bill's in town!

bill and isabelle are in town visiting from georgia (it's warm there!!) so thanks to the wonders of facebook a bunch of people got together at snappy dragon for dinner.  i miss bill. it was super good to see him!

did you know that there is parking behind snappy dragon.  i had no idea. alistair let me in on the secret.

hadley took the ferry over and showed up for din din!!  HEY DUDE!!

there's bill to the right of hadley.

she brought her dogs, oscar and hazel.  she's only had hazel a couple of weeks and she is a CUTE GIRL!!

as usual i managed to take no pics of people but made sure to take shots of the food:

snappy dragon is awesome.  the handmade noodles are the shit.  just go eat there.

grace turned 21 for the 10th time!!

it was grace's birthday!!  

from the care package from hadley last month, i had 4 partially finished aprons.  grace likes to bake a lot, so i finished two of the aprons for her:

i really liked the sparkly yellow/gold rick rack on here:

some of us met up at o'hana's before we went to karaoke for the rest of the evening.

grace got a blue hawaii:

i think i took this right before vena spilled water all over herself (that was awesome...i laughed so hard i had to use my inhaler.  vena was NOT as amused...):

then we went up to the rock box in crapitol hill where grace had booked a room:

this place was pretty great.  you book a room for you and all your friends to karaoke in.  the sound system was great and it was way funner than being stuck in some bar listening to some crappy strangers singing:

they had a drink for hello kitty!!:

i really wish that i liked coconut...i totally would have gotten the creamy martini...and it was no surprise to me that vena ordered the school girl :)

vena got a new camera and took lots of shots:

it was a super fun nite and easily the most fun i've had sitting through karaoke:

look!  vena was waiting on us too!  awww...thanks vena!!

juan and joseph came:

the smoke got in the way of the shot:

juan and grace sang some madonna and started a freaking dance party:

and david cho channeled some morrissey:

this was great fun!  me and vena's birthdays are a day apart, we're thinking about having a joint bday party here in september.  what do you think?  discuss...

OH MY GAH!!!

look what was waiting for me when i got home today!!!

they're from grace!!  it's my pay it foward 2011 from her.  i had an earlier post about what i made for her...and this is hers for me!!

an adorable piece of sushi and a bag of chips!  out of felt!  handmade!!

it's so cute, it's painful...

and this fits in your hand!  adorable!

poops...this is aweseome!  YOU KICK ASS!  thanks so much, i will heart them forever!!

warm!!!

WOO-HOO!  this last weekend was the nicest weather we've had in 9 months.  at least that's what the weather said on the news and i believe it!  what nice weather!  it was 75 on saturday and 72 on sunday.  fan-fricking-tastic!

the weather was already nice on friday when i got home from work, so i decided it was time to set up the barbie and do some grillin'.  i pulled it out and set it up outside the kichen door in the backyard:

it smells great out there right now because the wisteria is blooming full force.  everything is blooming almost 2 months behind schedule...we moved in here march 15 of last year and the wisteria was already blooming when we moved in and this didn't start blooming until a couple of weeks ago.  it's made up for being late...the blooms are big and stinky!

we're not big meat eaters, so i got some veggies and veggie dogs to grill:

i made a teriyaki like sauce for the skewers and threw them on.

i'm quite serious about my chopping:

din din was good and we all stuffed our faces.

saturday morning woke up bright and SUNNY so i had my coffee on the porch and stuck my nose in my book:

i loooove summer mornings.

these cute little dukers were on the side of the house, they are TINY!!  they all bunched together and they were maybe the size of a dime all huddled together.

i got lots of yard work done.  i don't know why i tackle these huge weeding projects in my yard without getting a "before" picture.  you just really can't understand the amounts of weeding i did by the "after" shot. but before i started on this side of the house, you couldn't see the sidewalk at all.  it's like it didn't exist.  stupid ivy.

and the flowers are starting to bloom and are getting big in the front of the house...ahhh...poppies.  so happy and colorful.

and my tacky yard art!

i heart quail.  they are so cute!

well, it was a great weekend and i'm really tired from doing nothing but yardwork.  did i get any of the many other things i needed to do?  no....but, the weeds are somewhat under control.  next weekend = dig up spreading blackberry bushes in backyard.  will i take a before pic?  i hope so.  

now the weather can get HOT!  come on HOT!  let's crank it up another 15-20 degrees!  YEAH!

cheese sticker coffee table...

a couple of weeks ago i went back to idaho for my step-sisters graduation from college.  i took some pics, but not too many.  i'll probably stick them up on their own post tomorrow.  anyway...my mom had found this cute, kind of crappy looking little coffee table.  and since i really like to cover wooden furniture with cheese stickers it came home with me be covered.

here it is before i did anything to it:

usually, i just use cheese stickers to cover the whole thing, but my mom sent home a bunch of bird and flower magazines with me so i got the bright idea to decoupage birds and butterflies on there also.  here's the ones i decided on.  

i figure one for wrapping around the base of each leg and 2 for the top of the coffee table.  i want to do this double fan design i thought of and that will give the corners an even better focus point.  and i thought that the birds would also kind of blend in with the cheese stickers my mom wanted, kind of like how birds blend in with trees and bushes at the same time they stand out in them.

i even managed not to slice my twinkies up using an x-acto knife:

i did the legs first just to get them out of the way.  here they are, drying from the ceiling after i put the first coat of modge podge on them:

i really like how they came out.  the birds and butterflies wrap around the bottoms, so you have to go all around them to see the whole thing.

then here are the stickers my mom wanted for the top of the table:

she really only told me about the oval ones.  i chose the green to make a nice checkerboard pattern for the bottom.  i have the oval ones on my kitchen table that i covered years ago.  you can kind of see the pattern in earlier posts with ravioli :)

but then i also chose a different sticker for the diagonal line down the middle and the edging around the coffee table.

here's my drawing of my guide lines for sticking the stickers on:

looks like a spiderweb.  apart from these lines, everything else is just stuck on by eyeballing it.

then almost halfway done putting the top stickers on:

now here is the bottom:

i like to do checkerboards on the bottom of tables and chairs.  it's easy and always looks nice.  even though you don't look at the bottom of tables and chairs, i can't leave them undone.  i'll know that it's totally finished.

and the final product!!!:

now i just have to put a million coats of clear finish on it.  that should take a couple of weeks.  i always coat it first with the modge podge and then with a clear lacquer of some kind.  this time i'm using a water based polyfinish.  the only problem is that it isn't very thick, so you gotta put like 30 coats on.  no shit.  takes forever.

but i really like how the birds came out with the stickers.  i hope my mom likes it...i think she will!!