I started doodling on this candle holder with my Dremel last night and this is the first of two candle holders I made during my break from woodburning. The pictures aren’t that good because Adam had his “more-expensive-than-anything-else-we-own-so-be-careful-when-you-use-it” camera with him since he was using it at the Much Music Video Awards last night.
Like all great ideas from the depths of Colin’s consciousness, this one was born of many, many, many glasses of beer and a conversation that was way too serious for the current blood alcohol saturation level. Back in October of last year a pact was entered into by Colin and Adam to embark on a great baseball quest (searching for….?) this season, and the first stage took place just over a week ago. Inexpertly titled “A Cacophony of Epiphanies,” the rules, as outlined by a fading Adam and Colin on that fateful October night, are outlined at the end of this post. And near incomprehensible.
The quest was officially started with a trip to The SkyDome on Retro Jersey night. 12 of our closest friends, a few questionable baby-blue retro jersey purchases, a two-day Rock Band marathon (with some actual guitar playing thrown in for fun) and a mini-keg for the 6 of us left at the end of the adventure sure made this crazy idea seem kinda logical as we all had a great weekend. More pictures can be seen here, and here (the second set is Adam’s).
The Official Rules are listed after the jump, for anyone interested.
A couple of my favorites from Adam’s flickr photostream…
From some flowers he bought me a little while ago. Awww… isn’t that sweet….
Chuki isn’t the only one growing older last month. I hit the first big milestone: “The Big 3-0.” A lot of people worry about turning 30, but I don’t really have a problem with it, although the frequency with which people are wiling to use the phrase “The Big 3-0″ does alarm me a bit.
My dearly beloved took advantage of my obliviousness and scored Sheryl Crow tickets (3rd row!!!!!!!) to her concert in Toronto that I didn’t even know about. How’s that for head in the clouds, eh? The ONE person left that I have not seen in concert that I desperately wanted to, and I didn’t even know she was in town. And even better, KT Tunstall opened the show, someone else I have been hoping to see.
Chuki chipped in his 25 cent allowance (oh, come on, he’s a cat, of course we are kidding) and bought me a bookmark, since he ate all my old ones. And Ollie even sent along his wishes, which Emily helped capture in a card that they gave me with a gift certificate to Michael’s. I asked her how she got hi to sit still for an inking and she just said “treats,” which is, of course, enough motivation to get Ollie to do pretty much anything. I think the little marks from the fur between his toes is the cutest part.
I started woodburning 2 years ago with a walnut hollow “hobby” woodburner that I bought when I was 9. It did the job, but was rather awkward and sort of burned my hand after a while. 1 year ago Adam teamed up with some friends and family and bought me my first “real” woodburner - a Razortip with pen and replaceable tips (remember this post?). I loved it and used it everyday. It was perfect.
I don’t think the kids at Razortip intended the system be used everyday for about 5 hours, though. Actually, I don’t think anyone would recommend that, as I now have no feeling in the middle finger of my right hand. Eventually, I outgrew the little guy and there simply wasn’t enough power in it for me to finish some of the bigger projects I had. Since I do contemporary decorative woodburning, and not pictures of foxes or ducks, I sometimes have large areas I need to burn dark and the Razortip was having heart trouble.
So I upgraded and treated myself to a brand new Colwood Olympiad woodburner, complete with a couple new tips and even a nice wooden case. It came on Tuesday and I haven’t been able to put it down since, which has made me a bit of a fire hazard around the house. A huge temperature range and enough guts to finish the large pieces, I am really happy with it.
A better system doesn’t make me a better burner, but it will allow me to finish projects faster, which is important now that the shop has REALLY caught on and I am always working on something. Hopefully this will give me more time to start new designs, instead of steadily working on orders of designs I already have for sale. I just have to remember to stop every once in a while for food and sleep.
A fun Sunday. Adam, Colin, Emily and I went to the Sky-dome (I refuse to call it the Roger’s Center) for the first time in a long time. We got to see the Jays Sweep the Red Sox (but I secretly kind of like the Red Sox) and watch Frank Thomas pull off a pretty nice Grand Slam Home-run.
We thought going to the Sunday game would be better since Friday was Colin’s Athletic Therapy Banquet and there may have been some hang-overs on Saturday. But then we proceeded to have a jam session on Saturday night which led to wine and 4 cases of beer, so Sunday was a bit rough anyway, as Emily demonstrates on the train home. More pictures here.
St Peter’s Cathedral - Where Adam & I were married, Oct 21, 2006
When planning decorations for the reception it was important that we included items that would beautify the room, but also items that would be interesting, entertaining or treasured to our guests, and one of the simplest ways was to use treasured photographs as a decorating medium. We used the photographs in a number of ways, and collecting them all was tricky as we had to dig quite deep to attain a few of them, but the result was a display that was not only beautiful and in-keeping with our theme of vintage romantic, it was interesting to guests to peruse our collected pictures and remember people,places and times they knew.
The Key Players: The first set of photos I gathered was a baby photo of Adam, of me, of each of my parents and of each of his. These were each placed in vintage-type frames from the dollar store and labeled little tags that said “Bride” “Groom” “Mother of the Bride” “Father of the Bride” “Mother of the Groom” and “Father of the Groom” in the same font used for all other wedding stationary. These were set on the presentation table as people walked in, beside the board with the escort cards.
I have been having a lot of fun this week totally re-building my site. No, That’s not even partially true. It’s been hell. The site has been up and down, I have not been able to post and I have learned a lot about re-building databases, errors about “headers already sent,” incompatible plug-ins and general installation errors. And since Wonderday is fast approaching, Adam dear has not had time to cut up and code the beautiful site he made for me, so I have been theme-less as well.
So, after weeks of searching for a pretty pre-fab theme that wasn’t too cutesy I found a website called scribblescratch and a modified theme called “striped flowers” that I modified even more. I actually really like the result and will probably keep it up until the summer, when Adam has a chance to get to the new design. Not all the pages are up yet and the Sourcebook is temporarily down, the categories are messed up and the link list is incomplete, but the blog is up and running and I am working on the rest, so stay tuned.
Let me know what you think of the new design, or anything you’d like to see on the site, or hear more about in the posts. On a way cuter note, Chuki is sleeping beside me as I write this and he s snoring very loudly for such a little critter.
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