Playing Around With Graphics
Here’s some of the things I’ve been working on today:
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| This is the still-life from the other day – I’ve played around with the color and added some filters to it. |
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| paintbrush, needle, whisk, pencil – ink on paper |
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| hammer, knives, tongs, pins – ink on paper |
Magazine Solution
I had a brainstorm today for our bedroom redo (still underway! Before and after pictures yet to come!).
I propped the side rail of my daughter’s old (recalled) crib up against the wall to use for magazine and blanket storage. This picture doesn’t really do it much justice because I took it tonight with low light, but I really like the way it looks – I might cut off a few of the rungs to make it a bit shorter, but I’m going to keep it around for a bit and see how it works out.
Lost in Font Land
I’ve been playing on the computer tonight – my goal was to design a new header for this site but I got a bit lost in the land of free fonts. Here are some of the beauties I downloaded:
I found these fabulous fonts thanks to this post and this post on the wonderful blog the handmade home. I’m moving on to the header now, but don’t know that I’ll get it finished tonight (after I screwed around with fonts for 2 hours!).
Tilapia with Lemon Caper Sauce and Greek Salad
Oooh-eee I was inspired tonight! I didn’t set out to make this dinner but as I got ready to cook it all came together, which is my favorite kind of cooking.
We had tilapia filets pan fried in olive oil, seasoned with garlic salt, pepper, oregano and a dash of cayenne pepper. When the filets were done I took them out of the pan, lowered the heat and made a quick pan sauce with lemon juice (from two lemons), capers (about two teaspoons), and a knob of butter (about a tablespoon).
I served the fish with steamed brown rice and a Greek salad composed of cucumber, tomato (tasteless – I should have known better), feta and a Greek olive mix from the grocery store olive bar. The salad was dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and oregano.
Yum yum yum! We thought it was delicious, and even the kids ate all their fish (sans sauce) and some cucumbers.
Happy Pi Day!
In honor of Pi Day (3.14) I made a savory Onion Tart. I used a recipe from the cookbook 1080 Recipes, with a few modifications – mostly that I ended up with twice as much filling as space in my pie shell so I ended up making two tarts. We loved it – the kids turned up their noses at it. Oh well, their loss!
Cookbook Still-life
I’ve got an idea percolating for another web project (I think I might be crazy!). It involves cookbooks, so today I set up a little still-life with some books and did a bit of photography.
Then Viv set up her version and we photographed that.
Don’t be surprised if this makes another appearance in the future in another form (ink drawing, watercolor?) especially if I start up the other project.
Adding Wall Art to the Master Bedroom
We finished painting our bedroom yesterday, and we’re starting to “dress it up” by adding in the different components of the redesign. The first new items to go in are a trio of maps over the bed that reflect where I’m from, where my husband is from, and where we met.
I bought stretched canvases from a craft store and used Mod Podge to attach the maps to the canvas surface.
Two Kids in One Bedroom – All Done!
My mother-in-law is coming to stay with us in a few weeks and since she’s staying for five months she needs her own room; thus the challenge of merging both kids’ things into one bedroom. Here are some before pictures of my daughter’s room (the room we moved both kids into):
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| Daughter’s bed |
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| Shelves / dresser |
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| Little brother’s room |
As you can see the big room was already pretty crowded and cluttered, and brother’s room was just about the same. We knew we needed to stack the kids somehow instead of having two separate beds, so we decided to go with the Kura loft bed from Ikea.
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| Assembling the loft: it would have been easier if the instructions weren’t missing steps! |
One big part of the process was sorting and thinning out the books and toys – I’m trying out a rotation system so that the toys and books stay interesting and fresh and the amount of choice isn’t overwhelming. I got three big bins (for group “A”, “B” and “C”) and put together three sets of toys and books (group “A” is the group in the bedroom). It took a few hours just to sort all the books and divide them into three sets, and then a ton of time to sort the toys. I tried to group them by themes as much as possible, so that all the farm animals are in the same set as the barn and tractors, and the books about farms.
Most of today was spent putting everything back into the room and moving some of the hooks and hanging things around in the room. Here’s the result:
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| Clothes and toy storage |
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| Toys and art station |
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| Loft bed |
We’re so pleased with how it turned out, and our daughter is thrilled too. Little brother on the other hand is much less thrilled – he wants his old room back, and he thinks Tita (grandma) can just sleep with us. We’re hopeful the coolness of the loft bed will eventually win him over.
Working Hard
Still working away. We worked steadily from 7AM until 5:30 PM and then took a break to have dinner with friends.
The kids room is probably 70% done and our room is almost all painted but not ready for the big reveal yet. Hopefully it’ll be done (everything installed) by the end of the week. Stay tuned for photos tomorrow evening.
Underway – Project Bedrooms
I feel like I’m in the midst of a ‘While You Were Out’ episode and my kids are the clients. We’ve gotten the loft bed assembled and we’re bringing toys and furniture back in. Tomorrow we start on our room.
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