Baby fever!

I would have a baby right now if it meant that I could have this room in my house. Is that shallow? Don't care. I really am having those twinges of baby-wanting a little more frequently though (it's okay to say that here, Jeff only reads the blog when I tell him to!) and pictures of nurseries like this certainly don't help. This is exactly what I would want my baby's room to look like. Love the color combo, the wood mobile from Petit Collage, the cute fabrics in needlepoint hoops, the wood floors, the weenie dog lamp, the elephant hamper, oh my...




via Design*Sponge and Megan Creates

Speaking of creepy art...

I thought these drawings were really funny, but then after reading the artist's (Saiman Chow) description of the project titled "Summer of Love", I was kind of creeped out: "Its a bitter sweet series that examine our fascinating yet frightening views on sexuality in our exploitative society, aren't we all animals after all." Beastiality = yucky.

Happy birthday Henry!

This past Saturday Jeff and I were invited down to Claremont for little Henry's 1st birthday. Henry is the grandson of Pete and Sue Mieuli, and son of Nicole and Ben. We had a really nice time, it was a pretty amazing birthday party for a baby. The food was like a wedding's buffet and it was a lovely warm day for a backyard party. It was great to see Pete and Sue again, and so lovely to finally meet Nicole and her husband Ben. Here's the happy family:


Look how cute Henry is! He was such a well-behaved baby too. So good-natured and mellow. I wanted to steal him, he was such a peach. Jeff wouldn't let me though so I guess we'll just have to make our own baby.


Jeff and I drove down to Claremont's downtown area after the party and walked around the strip. Loved it! All of the buildings looked old but new and different. Whoever was in charge of their downtown redevelopment did an excellent job. Too bad it's so far away from LA, otherwise we'd look for houses there!

Pepto Dismal

Sneak peek alert!! Jeff has been working super hard on his upcoming solo show at the Last Rites gallery in Chelsea that is opening September 12th this year. The show is titled Pepto Dismal and is taking a turn for the creepy. As if Ronald McDonald wasn't bad enough, Jeff paints a version of him with half his face stripped off to show the skull. Eat too many McGriddles and McFish's and this too will happen to you. Fries and soft serve cones from McDonalds are okay though. Mmm... soft serve...

Anyways, here are your *exclusive* sneak peeks. These two are still in progress as dancing children will be circling the floating head. I think. Jeff and his crazy ideas!

I want it to be the Future right NOW.

Um, solar forest parking lots? YES PLEASE! Check out these EV charging stations of the future! They were designed by Neville Mars and serve a dual function of shade for parking lots AND electricity for plug in cars. Genius. This is the world that I want to live in.

I'm feeling crafty...

Jen needed to pick up some cool fabric for some throw pillows for her new pad so Mandy and I took her to the fabric mecca here: M&L fabrics. It's HUGE and has the most bolts of fabric I've ever seen in my life. She picked out some cool ones, and Mandy found a perfect fabric for the bedroom window in her new house. It looks a lot like something Seth would draw I think so it was a good find. Check it:


I was trying to be good during this shopping trip because I haven't been sewing very much and I already have a lot of great fabric so I don't need to add to the collection. But then I found this amazing bolt. And the gift ideas came flowing... painting apron for Jeff, tote bag for Jan, button down shirts for Dad and big Michael, pillow cases for Jerod and Seth... so manly!

Live Painting at DDR

This Friday Jeff was asked to participate in a live painting collaborative project at a local gallery called DDR Projects. Last week we went and saw Melissa paint a Long Beach landmark, the Daily Grind's giant donut sign, and this week it was Jeff's job to add on to it. So in typical Jeff style, a Mickey Mouse skull and prayer flags went up over the 3 hour period. It was a lot of fun, Jan, Jen, Mandy and Seth, Jerod and Karen, the cutest puppy in the world, and a lot of LB residents came through and checked it out.

More helmet pics

I just uploaded some pictures from my phone and had these of Jeff's helmet from the Celeritas show. SO COOL!

Bye Ruben and Jessica!

This has been the month for moving! Brendan and Evah to Sweden, Jen just moved to Long Beach (!), and Ruben and Jessica are now defecting to New Jersey! They will be going to graduate school out there (Ruben will be studying Library Sciences and Jessica will be studying Museum Curatorship or something like that- they're pretty awesome together) so it's a big life change. Good for us though because we'll get to see them when we go to visit Brooke! Three birds...

Here we are for their last hurrah in Long Beach at the Red Room. Good luck with the cross-country drive and move you crazy kids!

Wedding present!!

Our newly married friends Brendan and Evah are moving to Sweden! They will be going to a fancy art school out there and are moving soon, so they recently came down south to visit friends and family before the big trip. On their way home, they stopped at our house and dropped off a surprise wedding gift! We knew it was coming because Brendan gave us the clues that our gift was handmade by him, and we already had one. It's a coffee table! A super cool one too. I was giddy as he was unwrapping it and putting it together for us. It's perfect. The coffee table we had before was Brian and Gina's that they couldn't take with them, but it was big for the space and we knocked our shins repeatedly on it. This has perfectly rounded edges so no more bruises for us!

Thanks Brendan and Evah!!




P.S. Notice the mason jar vase on the table? Biggest score of the month. It's made by Perch! and was one of the only items on our registry not purchased. I registered for the yellow one and the gray one (to go with our wedding colors natch) and Kristin and Chris Miller gifted us the yellow one (thank you!!) so I always meant to pick up the gray one too at some point. Fast forward a year and wedding bills, and I never got it. So imagine my surprise when I saw it on sale this weekend at Urban Outfitters during their "Take an EXTRA 50% off all Sale!" sale! It was such a steal at $20 and I floated out of the store with my happy little vase for our new table.

Celeritas at SURU

This Saturday my brother joined Jeff and I at the Celeritas art show/charity event at the Suru gallery in LA. Jeff was one of the artists chosen to paint a motorcycle helmet for the show, with the proceeds of the silent auction going to Riders for Health, a charity that raises money for motorcycle transportation for health workers in Africa. The show was AMAZING! It was hosted by John Hensley (from the show Nip/Tuck) who is probably the nicest celebrity on the planet. We also got to meet Shia LeBeouf (from Transformers) who really does kind of look like my brother. Check out some of the pictures of the show here. I'll post the ones of Jeff strutting the red carpet and more detail shots of his helmet when they get up.
Here's a closeup of Jeff's helmet, from SLAMXHYPE.

Chalkboard paint is fun.

I started to feel my brain cells regenerating so I thought I should paint something else this weekend. I didn't have time for a big project so I got some chalkboard paint and taped off a big square in our laundry room and three coats later, we have an awesome family chalkboard. I like making lists and Jeff likes to draw so I think this will come in handy for us. We're going to nail up some wood molding underneath it to hold our chalk and eraser so it's a little unfinished. Maybe next weekend...

I'm into orthopedics

I am SO glad I didn't wait until I was 73 to buy a pair of these. Worishofer's are pretty much the best shoe ever. They have a cute little cork wedge but are the most comfortable non-New Balance shoe I've ever worn. My mom says that little old Austrian women wore them to wash their boats whatever that means, but I think they're chic. They come in some pretty awful colors that are trying to be trendy, but I went with the classic black pair and a pair of white ones that you think would make me look like an orderly, but end up looking cute with rolled dark denim jeans. Order them a size up though, because I'm usually a 36 in European sizing and they were way too small. 37's were juuuuust right. Thankfully Endless.com has free overnight shipping and free returns! Best online shoe store EVER.

*grate, grate, gag*

I swear I'm slowly getting over my fear and loathing of cheese. For goodness sake, I made mac n' cheese and a fontina flatbread for dinner the other day! I'm totally progressing. The act of grating cheese still completely grosses me out though. I average two swipes on the grater to every gag and I can't stand it getting under my fingernails. Blech. So I find this new invention brilliant: Mario Batali's Cheese Grater from Sur La Table. It holds the cheese for you in a little compartment and you rock it back and forth and grate! Thanks Fanta Pants!

Aww, shoot.

Smith & Hawken just went under! That kind of sucks. But might be very good timing for me to pick up some gardening deals! They're not accepting orders online anymore, but they have a store in Costa Mesa and one in Manhattan Beach that I'll hit up. Still a bummer.

Welcome little Kaylee!

Our friend (and Mandy's sister) Kate just had her baby Kaylee at the end of June! Congratulations Kate and John! She's a little cutie...

I tried using my level 4 sewing skills to make Kaylee a little baby blanket with handsewn quilt binding but I screwed up the mitered corners. Dang mitered corners!! I couldn't fix them nicely so I gave the blanket to Lily Mae as a soft place for her to lay on her vinyl bedspread. She crapped on it. It was her way of letting me know she will not tolerate hand-me-downs with sewing mistakes. I should have known.

So Etsy to the rescue! I went to the same place I got Henry's chew toy hippo, Little Alouette and found that they have added even more adorable designs. I went with the T-Rex for Kaylee, but the giraffe was a close second.

Fun with post-its

Amaaaaaazing! via the super coolness that is Dude Craft.

Hello deliciousness...

We had our friends Brian, Gina, Tom, and baby Carter over for dinner on Friday night and made this carmelized fennel and tomato flatbread that was super tasty and easy to whip up. All you have to do is carmelize the sliced fennel bulb in some butter, roll out some pre-made TJ's pizza dough and brush it with olive oil, spread some mashed up garlic cloves on it, grate fontina cheese over it, spread out the caramelized fennel and sliced campari tomatoes, and then sprinkle lemon zest, lemon juice and fennel fronds all over it. Bake it at 375 for 35 minutes and grind some sea salt over it. Tastebuds rejoice.

This gem, along with creme brulee french toast (!!) came from the Jewels of New York blog. Sooo good.

Update on the Kroc Center!

This was just posted on LBPost.com. It said that grading the land will begin in September and construction will begin in the Spring of next year.

RVCA

In the mail yesterday we got a box of t-shirts with designs Jeff did for the company RVCA. Neat! They included each of the 2 designs in the 3 sizes so I get the smalls! I looked online for them and only found the three-eyed goat shirt (Goat Boy) in their online shop, but I'll snap a pic of one of us wearing the old man shirt and post that later. Sorry these pictures are so small and lame, but click on the links and you can zoom in on the designs on the RVCA shop page.



This other one called Nostradamus was another older design that Jeff did for them that is also for sale in their online shop.

A good thing to come out of greasy fast food and gansta rap

As Jeff and I get closer to making adult decisions about buying a house, we become more and more interested in community developments in the city we'd like to call home for awhile. One such development that has us fired up that we've just heard about, is the KROC center that is going to be built on the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Walnut, which is in our district in Long Beach.

From this website: In 2004, Mrs. Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, gave The Salvation Army an estate gift in excess of $1.5 billion for the exclusive purpose of building KROC Centers in many communities across the United States. The 19-acre Salvation Army Ray and Joan KROC Corps Community Center in Long Beach will include: an education, arts, and cultural complex, supported by a library, computer resource center, classrooms, auxiliary spaces, social spaces, a chapel and an auditorium; a state-of-the-art aquatics center with three pools; a four-court gymnasium with an elevated jogging track, and an extensive weight and fitness area; an administrative and family resource center that will include a drop-in day care component to serve families who are using the Center’s resources; a series of outdoor spaces which consist of field space for active (soccer, football, little league baseball, etc) and passive activity (picnic), along with an amphitheater for larger scale outdoor cultural events. Additionally, low key walking paths for community members to enjoy with their families will be designed in the context of street and neighborhood environments.

Last month the center won the OK from the Long Beach planning commission but they are still $25 million short of the $140 million cost to build it. Snoop Dogg has donated money for it and plans to release a new song with its proceeds also going to the center. Thanks Snoop and McDonalds!