button, penny, and figurine collections

  

A couple years ago my sister gave me her pin collection- maybe a hundred buttons from the 80s and early 90s. They were displayed on the same horrible cornflower blue quilting material that hung over her bed when we were kids. I took them off the "tapestry" and found the very best ones to give back to her- on blue velveteen in a frame:

This picture was so dark and hard to see without lightening and desaturating it.

You can see, the small collection of buttons that I gave back to her are all top notch, but the frame itself is literally falling apart. I think the idea was good, but the execution and materials just weren't there.

I still had the remaining 80 buttons in a box and decided to make myself a "triptych" of collections:

Three collections on 16" x 20" RIBBA frames, with foam under velvet. The frames are 15$ each, but we already had one in the apartment.  I didn't want to make the same mistakes I did with my sisters gift and end up with something I didn't like, which is how I justified the cost.

The hardest part will be actually hanging them on the wall evenly.

I'm pretty happy with the buttons- even though I, and now you, know they are second tier from the original collection.  

The pennies are glued to the velvet- they seem pretty secure but I bet I could peel them off if I wanted to. I had some difficulty polishing them- more on that another day.

I stopped having so much fun towards the end of sewing the ceramic animals to the fabric- I didn't get as many as I wanted on there before I hit the old wall of boredom.

Cookie Party Cookie Party Cookie Party

Been making these cookies based on Smitten Kitchen's recipe, but with dried cranberries, super dark chocolate chips cut off of a chocolate bar, and molasses. I've made them three times, and even without being too precise with measurements, they've turned out GREAT !

Here are some from the first batch I made a month or so ago:

 I also making cookies or some other treat, and cleaning up so well from it that when Francis wakes up, they are just there- no evidence of mixing bowls or spilled flour. It's kind of weird- if it's a sweet treat I have to clean up right away- but if we make pork chops and broccoli those pots and pans will be "soaking" for days!

Meanwhile, we just got 8 boxes of samoas, do-si-dos, and tagalongs  in the mail from my dad's side (his step grand daughter is a scout). I have to keep reminding myself that there is no timeline on consuming them. Fran moved them from the coffee table to the kitchen, which has taken the pressure off.

Anyway, I don't have a way to end this, so see ya.

Russian Doll

mollusks have weddings

We went to Atlantic City a few weeks ago, and saw lots of things on the beach that we wanted to believe were natural wonders and one actually pretty cool specimen:

It took a few minutes of internet searching to figure out what it was...
here's a clue:

the most expensive item at the asian grocery store

Castles Burning

On Sunday I checked Facebook at 11pm and discovered that a close friend from high school had committed suicide.. The peak of our friendship had been ten years ago, at hight school in DC, but Ben visited Philly a handful of times, for coffee, beer, a movie. We had plans to hang out this past April- but a day or two before we were supposed to hang out, a friend of mine was in a fatal car accident, and I didn't see Ben.

The detail about the Emily's car accident isn't important to Ben's death, but at 11pm, on Sunday night, it was the only other experience I'd had with a peer passing away. For the hour after finding out about Ben, I was sorting through different emotions- both deaths this year were sudden and tragic, but the circumstances were so different.

I spent an hour in front of the computer putting the pieces together via Ben's Facebook page.

I'm having trouble writing what happened next, so I'm going to say this much more plainly that was the experience. It was a horrifying.

We heard screaming, the police came, there was crying, and they took away the body of our 26 year old downstairs neighbor, who also committed suicide that night.

Food Porn Victim

Like a fashion victim who wears whatever the trend is, regardless of how ridiculous it may looks, a food porn victim will combine spices and unusual ingredients with the intention of a photogenic, rather than tasty, result.

Listen, I don't like saying the word 'porn' either! I'm a double victim here!

Egg boiled in coffee, yolk with pumpkin and spices, "finished" with cumin and sea salt 

I made some weird deviled eggs for Thanksgiving. The ones you see above were the wildest, the other varieties a little less imaginative: bacon-avocado, jalapeno-avocado, and dill lovers. Guess which ones were the best and most popular.
I'll tell you, it's... Dill Lovers. 

I learned an important lesson about creativity, and the general preference for mayonnaise, not fruits or vegetables, in deviled eggs.

Corinne's Vending Emporium

this machine would have 25 different movie 'spoilers' to collect, printed on paper with a cute illustration.
Other than the machine and the capsules, the cost would be only in paper and printing.

I've priced out gumball machines and pretty much know the ins and outs and all the options, and its actually a pretty reasonable and realistic purchase if I had a product and location in place.  I have ideas as to how I could incorporate a free-spin (no coin mechanism) machine into a Philly Penny Press package, but I'd also be interested in having a vending machine in public.

Thoughts on  a public machine:

The product has to be unusual, but also something someone would actually want to buy. It also has to cost under a quarter to produce, and the production run has to start between a hundred and two hundred pieces.

Clockwise from top left: 1) as beautiful as paper cranes are, their demand is low because everyone makes them. 2) mending notions could be cheap if they are only a few pins and a mini spool (think like a hotel mending kit divided into 4 smaller kits) but cheaper supplies wouldn't have that rustic look the people want. 3) Artisanal edibles would go rancid in the capsules. 4) Cheap figures are not of the best quality, though this and 5) are the most feasible of the batch.

Even with a great idea (I think the spoiler machine is pretty good) not having a location is the biggest road block. I'd need a friend with a store or cafe, and the machine needs to work with the stores theme but not compete with the merchandise. There is not so much incentive to host a machine when profit margins are so small that profit share isn't possible.

On display

color scheming

The Squished Penny Museum in DC had only 250 pennies of its collection of 6,000 on display at any one time, because you cannot appreciate any more than that in one sitting. I imagine that number is significantly less for pictures of pennies.

Miniaturia

(the largest miniature show on the east coast)

After accidentally missing the Miniature convention last year and feeling like bull shit about it, I'm thrilled to tell you that Shelly and I made it this year. The deck was sure stacked against us but we live to blog about it! 

Shelly got this one picture of the Wright Guide Minis.
Wright Guide Minis had the largest display of cool tiny accessories, definitely a resource I'd use if I was a serious miniaturist.

Totally married!

As I begin writing this, it is November 12th, 2012, and Francis and I have been married for 41 days.  In the first week after we eloped, almost every friend or co-worker who I saw asked me if it 'felt different', the way people joke on birthdays. In this instance, I didn't know whether to say yes or no: 'yes' would require an explanation, and 'no' was flippant and false.

Gumball Machine Vignette

Francis and I have been interested in creating an HO scale train set up for a few years. We've accrued a lot of material for our first display (buildings kits, figures, landscaping), though I don't think it even fits into our '3 year plan'. We don't have the space or money- and it's the kind of thing where if you can't do it right, why do it at all. We want the buildings to be realistically weathered, and the terrain to vary. This kind of thing takes a long time to plan, as the materials are expensive and unforgiving. 

While we take the next few years debating on what season our town will be forever fixed, we'll occupy ourselves with apartment appropriate projects like this one:

80 pennies

Slumlens Hipstapak

When I first moved to fishtown, this was an operating fish market.

When I first move to fishtown, this was an operating Goodwill.