snOwMG

During an early morning Facebook exchange regarding the weather and all the hubub about it, one of our funniest friends gave us the gift of snOwMG and I just had to share. The exchange:

The weather has been nasty for the last few days, see?

Ok, it kind of looks pretty, but it's really ANNOYING. Especially if you have to be in it all day. For work. Carrying 20,000 pounds of stone samples, a computer and a can of paint to touch up a client's wall after a curtain install gone wrong. And you are really more of a warm weather person. Enough complaining! Back to imagery.....

Oliver, looking thrilled, on his way out the door this morning:

I'm heading out now, but you won't see a picture of me. I refuse to document myself wearing my horrible, floor-length sleeping bag coat.

Culinary Quandaries and Repetitious Beauty

Killy vocalized a strong distaste for our spice rack a while ago.

Well, not the rack specifically, as we'd tracked down some very lovely and inexpensive chrome wire racks when we moved into our current apartment. No, the spice containers themselves were the culprits, a cornucopian melange of colors, shapes, and sizes. We cook at home a lot, thus the orderliness of spices quickly became a source of contention. One false move with the cumin instead of the cinnamon and your Saturday morning pancake breakfast extravaganza instantly falls down several notches on the Deliciousness Scale.

Killy prefers an alphabetically arranged spice rack, of course, as any rational person would. I preferred to arrange them by overall container shape and color, resulting in five or six groups of similar spices—spice families, if you will. I memorized the overall shape and color of my favorites because, well... they are my favorites. For example, I put Red Pepper Flakes on just about everything and I know it's tall and plastic with a red label. Now, in the heat of battle with a pan of shallots and tuna steaks, the last thing I need is to get bogged down with reading twenty-nine labels (until getting to the "R's"). I thought it would be faster to look at the group (family) of five tall plastic red containers, skipping past two or three (Basil, Oregano, Ground Mustard) and quickly narrowing it down to the Red Pepper Flakes. Done and done, right?

As you might imagine, Killy was not a fan of this method. In fact, she probably skipped reading the entire paragraph above, as well it deserves. I will admit my reasoning involved a small amount of laziness, but in my defense, the discrete groups *were* nicer to look at than what I considered to be the arrangement of a demented person if you weren't close enough to read the labels (ie: alphabetical).

This is all I could find of the evidence, hidden partially (mercifully) behind our Quaaludes jar:

Killy is quite tolerant of my madness, as you can see.

Pressing on: I found out that our local grocery store West Side Market stocks spices in nice (and cheap) little glass spice bottles. After a prototype phase and Killy Certification, I picked up twenty jars of peppercorns (we go through them like crazy), dumped the contents into a large tupperware, washed the jars, removed the labels, made some new labels, and (with Killy's expert assistance) transferred the spices into their new homes and alphabetized them:

Common sense prevails once again in our very own kitchen.

Textures of Texas

As you might suspect from some of my paintings, I'm a bit of a sucker for textures. I've started to get in the habit of photographing them when I happen to have a camera handy. Here's a small sampling of interesting textures that we came across during our visit to Texas a little while ago:

Also, it's not directly related, but I have to include this amazing handrail we saw in the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth:

Happy Valentine's Day!

As you may have guessed, Oliver and I are trifle too cynical to buy into this holiday too much, although we do appreciate the opportunity it presents for designing a ton of cool stuff. After a hectic few weeks, Oliver and I are planning to spend this Valentine's Day hanging out together trying to lift one another's spirits from the dark gloom and doom of winter that's getting a little tiresome. I've also promised to tackle my ever-growing piles of papers, mail, magazines and other crap that seem to pile up in the blink of an eye and perhaps squeeze in a little baking. If anything comes out looking extra yummers, I'll be sure to share pictures. In the meantime, I leave you with a little Post-It greeting Oliver left for me on Valentine's Day a few years ago. He has a penchant for drawing adorable little robots, and Post-Its played a big role during our courtship, way back in 2002, so this brings back all kinds of fond memories. Plus, it's so flippin' cute!

DIY at it's finest

I briefly mentioned before what New Yorkers submit to and sacrifice in order to live here, and that the state was recently deemed the unhappiest in the the country, although I focused on life in New York City. I tried to put a positive spin on it, but sometimes it does wear us down. However, my cold little heart was warmed when Nick Olsen, a favorite source for whip-smart humor, talent and all-around fun-ness, posted a New York Times story about the 178 square foot studio apartment of his friend, Zach Motl.

Simply put, Zach doesn't play. He uses every inch of the space wisely, carving out storage where none existed previously and arranging furniture in vignettes, making the space look larger than it is and multi-functional–an essential in small-space living. But he didn't rely solely on his outstanding decorative eye, he is a fearless DIY-er, as well. He ebonized his own floors! He removed, cleaned and replaced his window panes to reduce rattling and heat loss! He installed bead board (which he stained and treated) in his kitchen nook! He built a space-saving cabinet/countertop that also works to create a sense of a little entry hall. This is one talented designerto watch.

The only thing missing is "before" shots. I would love to have seen what that place looked like before he waived his magic wand and transformed what is sure to have been a rundown, uncared for dump into a little jewel box of coziness.

Don't miss the slideshow for more images.

All images courtesy New York Times

Printers were sent from hell...

Remember how I said we were back and would be posting regularly? See how it's been almost a month from our last post? Not doing so well, huh. We've been pretty busy (a good thing) but we really shouldn't ignore our little soap box here. One thing that comes with busy-ness is getting ready for meetings and presentations, and what comes along with that is, inevitably, necessary equipment meltdown, making cheery blog posts out of the question.

It always seems that the more pressure you're under to finish something quickly, the more you can count on all of your equipment to self-destruct right at the witching hour. This has happened to me not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES in the last few weeks! I've worked on a presentation for this or that, it's all ready to go and time to print and WHAM! Meltdown. The printer runs out of ink, the paper jams, the computer freezes – the trifecta of inefficiency. Why it still surprises me, I do not know.

Image courtesy The Oatmeal

Oliver recently sent me a HILARIOUS post from The Oatmeal, a fantastic blog written and illustrated by Seattle-based web design, developer and marketer Matthew Inman, who has an outstanding sense of humor. All the content is worth looking at, but the one entitled "Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable" is my focus for today.

Favorites:

• The Setup

• Ink Colors

• Unfortunate Timing (duh)

After this complain-o-blog, I'll be sure to post something happy next time. In the meantime, share in my outrage!