Picture of the Day: Autumn Color Reflection

Northern Michigan, United States
10.11.2008 

Historic Buildings of Downtown Woodstock, Ontario

I've been in Woodstock, Ontario for the past two days for work.  It was just my luck to get my comfy new couch on Sunday and then have to wake up on Monday at 4:30 in the morning to drive to Ontario and have no time to enjoy it. Ah, well, so goes life...

While in Canada I snuck in a few of my rituals there, particularly grabbing coffee and doughnuts at Tim Horton's and eating a Coffee Crisp. We have Tim Horton's in Michigan but somehow it is necessary for me to go at least once whenever I am in Canada. As for Coffee Crisp, it is a Canadian candy bar with crisp wafers and coffee cream covered in milk chocolate. If you are visiting Canada I recommend trying one if you have never had one before. Very tasty!

When I was in Woodstock for work back in July the only touristy thing I was able to see was the Springbank Snow Countess Monument. I was quite busy on this trip as well but I did manage to sneak in an hour after work one day to check out downtown Woodstock which is full of historic buildings dating back a hundred years or more. Some of downtown looks like it has seen better days, but there are many lovely buildings and I really enjoyed wandering around looking at the architecture.

Built in 1895, the building below was erected as Woodstock Market. In more recent times it was renovated into a theater and has been home to the Woodstock Little Theatre since 1997.

The lovely building is home to the Church of the Epiphany. It was originally constructed as New St. Paul's Church in 1879. The red brick is beautiful but in my opinion the star of the show is the slate roof with the intricate pattern. I also liked that they had decorated the doorways with corn stalks for fall.

The old post office was built in 1901. It is now the "new" City Hall since the city government moved there in 1968 after it outgrew its old home.

This building was empty but it appears to have once been a lovely church.

In addition to the government buildings and churches the many of the store fronts along Dundas Street were also beautiful to see.

I particularly liked this row of buildings with the vibrant, warm colors of the brick contrasting with the blue sky.

Unfortunately my time was short and I didn't have a chance to go in the Woodstock Museum, once the old Town Hall. I also wasn't able to visit Old St. Paul's Church or the Oxford County Courthouse which are other notable buildings in Woodstock. It leaves me a little something to look forward to if I am back in the area again...

Picture of the Day: View From the North Rim

Grand Canyon
Arizona, United States
9.02.2007

Picture of the Day: Cristo Redentor

Christ the Redeemer Statue
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
6.01.2007

The Saga of Super Couch

I bought my first new couch (as in not free from someone or from a garage sale) when I was in grad school twelve years ago back in 2000. It was a Karlanda loveseat from Ikea that I found in the As-Is section for only $200 since it had previously been a floor model.

I was pretty excited about my awesome deal and managed to haul it home by tying it to the top of my Dodge Stratus with a bunch of the Ikea twine. Doing this is not advised (I think only a 23 year old is capable of thinking that it was a good plan) and I am really not sure how I got home in one piece and didn't hurt anyone.

My little blue couch happily lived in two different apartments in Northern California with me. I tried to find a picture of it, but the best I could find was the one to the left as all the others had people sitting on it.

Fast forwarding five years to 2005, I bought my second couch soon after moving to Ann Arbor. My living room was a little lonely with just the loveseat and my futon was in another room so a second couch was in order. A friend from work mentioned that a local store, Newton's Furniture, was going out of business and had a huge sale going on. They did indeed have some awesome deals and I ended getting a lovely tailored cream colored sofa for $999 which was half off the original price.

I loved the new sofa, but the royal blue loveseat looked a little strange next to it. Ikea sold beige slipcovers for the loveseat but even on eBay they were running about $200 which seemed ludicrous to spend since that is how much I bought the whole thing for. I did see that the light blue slipcovers on eBay were not hot sellers and was able to get one for $30. I bought a few packages of Rit fabric dye remover and washed the light blue slipcover with it. It definitely removed the color, but it had a bit of a blue tinge still so I washed it again with a single package of light tan Rit fabric dye which made it the perfect shade of beige to match my new sofa. Below is a picture of the sofas in my old house soon after I bought the second one and DIYed the color of the slipcover on the loveseat.

Now my couches are 12 and 7 years old and while I have loved them, they are definitely showing their age. They also have some practical problems. Neither one is very deep, especially the big sofa, so while they are awesome for me (I'm 5'-2") for most other people they are not very comfortable. I decided to save up some cash and buy myself a comfy sectional for my living room.

I wanted something like the Pottery Barn Comfort Square Sectional which is deep and comfy, but still has a clean look to it. Unfortunately, with the configuration I wanted it would have cost over $4000. That wasn't going to happen, so I hit up some other furniture stores in town.

At Art Van I found an amazingly deep sectional (5" deeper than the Pottery Barn Comfort Square!) that was super comfortable (in the picture below). It was Fontaine Sectional in the Cindy Crawford Home collection and while I loved the shape and style, I was not crazy about the brown color that had an olive greenish tinge to it. I asked the salesman what other colors it came in and he told me that it only came in the one color. I was disappointed and looked around the rest of the showroom, but couldn't find anything else that I liked as much.

I couldn't stop thinking about the Fontaine sectional, which I had dubbed "Super Couch" due to the fact that it was so ridiculously deep. I did a little online searching and I discovered that the exact same sectional came in beige under the name Brighton Park. Even better, the website I found it on had the sectional on sale for under $2000. I thought about it for a while (outside of vehicles and homes it is the largest purchase I've made) and then decided to order it. Super Couch was going to be mine!

After waiting a few weeks, Super Couch was scheduled to arrive this Wednesday and I was excited. Saturday afternoon after the Michigan game (Go Blue!) I got a call from the delivery service letting me know that they were running ahead of schedule and would deliver the sectional on Sunday morning. I was thrilled to get it early, but had to kick it into overdrive to clear out the space for it. Frank came over early on Sunday morning to help me move my old couches. I snapped the picture below right as we were about to move them (after I had already moved the little side table that went between them). I was a little sorry to see them go...

We got everything moved just in the nick of time and at 11 o'clock the delivery truck pulled up in front of my house and started unloading the sectional. As an aside, doesn't my little street look pretty with all of the fall leaves? Also note that as a wiser 35 year old I had the sectional delivered instead of trying some crazy things with a small car and twine (see above couch #1).

In half an hour the delivery men had my sectional all set up and were on their way to another delivery. I was a little surprised by the color. It's more of an oatmeal color than beige, but I like it and think the slightly darker color will probably hide stains a little better than my old beige couches did.

Super Couch is so comfortable that I don't know how I am going to get work done anymore. It is really hard to tell from the pictures how huge it is, but it is massive. For some perspective, if I sit with my back against the cushions my feet just barely stick off the edge of the seat cushions. I know I am short, but that is crazy deep!

I think Super Couch looks great in my living room although now I have all sorts of things I want to do to spruce up the area. The oatmeal color clashed with my grey rug so I need to find a different rug to go in the room. Also my old coffee table is long and narrow which looks strange in the space so I need to find a replacement for that, too. I'd also like to change the wall color, paint the trim white and a few other little things.

One thing about Super Couch that is not super is that it came with a bunch (eleven!) of ugly throw pillows. The striped ones don't look too bad from afar but when you get close they are actually purple, magenta and lime green. I simply have no words for the red, purple and grey brush stroke pillows. Frank said that they looked like they belonged to a pimp from the nineties which is not exactly the look I am going for. Luckily, the covers are removable so I plan to save the pillow forms and make some new covers. It will give me a good excuse to break out my sewing machine.

So there's my long winded saga of Super Couch and its illustrious predecessors. Have you bought any furniture recently? Have you ever used fabric dyes on a slip cover? What is your favorite furniture purchase? Have you ever been the beneficiary of unwanted ugly throw pillows?

Picture of the Day: Yellow Leaves Along Torch Lake

Torch Lake, Michigan
10.11.2008 

Michigan Tailgate Cake: Hail To The Victors

This week Michigan played Illinois for homecoming and the tailgate theme was Brazilian Steakhouse. I wasn't really sure how to translate that theme into a tailgate cake so I decided to make a cake with the first line of the chorus of the Michigan fight song across the front.

I started by baking a chocolate cake in two oval pans and then whipped up a double batch of buttercream icing, tinting it blue. Once the cake had completely cooled I leveled the layers by cutting off the crowns. I stacked the layers with some icing in between and then added a thin crumb coat of the blue icing over the whole cake.

After the crumb coat had dried I iced the cake with the blue icing and smoothed it over the cake. With the base of blue icing on the cake it was time for the fun part, decorating. I used marzipan that I tinted yellow to make the word "HAIL" and put that across the front of the cake. I also made a large block M and used skewers to make it stand on top of the cake. I added a little cocoa powder and copper tint to some more marzipan and made a little football to prop up in front of the block M.  

As a final step I made another single batch of buttercream icing, tinting half of it yellow and leaving the rest white. I put both colors in piping bags and piped a star border around the base of the cake in yellow. I used the white to add "to the victors" and add some laces on the football. 

Although the tailgate was a lot of fun, it was cold and toward game time it started raining. At the tailgate we were under tents, but we were completely exposed to the elements in the stadium. Being soaking wet and cold made watching the game a bit miserable but drinking a bunch of hot chocolate definitely helped.

Luckily the Wolverines dominated Illinois and when the score was 31-0 in favor of Michigan we decided that victory was ensured and it was okay to leave, watching the rest of the game back at the tailgate with the satellite TV under the tents. In the end Michigan won 45-0 for a decisive win. Bring on Sparty!

Do you root for any college teams? How did you spend your weekend?

Picture of the Day: Forbidden City

11.2008
Beijing, China 

Picture of the Day: Autumn Aspen in Front of Devil's Tower

Devil's Tower National Monument, Wyoming
9.28.2005 

A Little Splurge

Wednesday I came home from work in the evening to find a package I had ordered on my front porch. After coveting a wide aperture lens and an external flash for a long time I finally bit the bullet and had decided to buy a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens and a Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash.

This past month I had a pretty rough schedule at working a ton of overtime to meet deadlines for my job. I was exhausted mentally and physically and I needed a little pick me up. Normally I am not one for retail therapy but in this case I decided to do it for a few reasons.

First, this was not an impulse purchase but instead something I had been thinking about for a while. Second, it fit into the budget I have set aside and save up for myself to buy fun things. Third, although the reality is that it is better to take photos in natural light I really don't have a chance to work on projects much outside of evening hours. I wanted to be able to take better pictures when I am working on things at night and I am hopeful this will help me do it. Fourth, after pulling a seventy hour work week a girl just needs something to look forward to and I felt a little splurge could be justified.

Now that I have the lens and flash I couldn't be more thrilled with them. I have been having fun taking pictures around the house and my neighborhood just to try them out. Next week I plan to post some pictures and results using my new set-up.

I can't resist sharing one photo now (this is just with the new lens, no flash) so here is a picture of a purple kale in my front yard. I have a lot to learn about using this new equipment, but I think it is going to be fun.

Have you splurged on anything recently? Have you ever rewarded yourself after a stressful patch at work?