DIY Apron with Ikea Fabric

Finally!! The moment that I've been waiting for....Seattle Ikea gets the fabric by the yard department! For the longest time, the Seattle Ikea never had the fabric department and I was always bummed about it. I would go to Vancouver Ikea just so to get some yardage of some sort to fulfill my itch. (even though that's usually just a detour after a dim sum meal, a walk in Stanley park, a visit to the art museum, and another Taiwanese meal in Richmond.) Nonetheless, it wasn't the most accessible.

So Last week, Dylan & I went to Ikea to do some shopping for our new home and I found this fantastic FIALENA line with this adorable bold black and red heart pattern for only $7.99/yd! I had to use it for something, so I decided to make an reversable apron for Chika (my biz partner)as her birthday gift!! So this is it! My first stab at making an apron....

It's reversable...
with pockets and button hoops on each side to hang hand towels or oven mits.

It took me a good 5 hours to figure out the pattern, cut it, iron it, sew it, and iron some more...I think I'll have to modify the design so it's not so tedious to make. It made me kind of depressed to see Ikea selling their clever aprons for mere $7.99. But I suppose that's not the point...the point is that I had fun making the apron! On top of that, I think Chika did appreciate it much more knowing I put all my "hearts" into make the apron for her...Well, she better!! I'll be checking her kitchen regularly to make sure she's not cheating on me with some other aprons!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

A Bitter Sweet Farewell to L&G Apartment

Poppytalk once again has generously allow L&G to participate in submitting a post on their wonderful blog. Last week, I did a cooking with L&G post, and this week I finally was able to get my act together in taking photos around Dylan&I's apartment and and answer some fun questions for PHM Studio Spaces post!
Doing the post motivated us to do a farewell photo tribute (more photos!)to our first and probably the coolest place we lived together. Yes....we're saying goodbye to this amazing 1905 apartment in the middle of Capitol Hill, Seattle. I know it may sound crazy....and we assure you that it's for good reasons...we got a house!! It's totally a great thing...except it's just a little sad leaving the high ceilings, the old world charm, the claw foot bathtub, and the large kitchen....sigh.We can't really complain, because we're moving to Ballard, which is a wonderful area close to a bunch of new great things! It's a great Scandinavian community with a fun little Nordic Museum and Scandinavian Grocery shop . It's close to the beach, the best Sunday farmer's market, downtown Ballard with great shops and art walks, bars, and even thrift stores! We just have to keep reminding ourselves of the good positive things, even though we're moving into a not as cool of a place....soon enough we'll make it awesome!

Which reminds me one good thing...we get to pick paint colors for the walls and hang as much stuff on the walls!! I'm totally stoked!! and the kitchen....Dylan's getting excited about re-doing our kitchen plan with his Henrybuilt skillz....yes..spelled with a "z" to emphasize that it's not just any skills....as he has already made the first HB teak credenza for our living room!!There shall be lots of post about all our house renovations!!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Cooking with L&G on Poppytalk

I did a cooking post for Poppytalk today on a Greek-themed meal we made the other day using some recipes from the NY Times Magazine. My favorite is the bright pink fuschia colored beet tzatziki...and no....it's not just because of the color...it actually taste good, too! But that fuschia....it's just mesmerizing and pretty to look at...so bright...and pink....

Read the post here for the recipes and more!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Blogged on SFgirlbybay!!

I just found out that L&G got mentioned on one of my favorite blogs....SFgirlbybay! I was very close to meeting the lovely writer of SFgirlbybay, Victoria, but I missed her! She was at the SF Renegade Fair and came by Chikabird's Booth and snapped a photo for her review on the event. I was so close!
Maybe some day...some day....
Thanks for the shout out, Victoria!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

New Great Finds!

Just recently updated L&G shop with some awesome finds! There's lots of great mid-Century modern housewares such as Dansk enamel pitcher, Cathrineholm cookware, Arabia enamel bowl, Gense stainless metal plates as well as some other fun stuff! Some are stuff that I dragged back from Michigan! Check them out!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Hang it up!

So I've had people ask me where to get vintage pant hangers since the blog mentions (Poppytalk, Readymade, Apartment Therapy) of our living room display awhile ago, and now they're available on L&G shop! Enjoy!We also wrote up an instruction about how to build the wall grid. It's really simple. Depending on the material it could be around $50 or less. We used cedar 2"x2" and it cost us more like $75. and took us half an afternoon to put it together.

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Tea Towel & Mug Time

I got this set of mugs at a thrift store for L&G Shop recently, and realized that they look very similar to one of the mugs on Skinny La Minx's tea towel print!! It's the ear handled mug with lantern looking shapes. All the mugs on the towel are from her beautiful mug collection.
I'm a huge fan of her work and have the mug towel in gooseberry. I just love how Heather Moore uses all the various forms and graphics of the mugs to create such a striking overall print.On a side note, recently Heather has been experimenting with incorporating her beautiful designs on dinner plates and I can't wait 'til she starts selling them. I know people are going to go nuts over them...I know I will!! In fact, I'm already going nuts just looking at all the ones she's made...she's just too darn good!!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

L&G On a Blog Roll!

So check it! L&G got on the READYMADE blog!! ...I didn't even know they had a blog! Totally awesome! Once again, Jan from Poppytalk who's always in the know (I'm obviously not...), mentioned that readymade wrote L&G up! Woo Hoo! I really gotta say, if it wasn't for Jan and her great blog I wouldn't even be here blogging about being blogged! Big blog hug to Jan! \(^-^)/
Best of all, readymade used the grid and the hangers as an "idea worthy"example for the next MacGyver Challenge: Clothes Hangers , the challenge is due on July 21! Sounds totally fun....I should come up with something for that! Hangers do just take up space and they're usually not that appealing....especially the plastic ones. eck! But they do coming handy when you want to get spiderwebs off the ceiling corners.....or something....hmmm. Something tells me that readymade won't really like that idea....I suppose I should go back to the drawing board. (FYI, I don't really have a drawing board...that would be silly!)

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Our livingroom on Apartment Therapy Blog!!

So it has been a super exciting week for L&G, because not only did Jan from the Poppytalk Blog write a nice entry about our living room display, but Apartment Therapy (Chicago) also used it as an example for a display idea! I was floored when Jan passed that information to me! Thanks Jan!

There's been several comments and inquiries about the couch and here's a little info about it! The couch is a Knoll couch with a parallel bar base that Dylan scored on Craig's List (for a mere $125...they didn't know what they had!). It was originally a couch in the Seattle Public Library and was covered in hideous brown naugahide.....eew, I know. We had to get it reupholstered and chose a Knoll fabric called Alignment in blood orange. We were able to get for cheap on Ebay for only $9.00/yd. I love Ebay.....and Craig's list.
Those curious about the display grid: The grid is easy to construct with standard 2 x 2's from a local lumber store (they're actually 1.5" x 1.5"). We chose cedar because we liked the color and consistency. So here are the steps...pretty simple, but the main thing is that there aren't any visible fasteners.

• Lay out the grid's verticals according to wall stud locations maintaining asymmetric spacing. The horizontal elements are arranged according to the desired height of shelves and prints.
• Set the grid up on the floor and screw it together from the back.
• To attach to the wall, we cut 4 short blocks of 2x2 down to about 1 1/2". Screwed each of these to the wall at a stud from the end to align with the grid.
• Use L-brackets to attach the grid to the blocks...because of the height of these, the brackets are hidden from view.
• Shallow shelves (up to 8" deep) can be cut to the width of each bay and screwed down from the top with nice looking screws (screwing down is much stronger than upwards from the bottom).
• Decorate & Enjoy!

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

The Wonder of Pant Hangers

I came across Poppytalk's blog entry about using pant hangers to hang prints and how it was in the summer issue of O at Home Magazine! I thought it was kinda funny since I started using pant hangers years ago just as a budget solution to hang my collection of prints. Little did I know that even Oprah thinks it's a good idea!! I feel so special...I mean, it's OOOH-PRAH we're talking about!
The way they photographed the hangers with charming old photographs was definitely more sophisticated looking than my jumbled arrangement. I love pant hangers myself and think that they are elegant, well-designed utilitarian objects. I have a whole collection of vintage hangers in all different sizes, materials and forms.
But I was super psyched to also see that Jan from Poppytalk blog wrote a nice entry about my display!! So awesome!! Thanks Jan!!
Dylan and I built this grid on a project day because our landlord is strict about what we do to the old 1905 lathe&plaster walls in our apartment. So we came up with this simple grid for us to change things up easily.

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Needle Felting Fun!

So I did a needle felting project finally! Lauren's needle felted bowls inspired me to use the felting supplies I had for a couple of years but never really touched till now!
But I made a pillow out of lambs wool blanket and loose wool fiber of various colors in which I used a felting needle to make the face....pretty simple process for the most part, just shape the wool and poke the needle through the surfaces up and down and the fibers weave in and out of the main piece. The challenging part was coming up with the face.As you can see up close the level of detail and craftsmanship that is required for something as complicated as the sleepy face is very difficult to achieve. It requires meticulous planning, advance color theory knowledge, multiple calculated measurements, and countless facial studies of people of every race. One may see this and think its a master piece and work of art....but I say...no, this is just something I do and have a passion for. But mostly it's because I "felt" like making it.......pause....silence.......waiting for laughter.....I FELT like it? get it? you know...since I needle "FELTed" it?
yeah...there's the laugh that I've been waiting for. Let's all LOL....in which under Dylan's definition=Laugh On Line....which I have to agree it makes sense.

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Finally!! Glazed pieces!

Finally! here they are, all glazed and done! As you can see we didn't take too many risks in terms of experimenting with glazes. So we played it safe and went with white, black, yellow, and some oranges. All the white pieces are my miniature form studies. I threw them all on a hump of clay and each are about 2.5"-3" tall. It was great way to practice making various forms in a short amount of time. This was the extent of my experimentation using underglaze. Black bubbles.
This is the yellow and white combo by Dylan. My first piece in use....and you guessed it! It's a planter! If it's not a vase or a bowl, it's going to be a planter. The color and shape reminds me of an orange...with a crazy stem.
This is one of the letter stamp piece with a clear glaze. I made some coasters some with letters and some with numbers. All the pieces can be seen here on Flickr.
After taking the ceramics class, it made me really want to have my own ceramics studio and just make things all day. It's so gratifying to see and feel the finished piece in your hand. Hopefully I can make this happen before I retire!
-Jean

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Table of white

Here are all the piece Dylan and I did over the 10 week wheel throwing course at Greenlake Community center. These are unglazed, so we still have to go through the agony of waiting for the final results of all the pieces in their fully glazed state. We started looking through all the shelves and kept finding pieces that we didn't even remember making!!
I was surprised how many things we actually made! I think part of it was because many pieces were only 2-3 inches tall (I like making little things), and I made sure that we used ALL of our clay....none wasted!
I struggled in the glazing phase since there were so many pieces to glaze. I kept finding myself having internal debates in my head about whether to keep it simple but boring by using white or be experimental but risk having bad results with other glazes. It's really tough not knowing for sure how they'll turn out!!
We'll be picking them up this coming Thursday, and I'm actually really nervous about seeing them.........Oh god! are they going to look like crap!? It's killing me!
But we won't find out until Thursday! I just gotta keep my fingers crossed....tightly.
-Jean

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

DIY Bundles of Joy

Last weekend I went to Eugene OR to visit my best friend, Kellie. I had her take me to a few antique stores and I found a few of these fabulous fabric yarn balls. They were all made with various cotton printed fabric, which had so much charm. Seeing them in the store inspired me to hit some thrift stores the following day to pick up some random fabric....and then next thing we know, Kellie and I were sitting on the couch ripping fabric like we never done before. There was something so therapeutic about ripping fabric...I can just sit and listen to music and make bunch of these....and not have to think about anything else. It was great!
The few in the bowls are a mix of ones I purchased from the antique store and ones I actually made myself.
These are the ones I made. I really love how it all looks when there's a BUNCH of them....so colorful and shabby chic! Plus it was effortless and fun! I'm thinking to make A LOT of them ....enough to make a room full of those balls....like the ones that kids play in. Wouldn't that be fun?
They sure are little bundles of joy!!
-Jean

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Story time part two-Good and Easy Cook Book

This is part two of our story time. Today I'm going to show you this great 'Betty Crocker's Good and Easy' Cook Book filled with fun printed illustrations that I found at a Goodwill. Not only does the book include good n' easy recipes...and not so appetizing looking food, they also provide useful tips for other food related activities.

Here, they provide tips on how to pack a 4 star lunch box for the man, the young lady, and the school child. You just gotta make sure not to get them confused, because you don't want the man end up carrying the fabric wrapped lunch that could make him look too attractive while he eats his lunch.

Here on this page, the book provide tips on how to make coffee in various ways, such as using a percolator, dripolator, vacuum maker, steeped in a pot, frozen coffee, and instant coffee. I love the drawing style in the two color printing format.

I haven't tried the cake mix magic recipes...nor anything else. I think I would have to read through them to replace ingredients such as lard for something better. I'm tempted to have a party where everything I make is from this book and see how people react to it. But it might backfire and no one will ever come to my party in the future...Hmm.

-Jean

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Few things from our ceramic class

Dylan and I started taking a ceramic class beginning of January as a Christmas gift for ourselves. I haven't worked with clay since high school, and didn't get much out of it since my teacher failed to teach us anything, so I stuck with hand building vs. wheel throwing. Dylan took a wheel throwing class for a quarter at UW while his teacher would show up to class drunk or hungover....so enough said.

But we started taking a wheel throwing class at the Green Lake community center (only $140 for 10 weeks!), and it's been a blast! Most of the time it's been frustrating, but once we warmed up and starts to make things that we actually have in mind....then it's great! But Here are some few things we made.....most of them are all not centered. It's totally wabisabi....uh, yeah! Totally intentional....yes. I made the elephant and the lettuce bowl.
Dylan made the cute cup with a flattened top, and the yellow interior pot.
some matcha bowls I made. Can't wait to whip out my Chasen bamboo whisk to make some matcha tea! -Jean

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

L&G on Poppytalk!

Jan from Poppytalk blog posted a couple of things from L&G on Feb 28th!! How exciting! Thanks Jan!
I'm starting to sell on PHM (Poppy Handmade Market) store starting March 11th. There's tons of great things, which got me totally tempted. But I pulled myself back from buying things.....for now.

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Our Color Coded Collection

 

What happens to the stuff we get for the store that's so awesome that we don't want to part with it? That's right, it stays right here to get packed into the few unoccupied corners of the apartment. Jean got a little overzealous this morning and started arranging things from our personal collection into color-coded still-lifes. It's a damn good thing she did 'cause look at these gorgeous shots. Taking the starring role is our recently acquired set of Kathrine Holm enamel pots and an enamel Finel bowl by Kaj Franck (the b&w one with mushroom motif). Yummo!

Pictures speak louder than words, so check out this small selection of pics from the shoot then head on over to our flickr site for more

-Dylan

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

L&G on DESIGN SPONGE!!!

WOW! I just found out that L&G was featured on design sponge!! I'm a HUUUUGE fan of D*S Blog and so this is a great honor to be featured on there along with all those other amazing stuff. I was practically jumping off the wall when I saw my store featured on there, especially when I only started L&G a week before the posting! This is super encouraging!

The posting was on Jan. 24 titled 'Vintage Kitchen'! and then a posting on Jan 31st Titled 'Before and After Mid Century Hutch,' in the top left corner there's the same Taylor Smith & Taylor casserole dish I sold on L&G! I was wondering how the number of people who hearts my store went from less than 20 to 160!!! I think it was all because D*S.....well...I know it is!
Thanks Design* Sponge! I heart you!! -3- Muah! (that's a face doing a kissy face)

Oh! They also have the same mustard color Mikasa sugar bowl in my store, too in the upper right corner! I like their teal Mikasa salt and pepper set (lower shelf) as well. Such sweet colors...
-Jean

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious

Happy 2008! and yay for our store one Etsy!

Happy new year everyone! I have a feeling that this year is gonna be great. I foresee great changes that will take place this year. Things like me waking up and going to work on time, eat more veggies and fruit (organic ones, of course) instead of my usual rice and fried eggs, bread and butter, or potatoes and cheese....dont' get me wrong, they're still very satisfying on occasion! But I do need to follow the "less carbs and more fiber/nutrition rule."....that's what she says.

But REALLY the biggest change of all is my launching of my new Etsy store 'Ladies & Gentlemen.' This is my store where I sell vintage goods that I find all over the place starting in Seattle, WA. (hopefully will expand to multiple states or even countries!) I always have this compulsive behavior where I see something at a garage sale or thrift store that I must get, but always end up talk myself out of it because in the end....I don't really NEED another owl figure besides the 10 that already have, or another set of creamer and sugar set. But it's just that when I spot something unique I feel like I need to just get it, and give it someone who'll like it as much as I do!! There's nothing wrong with me! Right?
So starting Ladies and Gentlemen store has been the most therapeutic thing which cured my need to obtain great awesome finds and all guilt free!!! Thanks Etsy! Your the best! :)
-Jean&Dylan

Ladies and Gentlemen Home: For the love of all things vintage, clever, designed, and/or delicious