Silver Crosses

I was playing with my camera the other day and seeing how well I could fake taking macro photos with my non-macro lens. These are all of my silver crosses that I got in San Antonio. Two of them are actually ceramic that I spray painted silver and antiqued with black paint, but I like them better that way.

Green with Envy (I know it's a lame title, but I'm lazy)

In the spirit of St. Patrick's day, I'm thinking about green. More specifically, I'm thinking I miss my old green apartment.

Case in point

I can never make up my mind as to what I want. Today, my brilliant ideas have been to reupholster my currently rusty-orange chesterfield so it is more neutral, stain all of my wood furniture dark, and go back to the green color scheme. I told boyfriend this, and he tells me I have to stop fighting my apartment. I thought about that for a bit, and it's true. I am always trying to change something about it, so I think I'm going to take a deep breath, relax, and learn to enjoy what I have (for the time being at least). And while I do that, I'm going to soak in the lovely greenness of the photo below.


(Photo courtesy of Domino by way of http://mywhiteshirt.blogspot.com/)

Sláinte!

Seeing as how I lived a good chunk of my life in County Clare (ok, Clare County in Michigan, but still highly Irish), I am no stranger to the festivities that surround St. Patrick's Day. Unfortunately, this year I will have to abstain and pack for my trip to Honduras tonight. Instead, I celebrated Saturday night. I went over to a friend's house for a delicious meal of corned beef and cabbage. Mmmmmm.

Ready to dig in

Irish soda bread


Brian made enough to feed an army

And I will conclude with every gaelic word/saying I can remember, based on my time working at the Leprechaun Shop:

Sláinte - Cheers
Erin go braugh - Ireland forever
Pog mo thoin - Kiss my ass
Inis - Island

Dutch Sand Dunes #2

This is another favorite picture of mine from the sand dunes in the Netherlands. I'm the really enthusiastic one right behind the leader guy.

Fisheye!

I got my fisheye lens adaptor! It's not nearly as good as an actual fisheye lens, but a heckofa lot cheaper, and better than my fisheye film camera. Of course I got right to work playing with it.

I'm famous!

I didn't actually find this myself, but several people told me that I made the Washington Post Express! I had to get a hard copy for myself, and sure enough, I was quoted in the Blog Log. How cool is that? I still haven't decided about the phone number thing, though.

On Top of the World

This one goes back even further, to when I was in the Netherlands in 2002. This was my favorite fieldtrip of the class, as we basically just got to run around on the sand dunes. Oh, and learn how Amsterdam's water supply was filtered through the dunes, etc, etc, but that was all just a side benefit.

Beauty Before Function

I was going through some pictures from back in the day when I only had a film camera, or was in between digital cameras, and it brought back some good memories, so I thought I would scan some. This was a really cool drainpipe that I saw in Seattle when I went there in 2006 for a friend's wedding.

Flowers are popping up everywhere...

I was reading a new favorite blog of mine, Threadbangers, which is all about being crafty without looking like you're 80, and I came across these pictures of the Fendi Spring 2009 collection, with the flowers. I am in love! Boyfriend isn't quite as enthused about it, but he just has to accept that I have weird taste.


The funny thing is that I was actually already planning on doing something similar. I had come across this post on Design*Sponge, and thought the lamp shades looked really cool, especially the one on the left. There just happened to be instructions, so I thought I might try something similar, but on a shirt. I went to my favorite fabric store a few days later and picked up some felt in varying shades of blue, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Yet another thing to add to the list of projects.


(Top photos: Fendi, Bottom photo: Design*Sponge)

Food: Ray's Hell-Burger Edition

So boyfriend has been talking about this burger place in Rosslyn for months now, but I'm always reluctant to leave my haven of DC and enter the Commonwealth of Virigina. Last week, I finally did though, and went down to meet him after work for a wine tasting at Domasoteca (free wine tastings every Thursday). Afterwards, we walked over to Ray's Hell-Burger for dinner. It's definitely not a swanky place, but the burgers are good. It's the kind of place where you order your food, get a number, and then have to wait for people to leave so you can actually sit. I highly recommend it if you need to get you month's worth of cholesterol in one sitting, it was delicious.

Boyfriend had a burger with mushrooms, grilled onions and peppers, bacon, and mozzarella.


I had a burger with pepperjack cheese, grilled peppers and onions, and guacomole.

We also had these delicious little balls of goodness - they were called tater tots, but they were essentially cheesy balls of mashed potatoes deep fried. I was in heaven. We washed it all down with Old Dominion root beer, which they have on tap. Ray's Hell-burger gets one and half thumbs up, but only doesn't get the extra half a thumb because it's in Virgina. :)

My New Baby Has Arrived!

Unfortunately, Mom, this is the only grandbaby you will be getting out of me. But yes, my beautiful new camera came in the mail yesterday, and I had oodles of fun playing with it.

Boyfriend actually took the picture of the seedlings, but it shows that I can almost do macro with my lens! I now have to start saving all of my dollar bills for a new lens - I can't decide if I want a wide angle lens or a macro...oh well, I have plenty of time, as either of those will be more expensive than my camera and current lens combined.

Going Over to the Dark Side

I've been debating for a while now as to whether or not to go over to the dark side. And by that I mean succumb to the need for a fancy phone that can check the internet, pay my bills, wash my dishes, you name it. Well, the last one is wishful thinking, but you get the picture. I think I've pretty much made up my mind to take the plunge and get the Samsung Omnia.

So here comes the even trickier bit. Do I give up the only cell phone number I've ever had, and switch over to a phone number that actually makes geographical sense? It's not likely that I will move back to Grand Rapids any time in the near future, but I will miss the 616, it's true. Not only that, it's a huge pain in the butt to tell everyone I know that I've switched my phone number. It would make my life a little easier in that I could actually buzz people into my building, as it's not possible with a long-distance number. What do you think?

DC Design House 2009 - Odds and Ends

So there were a few things that I saw at the DC Design House that didn't really have anything to do with the design projects themselves, so I thought they deserved their own post. There was a little passageway in between the master sitting room and the master bedroom, with a closet off of it. I peaked in the closet, but from the looks of it, I wasn't supposed to. On the other side of the passageway though, were these really cool hooks. I didn't know what they were, but boyfriend in his vast pastor's kid knowledge said that they were organ stops. I know they will probably get rid of them in the redo, but I hope they keep them, as it's a cool thing to have in a rectory.

Another cool little doo-dad that boyfriend filled me in on was the peephole on the front door. I had never seen one that looked like that and I thought it was odd looking, but then I looked through it and I was amazed. It's essentially a tiny fisheye lens, and is so awesome. That's what I want on my door now.

I Can't Escape the Travel Bug

So, I told myself I wasn't going on any trips this year, as Botswana totally blew my budget last year. That is, until boyfriend tells me he found tickets to Honduras for $250 roundtrip. So now we are going in a week and a half down to visit his dad for 5 days. Once we bought our tickets though, boyfriend realizes his passport will be expiring soon. Sure enough, they won't let you in within six months of the expiration date. Mild rant - I think that's stupid. Essentially that makes your passport invalid for 6 months that they tell you it's really supposed to be valid. You really should get a six month grace period after your passport expires, is what I think. Anyway, so boyfriend had 2 options. One was to send it away for expedited service and hope they returned it within 2 weeks (we bought the tickets 3 weeks ahead of time). Option number two was just to wait until the 2 week window hit, where he could just go to the passport office and have them do it immediately. Since the passport office is downtown, he went with that option and will get his renewed passport on Wednesday, and will pay less than sending it away.

Second exciting news. I've been saving all my ones and the occasional five dollar bill for a while now, so that I can buy a digital SLR camera. It's been taking a while, but I was about $75 away from my goal when boyfriend mentioned this weekend that maybe I could get the camera. Hmmm....the wheels turn in my head. If I keep saving my dollars and fives, I won't be able to buy it until June. But what's the point of going on a tropical vacation if I can't fully capture it in photographs? So I bit the bullet and ordered my Nikon D40, which will be arriving on Wednesday. :) I'm so excited. It was a bit hard for me to give up my Canon loyalty, but it's pretty much universally accepted by the camera reviewing world that the D40 is the best bang for the buck, and is a great camera. I also like the fact it's not ginormous, like boyfriend's D80. Also, there is the added advantage that I can now steal boyfriend's lenses, since we will both have Nikons.

Funny story about that though. So I ordered the camera Saturday, so Sunday I thought I would go practice with boyfriend's old film SLR camera, so I know what I'm doing once I get my camera. I thought I was doing really well, writing down the settings for each picture, so I would know what they were once I got them developed. After about 3 pictures though, I realized that the film wasn't advancing, and it appeared to be staying on 4. Oh, I realized, that's actually the apeture number. Hmm....so where is the film number? I'm looking all over the camera and then realize that there is no actual film in the camera. Seriously, sometimes I'm a moron.

DC Design House 2009 - Bare Bones Tour, Part 2

As promised, I've continued the DC Design House tour, and here is the second floor, with their planned designs. I wasn't quite as impressed with the designs overall on the second floor as with the first, but primarily because it wasn't really my style. But, given that it is a church rectory with a traditional architecture, it makes sense.

Second Floor Plan

Going up the back stairs, the first room we came to was the Children's room. As the rectory doesn't actually have an inhabitants, this room was designed with a little girl who is at the Children's Hospital in mind, and will incorporate her artwork. The designer wasn't in the room, so I don't know all the details of the room, but I love the large floral fabric. It's interesting as well that the paint colors were almost identical to colors used in the Dining Room. It will look really nice in this room though, as it had 3 large windows and lots of light.

Children's Room

The next room along the hallway was a Sitting Room/Den. The design here was nice and classic, with a greek key theme. I want to steal the stool pictured bottom center though. In my old apartment building, people would frequently leave stuff they no longer wanted in the hallway, and it would invariably be gone in 24 hours. One night, I was walking up to my apartment with boyfriend, and there was a stool just like that, except not painted and gorgeous, a floor below me. I immediately said I had to have it, but boyfriend, always the voice of reason, said that I wasn't allowed because I already had way too much furniture for my studio apartment. I held my piece and thought I would just go get it in the morning. Alas, someone else saw how beautiful it was, and had snatched it up in the night. i'm still sad to this day, and boyfriend is no longer allowed to talk me out of things that I love. Rather, he's allowed to try, but I just don't listen. :)

Sitting Room Design Board

Connected to the Sitting Room was a Guest Bedroom. It currently has some crazy shelves all along one wall (the wall with the bed on the design board), so it will look quite different once it's all redone. It has a similar design sensibility to the Sitting Room and should flow well, but there were some elements I wasn't a huge fan of on the design board. Primarily it involved the bench at the foot of the bed being covered in some sort of white furriness, which I didn't like at all. I'm also not partial to sisal rugs, especially in a bedroom, but that was what was proposed for the room.

Guest Bedroom Design Board

Back out in the hallway, the next room is the Master Bathroom. It's a small room, as to be expected in an old house, and the design was fairly safe, mainly just updating the look of the room with brown colors, which I tend to stay away from.

Master Bathroom Design Board

Connected to the Master Bath is the Master Sitting Room, which was being designed by the same firm. I thought the proposed layout was a little strange for a private room such as a master sitting room, having two loveseats facing each other. I think though that they were already in there and are being reupholstered, as there were two loveseats that look very similar to the ones on the board already in the room. The one piece that I loved in this room was the end table, two of which will form a coffee table arrangement. The bright pop of lime green and shape of them will help add a more modern element to a house where the design is getting increasingly fuddy-duddy.

Master Sitting Room Design Board

And the final room of the house tour - the Master Bedroom! I really should have done the tour in the opposite direction, as this was my least favorite design concept of the house, but we'll see when it's done. I love peacocks incorporated into design (see my old bathroom for example), but I think they need to be done in rich jewel tones, more like art deco, rather than the toned-down watercolor look below. I think this room will end up looking more like a museum, rather than a functional room.

Master Bedroom Design Board

And so wraps up the 2009 DC Design House Bare Bones Tour. I am volunteering as a docent on May 2 (get in for free and get the inside scoop), so stayed tuned for the finished project!