do you want to hear a xylophone in the forest?

yes, of course you do.  click below.

you’re welcome.

[from here]

i’m not entirely sure, but it looks like I may have purchased these blueberries in 1925 this week.

(image via)

now that we are decorennovating (see what i did there: decorate, renovate, innovate all combined into a superword) casa derose, i finally have justifcation and reason to buy a print that i love from an artist that the boy and i both love, frank chimero.

and of course, after eyeing it for the past year or so, right when i get ready to buy it, the site is down for maintenance. [update: big cartel, the shop site, responded uber-fast to my twitter inquiry, and advises it's not on their side, but mr. chimero's.]

for 4 days now.

4.  four. or, in German, vier.

okay, so i sound rather whiny at the prospect of delaying my instant gratification for only 96 hours, especially when we’re talking about art for decoration purpose and not, say, waiting for more valuable things like air, food, or being rescued from a chilean mine.

but still.

this…is…my…um… chilean mine?  yeah, i’m not even sure i can fully go through with that analogy.

suffice it to say, that in my well-appointed home office where i have light and air and zero soot stains, i certainly am only dealing with first-world problems.   4-day-long-first-world problems.

i’ve put my requests out into twitterland, and hopefully it will come through for me.

for this WILL. BE. MINE.

i was having a very long week a few weeks ago with nothing much to look forward to on the weekend except for a small reprieve and stacks and stacks more work.

the only recourse i had was to go shopping for christmas decorations.

naturally.

alas, i didn’t find any; however, while poking around online, i stumbled on the PERFECT decorations for this year from CB2: jetsons-inspired ornaments.  en route to me are 8 of the white ones, to be hung in front of our grey curtains with crimson ribbon, and then the orange and green to adorn the tree.

paradoxically, our other christmas addition came from the opposite spectrum of modernity: charles dickens and chalk.

the boy and i have been pondering how to change our chalkboard wall into something befitting the holidays.  we’ve batted around various song lyrics, picture ideas, and classic quotes, but nothing called out to us that matched the perfection we found in our first iteration of the wall (crafted in June at the time of our wedding):

until sunday.

i woke up in a grumpy mood on sunday.  no, grumpy doesn’t quite cover it…i was fussy. you know…FUSS. Y.  i had forgotten a disk i needed at school, so the boy and i pulled on our shoes and decided to fetch the disk while getting some pancake mix and then come home for breakfast.  i went to my desk to get my key (which is attached to my passkey to get into school and my jump drive with my whole school career on it) and found…nothing.

harumph!  now, i’ve definitely lost things before, and i have a natural talent for losing things within minutes of getting home, but i have not lost/misplaced my school keys the ENTIRE YEAR.  i have a pretty set system; however, last friday i taught in literally 5 different rooms on 3 different floors of school, so things were a little off.

but, how to get into school on a sunday to retrieve the keys AND the disk i needed.

i call my friend, heather, who works with me.

because she is a goddess among women (and men, too, if we’re getting technical) she agrees to pop over and meet me while we retrieve everything.  [note: ironically, after this whole ordeal, i retrieved the keys and not the disk i was going there for in the first place.  of course.]

we find keys in the 2nd place i thought they’d be, set the alarm and then headed out.  not, of course, without first inviting heather for breakfast as repayment.

over a tasty breakfast of pancakes and eggs cooked by the chef boy, we mention to heather that we still need something for our chalkboard wall.  immediately she suggests a particular quote (from memory) from a one charles dickens that we INSTANTLY swoon over.  it’s perfect.

[side note: i heart my friends.]

if you know anything about the boy, you know that once he has a project he’s excited about, it’s like a dog with a bone.  he must attack it, immediately, if not sooner.  he spent the afternoon designing it, then spent the next evening in the dark with his projector faintly outlining the script, then spent the next evening detailing this:

dude.

duuuuuuuuuude.

it’s really awesome, if i do say so myself.

so, the beginning of our christmas season has started with a bang (not a whimper).  it will be a very dickens/jetson christmas, and i can’t wait.

if you have known me longer than 2 weeks, you know my affinity towards polaroid film.  with this, i way live up to my hipster street cred.  i own five of them, and a long time ago the lovely paradigm girls gifted me my polaroid mio.

they no longer make the mio, but they do make the fuji instax 210 camera (which i also really, really REALLY want for many reasons, not least of which is the wide format.  did i mention REALLY?  all caps?), and my mio take fuji instax film.  thankfully, while the impossible project folks figured out how to make polaroid again, i have not been devoid of my beloved instant lo-fi film.

when we got our engagement pictures taken by the lovely jannelle (who you will remember from the last post i wrote), she was more than happy to take pictures with my cara mio.  i scanned them in, tweaked the color just a tad and added my favorite vintage-looking rounded corners, and voila.  lo-fi love.

bluebirds, lovebirds.

he’s awfully cute.

“love, love here we are.”  — pablo neruda

we registered for gifts.   or, well, we registered for part of our gifts.  as it turns out, trying to figure out what you have, what you need, and what goes where with what and how…takes a lot of energy and more time than one evening.  but we are well on our way.

we got the design of our invitations finalized (after much delay from me who was a little busy to work on the copy) and ready to print/mail this week.

with the incredible generosity of my friends who came to my bridal shower, i also was able to buy a couple of things i had been needing for awhile as well as a few cute additions to the clothes i picked out for our engagement photos.

which were also this weekend.

we spent a windy (thankfully, it died down a little) and mostly sunny afternoon on saturday taking photos with our friend, and fantastic photographer, jannelle.  i’ve known jannelle forever, and liked her own personal style as well as her photography style for some time.  she composes pictures well, she edits well, and she’s generally a fantastic person overall.  but, i wondered if it would feel strange to get my picture taken for hours (not my idea of the best time ever), particularly by a friend?

nope.  nada.  nyet.  jannelle is really great at that too.  it more felt like we were on a fun adventure with cute outfits and happened to have someone taking some pictures of us along the way.  she has great ideas, is open and spontaneous to new locations and options, and will also help you move 30 reference books at the library to a new shelf in order to get a great shot.

or maybe that’s just if you happen to want your pictures done in a library, because you’re nerds.   i don’t know anything about that, really, but i bet if you were in a library and taking pictures, jannelle would haul heavy books, take a picture with your polaroid camera, take the cutest pictures you’d ever seen, and then edit them brilliantly.   because that’s just how she rolls.

you know, hypothetically speaking.

and setting it in one of the most bizarre choices of location (the suburbs)?  well, that’s just the icing on the cake.

band: the dead weathers (aka jack white & alison mosshart’s newest project).
video: directed by jonathan glazer.
thank you: christopher, stewart, and ken wang; respect.

(via)

so, how about friday?  good then, that’s settled.  for everyone else, here you go.

i’m fairly beaming now, because my very talented boy has sold a few more paintings.

i have always loved and been immensely proud of his talent, and loved the fact that i didn’t have to use my “very supportive yet fake interested” face with his art.  you know the one, where you are going to be all supportive-wife/girlfriend/whathaveyou, and say “that’s so great!” and hope that you never have to actually hang this stuff on your walls.

thankfully, i actually liked it. and some of the things, i loved.

his bachelor’s degree, after all, is in fine art with am emphasis in painting, so beyond his actual work (and talent) as a graphic designer, painting and mixed media is a core passion of his.  and, part of the reason (you know, besides me) of moving here was so that he could have more creative time to pursue his fine art – hanging his paintings in galleries, meeting other artists and working on their art, taking more drawing classes, and of course, hopefully selling art as well.

one of our absolute favorite places in town is shuga’s, a bar/cafe/tapas place on the corner of downtown.  i’ve come here for years, and the boy quickly adopted it as a fave haunt as well.

they have an open wall for artists to routinely show their work, and so i suggested he get on their rotation.  one of their first openings (15th through the 29th) coincided with his birthday, so we decided to have an artshow/birthday, which is this saturday.  (p.s. if you are reading this, you are invited!  shuga’s, 6pm, saturday.  do come, really.  it will be nice.)  he hung the paintings on friday afternoon, and since then has sold four paintings, with interest shown in a couple more and the owner of shuga’s and a gallery owner declaring their interest.

i’m sorry, but how badass is that?

very.

VERY.

exclamation point!

he is so persistent, and i am desperately happy that people are taking interest. he’s trifled with putting it on etsy, so that people can see it/buy it/hate it (just kidding) online, which will happen soon.  many people have asked, so i will keep you in the know. until then, if you would like to commission some art or buy existing art pieces, have your people call my people   but in the meantime, i wanted to show you some favorites from the show:

this one sold today, with another person also interested in it.  this is his children’s book phase, as i am calling it.

this one he painted a few years ago, and sold on saturday.  his friend garrett loved this painting, and is now very sad.

sorry for the crappy picture quality, i took it from the boy.  this is actually his first painting he did for me, as a housewarming present a few years ago.  it’s not actually for sale, but in the show for display.  several people have wanted it, though, so he may be making more

the first painting that sold, again with another person interested in it.  also, again my apologies for the crappy camera work (not mine!)  the text says “teddy looked at the big pile.  he did not want to go back.”  from the children’s book phase of 08/09.

this one sold saturday, and i was sad to see it go.  it’s one of my favorites.

this one was from several years ago, painted on wood.
also not for sale, and usually resides in my house above the television set.

this one is in my kitchen.  it’s not in the show, but only for lack of room.

* * * * *

beam.  bravo.  cheers.