New books!

Two Christmases ago, Eric's uncle gave us an Amazon gift card. I just now got around to using it!

I ordered a book on paper cutting, and then two others by some of my favorite illustrators. They arrived last night as we were headed out the door for a baseball game, so I didn't have time to delve into all of them, but I wanted to give you a peek of at least one today.

So.... Paper Cutting. Complied by Laura Heyenga. Why paper cutting?

I've been looking for artwork to hang on our walls, but it's all pretty pricey. Plus, I haven't really found anything I like. Until this:

Of course it's hanging in The Brick House. Now I know I talk about the brick house blog a lot, but it's because it is the most amazing blog in the world and that chick is like my soul sister. Except that she's not married and gets to use swears. Plus, she has freaking amazing paper cuts hanging in her dining room! I have a checkerboard of paint swatches in mine.
My dining room:

Her dining room:

My dining room:

Her dining room:

Yeah, she totally wins. In a landslide. Which is why I need paper cuts to stay in the game. Who am I joking, I need paper cuts (and a whole heck more) to even get in the game!

Anyway, I wanted to learn about paper cutting since my first attempts failed miserably (I think the cat ate part of one), so I ordered this book. It's pretty incredible.

It starts with the history of paper and paper cutting (China brilliantly invents paper, while everyone else continues to hammer things into rocks for a few more centuries), then consists of paper cut artwork by contemporary artworks. It is really, really inspiring.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Peter Callesen -

Matthew Sporzinsky -

Mia Pearlman -

Beatrice Coron makes cities of tunnels that are the stuff of my childhood dreams - 

Heather Moore and Emily Hogarth stumbled onto paper cutting as a method of creating stencils for screen printing. I really like their styles and subject matter -

I am obviously not going to make tiny paper castles for our house, but I love seeing what's possible with an ordinary material. I really like the idea of making screen printing stencils....It will be fun to experiment and just see what I can do. Maybe something I make will end up on a wall someday.

Over the Weekend: Finally Feels Like Summer!!

The weekend kicked off on Thursday with Eric's "Fixie Forty" bike ride to Laurel and back.

Saturday I woke up and continued my rock removal efforts. Then Eric woke up and we headed to Oxford Antiques. It was closed (most disappointing store in the history of my life), but I found these awesome chairs at a garage sale on the way home:

$15 for the pair! Dope! So in love. Finally finding furniture I really like causes me to feel better about waiting - ie not buying the table I only kind of liked the other day.

Then....we went kayaking!

We ended up going to East Rosebud where we paddled around the lake, took a nap on the beach, and then gobbled down some chicken strips. The weather was glorious; we couldn't have picked a better day for it!

I have more pictures of us actually kayaking.....but they are on my camera....which is somewhere in my bedroom.....hopefully not on the floor?

Sunday we went to Symphony in the Park. It was blazing hot.

Ooooo! And then, this morning, I FINALLY finished picking up all of our stinking backyard rocks! And I did it all by myself!!

Prepare yourself for dirt pictures:

I'll probably have to give it another once over with the rake, but it is pretty much ready to be leveled and covered with sod. I'm really, really excited :)

And I discovered our first tomato this morning too!

The Admiral Perturbed

Comforter II

I took the comforter I got from Target back to the store. And then I found one of the exact same style at T.J. Maxx for half the price. So I got it. I'm feeling better about it now.

Looks exactly the same. Kind of boring.

What I didn't buy is much less boring.

I found this credenza and dining set at the used furniture store. I really like the style, and the price is right, but both the table and credenza have awful plastic-y veneer tops. If they were wood veneer, I'd snatch them up in a heartbeat, but I just don't.....knoooww....... I'm going to have to think about it more. Do I spend money on these pieces that aren't the best quality and plan on buying something better later? Or do I save that money so I can get something of quality sooner? What say you?

Over the Weekend: Big ol' Bike Ride

Eric had his gigantic, huge, 200 mile bike ride this weekend. It was intense.

He and Lewis left at five in the morning and didn't finish until they were in Buffalo, 15 hours later. 16 hours? I don't know. It was a loooong time.

I rode in the sag wagon with Lewis' wife, Karen; we provided the men folk with water and lots of cheering.


Here's my hardcore hubby in Buffalo.

After the guys finished, Lewis tried to get up......and immediately cramped up. Haha. I wish I'd taken a video, but I was laughing too hard. He basically just stood there, hunched over, clinging to a little scrap of a tree, yelling Eric's name for five minutes. Haha. I shouldn't laugh.

But we all were :) Look at Eric....

After we finished laughing, we headed up to the Vowell's cabin.

It's a pretty gorgeous place.

 We had lots of fun. Karen is apparently a pro at etch-a-sketch:

We climbed the aptly named, "Heart Attack Hill."

And the next day, we went to the Buffalo pool. This thing was sweet. It's gigantic, and clean, and, best of all, free! So nice.

Kind of an exhausting trip (obviously more so for Eric than me), but we had a lot of fun!

The Admiral Conquers

If you've been to our house, you know we have two gigantic trees in the middle of our backyard. I went outside this morning to find Mister Fur Face up the taller of the two.

So nerve-wracking. He was up there FOREVER, and when he finally did try to come down, he freaked out and sat on the lowest branch, meowing for another FOREVER.

Then he started looking like he wanted to jump onto me.

 But he finally flipped around and backed himself down the tree.

I'm pretty glad. I was a little worried that I was going to have to call the fire brigade. More importantly, I was concerned that I'd be late for work.

Though I must not have been too worried, what with all the picture taking :)

The Admiral Contemplates the Best Way

Bike Ride

My husband may be nuts. He and a buddy are riding their bikes from Billings to his buddy's cabin in Buffalo, Wyoming. Yeah. That's 200 miles for you.

Look at how far you have to zoom out to see the whole route.

Look at this.

These guys are nuts. Darling crazy husband.

Flooring Choices

We couldn't find any affordable flooring that we liked in Billings, so we ordered some samples form Lumber Liquidators.

Samples are as follows: walnut, curupay, cherry. We ordered an acacia, but they didn't have the sample in stock. Frustrating since that's the one I was most interested in.

I'm pretty indifferent to all of these, but Eric really likes the cherry (last one), so that's probably what we'll go with. I'm sure it'll look great once it's finished.