Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Closet Doors


Back when I painted my craft room, I realized that my closet doors were just one big blank spot in the room. My friend thought I should just paint them – but that gave me the great idea of having somebody paint an actual mural on them.

I found myself down at the table one morning wondering what I should have put on them, when I realized I was staring out the window at my back yard full of fireweed and wild iris.

“How pretty that is.” I thought to myself.

So, I contacted my friend Audra at the Star Dust Dezignz Studio and asked if she would be willing to step out of her comfort zone and do just that for me. Her usual canvas of choice is actually glass: she paints beautiful flowers and whatnot on glassware for the table. But she does such beautiful work; I just knew she would be fine.

http://stardustdezignz.com/

It actually took her a while to warm up to the idea. But finally she agreed so I hauled my closet doors out to Palmer and handed them over.

Taking the closet doors down was no problem at all, particularly when my friend Rob did it for me. He even thought to write “top left” and “top right” on the edge of the doors so that she would know up from down and left from right. 

Getting them to fit into my tiny little Yaris was not as big a problem as I thought it would be, either. Lay the back seat face down; lay the passenger-side front seat back; then open the hatch and slide them in cross-waysVoila:  two 6-foot bi-fold closet doors really DO fit!

Not a week later and Audra called up to say they were ready to come home. She sounded really excited about it, too. I hopped in my car and headed on back to town, arriving at the studio within the hour.

Let me just say this: wow. I am so pleased with the results! She did an awesome job, as I knew she would. They are EXACTLY what I wanted! I can highly recommend her to you, if you have closet doors you’d like painted.

However, once I got them installed back in my craft room, I realized right away that something was wrong: the trim around the doors was orange and clashed horribly with my new pretty flowers.

Thankfully, that was easy enough to fix. The very next weekend found Thing and I with paintbrush in hand changing the orange trim into a beautiful dark green (matching the accent wall adjacent to the closet).

I love it!

Just For Me


I’m really getting the hang of this “just for me” stuff, and am quite enjoying myself.

Last week was my tea tasting class (see previous posting), this week will be my Talkeetna trip (posting soon to follow) and the following week will by my chocolate tasting class (again, posting to follow).

And to keep the ball rolling, I just booked myself in a pottery class! I’ve always been interested in that, just never really did anything about it. So, for this class, I will be making a bird feeder. Apparently, the instructor will have the major pieces already made: I will simply be putting it together and embellishing it. The class includes coming back for the glazing portion as well.

When all is said and done, I will have a new bird feeder to put outside my kitchen window!

I’m pretty excited about that.

Tea Tasting


Last week was my tea tasting class at Summit Spice & Teas – I had a lot of fun with it.

They had the cafĂ© set up with tables in a big U shape for the 20+ people who attended the class. Each person got two small cups, and each table had a big urn to dump leftovers into as well as a small bowl of saltine crackers to “cleanse the palate” after each tasting.

After introducing themselves, our instructors talked to us about the history of tea, how it’s grown & harvested and then how it’s processed into the teas we drink. Then they started pouring the teas to taste and talked to us about the particulars of each one.

In total, we tried eleven different black teas (one we tasted twice, a first brewing and then a second brewing):

6 from India
Darjeeling Soom TGFOP 1st
Jun Chiyabari
Ceylon Courtlodge FBOP
Ceylon Lumbini FBOP EXS
Assam Rembang
Assam Sewpur TGFOP1

3 from China
Bi Luo Chun Hong Cha
Keemun Mao Feng GFBOP
Golden Needle 1st

1 from Africa
Kenya Milima Estate

1 from Vietnam
Nam Lanh Estate FBOP

My favorites were the Assam Rembang from India and the Bi Luo Chun Hong Cha from China. We got a 15% off coupon for attending the class, so I’ll have to go back and buy them.