3rd generation renovation

This weekend I painted our breakfast nook all by myself (I kind of had to do it all by myself because everyone else in the house had painted a room on their own too, so I took on the kitchen). All I can say is that if you're not on the tall side, a ladder is your best friend when doing tasks like these.

There will be more projects to come.

The nook before

Getting ready to start painting

The nook after

The first year

I started this blog a year ago to give myself something productive to do. It started as some sort of a journal for my day to day life, but since then I have gone in a different direction. I started making things with my hands, all sorts of bad DIY projects. I wanted to show people that not all projects come out perfect, but the point of doing the project was to at least try it once!

So, in honor of my strange little blog turning one year old (because honestly, I thought it wouldn't make it to a year), I want to give something back.

For this first birthday: one reader will get a free PARA MORIR NACIMOS t-shirt reconstructed by AWCA. Just to be forewarned, it ain't gonna be perfect but at least you'll know you're the only one with a one of a kind t-shirt.

A free shirt is a free shirt.

Side Project: PARA MORIR NACIMOS

This is a side project I am working on with Bearded Man for his blog PARA MORIR NACIMOS. We will have t-shirts and stickers for sale soon. We want to show positive and real imagery during confusing times like these. 

Love it or hate it, Death is coming for you.

PARA MORIR NACIMOS is not obsessed with the morbid. Death is a natural process we must all go through. We are born to die. But we should not fear Death, we should welcome it. If we fear Death, we fear life. We fear to live our lives the way we want, to find happiness in the smallest things, to make light of big problems. 

PARA MORIR NACIMOS is a positive message. We believe in: living life to your heart's desires, welcoming Death as a natural process, loyalty til death, and of course, supporting your family, supporting your friends, and supporting what you believe in.

Here are some things we have in store in the coming future.

Not-so-spontaneous DIY Monday: heart pocket tee

When my co-worker and friend, Ashley, had asked me to do something interesting to some of her t-shirts, I was flattered. No one's ever asked me to do anything like that before. The fact that she let me do some sort of project with her t-shirt really meant a lot to me, someone actually thought my DIY stuff was not all that bad. I'm not the best at DIY, as I've said this many times before,but I find so much joy just sitting on my floor and hacking up t-shirts and listening to good music.
Now, for this not-so-spontaneous DIY Monday (because I had actually planned this project out to the best of my ability), I modeled Ashley's shirt from the one I made here.

It's just any other ordinary cotton American Apparel t-shirt. Have scissors, needle and thread, and some willing hands to do this project. I sew everything by hand, I don't own a sewing machine...yet!

Next, using two pieces of fabric, cut the pocket out into the shape of a heart. You can use, one piece of fabric if you'd like. Don't let fabric go to waste!

Sew the two pieces together with any colored thread you want.

Pin down.

Sew the heart-pocket onto the t-shirt but keep the top part open. Then cut the collar if you'd like.

There we go. I don't know why I decided on a heart-shaped pocket (a black heart, no less), but I thought it would be a little bit more cheery than just a regular pocket.

Spontaneous DIY Wednesday night

Who knows how others create projects, but I know that mine cannot be planned out. They never work when I plan it out. So after many failed planned DIY projects, I gave up and now do everything on a whim. This afternoon this idea (pictured above) to turn a plain men's black long sleeve into a pocket tee came up in a moment of boredom at work. 

Any plain old oversize t-shirt will do. Go nuts with it. The cut of the shirt depends on your preferences.

After you've cut your sleeves, use the excess and trace out a pocket. I have another pocket tee already, so I just used that as a pattern. 

Cut it and sew it on. If you have a sewing machine, you are very lucky! I sewed this pocket on by hand. (Sorry for the shit quality photo. It's spontaneous, duh.)

And these are the results. If you can see the detail, congrats! You have amazing vision.

Spontaneous DIY Saturday: No Statik racerback

Turn a regular t-shirt into a racerback tank. I bought this No Statik t-shirt at Chaos with many plans in mind for it. When I came back from my trip to Chaos, I didn't get to my project right away and my t-shirt just sat in different spots in the room.
I found this tutorial on BUST .
You can follow the steps here.
And here are my results.

Spontaneous DIY Saturday: S. Pellegrino to TANKCRIMES

I'm sure this has been done before somewhere else in the internet world of DIY projects, but I thought I'd share my take on this anyway.
I took an old S. Pellegrino bottle, washed off the label, and put a sticker on it to continue its use of hydrating me on a warm day.

I have multiples of these TANKCRIMES stickers at home. So if this bottle happens to break in the future, I can slap on another one of these bad boys and it's all good.

Spontaneous DIY Sunday

Today I decided to tie-dye one of my newest band t-shirts to the best of my ability. I've dyed clothes before, but had never done tie-dye because I considered that shit for the hippies. But seeing as this t-shirt was white and not black, I decided to do something different--very different! I had one box of navy dye left over from a few months back when I went a little dye-crazy and decided that it was the only color  I wanted to work with (also because I was too lazy to leave my house to buy a different color). 

Tie-dye, and DIY itself, isn't supposed to be perfect no matter what results you see on DIY-whatever tutorials. My DIY projects are the worst example of great results. Nothing ever comes out the way I envision it, but I still wear all of my DIY projects gone bad. I'm wearing a pair of dark purple jeans that were supposed to turn out black but never did as I type this! If you don't like something and want to change it, do it. If it doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to, who the fuck cares? OWN IT! So, here it is: my first attempt at tie-dye. I'm the only one now with a CRYPT KEEPER tie-dye tank top, unless there is someone out there with one too. I'd like to see!

BEFORE

The materials on hand.

I forgot to wear gloves and I'll be sporting purple hands for the next week. Also, excuse the mess, we're in the process of cleaning out a bunch of junk from our backyard.

AFTER

Skateboard "art"

Bearded Man asked me to draw something on his new skateboard and this is all I could come up with.

Zines, wonderful zines!

Today I got the great idea to start a zine of my own. 

I have no idea why out of nowhere this idea popped in my head. 

Lately I've been in a slump in my life, I got sick and it's just now going away. So now that my energy to do things is coming back little by little, I want to do things. Lots of things! 

And one of those things is starting a zine of my own.

Something to share with my friends, and all of my 5 readers for AWCA!

Tell me what your favorite zines are!!! I want to know.

I can make this shit

I'm back from my mini-vacation to Vegas and have come back with a ton of new DIY ideas to try out. After visiting every luxury brand store you can think of at Caesar's Palace, I saw that many places had accessories that I can make and I don't have to spend a ton of money on it. Here are some that I saw that I want to try and make:

Marc Jacobs Las Vegas

Chloe Las Vegas

Not everything that happens in Vegas has to stay there.

My first

Homemade pizza!

I don't think I can ever go back to ordering pizza again...well, maybe if it's from Pizza & Curry. I had told myself earlier in the year that I wanted to attempt to make a pizza. Off to Trader Joe's it was to get the ingredients:

Pre-made pizza dough

pesto sauce

mozzarella

chopped pancetta

sliced Roma tomatoes

Assemble it any way you want, stick in in the oven at 400 for 15 minutes and there it is!

Just add your favorite beer.

Life of a night owl

More and more I find myself watching TV alone late at night because Bearded Man goes to work early in the morning, so he's usually out by 10:30 on most nights, what else am I supposed to do? I've tried going to sleep when he does but it does not work for me!
As I've mentioned before, I really really love watching TV.  Especially when it includes shows that gives me an inside look of people looking for and/or buying a house, people buying fixer-upper homes and remodeling them (I'm so jealous of people on this show because I want a fixer-upper, but that's another post for another time), and shows about remodeling bathrooms, kitchens, and back yards. I change the channel when it's a show about remodeling a basement, houses in California rarely have basements, so I really don't care for those episodes.
HGTV must be keeping track of what shows I watch the most because they give me hours-long marathon of House Hunters, Property Brothers, and Bath/Yard Crashers that I crave for this time of night.

People are looking for a house to buy, they're shown 3 houses, and then they choose which one they liked best or had the best price. My only reservation with this show is when they have this childless couple or a couple with only one child and they want like a 4 fucking bedroom home. Why do you need so many rooms for a family of three? Oh, you want more children? Oh, you want your child to have a separate room for their toys? Blah blah blah, first world problems. Either way, I can't stop watching. I like looking at houses, except for track homes. Those suck ass.

They're twins! One is a real estate agent who shows you your dream home but then tells you can't afford it. But don't worry, he's going to show you what you can afford, a fixer-upper home. Usually the buyer is a whiner who just wants a move-in ready home, doesn't want to deal with renovations, and other shit "too much to do, so little time." That's when real estate agent guy brings in his twin brother who's a contractor and shows the whiney buyer that buying a fixer-upper home isn't such a bad thing. It gives the buyer the opportunity to fix their house the way they want to, given if they budget correctly. All the homes turn out to be wonderful and so much better than the model dream homes they wanted in the first place. I'm so jealous of them. I would like a fixer-upper of my own one day. Baby steps. In about five years, I'll be calling you, Property Brothers!

First of all, I cannot stand the hosts of these shows, they're annoying. If one of them came up to me while I was shopping at Home Depot or Lowe's, I'd say no to their offer of fixing up my bathroom or yard in two days as well, just like half of the people they scout at the beginning of the show. Other than that, I really like the outcome of the renovations at the end. It's just a shame you'd have to spend two days with those annoying hosts.

Ooooh, House Hunters International is on! Yay!

Because I'm starting to get old lady hands

Last month I tried using my mom's sewing machine to no avail. I've decided to invest in my own. Don't get me wrong, hand sewing is great, but my hands were starting to cramp up and I can't sew some big projects I have in mind of doing all by hand! 

I'm thinking about investing in this bad boy, so I can get to doing some Frankenstein-like things to thrifted finds that I have hanging in my closet.

Drooling

Today I was getting my The Sartorialist fix at lunch and could not stop staring at this beautiful dress

Now I have to add this to the growing list of DIY projects I have in mind.

Yeah, it's a bit on the simple side, but that's why I'm drawn to it.

One project down, so many more to go

Earlier this month I was rummaging through my mom's sewing stuff and found day-of-the-week towels to embroider. I wanted to take all of them with me but my mom said to take one first and if I finished I could come back for another. I don't have a good track record with projects. They get started but slowly I begin to lose interest. It almost happened with the Lunes towel I took with me that day, but earlier this week I finished it! I felt so accomplished. Sewing helped me relax after a long day, it helped me be less bored on weekend afternoons when there was nothing to do and I'd be all alone.

After week one. This is all I thought about when I was at work.

Saturday afternoons with Bearded Man's mom. She was crocheting a dress and we were listening to Mexican oldies all afternoon.

Embroidering the word "Lunes" was the hardest part and I almost gave up on it.

I neglected my project for a week and decided to pick it up again.

Fucking finally! The embroidery part is done, but then I was reminded that I have to crochet the edges to make it look nicer for the tortillas it will be holding.

But that can wait, because now it's time for me to start working on this bad boy.

When I saw this at a thrift store, I thought "Jeez what an ugly blouse." But after staring at it for a few minutes I convinced myself that I can make it pretty. 

Wish me luck on this project. I'm really liking this whole finishing things that I've started.