Browsing articles from "April, 2012"

Baby Moses

Apr 12, 2012 by

Meet Baby Moses, the newest and littlest member to our household! He’s a 10-week-old Devon Rex and I already love him so much.

Believe it or not, despite a lot of cat-centric work I’ve done, I’ve never lived with a cat before. I’m allergic to pretty much everything, and so I grew up with poodles. Somehow, miraculously, I’m not allergic to Baby Moses (or, as we’ve taken to calling him, Baby Mo, Baby, Momo, Little Chief, Prince of Egypt, Prince of Bushwick). He has short wavy hair, much like poodles, and really acts like one too, but much quieter. He craves attention: always wants to play, won’t leave Dylan’s lap, and jumps on our faces to wake us up in the morning.

Baby Moses will probably be the star of our lives from now on, so please excuse my Instagram feed if all you see from now on are these big ears and blue eyes.

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Life

Easter Eggs

Apr 8, 2012 by

Leah.

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After a fun Passover seder with my family on Friday night, Dylan decided to show me a thing or two about painting Easter eggs this morning. We weren’t prepared with the proper dyes, and since I’ve never done this before it seemed right to get out the gouache and just go for it.

We blew out the last four brown eggs that were in the fridge so we could still eat them. I know you’re supposed to use white eggs, but I like the neutral color as a base.

The finished eggs! I really could have done a whole dozen it was so much fun, but sadly there’s other work to be done today.

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DIY, Illustration

The Studio

Apr 3, 2012 by

Dylan.

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Before. Heaps of displaced stuff, only one desk, ugly wall shelving (these were here when we moved in and were the only place for our clothes until I built the shelving/clothes rack in the bedroom), etc.

After!

I’d been putting off painting the studio for about 5 months, and it was the last room in the apartment that needed it. Now that it’s finished, it feels so good to have a nice clean work space! If you work at home like us, you know first hand that having a positive place to work makes the biggest difference in mood, productivity , and even hygiene (for me at least!). It’s the deciding factor in the daily question, “Am I going to shower, get dressed and get to work like a normal human, or am I going to work on the couch in my pajamas until the sun goes down?”

I finally had a plan to build wall-to-wall shelves above our desks, but first the walls needed to be patched, sanded, and painted. And, we needed to move all the shit out of the room first. We had JUST enough paint left over for the studio, and I’m so glad we didn’t have to make another trip to Home Depot for more. Prepping and painting the room took longer than I thought, though. I had hoped to finish in two days, but it ended up taking three. The first two days for patching and painting, and the last for building the shelves. Luckily, the shelves were easier than I thought they would be to install.

The boards for the shelving were really beat up, really cheap, 10 foot scaffolding planks that I scored for six bucks each at the lumber yard near our apartment. I had to cut them down and wire-brush the splinters off and give a good sanding to all 20 feet worth of dirty boards. It was hard and dusty, but after I oiled them up with some teak oil they started looking really good.

I was a little apprehensive at first because in order to hang the shelves I had to anchor into drywall-covered brick, but the guys at Oriental Lumber (of which is my only NYC Foursquare mayorship) were super helpful in recommending the right hardware and drill bit.

I ended up anchoring 1×1 blocks to the wall for the planks to sit on, and it worked out really well. They’re solid. Also, I think it looks a lot better this way rather than having installed ‘L’ brackets. All in all, it was a pretty cheap project – about $12 for the wood and maybe $40 for hardware, 1x1s, sandpaper and spackle.