Life

Amazing photos, amazing coworkers

It pays to know a professional photographer.

I’ve talked about my coworker and friend Tony Richards before on the blog. He’s our department’s kick ass photographer.

It’s not often that I am the subject of Tony’s photo shoot. If I’m involved at all, I play the role of photographer’s assistant (i.e. the person Tony gets to boss around). Recently, I had the pleasure of participating in a shoot as the subject! The result was too fun not to share.

Enter the most BAD ASS picture you’ll ever see of me (or possibly another human being) in your life:

JessBadassBAM!

OK, how cool is that!?! My whole team — we’re the creative department — recently just did a quirky photo shoot so we could have fun photos for our website. Of course, my prop was a hammer 🙂 That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

And if my badass picture wasn’t cool enough, I had to share these photos, too.

JessAndChrisBattleShot

Chris (the guy I’m knocking out) and I were helping Tony set up for a boxing-themed shoot. I often step in as the “model” to help Tony get his lighting just right. Since we were both around, we put on the gloves and put on a pretty good show.

JoyceVsVictor-28Mar14-5 (1)

I won 🙂

Like I said, it pays to have an awesome photographer as your work buddy. Mad props (I know no one says that anymore) to Tony and his awesome photography skills. You are crazy not to peek at his website: http://tonyrichardsphoto.com/

Speaking of work, the magazine that Tony and I work on together came out earlier in the week 🙂 We took the lead on this issue, which was a crazy, stressful and awesome experience all at the same time. I am so happy that it is out and looking pretty!

SmithBizPic

Happy Friday! Enjoy your weekends. I plan to finally get outside and work on a few furniture projects. Woohoo!

Craft Projects

Frame mania

Sorry I disappeared off the face of the earth this past week. The medicine I was taking for my poison ivy was worse than the poison ivy itself. I stopped taking it two days early, but it took about three days to get out of my system completely. I felt so icky that all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and do nothing. I didn’t even feel like watching TV or browsing the Internet. Weird.

The hubby was starting to get a bit concerned: “Are you sure you’re OK? You’re not gluing or crafting anything….”

A week later and I feel just lovely again, now that the stuff is out of my system… and my poison ivy is gone! Woo! It’s also pretty much all dead in our yard, so that’s just lovely too.

On to the crafting (and gluing… because apparently that’s what I do. I glue…)!

I’m happy with the progress we’ve made in our house since we moved in in March, but I still feel like it looks like a house anyone could live in. So I’m trying to pick out pictures to decorate our home. I had more than 100 photos ready to print online, but Snapfish failed the upload and my hour or so of time was completely wasted. Such is life.

I’ve taken a break from sorting through our photos to redo some of our picture frames. I’ve got this great idea for a gallery-style wall in our master bedroom that will include pictures, mirrors, a shelf and maybe something else. Here’s what I’m thinking…

The gray frames are mirrors, the empty frames would likely stay empty to show the wall color through and act as architectural elements. The frames with pictures would be, you guessed it, pictures! And the center frame would be an empty frame with some sort of wood letter in the middle that reads “you & me,” sorta like this:

Right now, all of the frames I have are boring black, super ugly or just won’t go with my grand idea. So I decided I’d do a simple makeover of some of my picture frames to give them a more cohesive look. I want to use silver and white because those colors will pop of our blueish-gray walls.

Enter my new favorite paint: Martha Stewart Metallic Silver. I can’t get enough of this stuff. I used it to paint an ugly, thick wooden frame, a cheapy wood frame from a thrift store, a bright blue frame, and two resin frames (I picked these up at a yard sale for $1!).

Here’s the resin frame. This bad boy is heavy… and gold… and green. Yuck.

For one of these frames, I did a light dusting of silver paint using a sponge brush. By only applying a light coat of paint, a lot of the dark tones still have a presence. For the other frame, I used a sponge brush to get into all of the nooks and crannies of the frame. Same frame. Same paint. Two different looks.

For my other frames, I used the same brush and applied several coats of paint. Several. I started painting two of these frames before I got poison ivy and have probably done three coats on each.

They don’t take long, but to get each side you have to wait for others to dry. You also have to make sure any angle of the frame that might be seen is painted. For example, if you know you are hanging your frame on a wall, you don’t necessarily need to paint the back; however, if you plan on propping your picture frames up on a shelf, the back of the frame will likely be visible from some angle so you should take the time to paint that, too.

Look at all of my pretty frames drying! I’ll be doing one last coat of paint tonight, then on to my gallery wall! {so excited}

Also, I’m hoping to get a countertop for my craft room this weekend. No more painting on the floor or on top of my washer and dryer! Woo!

Home Improvement

Pictures, pictures, pictures!

Pictures… finally! My new camera came from Target today AND I found our Leica. Sweet night for me and my cameras and photos. Wooo!

Now for a photo display of awesomeness.

1. Look at our flowers!

They are crocuses and they our in our yard and they are beautiful. I can’t wait for spring so we can see how pretty our home looks!

2. Our Mocha-colored guest room

It’s all done! Saweet. Four rooms down, a bunch more to go. I love the brown. It’s really beautiful. And it’s not blue (although I would have been OK with more blue)!

Yes, that is a Dug the dog doll in the middle of the guest room.

3. WE HAVE A FRIDGE!

4. AND A MICROWAVE!

5. We have lights and fans!

We now have a light in our linen closet. It might not sound exciting, but it’s very exciting for us.

And our electrician installed bathroom fans. OK, not the best photos. My B.

6. We also have a dryer (I’d throw in an exclamation point, except I loath laundry).

Man, we got a lot of new stuff this past weekend.

7. Best of all, we have drywall

Yesterday, Glen worked incredibly hard and spackled and taped all of the drywall the boys hung on Monday. Check it out!!!!! Notice the fireplace — you can’t even tell where the missing bricks were!

It looks fantastic. I’m getting really excited to see the final product. Oh! And look at the lighting! I forgot I hadn’t posted pictures yet. The recessed lighting is wonderful. It makes a huge difference. We had it installed in the kitchen and craft room, too!