TILT- Kriss Kross will make you wanna.....

JUMP JUMP!

Today's TiLT is just about one thing I loved that I did this year. It was going to SkyZone with a bunch of friends and playing like we were kids again but feeling like we were 80 years old by the time we were done.

I was essentially a nice warehouse with tons of trampolines in all different configuring for maximum fun. I took these pictures at the end and in between a private party so you can see the grand scale.
There was a Foam Pit with 3 trampolines that you jump on before diving face first into memory foam blocks.

I really don't want to dwell on the bacteria that could be floating around in there so let's pretend there isn't any. It felt like what you might imagine jumping into a cloud would be from your youth before you started taking practical science.

The main jumping area is here, where the walls are also trampolines. It was slightly embarrassing to be the oldest people there jumping. They put us in a corner just for the 5 of us and kept telling the kids to stay away as if we were some big hazard waiting to happen.

This was our corner of exile.  It was probably for the best since I kept trying to do flips only to faceplant repeatedly into the trampoline. I'm surprised I didn't break my neck or come out with another back injury. There was one more section that was 6 tramoplines facing each other with padding in the middle for a dodgeball court. We were all excited when they asked us if we wanted to do that because we thought we would be playing each other. No such luck, they were looking for a team to play against a bunch of High School kids both guys and girls. We felt a bit guilty trying to throw balls at these kids faces.

Over all I'd do it again. I mean I wouldn't of bothered blogging about it unless I thought it was amazing and made me happy right? And this Blog is about positive and happy things that I want to share with whomever reads my various fashion/nerd/adventure/event posts.

So go out there and BOUNCE!
As a side note they do have aerobic bounce classes and "rebounding" is starting to become a more popular form of exercise.

All I ever wanted.........

Once upon a time in Korea when I was in High School I had the perfect wallet. My oldest brother bought it for me. I didn't know it at the time but it was a total splurge. We got it from Galleria Department Store in Apkujung Dong. Department stores in Korea are what they used to be here in the States. Only superior high class brands they basically are the equivalent of what the Original Marshall Fields or Bloomingdales. Anyways I digress, this wallet was perfect, slim dark turquoise leather with the Logo OZOC on a rectangular silver plaque only have an inch by half inch large placed off center to one side. It was a long style wallet but not accordion, it would open up all the way with a small accordion for cash, a zippered change pocket and slots of cards and ID on the opposing side. The best part was it zippered all the way around flawlessly. If you can't tell by now I loved that wallet, it was the one wallet that I think all wallets should aspire to be. I have been on the hunt for such a wallet every since it was stolen from me in the summer for '99 at night club in Myung Dong.

I thought my search was fruitless until I saw this wallet on Linea Pelle. It was by chance that I went to their site through an "Lucky Daily Break" where they were offering 50% of this wallet. I'm a sucker for sales so of course I clicked into. I was pleasantly surprised by this luscious looking leather wallet. Her name was Dylan and I knew I needed her.

About a week later she came. I was impressed with the clean packaging and the safety put into it. There was a small box much larger then the wallet filled with packing peanuts and wrapped in two layers of zebra tissue paper.

The pictures on the website did her no justice. Where I was wary in getting the green color because of what looked like white leather painted green I was happy to see that it was not the case. The leather was a fully dyed green so there were no awkward white edges around the seams. Buttery Soft with shiny gold hardware.

The inside was my identical to my precious lost OZOC wallet and best of all was the zipper all the way around!

I'm telling you guys even though I got this wallet at 50% off because of that deal, if I had seen this in person I would of dropped that money for full price. This is high quality leather, thick and buttery with the wonderful wrist strap so I can take it on the go as needed without toting my entire Purse (no really more like knitting bag) with me. I feel like I will never need to buy another wallet as long as I have her. My husband will be very happy to hear that.

Do you have any Holy Grails of accessories or clothing that you have accomplished in owning? or have anything you are still on the quest for?  I'd love to hear about it!

TiLT - More Random

 1. Succulents. These are my baby plants. I have been nurturing inside and now they had to come out into the elements for lack of a good place in the house with the kitchen upheaval. Succulents are some of my favorite plants because of their various shapes and their uncanny ability of regrowth.

2. Cat bed Roll. I saw this tutorial off of Pinterest which led me to the original link here. The kitties LOVE it. Also nice and convenient since it will pack away very easily when we have guests over. Since it is all fabric I can easily wash it by throwing it into the machine. This was one of the few sewing projects I felt I had to get done before the house was a wreck and I no longer had access to my studio.

3. Bribery from the Hubby. I love that my hubby knows me well enough to bribe me to do simple things such as walk through a street festival without getting distracted by jewelry vendors. He heads it all off by buying me pretties. Usually it's stuffed toys but I'm not going to complain at all. The  Artist is Ashka Dymel and her website is here.

 4. Lakehouse Weekends. With the start of summer also comes trips up to the Lakehouse. Relaxing weekends of just hanging out in a clean house with very little TV or internet. Just sweet nature and the local sights and attractions

5. Organic mass. Some new work I am doing that is yet again small scale and portable. Much like how I need my life to be right now in the chaos for lack of space and sanity. I plan to do a series of at least 5 in red and pink then we'll see where I take it from there.

Columbus Arts Festival

This big festival happens once a year but this is the firs time in a very long time that is has come back to it home on the river front. The hubby and I rode our bike's as it is a very well attended event and we didn't want to deal with the parking lots in the area. On the way there we spied some amazing temporary artwork pillared on the posts of bridge.

Laser cut plywood that reminded me of the grand Cathedrals that we saw while in our honeymoon in Europe.

As we rode our bikes up I could see all the vendors tents lining the bridges

It was a gorgeous day with some overcast and the people were out in full throng!

This was some local art I spied in the "BIG LOCAL TENT" that was set up with groups such as:

Mother Artists at Work

OAL- Ohio Art League

Columbus Crafty Cotillion

Cloud Haus

Cap City Creatives

Etsy Team Columbus

CAW

Idea Foundry

(I'm sorry if I missed anyone)

I'm really Interested in this women's artwork so I had to take some photos to remember it and remember to look her up when I have some more disposable funds. 

Mary Ann Crago

Of course there is the food, which I really hate to put on my blog but the little potatoes above were just too pretty in their colors to not get snapshot. The lobster roll below with it's green cucumbers and bright red lobster flesh complimented each other so well. Both of these were from one of my favorite dining restaurants in town Deep Wood.

No street fair is complete without a crazy musician and Cheese sticks.

I look forward to this summer's Comfest and the Columbus Food Truck and Cart Fest!

Summer approaching

With Summer pretty much on the doorstep I keep thinking about how great my last summer ended with getting married and our amazing whirlwind honey moon to London, Paris and Rome.
As I daydream of the fantastic time I had I am avoiding the reality of things that will be this summer, the kitchen renovation.

Everyone looks nice and dandy right? Wrong....... when we did the Tear out the cabinets were from 1948 shipped from California and made proudly in the USA by Union workers. The oven is failing, 2 of the three stove top burners are no longer working and there is no dishwasher. The counters and cabinets are also too narrow to fit in with modern appliances. I loathe the vinyl flooring so that will be replaced with the same Bamboo throughout the rest of our first floor.  We are also getting a wall demolished to open the area up, moving the window by the oven to the opposite side and installing a half bath.

In other news the beginning of summer also means the start of summer classes for me to teach.
Over at ye' olde stomping grounds of CCAD for teaching I'll be doing Pattern Drafting and Sewing Construction per usual, then my favorite Summer program College Preview teaching another summer of heart wrenching fashion elective! Sadly my Draping and Fabric Manipulation class did not have a large enough enrollment to happen this summer. I love teaching draping, it is just more my style and such a fun loose class to get creative in.

I also will have a few classes over at one of my favorite local stores Wholly Craft. I'll be teaching beginning crochet and also an Amigurami class for a little Jelly fish doll.

I'm trying to work on some new pieces of art and just jewelry in general that I'd like to sell on Etsy. It's very annoying to be out of my element and without a proper work space. I'm making do as much as I can with just the small handicrafts that I can transport around with me. It is seriously stressing me out not to be able to sew and work in fabric freely when ever I want. Today is just Monday so hopefully the rest of the week turns around. Tomorrow is my first day to teach with the summer class so that'll be exciting to meet some new people and find out why they want to learn basic pattern drafting.

Cheers!

Procrastinator

I am dying right now trying to come up with an artist statement and artist bio for this show I applying for. The deadline is of course TOMORROW. I heard about it over the weekend and put that e.mail aside from my friend because I just wanted to enjoy my weekend. Why do I always seem to apply for things last minute?

What I did instead of taking care of this was packing our kitchen away and go to a multitude of cookouts. I also wound an entire box of yarn skeins that I had gotten in last week in between filling up this amazing pool we got at target for $79.99 that came with a filtration unit.

The pool was totally worth it, ten feet by thirty inches high of pure cold relaxation.

But seriously back to the art stuff.

I have probably revised my artist statement about 6 times and still have nothing. I just feel like such a snob when I write them or as my friend Jay refers to himself #artjerk . As you can see I am procrastinating even as I type this blog because it is yet another thing I can do to avoid putting labels and explaining my inner dialogue that I don't even understand that represents myself as an artist.

I also need ten images to submit. I'm not doing very well.......

Let's go over some basics about my work. I work in fiber and fabric. I enjoy clothing the human body. I also enjoy depicting parts of the human body and inner workings through embellishments on fabric. I like to emulate patterns in nature when I make my garments. I feel like fabric and fiber mimic the building blocks of the human body just as they are the building blocks for my projects. I view my work as soft sculpture with the body as a canvas rather then fashion clothing.

Why can't my artist statement be as simply stated as I did above? Oh because it's art, because people tend to not take you as seriously unless you have a bit of long winded response. They want to sit around and prod and poke you with their "why" stick. I learned how to take and defend your work during a critique very well at the Art Institute of Chicago but in terms of writing my own artist statement there wasn't a class for undergraduates.  I think my Liberal Arts classes involved class title such as "Opera", "Norse Mythology", "Failure"(yes it was a class all about failure), "Meteorology", "Korean History" and "French". The most critical writing we did was in Art history and well that isn't very creative just regurgitating facts and commentary.

Well I guess I will stop my sniveling here and troll some other artist sites that I admire, or who's work is similar to mine and see what they have to say and how they said it. I will most likely watch that Art21 episode of Ann Hamilton again as well.

TONIGHT I DINE IN HELL!

Friday Thoughts and Easy outfit - OOTD

 I love having Lavender in the backyard, it seems so nice and comes in through the kitchen windows. The flowers also last for such a long time. We are letting it overtake one of our flower beds next to the garage. Eventually I'd like to add some Sage into that bed as well. I'm also obsessed with getting a Gardenia shrub. You know, things that smell nice while we have friends over for BBQ's all summer since we will have no kitchen for about two months. I'm trying really hard to keep on the up and up and just cook everything in our freezer before we have to say goodbye to cooking inside. With this mentality of trying to be more easy breezy I've turned to long skirts and pretty hoodies for comfort with style.

Lace Hoodie - Antrhopologie

Grey Striped tank - Target

Mint pleated long skirt - Tobi

Silver Dr. Scholl's sandals - Zappos

Baby G watch

This may become a staple combination of what I'll wear to work all summer. It is comfortable, I can easily switch out one piece for after work exploits and the hoodie has pockets!  I prefer a long skirt at work because it can be cold with the AC on full blast in the cubes but then almost non-existent when I have to switch to the front desk. The option of being sleeveless when I go to lunch is a Plus and if It rains I have the hoodie.

Ignore my toenail paint, it is terrible. I will be re-doing that this weekend among other things which includes:

• packing the kitchen more
• time on the porch with water colors
• warping my borrowed loom for an overshot project
• trying my hand at Silk painting 
• start some new embroideries
• knitting & crochet per usual

My strange little thing I like to do when I declare it is summer is wear an anklet. I don't know why but even when no one can see it, this makes me feel complete in my outfit.
I got this little handcuff one from Pop Killer in LA

Do you have any secret Seasonal habits in your wardrobe?