Diner food

  Image from maryshelsby

 Image from fallsguyd

This past weekend my dad came up for a visit and we got to have breakfast at the Highland Park Diner.  Yum! I love this diner.  It's got a wonderful old style and the food is great.  I almost always get a chocolate milkshake (made with vanilla ice cream), although this time I just opted for OJ and eggs. It was the perfect way to spend Saturday morning!

Extreme Sheep Herding?

I have nothing to say but AWESOME!

Found via Swayspace

Today has been three years.  Sometimes it's odd how time moves.  Squeezing my girls extra hard tonight.

Erich Camping Photography

This past week I had the pleasure of chatting with Erich Camping, an amazing wedding photographer who has a studio two doors down from mine. We talked about being small business owners, our inboxes, the upstate New York wedding scene, and our mutual love of letterpress. I drooled over Erich's photos and the fact that he recently shot a wedding in St. Thomas! Here are a few of his incredible shots - I could have posted everything and choosing just a few was harder than hard! It looks like I particularly like the black and whites :)  Check out his blog for more inspiration.

A library for Jake

 awesome dining room library found here  

crazy basement library found here 

abandoned books found here

Jake and I have been talking about turning our guest bedroom into a library/reading room.  We hardly ever have people stay over and it seems like it might make more sense to make that room into something that we use on a regular basis, especially since Jake is writing more.  Or maybe we can turn my office into a space for both of us, especially considering that I hardly use my home office. Hopefully our book-hoarding habits won't let our house turn into some of the rooms featured above!

Back at it

Ok, I'm finally feeling like I can breathe again! I made it through a full day of teaching today.  Still sleeping a lot and going through gallons of orange juice, but I'm excited to get back to the studio tomorrow!

Ok, so I think it was the flu, not a cold.  And I think I made it worse by printing on Friday when I thought I was getting better.  But, the work had to be finished and shipped and it was a relief not to worry about it this weekend.  For the last week I have been in bed for 15-hour stretches and when I do get up it's been to sit on the couch and watch movies.  It was the kind of sick where I couldn't even write a coherent email if I had the energy to open my inbox. The kind of sick where I've almost depleted two boxes of tissues.  The kind of sick that I don't know if I should go to work tomorrow, but I feel incredibly guilty about missing three classes in two weeks, which I've never done. I hope I don't jinx myself again, but I think I'm starting to feel better today.

Sexy People

Today has been a good day. I'm finally able to get out of bed and most of the shaky achy body feeling has left.  I wasn't expecting this cold to knock me down so completely.  The invitations that I had reprinted actually made it into the hands of the couple who ordered them.  I can't tell you what a relief that is!

One thing that has gotten me through the past few days was stumbling onto the Sexy People blog.  There are some pretty awesome glamour shots on it and some of them are surprisingly recent.

under the weather

It's Tuesday night and this week is already kicking my butt!  The reprinted invitations are officially out of my hands again.  My fingers are crossed that FedEx comes through!

I think I caught a cold from an incessantly coughing girl who sat near me on the airplane last week.  In spite of being in a fog the last two days, I think I managed to give a decent lecture about my artwork this afternoon to our senior class.  It was actually a little hard for me to talk about the frequency with which I make work these days.  Well, my theory on this front seem to be fairly well founded...when you start a business, you stop doing just about everything else. I managed to stumble across an article that compares starting a business to having children.  Let me tell you, my business-baby is almost three and I'm starting to see room for me to bring artmaking back into my life...finally. I think the new collaboration has helped that a lot and there are a few more in the works!

Before I head back to my hot chocolate and snuggly pups, I thought you should know what my Valentine's plans are...watching Jake jump into lake Ontario!  Sunday at noon hundreds of adrenaline junkies will brave the cold to raise money for Special Olympis.  It's quite the spectacle.  If you want to join his zombie team or sponsor him let me know!  If you're in the area, stop by and see it for yourslef!

ups and downs

Ok, so you may have noticed my increasingly sporadic posting the last week.  And I know that you already know when this happens I'm in all-work-no-blog mode, which means that it's time for a recap of the past week.

I spent part of last week in NYC at the International Gift Fair helping my friend Amber in her jewelry booth.  Amber's booth looked beautiful and was the perfect showcase for her incredible botanical jewelry.  Actually working a booth was a lot more intense than I thought it would be.  Mainly, there is a lot of standing and greeting and set up and take down and sore legs! It was really great to see how the show works from the inside and it was amazing that I could gain this experience while I contemplate attending the Stationery Show or a Gift Show.  The de-installation of the booths was crazy!

We stayed in a very sweet and very small hotel with the best wallpaper ever. We went to some of my favorite restaurants and checked out the New Museum of Contemporary Art.  I also got to meet Jackie Bos for coffee and French baked goods.  I knew before I even met her that we would hit it off and I was right!

Unfortunately, while I was gone I found out that an entire suite of wedding invitations was being held in customs in the wrong country.  I will tell you now, for your future reference, that the USPS International office only has an automated number and that it's close to impossible to talk to a responsive human being. By the time you do speak to someone there is steam coming out of your ears and it's hard to be nice as they tell you that there is no way for them to do anything even though they delivered said package to the wrong country. After a few hours on the phone and no easy resolution in sight and I have been reprinting the entire suite to mail via FedEx on Monday.  I'm so lucky to have such an understanding couple on the receiving end!

This afternoon I took a break from my own printing to help a friend get back into the swing of screen printing.  It's been a long time since I have been in a really well-equipped printmaking studio.  I miss it. A lot.  On many different levels.

My mom and step dad are coming to visit tomorrow and take me out to a post-birthday lunch.  And then Jake and I will head to our yearly superbowl party at Luke's.  I'll be wearing my "Ladies Superbowl Sunday" shirt that I got with my roommates in college.  It's a little small, but it's yellow and awesome and we each have one.

I'm also so excited to come in third place for the jury selection in the Poppies Favorite Papergoods category.  I am shocked and incredibly humbled to be on a short list with Rifle Paper Co and Yee Haw Industries.  Many many thanks to the jurors!

A photo and a link: Fideli Sundqvist

 

cut paper awesomeness: Fideli Sundqvist

Unhappy Hipsters

 

Unhappy Hipsters: It's lonely in the modern world

I have a mix of vintage and new furniture, of mid-century modern and grad-school-chic.  And while I love the look of rooms with minimal furniture and great design, they tend to not be me.  I just can't see myself living in a space where everything is perfect and there are no piles.  Where are the books, car keys, shoes? So glad someone else has similar feelings. This is not to say that I wouldn't take any one of the houses listed in Unhappy Hipsters, but mine would have some dog-hair tumbleweed and a basket or two of junk mail.