Classy Classified
From Adam’s most recent Twitter update:
“For sale: 1 slightly used 15″ crt monitor. Has only been on the front curb of my driveway in the rain once.”
Currently Working On: Little Glass Etching Distraction
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.
A Cacopha……What?
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.
Eye Candy
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….
Take Me Out to the Ballgame…
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.
The Wedding Files – Project #2 Decorating With Memories
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.
The “I Do”‘s that made us who we are: I then tracked down the wedding photos of his parents, my parents and all 5 or our grandparent’s weddings (Grandma Carpenter married again after the loss of Grandpa Shortt). I printed these as 5×7 and inserted into simple black frames, again from the dollar store. I made a small card label for each again, and placed on a display table with some keepsakes we could collect: My mother’s veil and their guest-book, my grandmother’s cake topper and a few other treasures. Everyone has kept something from their special day, and all were willing to pull a little something out of hiding.
The Wedding Book: While searching for the wedding pictures of our parents and grandparent’s I came across many other wedding pictures and it made me think of the shoebox of wedding pics I have at home sent in numerous thanks you cards through the years. I took all the collected pictures that had no home and asked friends and family for more, and included as many wedding pictures of the guests that I could find into a small journal with the picture, their names and the date of marriage and I placed this on the gifts table for people to peruse. It was neat for people to see their own pictures in there and fun when they found an old picture of someone we knew in common. I have kept this book and plan on adding any new pictures we get in the future.
Random pictures: With a little patience and a lot of photopaper (courtesy of Kieran at Henry’s – thank you!!) I rounded up extra pictures and any copies I made for the other projects that did not get used and made a small picture packet for each table. I tried to include cute pictures of the table occupants or perhaps a wedding picture of one of the guests seated there. From what I could see it was a good conversation starter at the tables with particularly goofy pictures or very old wedding shots, and brought back many memories of inside jokes, mischief or embarrassing haircuts. I tried to do this for every table, but there were a couple I was just not able to round up pictures for (friends of parents, for example) but I think they had fun looking at other’s funny pictures.
Blast from the past: I also came across many very old photos of family that I put in an album near the family tree (that’s another project)and almost every family present at the wedding has asked for scans of the precious old photos. Most of them came from Adam’s mom, but I was able to supplement our collections with some neat photos from my Baba, some dating back to when her Dad was young.
So there you have it. Simple ideas not requiring too much skill, just a lot of digging. These project has doubled our collection of memorable family photos, and provided some simple decoration and simple entertainment.
Wedding Projects
I miss wedding projects. Adam and I got married in 2006 and for the year leading up to the big event there was always a “project” that needed to be done for the wedding, and I loved it. Stuff to be made, stuff to be organized, stuff to be done. Being a DIY-er, I made a lot of the things for the wedding by hand and my darling husband, knowing I can’t sit still and always need a project was content to let me. He helped me design the colours, style and feel of the overall event, but then he let me gallop off on my own.
Anyways, I learned a lot and figured out a lot and thought maybe by posting a lot of the projects to the blog I could pass on some ideas and keep the “wedding projects” going for a bit longer. So, starting this week, I am going to be posting tutorials for the things we made for the big day, as well as some tips and pointers we learned along the way. Feel free to steal ideas and philosophies as desired and, as always, you can contact me if you would like to commission Sixth & Elm to make any of these projects for your big day – I know we’re all creative but sometimes there just isn’t enough time to make it all yourself.
Non-Denominational Festival Shrub
We put the tree up this weekend, mostly because we are feeling holiday nostalgia since at this time last year we were walking into Disneyworld when it was fully decked out in holiday decor. They don’t do anything halfway and I was overwhelmed by the lights, music, trees and general holiday mayhem. What a way for someone to experience Disney for the first time, especially someone who likes Christmas as much as I do.
The holidays have been getting a bad rap for the past few years and I have to tell you, I don’t buy into it. Sure, companies make a ton of money during the holidays, but Christmas is what YOU make it. No one is going to make you buy all that crap you see in the stores, no one can force you to care more about your presents’ price than it’s intent. I think it’s fun to go to the mall and listen to the music and look at the elaborate displays, and I am not going to let the fact that those displays are intended to lure me into shopping ruin the fact that they are fun to look at. I love holidays because everyone gets into it, for their own reasons to be sure, but apathy has trouble finding a home this season. There are so many stories, so many moments during the holidays that make you smile, remember, appreciate who you are with – what can be bad about a season that does all that?
I guess it is about the way I was raised. Christmas dinner is more important to me than the gifts, even though Tia and I were blessed with generous parents and did get a bit spoiled in the gift department. I think if you want to capture the spirit of Christmas and teach your children to appreciate something other than the price tag you have to start inside your family, not outside of it by passing the buck and blaming the corporations. A Christmas full of traditions (the wackier the better) and family gatherings, of spending time with your kids by going skating, or shopping, or just playing in the snow – those are the things that will end the commercialism and bring back a wholesome Christmas. We are really good at blaming others, but for this we need to start in our own backyard.
Anyways, here are some beautiful pictures Adam took of our tree (of course, only one shot of the whole tree, and one of the glass bulb I broke). If you are wondering why it looks shorter this year we had to leave the base off or else it covered the TV and half the room. Once we win the lottery and have a gigantic mansion we can use the whole tree again in all its 8-foot-what-were-we-thinking-buying-a-tree-that-damn-big-in-the-first-place glory.
Things we Learned While Painting the House
We just finished painting a large part of the house – a light brown on the first floor and our bedroom and blue in the kitchen. It was a learning experience, and here are some of the truths we have discovered..
- Painter’s tape is for woosies.
- Chuki sucks at painting trim.
- Sour Cream and Onion Chips splattered with Rona Blue #227 taste just as bad as you’d think they would.
- Our room painting limit is exactly 2 and 1/4 rooms per weekend. The limit is determined not by time, but by our threshold for aggravation.
- Cats have a strange affinity for freshly painted surfaces.
- No matter how cleanly I can paint a trim, I cannot paint a room without getting paint in my hair.
- Wash your baseboards before you start unless you want blue-painted dust-bunnies (which are not as cute as they sound). If you are one of those immaculately clean people who clean all their baseboards every week then stop reading this blog and go away because I hate you. Emily, you don’t count.
- You know how cats like to sit on anything on the floor that isn’t usually there? Apparently that counts for upturned paint can lids.
- Chuki looks good in blue and brown.
- Don’t sneeze when edging a baseboard unless you want brown baseboards.
- It takes exactly the same amount of time to paint the first floor as it does to watch the special features on the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy (minus the second disc of the third movie, which we couldn’t find because I forgot to take it out of the DVD player upstairs last time).