family + adventures + the emerald city
{sorry for anyone that got two emails about the first peru blog post last wednesday & friday. i was having trouble with the formatting & the post uploaded, but then was taken back down.}
{part i.}
{ollantaytambo, peru}
{inka rail – machu picchu, peru}
{the ruins – machu picchu, peru}
more photos to come!
M
{turns out sadie likes to cruise the kitchen counters while we are gone & chew on the plastic lid to our pyrex dish. #mydogisaninja}
{the perfect saturday night.}
{spent saturday afternoon at lowe’s getting paint for our projects this week. we also got christmas lights. so stoked for this week!}
{sadie is still enjoying the huge bone she got for her birthday.}
{watching the stanford cardinal beat the oregon ducks was glorious! #gostanford}
{enjoying the christmas décor at starbucks as i waited for my gingerbread latte. #isitchristmasyet}
{we had a photoshoot at the house on sunday to film an interview for our realtor about the house. those cameras were pretty legit.}
{aaron started prepping for the big paint job on our bedroom this week by taking off our closet doors. it proved to be a bit of a challenge, but success! #whydidtheypaintthedoorhinges}
our weekend was busy, busy with lots of errands to run. we prepped for our big painting weekend this coming week & are looking forward to some time together to work on the house. how was your weekend?
M
i thought it would be fun to commemorate the one month mark from returning home from peru to post our trip pictures. {i apologize to those of you who have been waiting. good news, wait is over!} i have to warn you that there are a lot of pictures & i will be breaking up the trip into a couple of posts. enjoy!
{larco herrera museum – lima, peru}
{cusco, peru}
{chincheros – sacred valley, peru}
{aranwa hotel – sacred valley, peru}
more photos to come!
M
{image via anthro}
i am sure you have seen these spice jars either in-store at anthro or pinned all over pinterest. i have had them pinned on my to-do list pinterest board for months since the $12 a piece price tag was a little steep for moi.
this was a fairly easy project, though it took me a long time to complete. you could probably finish it in a weekend.
supplies:
{first i spray painted the jars with chalkboard paint. in hindsight i should have taped off the neck of the jars (for the entire process) and added one or two more coats of chalkboard paint. you could just paint or spray chalkboard paint on the area where you want the label, as opposed to the entire jar. i found that the chalkboard paint worked really well as a primer. i also primed the lids with bonding primer that i used here.}
{once the lids were dry, i painted them with acrylic paint that i picked up at michael’s. i found that if i painted around the lid first, holding the top & bottom {as seen in the second photo} & then gently set the lid down on the newspaper to paint the top, the process was much less messy {i.e., not as much paint on your fingers.} it took about four or five coats of the red & blue paint to get to the opaque-ness i wanted.}
{to make the chalkboard “label,” i made a design that i liked and cut it out of computer paper. then i traced it onto painters tape & cut it out.}
{i attached the tape labels to the jars & made sure the tape was really stuck on there. then i taped the jar necks – again, i would recommend taping the jar necks before painting on the chalkboard paint. then i painted the jars white. i used a sample of cloud cover by benjamin moore that i had from our kitchen cabinet update. i didn’t paint the bottoms of the jar since there was a useable chalkboard surface there, for expiration dates or other notes. i painted about three or four coats of white paint.}
{after the jars were dry, i took off the tape from the neck and the label. at this point, i decided my jars needed some touch-up, so i painted the rest of the necks white & i used a very small craft brush to clean up the edges of the label.}
{the final touch was to “season” the chalkboard label by rubbing chalk all over it & then wiping it off. then, fill up the jars with your favorite spices & add names!}
how do you store your spices?
M
{late friday afternoon pick-me-up. hello weekend!}
{lazy dinner on friday after a long work week. a perk of living in the city – zeek’s pizza is right around the corner!}
{sadie was already missing us as we left to run some saturday morning errands.}
{we bought a nest this weekend – sorry, terrible lighting! – as our little old house is already very cold.}
{sunday morning just isn’t sunday morning without french press coffee.}
{finally hung the beautiful wooden utensils we picked up on our trip to peru.}
sorry for the lack of pictures this weekend. we had a lazy, but also productive weekend – does that even make sense? – as the work week was long with aaron working all week at a conference for work. we have lots of house projects lined up for the coming weeks & i am already envisioning our house in christmas lights! {i know, one holiday at a time. i waited until the day after the election to start listening to christmas music, & will wait until thanksgiving is over to deck the halls in christmas décor.}
how was your weekend?
M
i have had a twitter handle for a while now – mostly because i wanted to make sure i could get the one i wanted, even though misha was taken, boo! – but i hadn’t tweeted anything for months.
when i was in indiana a few weeks ago, my cousin kendra convinced me that i should be tweeting. even if it is just a link to a blog post.
so, i have tweeted a handful of times. two to be exact.
i don’t know if how much i will be tweeting in the future, but if you are interested in following me, my handle is: mishacslower {same as instagram}.
do you tweet? if you do, leave your handle in the comments, i would love to follow you!
M
{on my friday evening commute it was pouring rain. yes, my kate spade loafers were full of water. boo.}
{sadie patiently waiting for us to go on a saturday morning walk.}
{there were lots of hanging leaves on our walk.}
{it is definitely fall in the emerald city.}
{saturday brunch at café campagne at the market with ben, sarah, aaron’s aunt susan & her new husband duane}
{we visited the ballard locks.}
{the lake washington canal, since 1915.}
{me, aunt susan, & sarah watching the locks move the boats.}
{we took our out-of-town guests on the theo’s chocolate factory tour in fremont. highly recommended!}
{highlight of the chocolate tour: you get to wear hairnets. yes, i am donning two hair nets as one was not sufficient to cover my top knot.}
{a blurry but beautiful shot of the emerald city from the famous kerry park. no, the space needle is not in the middle of downtown, it just looks like it from this viewpoint.}
{dinner during a movie at iPic in redmond with my grandmother. we saw flight which was pretty darn good. sad but good.}
{my grandmother in her adorable stripey jacket & christmas lights at redmond town center!}
we had an action-packed weekend with lots of family & friends. fall is definitely in the air as the leaves are turning beautiful colors & falling all over. luckily it appears our leaf raking will be minimal this fall! we are enjoying the new season thus far (especially the extra hour of sleep this morning!) but would be happy to see the rain go away. how was your weekend?
M
our front porch is decorated with pumpkins & our candy bins are overflowing in preparation for the neighborhood kids to trick-or-treat at the lower house tomorrow! there is also a neighborhood parade where the kids get to show off their costumes – so excited!
we hope you have a spooky (& safe) halloween!
M
{we have been cooking from pinterest a lot recently.}
{attempting to catch up on my back-log of vogues.}
{yep, it is officially hot water bottle season in seattle.}
{we saved the seeds from two pumpkins to roast this weekend!}
{sadie waiting patiently for aaron to get a latte.}
{ordering my sandwich at which wich in the u district.}
{really joann’s? christmas stuff? it isn’t even halloween yet!}
{spray painting with my go-to chalkboard paint.}
{we debuted our halloween costume at ben & sarah’s annual ghouls near greenlake party.}
{me & mary alice at the party – aviators were borrowed.}
{we met up with ben & sarah for sunday morning breakfast at wholefoods. apparently my husband erik ordered my latte this morning.}
{sadie was a cuddlebug on sunday morning.}
{thanks amanda for hosting crafternoon – it was so great to see you, george, & madeleine!}
we had a fun fall weekend, but as always, it went way too fast! how was your weekend?
M
while we were in paris in the spring of 2011, we started taking pictures of the beautiful french doors that were all over the city. i didn’t know what we would do with them at the time (& didn’t for over a year after the trip), but i wanted to do some kind of art piece for the house.
i thought at first i might just print a few, frame them, & hang them in a grouping, but then i thought that it would be cool to print them to look like polaroids. my original idea was to print the photos, cut them into squares, & mount them onto white cardstock – a faux polaroid.
i didn’t work or even think about this project for months, but then this summer i stumbled onto the perfect thing: the polaroid image maker. this program is a free download & pretty fun to use. you open up the “camera,” drag a picture file into the camera, & the picture “develops” on your screen. you can only do ten pictures at a time (since real polaroid film only has ten exposures) so if you want to do more pictures, you have to close & re-open the program. also, the program can also put a filter on the image, but this is optional if you don’t want it.
{my polaroids developing on my desktop}
{a sampling of my polaroids}
once i had all of my polaroids (i made almost 50 since i couldn’t choose which doors wouldn’t make the cut) i had them printed at mpix. the reason i chose mpix over the usual snapfish or target printing is because mpix has a 4 by 5 print option, which is perfect for printing a polaroid (or is it a faux-laroid?).
i got my prints fairly quickly & was really happy with the results. obviously they didn’t look exactly like polaroids, but they were pretty darn close! i wanted to keep this project simple, so i decided just to tape the polaroids to the wall instead of trying to do any framing or anything. i found some cute “airmail stripe” washi tape* on etsy that i thought would fit in with the parisian theme without being too corny. {update: a few of the pictures have been falling off the wall, so i think adding a bit of poster tacky stuff – you know what i am talking about? – to the backs of the pictures to keep them from falling since washi tape isn’t very strong.}
{i put them up on opposing walls of our bedroom near our closet doors & changed up the pattern. apparently i should have printed one more picture…fail.}
i don’t know if we will keep this photo arrangement after we paint our room (fingers crossed this happens over thanksgiving weekend!) but for now it is a fun reminder of our trip to paris & an easy way to cover some once-bare walls.
are you nostalgic for polaroids? have you tried making your own faux-laroids?
M
*when did wasabi tape start being called washi tape?