Category: homelife

Our Imagination Nursery Project!

   This weekend was super productive.  With no set plans, it gave us a ton of time to work in the nursery as we are closing in on the final project in this room….the new floor.  I’m a bit scared to try this next project by myself, but I was scared when I was trying the crown molding, and that turned out fine.  This will be my most challenging project yet.
    This weekend, we started wrapping up some of the final things that needed to get done before starting the floor.  We had to finish the inside of the closet and we had to sand and paint the window molding.  As soon as we finished these, all of the dirty work was pretty much done.  This would clear the way for putting up the new light.  We had looked at a number of lights and up until maybe a week ago, we were set to pay a little more than $100 for the one we wanted.  Then Nicole came up with the idea to get one of those paper ball  shades.  I loved this idea, mainly because it would sort of resemble a moon!  We found one at Pier 1 Imports for about 10.00.  We then bought a mini pendant light kit from Home Depot for 14.99 making the entire light around 25.00.  Pretty sweet huh?  I put that up this weekend as well, and we are finally getting to see the formation of this room come together.  Besides our kitchen, this baby is going to have the best room in the house!

Stay tuned for more updates!  I’m trying to make a more constant flow of blog posts happen, I have been insanely busy but if I pour myself a tasty pint, I can chill out enough to type out an entry!  

0

The Nursery is coming along nice!

 
If you are new to this blog, my wife and I are having a kid, so we have been working on a nursery.  We took the room where my old office was, and completely gutted it out, down to bare bones.  The room was a disaster…crumbling plaster walls, layers of overlapping wallpaper, no insulation, a pull string light on the ceiling, wall sconces with twisty switches randomly on the wall, and a wood floor that was cracked and in rough shape.  This has been, by far, the biggest job I’ve done myself in this house.  My wife has helped a lot as well, but the hardcore stuff she couldn’t help with.  I went balls out.  It’s crazy when you know you have a kid on the way, like someone you are going to raise and care for.  A new life that you get to pass down things to.  It makes (or should make) you want to be the best you can be, and to give the best you can give in terms of effort in life.  You don’t want your kid thinking your a shlub.
I’m a nostalgic person, I never forgot what it was like to be a kid and to use your imagination.  Mine was always going.  I’d spend hours and hours with my toys, acting out entire wrestling story-lines that went on for years.  I remember all of them, its completely ridiculous looking back on it now, but at the time, I know I loved it.  My toys at the time, were all commercial, like He-man, Rambo, Thundercats etc…..but I never really cared about that, all of the toys in my mind had totally different names and personalities that I created.  That’s just how I was.  As stupid as it sounds, I think it was just creativity, something that once you get a taste of, it never leaves you.  Lets get back to this room…

Nicole and I are not going to know what the baby is and want to be as unisex as we can be.  We painted the room a pretty neutral combination of colors and we will be putting in an oak floor to further soften the room. I currently am in the process of doing the crown molding around the door.  This was one hell of an experience, but I finally learned how to do it!

A royal pain….but it came out great!

     On the wall where the closet is, will be where the crib goes…I wanted to do something cool on the wall.  Like many kids, the timeless tale of “Where the Wild Things Are” was one of my favorites, a true tale of a wild imagination.  I decided to attempt my first wall mural.  I’m not a painter, in fact I hate it.  I never had the attention span to deal with paint, which was why I always worked pen/ink.  This was going to be painted and I knew it would be a challenge.  I borrowed my step fathers projector to help me get an accurate outline of the picture on the wall.  This sort of failed.  Mainly because I couldn’t move the projector back far enough to fill the wall, in fact it would only fill maybe a quarter of it…minus a few facial details, the projector was sort of a failure….I was going to have to draw out 90% of it myself which was sort of intimidating because I’ve never worked on something so large.

For the paints, I had the idea of just bringing a picture of the book cover to home depot and then having them mix me $2.95 8oz samples of every color I needed.  It was really super easy although I’m sure they were annoyed at the amount of samples I wanted.

I’m not the greatest painter, but i feel this is looking OK so far.  If it winds up looking terrible, we can just paint over it!

More updates to come, including new shirts, beer, and Doctor who!

0

Our Trip to Stone Brewery

   The last thing we did on our San Diego trip was the thing I wanted to do most….our trip to Stone!

When I think of craft beer, Stone Brewing is one of the first breweries I think of.  They are like the Bruce Lee of brewing.  They took a look a traditional craft brewing at the time, and tossed all rules and tradition out the window.  Setting themselves apart from the rest, they are true icons of the craft beer movement.  This was the nicest brewery I’ve ever been to.  It was sort of hard to find the place, not because it was complicated direction-wise, but the building looked like some cookie cutter office park and we had initially driven past it.   Parking was almost impossible as the lot was totally full.  Once we got in, it was like stepping foot into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.  Ok maybe not that extreme….but I was pretty happy.  The eating area is amazing with a huge outdoor section in a lush Japanese garden that actually had trails which led to little social areas with fire pits, chairs, mini bars, it was awesome.  We sat down outside, each table having one of those heaters in case it was a bit chilly.  I wanted the beer on cask which was some sort of special IPA with ginger (if I remember correctly), but they were out of the cask.  I was upset..but not really, there were tons of beers to choose from.  The cool thing about stone is that they carry other craft beers from other brewers.  I was in the mood for a cask brew….

I was able to find several different IPA’s to enjoy and we also sampled some others.  You were able to get sample flights of basically whatever you wanted.

The food was average, not bad at all, just not “amazing”.  The portions though were truly American.
In the back, you can see where the trails go off into the Stone wooded wonderland.   It’s amazing to see something like this when you see that the brewery is just some business park.
I wish every table I sat at looked this way.

    The visit to Stone was pretty awesome.  I was not leaving San Diego without stopping here!  The Merch Shop was pretty nice as well an reasonably priced.  I picked up a shirt and cap and Nicole picked up one of these:

0

The San Diego Zoo and a Lunch at the Hopping Pig

    One of the “must see” spots we wanted to hit was the Zoo.  It was supposed to be one of the nicer zoo’s to see in the U.S. so to not go would just be silly.  The Zoo opened at 9am and we were there right at that time.  This zoo was gigantic.  The entire layout felt as if you were taking a weird paved stroll through a jungle.  It was really impressive.  I found myself able to take some really awesome photos, close up.  I’m not sure if its just a common thing, or maybe we were just lucky, but many of the animals were as close to us as they could possibly be.

These two were rough housing under water while we watched.

Seeing this guy brought some mixed feelings about the zoo.  These things are so human-like, that its hard not to look at them as slaves or prisoners.   They did state several times while walking through the zoo, that these animals end up living way longer than they normally would in the wild, but still…

Talking about the upcoming NFL draft…

This was a site to see….the panda!  With only like 1600 of these things left on this earth, getting to see the Panda was awesome.  This panda was totally relaxed in his tree stump recliner eating some veggies in the sun, living it up.  He was not as sad (or sad looking) as the orangutan.  I could be wrong though…maybe the orangutan wasn’t sad at all.   Maybe he was just as enthused as I’d be with people pointing at me while I tried enjoying lunch…

For 40 bucks a ticket, the San Diego Zoo ended up being worth the trip.  It was a gorgeous day, nice breeze, and great way to spend a few hours.

For lunch we headed back into the city to the Gas Lamp District, an area in the city loaded with shops, places to eat, and pubs.  I had Nicole pick the lunch destination and she surprised me by picking a place that was right up my alley, the “Hopping Pig”.  The Hopping Pig is a little place with an open front, some exposed brick, great taps, nice menu, and cool background music (I believe they played The Smiths the entire time we were there).  Having driven, I only treated myself to one beer, Port Brewery’s Erasure IPA, which was solid.  Nicole ordered the Short Ribs and I ordered the Yellow Tail.

The result of two awesomely prepared dishes! 

   I was pretty happy Nicole found this place, as these are commonly the places I seek out when going out of town.  Similar places to the “Blue Monk” in Buffalo, “Hop Leaf” in Chicago, and now I’ve had the pleasure of relaxing at “The Hopping Pig” in San Diego.  Like Cube says….

0

San Diego Pretty Sweet….

   I’m terrible at blogging, I fully admit.  I keep forgetting.  But I remembered now!  That’s whats most important right!?  Well, Nicole and I are in San Diego and it’s been awesome.  San Diego is way better than San Fran.  Last year we went to San Fran, it was nice……beautiful scenery, great weather, begging, 20 year old homless, etc…….San Diego?  Great weather, beautiful scenery, great beer, great food.   San Diego wins.   Nicole and I have enjoyed our time here.  I love Buffalo, but man, after this winter, San Diego was like heaven.  Nicole couldn’t even drink…..shes a trooper.  I’m not going to lie.   The main reason I wanted to go to San Diego was to drink amazing beer…and that, I did.  As I type this, I haven’t even gotten to Stone yet!
Let me start with this……the staple of the west coast, is that you cannot get good pizza.  I was proven wrong.  I fully admit.  Chicago and New York are kings for pizza, and from everything I have experienced and from everything I have heard, there is shit for pizza on the West.  I was proven wrong this weekend, and pleasantly impressed!  Woodstock’s Pizza on Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach is tasty!  Delicious Pizza and top notch beer.  One thing I noticed while in San Diego….every place you go that is able to serve alcohol, has great beer.   We have come a long way in Buffalo with our craft beer scene, but there are still too many places that have a predominant menu of Bud, Coors, Molson, and Sam Adams.

Lets Get back to Woodstock’s.  I ordered the BBQ chicken pizza with a pint of freaking Union jack from Firestone Walker.

I’m a pizza snob.  One might even call me “a dick”.  Whatever, I’ve worked pizza since legal working age, so I know it.  Woodstock’s is as good as you’re going to get not being from NY or Chicago.

     My stepfather and I went out one night after the ladies were asleep in search of a beer oasis.  We found it at the Taproom.  Let me start by saying, that if you are on the West Coast, you should be constantly searching for Russian River’s Pliny The Elder.  I won’t even go into detail about it….if you are into craft beer….do some research. Needless to say, we were lucky enough to run into a freshly tapped barrel which they get only once a week, and gets kicked in a little more than a day.  It’s easily a top 5 IPA of all time.  I had one of those, along with Russian River’s “Blind Pig” which is an IPA, and then Stone’s Ruination on Cask.   The Ruination on Cask was like liquid gold.  If you don’t appreciate cask beer, then you can’t say you are a fan of beer.  With a cask beer, you taste beer in its purest form. If you think of it as just “flat beer”, than you failed to grab the pebble from the master’s hand.  You fu*king failed to capture a fly in the chop sticks and sure as shit didn’t perform the crane kick from a stoop.  The Ruination Cask was sick, and was the best beer I had while in San Diego (so far, I have yet to reach Stone!).

Are you kidding?

Ruination on Cask

Pliney

This trip has been sweet so far.  I’ll have more updates as they come.  I can’t wait till Stone!

3

Back from Vacation!

      Haven’t had a chance to blog since returning from our little vacation, as soon as we got home we got pounded with orders!  Things are back to normal now and the website has been updated with some of the latest products we have.  We have also started expanding the toddler section and there will be more added this week.

    Nicole and I went to freakin’ Disneyland.  I haven’t been in over 20 years.  The bad part was Nicole had a brutal cold the whole time.  She was a trooper though and made the best of it.  We had time to hit up Magic Kingdom and Epcot.  Both were equally cool, however Epcot was more enjoyable because there were less kids.  The weather was really nice as well compare to here in Buffalo.  One thing I won’t miss about Florida?  Bad Beer.

0

Oh the work continues….

     Couldn’t post last week, the shirt orders were steady and there was much to to.  I had taken Monday off to work in the old office room, continuing my demo work and making progress.  The room has now gone from one outlet, to three.  The pull string light on the ceiling is now gone and I installed a dimmer switch on the wall for it (which was a giant pain but I better get used to it, there are 2 others in the house that need to be gone), and the room is now insulated.

Here is a good look at the wall paper that was hidden behind the paneling.  This layer came off easy….but the layer under it might have been at east 60 years old.  That one I needed to spend an hour or two on steaming and scraping.  The plaster wall behind it was in good shape though which will save a ton of work and mess.

I get amazed when I see the bones of this house which was build in the 1800’s.  These things were built to last.

Hard to make out, but this is the floral, base layer of wallpaper that needed to get steamed.

This is a close up of the hippy second layer paper.

After a steam.

All insulated!

   Next up is clearing out the room of anything that we don’t need in there, tearing down the rest of the door and wall molding, and starting the brick wall.  Stay tuned

0

Friday!

   Oh man I’m glad its Friday, this week has been draining.  Over the next two weeks, we will be focusing on the Toddler section of our site.  I received a few orders for Toddler shirts this week and was immediately embarrassed that the Toddler webpage looked as terrible as it did.  Thanks to the people that looked at that and still wanted to order!  The pictures of the shirts on that section of our webpage were horrendous, you couldn’t tell what colors the shirts were not to mention, 90% of the colors/styles were discontinued.  Over the next two weeks that section is under complete overhaul and it will look fantastic when its finished.
    Also for blog readers that like it when we post home improvement projects, we have started renovation in another room.  The room that used to be my office has begun demolition.  The room was way too big to be my office and I pretty much hated being in there.  I moved my office into a smaller room and began tearing the room apart.  I made the vow that there will be no messing around in there.  This house was loaded with archaic electrical situations, terrible dry walling, and the floors are awful as well.

The previous owners drywalled over the plaster to hide the wallpaper and damaged plaster. This is a common practice but do it right….don’t drywall around the woodwork or it looks like this……kill me.
Our bedroom and the old office have lights like this….no switch…just this rope hanging from the ceiling.  I have had enough of this as well….I’m going to rewire the ceiling to a switch.

………………. plus the plaster is cracked.  This will need to be addressed as well.  Oh and do you see that to the left…?
…yeah this. We are almost 100% positive that this gorgeous paneling is hiding something as well. Oh the anticipation!

More to come on this!

0

Everyone Have a Safe and Happy New Year!

   We at Super Sweet Shirts would like to wish everyone a safe and happy new year!  Big announcement, if you haven’t noticed, we are slowly adding color options for all the onesies.  The transition is complete in our Etsy store and is almost complete in the eBay store.  The website will be updated shortly after.  All onesies will now have a pink and blue option.  Pretty sweet.
Happy New year!

0

This Is More Like It…

    Living in Buffalo, you get to hear all the stereotypes about our city, one in particular being the weather.  I’ll admit, there is a history to the weather stereotype but it isn’t nearly as bad as they make it out to be.  The past few years have been almost depressing with barely any snow and green holidays.  I couldn’t live in a state that didn’t get snow.
    This year was looking to be the same as last year with a lack of snow and unseasonably warm temperatures.  Until last night.  Finally we got trampled, as last night’s storm rampaged through the area dropping a foot of snow.  It was pretty awesome.  My wife doesn’t share my enthusiasm and thinks I’m crazy when I show genuine excitement at the opportunity to go shovel.  I love it.  As a child, you get to see the snow fall, you bundle up, and you go play outside.  As an adult, unless you have a kid, you can’t just bundle up and go play in the snow (unless you want your neighbors to think that you’re an idiot).  So you have to bundle up and go shovel, but I like it.  I like getting blasted in the face with fresh powder. I like the fact that I have snow and ice collecting in my beard while my nose runs uncontrollably.  Most of all, I love the feeling that you get when you finish shoveling, and you bundle up and sit on the couch with some hot chocolate or tea.

The Christmas season is over, so the blog posts will resume as regular from now on.  I will get back to blogging about shirt ideas, food recipes, beer, gadgets, and action movies.  My wife and I have started making new recipes for dinner at night.  I plan on blogging them with pictures to share our success and our failures.  Happy New Year!

-Super Sweet Shirt Co.

0

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑