Archive for December, 2010
Done. Over it. Finito.
After over two weeks of doing it, sleeping on the floor is officially getting old.
So we bought a bed frame. Oh happy day! We had big plans for possibly building one (using one of Ana White’s amazing tutorials). And we debated just getting a cheapo-metal frame and laying slats of wood across it so we could rest our mattress on that (so we could DIY another upholstered headboard down the road). But in the end the four poster bed that caught our eye back when we whipped up this future bedroom mood board won out (click here for more mood board details).
One of the issues is that our organic mattress (which you can read about here and here) is super thick and made of extra dense all natural latex rubber. So as I’ve weirdly described it before, it’s heavier than thirty dead people. To this comment John always responds: “How would you know that? Even serial killers don’t attempt to carry thirty bodies at once.” So although I will specify that I haven’t actually carried thirty dead people, the mattress is as heavy as I would imagine that scenario to be. Seriously, it weighs a ton. Which is why we worried that a normal metal frame meant to hold a boxspring and a regular (much lighter) mattress wouldn’t exactly adapt very well to wood slats and a box-springless super heavy mattress. And the idea of buying a $600+ organic boxspring to make a cheap-o metal frame work quickly became a not-so-cheap-o solution, so we tossed out that possibility as well.
It definitely would have been fun (and kinda romantic) to build a bed frame together like our Bower buddies, but our aching backs won out and we decided we were done with sleeping on the floor. Over it. Seriously spent. Imagine Ben Stiller emphatically saying “I’m finished with the checking of the bags conversation” to that flight attendant in Meet The Parents. That’s how emphatically those last few sentences should be read. Warning: Ben tosses out a the word beeyotch (without all the eee’s) at the end of this clip in case you’re at work/with a tot.
And with the chaos of the holidays, bed-building just wasn’t going to happen for another week or so. Which is how we got to the purchase of our new queen sized white Ikea four poster bed. And since his official Ikea name is Edland, we like to affectionately refer to him as Ed.
But right now he’s looking like this in our house:
Here’s hoping he’s not too hard to assemble and can handle the weight of thirty dead bodies. We’ll be back with pics when he’s all set up after some not-floor sleeping (we’re gonna give him a test run and tell you all about the comfort-factor tomorrow).
Hold On.
As we head into the holiday weekend, we’re looking forward to watching “the kids” unwrap their presents (yes, Burger gets some too), gorging on goodies, and spending time with family and friends. But before the festivities officially begin, we wanted to take a moment to say HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you guys!
The image above was the Christmas card that we sent out to our family and friends (in case you can’t see, the text reads: “Hope you get your mitts on everything that you want this season“). This is the template we used through Snapfish (we just provided the pic and the wording of the note and they printed 40 5 x 7 cards on matte photo paper & provided envelopes for each one to the tune of around $25 thanks to a coupon code that we googled around for).
Getting the shot was a bit more involved than our previous years’ cards (which starred Burger as a reindeer, a kiss-monger, and a big brother in waiting) since we had a dog and a baby to work with this time (everything from getting Burger to actually wear his trapdoor sleeper to keeping both of our models in place was a bit of a challenge). But we had tons of fun watching Clara try to lick Burger for a change (weird, but true). And since we know you guys love behind the scenes stuff, here’s our “set” of sheepskins in the ol’ den where we shot it in early December:
Notice the block acting as Clara’s stand-in while she was getting a diaper change? Oh and here’s a fun fact, Sherry actually photoshopped that bow on Clara’s head after we uploaded the pic because she wanted her to look a bit less androgynous (since there’s no hair to clip a real bow to yet).
Anyway, happy holidays to all! May your days be merry and bright- and may your chihuahuas (and other various family members) be held tight.
Psst- We announced this week’s giveaway winner. Click here to see if it’s you.
Nice Mugs
This is a weird DIY thing I tossed together three Monday nights ago in front of the TV in our old house.
The first reason I’m calling it weird is because we no longer live there, so it’s funny that this post somehow got buried and now it’s getting published with our old walls and shelves in the background. And it’s pretty darn close to Christmas, but I figured it might be a fun little last minute gift idea for someone. Better late than never, right? Hence the idea of hitting publish on it (as opposed to delete).
The second reason I’m calling it weird is that I totally didn’t use the right materials to make these mugs food or beverage safe (so they’d be great informal flower vases on a kitchen windowsill, pencil holders in an office, or even q-tip or cotton ball containers in a bathroom) but they shouldn’t be used to hold tea or coffee. I just used a silver Sharpie that I had on hand (the same one I used to make these ornaments to celebrate Clara’s first Christmas). Why’d I do that? Well, we sold a bunch of these mugs that we never used at our moving sale, but when we were packing our three floating shelves in our old dining area we realized there were three more mugs sitting up there that we somehow missed. So before I put them in our donate pile, I got the odd urge to draw on them with my favorite little marker. Just for kicks.
My expectations were to have some fun sketching on the mugs and then just donate them (after writing “not for food use” on the bottom). But I ended up loving them so much that I gleefully packed them up and took them with us to our new house. I think they’ll look so cute in our office (full of pens, pencils, and paperclips). And of course I can also use them every year around the holidays to hold individually wrapped candy canes in fun fruity colors like yellow or pink (which, thanks to the wrapping, won’t be affected by the not-food-safe Sharpie).
As for the how-to details, what you see is what I did. I pretty much just drew rows of hearts all the way around one, some funny scale-ish wiggles that looked sort of like strips of ribbon on the second one…
…and a whimsical little tea bag on the outside (and inside) of the third….
The tea bag idea was actually inspired by a similar mug that I recently saw at Urban Outfitters (shown in this post). And of course that one took about ten seconds to do. So anyway, I figured it was worth sharing my odd little a-few-weeks-old evening project even though it’s not really the best DIY gift when you use a silver Sharpie (unless you tell the giftee that they’re not food or dishwasher safe) since a food-friendly ceramic marker or paint pen might make these quick little designs that I threw together a lot more functional. Happy mug-drawing to one and all!
