Take a bow

It's probably time to take down the last of the holiday decor...

Hooray for Free Table!

Last year I once mentioned that we have a Free Table in the building.

This bears repeating and praising, again. It's just a table in hallway, in the middle of the school, where people can leave and find stuff. The rules are: Anything you leave is still yours until someone claims it. If no one claims it, it needs to be disposed of another way. (Supposedly this should happen after three days, but some things stay longer, and occasionally someone has mercy and takes the whole unwanted loot to Value Village or Goodwill.)

The Free Table is BRILLIANT! I think every community and apartment building should have one. It's a great way to recycle and save money.

In our 18 months (!) at the school, what have we gotten from the Free Table?

• Furniture: A full-sized ottoman, and a little mushroom-shaped upholstered footstool
• Appliances: A working microwave
• Clothing: Rusty's full-length wool coat in immaculate condition; Dina's velvet dress and a summer jacket
• Jewelry: I'm still ecstatic about the beautiful heart-shaped amber earrings I found last week!
• A bread storage box
• A table lamp
• Candles, candle holders
• Numerous cat toys!
  

But even better than scoring at the Free Table is donating to the Free Table. There's nothing more satisfying than leaving something that then disappears within hours (or minutes). It's also so encouraging to continually sort and purge our belongings: I have much less trouble parting with stuff if I know it will make one of my neighbors happy. Seeing Meg's face light up at the collection of small figurines that I collected for my shadow box when I was little made the parting that much easier! I've left clothes, books, CDs and tapes, and jewelry, as well as things we replaced. When I finally found a butter dish that did not squish the butter like the standard size does (pet peeve, anyone?), the old one was cleaned and went to the Free Table. And was gone within a day.

Yay for recycling and saving money!

And now for the continuing saga of the bald head and its piggy dinner:
Piggy prevailed! The white head now gets to enjoy a brussel sprout instead. With fly topping.

Next up: Froggies and rubber duckies go hot-tubbing...

Art expressions...

In a building where about 13 artists work and live, you can imagine that the public spaces get "decorated" very creatively.

Most noticeable is that the hallway is painted very bright colors, usually chosen by the person inhabiting their particular section. There are stripes, solids, collages, ornaments hanging from the ceiling, and of course no shortage of trinkets and pictures on top of the lockers. Stringed lights are popular too -- not just for the holidays, but year-round.

One of my favorite new pieces of "art" is the former "shrine" by the front door, now turned into a miniature theater stage. Every day a new scene appears and transforms ever so subtly. I should have started taking pictures from day 1, but I couldn't anticipate how quickly things would get updated -- so we all missed a hilarious series of various little plastic and rubber animals having a campfire with matches and sleeping in little rolled-up felt sleeping bags. Now we've moved on to Act 2: Dinner.

At first the pig was just worshiping the bust, but today silverware and napkins have changed the plot.

Stay tuned for how the pig escapes its fate...

But on the other end of the spectrum, I still can't figure out the origin of or reason for this piece of "art" that showed up in the laundry room:


She's been there for two weeks now. Why?? Why does Linda Evans care how many loads I did today, or whose laundry is waiting all week to be picked up?

(Btw, the yellow arrow says, "Please put in dryer." That way if I'm late transferring my laundry myself, the next person can go ahead with their load. We're a helpful community -- more than once did I put in a load to wash, and found it dried and waiting for me two hours later. Thanks, neighbors!)

Happy New Year from the Principal's Office!

What a year it's been for us!
Aside from getting some snow time in Spokane over Thankgiving, here's what we were celebrating last night as 2010 clocked out:

• Rusty completing his training as a cabinetmaker/woodworker through Seattle Central Community College (you can admire his finished projects here -- they sure make the rest of our IKEA furnishings look shabby!)
• Dina starting school to become a German-English translator
• We both became first-time aunt & uncle as Dina's brother had his first son in December -- baby Kai John Trageser. (We'll meet him in person in March, when we travel to Germany for a visit.)
• We had lovely visits to Spokane, Eugene, Newport OR, Port Townsend, and Berkeley/San Francisco to visit with family and friends or just to relax
• And still, home is best. We continue to feel very lucky to live in this little community of artists, in a funky little space that feels more and more like home as we continue to tinker with it.
  

We don't have a fireplace, but appeased Saint Nick as follows:


Other tinkering accomplishments:

• We have a functioning toilet! It's small, but it works! (I'll spare you the photo...)
  
• Rusty figured out how to fit the entire sectional sofa into the narrow living room in one piece:

(Hi, mom!)

• More light for the dining area:

Note the daybed under the window -- made by the new craftsman in the house. All we need is a fitting mattress to make it functional!

Happy New Year, one and all! May it be a year full of creative accomplishment!

On the road again

There are boxes piling up in the hallway. This means one of our neighbors is about to take her art on the road.

I should have featured her much sooner: Meg Hannan, owner and artist of Fabric Jewels. She creates beautiful jewelry from rolled-up fabric. That's a simplistic description -- the process is much more involved than that. And the results are varied and stunning:

Aside from an inspiring, inspired, and very hard-working artist, Meg is also the "good spirit" of the school. That's my unofficial assessment. Her living space and studio are in the center of the main hallway, and she frequently moves between the two (each a full-sized classroom) (check out her studio here!), so she's in touch with residents from the north and south of her. (You'd laugh, since the school is not that large, but we really rarely see the people on the south end. We wave from afar, but that's mostly it.) If I don't run into Meg every other day or so, something is just missing.

Well, I'm about to miss her a bunch, as she's taking her wares on the road for art shows in Houston and San Francisco. Bye, Meg!! Bring home lots of cash and empty bins!

Lights!

At the risk of making our living room look like a skating rink... those golden pipes just beg to have strings of lights wrapped around them.

The overhead lights are much too bright and make a buzzing sound. We mostly leave them off, unless we're cleaning and need a reality check on just how much cat hair is covering the couch and rugs.

We've had the colored lights up for a while, but recently added our new light covers from Bella Luz. Bella Luz (a.k.a. Joline El Hai) had her studio in the school for years, but recently moved out. We scored some of her artwork, including these light covers, at her going-away sale.

Each one has a different image on each side -- and there are far too many to show here.

You'll have to check out her artwork on Bellaluz.com yourself!

Office organization

I recently made a big push and organized our office. You know those cubby shelves that everyone has from Ikea? Yeah, it was getting out of hand with clutter. I finally straightened it out. Even emptied out my inbox. But you know how that goes... within minutes, the inbox was full again.
But that item on top is easy. It just wants some petting, and done.

The Principal's Office

Confession: I keep wanting to blog more about our space. But very little of it is in a state that I feel comfortable taking a picture of and sharing publicly.

Oh, it's not a pigsty. It's ok. But you know, it's not *neat.* Cat toys everywhere. Laundry piles, dirty and clean. Stuff. We have stuff. Our desk is shared by a laptop and a desktop, and all the accoutrements for each -- how attractive is that?

Well, one room passes muster, without too much prep: the bedroom. That's because we recently moved the dressers and a clothing rack into our dressing room, which is now too messy to take a picture of... ha! But the bedroom (formerly the actual principal's office) is *just* a bedroom, which is great.

I painted the room "sailor's eye" blue when we moved in. The heating pipes (on the left) had been painted gold by a previous resident, which works great with the blue. Striped curtains from Ikea, with gold chains from... Home Depot? Rusty rigged up a kitty-proof screen for one of the windows, which is held in place by some intensely strong magnets.

Perhaps someday we'll have lovely bedside cubbies made by Rusty, but now it's cheapo canvas bins. At least they match. :-)

Through the window you can see evidence of our light challenge: We face east, and trees and shrubs allow for minimal daylight to come in directly. (These pictures were taking in the early evening of a sunny day, and I had to use flash.) But it also gives us a lot of privacy, which we love.

We wrapped white string lights around the gold pipes, which looks lovely at night, and the paper lamp is so much better than the school-issue overheads.

And it seems like every bedroom has to have its requisite naked girl art, so this is the new home of my Maxfield Parrish print that I've had since college.

Overall, a very calm bedroom, until the ceiling tiles fall down at night (I think this happened to Rusty once). Just another reminder that this is no ordinary living space.

Summertime!

My, but summer is reluctant this year in Seattle!

But it's here nonetheless. Suddenly we have to think about watering our little garden. Hm, and the hose is where...? Too far away. The best solution would be to attach one to the kitchen sink and hoist it through the livingroom window... or walk with a bucket back and forth and back and forth. Hm. Well, there may or may not be vegetables this year!

Catching up on other news: We've done some rearranging. Remember my agony about not having a closet? I had a clothes rack in the bedroom, as well as two dressers, which made the bedroom kind of cramped and blocked the door into the hallway. I had two racks in the "back corner room" -- remember this room?
We'd never really fully organized or designated it for anything, but since it's adjoining the music studio, we made it the office, and moved the piano in there. Of course the office is still too messy to post a real photo, but here's a snapshot taken from the desk:
Hi, Gavin! Oh, what's that you're sitting on?


A filing cabinet made by Rusty. Wow!

The previous office (formerly the conference room) is now the "dressing room." Yay! Not only a closet, but a whole room just for clothes. We moved the dressers in there too, so now our bedroom is so much more spacious and relaxed -- no clutter. Just a bed. Nice.

We've been here just over a year now! We couldn't be happier. The music studio is being put to good use with rehearsals once or twice a week, our neighbors are all terrific (and wonderful cat sitters when we're out of town), and the courtyard is so great on warm summer evenings. Happy anniversary to us!

Spring

Spring is here, so the cellophane-panels that helped insulate our rooms are down and in storage.

So it's nothing but single-pane windows between us and nature. And it still gets cold sometimes. Thank goodness for fleece and purring lap warmers....

Fetching kitty

Forgive the sideways view... This is the best video yet of evidence that Gavin loves to play fetch. Even right-side up.

Gardening

Residents at the school have the option of gardening in the grounds that are near their classroom/studio. For Rusty and me this has been on the back burner -- there are so many other projects to do, and with school and work and performing, we can barely keep up with the laundry. But one sunny weekend afternoon recently had us strolling over to the tiered garden beds behind our kitchen. We just started yanking some weeds...
... and before you know it, we'd cleared the whole bed.
I went off to a baby shower, and when I returned, behold, there was a garden!
Rusty planted strawberries, various herbs, salad greens, and I think some lavender. So fun!

In the meantime, the cats are still cute as can be. When they're not being little monsters.

Bread!

Remember that stove we paid so dearly to have put in?

Brief recap: Stove left by previous tenants very small; we trade for larger stove with door that doesn't close; we pay for electrical 220V line.

Rusty figured out the door problem: magnets! So simple! And so much easier to deal with than wedging a chair under the door handle any time we're baking.

So baking has been picking up again, and Rusty continues to turn out amazing artisan bread loaves. It's this simple recipe where he has a starter in the fridge, takes it out whenever he wants to make something, doesn't knead it, just lets it rise for an hour or so, then bake, and yummmm!

Fabulous Neighbors

I've been meaning to highlight some of the other residents in our little school, and here's a good reason to get started: Lance and Trixie, whose home and business is in the former Kindergarten area of the school, just got featured as one of the top five coolest booths at the Seattle Wedding Show. What do they do? They run a pin-up photography studio. Lance is an accomplished photographer, and Trixie is a burlesque instructor, now acting as Lance's stylist. Their home doubles as the backdrop for their photos, which are all mid-century retro style. (Very appropriate, since the school was built in the 1950s.) It's an incredible place. And the wardrobe, the wardrobe...! Trixie has an amazingly fun closet. Check out their work at Old School Pinups.

Congrats on the good publicity, neighbors!

Happy New Year!

2009 is over -- what a great year! We moved in together, into the Principal's Office of an artist community/elementary school building; Rusty got to tour with Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra, then started a cabinet building program at Seattle Central; Dina released her first Dunava CD and started working at Expedia. And then we adopted the cutest kittens on the planet! We have a lot to be happy about and thankful for. Tonight we'll celebrate with some friends, some cheese and chocolate fondue, and by watching "Dinner for One" -- one of those German traditions I'm determined to keep around.



Happy 2010, everyone!

Merry Cat-mas!

It's been a very merry and happy month of December in the Principal's office. A couple weeks ago Rusty and I adopted two kittens! They are around six months old, had been rescued from an abandoned litter and have been living in foster care, waiting for adoption. Once we met them, it was instantly decided. We chose a brother and sister from the litter of four (two brothers are still waiting for adoption), a pair of tabbies, with plenty of spunk and affection and personality.

Welcome, Gavin and Teagan! (Oh, you have no idea how long I waited for them to sit still for this picture. For each nice shot there must be twenty blurry ones of tails and paws dashing around...)


Gavin is the fluffy one; Teagan has amazing markings that make her look a little like an ocelot. They like to wrestle and chase each other, play with a wide variety of toys, crawl into every corner of our apartment, nap, and cuddle with us. (Teagan has been snuggled on my lap for most of this post.)




They are certainly keeping us entertained!

But alas, tomorrow we leave them for a few days, as we drive to Eugene to visit my family for Christmas. I'm sure we won't be able to talk about anything else but our two fuzzballs. But we know our neighbors will take good care of them.

Heat!

There is heat!

In the school! Yes! Actually, there has been heat for weeks... it's just the pump to *our* rooms that was broken, and since the parts in question date back to the 1950s, it took a while to find a replacement. But I guess it's been found. As of this afternoon, our heaters have been cranking out warmth.

Ahh.

Actually: it gets warm really fast. (I'm getting over the flu, so I don't mind a little toastiness at all!) Turning off the heat involves taking a flashlight and going through the rainy parking lot to the boiler room and fiddling with the timer contraption that seems awfully, well, manual. Dates back to the 1950s. I should really post a picture... I will, I promise.

If all goes well, the heater should kick back on at 8 p.m. I'm very curious. That's in 15 minutes. Oh boy...!

Next project: Putting up the window panels of saran wrap, to keep the heat from sneaking right out of our giant single-paned windows.

Mergers

It's cold days here at the school. Outside temperatures certainly warrant the heat to be turned on, but we are waiting for a couple replacement parts for the leaky (?) boiler. So in the meantime: space heaters. Fleece. Cuddle up.

We had another idea for warming up the place: have a housewarming party! Lots of people showed up, and for a while the place did get really warm. (It didn't hurt that we had been baking and cooking all morning long to prepare.) Unfortunately, amidst the mingling and snacking and giving hourly tours of the school, neither one of us remembered to take any photos. Just imagine a crowded room! That's how it looked.

But I do have other photos. :-) I maybe never mentioned that this is the first place that Rusty and I moved into together. (Awww!) (And yes, this is his first official land residence after spending 4+ years living on a sail boat!) So there are lots of firsts for us. Our laundry all goes in the same hamper now. Our towels are all stacked up together. But the biggest merger must have been the merging of the CDs.

Mine were in many midsized CD racks. His were mostly in boxes! But we found a big gynormous CD shelf on sale, so presto: let the sorting fun begin!

Alphabetized by group or artist/composer's last name. This is leading to some interesting neighbors (could I say "bed-fellows" here? I think not): Vaughn-Williams next to Vandenplas. Kitka next to Kiss. And what do we have a lot of? Sting! Steve Ray Vaugn. And Bulgarian Women's Choirs. I think between the two of us, we have ALL of those. But the true sign of commitment is getting rid of the duplicates. Oh boy. This is it!

The same day we got that shelf, we also finally decided to get ourselves the house-warming present we've been planning on all along. Yup, and we've been playing it. It's one way to keep the fingers warm...

(Oh, P.S.: Does anyone want a couple mid-sized CD racks? They're still out on the free table...)

Noise pollution

A recent school-wide e-mail from Rusty caused some stir and discussion:

"I wanted to ask everyone's understanding of something that has become something of an issue for Dina and me (and we haven't been sure of how to handle it) so I am making a plea. The bathrooms on the north end of the building, while being much quieter since Anne made improvements, are a source of distasteful nightly distraction. Imagine every night (and I do mean EVERY night) lying down in your nice, comfortable bed and enjoying the sounds of exuberant defecation gently rocking you to sleep, or cuddling up to the one you love to the discordant symphony #2 (the bowel movement is my favorite), or trying to enjoy a late night snack while someone enjoys a late night dump. Assuming that people are coming down to this bathroom at night for privacy (and why else would you walk all the way down to these toilets when the other ones are way closer for most people), let me assure you that we can hear you scratch your nose (and EVERY other sound that you make) reverberating into our quiet, night-time home. I would like to ask for a very gentle and completely voluntary 10pm curfew on the north bathrooms ..."

Ah, community living. We are spoiled by having those two bathrooms right outside of our front door, whereas everyone else has to walk the halls to either these or the central bathrooms. The community came up with a better option than the poo-curfew: a door! A door with soundproofing that will separate our space from the public bathrooms, thereby affording everyone more privacy. (And giving us a hallway, so we don't constantly have to lock and unlock every room we are in as we move around.)

So that's what's happening: a door is being built. Right now. It's very very cool. Love quick and efficient decision-making!

Summertime

Hi! I know... is this thing on? Is anyone still posting?

Well, Seattle survived a record heat wave last week, with temperatures creeping over 100 throughout the area. (Rusty is on the road again and was spared, but not really -- he got to visit balmy places like Nevada, Utah, Colorado and now Texas!) I discovered, happily, that the school stays relatively cool -- not air conditioned, but not sweltering like some people's houses. So I hosted my first Dunava rehearsal in our music studio (should have taken a picture!). Temps were tolerable, and in between running to the kitchen for ice water and popsicles, we sang, and it sounded pretty good!

Then I got a job, and have not been doing much "around the place." Until today. Ah, today! One of my dreams came true today...

... I got a piano! It's exactly what I've been dreaming of. A friend of mine sold it to me, so I know where it came from. And let me tell you: it's worth hiring piano movers. They know what they're doing! They're fast! They take care of your baby! They were worth every penny. (J & J Piano Movers from Seattle; they don't have a Web site, but I do recommend them!)

Putting the piano in the office (mom says it has to be by an inside wall, and well, that's the only inside wall I have right now) meant I had to move the last two sections of my red couch out of here. My five-piece sectional didn't fit in the living room, so ... what to do?

Reading nook by the window. Nice! (Do you think I should turn that corner piece the other way? It's a little odd... but hey...)