Oh Happiest Day!

Back in June upon reading this decor8 entry which featured this picture...


I was haunted. I showed everyone I knew this exquisite portrait. I had to have one of my very own to hang here...


So I spent hours googling "painted" + "dog" + "portrait" + "cone" + "wearing" and while this search blessed me with him I was still no where near finding a coned canine to call my own.

Today the search has ended and sometime between August 6th and August 12th my very own Kranker Hund by Michael Sowa will be waiting for me at home. Thank you design*sponge for this morning's living in:amelie which featured the picture that ended my multi-month long search...

I feel decidely unhip as the print I have been lusting after for months was from a well known movie and I failed to recognize it. C'est la vie... it will soon be mine!!!

I Die...

While perusing my google reader today I found that Design Sponge posted a portal to the deepest parts of my soul with this image:

A dog in military garb with his pet dog! Oh man, nothing gets me more than anthropomorphism and what's even better is that this image did not stand alone. Along with it was a link to a certain Dorian Greyhound & CO and while the site is not fully up and running yet it shows great promise with its tag line of "Portraits for Pets of Distinction". The associates of Dorian Greyhound & Co create "ancestral" pet portraits by combining old world images and pictures of pooches (but I'm assuming other animals can be used as well). Although I don't currently have a pet for them to paint (or the $800+ price tag that goes along with the portraits) I am hoping the site will have a gallery for me to spend hours gazing at and dreaming of the day when I will be one of the lucky few with an ancestral pet portrait of my very own.... ... ...

Perhaps so that I could have a portrait with all of my many dogs in it I would opt for Diego Valaquez's Las Meninas

But then again I've always had a thing for Byzantine iconography. A nice Madonna and Child could be lovely (despite the damnation I might be tempting through my sacrilege).
Ah dreams. I suppose I have a lot of time to ponder the merits of both but it's nice to have something important to really get the ole' mind going.

Best Regards,
OLIT

Dog Wall Unleashed...

I actually have quite the brain-full of blog ideas right now and just have not had the time to actually post. So until my next entry (hopefully tonight or tomorrow) that will be lengthier here are a few pictures of the project that I mentioned a few entries ago.

I was inspired by a picture in Emily Chalmer's Flea Market Style to have a dog portrait wall of my very own and a few months ago when at an estate sale in a home previously inhabited by a hoarder I came across a collection of dog portraits and had to snatch them up. I purchased frames at Goodwill in Bremmerton and waited for inspiration to hit me. I decided that I wanted to use salvaged crown molding for my shelves and headed to The Re-Store in Ballard. I bought one that was perfect as is... clunky and chipped. The other two pieces needed to be painted so I headed to Lowes with my trusty Lowes expert picked up some paint and got to fixing them up. Here is the final product!








Respectfully Yours,
OLIT

OLIT Flies the "Friendly" Skies

For those of you who know this Old Lady in Training then it is no secret that I do not care for airplanes. For those of you who do not know me then I shall educate you...

I HATE FLYING!!

As an old lady in training I am obviously irritated by the swelling of my feet that is inherent in air travel but beyond my own physical discomfort there are SO many other reasons to avoid flight. One - it is unnatural. Two - I don't care if people say it's the safest way to travel... I've seen enough Lost (one or two episodes) to know that it is DANGEROUS. Three - with it's three main components being take-off, 30,000 feet above ground suspension, and landing it is completely 100% horrifying. But unfortunately it is also the most convenient way to get from Seattle to the Bay Area for a weekend trip. Yes I have been looking forward to this for weeks and YES I am so thrilled to be scooped up by my friend this evening and whisked away to San Francisco for some catch up, good food, and a beautiful city I just wish that Seattle would do a better job of making me want to leave it. Perhaps if I felt it urgent to leave the Emerald City then this flight would be weighing on me less as a potential disaster and more as a "cannot come soon enough" escape plan.

What's strange is that last week at this time I could not wait to get down to California and now my feelings are more along the lines of, "Oh California, I love you but can't you just come up here for a visit?" What has changed since last week? I guess if I had to narrow it down to three things they would be the following:

1) I am still riding high from Monday's completely lovely day of birthday merriment (not to mention the most perfect $1 ice cream cone that McDonalds has ever produced)! Why would I want to leave the people who plied me with wine, Pike's Place lunch, red vines, pie, spicy, tortellini, laughter, and allow me to get cheesy and say love?!

2) Seattle decided to have a "this" kind of a day...

... whenever Seattle has a "this" kind of a day my old love San Francisco, who occassionally beckons for me to once again pine away after its beautiful albeit astronomically expensive cityscape, suddenly pales in comparison to the everywhere you turn mountain peaks, blue water, and overly excited vitamin-D deficient Pacific Northwesterners.

3) After searching for worthy Bay Area estate sales to pounce on this weekend (cannot seem to find any) I decided to peruse estatesales.net and see what I would be missing out on here this weekend. Bad... no awful... no HORRENDOUS idea. Turns out a Ballard estate sale has the final puzzle piece to my ever growing "dog portrait" collection.

I say all of this knowing that the second my plane touches down in San Jose my heart will be skipping beats with excitement for a weekend of family, friends, sunshine, and warmth but in the mean time it makes it so much easier to get carried away with my ritual of flight dread by convincing myself that I should just stay here for the weekend to enjoy the delights of my PNW home or at the very least to snatch up Rolph (clearly by Rolph I am referring to the pipe smoking dog pictured above who's sure to go quick at this weekend's sale).

But since I know I am ultimately giddy about my trip home I will try and concentrate on ways to help me get through the flight instead of reasons I shouldn't go through with it.
1) Beer.
2) Trashy magazine featuring the Kardashian's that I would feel guilty reading otherwise.

California Here I Come!

OLIT