my notecards came!

When my Crane museo cards arrived late last week, I felt like I had just received a package from Tiffany. Look at those boxes! I'm just trying to think of what I'll store in them after I run out of cards. And of course the boxes are sitting on top of my gorgeous Rotatrim monorail, which cuts like a dream. While I was doing test prints a few weeks ago I was using my old scrapbook cutter that has a blade you need to replace often, and the edges were so uneven. But the Rotatrim makes perfect, clean cuts that make the paper look like it just came out of the package. I love supplies!

puppy play

Last weekend we pet sat for an 8 month old puppy named Nigel. This was the first time I'd ever done pet sitting, and it was a lot harder than I'd expected. Luckily, Jolly and Nigel got along like a house on fire. They played several times throughout the three days he was here until they both collapsed on the floor. I would then put Nigel in his crate and he'd sleep for several hours.


It was definitely a learning experience, but I told the boy not to book us for any more sitting any time soon. It's hard enough taking care of my own dog!

coffee film

Did you know that you can develop black & white film using coffee and vitamin C? Using instant coffee, vitamin C powder, washing soda, dishwasher liquid, and a few other ingredients, it's possible. There is a neat tutorial at Photojojo. Surprisingly, the results aren't bad at all, like the above photo. There is a group on Flickr called Caffenol that is dedicated to photos developed using this process. So if you're ever in dire need to develop film at 3am when CVS is closed, there is hope, still!

Via Geek Sugar.
Image by remediate.this.

starting the process again

I don't know what happened, exactly. We had decided that we were going to move to Brooklyn on June 1st, which means we'd have to begin looking for apartments in the beginning of May. But somehow I found myself on craigslist this weekend, and suddenly I'm looking for May 1st move-ins instead.

This will be our 3rd apartment in the city, but now we are specifically targeting the Park Slope neighborhood (or Fort Greene, but it's more expensive, if you can believe it.) Yesterday I looked at one apartment that was too small. Otherwise it was perfect - elevator, washer/dryer, dishwasher, shared roof and garden, on a nice street, not far from all of the subway lines and Atlantic Avenue. But it was advertised as a 'loft,' and the realtor said 'around 900 square feet.' Here's a tip, Property Shark is your best friend. The craigslist listing provided the cross-streets and a photo of the entrance to the building. That was all I needed to pinpoint the exact address even before the realtor gave it to me, and knowing the floor, and that the owner of the condo was a woman, I was able to see that there was no 4th floor apartment owned by a woman with more than 740 square feet. There was that one, and one that was 504 square feet. Guess which one she took me to see? Yeah, the one with less square footage than I have now. I told her it was 400 square feet smaller than she'd said, and she gives me the, "Oh, we thought it was much larger," deal, but come on. She's a realtor. She spends her whole day in apartments. That's why working with realtors is tough. They're like used car salesmen. Do your own research and don't listen to a darn thing they say, that's my motto. Well, it's fine that it didn't work out because it had a one month broker fee, and ideally it would be no-fee or through an owner or tenant instead of realtor.



The photos provided in the listing did the apartment justice (it was also in crummy shape), so I didn't take any more except for up on the roof deck, which had a 360 degree view of Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was awesome. But pets weren't allowed up there and the deck part was like a catwalk, very narrow and kind of scary, unlike other roof decks I've seen. Sort of a let down.

But hopefully I'll see more apartments later this week and into the next, and if nothing still, we'll just keep looking! Actually I really enjoy looking at apartments, it's just that I hate knowing I have to choose one of them and do all the paperwork to apply. But I cannot wait to decorate a new place!

it's beginning to look a lot like spring-mas!

The tree that was budding was totally in the shade, so I appologize for the poor photos, but look! It's blooming! I just had to show you. It's so exciting. I can't wait to see more.

artexpo photos

I was going through my iPhone today when I discovered these photos I had taken inside the Javits Center at the ArtExpo on March 1st. I'd never been to the Javits Center before so I was really blown away by the fact that the entire building is made of glass. And it's an expo center, mind you, so it's just huge.


Crazy, right? And the Art Expo was great, too! We saw the actress Jane Seymour who was there selling her art. All of the artists' work was a little out of my league, price wise, though.

photo of a photo

In each of my Etsy listings, I plan to have one digital image of the photograph and one photo of the actual print (as seen below), and perhaps also a framed version, too. So far there are two possible locations for taking photos of my prints. I'm also considering bringing them to the park and taking them in or around trees, and another option is to set up a clothes hanger on the wall and clip each photo to a clotheshanger. I love that idea, but the lighting in my apartment is so poor, I've been considering these other options.

Do you prefer either of these? These are just test shots, so quality will likely improve for the final version.