Trying to get all my in boxes in order again…

My e-mail in box I usually clean up about every 6 weeks.  I organize it by name of sender so I can delete, delete, delete those random GAP e-mails that magically pop up even though I keep unsubscribing.

(sorry GAP, nothing personal and it’s not just you…)

I say 6 weeks because I do this while getting my hair highlighted.  Works great…Except when I have roots, it means I’m getting behind.

And let me tell you….I have roots.

As for my other papers and such, I’ve been using an organization system that I read about in Better Homes and Garden’s Organization Issue from January 2012.

When I find random papers on the counter, or the kids come home with a wad that I just can’t immediately dive into, I place them in my IN BOX.  Every couple days I go (or I should go) through my In Box. I then place the item in the DO NOW, DO LATER, PENDING, or TO FILE folders.  I keep this little mobil filing cabinet right on my kitchen counter.  I carry it to my desk sometimes and I may tuck it away when entertaining.  It is the first organizing system for the kitchen piles that is actually working for me.  I have another one for Dan that is 5 stacked trays.  It is working wall for him too.  FOr the first time, we don’t have piles of paper work in the kitchen.  AND I can usually find what I need in less time.

I’m being inspired by this photo I took at an Anthropologie in San Diego last year.

Wooden boards on a wall with plants.

Remember another time I was inspired by an anthropologie display?

…and I made this:

…dun dun DUN!

What a fun trip.

I love my kids but it sure is nice to spend a weekend with just my hubby.  We flew to Austin, TX to attend the Country Living Fair and to check out the town.  I apologize now for the quality of my photos….I chose to rely exclusively on my i-phone for the weekend.

Doll Chandelier anyone?

This piece here was incredible.  I was calling home to find out measurements of a particular wall where I knew it would fit perfectly.  It would hold my ‘collections’ in style!

How cute would these faces look over the head of a bed?  They are vintage carnival characters.

The adorable vintage trailers from Sisters on the fly were available to tour.  Ooh I’d love to have one of these.  The detailed attention these ladies took in their decor and restoration is admirable.

Dan and I with Country Living editor Sarah Gray Miller

Jourdan Crouch, Senior Editor of Country Living Magazine wrote the article on my shutter wall and was in fact the one to discover it on my blog.

Natalie Warady was the stylist for the April photo shoot of my shutter wall.  This is our picture from the Country Living photo booth with my mom’s dog Gracie.

 Check out Gracie’s photos on one of the vendor’s websites where she is modeling her new necklace.

Friday night we went to Lustre Pearl, an old home transformed into a happening bar complete with ping pong tables, hula hoops and a taco truck in the back yard.  It was featured in the magazine a couple months ago so I was excited to check it out and spend some more time with the crew from Country Living.

Brent Beekman from The Beekman Boys was one of the featured speakers at the fair.  We hung out at Lustre Pearl where he joked about milking pygmy goats with Dr. Oz.  I totally need a goat.

We walked from our hotel downtown to the capital and then bussed to South Congress street to check out the shops and food carts.

Austin did not feel very “Texas” although I did see a cowboy on a horse walking down the street.

These boots were beautiful, however they were also a pretty penny.  Maybe someday…

Vintage clothing shops line South Congress street.  I could have done some serious damage here.

While in town, I was fortunate to meet up with my first friend from Kindergartern.  I remember Ann asking me if I wanted to play on that momentous occasion of the first day of school.  I can still see our parents standing outside the windows of the classroom, waving at us.

Saturday was Dan’s birthday.  After hours of shopping (obviously his favorite thing to do), we enjoyed dinner with my parents at The Oasis at Lake Travis.

It was great seeing my mom and dad who drove out to Austin to spend time with us.  My mom reminded my dad to shave…his beard….on his hand.  He had skin cancer on his hand a few years ago and so they did a skin transfer from his neck to cover the area they removed.  So yes.  He has to shave his beard….on his hand.  This makes me laugh every time I see it.

The night scene in Austin is definitely happening.  6th street is reminiscent of New Orleans minus the beads.  You can drink on the bar roof tops and watch all the people wander the closed off street below.  We meandered down to West 6th Street where the “older folk” hang out.  Ya know…like people in their thirties.

Found this wall in one of the bars which is inspiring me to mimic something similar in my kids rooms.

I heart the multiple love murals we saw in Austin.  I watched someone photograph a beautiful pregnant woman holding her belly in front of this red spray painted wall.  Perfect photo opp…

Love Austin.

Love how their motto is “keep Austin weird.”

And yes….we did see the guy who only wears a g-string as he bikes down 6th street.

And a guy in a pretty pink sweater sitting on a bench tweezing his beard….one by one.

And a final treat on the way home?  A shopping trip on Sky Mall.

Oh how I love my new personal Sauna.

lol….jk.

A couple years ago I worked with a lower elementary Montessori classroom to create a Mandala.  As the end of the year, the students added their handprints and names to use the Mandala as a going away gift for the teacher who was moving.

• Vase with Flowers
• 3-D Blocks ‘Our Universe’
• Our Neighborhood

Inspired by a project by Glitter Goods, I worked with 33 second graders and about 6 or 7 parent volunteers to complete this print making project (for our school’s Fine Arts night auction).

I collected photos off the internet of buildings, landscapes and activities, that are associated with our town, Reno, Nevada.  I printed them and taped them to a blank sheet of paper.  I drew a simplified version of the photo on the paper, leaving space for the students to practice their own rendition.  Remember that with printmaking, the final print is backwards.  When drawing mountains or signs, be sure to give the students a backward image from which to copy so the final will be in the correct format.

I picked up a pack of styrofoam food trays from Smart and Final and used the paper cutter in the teacher supply lounge to chop them into three variations of rectangles.  I opened the package hours before the class workshop and found they were printed with an oval logo on the bottom.  Thankfully my sample didn’t show any of the oval on the the final print however a couple students carved on the wrong side and their print was stamped.  If I did a repeat of this project for an auction, I would purchase ‘Scratch Foam’, a product made for this process.

I wasn’t exact about cutting (or using) equal amounts of each shape.  I made sure that even if the prints used all of the largest sized styrofoam, that they would still fit my previously purchased frame.

After the prep work was complete, I explained the basics of print making to the students.  I showed them the brayer (roller), the ink, the styrofoam and explained how to carve a simple drawing using a dull pencil.

At the last minute (as usual), I had the the parent volunteers help me trace the appropriate size styrofoam rectangle onto each paper so when the students practiced the drawing, they would know how to fill the space.

The students got to work practicing their simple line drawing for the carving.

R just ‘LOVES’ that I gave him one of the RENO signs to draw backwards, and as you can see, his excitement here is contagious!

Once the student had mastered the drawing, they were given a coordinated styrofoam rectangle to begin carving.

I love that the student given the Burning Man symbol is wearing tie dye!

Make sure the carving is deep enough that you can see a deep crevice.  If it is too shallow, it will fill up with ink and will not print the design.

We used five colors of Speedball ink: pewter, yellow, turquoise, green and blue.  The brayers were provided by the school art room.  They are about ten bucks each so I’m glad we didn’t have to purchase them.  We used tupperwear lids to roll out the ink.  Glass would be better or perhaps some plastic lids from those baby greens (lettuce) containers.  Whatever you use, wash it soon or you won’t want to use it for anything else.  I plopped all mine in a plastic bag to wash when I got home but it got lost in the depths of my garage and now I can’t get it all off.  Good thing the lids came from my collection of extra tuppewear lids…(Can you hear my husband chanting “Horder! Horder!”)

Plop a drop of ink on your surface and roll your brayer until it’s covered with an equal amount all around.

Tip: The rubber brayers seem to use less ink then the spongy brayers.

You don’t want any big blobs of ink and you don’t want any areas without.  There is a happy medium where you will hear a sticky sound when you roll the brayer.

Roll the ink onto the styrofoam.

Turn the styrofoam ink side down onto your paper.  We used print making paper from Nevada Fine Arts, an art supply store in town.  Be sure not to wiggle the styrofoam but to press firmly.  There is a tool called a barren that is traditionally used for this process however you can use the back of a spoon or the palm of your hand.

With so many wonderful volunteers, we were able to have one adult for each color.  Wear gloves because this ink really likes to hang out on your hands for a few days.

Peel away the styrofoam carefully and voila!  A print!

Tip:  Keep the styrofoam carvings in case you find later that one needs to be reprinted.  (We did not do this but I wish we had).

We let our prints dry for the weekend and Monday morning I picked them up and took them home.  I gave them preliminary labels with names and titles and handed them off to a fellow mom to label them with nice handwriting.

I used a clear ruler to line each print with a quarter inch border.  Using my trusty slide cutter from the craft store, I trimmed down each print.

I laid the prints out on a grey mat that was cut to the size of the frame by Aaron Brothers.  They were a bit tight so I decided they needed a smaller white border.

Starting with even shaped rectangles made it easy to trim down the edges.  Just a bit off each one was enough to give the prints enough space between each other.

This amazing piece of artwork will be on silent auction at our Fine Arts Night on May 11, 2012

Here are some close ups of each print:

My Grandmother Betty had impeccable taste.  I drink from her teapot and cups, I sew at her table and I look forward to having her chairs reupholstered.  I love the colors and design of her plant pot that I have adopted and now use for brushes.  It has probably lived in nearly every room in my house and has always looked fantastic.  It is now full of dried green peas to hold up my make-up brushes.

Simple.

P.S.  Stay tuned….I’ll tell you all about the Austin Country Living Fair later this week!

I would like to announce an addition to the Home Tour tab at the top menu of Olive and Love.

The addition to the tab is an…

“s”

as it now reads Home Tours.

Click on the tab to be taken to a menu page of home tours including my own.  If you or someone you know is interested in sharing your home, please e-mail me.  I like to photograph the home myself but I may make exceptions.

 Please check out Joanna’s home.  

For lunch we went to the Somoa Cookhouse.  This place was legit:

“This is the last lumber camp style cookhouse in operation in North America.  This cookhouse was originally opened as part of Somoa, one of the last company owned towns in the US, established by the Vance Lumber Company.  THe original building is the four left most dormer windows.  The major additions war made to house the kitchen staff.  Meals have been served here continuously for over 105 years.  Only employees were served here until the late 1960/s when it was opened to the public by Johnny Fillman.”

You don’t get to choose your meal off a menu, “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”  It was so tasty, everyone cleaned their plates.  I’d go here all the time if we lived closer!

The Menu:

After a couple stops at a thrift store and the Food Coop in Arcata, we headed back up to Trinidad for more beach combing.  Our last morning we refilled our coffee mugs at the Beachcomber Cafe, and headed home.  We had a wonderful time.