As I've eluded to in the previous posts (slash "completely stated"), I did not "do" Halloween this year. I actually ran away from the city for a long weekend in New York City. We hadn't entirely intended to miss Halloween in the Tdot, but the conference my boyfriend was attending happened to be that weekend, and I'm game for most excuses to go to New York. Also, both of us got most of a week off from work as a result of this trip, so bonus.
The last weekend in October is a lovely weekend to see the fall colours in Central Park.
After a bumpy flight and a rainy walk to the hotel the night before, we were greeted by a 20 degree day in New York City. The boy went off to his conference and I started wandering throughout the city. I had a whole list of things I had some mind to do while there, well more than half of it was thrown to wayside in favour of wandering aimlessly.
Lady Liberty way off in the distance.
A Navel Monument of some kind... I neglected to read the plaque that closely.
Tribeca in the fall, looking fantastic.
I dragged G to the Chelsea Highline one night for an evening wander, which not only worked up the needed appetite for ramen and sashimi but was also a lovely place to see at night. The Highline was a raised train track in New York that stopped being used in 1980. Jump to 2006 and it's revitalization as a vibrant, urban green space. There are some handily place viewing platforms set up directly over some of the streets to get a view a fair ways through the city.
From the Chelsea Highline one evening.
The one Halloween-y thing we did do while in NY was the one touristy thing that G wanted to do, which was visit the Ghostbusters Fire Hall. Hook & Ladder #8 was open for business and handing out candy to the various trick-or-treaters. They fully celebrate the movie fame and offer tours of the fire hall itself.
Who ya gonna call?
While most of the costumes I saw throughout the day were remarkably disappointing (sorry NY, but y'all need to step it up), Taco Dog here brightened my afternoon significantly. I am not above enjoying cutesy dog costumes.
Taco Dog!
Our last morning was spent exploring Central Park, and occassionally going around it since we didn't know that the New York City Marathon went through the park. We got blessed with amazing weather throughout the trip, and the idea that it could be a comfortable 18 degrees on November 1rst was pretty sweet.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir... and some joggers.
Cleopatra's Needle.
G photographing Belvedere Castle... and my photo being ruined by an algae bloom advisory.
The gal on the left was less than impressed by ol' Burnsie.
Random Greenery.
All in all, it was an amazing trip. There were a few things I wish I had gotten too while I was there, but life's tough. We ate a lot of great food which made up for most things, and got a lovely sunset above the clouds on the way home. Some of my finds from this trip will be making appearances in the next wee while, since I did get to a thrift shop and a flea market. I've been quietly getting into all things Christmas since I got back but holding off until closer to now to be less annoying about it. I also like fall to be fall, and not CHRISTMAS on November 1rst. It may involve copper reindeer. Just sayin'.
First of all, the floral crown! It's finished! And here are the crappy photos of the build and finished product!
Step 1:
Try to clean your room, and then get board and insist on going for a walk to Dollarama to get some fresh air and some exercise. While there, be inspired and gather your materials.
-6 pack of plastic head bands (multi-coloured no less, black, brown and "blond"),
-Green ribbon, and
-Pack of stick-on paper flowers.
-Have a glue gun and sticks already.
Step 2:
Using your glue gun (badly in my case), wrap your ribbon around the head band. You can either glue and secure as you go along the entire head band, or just mega glue the bottom ends like I do. I found that if you wrap the ribbon tightly, it didn't shift or move once finished.
Pro-tip--> Keep a lighter handy, and burn the edges of cut ribbon to seal them and stop fraying. Burn carefully, they will melt a bit.
Step 3:
Start hot gluing those puppies on! I recommend picking a "front" of the head band, and face the flowers towards that direction. Try to get them fairly close together, or not. Whichever you'd prefer for your crown. There were some instances when the flower became detached from the foam sticky base it was on, so I just added more hot glue. It got a little messy back there, but this will be fixed momentarily.
Step 4: Time to cover up that mess in the back. Hot glue ribbon over the foam sticky pads of the flowers. This will cover the mess and further strengthen the flowers on the head band. I used smaller pieces of ribbon with slits cut in the bottom half to fold over themselves. This, in theory, creates a curve in the ribbon and will allow it to sit a little flatter. I'm sure you can attempt to do this with one piece of ribbon instead of many.
Step 5:
Wear it. Try to fiddle around with strange backgrounds, like an art poster purchase from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts almost 4 years ago. Also, attempt to actually wear outside the apartment.
There are several floral crown tutorials out there, I know. Lana Del Ray bringing the trend back, along with the summer festival season last year has cemented the floral crown in the young'uns' wardrobe. To add to the repertoire of links to check out, may I recommend,
Threadbanger's DIY Frida inspired floral crown tutorial (They're back!!! Soooo excited) (one could argue that my crown's construction is very much based on this tutorial),
and of course, the lovely and wonderful, Aunt Peaches's tutorial for a coffee filter fascinator. Yep.
As some of you may remember, I mentioned that I was going to New York City soon. Well, that was last weekend, and it was awesome. It was great to see some of my old classmates, and we got some amazing tours of the New York Public Library's collection of photographs, and the Museum of Modern Art's preservation facility. I also only took two pictures the entire time I was there. Quite pathetic in comparison to the first time I went to New York really, but what can you do? Here they are, by the way.
I've been cleaning my room all week. I've been making room for some furniture I should be getting from my parents' place *soon, and attempting to purge a lot of stuff. I'm half way there.
I also got bored with this idea several times. So I hit Dollarama as an excuse to get outside and get some fresh air. I got further inspired to ignore my room by picking up a few things.
Here's a few hints as to the finished project!
I'll post the finished product once I can get some better photographs of it, not on my desk and maybe in natural light. I wonder how many of my old photography teachers would be appalled by my current habits.
In other news, NEW FREAKIN' YORK. Several lovely ladies from previous years of my Master's program have organized a reunion, and it happens to be around AIPAD. I booked my hostel and flights this past week, and I'm pretty stoked. I've been compiling a list of vintage places and cheap food as another way of ignoring the vacuuming needing doing. Another post, hopefully a picture heavy one.
I'm back from New York, and painted all weekend, so most of me hurts. Progress requires payments, I just wish I could do it in installments.
AIPAD was awesome, and I got to meet up with half of Team Rochester for dinner and drinks, which was awesome. The show had far more vintage and historic works than I expected, which was really fun to browse through. Actually knowing most of the names was handy too, so it's nice to see the education finally paying off.
Hi guys! Team Rochester shopping for the GEH's collection. And because this is me, spot the porn on the wall.
I also had the opportunity to see Adam Savage and Jaime Hyneman live, on stage in the Tdot. Oh Yes.
FAN GIRL MOMENT!! While Adam's hard to photograph in low light, Jaime was great at holding still for long periods of time.
They hit Toronto as part of their Behind the Myths tour, and my buddy and I got some really sweet, third row seats. I wasn't picked for any of the audience participation, but it was still awesome being that close. I know a fair bit of the show was scripted, but they made it seem fairly natural and friendly. It was an awesome show with a hint of danger and a splatter zone.
This is a mildly terrifying video of the paint ball aspect of the audience participation. The sound doesn't do it justice, but the paint ball gun/rapid fire machine gun they were using was incredibly loud and bass-y when it hit the target wall and person.
Paint! A lot of it! I spent the weekend painting the gallery for our upcoming exhibition. We needed about three coats in total, and while time consuming, it was totally worth it. Now I just have to scrape off the purple stuff I have everywhere. We'll be mounting the works in the next few days and will be celebrating the whole thing with a reception soon. I've already chosen the outfit for it.
Taping.
Painting, slightly fuzzily.
So. Much. Purple.
I have actually cooked a fair bit lately, I did a St. Paddy's special and some real experimentation for my birthday, all of which I will blog about a bit later when I'm feeling less dead. Here's a wee hint for the Paddy's recipe until I get back.
Although being up and blogging at what is now 3am, probably isn't helping either...
1. Waiting for my new Asos bag. Got it during their Leap Day sale, combined with a February sale, so it should be just under the amount Canada Customs bothers to work out customs and duties for.
2. We've made some great headway on the Bedford exhibition my classmates and I have been working on non-stop for the past two months.
A Bedford photograph for sale on Etsy! Check out William Johnson's shop for more.
3. New York Trip! I going to the AIPAD show for the first time, but the whole thing will be a whirlwind trip. I got a great deal on a return flight from Porter, managed to find one bed left in a hostel, and will be seeing some of the guys from PPCM: Team Rochester. The downside is that I'll be flying in at about 8am Friday morning, and coming back on Saturday morning to make sure I'm back in time for the exhibition installation/painting.
The good news, NYC carts and restaurants!
I'm scouring Eat Street's website for a running list of what's close to the hostel. I'm trying to work out when is the best time to make the pilgrimage to Japadog, and have one of those glorious hot dogs again!
The bus rides sucked quite a bit, but the weather held out and we had a fabulous time. A lot of food was had and I think I walked off everything I ate. The feet were slightly ruined by the time we came back to Toronto.
We hit all the regulars, 30 Rock, the MoMA, International Center of Photography, Times Square and we happened to be living in Upper Manhattan, so it worked out well I think. We found some great restaurants along the way, although bar food had to be avoided for the most part, there not being too much by way of Vegetarian for one of our traveling companions. However, we were able to placate ourselves with "Wine product" that was $6 at the local 24 hour convenience store. We enjoyed it just for the fun of not having to go to the LCBO during strict business hours.
We found a great sushi an seafood restaurant called Ichiumi on our last day and I wish this was in Toronto! It was like an awesome Mandarin, with MUCH better quality and variety. And Sushi up the wazoo, so much sushi. We didn't have breakfast that day, had this at about noon and we were set for the next 8 hours. Soooo good.
I didn't really get any photos of the food we ate over the weekend since I was kinda busy eating it. I'm not very good at this whole taking pictures for my blog, thing. My buddy Rob (who was also, incidentally, the gentleman who took pictures of the Christmas party, and hasn't posted them yet) took about 400 pictures over the weekend a lot of the food as well. So I've stolen one of his to show off this restaurant. His name is Rob, and he's on the Flickr. Check him out.
Dessert bits. Mango, blueberries and apple tarts, oh my! (Photo by Rob.)
This was one of the two photos of food I took while on the trip, or I guess technically in this case, what was left of the food. We had our first breakfast at a place called Metro Diner on Broadway. Each of us would have paid about $7 for a full plate of food and tea, but the waiter kind of cornered Rob into paying for the ladies.
Dude at diner: "So, are you going to buy these lovely ladies lunch then?"
Rob: "... I guess I am now!"
This is the other photo. Leo's Scrambled eggs with Nova lox and onions with fries at Artie's Deli. Good, greasy dinner for the 12 hour bus ride home.
I did fairly well money wise on the trip. We lucked out with the price of the trip to begin with, it was only $165 for the bus and hostel, and the Canadian dollar is doing phenomenally against the US dollar at the moment. We didn't do as much shopping as we had intended, but we still did the museums, gift shops and a trip to B&H, where I geeked out thoroughly and got a whole bunch of archival materials for my photo collections. Despite that, I'm trying to be frugal for the rest of the month to even things out a bit in the finances. So eggs, pasta and campbell's soup for the next full weeks. That can work though, just have to get creative. Hence, deviled eggs with dill and crab.
Back to class, so back to infrequent blog posts... sorry.
Right, enough of that.
I don't really do resolutions, never really have. I have however, decided to stop eating pizza pizza as much as I do. I'm starting to notice how awful it is for me, and not just because it's unhealthy, I'm talking about the fact it's just awful. Fortunately, my roommate feels the same way so when we order take-out it's usually something slightly more edible, like sushi or Chinese. She has introduced me to a great sushi delivery place in our neighborhood, and I think we'll be ordering from them a lot, they are great.
I am, however, starting the new year with some major awesomeness, I'm going to New York this weekend! A few amazing people in my department at school decided to organize a trip just for us which included a financial subsidy from the school to help cover the costs. So, $165 covers the return bus trip and 3 nights stay at a hostel in downtown New York. Yep.
I've got a few plans for myself and the group of friends that I'm going with, assuming we all survive the 12 hour bus ride to get there, the only bad part about the trip. For one, I hope that this amazingness is still up on Wall street. It's some pretty cool vandalism if you ask me.
Obviously we'll be hitting up some galleries, and the Met and MoMA seem to be the top choices. Also, since there are three girls in our group, we've planned to do a fair bit of shopping throughout the weekend, and I'm definitely checking out the Antiques Garage in Hell's Kitchen. I have had to make a promise that I won't buy any furniture or carved, wooden bears. Why carved wooden bears you ask? My roommate isn't too fond of Fred, one of my only souvenirs from my working days in Niagara Falls. She was slightly terrified that I'd put it in the living room when I brought him home. I admit that this photo of him is a little scary... but he is quite sweet and innocent as he guards my closet.
He doesn't look so bad in this photo.
Anyway, I can't technically buy furniture since I am relying on a coach bus for my transportation to and from New York. We're also limited to one carry-on and one stored piece of luggage. It was never specified how big that stored luggage could or couldn't be, so I imagine a few people may be taking advantage of some of the shopping opportunities, and the Canadian dollar being above par with the US dollar at the moment.
I will post some of the food, shopping and art excursions when I get back, I've lucked out in the sense that all of us are huge foodies and are going to enjoy ourselves while we're in New York. See you next week!
By the way, my post title is from the wonderful band, Spirit of the West and their great New Year's song, Another Happy New Year. Canadian rock folk at its best.
