NYC trip

I took a whirlwind trip to NYC for Christmas. I was lucky enough to have enough frequent flier miles to afford the trip. The main thing I wanted to do was see Waiting for Godot with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan and see the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker. I got to do both of those things. The play was just amazing and did not disappoint at all. I read Waiting for Godot either as a teen or in my early 20s, and always wanted to see it performed. I couldn't have asked for a better cast! I was a bit disappointed with the Nutcracker. The set and costumes were amazing, but the ballet was just OK. They didn't do the traditional choreography, and I missed that. The acoustics in the Lincoln Center were amazing though and I did enjoy it.

I decided that I would try and see some of the museums I've never seen. Despite having been to New York many times, I've often wound up wandering the city and not doing a lot of "tourist" things. So my first full day there I went to the Met. I could have spent all day there. It was heavenly. Lots of Monet, and other impressionists that I love. I had hoped to also go to the Guggenheim that day, but I couldn't look at another piece of art. It was raining and the museum was very crowded. I rested at the hotel and then went to the play.

On my second day, I crammed in a lot. I started off at MoMA. I enjoyed it more than I thought, and could have spent more time there. They have a nice collection of impressionists and post impressionists. I also enjoyed the Kandinsky exhibit. My plan for seeing several museums was to triage and see what I really wanted to each museum. So on to the Guggenheim. I mostly wanted to go here for the building, and it did not disappoint. Even the bathroom was interesting since it too had curved walls! It didn't take long to walk through and I enjoyed the Christopher Wool exhibit as well as a few other modern pieces. I took a break and saw the Nutcracker in the afternoon. And after the Nutcracker, I had just enough time to make it over to the natural history museum. I wanted to see the dinosaurs, and the blue whale. It was fun to see some of the dioramas as well. It's a beautiful building. My day wasn't done yet! I then took a walk to see the Christmas displays in the stores and the tree at Rockefeller center!

My last day was Christmas day, and very cold. I think it was about 25, but much colder with the wind chill. I tried to take a bus tour of the city, but there was no heat on the tour bus, and once I got to Battery Park I got off so I could get warmed up. I took the subway to Grand Central Station, and then back to Time Square. I had a nice lunch and then it was time to head home.

Oddly, I'm kind of tired after all that! :-) I had loads of fun though, and it was really nice to get to see some things I've always wanted to see.

Pictures!!

Lemon tree in the kitchen

I finally did it! I painted an art deco looking lemon tree in the kitchen.

Gran in Texas--reflection

One of the thinks I like about Ros' style is that she freehands a lot of things in. In decorative painting you often work from a pattern and a set of instructions. With Ros, she'll give you color options, and you are not always working with a pattern. It's a nice stepping stone for me. I'm trying to branch out more as an artist (ooh, I still cringe to type that word, but I am working on being able to say or type it without cringing!). It's nice to have a pattern to fall back on for a building or structure, but it's also good to know I can paint trees or flowers with out a pattern.

I learned so much this week, and feel like my self confidence continues to grow. One of the things I like after taking a good painting class is how it opens your eyes and you see things differently. On the drive home, I kept looking at the trees and shrubs and thinking about what colors were in them, and the shapes they made, and how I would paint them. It's fun.

Ros is also just a lot of fun. She encouraged us to be loose, bold women in class. She was referring to our painting, but it's good advice always to not be shy of color or paint and keep things loose (or at least some things! ha!).

We were awarded a certificate today into the L.O.O.S.E. Women Society, which stands for Ladies of Originality, Style and Elegance. The best part though is where it says that it is "an annual event to develop and maintain skills in giggling, tapping, flicking, shoveling and the general slinging of paint with gleeful abandonment."

Gran in Texas--Day 4

Poppies were up for the last day of the seminar. We painted them on burplap-like placemats. I do not recommend that material for painting at all. Ugh. It was awful...the loose weave, and they seemed to absorb even more of the paint that "normal" fabric. I was pretty whiny today, and struggled with the surface.

However, I really liked painting the poppies! They were fun. I didn't finish the placemats as I just needed a break from the fabric. I need to do a little more work on the centers, and there are some bluebonnets that go in the design too. This whole design was freehanded in, so that was pretty darn cool.

Gran in Texas--Day 3

Day 3 was a challenging day. I was bit worn out from Day 2, and boy is painting a reflection a brain bender!! There were some interesting logistics to this, but I got the hang of painting wood, and for once my building isn't leaning! I have a tendency to have leaning buildings when I paint. I didn't finish this that day. We took a break and got some dinner and I did manage to put the glaze of color on the water section. Ros had to work her magic with the water ripples for me the next day. The first picture is without any water done, and the second is the finished painting.

Gran in Texas--Day 2--part 2

After the fruit painting we took a dinner break, and ate some good Cranky Frank's BBQ, and then painted a small beach scene. The downside meant this was a 13 hour day!! The plus side was a pretty awesome beach scene. These are a bit challenging too, but I'm looking forward to trying it again and seeing if I can get the waves right without Ros' touch ups! She has a way of making two or three strokes on your painting and bringing the whole thing together.

Gran in Texas--Day 2--part 1

Day 2 was fruit...strawberries and kiwi on a tin box. I decided to multi-task and also paint the fruit on a set of coasters, and paint some strawberry pins. It was fun until we hit the leaves. Leaves are my painting arch-nemesis. I don't know what it is about them. They make me grumble and whine almost every time. However, I got through it and wound up with some nice leaves. Again, a finished project at the end of the day!

Ros Stallcup--Gran in Texas Painting Seminar--Day 1

Ten years ago I took a week long painting seminar with Ros Stallcup, and had the best time. I've been wanting to take a seminar from her again, but she stays on the East coast a lot, and I just haven't been able to make it happen. I was so excited to learn she was coming to Texas, and I am so happy that I got to go. It was a wonderful 4 days in Fredericksburg.

The first day we painted this lovely flower cart on a wooden tray. We painted the background and then traced the cart on; everything else was freehanded. The best part was finishing the project that day! :-)

Simple Skirts

Back in the beginning of October, I took a Simple Skirts class at one of my favorite places, Stitch Lab. It's just an elastic waistband skirt. Super simple, and a couple weeks later, I made another one in about 45 minutes start to finish.

Curtains

I finished up the curtains for the make stuff room. There wasn't enough color in there, so I picked colorful fabric for the curtains. hehe. They make me happy.

Paper Mache

I finally made it to a painting club meeting this summer. The project was to paint paper mache santas. I made my Santa over 4 years ago, along with a bunch of other things. I painted the Santa and two of the snowmen. I just have some Halloween themed ones to paint and then I can "close" out that project!!

Summer Stitching Club Quilt

I finished up my quilt project. I'm super happy with it. I still can't believe I did this by hand. Pretty darn cool. I can't wait for the fall one! There are more pictures on Flickr. Notice the invisible stitches in the binding on the back!! I actually did the blind hem stitch.

Summer Stitching Club

About 4 weeks ago I signed up for Wild Olive's Summer Stitching Club. I don't know why. I took an embroidery class two years ago and haven't really done much with it since. I am not really a fan of hand sewing, and I dislike cutting things out. This project has all of that. I wrangled a friend into doing with me, and that made a huge difference. We got all the hexagons cut out together and it was easy peasy with a rotary cutter.

The project has been a pleasant surprise. Each week I get a new embroidery pattern and it only takes an hour or so to do it. It's good practice, and they are so cute. I have actually enjoyed sewing the hexagons together. I think it's because things are small and it's easy to work on it for a short amount of time. I'm about a third of the way done with the project. I'm pretty happy that I challenged myself to take this on!

Crepe Dress

I took a 3 session dress of the month class at Stitch Lab, and made a super cute wrap around dress. It even has pockets. It's a pretty clever design, and was pretty easy to put together. My only complaint is that it's a tad big. I still don't seem to be able to pick the right size for a pattern. I'm sure I'll get better at that.

London Trip

I spend a wonderful week in London with my best friend from high school. We rented an apartment for the week....originally in the Whitechapel area, but got switched at the last minute to the uber swanky Knightsbridge area near Harrod's. Here's a link to photos.

London is not my favorite city, but I liked it more this time than I have on previous visits.

4/17--arrived in London. Super jetlagged, but managed to go to Picadilly to get my London Pass, and get some food before crashing. Nikki's flight was cancelled so she wouldn't arrive until the next day.

4/18--Day tour of Stonehenge, Lacock and Bath. We left London at 5:20 am. Yes...5:30 am!! We arrived at Stonehendge about 8am. This was a private viewing before Stonehenge opens and we were able to go in and around the stones, but under no circumstances could we touch the stones. It was amazing. Next we went to Lacock for a full English breakfast in an old pub and had about an hour total there. Last stop was Bath for a couple of hours. We had a tour of the baths, and then I also toured the abbey, which was amazing. Then back in London by about 5:30 pm. Nikki finally arrived about 6pm, and we had dinner and a few drinks that night.

4/19--London. We tried to queue for some day of tickets to a play Peter and Alice with Judi Dench, but didn't have any luck. We then went on a bus tour around London, and got off at the London Tower for a tour there. Queued again for return tickets to the play, and did manage to get tickets!! The play was amazing. I was in the 11th row and all the actors gave fantastic performances. Afterwards we had some drinks in Picadilly and then headed home.

4/20--London. We spent half the day in the Camden market. It's a mix of handcrafted goods and clothing stalls and stores. It was a crush of people, but pretty amazing too. I wound up buying a cute top, a sweater and a fitted winter coat. I also had an amazing gluten free crepe! :-D Next we went on a river cruise of the Thames. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny. We had some drinks in at the flat and relaxed a bit.

4/21--Cardiff. We took the bus to Cardiff so we could go to the Dr. Who Experience. Unfortunately things did not work out us to spend any time exploring Cardiff or trying the local drink...Brains....beer! We hung out at a pub in London that night.

4/22--London. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral. We had lunch at Speedy's to bask in sharing the same space as Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock. Got tickets for the London Eye, and then went over to Oxford St. for a little more shopping and then tea at Selfridges. We then went back for a late afternoon trip on the London Eye. That night we went out dancing until the wee hours.

4/23--London. We had a lovely full English breakfast, and then unfortunately had to leave to go home.

Kitchen Demo Day 73

My backsplash was put in while I was on vacation! I love it. The pictures don't quite do it justice, but the colors are fairly accurate.

The kitchen is about 98% done. I still need a couple of things done to the floor. So happy it's practically over!!

Kitchen Demo Day 43

 I have a functional kitchen!! I have cold and hot water, and even filtered water. I have a dishwasher that works!! Oh, I haven't had a dishwasher since I moved in in August. I have drawer pulls and knobs. And as you can see by the pictures I'm very happy to have counters to pile crap on.

I have a fridge, but.... There are a couple of scratches on the top of the front door. And unfortunately no one realized there were three bags of frozen food in the freezer, so those got hauled off with the old fridge. I'm pretty devastated by that. I use my freezer like nobody's business, and lost a lot of food. It's actually pretty amazing how much was left in there since I've been eating lunch out of my freezer for 6 weeks. I gave up on trying to do dinner because the washing up was too much. I'll get over the heartbreak, and can hopefully clear out the curse of the fridge. :-D I have a beautiful, lovely, open kitchen that I can't wait to be in. I ordered the backsplash today. Unfortunately it won't be ready until the end of next week, but at least I have a functional kitchen. I can start settling in!! And despite a few annoyances, that's all they are. I have a kitchen again!! And a pretty one at that!!

Kitchen Demo Day 42

I have a working stove, microwave, garbage disposal and cold water!! So exciting! The disposal is super quiet, and I can't tell you how lovely it is to have a sink.

This kitchen feels like home. And bonus, I can't touch the ceiling anymore!!

Kitchen Demo Day 41

41 days of not having a kitchen. UGH!! I should have the appliances and plumbing hooked up on Thursday. Yay!!

So I love the granite. It's definitely more blue green than I was expecting, and doesn't go with the olive green I just painted in the dining room. So I need to pick a new color. I am pretty well decided on the celery green subway tile and a couple of rows of the mosaic.

Here are the paint swatches I'm considering.

Kitchen Demo Day 38

Time to take a break from the demo part and discuss kitchen backsplashes. So last week when I went to The Tile Guy shop, I looked at travertine and faux travertine tiles for the backsplash. They are pretty, but very neutral. To jazz it up, I could add a mosaic border...along the lines of this.

One of the challenges is I have a spectacular floor (or I will once I get a few things fixed...I don't want to talk about the problems I've encountered yet) and the granite will also be a little busy. So the travertine is calm and will allow everything else to be the star. The problem for me is that it's beige. It does come in warm tones, and I do think it looks lovely with the granite, but it's kind of boring.

I've spent the last week coming to terms with the fact that I might just have a blah backsplash. Last night I looked at glass mosaics to use as a border and found these two. I like the one with the purple in it.

So I went to the tile shop today, and John, who helped me before was there. He's amazing. Knowledgable and has a good eye for things. Anyway, I also had my paint swatch. I'm do the olive in the dining area. He pulled out a beveled subway tile in celery, which is calm but not blah. It doesn't have the high gloss as the other colored ceramic/porcelain tiles I'd looked at and looks great with my granite.

As we're talking he said I could still do a mosaic border in there, but it might not need it. But then an idea hits him and he shows me this stunning ceramic mosaic. It's got a bit more blue in it, but wow!! I really like it. It comes in this cool basketweave pattern that would be pretty darn awesome because that reads arts and crafts so much.

I also asked him to show me this hexagon tile in yellow. It's blended so there's a bunch of different yellows. I saw it last week and it stuck in my head. It could work.

Anyway--I've gone from blah to OH! I'm going to wait to make a final decision until granite is in and I can see the samples with the full size granite.

Kitchen Demo Day 34

This has been a rough couple of weeks. I have had a hard time getting estimates from tile installers. I wound up with only two estimates and wildly different approaches. I really would have liked a third, but I just don't have the time, or the patience to track down another installer. I also really don't like that it's harder to find reviews or info on installers. So I am going on my instinct. My head keeps arguing with me. I'm so anxious, but I try and keep reassuring myself it will all work out fine in the end!

So I spent most of last week with a horrendous cold trying to get things nailed down. My hope was to get the tile installed this week so appliances could be delivered, and then the countertops would come next week. After many phone calls, I did get a tile guy scheduled for this week. He put down an underlayment yesterday. This is to stabilize the floor and keep the cracks from cracking my tile.

Today he started to lay the tile. Unfortunately a couple of hours after starting, I got a call. They were short on tile. ACK!! So I called the tile store, and they were going to check. Fortunately it was in stock and could be delivered later that afternoon to the store. Unfortunately I have a job where I can't really slip away in the afternoon since it's my busy time. However, I have a dear friend who was willing pick up the tile for me. Yay!! So the tile guys will be able to finish laying the tile tomorrow and do the grout. Whew.

This sort of stuff just stresses me out. I hate having to deal with all of it, and I start worrying and obsessing. I know it will be fine. I really do, but I can't help it. Anyway, I got home from work and my heart stopped. The tile is beyond words beautiful. It is exactly what I wanted, and visual reminder of why I really wanted the tile and didn't want to have to find a different flooring. I can hardly wait to see it tomorrow after it's finished.

Now, if I could just get the countertop folks to wrap up the details!!

Kitchen Demo Day 29

Trim is up. It finishes the cabinets off nicely, and I like the transition from the stain to paint. Now back to waiting.