Art Wall, a beginning

As I mentioned last week, we had some frames to hang. Today, we hung them. I had grand plans to make some epic art walls.  I have been oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over art walls on the interwebs for quite a while now. I am sharing them with you so you may ooh and ahh as well. Let the fawning commence.So, very very pretty.

My many apologies about the links. I am trying to become more organized when I save images so I know where I found them. When I know where I found the image I’ve linked back, but when I don’t… well, I didn’t.  Lets just chalk this up to a rookie mistake, okay? Good. I’m glad that’s settled.

Anyway, my point was not my poor blogging courtesy, but rather how much I love these art walls.

Here is our interpretation.It is just a start. I would like to see it grow. I’m not 100% committed to the arrangement, but as we get more pieces to hang I hope that it will fill out nicely.

We hung the rest of the pieces we framed last weekend as well, but not in an art wall set up… Rather in my standard museum hang. You know, evenly spaced and at a eye level. Classic. 

Our Vancouver Getaway

We have been back from Vancouver, BC for well over a week now, so I guess the time to blog about it is now or never.

It was a really nice little vacation. We had a lot of fun and were able to relax (even though we were perpetually on the go… It is funny how vacation works, eh?).

We stayed a the Nelson House B&B in West End Vancouver, just a few blocks from wonderful Stanley Park. We had the attic suite, which was surprisingly large. It had a little writing desk and twin bed in one dormer, a kitchen nook in another, and the queen bed in the what would have been the third (however, the dormer window had been converted into a little balcony). Plus, there was the living room area in the middle.Right outside the writing desk dormer was a Magnolia in full bloom.

We arrived on a Tuesday and lucky for us the Vancouver Art Gallery is free Tuesday evenings! Now, can someone please explain to me why it is called a ‘gallery’ and not a ‘museum’? It is most definitely the city’s art museum with permanent and rotating exhibits, not some gallery where you can buy works.  

Anyway, the classical facade of the Gallery was covered in a hand painted mural by Michael Lin, which I loved. I was really hoping that they would have some prints of his in the museum, ahem, gallery store, alas, they did not. They did, however, have a framed Dutch still life print in their clearance section (a remnant from a previous exhibit from the Rijks, which I wish I could have seen). I think it will end up in our bedroom, but as of yet it is sitting on our kitchen table amidst a pile of mail.

The only other real souvenir we bought on our trip was this adorable mercury glass owl from Parliament, a furniture store in Gastown (which, sadly, does not have a website).  This little guy is living in our dining room on the plate railing that lines two walls.

I, of course, took a ton of photos while we walked or (tandem) biked around the city. Maybe some of the photos will actually be printed and framed. Particularly ones of the jellyfish at the aquarium or the birds at the conservatory. But, where would the jellyfish go? Hmmm….This little guy is adorable and would work well in our bedroom or in my imaginary art wall installation. I wish I knew how to use Photoshop better so I could play around with a bunch of fun effects. Right now I just use Picasa which is super duper basic. I love swans. I think this was only the second time I had seen them in real life (the other time being in Rome at Villa Borghese). I don’t think I will probably do anything with the swan photos, but who knows…

Now here are some to definitely print and frame:Just kidding! How disgusting are those seagulls choking down starfish? Blech.

Here is the pretty boy we came home to. He was super cuddly when we returned (even more than usual). We saw two saints while in Vancouver. Bill and I both stopped and just watched them go by. While (in our humble opinion) they were no where as cute as Ralph, they were far better behaved (being that they were able to be walked in a dense urban setting and did not jump or bark at anybody. Amazing, I know).

Well, that is it for our trip. This weekend we are not up to anything terribly exciting. While I am doing house stuff, it is just the boring things like laundry (which I am good about regularly doing) and dishes (which I am horrible at regularly doing). We recently bought some power tools (a jigsaw and miter saw) so expect some fun projects in the near future. Right now we are just making a pair of saw horses to get used to the tools and gear up for repairing the back steps. But, oh, my idea list of things to make with those tools grows daily as I find new plans and projects out there in blogland.

Shop, Shop, Shopping

Well, we are back. You probably didn’t even know were gone. Anyway, we headed up North to Vancouver, BC for a mini vacation this week. It was also our 2 year wedding anniversary. I must say, it was very convenient getting married over spring break, because now we always have the option to get away together to celebrate our anniversary. But, I’m not really writing about our travels today. Maybe I will get to that tomorrow. Maybe not. After all, I do have a big list of things I need to accomplish before, *gasp*, returning to work and the kiddos bright and early Monday morning.

You might be amazed to know this (your amazement level will vary greatly depending on how well you know me), but I actually got stuff done today and did not procrastinate by putting (it all) off until tomorrow. I (are you ready for this?) put away my clothes! I know, I know, it is quite unbelievable. It had really been way, way, way too long. I am happy to now report that you can see the floor in my room. I am also working on laundry and have been good about putting dishes right into the dishwasher (as opposed to just piling them in the sink). We will see how long this streak of cleanliness lasts.

Anyway, as the blog titles indicated I also did a bit of online shopping as reward for my job well done. I got some cute new candle holders at Luna Bazaar. Ah, cute, cute, cute! I had seen the Capiz lotus blossom candle holders at some stores before, but could never bring myself to buy one due to their inflated cost. However, at Luna Bazaar they are quite a steal, so I didn’t feel quite so torn about parting with my money.

I also bought some art prints off of Etsy. I had been eyeing a couple of sellers’ work for quite some time; today was they day I finally decided exactly which prints I wanted. They were tough choices to make, I assure you. I bought a couple of cityscape prints from Artquirk. I also got some animal prints from Matou En Peluche.

I can’t wait for it all to get here. Of course, I really need to be on the look out for frames (and possibly some mats) to go with all my new prints.

Oh, and I almost forgot (probably because this purchase is not quite so thrilling as the others)… But, I also bought some metal sectional framing kits from Utrecht. They are to frame my 2 wonderful Beautiful Angle posters. I will still need to go to a local framing store to get glass and the backing material for the posters though. Soon, so very soon, I will have many beautiful pieces of art to hang. Yay!

However, I still need to figure out framing for our gargantuan Nolli map (remember this?). I think we will just have to end up biting the bullet and paying an astronomical amount to get it professionally mounted and framed. That is, unless any of you out there have any helpful suggestions… Hmmm?

Screw an Easter egg hunt; I’m looking for Monkeyshines glass!

Here is one of the (many) reasons I have grown to love Tacoma over the last few years: Monkeyshines. They are a group of anonymous glass artists who gift the city with art once a year around the time of the Chinese New Year. For the last seven years they have distributed glass orbs and/or glass medallions emblazed with the corresponding animal from the Chinese zodiac.  It is basically like a giant city wide game of hide-and-seek or an Easter egg hunt, except that it is way cooler to find hand-blown glass than a person or a hardboiled egg.


Although the Chinese New Year is still a few days away, the hunt is already in full swing. The first gifts were found Tuesday morning.  This is the year of the tiger. The folks over at Exit133 found this pretty ball along with these 2 medallions downtown.


After seeing their blog post when I got home from work yesterday it took me all of 30 minutes to convince Bill to put on his shoes and coat and come search with me. We decided to check out the Evergreen Extension Campus nearby; after all, we figured there were reports of finding orbs at UWT and UPS already, so surely there has to be one somewhere at Evergreen! Alas, our search was unfruitful (but, of course, still fun).  We also got up extra early for work this morning to go search several parks within walking distance…. still no luck. They could be anywhere, which is part of the fun and part of the frustration. I dreamt last night that everywhere I looked I found one, but being the civically minded person I am (or at least like to think I am) I only took one orb and re-hid the others. Okay, I lied. In my dream I actually took one orb and one medallion, but even my dream self was able to reason that the medallion was to keep in my classroom.

We are going to try searching again tomorrow morning. Hopefully we will spot one, but even if we don’t we will still fun.

We both have Friday off so we will be able to go on a big search (when it is actually light out, what a novel concept). However, I have no idea if we are too late in the game to even have a slight chance of finding the gifted art. The whole production is quite mysterious. At this point no one knows for sure how many pieces are out there, or even if they have all been delivered! The first year they distributed 200 balls, but last year there were 600. Also, when they first started they were hidden on the eve of the Chinese New Year, but in the years following people started going out in anticipation and cherry picking the art before the city had a chance to discover and enjoy the fun., therefore they started varying the night of delivery. This year there is even speculation that they are only delivering small batches each night to extend the fun and give people more chance to search.


I talked to my students about Monkeyshines today and they became all aflutter. For the rest of the day they kept reporting that they had spotted a medallion off of school grounds (although all the sightings were false, just pop cans or other shiny bits of litter). I hope that some of them were able to get their parents in on the fun and get outside and searching.  We decided as a class that Monkeyshines exist to have fun, make Tacoma a better place, and create a community experience. 


Wish me luck. I would love nothing more than to create a post tomorrow (or the next day, or the day after that) showing off my Monkeyshines gift!