My cube had a little holiday, too.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays! No matter what you celebrate, may this season find you with happiness, joy, love, and abundance. May the New Year be a better one for you. Wishing each and every one of you the best this season has to offer.
My cube had a little holiday, too.
My cube had a little holiday, too.
Friday, December 18, 2009
It's red, it's a cube, it's art! ... does that make it Cubism?
The Chicago Art Institute has been running a year-long art project called "500 Ways", designed to get people to think about modern art - and public art in general - in new ways.
I lucked out and found a cube; my assignment was "Theodore Robinson’s The Valley of Arconville shows someone getting away from it all. Where in the Art Institute can you get away from it all? Take a photo of the area (or work that inspires your mental state) and upload it (to the site)."
While I've been having fun fulfilling this assignment, I'm also stretching outside the box, so to speak. ;)
Monday, December 14, 2009
400th!
I have to admit that it's taken me a while to decide what I'd like to post for my 400th blog post. But Air New Zealand and Southwest Airlines solved my dilemma with their commercials (ANZ) and the response (SWA)...
Southwest's response...
Southwest's response...
It's nice to know that in the midst of a lot of changes that have swept through the travel industry - and most of those changes affecting the more casual travelers - that there are still some airlines with a good sense of humor - and we love to fly them!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
A little green home rehab
Although I primarily talk about travel here, I have also to a lesser extent been talking about the "green" lifestyle and integrating organic/green living into both everyday life and traveling.
I am a big fan of "Freshaire" brand paints, which are VOC-free. The paint hardly smells at all when you're painting (in fact to me, it smells a little bit like pumpkin), and it dries really quickly - my experience has been within half an hour, which means you can paint and put the furniture back in place almost as soon as you're done.
Room by room, I have been working my way through my condo, turning a personality-free off-white living space into a colorful home. The bedroom is two shades of blue ("Beckoning sea" and "Winding river"); the living room is now a pale terracotta ("Ginger root"), as is the bathroom; the kitchen is a cheerful combination of white enamel and yellow ("Delightful daffodil"). My latest project has been the combination living room/dining room.
I already have an existing look to one side of the room. (The giant wall map is a National Geographic product. People always ask.)
The map, the colors - I really loved the look I created on that side of the room, but the long wall that joins the living room and dining room has been boring - blah - with a bunch of birch-colored furniture and an off-white color. (It doesn't help that the carpet is also a dark cream color. Not my choice - it was newly installed by the seller when I bought the place. But since it's new, I'm not in a hurry to rip it out, either.)
I needed a color that would draw together my existing elements in the big room - the dark green of the couch; the multiple hues of green in a large wall painting done by a friend; the soft sage of an area rug under the dining room table. A pale sage (or as Freshaire calls it, "Arbor vine") was the perfect choice. It also compliments the birch-colored furniture nicely and really makes the room pop.
One of my more unusual storage needs - and I have lots of storage needs, thanks to near-non-existent closet space - was that I needed someplace to stick about two cases' worth of wine until I can get around to purchasing a wine fridge. (You know, one of those 35-50 bottle wine fridges.) As it was, I had three Ikea "Billy" bookcases that I was moving from the long wall to the short wall in the dining room. The bookcases didn't quite fill the wall, but the narrow "Benno" CD/DVD tower was perfect to fill the gap.
And, as it turns out, the Benno is working decently as a makeshift wine rack, although I wish Ikea had a variant that was twice as deep, so the bottles didn't stick out the front, and had less risk of falling out. The shelves are adjustable - I left a large gap at the bottom to fit a couple of oversized books - and you can easily fit two regular-sized bottles or three half-sized bottles per shelf at this configuration.
I am a big fan of "Freshaire" brand paints, which are VOC-free. The paint hardly smells at all when you're painting (in fact to me, it smells a little bit like pumpkin), and it dries really quickly - my experience has been within half an hour, which means you can paint and put the furniture back in place almost as soon as you're done.
Room by room, I have been working my way through my condo, turning a personality-free off-white living space into a colorful home. The bedroom is two shades of blue ("Beckoning sea" and "Winding river"); the living room is now a pale terracotta ("Ginger root"), as is the bathroom; the kitchen is a cheerful combination of white enamel and yellow ("Delightful daffodil"). My latest project has been the combination living room/dining room.
I already have an existing look to one side of the room. (The giant wall map is a National Geographic product. People always ask.)
The map, the colors - I really loved the look I created on that side of the room, but the long wall that joins the living room and dining room has been boring - blah - with a bunch of birch-colored furniture and an off-white color. (It doesn't help that the carpet is also a dark cream color. Not my choice - it was newly installed by the seller when I bought the place. But since it's new, I'm not in a hurry to rip it out, either.)
I needed a color that would draw together my existing elements in the big room - the dark green of the couch; the multiple hues of green in a large wall painting done by a friend; the soft sage of an area rug under the dining room table. A pale sage (or as Freshaire calls it, "Arbor vine") was the perfect choice. It also compliments the birch-colored furniture nicely and really makes the room pop.
One of my more unusual storage needs - and I have lots of storage needs, thanks to near-non-existent closet space - was that I needed someplace to stick about two cases' worth of wine until I can get around to purchasing a wine fridge. (You know, one of those 35-50 bottle wine fridges.) As it was, I had three Ikea "Billy" bookcases that I was moving from the long wall to the short wall in the dining room. The bookcases didn't quite fill the wall, but the narrow "Benno" CD/DVD tower was perfect to fill the gap.
And, as it turns out, the Benno is working decently as a makeshift wine rack, although I wish Ikea had a variant that was twice as deep, so the bottles didn't stick out the front, and had less risk of falling out. The shelves are adjustable - I left a large gap at the bottom to fit a couple of oversized books - and you can easily fit two regular-sized bottles or three half-sized bottles per shelf at this configuration.
I cut some small pieces of padded shelf liner for each shelf, to ensure the bottles would not roll out of their nooks. Although it is not likely to be a permanent solution - I would still like a wine fridge so that I could actually keep and age some reds - it was a handy fix.
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