you're just being shelfish

Shelf-ish. Get it?

We forgot to take a "before" picture of our empty babies closet. But all these shelves (except the top white one) are brand new. Originally, I was just gonna put 3 shelves up and call it a day, but S nixed that.

She said she wanted the shelving to be dynamic, and came up with this layout plan: four foot-high shelves on the right, two extra large shelves in the middle, and a ladder leading down to the floor on the far left with shelves of varying sizes.


As usual, S was the lead designer and I was the lead engineer. She had a great vision to make it as functional as possible. I was a little concerned about there being too many shelves, which would make it too crowded in there. Turns out it's perfect as usual.

reupholstering fever!

This is a chair from G's childhood. When we first moved in, G was thinking about throwing it away because it was so tore up, but I thought is has a beautiful shape and wanted to hold on to it. I saw potential in the chair and also I don't like to throw things out from his childhood. I knew that someday I want to do something with it and since we're working on the nursery, it was a great opportunity for another challenge.

we spent an afternoon at jo-ann's and picked out this fabric to reupholster it. but we needed 6 yards, and they only had 4! we were already thinking about going to the joanns in natick until my husband came up with the idea of using white fabric in areas that are hidden from view. so instead of driving all the way to natick, we just bought a little more plain white upholstery fabric.

So we started to take the whole thing apart! Here's G trying to figure out what pieces can be cut out of what part of our two different fabrics. he's good at geometry.

This is a lot of the materials laid out on the floor. it was a mess all week!

After the pieces were cut, I sewed them together.

Our new best friend: a staple gun

I didn't know he was taking pictures or else i would have wore something instead of a bathrobe! i'm using his patriots hammer to put the arm together.

It's starting to look like a chair again...

G says he never thought about how furniture was put together before this.

Revealing some of the white fabric we're keeping hidden.

close-up view

Now I just want to reupholster everything in the house! next project will probably be our media room sofa...another piece from G's childhood. probably even before he was born...even before people started to talk about "clean lines"!

Painting Family

It's G here. We did some painting over the past few. Many of you who have been over the crib know we had two little birdies painted in the living room representing wifey and me. Now that we're about to welcome two kids into the world, we decided it made sense to add a couple more to the tree.

Here I go working the paintbrush like a Wii remote.

 

The family should look something like this in a few weeks.

 

Before they moved, Theresa & Sophea (two real artists) gave us this joint to paint on. It took a while to figure out what to do with it, but...

 

Junior (a stuffed animal), an alien, a sheep, baby girl and baby boy, and a robot. Full update on the babies room soon...

diy updates: baby accessories

G has been busy getting the house ready for the babies arrival. You saw the cornices already...and we'll update other things when they're finished. But i wanted to take a second to update you on some baby accessories i've made over the past month.

since there are no newborns nearby, everything is being modeled by other friends! thanks to snuggles, whisker, and david the bear.

baby tutu

 

baby bear hat

 

baby tutu and baby bear hat (and another gumdrop pillow I just made)

 

baby winter hats

baby mary janes with real pearls!

curvaceous pelmet boxes

Of all the projects we've done, this is one of the ones we're most proud of. When all is said and done, I think the babies room is going to be the dopest room in the house.

For a long time, I wanted to put up a cornice box - also called a pelmet box - above some of the windows in our condo. G and I had done some planning, and we mostly knew how to do it. The problem was that G said we don't have a jigsaw so we couldn't build a cornice with a shape that I like, it would have to just be a rectangle. It wasn't exactly what I hoped for, but G said it was the only way.

But because this was going to be the first cornice in our home, and it was going to be in the babies room, I never gave up hope we could find a way to have a shape. If it was for our bedroom instead, maybe I would have accepted the plain front, but for this room, I was motivated to figure it out.

Just a couple days before we were planning to start on building them, I found a tutorial online that said you could make a beautiful pelmet out of just foamcore! That makes it easy to carve any shape you want! Isn't that a great idea? It's inexpensive and you can choose any shape you want, which allowed us to splurge on the fabric.

When I told G this idea, he was a little hesitant. He didn't think it would be strong - and he also prefers using wood because he thinks it's more tough and manly. But he changed his mind when he realized how much I really wanted some kind of style other than a rectangle on it. Thats something great about me & G together: I tell him what I want, and he helps me make it happen. Without him, I don't feel I can finish any projects. Without me, he doesn't ever want to start any projects!

Here is a step by step tutorial. We didn't do it exactly the same way the Little Green Notebook did, but hers was a good place to start.

First, we designed the front of the box. I was looking for a style that wasn't too ornate, but was still pretty. I definitely wanted a little bit of curve, not just right angles. Here's G drawing the design on foamcore. He's wearing a Randy Moss jersey in support of him since everyone else is blaming him now!

 

Then we used a boxcutter to cut out the right shapes, and used duct tape to connect them pieces together. This is G looking proud of the job he did!

Instead of using all foamcore like the other site, we compromised and used wood on the back so it's sturdier. The wood keeps the front from bending and also is the piece that attached to the wall.

We then covered the front of each box with batting to make it puffy. After that, we wrapped it with this fabric. Initially, we were going to use an amy butler fabric for this project, but based on the design of the fabric and the style of the cornice, they weren't a good match, so we changed our mind last minute. We looked all over the place for the right fabric, and when we finally found this one, we were excited!

Here is G using a staple gun to upholster the cornice. Can you believe it's just made of foamcore?

This is what it looks like on the window. Isn't it pretty?

So what do you think?

tutorial: bootleg gumdrop pillow

i've been sweating this pillow for a long time, but i could never figure out how to make it. i surfed all over the internet for the bootleg version. i even borrowed amy butler's books from the library, but i couldn't find the right pattern for this pillow. just when i was about to give in and buy the pattern for the pillow...which only cost $11.99 anyway, i found a DIY tutorial for a "Moroccan pouf" online. i think it's kinda funny that it doesn't mention Amy Butler at all, when it's almost exactly her pattern, just a couple inches different in size.

When i saw it, it looked so similar to Amy Butler's pouf, that I asked G to reverse engineer and figure out how to change the free bootleg pattern to be more the right size of the amy butler version. that way it looks even more like the original one that i liked in the first place.

BTW, i did support amy butler herself by buying her fabric. a lot of the babys room is going to be done using her fabrics. but the reason i didn't want to buy the pattern is both me & G don't like paying money for ideas. Ideas should be free and we should share them freely!

Here is our process step by step.

First, cut out 8 pieces of fabric in this shape. The design we chose had some regular features, so we tried to make each piece identical. we could have been a little more random, but I wanted the uniform look.

Sew them together like this in pairs, also sew the diagonal edges together but not all the way to leave space to stuff it later. Then sew the pairs together until you have the outer casing of the pillow.

See?

Then start stuffing with whatever kind of stuffing you got. I used polyester fiberfil, although amy butler suggests using some natural stuffing that would cost $100 just for the filling!

It's a convenient time capsule too. We're going to let our kids open it when they turn 21. So we also put in a bottle of gin...

...a Bruce Lee DVD in honor of their dad's favorite guy...

...and a Justin Timberlake bobblehead given to me by Auntie kay.

Next, make a cover for that hole. It could be any shape, we chose something like an octagon.

We're going to make another one for the nursery.

Yuri

Before my travel to the Pacifics, G and I embarked on a new project together. We hand painted Yuri Kochiyama in her younger days. If you don't know who Yuri is, she became a civil rights activist in the 60's. She and her husband Bill were in the internment camps in WWII, and later got active with the Harlem Parents Committee, and later Malcolm X died as she cradled his head. She is almost 90 years old and still active, writing letters to political prisoners.

She is the most prominent Asian American civil rights activist ever. The style of the painting is that we didn't use any brushes - it's all made by dipping our hands in paint and putting it on the canvas. We wanted to ask other friends to participate by putting their hands on the painting too because it's a tribute - in the same way her hands laid the foundation for our work, our hands can honor her contributions.

We were partly inspired by the work of modern american artist,Chuck Close, who recreated photos with paint, by concentrating on tiny pieces - one dot at a time. But instead of using fingertips, we used our whole hands.

But most of all, it means a lot to us because me & G met when we were at UMass. Chuck Close used to teach there. The Asian American center there is called the Yuri Kochiyama Cultural Center. I think most of us who put our hands on the painting, we learned who Yuri was when we were in college, when we developed our Asian American political identity. It all comes together, and this project was the perfect thing for us to do together!

With me & G as the lead artists, we've had contributions from: VyVy Trinh, Theresa Vu, Chengyang Lor, Mike Keo, Wameng Lor, Theresa Hwang, Sophea Khem, Eugene Shih, Chun Fai Chan, Chintra Pich, Lyna Sun, Christophe Lim, Pywat Tan, Mealear Tan, and Morodoc Tan.

On May 19, Yuri turns 88 years old: that's the day we bring this project to a close.

Guest Post / Bok Sadai (#5 Style)

it's G here. hi. two weeks until S gets back.

the dish i never tasted before S was bok lahong (papaya salad), as well as its variants like bok sadai (green bean salad), and what we call "bok mango" - which is self-explanatory. But the term "bok" in khmer doesn't mean salad, it means the method by which you make these dishes, by crushing all the ingredients in a huge mortar and pestle thing.

i am something of a connoisseur. i can pick out my wife's bok dishes out of anyone's in the world. it's pretty unlike anything i grew up eating, so i set out to learn how to make it. after working on it for months, i have determined myself to be the #5 best bok-er in the world. yeah i said it.

so before she left, we done did this. check it:


these are the ingredient for making bok sadai: fish sauce, shrimp paste, garlic, lime, MSG, smoked fish, hot peppers, beer. (missing: green beans and sugar)


then you toast this smoked fish for a little while to bring out the flavor. it's still in the package here, we bought it in revere or maybe lowell. at this point, you should also drink your beer. if you need more, go ahead and get more.


cut up the green beans into little pieces like this. check out how fast my knife moves - it's a blur! i think this was the day i sliced off the tip of my finger.


BOK the smoked fish. break up the bones!


add the fish sauce, lime, shrimp paste, garlic, peppers, msg, and sugar. BOK that! my steez is to add a little at a time of fish sauce, lime, and sugar and taste along the way and add more of each accordingly. the flavor has to be a balance of salty, sweet, sour, and MSG-y. all those flavors should be strong too. you can only know if you know.


add the sadai and keep up the BOKing.


blacken some chicken. dark meat is highly preferred - but that's always preferred in my opinion.


typically, most people like to BOK the sadai to the point where it's more pasty than this. but my style is to keep them more whole, i like the texture that way.


eat with rice. holla.