yard games

Here are a few pictures of Pat and Brad playing a game called, I kid you not, "Corn Hole", in the backyard Saturday. Looks like I need to stock up on some good outdoor games for when the summer decides to show itself because this had them entertained for hours. I personally am a big fan of ladder ball, though I find the homemade renditions to be the best. I will add that on to the list of projects. 

[[ boys being boys. ]]

happy birthday little brother

This picture is Hayden, Pat's little brother (who's birthday was actually on Wednesday). Luckily for me Hayden is pretty awesome and I get to call him my little brother now too! Happy Birthday Brosaphine... see you tonight.

[[ hbd hayden. ]]

oil spotsss

A few weeks ago I went out to the parking lot at lunch time to find this glorious rainbow of an old spot staring at me from the pavement, so naturally, I had to take some pictures.
How perfect was it that my "Photo A Day" word was "Color" when I spotted it?

I wanted to post these before they were forgotten forever, so today it is.

[[ oil spots in the parking lot & my tall brown boots. ]]

midweek inspiration 42

This video "This is Oregon" by Shwood Eyewear is super inspiring! Mission accomplished. Not only am I dying to get outside and explore right this second, but this reminds me how much fun I used to have with a video camera, and how much unedited raw film I have yet to compile to show off my personal adventures. Maybe I can borrow someones before me and Pat are off this summer?! So many ideas...

Check out the website as well for This is Oregon, there are a ton of gorgeous Instagram photos submitted by people from all over the state that make me happy to call this place home.

[[  bdf2. fairlightfitz. dbob. shwoodshop. nicoleclemetson. nathanielyoung. ]]

weekend adventures 55

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday... it was a hell of a Monday, and not in a good way. Oh well, that is what happens when you are working on several design projects at once.


All of last week I was super sick, so when I woke up feeling like myself Saturday I was super excited and ready to get out of my funk. Oregon greeted me with some glorious sunshine and warm weather as well, so I spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday outside watching the OSU baseball team play. I also got a pretty wicked sunburn... thanks a lot vampire skin (and yes parental units, I was wearing sunscreen).

saturday
Baseball all day. Corn nuts. No sunburn. Then over to Nate and Alicia's house for some impromptu disc golf, BBQ chicken, beers, and a bonfire.

sunday
Baseball all day. Dippin Dots. Sunburn. Then over to the 35th street house for another BBQ with Pat's little brother Hayden and his Parents/Grandparents in honor of little brothers birthday (which is tomorrow).

[[ beaver baseball. sunflower seeds. dippin dots. win. ]]

[[ me. tasty beverage. toby. nate's backyard. disc golf. bonfire. ]] 

It was a great sunshiney and relaxing weekend with plenty of vitamin D for me, which I was in dire need of and am now recovering from. I even fit a tiny bit of long boarding in there.

baby cousin does not like lemons...

I was kind of grumpy last night due to a heavy work load and still being sick, so when my Dad texted me this series of pictures I was instantly in a good mood. Thanks pops.

Landon clearly was NOT impressed by the taste of this lemon slice.
The cutest.

[[ baby cousin does not like lemons. ]]

Happy Friday.

Hopefully some rest and sunshine (*fingers crossed*) will help get rid of this plague so I can get back to normal! If I am really lucky I will get some much needed vitamin D in my system while watching some OSU baseball.

tiff's bday pictures

Here are the rest of the pictures from Tiff's birthday last Saturday...
At one point when we were wandering around downtown I even ran in to an old friend from my Ashland days Natalie! Crazy.

Happy Birthday Laaaaady!

[[ buuudies. panda & meguenther. me & tiff. morgan/ricky. photo bomb. sam being weird. pat. hug? laaaadies. walking around downtown. tattie! blurr. ]]

((( you can even kinda see my homemade ombre in these! )))

Tiff also brought her Polaroid camera with her and took pictures of everyone. I stole all of these off Facebook from Tiff. 

[[ tiff, the birthday girl. colleen. ricky. chinns. megan & me. jason & pat. frantastic. sam. ]]

midweek inspiration 41

These mixed media paintings by Alex Gross are super cool. I guess he finds old photographs and postcards and then transformes them into some highly recognizable characters. I feel like Pat will definitely appreciate this one. Check it out.

[[ wolverine. clark. spock. hawkeye. batman. riddler. robin. joker. ]]

weekend adventures 54

saturday
We drove up to Portland for Tiff's birthday party first stopping at the mall and then grabbing some lunch, then heading to my parents house to get ready before heading out. It was a gorgeous day so we spent a little bit of time outside as well. Eventually Megan stopped by and picked us up and then we rode the Max downtown to Brix Tavern where "the living room" was rented out for Tiff's party. We stayed there for most of the night having some drinks and being silly, before making our way to a little dive to close out the night. We wandered to Fran's new studio to check it out before calling it a night and heading home.

I will post the rest of my pictures from the party Thursday.

[[ beautiful drive. barrel of jenns (inside joke). windows down. book store. little sister. back yard. ]]

[[ riding the max. tiffs 25. presents. snapshots preview. too much party for panda. ]]

sunday
I woke up before Pat so I headed downstairs and watched some old Laguna Beach episodes with my little sister, which was hilarious. Then we headed down to the waterfront where I had an appointment before meeting my parents in Vancouver for some lunch. The sun was out again and it actually got fairly warm for a little while so we ended up going for a long walk together. Eventually we said goodbye and started making out way for home. Because it was so nice out still we decided to stop for some beers and dinner somewhere we could sit outside, Green Dragon, was the choice. Then it was home and sleep. Good weekend.

[[ on the portland waterfront with sister. sunny family walk time in vancouver. ]]

[[ beer, dinner, and sorry at green dragon. ]]

uh oh, not this again...

I. Am. Sick. :(

Rest now, Weekend Adventures tomorrow.

[[ caffeine free teas make me feel better. ]]

friday the 13th

I saw this quote earlier today, thought it was funny, and thought I would make my own little picture.

Happy Friday the 13th, I hope it is filled with many cocktails
...not zombies.

[[ friday the 13th. ]]

b & a wedding invitations

Our good friend Brad is getting married this summer to his long time girlfriend/fiance Alia. She approached me a while ago about potentially doing their invitations for them and I of course agreed, but it was not until about a month ago that the subject was brought up again.

They had a style in mind as well as their wedding colors and had already sent out electronic save the dates, so I only designed the invitation itself, which is very heavy on typography arrangement. I utilized a bit of ornamentation to organize the text and customized the font used for their names to fit better within the piece. Originally there were no boarders at the top and bottom, but Alia expressed that she wanted those upon her final review, so they were added at the end. The couple did the printing themselves on a textured paper they received from a friend. The map was created by Alia, who is a GIS analist, and was printed on the back. The turn around/working time on this was about two weeks as time between my jobs allowed.

Here is the final product.
(Their wedding colors are blue and orange, Alia provided the RGB values).

[[ final invitations. ]]

midweek inspiration 40

I found these illustrations by Spencer Studio this morning on Pinterest. I love the concept of taking found objects such as images, or post cards, and adding on to them in some way. These are a perfect example with vintage photographs.

[[ spencer studio illustrations. ]]

the hunger games - movie review

The first weekend of April me, Megan, Pat, Tony and a few more guy friends went to see The Hunger Games (finally). I was definitely excited about it and could not stand to wait anymore.

I am not trying to go in to a bunch of detail, yet again, so I will try to keep this short.

[[ theater sign. ]]

The costume design in the Capitol was really incredible. Think Victorian meets Geisha with some runway thrown in there as well. Not so unlike some Alexander McQueen designs I have seen. I have read some interviews with Elizabeth Banks who definitely expresses it being near impossible to walk or use her hands due to her insane fake nails and shoes. I loved the contrast of Sector 12, which was reminiscent of depression era, with the opulent capital.

In terms of the film itself, I overall thought they did a really good job interpreting the book. There were definitely a few characters cut out, but understandably so. I appreciated the length of the movie in general, and the amount of time spent setting up most of the story before the beginning of the actual games, including the important components of training, and a bit of the tension between competitors. I do wish that they would have made Haymitch more Haymitch. He hardly seemed like a battered old competitor with a drinking problem.

Finally, I was pleasantly surprised with the way they did the actual games because all of the important scenes were included and it was still fairly brutal despite its PG13 rating, which is something I was worried they would sugarcoat too much. And I definitely cried during a certain scene in the movie...

[[ at the movies. ]]

Ok, so I guess that was me failing at "keeping it short". In a sentence: I was pleased with it, and all of the boys liked it too, including Pat much to my surprise.

last weekend

This weekend me and Pat just stuck around home and "spring cleaned" our house, caught a happy hour, made mini burgers with cilantro lime aioli, and relaxed with some movies. Though there was nothing particularly Eastery about the weekend, I did wear my love bunnies t-shirt. Our Sunday looked like this.

[[ haircut. happy hour. arm party. spring shoes. re-doing the ombre. despicable me. koko brown. love bunnies. longboard rides. ]]

cheers to the freakin' weekend

Its the weekend! I feel like I got a lot done this week and was definitely excited to get some happy hour drinks and dinner with my man. Now onto the rest of our night.

I almost forgot about these pictures from this weekend when we stopped at Grill Cheese Grill in Portland. Here are some Pocketbooth gems. Clearly, Chris did not really understand how to play.

P.S. we ♥ photobooths!

[[ pocketbooth fun with megan and chris. ]]

And here is a little ditty to get you in the weekend mood
from Walk Off The Earth.

((( p.s. this video gets weird after the song ends... )))

.

frantastic

I am really busy today, I am turning in my taxes to an accountant tomorrow. Like a grownup. As usual I put this off for a long time so I have been swamped the whole week getting a chart together of my work expenses. Thus, I am keeping this short.

Guess what just happened this week...
FRANTASTIC MOVED BACK TO OREGON!
(*cue skype party emoticon*).

After we graduated from OSU in 2009 Fran and a few other people moved down to LA, and though a couple of them came back he stayed down there until now. He finally decided to come to back to Oregon to be closer to his friends and family and we are definitely all super excited about it! Though we won't get to have our daily Skype conversations anymore at least I will get to see you more than once a year. Definitely a win.

[[ throwbacks! ]]

I am pumped to see this guy, and everyone else in Portland next weekend for Tiff's birthday!

midweek inspiration 39

It is no secret to those that know me that I love bunnies. Its not my fault, my family literally surrounded me with bunny paraphernalia since birth, in fact, all of my favorite childhood items (blanket/stuffed animals) are bunnies or have the creatures stamped on them in some way. So in honor of Easter this weekend enjoy some bunnies.

1 & 4. Illustrations by Tabitha Emma: Bunnies and Tea & Wild Child.
2. Hello There Love Print by Whimsy Whimsical Paper Goods.
3. Black Bunny Rabbit by Matou en Peluche. I did a whole Midweek Inspiration Post on her back in May 2011 (click to view).

.

march :: photo challenge

Here are the results from my PDX March Photo A Day Challenge. I did much better then last months attempt and only a few of these were not posted on the corresponding day! Having an Instagram to update helps a lot. (@jennblech).

[[ march photo challenge. ]]