Stuff and Things

Paper Lantern Wedding Photobooth

Projects, Stuff and Things

If you’re going to build a photo booth, why not do it with some style?

I’m finally getting around to posting about some of the projects that we did for the wedding. Because, if I don’t do it now… it’s never going to happen.

Laurel and I knew that we wanted to have a photobooth at our wedding. We have some great pictures from early in our relationship that were taken at photobooths in Bethany, MD and  Manassas, VA. But when we picked the wedding location in Natural Bridge Va we realized that getting a photobooth all the way down ther was going to be pretty expensive. Over $1500 type of expensive. So I looked into building one of my own. I found a lot of great resources out there.  PhotoBoof being one. But they are charging $600 for their software, which is pretty awesome, but a little overkill for my needs.  If you want to use the photobooth professionally this may be the best option, but I can’t even sell door knockers and hoodies on Etsy, so I’m not getting into the photo booth business.

Read More inside and more pictures!

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Project Progress : The BAR

Beer, Projects, Stuff and Things


In the last post I posted a few pictures of the bar in progress. It’s a little farther on than in those pictures, but it still has a long way to go. Because I’m impatient and also still figuring out what I want to do with the whole setup, I decided to make a mock-up of the bar. I had this idea of using The Rasterbator to make a divided image and mount it in the IKEA frames that I still have from the bar at the Vienna house. But seeing it in action I’m not sure if it has the cool factor that I wanted, it may look different in real life… The front of the bar will be stained in 3 different shades of ‘ebony’ stain with 1x 1/2 wooden strips as dividers. I need to find a place to buy them or how to make them (without table saw swirl marks. I also need to do a test stain on some scrap wood to make sure I can get the effect that I want. Why can’t photoshop be in real life, I would get things done much quicker.

What Have I been doing?

Projects, Stuff and Things

Hey Internet,

It turns out that adding buying a new house and being a newlywed is tough to squeeze into an already tight schedule. One of the things that has been getting pushed aside is updating this blog, facebook, and most other computer related projects. This past weekend was presidents day so I was able to catch up on some projects and kind of keep my head above water on some others.

Overall the house is getting to feel more like a home, we have the living room/kitchen area pretty well set up as well and the bedroom completely set up.  Since those two rooms are pretty much the size of our entire previous house it’s pretty easy to forget the rest of the house even exists. The Office is in some kind of usable state, Kara (Laurel’s sister) is using one of the bedrooms and the other is filled with everything that doesn’t fit in the other rooms of the house.

It’s becoming a slower process to finish setting up all the other rooms. I’m hoping to have some time to get to some art projects in the coming weeks (door knockers, Rad Hoodies)

As if I needed another project… Enter, The Basement Bar.

We started building the bar in the basement, I’m hoping to have a full descriptive post sometime or at least some better pictures. It’s looking very smooth and thanks to Wade, Charlie, and Jesse much better than I would have built it myself.

I’ve also included a picture of the cabinets and workbench in the ‘laundry /Art project room’ Hopefully I’ll get to sit down there and finish some projects soon!

Schu-Recipe : Spinach and Cheese Turkey Cups

Projects, Stuff and Things

We needed dinner. We needed to use up some things in the fridge. We were hungry.

Laurel and I created these egg and cheese based turkey lined ‘cupcake’ like things. It was really easy actually. If you’re looking for a quick easy breakfast-for-dinner thing, this is the way to go. Besides the cheese they seem to be semi-healthy too.

Line a muffin tin with 3 pieces of sliced turkey, then add diced onions, shredded (mozzarella) cheese, mushrooms, spinach and more cheese. We added a dusting of garlic powder because we love it so much. Fill with liquid egg whites to keep everything together. We’re not sure about the timing but 350 degrees for about 15 minutes seems about right. Keep an eye on it to be safe. They should come out of the pan with a little coaxing from a spoon.

Then enjoy!

process pictures after the break…

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DIY Wedding Invitations

Projects, Stuff and Things


We finally finished our wedding invitations and got almost all of them in the mail yesterday. They are a perfect metaphor for who we are as a couple. I designed them with a sophisticated look but with cool distressed fonts and fun elements. The main parts are printed on tree-free banana husk paper. The envelopes are natural vellum and the outside wrapper is fine art paper with mango leaves or banana husks embedded in them.

But what is more like Laurel and me is that we were too focused on the little things about the design and missed a few major things. Like the fact that the red card stock was about a quarter inch too short and wouldn’t properly gate fold around our card. Or that the only reason we had to use the card stock in the first place was that we couldn’t find a natural card stock that was thick enough, so we rigged something up with paper from the craft store. Or that we procrastinated until the last minute and then realized that our design was a little complicated, forcing us to glue, fold, insert, label, and stamp 76 of them in two days. In hindsight I wish that I’d made them a little bigger and spent longer looking for some kind of all natural card stock for the gate fold.

Way too many pictures and a cost breakdown after the break.

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El Jardin – 2010

Projects, Stuff and Things

It’s that time of year again, garden time! We were distracted last year and had a lack luster harvest. But this year we are both interested in actually growing some vegetables that are worth talking about. So we’ve put in some work on the garden in the last few weeks. I think it could really turn out great this year. We have pumpkins, green peppers, jalapenos, carrots, beets, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, tomatoes, basil, cilantro, and two unknown things in the pot… I’m pretty sure one of them is a tree. To simplify the process I set up a sprinkler at the edge of the garden so all we have to do is go down and turn on the faucet and it automatically gets watered.  Now all we have to do is remember to do that!

more pictures after the break…

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