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By now I am sure you all are super duper jealous of our roof top deck. I don't blame you. But don't worry, I'm probably super duper jealous of your beach, pool, huge yard, or what have you that I can't get here in the city. However, if there is one thing that a roof top is good for, it is fireworks. We get two good displays a year-- New Year's and Fourth of July. And this year we got three if you include the fireworks from the Sailabration. We are lucky to be able to see the whole show peeking above the treeline in Patterson Park. So this year was no different. We camped up on our deck (and by camped up, I mean took a few beers and chilled out on our patio furniture) about an hour before the show.

It is a must that you go up to the deck just as it's getting dark and wait about an hour before the show. Why might you ask? Well if you don't, you will miss out on the amazing 360 degree fireworks show. I'm not kidding. Not only do we have an amazing view of the show in downtown Baltimore, but we get to see everyone else's fireworks going off throughout the city. I brought my camera up to the deck and took a few shots just to show you how fabulous it is.

 Then eventually 9:30 rolls around and it's time to enjoy the show the professionals have put on.
Ok, so now that you've enjoyed those beautiful pictures, of the Baltimore fireworks, I must break it to you that those were not the professional fireworks I was referring to. The real professionals? Us. Clearly by the title of this post this is a tutorial. In Baltimore, they have pretty strict rules in terms of fireworks that you can and cannot set off and where you can and cannot enjoy them. So rather than attempting the good old go to a Patterson Park baseball field, light the fuse, and run method, Andrew thought that he had a better idea. This is a photo of our roof with other houses in the background during night. Look at the roof portion of the photo closely my friends.
Now here comes the tutorial. Get a bright orange Home Depot contractor bucket. Fill said bucket with water for weight and fire safety. Attach a PVC pipe to said bucket with blue painter's tape. Put bucket contraption in the middle of your roof 30 feet away from roof top deck. Place roman candle firework in PVC pipe. Light fuse and run back to roof top deck, hoping that you don't fall through any potential soft spots in the roof. Enjoy fireworks display from roof top deck. Shout, "Ameeeerrrrrica!" with beer in hand with redneck like grunt and yeehaaaaw a la Andrew style. Laugh in Heidi-like cackle and say, "Be careful! You are crazy! Stick the fireworks in the bucket of water!" Then stick fireworks in the extra bucket of water (see lower right hand corner of photo) to make sure you are being completely safe. Oh wait, what? You mean we were already being unsafe by shooting fireworks off our roof? Oh, ok. Check street over edge of roof for absence of cop car lights and then repeat.

And that is my tutorial for how to shoot off fireworks if you live in a city. Now let's just be thankful that Andrew didn't burn the house down.

How was your Fourth?

It's been a while since I shared what I've been listening to lately. There are plenty of new albums that have entered this house, played on the iPod, and even spun on the record player. Recently, I had dusted off a vinyl copy of Midnight Oil's album 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and blasted it on the record player. We were pretty much hooked all over again from that point on and vowed that the next time we went to the record store, we'd buy some more vinyl.

During a record store trip last week, I gathered the albums that were on my mental list and then headed into the vinyl portion of the store. So many records. So much to choose from. I didn't know what to buy. Should I get something that we already had on cd so that we didn't have to pay for the iTunes version too? I mean you have to have your music on the iPod as well for good measure! Or should I buy something new and pay to get the iTunes too?

Then I spotted something absolutely genious. Two of the newer albums that I wanted to get just happened to also have a free download code. Who knew?! Best of both worlds! Vinyl to listen to at home and a digital copy to pop on your iPod for on the go! Victory was mine as I snagged a copy of Grace Potter & the Nocturnals' The Lion The Beast The Beat and The Alabama Shakes' Boys & Girls.

I have not stopped listening to either albums. Not only do they sound great on vinyl, they are also both amazing albums. Between the two, the one song that I want to listen to over and over again is Keepsake from Grace Potter & the Nocturnals. Grace has got some amazing pipes, that's for sure. And another favorite from the new album is the opening song that shares the album title. It is of epic proportions in terms of overall production. Epic.



You are welcome for that. Again, she has some pipes. And now it's your turn. What have you been listening to lately? I'd love to know-- you just might find me meandering on down to the record store for some more vinyl and I may need a few more suggestions. ;)

P.S. The winner of the Shabby Apple giveaway is commenter number 16, Amy. Amy please be sure to email me so that I can get your info!

I've been very, very slow when it comes to updating you on our improvements in this row house. After quite a long time, the transition of our second bedroom to a studio and reading room is finally complete. I would still like to add a few things like artwork, a small side table that would fit between the chairs, and a few small storage options next to my desk. However, the room is finally fully functional and very efficient at that.

You can revisit the looks of how the room used to look here and here. The color scheme didn't change too much-- we stuck with browns and blues. We have two incredibly comfortable chairs along one wall. The large pillows came with the chairs and the smaller blue and brown pillows were made by me when this was a bedroom. And no reading area would be complete without a cozy blanket to curl up with.

No creative and cozy space would be complete without a nice green plant, some FLW inspiration, and some coasters that I made for a tasty beverage.

My printer, The Beast, is sitting on top of a small dresser that we moved from our master bedroom. I repainted it four years ago with leftover paint a friend gave me and would like to try to find some neat knobs from the architectural salvage to replace the wood knobs. I store my packaging and shipping supplies as well as my ink in the dresser. The clock was originally purchased for the original bedroom from Uncommon, and it just so happens that the dresser matched it exactly! This is a great space with lots of natural light and I enjoy being in this room hence the yoga mat rolled up next to the dresser. It's a good yoga space!
My desk is along the wall opposite of the chairs and gets lots of great natural light from our second story deck. I use one of our dining room chairs so as to save space on our first floor when we don't have guests for dinner. The exposed brick wall is one of my favorite features in our house. It runs the full length of the house on both floors of the house. Things not to pay attention to? The mirror that is currently camping out here while our first floor half bath is still under renovation, and that cardboard box that is currently being used for my recycle bin. I'm currently in the hunt for some aesthetically pleasing recycling and trash receptacles.
On the desk is my trusty macbook, my scanner, a flat screen monitor that I use while working on designs or editing photos, a calendar, and my to do list (of course!). I stow away my external hard drives and my graphics tablet in a super secret drawer that also serves as extra work space.
The calendar from Smock is a perfect way for me to keep track of things with a simple glance and it doubles as a great art piece.
On the wall opposite of the windows, we have what would appear to be your average sliding door closet.
But in reality this closet hides a lot of my essentials. I have two storage units that I picked up at IKEA. The lower one houses all of my paper (though you may notice I still have some overflow on top of the storage units. The upper unit is turned sideways so that it would fit and stores all of my crafty odds and ends. I keep my boxes of envelopes both in the corner to the left and on a shelf above the storage units.
And there you have it! Hope you enjoyed my little studio tour!

If there is one thing I am most certain about myself, it is that I am not a runner. I've always excelled in exercise that was focused around a sport. To me, running is torturous and boring. Competitive sports though are fun. And fun = not boring.

About three years ago I attempted to go running with Andrew. We took a nice little loop the whole way around Patterson Park. By the time we had made our way back to our street, I thought I was going to die, and I proclaimed, "That's it! I'm done! I'm walking the rest of the way!" The rest of the way, mind you, was only a block and a half.

Andrew began to laugh. He then said that it was funny that I couldn't at least jog the rest of the way to our house and that I had only run a quarter of a mile. I disagreed. I had definitely just ran more than a quarter of a mile! I was sure that I had run about a mile. Ok, not a lot, but a good starting place for someone that is pretty out of shape.

For the next week, Andrew continued to give me a hard time about my inability to jog more than a quarter of a mile. Finally, in an attempt to prove him wrong, I went to the computer, pulled up mapmyrun.com and plotted out our path from a week before. Sure enough, I was right. I had jogged more than a mile! I had jogged a mile and a quarter!

Long story short, I never went running again after this particular event. I told Andrew I had been traumatized. Give me a hard time about trying to get in shape when I've never been a runner to begin with? Yup, traumatic.

Until Monday.

On Monday morning, I woke up, put on my running shoes, and took a 10 minute jog. I know it wasn't a lot-- about half a mile. For whatever reason, I seemed to have thought this was going to be a good idea. It was a pretty crappy experience, but at least I didn't have anyone to make fun of me or tell me I had to run more. And maybe the next time, I'll go a little further.

You may find yourself wondering what this has to do with anything. I know I find myself wondering that a lot when it comes to some of my blog posts, so I'll try to get to the point of this post. After I went on my horrific and grueling half a mile jog, I was hungry. And hot. It was 9:13 in the morning and I wasn't even quite sure what I was doing up at this ungodly hour during my summer break anyway-- let alone going running! I needed a super awesome breakfast and something to cool me down, but I'm not much of a breakfast person. So I tossed together a few ingredients and made a delicious smoothie. I used to buy or make smoothies all the time when I lived in Australia and it had been much too long.


Monday's go to flavor was Strawberry Banana, but you could definitely use all sorts of fruit for this simple recipe. Sometimes I use mango, peach, or pineapple as well. The key though, I believe, is to use fresh fruit!

Toss these ingredients into a blender--

• 1 1/2 cups of cut up strawberries
• one banana
• 1 cup of low fat vanilla yogurt
• 1/4 cup apple juice

Blend everything until it is nice and smooth. I prefer to use low fat instead of nonfat yogurt. The nonfat yogurt tends to have weird additives in it that makes it nonfat. And I also use unsweetened 100% apple juice not from concentrate again for the same reasons.

Yuuuuummmy. It was just what I needed after my endless morning workout. And by endless, I mean ten minutes.

Anyone is the same boat as me when it comes to running? What tactics do you use to get yourself motivated to run?

Sunday was a day to unplug. No blogging. So today I'll share both days 7 and 8 for my Design a Day Challenge. Day 6 is single card that I created from some of my leftover scraps. You probably saw cards like this before when I shared the first few that I had made. I've made a few more in the past week. There is something super satisfying about bold blocks in coordinating colors or funky patterns on a clean white background.
Today's design is more blocks of color with a black handwritten "hello" that I created by using my tablet. The original intention was to use four squares of the same patterned card stock that I had left over. I was going to use black pen to write the hello, but decided to do something a bit more uniform and use my tablet. After I had printed the cards with the "hello," I decided against the patterned card stock and made new blocks out of similar textured colored card stock. I like this look a lot more than I liked the original idea. I also like to be able to offer a variety of colors in one set of cards.

What do you think about the "minimalist" look on the second set? I'm kind of liking the less is more approach with these.