Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The month of December was crazy! I failed to post for two weeks! Sorry!
Nate and I traveled to NYC for a few days and then to Costa Rica for a week! We had a great time and saw lots of natural and cultural highlights.

This one is called: "Ox next to an ox cart!"

We went zipling! This is Nate ziplining like superman! Ziplining was his favorite part of the week!

We learned how to make coffee and chocolate! 

Nate got to hold a Toucan! This was his main goal for most of the week! He was so happy!

We went to a Costa Rican cultural show. It was interesting. Here are the fireworks and "dancing" at the end. 

We went on several boat rides to see animals in the wild. This is a panoramic of a boat ride next to the Pacific Ocean. During this boat rides we saw 36 differenct species of birds (we had a handout!) and lots of crocodiles!

We went to a waterfall park. This is us under/next to one of the waterfalls!  

And since we now have front facing cameras, we took lots of pictures! Here are some!

I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas! Happy new year! See you in 2013!

Felt Ornaments

Last night, my brother and his housemates had a party. One of his housemates (Cesar) and I decided to get together and have craft time to make some decorations for this party. I suggested felt ornaments because I think they are so fun to make and pretty simple. Unfortunately, we did not end up making as many as we were anticipating (we each got like 10-15 pieces of felt!).

All of our supplies and Cesar cutting out circles

I picked four types of felt ornaments that I felt had good variety and still were straight-forward. I printed out instructions so we could easily reference the directions. I had fun, but Cesar felt like he was working in a sweat shop (he wanted me to mention this here). I guess these felt ornaments were a tiny bit on the tedious side and do require some sewing skills. It would have helped him to have youtube videos rather than printed out instructions. 

Since I am a nerd, I decided to rate these on three categories: difficulty, time, and wow-factor (1 to 5 with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest). 

1. Simple Ball Ornament

credit to the Purl Bee; difficulty: 3, time: 2, wow-factor: 2

This one took a minute to wrap my head around, but once I got what was happening (this is one where a video might have helped), it went quite fast. I attached a star to the bottom to add some sparkle! I had plans to make these as ovals, stars, etc. which would make them a little more interesting. 

2. Intricate Ball Ornament
credit to Zakka Life: difficulty: 2, time: 4, wow-factor: 4

I really, really liked how this turned out. Since I only bought silver embroidery thread, the stitches were in stark contrast to the felt and made it look even more interesting. This also could look pretty cool if ovals were used instead of circles. I added a silver puff ball to the string for added cuteness.

3. Ogee Ornament
credit to betz white; difficulty 1, time: 1, wow-factor: 3.5

I made this before with a tiny bit of felt. This turned out really well. Theoretically, it would look even better with stiffer felt. This is an ornament where the silver stiches detract rather than enhance, so it would have been better if I used green embroidery thread for this. Overall, from cutting to finishing, this took me maybe two and half minutes.

4. Random Funnel Ball Ornament

credit to How About Orange; difficulty: 3, time: 2, wow-factor 2.5

I wanted to make the funnels, but then I ended up folding my circles more and just made lots of creases and put them together. This took a bit of finagling to look good, but as I added more parts, it shaped up to look like a ball. I meant for the red and green to be distributed more around the ball, but they ended up bunching a bit.

In the end, we put up the four ornaments (Cesar only had a chance to finish 1/2 an ornament) on either side of the walkway between the hallway and the living room. We also go some non-Christmas color felt to make some to put up year round! So easy and fun!

Christmas Tree Up!

I have not put up a Christmas tree in my apartment ever, but Nate wanted one so we went to Target and got a fake Christmas tree and some decorations. We got one that pops up and is made of tinsel but it fits great.

I added lights and then ornaments! I like how the lights reflected off the hardwood floor. 

The ornaments were all different and the star was nice and simple! Because the tree was just a circle of tinsel wrapped around a pole, I could tie all the ornaments into the tinsel and make them stay on (forever!).

Some details of the star, lights, and ornaments. 

I also added decorative touches to a bunch of items in the room. 

Aren't these pictures so much better? What a difference flash and the iPhone5 makes! I tried to take a few panorama pictures of the full room and this one came out the best: 

I like the halo of light coming from the Christmas tree!

Nate made the meme above because of all of my panorama pictures (I tried some of the tree, too, which turned out ridiculous!!). 

Hopefully, now that our apartment is all decked out, I will make some Christmas-y crafts. I need to figure out exactly what I want to make!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Unfortunately, I have been really quiet on crafts and home improvements. It may have something to do with the fact that I've been writing over a hundred thank you cards and just trying to keep up with lab stuff. I will definitely have some projects up here before Christmas.

The one exciting thing I have to report is that both Nate and I got iPhone5s! The iPhone5 is such an improvement over the iPhone3GS (which we both had). My pictures will be much brighter and less grainy and I think that will be improvement for all. Plus, I have been FaceTiming everyone who can put up with me and having Siri write out all my text messages. Oh technology!

Also, in the home improvement front, we will be getting new windows in the next week or two, so that should be awesome! Our windows are horrendous and since our bedroom has four windows, having better windows will improve our lives tremendously! With the new windows, I am hoping to put up and/or make new curtains, so we'll see how that goes!

Hope everyone had a relaxing and wonderful Thanksgiving break! 

Happy Halloween!

I did end up redoing the skirt and making it reversible with pockets. I cut out two rectangles the same size and put them each together into a circle to make two identical skirts. The pockets went into the seam of the orange side, but sewing them into the seam was surprisingly hard to wrap my head around. Once the two skirts were sewn (with the pockets on the orange side!), I could go on to joining the two skirts together to make it reversible.

For the joining, I first did it correctly on the bottom, but then I decided to do it the same way on the top and I didn't realize that this would make it so that I couldn't turn it inside out completely (it was sort of a mobious strip). Oops! I did get these fun pictures of Nate using the skirt as a bandana. 

I took out my failed top and ironed it and redid it (very neatly) from the outside and everything worked out. I then made a place for the elastic and put it in. I realized that it would get bunched up if I didn't sew the elastic in, so I went through and sewed the elastic in once around the diameter of the skirt. Overall, I was happy with how it turned out, but it was a little bit on the large side, so I should have made it a bit smaller (maybe 1.5x my hips measurement would have been better than 2x my hips measurement). If I averaged this skirt and the skirt I made last week, it would have been perfect. Unfortunately, you can't average real objects (kind of like how you can't CTRL+Z real life). Also, when I went to the fabric store, they didn't have the glow-in-the-dark fabric, so I got a dark fabric with purple words and used what I had of the glow-in-the-dark fabric for the pockets. Yay pockets!

I wore the skirt on last Friday when we had our department halloween party with some striped black and purple tights and then again on Halloween with just some grey tights. I was debating on wearing the less bright side of the skirt seeing as I was in a visiting lab, but I decided against it because the orange side is just so much fun! These pictures were taken neither of these times, but here it is being worn by me!

Also, in the spirit of Halloween, I carved a pumpkin this week. There was an organized pumpkin carving at the university that I'm visiting. It was a lot harder to carve than I thought! The tools we had were a bit primitive so it made it hard to work with. My pumpkin is the first one in the picture below (super generic, but oh well!) and there are some better ones that others made. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful halloween!!

Failed Skirt & Corn Maze

This weekend, I had two failed adventures. First, this Saturday, we went to the Davis Corn Maze. There were a few reasons we went there rather than other mazes in the area. First off, we had discounted tickets through MIT (only a few bucks off, but still helps). Second off, it was advertised as the largest, most intense maze in New England. And, boy, did it not disappoint. I have to say as a neurotic "completer" of things, I do not enjoy not thoroughly and wholly finishing things. Let's say that somehow we missed one of each of the rubbings, riddles, and QRC codes (although we somehow found all three geocaches without actually doing the geocaching), and I was a bit annoyed.

Laura, Boris, Olga, and Nate at the beginning and on a bridge within the maze.

We did spend a quality three full hours (they had time stamps on our booklets so this is not an exaggeration!) in the maze (the first time, just exploring, and the second time using the trusty "right-hand-rule"). In the end, we had tons of fun, but I would have wanted to do it once more and attempted to find EVERYTHING in the maze. There were quick and fun activities throughout the maze (pseudo catapulting, pseudo ring throwing, pseudo ziplining, pseudo sumo wrestling, etc.) and when Olga and I went to "sumo wrestle," I ended up tripping and falling and not being able to get up. It was HILARIOUS.

In the second picture, my feet are in the air and everyone is laughing uncontrollably!

My second failed adventure of the weekend was my double sided skirt. I started off so strong! The fabric is adorable -- the stars on the black side glow in the dark!!! However, I miscalculated my seams and the width of the waist elastic so it ended up a bit too tight at the hips. Also, it was not completely reversible. I also attempted to make some pockets that did not make it into the skirt because of their lack of reversibility. Anyway, it was an utter failure. It's still wearable but I am disappointed at my lack of getting it right. If I have enough time this week, I will attempt to get a bit more fabric (it's only a few dollars) and try again, knowing what I know now. I know why I messed up the reversibility and hopefully, I will even be able to put in the pockets correctly!

I'm holding up the tights I got to wear under the skirt in the bottom left picture. The way I flipped over the other side on that picture makes the pattern go upside down! Arg!

Curtains for Boris & Laura

Last weekend, I made some curtains for Laura and Boris's apartment. Laura and I went to a fabric store (Sewfisticated) to get the fabric. Laura wanted this grey jersey fabric with a black ribbon lengthwise through the curtain. I took the measurements she gave me and put together a sketch.

As the sketch above shows, I hemmed the sides first, then the bottom, and then folded over about 4 1/2-4 3/4 inches on the top, pinned 15 inches from bottom, and sewed across so I was sewing 4 1/4 inches from the top and 14 3/4 inches from the bottom. I sewed again about 2 inches from the top (so that the top would have ruffle and so that there was a designated 2 1/2 inches for the curtain rod). Finally, I attached the ribbon by first pinning it 3 3/4 inches from the bottom and then sewing both sides 1/4 inches from each side.  

When both curtains were done, I went over to Boris and Laura's and Boris installed the curtain rods. The final product looked fine overall, but since the fabric was a bit on the heavy side, my two inches of ruffles kind of went limp. I should've done a bit less and it would have been a bit more ruffly on top. 

I am thinking of making some curtains for our bedroom because the ones we have are not sufficient and we have four windows in our bedroom so it gets cold very easily. 

I did not do any crafts or home improvement projects this weekend. On Saturday, my parents were in town for a day long layover, and today we went to deCordova Museum & Sculpture Park. Nate was unsure of it going in and left feeling "meh" about it, but I thought it was AWESOME. I highly recommend it to people who like sculptures and/or just pretty places to walk around and see art. 

While at the fabric store, I got some halloween fabric and will attempt to make a two-sided skirt next weekend! It should be awesome!

Painting On Loan

The MIT Visual Arts Center has a program where you can borrow a piece of art for the school year to hang in your own apartment/dorm/lab/whatever. Since the demand for this is pretty high, you submit a little card with your name and three works that you would like and then they put all the cards together and pull them out one-by-one (giving people one of their chosen works) until all the art is gone. Although I have put in a card every year, this year I was lucky enough to get a painting (actually, all the grad students in my lab got paintings along with many other grad students in the lab next to us -- the probability of which is staggering).

The collection is quite varied, but I got a Joan Miro. It is one of about sixteen that are untitled (in the MIT collection), and it is unsigned, but it's still petty darn awesome. I did some internet sleuthing and I think it's price is approximately two thousand. Nate is always super amazed that paintings are expensive. Every time I ask him what he thinks the price of a painting is he always comes up with something on the range of $3-$10. I don't think he realizes that a frame costs more than that, but we'll let that be. He always states that he could have done better and that there is absolutely not inherent value in a painting. (Nate edit: It's a fiat system of value.) Nate just doesn't seem to understand art.

The left is the picture from the internet, and the right is my picture of the real thing I have.

Anyway, I really wanted to put the painting above the TV, but Nate decided that would not work for him. So I put it up to the right of the window in the living room. It may not have the colors of the living room, but I think it turned out very well. It makes me so happy when I'm sitting on the couch and I look over and see it!

Something that you may have noticed in this before and after is that my bookshelf is much taller than it was in the first pictures of the apartment three years ago. When Nadia moved out, she left her bookshelf so I moved it to the living room. I acquired these black canvas boxes (seen on the second and fourth shelves) from IKEA and store nick-nacks in there to keep clutter down. 

I am working on some curtains for Laura's apartment this afternoon, so I will put up pictures of those next weekend!

Ceiling Fan

This weekend, we finally installed a ceiling fan in the extra bedroom! When my brother lived in that bedroom this summer, the light bulb in the ceiling lamp died. When we went to replace it, we realized that it was an odd double circular fluorescent bulb that was very difficult to find and cost at least $30. I didn't want to spend that much money on a light bulb so I figured it would be easier to install a nice light fixture that used cheaper and more standard bulbs. When I was looking at light fixtures, I realized that getting a ceiling fan wasn't that much more expensive and would be great to have in the bedrooms. I went to Home Depot and bought two fans along with two remote controls. I bought the smaller Hampton Bay Clarkston for the extra bedroom and the larger Hampton Bay Glendale for our bedroom. The remote controls were actually half the price of the fans but my parents have them at home in all the bedrooms and they are incredibly convenient (especially in the extra bedroom that has the light switches outside the door of the bedroom).

After my brother moved out this summer, we tried to install the fan, but the fan box was installed unevenly in the ceiling (seen in the top left picture where you can also see a black ring around where the old light fixture was on the ceiling). Therefore, we had to find a way to level the bracket (seen top right) that the fan was going to be hanging on. I achieved this by using lock washers along with regular washers and making sure everything was level after screwing it together. This took the longest time (say two months) mostly because I have been out of town quite frequently and we were waiting until we were both available on a weekend to get this done. The picture above is me being excited that the bracket was finally perfectly level!

Next, we needed to wire the receiver (I'm holding it down in the top left picture) into the mounting box and wire the mounting box into the ceiling (Nate is doing that in the top right picture). Finally, the blades were screwed into the box and then the lights were wired and installed (shown above in the bottom two pictures). The directions were very straight forward so the hardest part after the leveling of the bracket was putting together the wires of the receiver so we could stuff them between the bracket and the mounting box.

After we installed the lights, everything was done! We turned the circuit braker back on and tried it out and it worked!! The remote control is very nice (shown above left) and the lights and fan work great. The fan looks good in the room because it matches the bed, nightstand, and hardwood floors.

And it works:

We feel so accomplished that this is done and working (even though Nate won't admit it, I think even he is excited about this project)! The only thing left to do is touch up the ceiling where the old light fixture made a few marks but we can do that later. Now, we'll just have to install the fan in our own bedroom...

Hemmed Shirts

Now that I am finally caught up on current events, I am moving forward with a post about my new sewing machine...

I bought this sewing machine from IKEA. I know this sounds super sketchy, but it works AMAZINGLY and it was only $70. For the kinds of crafts I need to do, it's the perfect thing for me. My first project was hemming two shirts for my brother. He bought two cotton shirts and thought they were one inch too long so he wanted them shortened. I undid the hem and hemmed them using my new sewing machine (in a fun zigzag stitch).

It took me about fifteen minutes to learn how to use this machine but it was super straight forward and now I am ready for many new projects!

Bar Shelf

Partly inspired by this, I became completely obsessed with getting a bar cart. I originally wanted to put a cart next to the wall across form the window, but I wanted it to be small enough to not look awkward in that space. However, as I looked online for hours, I could not find anything that was within our price and size range, and most importantly, in my style (namely: modern, black with silver details). A week or two after the start of my obsession, I ended up in IKEA and I found a black shelf for $7 and I had an idea! Instead of getting a whole bar cart, I would get a bar shelf.

Once again, my lighting and the fact that these were taken at different times is making these pictures seem odd. 

I installed the shelf between the cabinet and window and made it even with the bottom of the cabinet. Along with the two nails in the wall, I drilled a nail through the bottom of the cabinet into the shelf to make sure everything was secure. 

On the shelf in these pictures there is some cognac and a bar set from IKEA. I like the black shelf with the silver touches because it matches the kitchen but is not too over the top. As the zoomed out picture shows, I have also put up a new curtain that matches the kitchen. This curtain used to be in Nadia's room (and was left in the extra bedroom when she moved out) but it matched the kitchen so well I moved it there. It is not obvious from the pictures above, but the dishwasher is new between the before and after pictures. The dishwasher broke down about a year ago, and we ordered a new one (dishwashers are surprisingly cheap!) and Nate installed it by himself. 

Another updated part of the kitchen is the wall opposite the window. We added a wine holder and a pan/pot holder (both from IKEA). As a wedding present, Christina used a picture of Nate and me and made a cutout of it in our wedding colors which is now hanging above the pot/pan holder. 

As you can see from the pictures, we also have a few more things on our fridge since we moved into the apartment! 

I didn't realize how out of focus this picture was. Oops. 

Now, we have a port and a red wine on our shelf and it's holding up just fine. I have been made fun of for this shelf A LOT but I am really enjoying it. I think it worked out perfectly and we ended up saving at least $100 on the bar cart we did not buy. 

Bathroom Facelift

My brother, Ivan, was living with Nate and me this summer and while our bathroom does have a lot of storage space, most of it goes to the massive amount of soap, laundry detergent, and cleaning supplies we buy from Costco (so much cheaper...I think; I just love Costco!). In order for us to be able to store all of our stuff comfortably, we needed to have some usable storage space outside of the sink vanity.

Lighting in the bathroom is far from optimal...

We already had this bathroom console in the bathroom but were not really using it for storage. I decided to buy some baskets for this area. I looked everywhere online for hours and at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (I think you are quickly seeing my regular patterns: searching internet for hours for the perfect thing and/or go to BBB). I was first imagining the wicker/woven baskets but quickly realized that I was not actually a fan of those and they didn't really work for the bathroom. Also, wicker baskets are surprisingly expensive ($10-20 PER basket). Finally, I stumbled on these, which were $12 for four and seemed right. Interestingly, I couldn't find the size (even after intense searching), but decided to order them anyway. They came and were PERFECT!

A brighter and more organized bathroom!

Along with the baskets, I also decided to get a new shower curtain and liner. The new bright colors are super fun. I also put up a picture (in a white IKEA frame) to the left of the mirror that completes this more vibrant almost beach-y vibe:

Yay more exciting and practical bathroom!

Accent Wall

The first major change Nate and I made to the apartment is painting an accent wall in the living room! We (and by that I mean, I) wanted a sage color to match the colors we had in our living room. We went with Sherman Williams' Leapfrog. It came out a bit brighter than I imagined but it keeps the room light and cheery!

It totally looks photoshopped here, but I swear these pictures were taken 2.5 years apart! Also, the pillows are moved! 

We painted this in one weekend. We started getting everything ready on Saturday afternoon.

We used garbage bags on the ground to keep the paint from dripping on the floor. 

Once everything was ready (~1 hour), we painted a first coat on Saturday afternoon and let it dry overnight. It took us about an hour and a half to paint the first coat which was much longer than we thought it because we were under the impression that it would take us 20 minutes. Nate did all the large sections with the roller and I did the details with a small paintbrush. On Sunday afternoon, we painted another coat which took only about 30 minutes. We ended up using a whole 872 mL can of paint for this! That seemed like a lot to me but I just looked it up and that is supposed to cover 80 square feet and our wall is actually closer to 100 square feet. Oops! 

Yeah, we used our dining room chairs to get up to the ceiling!

After letting the second coat dry for 6-7 hours, we moved the furniture back on Sunday evening. Here is the finished full result! Yay! It makes me so happy every time I walk in the room. Nate couldn't care less, but that will always be the case with any home improvement project.

Yay! So cheerful!

Apartment Tour!

Before I start going through the many home "improvements" (those quotes are there because Nate always tells me that I need to leave well enough alone and stop trying to improve things... but I don't listen and here we are!), I wanted to show what our apartment looked like before.

Floor plan: The top is the room layout and the bottom is a more detailed layout of all of the furniture. This is not perfectly to scale, but it is close. 

We have a two bedroom apartment, but I do not have any pictures of the bedrooms, so this is only the common areas, which we spend pretty much all our time in anyway (Nate may have an office in a closet right now but that is because we're trying to install some lighting in the second bedroom... long story which will be explained in a few posts!). These pictures were taken 3 years ago, but very little has changed other than the stuff I have in the following posts!

Living room

The bookshelf, coffee table, side table, and TV stand were from Target. The rug was from Overstock (I searched for that carpet for HOURS! 3 years later, and it still looks perfect!). The rest of the furniture was from CORT. The details (window decor, placemats, pillows, napkin folder, coasters) were from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. The picture on the wall is by this guy and was a gift from my parents for my college graduation. The last picture is the view from the window of our 3rd floor apartment (lots of trees!).

Kitchen

Here is the kitchen -- the classiest part of the apartment! It features all stainless steel appliances and my $100 trashcan (I got made fun of SO badly my first year of grad school for getting a $100 trash can, but 3 years later, it's still good as new and I've never had any problems!). Pretty much all of the items in the kitchen are from Bed, Bath, and Beyond (as you can see by the coupons on the fridge!). Instead of the toaster, we now have a coffee machine that is used constantly!

Bathroom 

The nicest thing about the bathroom is the built in washer/dryer! Such a lifesaver! Other than that, it is a pretty average bathroom, but with a good deal of storage space. Pretty much all the accessories are Bed, Bath, and Beyond, but I have updated some of the accessories since these pictures have been taken and will show you in upcoming posts.

That is it. I will use some of these pictures in before/afters to show some of the "improvements" we do so you may see them again!

Cute Crafts

I really like quick crafts that are cute and simple. Most of these are paper crafts I see around the internet.

The left card is from here and the sphere is from here. 

The card requires a razor blade but is super fun to do. I sent a bunch of these as Valentine's cards this year. The sphere is really fun to weave but does require a bit of glue and tweezers at the end to secure. 

Stars & stripes!

I have done a few other paper crafts around lab for decoration (you can see the fact that there is only one type of neon paper I use for all of these... :). The one on the left was just stars cut out of paper and hung in the window of my lab bay, and the one on the right is from here made for my bay mate's birthday! 

These cute felt decorations were inspired by this.

Other than paper crafts, I like other simple felt and bead crafts. Nate and I made these for Nate's relatives for Christmas. Nate helped me cut everything and I sewed the felt together. 

Beads and bears, oh my!

The bead animal patterns I make are largely from here (this site has not changed in ten years -- it has frames! The Horror! -- but is still super useful!) but I use seed beads and wire instead of pony beads and yarn. I sent these to Nate for the summer were apart, and after the first two letters with critters, the rest of the letters were carefully cut open and the critters removed. I hope they are making someone else very happy! These earrings were put together from materials from my favorite bead store!