Another project crossed off the list

Last night Jillian and I crossed another project off our house duties list. We put cushions on our rad stools that hang out around the bench. I know you are saying to yourself man what heck would he post about cushions. Come on cushions really. Ha. But ours are rad. We wanted to add some color to the living room and kitchen area so we decided to do it with the cushions. We thought about bright fabrics, crazy patterns and even screening our own fabric. But what we decided to do is cover the cushions in old tshirts with rad graphics. Here is what they turned out like.
















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Newest, biggest and best piece or art work I have ever done.

I have been wanting to show Jillian want she means to me for a while now and I wanted to be able to show her everyday.

So I came up with is idea to paint a mural on the back wall of our garage so she would see it everyday.

The story behind it is Jillian and I used to listen to Ben Harper a lot and he had a song called "You look like gold to me" But Jillian would sing it as "you look like home to me". Because Jillian rarely gets the words wrong in any song I pounced on this opportunity to tease her. Which I did a lot. From that time on it kind of became our anthem for when we were apart from each other. So it was only fitting that I created this.

Also I want to acknowledge one of the people I got some of my inspiration from. There is a artist called Espo aka Steve Powers who has a great art series in Philly called A love Letter For You or check him out on the documentary Beautiful Losers or on this site firstandfifthteenth. Anyway is work is very inspiring check it out if you get a chance.

I hope you guys like it.
But really I don't care if you do or don't as long as Jillian loves it. Which she does!!

Getting wired

Oh what busy but great weekend. On Friday night Jillian and I took her dad out to dinner and a special movie (some french that was way to old and long for my taste) as his Christmas present. It was a fun time.
Saturday my friend kenny came over and we hung out, played music and I worked on a project with the tv wall.




Jillian had a fun Saturday as she chopped off more than 10inches of her hair charity. Her new haircut looks wonderful.

Sat night was quite busy as well. A family friend was in town and it was her birthday so we had dinner with her and most of the family. Straight after that we headed into Seattle to go to a dual bday party for our friends Noah and Vaneeta. That was super fun catching up with quite a few friends we had not seen in a while.
Sunday was a bit more relaxed, jillatron and I ran some errands
I finished up the project I was working on Sat, skating at a real
Skatepark cause for once it was not raining and relaxed a bit.

Even though Jillian was not feeling well she still manage to go to the florist with her friend Hillary for Hilary's wedding. Run errands with me and put together some new shelving we got for the dinning room.


We hung out on the couch for the rest of Sunday night.
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Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie

Oi oi oi

Every Sunday Jillian and I's American family get together to for a good old fashioned Sunday dinner. We chat about our weeks happenings, debate topics, laugh, hang out and celebrate bdays, holidays and so. Which brings to my point on this past Sunday dinner we celebrated Australia day. We did so by having bangers and mash with veggi's and with my sister inlaw Amy baking cookies with Ozzie flag on it. It was such delight.



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Odd Jobs jobs jobs

As most people know when you buy a house the odd job list is long times that by 7 when you add a remodel, times it by another 12 when you have to creatives minds who have an urge to move forward at all times and add a few more for the heck of it.
Well Jillian and I have been more than just chipping away at this odd job list. We have been taking it down like a lumber jack.
We have painted a wall completely in black chalk board paint, put a picture of Fremantle, a black keys poster, an old painting, a cork board that we made out of an old burlap sack, put in a new light fixture and all this was in one weekend or so.





































Well much love to all.
matty3stars

My micro mini ramp

It's been a while since my last confession. Cough . Ah I mean post.

Jillian and I had a very Merry Xmas and a very Happy New
Year. We were once again spoilt with many greatly thoughtful gifts. Jillian and I did splurged on each by getting an elliptical (a low impact running machine ) . We are now living the high life with our own work out room.



Over the Xmas holidays Jillian and I both had 10 days off. My work is so great it gives us those days off and Jillian had vacation built up on a use it or lose it by the end of the year type deal. So we had it off together. We our time we got to share a lot of family and friend time while also doing some personal projects.
Since moving into the new house I have been wanting to build a mini ramp and over the Xmas break I got to do just that.
I built it 4 foot wide so we can still fit the car in garage and that size also made materials easier to work with 1 3/4 foot tall because of and length restrictions and roughly 11 foot in length.
Other than a few helping hands from mate Mikey G, Big Poppa (Jillian's dad) and Jillian herself I made it myself.
Here is picture of the finished product.



I think is a long enough post for now.
Peace
Matty

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Holiday Parties and Holiday fun

As I sit here writing this Seattle is holding true to it's name wet, rainy and cold. But that has not dampened Jillian and I's Holiday spirits.

With Thanksgiving always falling on a Thursday both Jillian and I were lucky enough to have both Thursday and Friday off, making it a 4 day weekend for us. With these four days off Jillian and I stayed very busy with Thanks giving Dinner, xmas tree shopping (even though we didn't get a real one we went up to enjoy the experience with the family), some live theater for Jillian, a few house projects and a whole bunch of rad family time. It was a really rad weekend.

With Thanksgiving kick starting the holiday season off with a bang. Jillian and I were excited. Our next Holiday season date was a friends of ours festive party called Chrismakwanzikah a blend of Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah. It was quite a fun night.

The next night Jillian's grandmother took the whole family out for a beautiful x-mas dinner. It was a delicious meal with great company.

Just a few days later than that on December 9th Jillian and I hosted my work Holiday party.

Oh Man, were we excited for this. Not only were we excited to be showing off our newly remodeled house. I had made t-shirts for all my fellow co-workers. Each shirt and a co-workers face on it but I didn't give the everyone a shirt with their face on it. Where is the fun in that? I gave everyone a shirt with a different co-workers face on it. See the picture below. Everyone had a good laugh. 

All the employees received some great gifts from Jay and Dave (Bosses).It was great night,

We still have a few holiday parties to attend and are looking forward to them all.

Hope you all are are enjoying the holiday season.

Matty

Tis the start of the Season.

I must admit it is easy to get wrapped up in the festive season here in the NW of America. Even when you get stuck on a bus for 5 hours on what should be a 40 min drive home on Monday night because of the snow. It seems like the classic American Festive story sometimes all we are missing is a grinch and/or jack frost. 

Jillian and I are always pushing forward on life and currently Jillian is the one to make huge push forward with deciding to get her MBA(Masters in Business). Jillian will starting on January 3rd and will be attending SU Seattle University. It is a part time program and will be lasting roughly 3 years. I am very excited to see Jillian take full advantage of that crazy smart brain of hers.

Jillian has once again been jet setting around the country and spent a week in Denver for work. 

Here is a site that my boss and I worked on Moprise.com . This site evolved alot over time and we are very pleased with what we ended up with.

Happy start of the holidays 
Much Love Matty

Here is a little shot of our house with a layer of snow.

OH Remodel

Oh Remodel, how we love and hate you...

Jillian and I moved into our new residence on July 15th 2010 and within two weeks the fun had started. We were tearing down walls, changing counter tops, ripping floors up, changing doors and the list goes on and on and on and is still going. Jillian and I added a touch to the house today that we feel is up to standard to share now.

Jillian and I ran into many bumps along the way. From uneven flooring, electrical problems, leaking sliding door, waiting on oven and contractors. Overall we changed the counter tops from hideous tile to beautiful slab granite, the floors from linoleum and gross carpet to fantastic red oak hardwood floors. A new slider door for the back door. A new five burner gas oven and a brand new gas fireplace. All of which was done by contractors. Jillian and I tried our hardest to do as much as we could and we ended up painting the cabinets a slightly matte black, with Jillian's Dad's help we did the electrical needed, we painted,  we put in a corrugated iron back splash for the counters, we added handles to the cabinets which all nobs but each one is different and our latest feat was adding some texture to two of our walls in the living area. We did this texture by staining 40 fence palings pearl gray then we attached brackets on the wall and screwed the wood in. Jillian and I are very very happy with how the house is looking and are excited. Enjoy.

The first photos are of the before shots of the house.

Above:
Looking from the Kitchen out the living room to the backyard

 

In the above photo the wall on the left was taken out to create an island and a more open space into the living room.

The below photo is a better view of the wall.

 

Notice the gross carpet above.

Above: The wall goes down. At this point we were were thinking it would be completed in a week or ...Hahahahaha the fools we are.

We lived with no oven for two months. Luckily we lived next door to Jillian's parents.

The projects are not complete, But the big stuff is done. Hope you cats like it.

Back to blogging

Okay I have been off my blog game lately and I know all three readers I have are devoed ( Australian for devastated ). So over the next few days I will try and a few new tid bits. First one is a little something I added to my office. I have been lucky enough to be able to start collecting skateboards And few weeks ago I got a chance to put some of them up.


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Milwaukee to Chicago

Here in the states we just had a long weekend. Jillian and I celebrated it by traveling with some friends to Milwaukee Wisconsin to visit our friend Laura who recently moved there for school. To make the most of it we took a red eye Thursday night and had Friday off to make it a four day weekend.
We arrived at six in the morning , after a little sleep in we found some energy to get up and go see some sites of the cheese state. Our friend lives in cool part of town which is a lot like Fremont in Seattle or Freo in WA. That artsy type feel to it. We walk around there and got to see the great lakes and it is crazy to see a lake you can not see the other side of after that we headed in to the main part of the city and man was there history and architecture to boot.
It is cool but seriously the highlight of The day was when we took the pub tour called the "Pedal Tavern". It is a 12 seated table that you pedal around the city from bar to bar unfortunately they are still working out the liquor license, so the tap on board was dry. A lovely dinner was had to round out the day. 
Here is a pic of Jillian and the "Pedal Tavern".
















The next day was was a little bit more chilled out but just as fun. We spent the day with our friend Charlie and his family and friends. Charlie lives in Seattle with us and coincidently is from the same place our friend is now going to school. We spent the day bbqing, having a few drinks watching football, playing games and rounded out with us sitting around fire.














Sunday we made am2 hr trip down to Chicago and man was it great. I don't think I can explain how cool and overwhelming it was, by far the biggest city I have been to. As soon as we step out of the tunnel we get to see one of the city's most infamous pieces of art. Here is a couple of pictures of it.
On the second picture can you pick me out? Cause when you were looking into it, it was hard to find yourself.


























 Chicago is famous for many many things, but we were hungry and hunting for one thing deep dish pizza. Let's just say it was worth the long walk and long wait.
Our now friends Annie and Mike (Charlie's brother in-law and sister) came up with a great idea to do a boat tour. Man what a dam good idea that was. We got see great stuff while learning so much about the city.
On Monday we just cruised around and tried to soak up as much of our friend as we could until our flight.

The weekend was great.

Work on the weeknds has never been so much fun

Every year my school SVC has an event called a Wayzgoose which is the old tradition of celebrating letterpress. And to celebrate this tradition my schools asks local design firms, artist and companies to join in the Steamroller Smackdown as well as many other activities.
The Steamroller Smackdown is where each firm creates a design, cuts it out of a 34in by 44in piece of linoleum and places it under a steamroller for printing.

I was mad stoked about this event anyway, but because my own design had been chosen to represent DC, I was over the moon.
The day was so much fun with DC crew getting under the sun.

Here are some photo's of the design, cutting and the steamrolling with the crew.

Well that is it for now. Much Love