crafty fanny

it's not where I am, it's who I'm with.

I've been listening to A LOT of Avett Brothers these days. Between painting the kitchen and the road trip to Phoenix, they've been playing pretty much playing nonstop on my ipod.

Here they are performing one of my favorites, "St. Joseph's," live from a gondola in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Beautiful.

We sat at Lake Junaluska
And cried over where we would wed
If it’s this place or any other
It’s not where I am…it’s who I’m with
-The Avett Brothers

I really love that sentiment: It's not where I am, it's who I'm with.

PS. Phoenix hit 119 degrees today. Yes, it really is that hot. And, yes, I do realize that some people live here all the time.

Renegade Craft Fair recap

Last weekend, I got my best renegade crew together and we headed over to Fort Mason for San Francisco's second annual Renegade Craft Fair.

All I can say is WOW! What an amazing collection of artists and crafters and creators. It was really wonderful having all of those people in one place. And as a novice crafter, it was so very inspiring to be around people who are actually living the dream.

My first stop was the booth for Seattle Show Posters, where I picked up this print for Tim.

I'm hoping to frame it and surprise him with it in the new kitchen. Once it's framed, I'll use a dry-erase marker to change out the message.

Then I picked up some cards from Dee & Lala. Their letterpress cards and prints were adorable. This was one of my favorites:

And here are some other good ones, in case you aren't completely smitten with giraffes like I currently am.

After Dee & Lala, I stopped by Beyond Wonderland's adorable booth and picked up a super cute Japanese-fabric headband.

At this point in the day, I was starting to watch my spending a little. It was just SO easy to get caught up in all the cuteness. Everything was great, and it felt really good supporting small-business artists. {Sigh} So I bought more stuff.

The booth for 16 Sparrows was really fun. I love that their motto is "where sarcasm is folded in half."

If you like sassy cards, I would definitely advise you to spend some time on their site.

Another vendor who had great irreverent cards was Old Tom Foolery. These guys really understand the power of an asterisk. For example:

My final, and possibly favorite purchase, was from Frank Chimero's booth. I've written about his work on this blog before, so it was fun that he was there.

Best. Reminder. Ever.

At this point in the day, we were all tired and thirsty and really needed to rest our feet, so we decided to head to Flour & Water for a little post-craft-fair yumminess. Our timing for checking the place out couldn't have been better, because a rave review was published in the paper the following day, thus making a walk-in table for 5 nearly impossible.

A few of the highlights:

Rabbit salad. So good!

Pizza with eggplant and olives. The green stuff in the photo is the eggplant.

Pizza with summer squash, ricotta, wild arugula and lemon zest. This one rocked my world. I really like pizza topped with fresh greens. And the hint of lemon zest was perfect!

Homemade pasta with fresh sweet corn. There was a little honey in the sauce that added the perfect amount of sweetness and complimented the corn wonderfully.

Dinner was ridiculously good, and the perfect end to a super fun day!

road trippin'

Tim and I are heading down to Phoenix for a few days to spend some time with his family. I hope we don't melt. 111 degrees on Monday? Yeesh, even if it is a dry heat, that's a lot of digits!

Happy weekending y'all! Stay cool if you can!

friday's confession

I'm not a very good house painter. I think that's why it took 3 days to paint the kitchen. 3 days, 3 coats, and 1 really weird bruise on the palm of my hand.

Painting well requires precision and accuracy. I'm not so much a precision and accuracy kind of girl. I'm more of a big-ideas type who's super focused on the big picture and doesn't really want to be bothered with all of the small details. Painting means putting paint on the wall! YAY for that! It doesn't mean spending a whole day (!) washing the walls and taping. Lucky for me, Tim actually likes doing that stuff, the taping and the prepping. He also just happens to also be the most patient man in the world. BONUS.

But all that I-hate-painting stuff being said, I am beyond thrilled with how bright and happy our kitchen now is.

Here's a glimpse. I'm not ready to call this the after just yet since the makeover isn't complete, so let's just call this one the during:

Sure beats kakhi, huh? The color is actually a bit brighter than it shows up on the screen, it looks a little more buttery on the photo. Oh well. Maybe by the time I'm doing with the kitchen makeover, I will have learned a thing or two about taking better pictures! 

Operation Big Bird is a Go!

And so it begins...

I cannot tell you how excited I am that this project is finally underway, and I'll definitely let you know how it turns out.

I also have some other fun posts up my sleeve for later this week, including a recap of some awesome finds from this weekend's Renegade Craft Fair.

And a big thanks to everyone who weighed in on the paint colors: "A" was the winner. So, this paint job is brought to you by the letter A.

friday's confession

I'm a total sap.

Really, I am. Everything makes me cry. Everything. When I first watched The Notebook, I sobbed. Loud.  So loud, in fact, that I was worried my neighbors were going to hear me and think something was wrong.

I have a feeling that there are two types of people in the world: those who would watch this video and tear up a little and those who would watch this video and throw up in their mouths a little.

Which type are you?

(video found via petunia face)

Operation Big Bird: an update

Anyone wondering how the I'm-gonna-paint-my-kitchen-yellow thing is going?

Commence Operation Big Bird.

At this point, after waytoomany trips to Home Depot, we have narrowed our choices down to Sun Shower and June Day (those were the two original choices from the ballot), and Bicycle Yellow and Lemon Drops.

I put the samples up one at a time, but they weren't painted on thick enough and some of the original khaki color was showing through. Here's what it looked like with the thinner layers. Ignore the top part. I can't remember the order I painted those on, so even if one emerges victorious from that section, I won't know what  color it is.

This is what it looks like now, with a second layer of each color applied. The stripe on the bottom left is the same as the color on the far right. I'm convinced that the colors on the right and left are actually identical, so I painted that against it to find out.

Tim thinks that we should just paint the kitchen the same yellow as the paper we used for our ballot. Funny guy.

I'm really hoping to get this done in the next week or so, so that, after a trip to Phoenix next weekend, we can give a new puppy a forever home. Painting seems much easier sans puppy, oui?

Any thoughts? Votes? Let's call them A-B-C-D (hehe, Sesame Street theme) going left to right. I'm highly influenced by suggestion, so suggest away!

Happy Bastille Day

Yay for Bastille Day!

In honor of the French national holiday, it seemed fitting to share some Bastille Day-y photos from our recent France trip:

These guards were some of the first people we saw on the Champs-Élysées right after we arrived in Paris. This was one of the first of many times on the trip that Tim reminded me that my photos would be even more surreptitious if I turned my flash off.

This is me being super cool on the Champ de Mars as we got ready for our bike tour of Paris. This bike tour made me really want a beach cruiser.

 See those big clouds in the sky? Yeah, it totally poured on our bike tour. Others were not happy, I didn't really mind so much.

Here I am at a Joan of Arc statue in Paris. She didn't really have anything to do with the French Revolution, but I think that she taught the French to fight for their country, no matter what. I'm positive that some of her spirit contributed to the spirit of the revolutionaries.

This is us at the top of the Arc de Triomphe at night. So pretty!

This photo was from the Maritime Museum -- this is one of Napolean's actual boats!

And this is one of the actual buildings of Marie Antionette's hamlet at Versailles. Did you know that she and her friends used to dress up to play peasant, but they would do things like have the sheep dyed to match their dresses? When learning about her role in history, it's easy to see why really hungry, really poor people were super pissed.

Have a wonderful day, my friends! And remember, Viva la Revolucion! But, not really, because that was a really tough time in French history. It all worked out in the end, but jeez, a lot of really bad stuff went down. Hmm...maybe this week's Friday Confession should be: I love gross understatments of historical facts.

nibbles from a delicious weekend

Wowza, did I have a fun-filled, jam-packed weekend or what?!

After a quick, no tears recovery from the yellow paint debacle on Saturday morning, I headed into the city for the first of three sewing classes at Craft Haven. How much fun was it? So much fun, that's how much! I took the Uber Basics class even though I've done some sewing before and already have my own machine. My suspicions that I was doing almost everything wrong were confirmed by our awesome instructor, Kelly.

I've now been bit hard by the sewing bug, especially after learning the correct, much easier ways to do things. I'm even going to attempt to make some napkins tonight. Deets and photos of those coming soon!

Look! I made those!

We learned all of the basics of the machine and basic stitches, including the oh-so-beautiful French seam. This only served to reinforce to me that everything French is better; I so have to move there!

If you are in the Bay Area and are interested in sewing, I would highly recommend Craft Haven. They even have 5 stars on yelp, a rating which is highly deserved. I'm already signed up for two more classes. Just imagine how into sewing I'll be after I learn how to do awesome stuff like put in zippers and button holes!

After the sewing class, I headed over to my old-boss-at-the-old-day-job's place to hang out with her and her super cutie baby. Such fun! I didn't get any pics of the baby, but I did have a chance to snap a shot of the treats I brought over from Baked. Yu-u-um! A red devil cupcake with cream cheese frosting and a fruit tart. I gotta learn how to make fruit tarts ASAP.

Also, isn't Baked a funny name for a bakery? I mean, I get it, but it's a little bit stoner, right?

After some sweet treats and sweet baby time, I headed downtown to meet up with Tim. We had a par-tay to attend, but first stopped off at our favorite taqueria for dinner. They make chicken tacos there like I remember from North Carolina -- crispy shells, shredded chicken, tons of iceberg lettuce and gobs of sour cream. Can I get another yu-u-um?

Tim had menudo, the soup not the boy band (hehe). Do y'all know about menudo? It's made from tripe. Do y'all know about tripe? It's cow stomach. And, yeah, it tastes sort of what you'd expect cow stomach to taste like. This was the third time I've tried tripe (I even had a taste in France) and I can now definitely confirm that I. Do. Not. Like. Tripe. I think I'll stick with the chicken tacos, thankyouverymuch.

After our dinner, we headed over to the Fillmore where a friend of Tim's band was playing. It turned out that the event was actually a 40th birthday party for the band's singer. Super fun! Oh, and the band has the best name ever: More Cow Bell.

On Sunday morning, I had my first artist's date with myself as part of The Artist's Way workshop I'm doing. I decided that my artist wanted to go to a new French cafe in the 'hood, have a cafe au lait and read about making jam.

After my date with myself (wow, am I a catch or what?!), I met up with my friend Meredith for a loo-ong bike ride along the SF Bay. What a beautiful day for a ride. I was apparently so caught up in the beauty of the bay, I forgot to take pictures.

I did, however, remember to take a picture when Mere and I stopped to rehydrate ourselves:

Lucky for us, there was a brewery along our bike route....yeah, ok, I admit, I totally planned that one. But, really, after a couple hours of riding, beer tastes like the most amazing thing in the world.

Meredith is my soul-sista cause we have the same birthday. And we both have bangs. And blue eyes.

After suitably rehydrating ourselves, we hopped back on the bikes and headed over to the Berkeley Marina to meet up with some peeps for an evening sunset sai, just one of the many perks of having a bf who is a sailing instructor.

Look how fun sailing is:

(sailing shots by Mia Heiman)

It's funny how serious I look in this shot. Funny because I was intermittenly dancing with the steering wheel while driving the boat. But, HERE, I'm super serious sailing girl.

WOW, that was a fun weekend! Did y'all do anything awesome too?

PS. In case you're wondering, the hardwood floors are 98% okay after their run in with Sun Shower yellow. And we still haven't picked a color for the walls. But, no worries, I'm sure you'll be hearing about that soon.

a helpful hint

So, I'm sure you guys know about how you can go to Home Depot to have a tiny can (smaller than the normal small ones) of paint mixed up as a sample. These cans that they give you are nice: they're small and cute and even have an easy twist off cap so you don't have to get your screwdriver out to open them.  It's really great that you don't have to commit to a whole can of paint when trying to decide if Sun Shower is the right color for your kitchen.

So, yeah, next time you're at Home Depot and you get one of those cans and you're soexcited because you're going to paint your kitchen bright yellow, remember this: when the guy gives you the can, just take a moment to make sure the lid is screwed on all the way. Because, you know, it would really kinda suck to be walking into your house and lose your hold on the can have Sun Shower splatter and spill out all over your beautiful hardwood floors.

Seriously, y'all, it looked like someone killed Big Bird.

*sigh* My mama should have named me Grace.