Wedding Colors

A quick trip to my kitchen will tell you that I love every color in the rainbow.

Though I was very committed to a single favorite color as a child, pink, I have since developed a deep enthusiasm for color of every hue.  How, then, could I possibly pick a color theme for my wedding?  Well, because Joseph told me to. 

Joseph did, however, put the kybosh on my idea of a rainbow themed wedding.  He thought it was too gay.  I have no idea what he is talking about.  My friends—Angela, Cher, and Judy—all thought it was a great idea. 

My second big idea was based on a color I have long loved.  Robin’s egg blue was always in my list of favorites.  It reminds me of the sky, the sea, and finding robin’s nests with my Gram as a kid.  That was good enough for Joseph, he locked that in right away as the best color idea I have ever had.  Since I was wearing a sky blue shirt when we met, he has always associated light blues with me.  He especially loves the robin’s egg shades that he finds in blue topaz, a jewel he loves to buy for me. 

He wanted topaz blue on white and that was it.  No color schemes.  No color family.  Just greenish-blue on white.  Done. 

And then Angela voiced what I was thinking.  “That will look a little wintery,” she said.  So I went back to the drawing board.  You see, I can’t just leave well enough alone.  When I wrap presents, I REALLY wrap them with color, pizzazz, and a whole lot of amenities like ribbons and bows! 

And there was the season to consider.  We are getting married next fall.  This means I could use one of my favorite trees for inspiration and base my colors as a complementary display of rowanberry reds. 

We were also getting married in October, the month we shared our first date in all those years ago.  Shouldn’t I give a nod towards the traditional October color schemes that involve pumpkins and spices? 

And of course, for those of you who read this blog on a regular basis, I made a comparison from my favorite childhood toy (which I wasn’t allowed to have) and the right to choose my mate regardless of my gender.  This toy was Peaches n’ Cream Barbie, and wouldn’t a Peaches n’ Cream color palette look amazing in fall for a wedding? 

And then the ideas all began to be too much.  If I had one color family, maybe I could work in another color.  The muddy, messy compilation was starting to look less like a rainbow and more like a patchouli scented tie-dye project.  I had to clear my mind, clear my ideas, and come up with the colors that would best express Joseph and me. 

And that’s when I knew I had to use robin’s egg blue.  It was Joseph’s favorite, and it was his favorite because it reminded him of me.  So, I started to look at how robin’s egg blue looked with white.  I decided that I would use a color palette of browns: chocolate, cappuccino, and ivory.  These colors look warm, romantic, and very autumnal.  But I would punch up the browns with robin’s egg blue, a color I now realize is a signature color of my life with Joseph.  From the shirt I was wearing when I first met Joseph, to the color we painted our old dining room, to the jewelry Joseph picks out for me; robin’s egg blue has been there through it all. 

This color is all about our life together.  And shouldn’t the color scheme you choose represent you?  I think so … but I will probably have to throw a kicking rainbow schemed party one of these days!

Christmas Police

I am not knitting for Christmas this year.  I am not baking.  I am not planning on anything above and beyond the yuletide season.   And even so, I am feeling the holiday spirit coming on strong.  I feel liberated by the pressure I usually feel when I put myself to tasks.  Don’t get me wrong, knitting hats for everyone in my extended family in 2005 felt good, and exciting, and very rewarding.  But I think the pressure to make something extraordinary out of December twenty-fifth can dampen some of the jovial mood.  And so, my gift to myself this year is to not fall into that trap of feeling like I “have to” do something.  If I feel like knitting, or baking, then I will.  If I do not, then I will not.

 

So imagine my surprise, with my devil-may-care attitude towards Christmas this year, when the spirit hit me big time.  I was only too excited to get Joseph up on a ladder to get the lights up.  And that’s when we got hit with a citation from The Christmas Police.  My neighbor’s mother has a strict “nothing Christmas before Thanksgiving” policy.  So, my younger neighbors were worried about our violation, and indeed, under threat of having our lights stripped from us if we violated this rule again, we staved off further decorating.  You cannot cross the Christmas police.  We have the citation on our refrigerator to remind us of this fact. 

 

But Thanksgiving passed, as it always does.  I brought out our old, tried-and-true, four-and-a-half foot Martha Stewart pre-lit Christmas tree from the garage.  I will be having no disastrous experiments like last year!  On Sunday (yes, Christmas Police, the Sunday after Thanksgiving!) I pulled together my ornaments and set to work decorating our fake little tree. 

 

I wanted to put every ornament we own on it when I pulled out the Christmas box, but I had new ornaments that I wanted to show off to best advantage.  So I put nostalgia aside, and decorated our tree with a silver ribbon, the silver balls, the teal balls, and even a couple of gold balls so I could show off the blue butterfly ornaments Joseph bought for me at Wally World.  But I thought the tree could use some warmth, so I set myself an impromptu craft project.

 

I cut random star shapes out of a paper bag and glued them on a long piece of brown yarn.  This I used as a garland, and wrapped it in a zigzag across our tree front.  And I made a large star for the top of our tree using stars cut from the same paper bag, glued together for solidarity, and attached to a toilet paper roll which fits the top of our tree brilliantly.  I added a touch of blue glitter to the top star so it would stand out a little. 

 

I probably could have used a template for my stars, or taken more time on the topper, but I am glad I didn’t.  It came together very quickly without me worrying about details, and the organic look of the stars keeps the tree from looking too processed.  This is no small feat for a fake tree to look anything but over-processed.  I love how our little tree looks.  And I guess I’m the only guy I need to impress. 

I am pleased to say that I already have presents under the tree.  I am also a little miffed that someone has already bought things for me to put under the tree when that same someone hasn’t even told me we had money to shop for each other this year.  But I digress. 

The Holidays are here!  And Christmas is right around the corner!  So how is your decorating going? 

Rope Rigging: a Christmas Tradition

We put our Christmas lights up outside on the porch today.  Joseph had to rent a ladder from the Home Depot because ours wasn’t quite tall enough.  He had his staple gun out, and I had to help him reach for things and hold the ladder while he climbed.  Though Joseph has a massive fear of heights, he wouldn't allow me to climb the ladder.  He has a fear of me breaking my neck (a very real possibility, maybe even a certainty).  Inspite of his fear, Joseph insisted he was the one to climb the ladder, and it was high! 

 

     So out he comes from the garage, through the house, and onto the front porch while I was waiting for him in the front yard.  He had an old rope he’s had since I can’t remember.  He starts wrapping it around himself, under his arms, then through his legs and back up to his arms.  I am not going to lie, it looked a little ridiculous.  It looked a lot like Chevy Chase in “Christmas Vacation.”  But the only thing that kept me from laughing out loud was the fact that he was utterly serious about it.  I may be spilling a Frank and Joseph family secret by writing about this daring do and rope trick, but I have to!  Joseph was a little skeptical of the couple of pictures I snapped of him, but I mumbled something about “before and after shots.”  I hope he bought it. 

            The rope came off very quickly because it was more cumbersome than it was intended to be.  I will have to post a picture of the lights, but I want to wait on the Christmas stuff until after Thanksgiving. 

Love is Love

I sat on the couch on election night with a man I had met twelve years ago.  He had come into my store on 5^th and Pine in Downtown Seattle with his boyfriend at the time and his boyfriend’s parents.  I gave the boyfriend’s parents a nice discount, and at lunch I handwrote a four page letter on a legal pad to my friend Shawn to tell her about the jerk I met who was flirting with me even though he had a boyfriend. 

A friend’s fiancé told us, when he met us, that he thought the story of how we met was refreshing, because it wasn’t through a social dating network.  And then I realized that my relationship predated E-Harmony.  That was back in the day when women died a lot in childbirth and Joseph and I were gay out of necessity. 

We were adamantly not watching any election results.  We had a lot riding on this one.  Not only would the question be answered of who would be captaining the ship for the next four years, but the State of Washington had Referendum 74 up for the voters’ consideration.  Referendum 74 would give same sex couples the basic human right of saying who they wanted their spouse to be. 

I had to work at eleven that night—the joys of being a night nurse!  But before I left, I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I whipped out my phone and went straight to Facebook where the first inkling that something wonderful had happened was this post from one of my dearest soul-sisters, Angela:

“Hooray!!! So...when are we gonna have a wedding planning mimosa/waffle date?! Hell, this is such an amazingly awesome thing, maybe we should just make it a standing biweekly date. Love you guys!!!”

And even though I couldn’t quite breathe easily about having the new right to marry until the Seattle Times put out that the opposition to gay marriage had conceded to the win, I was glowing.

When I walked into work, all of the evening shift looked at me like I had just opened a present they had all saved up to buy for me, and that is how it felt.  I knew that these people cared about me and were happy that I finally had a way of expressing my twelve-year-old love to the world in a way that was understood at once. 

My union can now be sanctioned in my very own state under the term and entitlements of marriage, and it feels amazing!  Thank you, Washington State! 

Hot Grape Mess

So just as fall is steeping itself into winter, and I was thinking I was getting off scott free when it comes to canning and jamming and wine-ing, my very lovely neighbors wanted to know if I wanted some grapes. My lazy side really wanted to say “no, thank you.” But then my neighbor busts out this little ditty:
  “[The Grapes are] all yours if you want them for wine or some other yummy homesteadish type project.”
  My neighbor is lovely, and she HAD to throw down the “homesteadish” challenge. Has she been reading my blog? Does she know Laura Ingalls Wilder is my home girl? I couldn’t refuse the opportunity to homestead it up. So later that day, this was on my back door step:

 

Now I had to do something with my hot grape mess. So I pulled out my big guns:

 

My good ol’ canner.

 

And my good ol’ canning supplies. And then I went to get my pectin, and was loathe to discover I only had enough Ball fruit Pectin to make one batch of grape jelly. I had another option, but I shuddered as I reached for …

 

… the Sure Jell, which is neither very sure, nor does it usually jell. This stuff is awful, and if you are reading this blog for canning advice (which you shouldn’t be) then I will advise you to not waste your money on this stuff. If you must waste your money on something that promises a sure jell, do NOT buy Sure Jell, just send me the money you want to waste, and I will send you a package of dirt instead. The Sure Jell even comes with instructions on what to do if it doesn’t jell!!! No other pectin products I’ve invested in even remotely hint at the possibility that their product won’t work.

Why do I have this in my cupboard, you ask. That was a story that goes a little something like this:

Joseph: I bought groceries, here’s the pectin you asked for.
Frank: I didn’t ask for this, this stuff is horrible!
Joseph: It’s pectin.
Frank: I wrote BALL FRUIT PECTIN on the list.
Joseph: This was Cheaper.
Frank: cuss cuss cuss.

 

 

So I made two batches of Jelly. The first batch was strictly grape juice with the rest of my Ball Fruit Pectin. The second batch was Sure Jell with mostly grape juice with a little blueberry juice thrown into the mix to stretch the leftover grape juice.

 

Needless to say, the first batch set up, and the second one did NOT. I will now have to follow Sure Jell’s handy instructions for what to do when their product fails. This requires another box of their product, but I’m not buying any more of it because my Joseph made sure to really stock the cupboards with the Sure Jell. So I have plenty.
 

 

In other news, I was also jealous of Joseph who got to dress up for work on Halloween, so I dressed myself up for two hours so I didn’t feel left out. Joseph was a Cowboy Vampire, and I did a quick March Hare costume with things I had on hand here at the house.

 

Joseph took me to Target like this and bought me a treat. I was very gratified and not at all pathetic.

Elements of Design: A Barbie Gown Deconstructed

I won the Barbie Project Runway challenge by only two votes. There were many designs that were superb, and the competition was cutthroat. I loved the ideas and the executions I saw lined up on the coffee table turned runway. I wanted to know everyone’s thought process, but the party didn’t lend itself to a good discussion on where people started and where they finished. I can only think for myself, but I wanted to take a Barbie design from the ground up and show where I start and finish. It all begins, for me, at the drawing board, literally. I begin sketching not only to come up with ideas, but to see how I liked them. When you draw a lot, you have time to really think about working the ideas over in fabric. Here are a few of my Sketches for the 2012 Peaches n’ Cream update challenge:

I can tell you from all my sketches (and there were many, many others) that I tended to like the idea of a full skirt with a hemline high enough to show off a fancy pair of shoes. I also began to really fancy the idea of a white dress with the pop of peach color coming through a bit of floral work. The next thing I need is a doll. After Roberta Sanchez, I doubted I would ever work with another model. But in the 2010 challenge, I tried working with another doll I named Pamela, and I thought it was a success. Roberta has a lot of personality that I find a little distracting when I design from scratch. I found myself designing audacious things for Roberta whereas Pamela, a blank doll devoid of the personality Roberta had, allowed me to freely design a look with my own idea of taste and sophistication. Roberta isn’t exactly sophisticated.

The new doll came from Amazon.com because she comes from a line of Barbies, like Pamela, that make great fashion dolls. These are the Barbie Basics line (which is unfortunately out of commission). Not only are Barbie Basics dolls designed to look like supermodels, they also come with stands so they can showcase our while standing virtually on their own. Amazon.com still carries these dolls, but some are more expensive than others based on availability.

I liked the new doll. She had a sweet face and a fresh look I found appealing. Her bangs and her brunette hair, I thought, would complement a peach-and-white design better than a redhead (which would clash) or a blonde (which would be washed out by the colors). I decided to name her Thalia. Now, the sketches rarely look exactly like my actual dresses or outfits. The sketches are the rough drafts. When I start working with actual materials, the idea takes shape with its own quirks and perks. This party was ill-timed for us. We were trying to budget and we had very little money left after each pay check to pay for things like material or notions. So, in a quick fit of inspiration, I decided I couldn’t wait for fabric; I had to design right now.

I took a piece of paper from our printer and crumpled it up, straightened it, and crumpled it again. I did this over and over until the paper was pliant and held a fold without looking like a fold. Then, with this paper, I began to play with shape on Thalia’s body. I had the overall bodice, neckline, and skirt length down when I rummaged through my cupboards and found my small cupcake papers. These I layered to build up a skirt. I couldn’t help but to use the cupcake papers for adding architectural interest to my design.

When the money finally did find its way to the craft store, I bought embellishments for the gown Thalia was already wearing. I found paper flowers in the scrapbook aisle in varying shades of peach. I arranged these in an ombre fade on the gown with my trusty Aleene’s Tacky Glue. Joseph found shimmery fabric in two different shades of peach for me to use as the underskirts. I layered these from lighter to dark to carry over the ombre look.

The higher hemline begged for a fun pair of shoes.

And voila! Here was the design that would win me the 2012’s Barbie Project Runway Challenge!

I can’t wait for next year!

Barbie Project Runway 2012

Barbie Project Runway 2012 was an amazing success. We had new designers from across the board and the talent that showed up left us clamoring for more!

The challenge was to take the look of 1984’s Peaches n’ Cream Barbie and bring it into 2012. (I apologize for some blurry pictures, I am hoping to get some better pictures from the designers themselves. As it was, the party was too fun for any of us to think clearly about proper photos.) So without further ado, here are the designs:

Angela, one of our original designers from 2009 brought out a super girlie array of blossoms and pink, giving a full skirt and fitted top look that paid homage to the original doll’s look.

Two new designers, Jennifer and Rey, are clearly a double threat. This married couple brought two distinct looks. Both looks held surprises that delighted the spectators. Jennifer’s look was all about “Make Love Not War,” with her butterfly-inspired bodice and dancing-veil skirt. Beneath those skirts was a shimmery set of panties made from shiny butterfly stickers.

Rey’s look, which he called “Roxanne Pow” was quite the opposite. The beguiling beauty distracted us with her peach-stripe-on cream coat and her nearly-nothing undergarments. But she blew us away with her surprise assassin weapons! To top things off, she wore a pair of white gloves and came with a watch to time things like bombs and perm solution.

Joseph’s girls came out to shine. Forgive me, but this is the best picture I have of Julie Ann’s look: a black-topped dress with a twirling skirt of peach-and-green. It was a lovely gown.

Katie’s dress was a blossom inspiration. This gown smacked of someone who has competed with us a couple of times, but I’m told Katie threw it together the night before. Like I said, she seemed just like some of us who have done this before!

My look was inspired less by invention and more by necessity. I worked with things I had in my house: paper and cupcake cups. I trimmed it out with some peach scrapbook flowers in an ombre effect, and filled her skirt out with a shimmery fabric.

Corina took the idea of peaches and cream literal when it came to her materials: food labels for Peach snacks and whip cream. But when it came to her execution, her look took the literal materials and executed a look that was editorial, modern, and inspired. Part Japanese pop-culture, part daytime couture, and part Barbie Hipster, this look brought exclamations of delight.

Here is Judy's Barbie, standing next to Britney's.

Judy, as always, took her attention to detail to amazing heights with her design. Hollywood glam in hand-placed glitter took to the lights and her creamy boa gave us a new texture on which to rest our eyes. The overall look was a red carpet success! Britney crafted a sweet cocktail dress from ribbon for her 2012 look. The design was seamless! Absolutely adorable, this look was ready to walk down the street, and Britney would not forgive me for neglecting to say she had the best braid in show.

Kimberly, who contributed to the money pot, was upset that we had to pick only one winner and couldn’t have prizes for “most inventive,” “best color,” and other things, because all of the designs were very well done. The votes were tight, but there was a winner. I am a little chagrined to say that the winner was me, and I am excited to compete against these talented people again next year! Barbie Project Runway 2012 was a success!