One of our newer endeavors, The City Pool has been a long time coming. It’s really Andrew’s baby, but I’ve been helping him out. If you are into sports, Ohio, and t-shirts please check out our new store.
-c.
After I made the first Q video, I decided that I’m going to try to make a video every three months. Here’s number two in the series. Enjoy!
*Update: Forgot to mention, the song is “The People Who Raised Me” by Gregory and the Hawk
–c.
Being one of the two graphic designers in the family (my brother, Tom, is also a designer. Check out his work here. It’s really great.), my computer skills are called upon pretty regularly to design invites for all types of occasions. My Mom’s 66th birthday is this month and I’ve been asked to do the invitation for her party. Over the years, I’ve found that designing invitations for my family can be a fun way to play around and do all the crazy things I normally can’t do when it comes to client work. It’s also a good way to learn new things in InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop, but still have a purpose and a finished product in the end.
This year was my Dad’s 70th birthday and we threw a big surprise party. My sister had a cake made at one of those places that has one of those fancy frosting printers and I got to design the graphic for the top of the cake. Most of the time those printouts don’t turn out well because it’s usually just a bad quality photo or just completely botched. But there is actually so much potential for it to turn out really cool!
This is what we had printed on my Dad’s cake:
And it turned out pretty neat! (Unfortunately, we I don’t have a photo of the actual cake. If I can find one, I’ll post it.)
Just one note, if you are planning on having something printed on a cake. Try not to use a graphic that has big areas of black, or all your guests will be walking around with discolored teeth! I tried to keep the black to a minimum on this one, but or course it’s difficult to not have any black if you are going to have any type of photo.
-c.
I am proud to say that we have some crazy talented friends. Our great friends Toby and Angela came to visit from NYC a couple months ago and one day we sat around and made Onesies for Q. I’m pretty sure he has already outgrown them by now (he could probably squeeze into one with a paper diaper but not his bulky cloth ones), but these will definitely be going into the memory box! We used plain white Gerber Onesies and TeeJuice fabric pens.
Drawing by Toby Goodshank
Drawing by Angela Carlucci (the same lovely lady who made our wedding papercut!)
Thanks yous twos!
-c.
P.S. Andrew, my brother and I all made a Onesie, but I haven’t gotten good pictures of those yet. Will post one day…
This year we took a different approach with the bean trellis. Last year, we did this for our peas and lima beans. It worked well enough, but it was hard to get the stakes in the ground and the strings were a pain in the ass. So this year we decided to go with something more simple for our green beans and made teepees out of tree branches. It was hard to get a pictures where they didn’t just blend in with the surroundings, but I think you can get a good idea from this picture:
Andrew simply found some thin branches and cut them all roughly to the same height (about 6 feet) and we pushed them into the ground and tied them together at the top. The beans took to them wonderfully.
Unfortunately, last weekend storms wreaked havoc on our garden. We’ve had a lot of rain this season and up until this past weekend the garden has been holding up pretty well. But last Friday and Saturday proved to be too much to handle. Two days in a row of powerful winds toppled corn, bean trellis’, and tomato plants! I don’t think anything was seriously damaged, but it was a sad sight to see.
-c.
[Image via The Cloud Appreciation Society]
A few years back I was living in a loft space in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. The building had a really neat rooftop with an incredible view. I went through this phase where I would get up super early and run up to the roof and take pictures of the sunrise. I got some amazing photos and got to see some great cloud formation. So I was thrilled when our friend Natalie posted a link on Facebook to The Cloud Appreciation Society! There are so many cool photos on this site and I highly recommend taking a minute to check it out.
-c.
P.S. Just an FYI, the navigation of the photo gallery is a little strange and the images a little slow to load.
One of the many things I love about summer is a cold sweet treat on a hot day! We made these popsicles from a recipe in Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food Magazine. Overall, I think they turned out okay. Both Andrew and I agreed that the flavors could be more concentrated. The fruit portion of the mixture tasted delicious before we froze it, but after it was much more watered down than I would have liked. I think next time we are going to try a fruit reduction to get as much water out as possible beforehand. Anyone else have any summer sweet treat suggestions?
-c.