My new purple dining room!

I have a new dining room! I had purple paint left over from the bathroom painting and decided to cover the ugly brown that was in my dining room. It was this color because we had planned on selling the house at one point, but the living room/dining room/kitchen were all different colors. There is a local place here that recycles paint and they offer free cans of paint to the public. Its pretty rad. but the only bulk color we could get was this:

Pretty boring right?

So after a couple of coats I got this:

I think it looks so much better! When we went to california to visit my parents I raided my mom's picture frame supply and used my dad's nice photo printer to get a bunch of pictures of the family and the wedding. Using the bounty I got from them (and our car was PACKED! poor panda, she was stuffed in the back)...I made a photo "collage" of sorts on the wall then to finish up my decorating I added some of the masks/decorations from the wedding and got this pretty memory wall!:

I love it! on the other side of the room I have a vintage china cabinet/hutch that I got for a steal at $25! (sorry its a blurry pic):

I collect skulls and other random stuff, so I have dedicated a whole shelf to my collection:

 My good friend made me this Shadow box as a wedding present. She lives far away from me (sad face) so couldn't attend. To show you just how close we are, she liked the background of this shadow box so she thought she would use it, well little did she know I used the same exact stuff (in plastic goodie bag form) at the wedding! I thought that was pretty rad and I love the shadow box! Thanks Hannelore!

 
 

My wedding cake topper! It was perfect... I really should blog about the wedding. Beth and I made a bunch of really cool stuff...

Now onto holiday baking, completing a blog about the craft exchange I just participated in and the awesome festivus stockings that Beth and I made!

Trip to Victoria B.C. 9.5.2010

I recently took a day trip up to Victoria, its about a 2.5 hour trip from Seattle. I got up super early and was at the terminal around 6:30am, the boat left at 7:30 so I found a place in the pre-boarding area and sat down. I ended up talking to a nice man from England who was traveling with his wife around America and Canada. We ended up talking about food, Top Gear and the price of gas around the world. In England they are paying 3.50 pounds per gallon which translates to $5.40USD! He was shocked that I had only paid $3/gallon for gas that morning, he was really nice and I hope he had a great trip.

I took these as the boat was pulling out of Seattle:

The Clipper's Tail:

It was a pretty morning:

After docking in Victoria, I spent most of the day walking around shopping and wandering. I did end up going to the Maritime Museum of BC (http://mmbc.bc.ca/). It's a pretty informative place that covers the nautical history of the area. I got to ride in the oldest birdcage elevator in North America, installed in 1899 (http://mmbc.bc.ca/?page_id=118) it was pretty rad! (sorry for the crummy pic, I couldn't use my flash in the museum)

Argghhh:

A Big daddy before going to Rapture:

 

More from the Maritime Museum:

Money from Spain (around 1600ish I believe) that was kept in a trunk with a really intricate lock:

There was a section about women nurses in the World Wars, they had some displays of outfits, and pictures, but this one caught my eye:

                                                      Canadian Ninja Nuns!
I learned that after companies had almost drove some local seal populations to extinction, they decided start hunting whales! I was kinda sad for all the animals. At one point they were trying out different things to kill whales, they tried explosives strapped to harpoons, guns and tactics. One picture described how you should go after whale calves so you could get the protective mother out to get her too.
Whale gun:

I did find out that eventually every part of the whale was used, but they almost drove them to extinction also.

In addition to the otter, seals and whales, beavers were also hunted for money and fashion:

There was a lot of talk of rum in one area of the museum:

I bet American Sailors wish they had rum rations!

There was a room filled with model ships, these two were made by prisoners who saved bones from meals and other scraps to build the ships:

Other awesome nautical stuff:

                                                                    Compass

                                                                            Stop!

                                                               A pretty Lady

                                                      H.M.C.S RAINBOW 1968

                                                Electrical Cable Junction from 1910

After the museum I walked around and ended up going into this little basement shop called "Sam's Sideshow" The first thing I saw when I walked in was a record bowl filled with pretty hair bows! Then after squeeing out loud over how awesome it was I met Sam, we ended up talking for a good while all about vintage clothes, shoes, pillow cases, crows, aprons, zombie jesus shirts and just fun stuff in general. I bought this really pretty dress that has pansies all over it, plan on getting a cute black dress to go under it (and will be posted here eventually). Sam also does alterations, so if you find something in her shop you can have it fitted to you. She doesn't have an online store yet, but I found her blog thingie, and the address:
"Sam's Sideshow Boutique" located at 559 Johnson St, Victoria BC
http://samssideshow.blogspot.com

Some shots leaving Victoria:

I had a lot of fun, and on the way home ended up talking with Rex from Atlanta(well as he said Hotlanta!), he was traveling with his two friends in Seattle and Victoria and then were headed to Rhode Island so his friends could get married. (Why isn't gay marriage legal yet?) I told him where he could get some good eats in Seattle, and what gay bar to go for dancing. Rex told me that he was featured in "Designed to Sell" a show on HGTV. After a quick google search I found the episode description:
(http://www.hgtv.com/designed-to-sell). When the rocking of the boat got to be too much, we all had a good laugh when Rex pretended to use his Gucci bag as a designer sickness bag, he immediately put it on facebook :P. at one point we were out on the deck and I took these beautiful shots of the sun going down:

                                           It was a beautiful way to end the day!

Nerdy Dice Boxes

In addition to the box I made for myself, wanted to make a couple of dice boxes for our friends; Austin and Travis. I had a lot of fun figuring out what each of them would like and in the end I think I did a pretty good job :).

Austin likes purple and stripes.. so I went with that theme for his.

Before:

Then I added stripes:

And for good measure a swirl to the lid:

I didn't get the best picture of it, but I lined the lid in this really pretty purple/black brocade paper:

I like the colors on Austins box, and it was super simple to make, just a couple of coats of paint and a little creative use of masking tape. The picture doesn't do much justice for the swirl on the top, but I used a really pretty metallic purple for it.



For Travis, I thought he might like duct tape and pirates, so I grabbed a tin that someone at my work had left in the coffee room (yea free craft stuff, saved something from a landfill and I got to turn it in to something useful!) I was looking for a more gray/black color scheme (the tin was originally fire engine red) so I glued a piece of card stock to the front and covered the rest in duct tape:

I added a skull/swords to the front:

On the inside I thought I would put Travis' most favorite animal.. a cat:

And another one on the very bottom:

(hey Travis... cats are everywhere!)
I filled both with a few mechanical pencils, a notebook and an eraser. I was happy with my mostly Instant Nerd gifts, not to mention I got to play with duct tape!