darkitysnark

Our entire neighborhood (save for the few diligent/stubborn homeowners) has brown lawns right now. Crispity crunchity goodness. I'm of the "mulch it all" camp anyway, so dead grass doesn't phase me too much. I'd love to have some sort of fruit bearing trees... pomegranates! Thanks for posting pics!

Purely through serendipity, Snarky was directed to the site of one Walt Lockley (link to his site, here's his Wikipedia user bio). She needs to find out more about this man. She read about the history of the Garden of Allah in Hollywood and thought of Valentina when she read the following passage: Snarky doesn't even know if anyone else gets excited about things like this (she has only recently been reminded of her own love affair with the built environment), but she just had to share that tidbit.

Wow. The more Snarky reads Lockley, the more she likes him. And now she wants to visit the Capitol! Straight up corn!

Oh, Snarky isn't an architect. She decided going into third year (and with more finality during her study abroad semester in Italy) that she just couldn't do it the justice it deserved. Plus her education was sub-par. (Though she sort of let it be too.) She just doesn't have the cajones to look a wealthy client in the face and say "it is thus because I said so". (Plus she's pretty certain anything she designs would look awesome but be structurally unsound.) She's just an avid fan like the rest of us. Mr. Lockley's site(s) (there's also a group of essays under his "Place Doctor" personae) are still under construction, but what he does have up is so insightful and accessible (a rarity in architectural criticism sometimes).

(New pics posted in Snarky's BPAL Member Gallery. She's having trouble linking to them directly ATM.) Snarky has posted picks of The Blackening. The dining room was originally a cranberry red, which looked very striking next to the neutral gray of the living room. Then the Snarks up and painted the living room candy apple green. In combination with the red, they were then faced with Christmas on Acid. So... they decided to put down an equally bright and cheery orange to complement the green only... it didn't. At all. Then The Mister, the normally non-gothy of the two Snarks, had a brainstorm: paint it BLACK. The Snarks had a gallon of matte black pain on hand to use as a base coat to the blood red they are planning for the basement AV room. After minor cajoling ("It'll look crisp against the white trim and green w/red accents theme of the living room! There will be so many pieces of art and state plates on the wall the black will look like a framing device!") Snarky agreed and now they have a BLACK dining room. Snarky is now considering a recycled antler chandelier as well. (only not really) (maybe?)

HFCS is the bane of my MIL's existance. She gets strange side effects after consuming anything containing the stuff (which is everywhere). The Mister and I don't read labels much, but we do check to make sure all of our juices don't have it, and that any sliced bread has it very low on the ingredient list (if at all). There was a small puddle of it on the bakery floor yesterday and one of my co-workers accidentally stepped in it. Not only is this stuff bad for you, but it is a downright bugger to get off your shoe! S*** is nasty sticky!

Please forgive Snarky for pointing you in the direction of this article (links to Salon dot com, you'll probably have to click through a day pass to get there). But. Marble bag?! She had never heard it called that before. Now, "banana hammock" (which really is fun to say out loud) for sure, but "Marble Bag"? Thus concludes this little bit of summertime fun.

Yeah. Just .

It took Snarky entirely too long to get that. Must acquire some caffeine. Perhaps a "bandana hammock" would be something one of the Duke boys would sport on a sweltering summer excursion to the local watering hole. Daisy can't have all the fun!

"'Do Rag" (And I totally rock the what-ever-you-call-ums too, spousal disapproval be damned!)

I was totally thinking "Why the heck would she want vintage bananas? That's.... kind of squishy, right?" Time for some caffeine, me thinks. I enjoy the MnS's too... but since I'm a much slower acquirer of la BPAL (I'm more of a Reduce-Reuse-Recycle enthusiast than a make-monthly-order-er) I don't have much to bring to the table other than small containers of coffee beans and my rapier wit. Still, it's fun being around like-minded folks for a change.

Puuurty! I am fond of I'm Not Really a Waitress! on other people (the pinkish red doesn't look quite right on me, I'm more of a Kennebunk-Port gal) but this looks good too. Very cute sakura, and the french mani makes your hands very continental! (Channeling Christopher Walken: "Would yew cahr for some champ-anyuh?")

I too was admiring your french mani! Also the big bowl of bounty. Beautiful! One thing I learned about growing jade plants (and this might not apply so much for your cuttings since it's the leaves and not leaves and stalks) is to cluster the cuttings together. They sort of support eachother as they grow. I love the way the christmas cactus looks all "Night of the Living Dead" and all.

Yay Money! (What a relief!)

The living room, formerly a sort of cranberry red - which was lovely when the living room was a cool grey but clashes badly with the candy apple green, is currently a decidedly horrid first-coat shade of yellow-orange papaya. It's a fun shade. Festive, even, but just not what should go next to such a bright, vibrant, glowing green. Just... no. So The Mister just got off the phone with Snarky to propose... black. His reasons: 1) the Snarks already have a gallon matte black (not because they are goths, but because they wanted to use it as the base coat for the gumball red going up down in the basement... because they are goths) 2) the ultimate wall treatment for the living room will be nothing more than a framing device for all the state plates (The Mister's new Goodwill scavanger hunt obsession) large art posters (Mucha and other Arts & Crafts/pre-Raphaelite/etc. type work) and other various arty things. The walls will be crowded with stuff, and any color will be even less than background in the end. 3) the tenative theme for the living/dining room is "chinoiserie", with the brilliant green accented by laquered blacks, clear reds, and crisp whites. Using black in the dining room would in the end clash much less than the Bango-Mango-Madness currently erupting along two-thirds of the dining room (and ringing the windows and trim) 4) resale, schmesale. So... Snarky's convinced. Worst case scenario: they end up using a gallon of Kilz to remove all proof of their folly. Best case: they continue to make this house truly and uniquely ChezSnark. Still, yikes!

The first coat is down. The Mister sang AC/DC's "Back in Black" the whole time... but Snarky was secretly thinking about red doors instead.

Snarky owns several statementy T-shirts that she used to employ to keep her sense of self at the gym. One had a giant, glaring Big Brother (from "1984"), another declared "RACIAL STEREOTYPES DEHUMANIZE" (a gift from her activist brother), and yet another one implored the reader to "Visualize Whirled Peas". Which really has nothing to do with this post, except that Snarky finally managed to download some photos and was thinking along the lines of helping y'all to visualize her life out here in the Pacific Northwest. More to come, eventually. First, some more house pics! A bad photo of our finished floor upstairs. Also an inkling of our whacky PeeWee color choices. The cats spend most of their day up in the hutch. Meant to give you an idea of the amazing candy-apple-green of the living room. Also our slovenly ways. And love for Kubrick. ... and some travel pics... One of our recent bike excursions on the Spring Water Corridor Trail. The red speck is The Mister. A mural by the Devil's Punchbowl on the coast. The poppies are real. Closeup of the strange sand formations on Hobbit Beach. This is why the Snarks love the coast. The Snarky's on the coast! The Mister has sworn to learn how to use the camera. Someday you might actually see more than just Reflected!Snarky. OK... that's it for now. Coming soon: more coastal pics, the IKEA run, and 'maters!

Whoops! Snarky broke her own "third person rule". Ah well. So much for ironic distance in a personal blog. Valentina, vintage license plates would be very cool... so long as they don't have vintage smashed up bug bits on them still. ()

I've lurked that birthchart thread and often considered having mine read as well... even though I only have a passing knowledge of astrology. Lately it seems like a lot of Capricorn traits are surfacing for me, but with a sort of Leo-slant (my sun sign). I am ing you all the way in your creative pursuits! Once you find your niche, you'll wonder why you just weren't always painting/drawing/sculpting/writing/performance art attacking.

Hm... the TAL could be named.... "Bitch-B-Gone"? "One-Up-Man-Shipwrecked"? Hm... I agree, Beth would make bank on a formulation that could deter/repel/reform toxic officemates. I currently am not "blessed" with such a character where I am... it's more of a bullpen situation with all the engineers and construction contractors milling around... so somedays it's work site cussin', and other days it's "not in front of the LADY (pointing toward me)" (even though I am not the only woman in the office, I'm the most visable). ARGHBLARGH indeed. (I love saying that!) PS Mum Moon is really testing my BPAL diet resolve. The Mister and I are trying to keep "fun" spending to a minimum in anticipation of possible upcoming emergencies (trip Back East for a funeral and his possible undefined period of unemployment) but even the tee looks good to me (and I love all of Macha's art, but this one is more resonant... apparently I'm all about the opium dens!) Must resist! (But I'm still going to enjoy reading people's reviews in a month!)

Exactly! I think that's a great deal of the appeal for The Mister. The general wackiness and sort of "design by committee" feel of the plates. We've got some from Canada too! Some of them have lacy cut-outs and look sort of chunkily delicate (if that makes sense). There might be more than one Texas plate. But that's because it's Texas! Hm... we do have a small collection of license plates too (SC, NC, VA...) that might make it on the uber black wall o doom. I'm loving the colors we have so far, but they are all (save for the very light green in the stairwell) really saturated. I'm hoping that the overall effect isn't too overpowering. I like to have a few restful rooms too. (Which right now are the bathroom (dark grey) and the bedroom (chocolate brown).) Still.. black! Ieee!

Snarky is a big fan of the picture within a picture thing too (not to mention the whole inverted image thing what with our funky eyeballs and all that). Everytime the Snarks go to the coast, they feel at home and wonder why they stayed away for so long. The Snarks feel like they lucked out with the hardwood floors. Snarky developed adult-onset allergies within the last six years and almost needs hardwoods as a medical necessity. They are also pretty. And slippy. Finally: tumblecats are easier to clean up, though sort of creppy given a light breeze and poor lighting.

:plish: (Snarky's head just exploded.) ()

:shakes head: I'm sorry.... I .... was going to post something about.... um, toenails? And maybe polish? Or... something? But I keep getting mental flashes of hairy, incredibly tanned middle aged Italian men in Speedoes... and then my brain shuts down.

Every paint sample card the Snarks picked at the store... both of them zeroed in on the most saturated chip. That's just how they roll. Snarky has a vast array of "myspace"-esque self-portraiture. Anything done by The Mister is usually in nature and at a great distance (as if Snarky were a deer, perhaps?) Not sure why that is. Snarky completely forgot about those pics! All hair pics are self-portraits, but The Mister did do the Ent-Snack-Snark one. True. Snarky must give him photog props for that one.