Last-minute wrapping ideas

If you're like me and you've yet to wrap most of your holiday presents, here's a little round-up of my favorite Macgyver-esque gift wrapping projects floating around the internets this year:

Top Row: Paint chip gift tags from A Spoonful of Sugar
Middle Row: Recycled magazine gift bow from Craftster
Bottom Row: Plastic bag gift bow from Creature Comforts

Happy Holidays!

A Christmas (Card) Story...

If you remember our holiday cards last year, you probably guessed that our major inspiration was of course this:

With a touch of this:

And a hint of my mommy's old family Christmas cards:

Here's how we did it...

Supplies:

• Camera with timer
• Tripod
• Natural light (a nice overcast day was key!)
• Winter outfits
• green screen*
• Photo Editing software
• Background school scene and foreground flagpole images for a-layerin' (we used actual images from the movie "A Christmas Story")
• Retro font - ours is 'Leisure Script' from fontdiner.com (You'll notice it is not free - I wont comment on how I got my hands on it - but there are many free fonts at DaFont, 1001freefonts, etc. I LOVE fonts! But more on that in another post.)

*our "green screen" was actually a white sheet. It was pretty easy to trim that out of the background. I am not sure why green is the ideal color to subtract from the background, but I am going to assume that it is science.

Steps:

1. Setting the scene. Pick a spot with good lighting. A bright but overcast day was best for our winter scene. (Besides that, sunny-day photography has a number of unique challenges: it makes people [read: me] all squinty, washes out features on one side of the face and creates harsh shadows on the other, and is hard to photoshop into other backgrounds because the angle of the light source is so obvious.) Now, getting back to picking your location ... ideally (assuming you do not live in an extremely Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in the heart of Brooklyn, where there is zero privacy and the neighbors already think you're weird) you'd do this photoshoot outside. We of course did ours inside cramped against our living room window. The backdrop consisted of a white sheet draped over a pile of furniture. Yes, very streamlined indeed.


2. Get into costume. Since this was done on a whim one Sunday afternoon - "Matt - the lighting is perfect, it's go time!", we had to use whatever winter attire props were lying around the apartment, so we dug out our own coats and hats that we felt looked the most timeless for our vintage scene. Looked okay, in my opinion ... at least I am glad we didn't spend any money.



3. The photoshoot. Put the camera on the tripod, have an assistant model to check your framing, set that timer, and work-it. We just did this by trial and error. At one point I tried pulling on Matt's ears for extra dramatic effect, but it turns out that he was NOT ok with that. This reminds me of the one of the cherished pearls of wisdom I learned from my mother, which despite all my years of martial arts training still stands out as the best self-defence technique I've ever learned: how to yank a dude's ear off. But I digress. Keep striking a pose until you think there are enough shots to choose from.



4. Post-production. This is where the magic happens. I am in absolutely no position to give photoshop lessons because all I know is from my own trial and error. However, a few key things: it is much easier to blend separate images when they are in grayscale, and, when in doubt, blur edges.



5. Printing. Our little ink jet is a P-O-S, so we had these professionally printed. We could have been happier with the quality, and in hindsight we should have saved money and gotten postcards, but all in all the product was all right.
   

And if you are anticipating fancy cards from us this Holiday Season, just know that we plan on systematically lowering the bar each year from now on. We cant take the pressure!

Patients are people too . . .

A really neat study was reported this week at the annual conference of the Radiologic Society of North America (RSNA). It turns out that if a radiologist sees a picture of a patient's face, their CT scan interpretations for that patient will be longer and more thorough. Awww, radiologists can be warm and fuzzy when given a chance! Check it out on AuntMinnie.com.

Me-likey: The Immortal House Plant

As many of you know, I kill plants. Most recently, I killed a cactus. That's right, it can be done. The thing actually started rotting. But there is hope for me and my fellow "gangrene thumbs" (eh? get it?) out there! Behold, a fun alternative to the dusty old fake ficus tree:



Zinc-finished metal plants from Wisteria! Okay, so maybe they're still dusty, but these babies were "used in 19th-century France for winter gardens and conservatories," so they're classy. I know that I am a total sucker for marketing, but I think I am going to get one. Throw in a glade plug-in and I am in fake botanical heaven. Shame is overrated anyway.

Wait ... What?

Who got to decide that flag football was to be the official sport of the McDonald's Third Pounder?

Neat Old Stuff: Christmas Cards of Yore

Today's Neat Old Stuff features these deliciously nostalgic holiday photo-cards that my mother's family sent out in the fifties:

(1954) Grandma, Mom, Aunt Patty, Aunt Betty, and Gramps

I absolutely love this picture! It was taken by a family friend who was a photographer for the Albany Times Union. I am not sure who did the script at the bottom (maybe another staffer at the paper?), but isn't it great?! (If you haven't noticed from our blog header, I am a little bit ga-ga for vintage fonts.) And why don't they put the deckle-edges on photos anymore?

Here's another:

(1957) Aunt Patty, Mom, and Aunt Betty

This photo was taken by the same photographer at the front door of the house in Westport, NY where my mom grew up. They removed the screen. She tells me it was still warm out at the time, but they donned their gay apparel for festivity's sake. I love the way it looks like the script could have been painted on the door, but this was added in post-production.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Knock, knock. Who's there? Our coffee table.

This is one of the cooler (my opinion) things we have done. It all started on morning when Sar and I were leaving for school/work. It was garbage pickup day, and there was a large pile outside of our building. So Sar and I have this habit, see, of looking at piles of garbage with this I-need-to-furnish-my-apartment sort of intent. And on this morning, while I saw nothing of note, Sar stopped me to look at this old, beaten up discard door. When I saw it I was like, "umm, we have one already, lets go" but Sar was all like "Hark, there within that refuse lies a golden opportunity!" So we stand there looking at a pile of garbage for a few minutes, when one of our building crew guys stops and asks us whether we want something (from the pile of trash.) Sar replies by saying something like "Behold, good Sir! Treasures abound! My Gentlemen caller and I desire that jettisoned domestic barricade." So after this guy is finished laughing at us, he agrees to take the door away from the pile and kept it on the side of the building for us.

"Elbow Grease!"

So Sar's idea was to take this beaten up door, and turn it into our new coffee table. The first thing we did with the door was to clean it, which we did in the alley next to our apartment building. After that, we brought it back up to our apartment (looking totally awesome as we did so,) and I began to put on a couple of coats of polyurethane. Meanwhile, Sar was busy online looking for something to use as legs. She ended up finding these awesome looking (and reasonably priced) hand-carved claw feet on ebay. I attached the claw feet using a combination of brackets and large screws. As a finishing touch, we added the door knocker from our Binghamton apartment (I wasn't the one who took it,) and viola our new coffee table was complete!

Tie-A-Thon: Week 3, 4, and 5

Tie-A-Thon is going smoothly, despite my inability to keep up with a demanding 1 blog per week. Hence today's entry.

So week # 3:

All of the above ties were thrifted except for the Whale tie, which is just too awesome to not buy new. The one on the end is my favorite because of it's ridiculous retro-ness. Its military green which - lets be honest - is my color.

And then Week 4:

Looking at this week's worth of ties makes me wish that I had the foresight to plan themes. I mean this is almost a complete brown week! With so many brown ties, its a good thing that brown is my color. The ties on the outside were thrifted, and the ones in the middle were purchased new. The outside ties are two of my absolute favorites. The duck one is knitted and is one of those ties that knot very easily. The one on the right features either two cowboys or two British gentlemen on a fox hunt. I have thus nicknamed it my Brokeback tie for obvious reasons.

And now Week 5:

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I know. But if I dont post this now, it'll take me a couple of weeks to do it. SO here are the ties that I'm wearing this week.

These ties were all thrifted. The first two are knitted ties, which is something that I'd like to find-buy-wear more of. And the last one is, well, a holiday appropriate little number I've been holding onto for a couple of months. My favorite of these three is the first one, because it ties like a dream and because pink is totally my color.

Me-likey: Mod Cloth

Quick! Someone invite me to a holiday party so I can buy one of these outfits.

All very reasonably priced at Mod Cloth, one of my new favorites!

Neat Old Stuff: Gnomes!

Today's Neat Old Stuff comes from ebay - a score for about $25 total. Vintage gnomes!

These little guys have the "Heissner" stamp on the back, the mark of the Heissner Gnome Company out of (West) Germany. My best estimate is they are from the 1960's, when gnomes were revived in plastic form. Prior to that they were made out of terracotta, but production of those fell off during WWII (turns out Germany was distracted back then). A little more about the history of gnomes here.

Someday, Matt and I will have a garden, and maybe these can hang out there. For now, though, they are harder to kill than houseplants.

Tie-A-Thon: Week 2

Another week, another quintuplet of ties!

I know what you're thinking, is that really a quintuplet of ties? Were those ties all really born in a single birth? My answer, friend, is a resounding yes.

The relentless building block video puzzle!

Impress your boss with these stunningly professional tetris ties ...

Hand painted using acrylics with textile medium.

I’ve dabbled with painting ties in the past, but it is always hard to come up with images that fit well on such an elongated canvas – the tetris design is perfect for this shape! I am going to sell these on etsy once Matt and I get our storefront set up.

And just in case it wasn't already in your head...

Dum

Da-da-dum

Da-da-dum

Da-da-dum

Da-da-dum

Da-dum

Dum

Dum

Dum

Dum

Tie-A-Thon: Week 1

One week down, numberless weeks to go! Here are the ties worn this week:

The Brown tie and the Bird tie were thrifted, I bought the black one new (before I knew any better), and I forget where and how I got the gold boring one. I probably wear the brown one the most, because I wear brown the most. That being said, the bird tie is my favorite because it is ridiculous. I only wore 4 ties this week because I was out sick one day.

Notice the craftsmanship - the finely knitted browns, the happy yellow symetry, and the life-like fear in the pheasant's eyes as the peregrine falcon swoops in for its mid-afternoon morsel.

Week One down ... how many more to go?

Neat Old Stuff: Creepy Portrait

This gem came from the Salvation Army in Binghamton Ny. I've forgotten what it cost me, but being that I was a sophomore in college, and had no job, I doubt if it was more than $8.99. Many cool things were purchased at the Bingo Salvo, and this was likely one of the first.

This portrait, nicknamed Jacobin Joe, has hung in my Sophomore year dorm room (above the door,) in my Junior year apartment (somewheres?), in the bathroom of our Senior year apartment (directly across from the crapper!), and now in the shadows of our mini hallway.

Sarah has long complained that Jacobin Joe is too creepy, too ugly, or something else that results in my complete zoning out. I say it could be worse.

OR MORE AWESOME!

Frightening.

My annual rant:

Now I know that Halloween is a time-honored opportunity for the ladies to dress more, um, provocatively than they normally would. There are classics like the sexy nurse and the french maid and what have you. But it seems like lately there is a slut-ified version of everything. I remember holding back gags as the girls on my college cheerleading team recited their plans, which included such ideas as (and I may be paraphrasing): "slut with butterfly wings," "whore with devil horns," "hooker with cat ears," and the list went on. I would then go home and joke to Matt that I was going to dress-up as something like a "sexy hobo" or a "trampy giraffe." I thought I was being ironic, but it turns out that you really can make anything slutty:

To my dismay, alarm, and amusement, these are all commercially available on the internets. A sexy Sherlock? Really? And the "mental patient" one is just downright offensive. Although this nonsense does make me feel like I am taking crazy pills!