St. Louis Fashion Week 2009

My blog has been quiet for a while as I've been very busy with preparations for St. Louis Fashion Week. I was part of the Stage Management team for the Washington University show; which was this past Sunday, the 29th.

I was backstage during the show, so I'm including some photos taken by Kris Medem, one of the photographers. If you'd like to see more images, you can find them here.

All the garments are made by the 11 Senior Designers and 7 Junior Designers from the university's Fashion Design program...of which I am an alumni.

The models are all volunteers; but you certainly couldn't tell by the way they outshined the professionals of the week prior.

Working on the House This Weekend

I was actually able to do some work on the house this weekend. Some of you may remember earlier post about my Studio, here and here. While the room was usable, it still needed some help, especially where the closets once stood; but that's for a later post.

My post today is about the east window and wall. Somewhere in the house's history, someone tried building up the woodwork on the window. The end result was a window whose trimwork wasn't square, making hanging blinds very hard. The problem is no more. We were able to remove the old stuff, properly built up the surface and add a sill.



The below picture shows the window and newly hung drywall, all taped and drying.


I'm extremely busy this entire week and coming weekend; but next on the list is sanding, painting and finishing the wall, then adding the final layer of window trim. You'll certainly be surprised at the results, I guarantee it.

Seed Starting

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had received in the mail my seed starting supplies...including the all important seeds. Well, this my friends is my little piece of spring found where else, in the basement of course.


It's two stacks of milk cartons with a piece of wood re purposed as a table top. The fluorescent light is hung the proper 3-5 inches from the seed cell-packs which sit in aluminum trays.

Here are the little seeds before their trip to the basement.

I planted the seeds on March 12th and already I have 12 Kohlrabi seedlings; which popped through the dirt in 3 days, and a handful of various tomato seedlings just starting to appear now.

It's not rocket science; but certainly makes me smile knowing that I might be able to bring some of this food to the table in a few months.

Home Appraisal (...biting nails...)

I heard on the local news yesterday that the county I live in was going to announce their preliminary biannual 2009 home appraisals/assessments. They stressed that these were preliminary and of course if someone wanted to, they could contest the findings through the proper procedures.

Certainly, I didn't have a clue what my home's appraisal would be in their eyes. What I did know were two things.

---One, I knew the appraisal from 2007, before I owned the house.

---Two, we all know the state of the economy and the mess that the real estate market is in.

So, as you can see I was very surprised when the appraisal was $30,000 higher than in 2007. Of course, I attribute this to all of the hard work my family has helped me with over the past year and a half, giving validity to some of my crazy ideas.

Yet, this news is a double-ended sword. Receiving a higher appraisal makes us feel good; but the flip side is higher taxes. The only saving grace is those taxes can be deducted next year :-)

I thank my lucky stars that I have a place to call home, and I encourage all of you to take a few moments to access what you have too.