Highway 18 Roadtrip : Ringling Around

Highway 18 Roadtrip : Road to McGregor

Highway 18 Road Trip : Lady Luck

view of prairie du chien, wi
from mcgregor, ia

we stayed at this hotel on the side of a cliff, above the river boat
in a room had a full view of the Mississippi








lady luck casino
{one of diamond jo's old haunts}



crazy pathway to the riverboat casino
{note the pink elephant}

Random Apartment Shots

I've been trying to get some decent, professional looking shots of my apartment, but instead got these...

The Lightness and Weight of Space

I have been building models for a project to create a space inspired by Paul Klee and Italo Calvino. The interactive instillation will ultimately be in a large glass room at the Art Institute of Chicago, facing the garden. Playing around with preliminary models, I decided to scan some, and love the resulting images:

~ D

From Chicago With Love...

There is an incredible amount of active industry in Chicago, unlike any other major city we have been to. It is intermixed into the various neighborhoods, such that, a Trader Joes and CB2 abuts the trash heap you see below, for example.





Trying to find our way home, one drunken night when we had first moved here, we stumbled into a steel factory that was actually pouring bright hot iron ore. It was memorizing to watch, and surprisingly, no one kicked us out... in fact, one worker explained the process to us (at 3a.m.)





That same drunken night, Rebecca tried to climb a fence and explore the area depicted below, convinced doable, a good idea, and had water access... wrong!

Before and After : Our Bathroom

The bathroom was perhaps the most extreme makeover in our Chicago apartment. It was really dirty... While Dave was away at Aphasia Camp, I spent 3 days scrubbing and painting.

I would like to get some better images, with daylight...

Before:


After:





Before:


After:





Note the ugly brown cabinets before:


After:





More after shots:

I am obsessed with the color "Dirty Robin's Egg Blue." It perfectly compliments the mushroomy greige in the rest of the apartment, so mixed my own version from some left over paint. A week after painting the bathroom I found an actual dirty robin's egg, and the color is an exact match- I am a color mixing genius!! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a better picture before breaking the egg shell:

The bathroom window presented a large problem. The wood on the is rotten. Since this is a rental, our solution was to let it dry out and paint the hell out of it... I used some special primer and then many coats of glossy bathroom paint. The other major problem was privacy. We didn't want to have a second shower curtain. I got inspired by this genius "window film" in a 2Jane catalog, and made my own using double stick tape and plastic drawer liner.

Chicago Antique Market

Last weekend we ventured out in tornado force gales for the last Chicago Antique Market of the season.





David was drooling over both of these work tables:




These wonderfully faded old wooden headboards have me dreaming about guest bedrooms on the Cape:













This pair of green metal headboards would be perfect in the Parisian boudoir inspired bedroom I am designing for my friend, Carissa... Too bad she's on a pauper's budget!




These blue chairs have potential to be "that perfect pop of color" just about anywhere:




Love this mini pop address book from the 50s in its original box:





Score!



We got this great globe for our collection. It has an unique iron pedestal with cast astrological symbols.






Well done Team Aphasia.