Papercraft

This morning I was bored and stumbling around the internets when I came across this funny YouTube video from fortaxreasons.



I've looked at papercraft stuff before but that video inspired me to make some armor of my own. I perused some examples of some of the finest on papercraft world and while very impressed - decided that I should start small, with something a little more inside my skill set. I finally settled on the uber-cute bulldozer available at paperboxworld.

After a brief foray into the land of unsuccessful printer networking, my housemate went ahead and printed from his machine and I got to work. 30 or so minutes later I am the proud owner of a paper bulldozer d00d.


He's not perfect, and I had to use tape in the place of the recommended glue but mission accomplished anyway.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to tangle with a more complex pattern but I'll check out the glue selection next time I'm at the store just in case.

I blog your puppy!

Dan's got himself a new puppy! (pic's include Julius goodness)







no name for this bugger yet but I hear that she poops and sleeps a lot (perfect training for human babies down the road).

Busy Weekend and Chair Envy

It's been a busy weekend, we've all been working to get the house ready for house guest v1.0. We got all of the "outside of the house" items taken care of in our 5-hour shopping trip Saturday (which, by the way, was the NICEST day we have had in Seattle so far this year - 75° and SUNNY SUNNY SUNNY). The house cleaning will continue through Thursday and my housemates friend Michelle will be arriving Friday night. I'm finding it difficult to stay focused on just one room - I haven't finished any of them yet... but, I guess all the dents I make in the mess will add up to clean one of these days.

In other news, I'm experiencing some chair envy. Just down the street at Area 51 they have the most amazing piece in the window right now.

(not the best picture ever)



I haven't even bothered to check the price, because I know it is too much $$ and also because I have nowhere in my house where that chair would work - nevertheless it is GORGEOUS and I will continue to drool every time I pass it by.

On the project front, I've been working on some Roman Shades for our bedroom. I'm going to guess that I've already sunk well over 5 hours into the project and only have 1 of 3 curtains finished (but not yet hung). I've been getting lots of help from L.O....



...and will be brushing all that "help" off the curtains before they go up.

I also got some curtains hung up over our closet yesterday, it's nowhere near cool enough to take a picture of but it is really nice to not have to look into the dark, messy, abyss anymore. Maybe I will get a picture up once I sew a center panel into place - it should look a little nicer then.

Also - just a quick note but I am loving ByeBye List these days. It's a site that lets you do your same Craiglist search in any category but only displays the first 20 or so characters of the title + price + PICTURE. I've found all sorts of things I'm sure I need.


If I only had the room, or a truck. The bar stool there looks like a perfect match (minus the color) to the 3 bar stools I have now. I probably don't need a fourth chair but it makes me sad to think about such a cool piece all on it's own like that. I'm sure I could save it but then I really would need to invest the $$ to have all 4 recovered, and actually at this point I don't have the room for a fourth chair. Someone else will have to snatch up that awesome find.

New Curtain!

I've been searching for great fabrics to make new curtains for our home. I have come across a lot of suitable prints online but wasn't sure that I was going to have the best success locating these in the brick & mortar locations around town.



I found a great selection online at ReproDepot.com .

This week I went out in search of fabrics in my area, hoping to find a similar selection. First I went 20 miles South to one of the big name stores - and found that despite the size of the store (think Costco) they didn't carry anything that was even approaching acceptable. Later on in the week I hit up a smaller store located just a few miles from the house and hit the jackpot! Pacific Fabrics & Crafts had almost all the fabrics I had been looking at online and the staff was super helpful.

I ended up picking a fabric with a pretty steady pattern so that I could make my cuts and sew the pieces together without worrying too much.



A good bit of mess and a lot of cursing over the next 5 hours and voilà! We have a new Roman Shade for the back door!



It isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it's still pretty good for the first go-round. I plan to take another swing at it, maybe do our upstairs windows (if I can find a fabric I like in there)- or the front windows downstairs to replace the dreadful ikea drapes that are hanging now.



With any luck (and the proper amount of planning) the next shot at Roman Shades should turn out less crooked-y than v1.0.

Of Houseplants and Cats

I know next to nothing about plants. My knowledge is limited to a few simple facts: that they are often green and that they require varying levels of water and light. I also have two cats that love to get into everything. With this in mind I've been looking for a resource on plants that are safe (safer?) around beasts such as these:


So far all I have really been able find are lists of the plants that are non-toxic but, with reference to what I mentioned above about knowing next to nothing about plants what I really want is a page that will show me actual pictures of each variety. Since I haven't been able to find a resource like this online I'm taking a crack at creating my own.



Here is a link to the ASPCA site that has a complete listing of plants not reported to have terrible effects on cats. They also have great resources for plants and common household things that ARE toxic.

My listing is probably not complete and I don't swear by the images being exactly what your plant might look like. This is just meant to be a guide. Please do your own research on plants and your pets before making any purchases.

Visitors

Guests will be coming out for a visit in May and I've been trying to come up with a list of things to do around the area. I've been looking at 1 Day and Multi-Day Trips and have put together a hokey but functional (I think) presentation of some of these ideas using Google Docs presentation.



I'm also going to work on a list of things to do around the city. I'm thinking stuff like:

Bill Speidel's Underground Tour

Space Needle

EMP

SAM

Pike Place Market

The Go Seattle™ Card seems like it might be a good way to save a little money and still see almost all the things on the list, plus a few more that maybe we wouldn't visit otherwise.

Both of the boys have people coming to visit, only a few weeks apart. I'm not sure what sort of things they are looking to do, beyond the obvious of course, but I might end up stealing some ideas from them if they come up with anything good.

No matter what we end up doing I'm sure that good times will be had by all. Now if I could only afford to hire a maid to come in and do all the "pre-house guest" cleaning!