I whipped up a quick little video from the scant footage we took on our recent trip out west. Complete with explanatory text graphics!
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I spent the weekend in Brattleboro, VT for a wedding – the setting was like a postcard for autumn in New England.
I’ve been meaning to share my wedding invites for a good month now, and this morning I finally laid the finished products out for their photoshoot.
The very first thing I did for this wedding was the stamp. I drew a picture of the barn we’d be dancing in and sent it off to be made into a stamp. If you’re in the NYC area, I cannot recommend Casey Rubber Stamps in the Lower East Side enough. John Casey has made a few stamps for me now, and they are always perfect, he his stamps are made with real red rubber, as opposed to the plastic stuff more commonly used these days.
I used the stamp to make the rsvp cards, and also stamped anything that could be stamped at the wedding. For the rest of the invite, as well as the programs for the ceremony, I designed them in photoshop and then screen-printed them by hand using my beloved Print Gocco. The Japanese company that made this little screen printing kit shuttered it’s doors in 2009, and today the supplies are dwindling and the prices sky high. Luckily, as a bit of an art supplies hoarder, I had a small pile of screens and bulbs with which to make my prints. The paper I used is my absolute favorite paper of all time to use for all things – Fabriano Medioevalis single cards and envelopes. They have rough-hewn edges, a perfect thickness, and a beautiful texture. And the 4-1/2″ × 6-3/4″ cards fit perfectly in the print gocco!
It was definitely a laborious process to hand print each piece of paper, but I couldn’t be happier with how they came out, and each piece is slightly different from the next. Last month I finally realized a long-cherished dream – I went to the American West. I’ve always wanted to experience those dramatic, majestic, and unequivocally American landscapes of Western states like Utah, Montana, and Colorado. After 10 days of hiking and back-country camping in National Parks, 13 hour marathon road-tripping stretches, ghost towns, merchantile general stores, and more wildlife than I’ve ever seen in such a short time, I’ve come away with one overwhelming feeling; I need to go back.
Road to the Sun in Montana
A real, live, wild mountain goat in Glacier National Park
Camping is all about the fire.
Trail-head of Quartz Lake in Glacier National Park
Wild mule deer crossing a river.
Idaho windmills at sunrise.
This is how we made coffee.
You can’t leave Utah without a visit to the Hole N” The Rock!
No pictures allowed inside the Hole (a home carved out of the side of a huge rock, now a museum) but I had to sneak one of this lovingly, if not very amateurishly taxidermied donkey, done by the home-owner (rock-owner?) in the 50s.
The Delicate Arch in Arches National Park!
A lizard in the Utah desert.
A different kind of hole in a rock, in Arches National Park.
Utah sunset
Black Canyon viewpoint in Colorado
Someday I’ll return to Colorado and make a visit to Tincup Pass, just because I like the sound of it.
The St. Elmo ghost town’s former post office. Last night I decided that our refrigerator could no longer contain the burden of two boxes of eggs and a small bag of green beans. So naturally I stuck them in some jars with vinegar! I have yet to try them (both the beans and the eggs take 3 days till well-brined), but I’ve made more than my share of refrigerator pickles, and I’m pretty confident that it’s hard to mess up. I’ve actually never had a pickled egg, which is a wrong that needs to be righted post-haste.
The beet pickled egg recipe came from Southernoise Gluttony and the spicy pickled green bean recipe came from Three Points Kitchen. I pretty much made these so that I could take a picture of the pretty colors. I have a thing for Natural History Museums – no matter how small, how old, or how new, there is also something inspiring to see. When I realized that Lancaster has one of their own, I decided we should pop in for a quick look. From the website, the museum looks very modern, but the site does not hint at the treasure trove to be found in the basement next to the bathrooms. The Antique Cabinet Museum is literally a museum within a museum. I attempted to research the history of the antique cabinets, but came up with nothing – I think it’s safe to say that these are the collections from the North Museum before they made a major update into the modern world. They couldn’t throw all those incredible pieces away, but didn’t have room in the museum for them any longer. The solution? Stick them in a basement and slap a a label on it, and the Antique Cabinet Museum was born. It is an absolute gem. I wish all museums put their historic specimens on display in the old style like this.
By far, the best part of the Cabinet Museum was the Dichotomous Cabinet – cabinets with pull-out drawers, each one representing a different category of specimens. Our favorite drawer was the Polycephaly Animals (having more than one head) – just look at that disembodied two-headed calf head! This is antique natural history at its best, folks.
True to form, Dylan and I took a mini-honeymoon the way an 80 year old couple might – we spent a few days in Lancaster, PA. We went to strange little museums and sampled Amish-made pickles, did a little antiquing, and got unnecessarily excited over bits of history. One of my favorite stops was the Choo Choo Barn. What started as a humble train set in 1945 between a father and son grew into a 1,700 square foot tiny world, with over 150 hand-built animated figures and vehicles and 22 operating trains. I have the feeling that you could visit the Choo Choo Barn 50 times and still find something new – there are so many tiny details and scenes. Here were a few of my favorites. You can view the full set of photos at Flickr.
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