me likey

Mirror, Mirror on the Bedside Table...

Ever since I was little I've wanted a vanity where I could primp. When I lived in a larger apartment I had such a thing. It was a dark wood, art deco style vanity with a huge octagonal mirror. When I moved into my studio I just didn't have the space for such a thing so I sold it on craigslist. Weirdly enough a set designer ended up buying it for an Avril Lavigne video. I hesitated for a bit on selling it to him since she so didn't deserve such a cool vanity, but 200 bucks is 200 bucks.

Anyhoo, one day while walking to the farmer's market I found an old bathroom mirror cabinet someone had thrown out. It was very Shabby Chic, so I decided to bring it home, figuring I could find some use for it. Back at the pad I realized it was just too heavy to safely install on the wall of my apartment, but I did have an old bedside table I had found on the street a year earlier that was the same width as the cabinet. When I placed the mirror on the table I realized that with some wood and screws I could make this dinky table into a vintage style vanity...

Keeping the Draft Out on the Cheap

Argh, I hate the winter. Other than snow days, the winter in New York can eat it. My main complaint is the cold, and more precisely, the cold that seeps into my ground floor apartment. Since I pay for my own heating, I try to be very conscious of how much the heat is on. That usually means that I'm walking around with four layers and under a blanket most days.

The main problem is the draft that comes in from the windows. Even though my apartment is relatively new, the windows seem to be single paned. Not good. At first I simply had one pair of relatively sheer curtains covering the windows, but that just doesn't do the trick, so I decided to install another set of curtains.

Seeing in Clusters: Hanging Art and Maximizing Space

I somehow amassed a ridiculous amount of artwork during 2008. For a few months there I became addicted to scoring low cost prints from Tiny Showcase. Have you guys heard of this place? OMG. It's the best thing ever. Each week the online art gallery

offers a limited edition print from up-and-coming artists like Jeff Soto, Josh Keyes, and Brendan Monroe. For $20, you get a miniature letterpress reproduction of an original artwork worth anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to over a grand. The editions top off at 200 so you still feel like you have a limited edition piece of art.

So with my stack of prints I was losing wall space. That's when I decided to take everything down and start over, this time avoiding the sparse museum look and instead going for clusters. I've seen more and more walls of clustered artwork on Flickr which caught my eye. I wanted to do the same thing but was scared of screwing up the coveted haphazard look and leaving my wall with a ton of tiny holes. I needed to plan out my organic look first...

Let it Snow!

I absolutely love Snow & Graham's gift wrap. Whenever I buy it to wrap someone's present I end up getting greedy and thinking, "Oh I can just wrap their present in butcher paper. This is much too pretty to be ripped up and thrown away." It becomes the gift wrap that's only used for people who will truly appreciate it.

That said, gift wrap doesn't only have to be used for beautifying presents. Recently I used the paper to spruce up some Ikea display boxes.

Poking Holes in Your Body

While looking through a body modification site as I was doing research for a possible Wired story I found  a new modification technique that actually didn't make me puke. While I doubt I'd ever get it done myself, it's an interesting piercing concept. Microdermals -- or surface anchors -- are body jewelry with a single point of entry. There's no exit hole. The benefit of this is that you can then pierce areas of the body that you would normally not be able to, such as your finger for a band-free ring of sorts.

Here's a diagram from BMEZine that illustrates how anchors are placed -- and stay -- in the skin.

And here's a photo of the actual jewelry.

 

I wonder if you always feel the little anchor under your skin, or like an ear piercing you get used to it to the point that you forget about it.

L'Election!

Today was election day and it looks like the entire world is sitting on the edge of their seat as we decide our fates. Le Figaro, the french daily newspaper, hired Shepard Fairey to once again lend his hand to create portraits of both candidates in the same vein as the Barack Obama posters he's made in the past. This is how American papers should look.

The Three Mouseketeers -- Part Two

So late last night, after many hours sitting post in front of the heater, Gizmo coaxed the mouse out of its hiding place and all three felines went running towards the other end of the apartment chasing the poor thing. The mouse went into hiding under a little table and I was able to get it into the little box I had prepared for it. The mouse is freaking adorable, and I just couldn't get myself to kill it or have the cats torture it until its little heart stopped. Naturally the mouse spent the night in the box and I picked up a habit trail from my friend Maria the next morning.

Bruce and I set it up with plush pet bedding, granola, and water. We dropped the little bugger in its new home and watched him run around, as well as climb the containers grating. I worried that maybe the mouse could squeeze himself through the grating, but after watching him attempt unsuccessfully, Bruce and I sat back and continued our work...until, I heard the mouse drop from the bookcase we had put the habittrail and the cats scramble to get it before it slipped under the fridge! Damn! 

The cats looked at me like I was insane for taking it away from them in the first place. They've probably got a point I've given them the OK to finish the deed since the little rodent just isn't grateful enough. Unfortunately the cats are too pooped from all their mouse hunting to attempt to hunt it down again. I may have missed my big chance with them...

The Three Mouseketeers!

So I've had a mouse in the house for the past week. Yes, a mouse. Somehow I have four cats living in my large studio and they've allowed a mouse to encroach on their territory without any fuss whatsoever. When I discovered the mouse I put all felines on major food rations. Bruce told the kids, "Whoever catches the mouse gets to stay." Finally today Damian took this whole operation seriously. She knows she's on thin ice here, being feral and all, so she got into action early this morning. She had been in the kitchen since on watch, when at 5 PM she came running through the "living room" area with it in her mouth. She then dropped it a few times, whacked it, and then, on her final drop, the mouse went running. We all chased it around trying to catch it, but then when I saw it hiding behind an old suitcase I felt so bad for the little bugger. She's just so teeny, and so scared. I decided to get a box and see if I could capture her in the box. What I would do after that was still up in the air.

Well, she's run into one of the heater floor boards and the cats are taking shifts guarding the perimeter. She seems quite content in there, peeking her little head out to see what the cats are up to in between grooming sessions. I've got a box with bird seed in it nearby in case she decides to come out and be caught with the one predator without claws. Maybe I can get a little terrarium and keep her in there for the rest of her days...incubate the bubonic plague in my very own home!