Bronco Busting

Or, I should say, busting out the Bronco theme room.

As you may remember from my previous post, the former occupant of Aidan's room had rather feminine taste. So we undertook a good effort to make a cool, sports theme room for him.  He loves the Broncos and orange is his current favorite color.

We took down the fussy peach drapes, repainted the room in Bronco team colors, and got some cool IKEA furniture to provide a great play space and lots of toy storage.  I also refinished a thrift store dresser to match the room.  This is a room he can enjoy now with room to grow.

Before (with previous owners furniture):

  Now:

some of our favorite parts:

Team color dresser, thrift store find sanded, painted and sealed with poly for durability.  It's over-sized now, but with plenty of room to grow into.

Lego play area from slightly modified IKEA storage furniture. We cut the long shelf in the middle from MDF, sealed it with poly and have Lego mats on it (soon to be glued down).  We used 3 of the Trofast storage units to create the end pieces (2 are assembled as usual, then we used the sides from the 3rd unit mounted on the outside to create the supports for the shelf.  The shelf can be turned upside down for a smooth surface and moved up as needed)  The white storage bins contain the eighty bazillion Lego pieces he has collected to date with room for more.

My personal favorite is the "Secret Laboratory" area we created in the lower bunk bed area.  I installed an LED light strip (hard to see in pictures), which creates a ton of light underneath. Aidan picked out the fabric for the curtains, they have a flame pattern.

Closed during secret experiments:

Open for inspection and cleaning:

He is a happy little Broncos fan now :)

Home, Sweet, Home

We are getting all settled into the new home.  She is a lovely old home built in the 1950's with great bones.  The previous owner obviously took pride in ownership and cared for everything really well.  I have big plans to update and refresh this lovely old lady.  We also got a fantastic Mid-Century Modern (MCM) living and dining room set with the house and I'm pretty excited about using that as the design jumping off point for most of the rest of the house.  Very Mad Men, with a big dash of Scandinavian Modern (OK, really, mostly IKEA, but it sounds much cooler to say Scandinavian Modern).

We decided to start with Aidan's room.  Below is the before picture, pretty but not great for a little boy.

For this area I'm not really following the MCM theme, because Aidan couldn't care less about that and is much more in favor of a sports theme room. So we are doing it all up in Denver Broncos team colors (orange, blue and white). Aidan is a big fan!

Paint, paint, more painting and yet more painting is in progress.  I'm currently working on re-painting a thrift store dresser to match the theme. I'm trying something called "Chalk Paint" followed by Polycrylic in the hopes of getting a smooth finish over the slightly beat up wood, so far, so good.  I'll post more pictures when it's done.

Here is a link to learn more about Chalk Paint.
 http://blog.diynetwork.com/maderemade/how-to/make-your-own-chalk-style-paint/http://blog.diynetwork.com/maderemade/how-to/make-your-own-chalk-style-paint/

The Colorado Adventure Begins

The Colorado Adventure begins.

The Big Move from California to Colorado happened last week.  As we drove ourselves and all our worldly possession across several states and over 2 mountain ranges I was reminded of previous travelers in their covered wagons.

My personal observation is that Nevada is desolate and dry.  Utah isn't a whole lot better, but the Great Salt Lake in Utah is pretty cool. 

Wyoming is also desolate, but gorgeous, with lots of gently rolling green hills and long vistas.

 I am happy to report that Colorado is everything Craig said it would be.  The weather is a welcome respite from the intense summer heat of the California Central Valley.  The day we arrived, it was 105F at our previous CA house and a lovely 84F in our new CO place!  Every afternoon the clouds start rumbling and booming followed by rain and occasionally even HAIL, suffice it to say that this is very, very strange for a California girl.

We are pretty close to Boulder, which has a very active, outdoor lifestyle emphasis.  So far, I've been on two hikes, both of which were lovely with lots of trees and greenery as well as imposing mountain vistas.

This picture was taken on the first (very short) hike in the Chautauqua area.  These foothills to the Rockies are known as the "Flat Irons" for their resemblance to old fashioned hot clothes irons. 

Damn, the altitude and my lack of exercise curtailed a longer hike, but I will definitely be back to this area for more. 

A few days ago Craig and I went on another lovely hike, I wish I could tell you the name, but alas, no.  It was very, very pretty, easy on the ascent and dog friendly.  A little sketchy on the descent as it was much steeper and my knees were starting to feel it. 

I think everyone, including Tex and Aidan, can handle this trail, especially if we go in the reverse order (steep up, gentle down).

Friends, I hope these pictures will entice you to come for a visit soon!!

Murano

it's been a long time friends!  Some of you (well, one of you anyway) requested an update and a sharing of my recent travel adventures to the lovely island of Murano. 

Murano is a small island near Venice. A little history: in 1291 Murano became the only place in The Most Serene Republic (Venice area) authorized to manufacture glassware.  This was largely due to a well founded fear that the glassworks on Venice could result in fire and great damage, but also as a means for Venice to control their virtual monopoly on fine glassware that they traded around the world to great financial benefit.   They managed to protect their exclusive trade in, at that time, the world's finest glass by closely controlling and protecting their glassworking trade secrets for many, many years and even today there are still a few Muranese who strongly feel that sharing glass working techniques with foreigners is somewhat treasonous to their livelihood and traditions. Luckily for me, Lucio Bubacco is not one of them.

The centerpiece of the trip was a 5 day workshop with the incomparable Lucio Bubacco, a world renown glass artists (click on his name to see the gallery on his website) at Scuola Bubacco.   The trip was arranged in the States by one of his long time acquaintances, Ofilia Cinta.  It was quite an international group. We had people from Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Turkey and the US in the workshop.  Below is one of the pieces he made to demonstrate his techniques for making sculpture with "soft glass" (as opposed to "hard glass",  borosilicate which is what the majority of American glass sculptors use).  I could go on and on about the differences between the various glasses, but I won't bore you with all that now.

In addition to learning a tremendous amount with Lucio, we also had an incredibly unique opportunity to visit many other glass artists in their private studios and talk with them about their art and see them work up close.  Below is another fabulous artist, Davide Salvadore, creating the latest in his series of almost life size human/animal busts at the furnace.

He is carefully aligning all the separately prepared murrini (cut cross-sections of patterned cane) that have been wrapped around a core of molten glass.  They will spend many hours carefully reheating, then gently melting everything to a uniform finish and shaping it into the final desired form.  This process takes many hours of intense labor in very hot conditions, but the end results are worth it.

Ok, that's it for tonight, but rest assured I have lots more stuff to write about and pictures to share. 

Ciao