home improvement

The trade-off of me being here in Ireland is that I work on the house, which fine by me! I am doing a range of tasks from organizing books to gardening to rearranging furniture to telling them what they should buy and even getting to paint some stuff. I really enjoy getting to add these mini mural/wall decorations around the house. These two are the only ones I have done so far, in addition to the liquor cabinet, but I need to re-photograph it. I would love to do this kind of thing in other people's homes. Maybe a future business idea?

sketch dump

idea

So I have just had the best idea. I want to go to a German Christmas Market. In elementary school I was pretty obsessed with Germany, not sure why, but I wanted to learn the language and I wanted to visit the Schoner Brunnen Fountain and turn the lucky ring. So maybe since I am much closer to Germany at the moment than I was in the US, I should take advantage and visit one of the magical festivals. And hopefully I will find odd trinkets and see a billion sparkly lights and drink mulled wine and exalt in the glories of Christmas time. Anyone have suggestions for this potential trip?

funk brothers

I just watched the documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" on the musicians behind a huge amount of their hits in Detroit. I bet pretty much any Motown hit you can think of, the Funk Brothers were responsible for instrumentals, all those catchy riffs and beats that make you wanna dance, you can thank them for. Sadly, they didn't get much recognition at the time, everyone preforming and working with Motown knew them, but the general public did not. SO if you want to learn more and listen to some great tunes and stories, you should definitely check out the documentary.

Also I had to include Dusty Springfield singing "Can I get a Witness" because it is such a fabulous version, though originally of course it was Marvin Gaye with the Funk Brothers.

Parteen-a-Lax

This beautiful estate was built circa 1904 by an architect as his personal home. It is so gorgeous, the perfect country home. But man is it cold. Stone walls and ceilings that are probably 14 feet don't exactly keep a place cozy.

blanket?

I brought a nice big piece of oatmeal colored fabric with me to Ireland, with hopes of it someday becoming a blanket of some sort. I am going to do my best to cover it in pretty embroidery while I am here. I haven't done all that much yet, embroidery sure is slow going.

These images are the work of two wildly talented ladies who inspire me. The first is a new find, Yumiko Higuchi and the second is by illustrator extraordinaire, Jillian Tamaki. You should really check them out, I'm pretty jealous of their mad skills. Maybe I should add monsters/creatures to mine?

fairy tales

Boy do I love fairy tales, and any kind of art based off them. Movies, books, photos, paintings, you name it. Two books I would recommend for those in agreement are The Book of Lost Things and Of Bees and Mist. Especially the latter. In terms of movies, it is more difficult than one would expect to find good, dark, fairy tales. Not sure why. Anyways the photos are from Miwa Yanagi, Lissy Elle, and Annie Collinge. Also, the painter Alejandra Alarcon has a tumblr with a lot of great fairy tale type images if you want some more. While writing this I've realized there really aren't any good synonyms for fairy tale. Sorry.