DOG DOG DOG DOG DOG.

Posted by Daniel 
on Jan 30, 2012  
254 Comments
Et Cetera

A few days ago, I was having coffee with the delightful Anna Dorfman of Door Sixteen and Jen McCabe of Honey Kennedy when the conversation turned to dogs, as it tends to do when Anna and I hang out. Anna turned to Jen and remarked, “Dan wants a dog more than anybody I have ever known.”

It’s true. Having always had dogs growing up, moving away from home a few years ago meant that a gaping, oozing, disgusting hole was left in my dog-loving soul. If you leave your dog tied up outside a store—BLAM, that’s me petting it until you return, then awkwardly slinking away. Think you can walk down the sidewalk and I won’t stop you? FUCK OFF LET ME PET YOUR DOG. I’m that person, that nightmare, who will make you tell me when you have to leave or I’ll just stay and pet your little monster forever. Age, breed, sex, cleanliness, likeliness to tear my face off: none of these details are important. I love dogs and dogs love me and I don’t trust people who don’t like dogs because dogs are the best. Dogs dogs dogs dogs.

In our neighborhood in Brooklyn, every now and again we see these adoption vans parked on the street during the weekend and I inevitably have to go inside. Oftentimes it’s just cats, which are great if you like neglect and disapproval, but on Saturday my friend Lexi and I passed one from the Sean Casey Animal Rescue with dogs. So many dogs. Cute cute cute dogs.

I actually love cats, by the way. I just don’t want one seeing as I always figured it might impede on my later ability to get a dog.

While inside the truck, I was checking out this little girl named Aruba who I believe was a Chihuahua/Italian Greyhound cross who—for all intents and purposes—was basically a fawn. Cute and timid and slim and long legs and, well, kind of elegant, really. Just the kind of dog Max and I had talked about having for months now.

There was some noise coming from the back of the truck so I squatted down to the ground, as is my instinct when I sense the approach of a dog. And this little Pit Bull—this wiggly little bright-eyed beast ran up, threw her arms around my shoulders, and attacked my face with her tongue. But her arms weren’t just, you know, there. This was a full-on hug.

So I took fawn/dog for a walk, and she was adorable. Shy but friendly and very sweet, and liked being held. Check, check, check, and check. The only problem was that she wasn’t that Pit Bull that hugged me.

Lexi and I got pho and sat down to think it over, because decisions require food. I texted Max. He came down to meet us, stopped at the truck on the way, and came in to report that yes, he wanted fawn/dog.

So we went back to the truck. And I took Max to the back, where the Pit Bull had been returned to her cage. And she looked at me and I looked at her and she licked my fingers through the bars and I asked to take her around the block.

She wasn’t good on the leash. She didn’t know commands, and she’s much too big to just scoop up during a kerfuffle. She can’t use a wee-wee pad and has the energy and enthusiasm of, well, a Pit Bull.

Fawn/dog was the smart choice, for us. She’d be a great apartment dog and quiet and lovely, but this Pit Bull just felt right. Rounding the corner of the second block, I made her sit. She did. And then I sat on the ground behind her and flipped her onto my body, cradling her like a baby and rubbing her little tummy and snorgling her fleshy neck. And that sealed it. Over the course of one square city block, we had our dog.

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And we are in love. She is beyond sweet, smart as a whip, and cuddles like you would not believe. Instantly the apartment was hers, and she has settled in with incredible speed and ease.

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We named her Mekko, as in Marimekko, as in the Finnish textile company, as in we really are that gay. I think it’s cute and suits her nicely and for some reason she actually responds to it.

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Did I mention the cuddles? This dog is all about cuddling. She’s one of those unique creatures who understands how to situate her body in order to be a good little spoon, and really just wants to be close to us at all times. We’ve had her all of a day and a half, and she’s already better on the leash and learning commands and just being all-around impressive.

If I thought the descent into crazy dog-owner would come gradually, I was mistaken. She is all I know how to talk about anymore to anybody. I proudly report the number of times she pooped in a day (yesterday: 3! Today: 1, so far.) and somehow I don’t even mind her rancid farts. To me, she is perfect.

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God, that face. That fucking face. I mean, can you even? No you cannot.

So far, owning a Pit Bull is great. People on the street are either terrified or thrilled, because Pit owners LOVE other Pit owners. It’s like this weird tribe of crazy people who know something that seems to have been lost on so many otherwise smart, dog-loving, educated people: Pit Bulls are great dogs. Their reputation is completely undeserved. They are smart and loyal and cute and cuddly and awesome.

Walking away from the adoption truck, Max led the way to the pet store while I tailed him with our new dog. And I completely broke the fuck down. I’m not really an overly-emotional person, and I think the last time I cried from happiness was when I was about 5, but there I was, wailing in the street like a crazy person. I try not to get too sappy on here or in my life in general, but for a minute all I could think about was that, a year ago, I didn’t have any of this. It was just me. And then, all at once, all this love has just come into my life, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it all feels pretty damn great. Mekko and Max and me. If not for the river pouring down my face and trouble walking or forming real words, we would have made a pretty handsome group in that moment.

Lucky doesn’t begin to describe my life right now. There, I said it. Slap it on a fucking Hallmark card.

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P.S.-None of this would have been possible without the amazing people at Sean Casey Animal Rescue. If you’re feeling a bit generous, please consider donating to the amazing work they do, or going to meet one of the many animals they have available for adoption. Our dog wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for them.

P.P.S.- SOMEBODY adopt fawn/dog. She really is precious. She’s here (her name is Aruba).

Kitchen happenings are afoot.

Posted by Daniel 
on Jan 12, 2012  
79 Comments
DIY Kitchen

For years, in order to shuttle passengers between terminals, Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. had its own particular brand of ground transportation that I have yet to encounter anywhere else. Foregoing both the speed and efficiency of an underground train system and the decidedly proletariat alternative of standing-room-only buses I’ve found myself on so many times, Dulles bravely balked the trends. Instead, they forged ahead with something more civilized, a beautiful idea that they dubbed the “Mobile Lounge.” The size of a double-wide trailer and no faster than a golf cart, the Mobile Lounge saunters lazily around the airport grounds, raised about 15 feet in the air atop enormous wheels. Mostly due to its name, it recalls a bygone era of air travel, when people dressed up and small children could visit the cockpit without being tased by an air marshall disguised as just another friendly citizen. Going to the airport wasn’t a hassle, but an event, and the plane ride was half the fun of the vacation.

“Can I take your coat?” a Mobile Lounge attendant might ask gently, while slipping a cocktail into your hand. From there, you’d be led through smoke-filled air to a private table, where plush velvet-upholstered benches would be waiting to accommodate your buttocks. “Just let me know if you need anything,” she’d offer before slipping away to greet the next set of guests, her sporty little uniform disappearing into the crowd. A tinkling of jazz would emanate from the corner, while people chatted quietly at the bar on the starboard side. Ah, the Mobile Lounge, where the drinks flow like water from a natural spring and the music is always right. The message is clear. Take a load off, it says. Relax. Where the Mobile Lounge is concerned, it’s about the journey, not the destination.

Of course, the Mobile Lounge bespeaks a kind of dignity and sophistication that is unambiguously betrayed by the lived experience of actually traveling on it. In reality, the people are packed in like sardines, only after which the driver enters and slowly makes his way through the length of the train to the front, tripping over carry-ons and strollers on the way. A promotional recording plays during the trip, cheerily informing you that the Mobile Lounge is not only innovative, but also comfortable and a fabulous opportunity to witness the advanced workings of a thriving international airport. This might be true, if you are lucky enough to have a view of the windows or are remotely interested in that sort of thing. But as it is, the announcement reads mostly as desperation. Like me, the Mobile Lounge cries. I’m really wonderful if you’d just give me a chance. 

I returned from Egypt on Sunday night and have since been drawing inspiration from the Dulles Airport Mobile Lounges with a little invention I like to call the Jet Lag Lounge. Catering to the extremely tired and erratic sleeper, a Jet Lag Lounge is, put simply, any place that looks comfortable enough to doze off for a short spell, regardless of location or time of day. Sleep on me, they call out. Just for a minute, nobody will notice. The living room sofa could be one such lounge, but why stop there, especially when the floor is calling? The shower is a perfectly acceptable place whether or not the water is running, and of course the toilet is always fair game. The real beauty of a Jet Lag Lounge is its ambiguity: anywhere can be a lounge if you squint hard enough. Communal tables at the coffee shop, movie theater seats, park benches—the options are virtually boundless.

Jet Lag never used to bother me, but it’s been several years since I did any sort of serious international travel, and the intervening years have brought me to my early 20s, rendering my body broken-down and fragile. My sleep schedule has never been a terribly reliable thing, much like that friend you had in college who you thought just liked to have fun and then turned out to be an alcoholic. If I’ve given the impression that all I’ve been doing for the last few days is sleeping, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s more an issue of when: the sudden and unpredictable onset of extreme fatigue, followed by the unavoidable nap, followed by intense, manic energy when I should be sleeping. If I didn’t know any better, I might think I was sick or losing my mind, but I’d prefer to just go with it. Ride out the trip. Let my body sort itself out. In the meantime, I think I’ll just go ahead and take advantage of my fucked up circadian rhythms and take care of some things.

The remainder of Sunday and Monday passed by in a complete haze, but roundabout 11 pm Monday night? Why, I think I’ll just start in on painting the kitchen! No better time than the present, really. Sleep a couple hours, and Home Depot and IKEA start calling my name on Tuesday. Don’t mind if I do! Then, crash. And so on.

By last night, we had gone from this:

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To this:

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One of the things I’m learning about living with Max is that we’re both totally crazy and obsessive in our own quaint little ways, which makes us a highly effective team if you’re into working until it feels like your bones might fall apart and you’re liable to die of starvation. I tend to worry endlessly about little things going awry over the course of a project, but Max just wants to get it done. I’ll admit, I like the process of making a project happen, whereas in Max’s world, the disorder that comes along with something like this is extraordinarily stressful.

The key, I’ve discovered, is taking advantage of his chaos-anxiety and channeling it into something productive, like assembling IKEA cabinets. And didn’t he do a wonderful job? I’m so proud of my boy.

So here’s how it all went down. It started with this advanced plan that I drew on graph paper and everything, the bulk of which was in my head because I can’t draw for shit. But you get the idea.

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Basically, I wanted the bottom cabinets and the tall cabinet on the side to protrude from the wall about 16 inches, which is a little over three inches deeper than standard IKEA wall cabinets sit when hung flush with the wall.

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I’m quite positive that there’s a better/smarter/more efficient way to go about this, but I’m not that smart and decided to just go ahead an build a platform for the cabinets to mount to, which is screwed into the studs in the wall. It’s not entirely glamorous, but it works. All it took was 2×4′s, my chop saw, some 2.5″ screws, and my drill. Pretty simple.

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The bottom cabinets are IKEA  30″ x 30″ wall cabinets. The platform bumps them up 5.5 inches, so with the addition of the 1″ thick countertop, they sit at standard countertop height. That board lying on the ground is going to become the baseboard molding for the entire room, which will wrap perfectly over the base of the cabinets and hide the 2×4 ugliness. They’re just 1×6 pine boards (but the 6″ is actually 5.5″, because wood is weird.).

Now, you might recall that I already had a big PAX wardrobe from IKEA, which moved with me from my last apartment, was in the bedroom for a while here before I moved it to the kitchen, where it sat awkwardly next to the fridge, like so:

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The PAX was about 2 feet deep, which was too deep for this, so I broke out my circular saw and got to work.

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Totally chopped the thing in half. It was a little crazy and precarious and I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it’s totally fine!  I also chopped off the three or so inches that form the base on the bottom so that all the cabinets would look uniform and sit on the same level.

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Here’s a process shot of building the little platform base for under the PAX, which I screwed into the other base for the bottom cabinets. Are you following? The PAX just sits on top of this, and I screwed the bottom of the PAX into this base and then attached it to the wall at the top with some small L-Brackets that I added to the inside to keep it from falling forward for any reason. It’s also screwed into all the cabinets, so it’s not going anywhere.

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The next step was cutting the countertop. We chose the NUMERAR double-sided countertop, which is white laminate on one side and grey on the other, with an aluminum edging. Cutting was fairly straightforward—just draw a straight line and go to it with the circular saw. Easy-peesy. We’re not going to screw down the countertop, so if at some point the white side gets beaten up or we get bored of it, we can always just flip it over.

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The next step was hanging the upper cabinets (30″x39″), which basically could not be easier. They hang off a steel suspension rail, so it’s important to make sure that’s VERY SECURE to the wall. I used about 8 big toggle anchors in addition to finding three studs, so the chances of these things falling are pretty slim. Max took this super flattering action shot of me, wherein I decided to dress like a lumberjack.

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After cleaning for approximately forever, here’s where we stand! I’m pretty ridiculously happy with it. It holds a ton, gives us five (FIVE!!!) extra feet of counter space that we didn’t have before (we had been operating off four feet, which makes for some tricky cooking), and I think already looks pretty great despite the necessary finishing touches. By the way, that adorable clock on the wall was Max’s Christmas present to me. I LOVE it. I’ll take a better picture of it for the next post. It’s a sphere.

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Anyway. Obviously this is a problem. IKEA sells cover panels for the sides of cabinets, so I need to go pick one up and cut it to the proper size. Soon! We also still have to:

1. Cut and install baseboards.
2. Install cabinet hardware.
3. Glue strip of aluminum trim to the cut side of the countertop.
4. Organize all my tools and fit them into the bottom cabinet on the right.
5. Paint the window molding (it’s primed in these photos, not painted).
6. Paint the other half of the ceiling.

You read that right. I painted half the ceiling. I actually basically just painted half the room. It’s sort of hilarious that this new fancy thing is sitting on one wall, and directly across from it, the room still looks like this.
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Ugh. Disaster. Its time will come.
Getting phase 1 almost done is hugely motivational, though. My favorite thing? Two-way tie.
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The microwave is concealed in a cabinet! I am so pleased that I don’t have to look at it. As you can see, we left the backs of the base cabinets open, which lets us take advantage of the added depth, run cords through it, and provide more than enough ventilation for the microwave to function without being a hazard. It’s not pretty, but who cares? Not me.

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Mostly, I think I’m just thrilled that I have a proper, fancy coffee station. I even bought Illy to celebrate, which means I’m probably never buying inferior coffee ever again.

Phew. Kitchen. Things are finally moving. I’d love to talk longer, but my new countertop is looking like a mighty fine place for a nap right now.

Traveling

Posted by Daniel 
on Dec 27, 2011  
64 Comments
Et Cetera

So, I haven’t blogged in…how long? Almost six weeks? What’s that about?

Okay, so here’s what happened: The last few weeks of school were crazy with assignments I didn’t want to do and books I didn’t want to read and papers I didn’t want to write and exams I didn’t want to take and classes I didn’t want to attend. But I did, because I’m a role model. Note to self: ideally, you only do college once, so stop taking classes that suck. Bitchfest, over.

Anyway, before school was technically even wrapped up, I was whisked away on a big family vacation. Israel, then Jordan, then Egypt. It is epic. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you’re probably already privy to these developments. If you don’t, shame on you.

Photos of my apartment keep mocking me, waiting desperately to be spun like gold from straw into glimmering new blog posts—but shit, I’m tired. I think I walked somewhere between 2 and 47 miles today and my weary bones just don’t want to write about my bathroom. Soon, you gorgeous impatient thing. Soon. I finally took the pictures and everything.

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Israel was totally beautiful and amazing and full of hot Jews who know their way around a hummus recipe. That leg of the trip was full of boatloads of incredible history and impossibly heavy and very old stones. I dug up really old pottery shards and floated around in some super salty water and slathered mud all over my semi-naked flesh.

Also, saw a skinny Santa Claus parading around some foxy lady in blue who I can only assume is his mistress. Slut.

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Israel has a lot going for it, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t put the discovery of my new favorite animal/future pet high on the list: the rock rabbit, also known as the Hyrax. Bear in mind that this is a real thing that exists in nature but is also a stuffed animal of my dreams, come to life in the form of fuzzy round cuteness. Get a load of this thing:

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OBSESSED.

Oh right. The trip has also been full of family—my dad, mom, brother, and sister, along with four cousins, two aunts, and two uncles.

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All of the cousins are younger and cuter than we are, and suddenly I am feeling very old. Nothing like explaining how a film camera works or what Tower Records used to sell to make your 22 years feel more like 23 and a half. The agony.

You know what helps with that? HYRAX.

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Look at that majestic motherfucker. Look at that nose and the little rounded ears and the fluffy blonde fur and those crazy little pudgy toes.

Fun fact about the Hyrax: it’s not a rodent.
Funner fact about the Hyrax: it’s more closely related to the rhinoceros. Oh, scientists, you crazy fuckers.

Anyway.

My second-oldest cousin Reese even got Bat Mitzvah’d in Israel! AT THE WESTERN WALL. Yeah, we’re not messing around. She did a beautiful job, by the way.

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And lest you doubted our piety as Jews, we also made sure to get Chinese food on Christmas in Tiberias, a task that was neither easy nor terribly appetizing, to be honest. But important all the same.

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So I guess you’re wondering: if Jews eat Chinese food, what do Hyrax eat?

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Looks like leaves? I’m going with leaves. Who cares! Look at that little round furry nugget nomming away! The snaggleteeth! The wide suspicious eyes! The crooked mouth!

Ugh, it kills me. Kills me dead.

So Israel was amazing. I had a great time and already want to go back and do totally different things and see more and stuff my face with falafel even more than I did. Someday.

I know I kind of missed the whole holiday train, but if you did Christmas or you’re wrapping up Chanukah or you’re celebrating something else altogether, I hope it was/is great.

And in case I don’t chime in before the New Year: 2011 was an amazing year for a lot of reasons, but if you’re reading this blog, then one of those reasons was you. I can’t offer money or gold or the elixir of youth, so as a token of my gratitude, please accept this Hyrax butt instead.

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Face. Yo. Fears.

Posted by Daniel 
on Nov 18, 2011  
117 Comments
DIY Et Cetera

Formally trained at The Martha Stewart Academy, Max had a difficult time moving in with somebody like me. He was disturbed by so many things in my apartment—the plain white linens, the lack of throw pillows, my surfaces clear of homey knickknacks. Where were all my throw blankets? Didn’t I own a few more table lamps I could set up? Why didn’t it smell persistently like flowers or fresh laundry? These were the habits of a barbarian, and I suppose I should count myself lucky that he has since spent months attempting to reform my bachelor ways. It was uncomfortable at first, but I’ve decided to be courageous and look at it less like an assault and more like a challenge to move beyond my comfort zone. One that involves a crazy, never-ending roller coaster ride of emotional turmoil.

I don’t mean to sing my own praises here, but I’d say I have an above-average olfactory sense, a gift that tends to be more curse than blessing in the city of New York. My apartment didn’t smell bad, but rather didn’t really smell like anything, which is how I like it. I tend to find scented rooms a little uncomfortable, to be honest. Why does your 6th floor East Village apartment always smell like a garden center full of hydrangeas? What are you trying to cover up? Do you have terrible gas? Are you growing pot in your coat closet? Do you have a rotting carcass fetish?  There are no flowers around, it doesn’t make sense. Context is everything.

All of this changed with Max.

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Face your fears.

By my count, we have 2 plug-ins, 2 reed diffusers, 2 oil burners, and a vast assortment of tiny vials of variously scented oils, much like a witch doctor. Bear in mind that our apartment is about 600 square feet. Max used to have a third oil burner before I think I urged him to throw it away, and I’ve put my foot solidly down against the concept of tiny bowls of potpourri strewn about the place, but I know it’s probably only a matter of time. I know he’s just waiting for that right potpourri.

At one point shortly after he moved in, he purchased a third reed diffuser and put it on the mantle. It was the sort of thing that gave me the nervous eye twitch, but hey, I thought, he’s new here, let the boy have it. It wasn’t until it fell to the floor, diffusing its contents all over my rug and the couch, that tacit frustration boiled over into rage. “THESE THINGS ARE ARE MADE BY THE MEDDLING HANDS OF THE DEVIL,” I recall yelling. I sulked for days, pretending that it was the oil spill all over my antique rug (which is gone now… just cover it with cornstarch and vacuum later! Thanks, Martha!) that bothered me, not that my apartment smelled like a funeral parlor. That smell could linger for days, but possibly forever, and eventually I’d have to move, telling people, “Oh, it was a great apartment, but I got tired of smelling Savon’s Sandlewood oil. It was time to move on.”

All of our many new fragrances were easy to accept with a kind of passive compliance, but things got more distressing when Max zeroed in on the throw pillow situation.

All I heard about was throw pillows. I had purchased some fabric that I had planned to make into throw pillows, but a combination of laziness and a crippling fear of my sewing machine had delayed the process for about a year. Max thought this fabric was “too manly” anyway (“but we are men, Sugar Tits!”), so what followed was weeks of bickering over which pillows. Max would threaten me with some semi-contemporary trellis pattern thing and I’d get all weepy about the vintage kilim pillow he made me donate to Goodwill (gone, but not forgotten) and that would go on for a while until we’d realize we were actually fighting about throw pillows and then we’d explode into a pile of rainbows and glitter paint.

Eventually I presented Max with a single option, which he took: the Coco Pillow from CB2. Neither of us loved them, neither of us hated them, which was a big improvement over everything else we’d presented each other. Stalemate pillows, if you will. We bought two. Drama, ended.

But two pillows wasn’t enough to satiate Max’s undying thirst for throw pillows. So, desperate to finally end this whole debacle, I walked into the Marimekko shop at Crate & Barrel and bought a yard of fabric.

And then I FACED MY FEARS.

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I looked up some instructions online. I broke out that sewing machine. I made some fucking pillows. I watched the pilot episode of that Terra Nova show and was disappointed. Talk about a packed afternoon.

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Don’t pretend you’re not impressed. FYI, made them about an inch smaller than the insert, which keeps them from getting too droopy. You know, pro tip.

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Totally sewed them with an envelop back, too! This allowed me to skip the whole zipper issue, seeing as who the hell am I kidding here? I can’t sew a zipper.

But then, because my pillows were such a wild success, I showed them to a friend at a party and we got to talking about whether I could make cushions for our friend Emily’s couch for her birthday.

Vintage teak Danish sofa. No cushions. Foam, dacron, spray adhesive, fabric, sewing machine, zippers. “Yes!” drunk Daniel said, “I would love to do that! When do we start?” And then sober Daniel had a panic attack.

FACE.

YOUR.

FEARS.

I basically followed this awesome dude’s instructions for the foam, which I purchased at Canal Rubber. They’re WONDERFUL there, by the way. If you go in, give Lee a holler for me.

Then, using these advanced tools… (indeed, those are children’s scissors from IKEA. Our kitchen scissors were inexplicably lost so the other option was cuticle scissors.)

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And a hefty amount of figuring it the fuck out…

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I made this sexy tweedy thing. And another one for the back.

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Which turned into these sexy tweedy things.

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So people could do shit like this on them.

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Sometimes people tell me, “oh, Daniel, you are so gifted and crafty!” And I say to them, “I swear, I don’t have any special skills.”  This is basically true, save for one caveat: I am just a naturally gifted DIY superhero who can do anything. ANYTHING. I even learned how to thread a bobbin during this whole sofa cushion thing. And watched the entire first season of Walking Dead. As I said: ANYTHING.

Face your fears.

As it’s getting dark so early, it’s cold outside, and Max was getting a little too comfortable, I decided I really wanted some house plants.

Max has this thing about houseplants. He hates them. Sometimes I think about why this might be, seeing as a good houseplant is loyal, and alive, and filters your air, and needs very little maintenance. Is it because sometimes the leaves collect dust? Is it because they have soil, which is traditionally home to bugs? Is it because they photosynthesize for energy, which is basically eating the sun? Is it because they grow, like silent, perpetually still zombie children waiting around in corners of your house?

FACE.

YO.

MOTHERFUCKING.

FEARS.

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I already had this one. Bought it at Morton-Williams, 82nd & 1st Ave. (can I hear a whut-whut?!). I do not know what it’s called, but I do know that it lived through the move and just keeps growing. So, so proud.

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And what? What did I do? Went and bought a Fabian Aralia from some guy on Craigslist? Like a crazy plant person? Who talked about plants with me while I pet his dog? Sure did.

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Then just to be an asshole I bought this little lovely at Trader Joe’s for a couple bucks. Planted her in a weird sized vase I had and water her every once in a while. She’s alright.

I recognize that buying houseplants as a form of passive aggression is about the gayest thing imaginable (I can say that, you can’t). It just feels so right.

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I wasn’t really prepared for this, though. Seasonal decorating.

Gourds. Everywhere there are gourds. Gourds, pumpkins, glass pumpkins, more gourds.

These cropped up shortly before Halloween and have been slowly rotting on most of the surfaces in our apartment ever since. Max says they’re a “slightly pre-Halloween up until and including Thanksgiving” thing. He is disposing of them piecemeal—we’ll come home, something will smell funky, and he’ll find the offending gourd and toss it.

It’s not a horrible smell, just something a little bitter in the air. It might be worse, but, you see, we have these air fresheners.

Until next time: FACE. YO. FEARS.

I Like All Colors That are Black or White.

Posted by Daniel 
on Nov 10, 2011  
125 Comments
DIY Living Room Thrifted & Scavenged

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably already gathered that I painted my living room! I’m bad at keeping secrets when provided with so many social networking outlets. Oopsie!

Before:

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AFTER!

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I like it! I don’t LOVE it, to be honest—the color’s a little bluer

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