patrick nagel mask + a bonus zombie

happy halloween! this year i wanted to be a shitty patrick nagel painting but the makeup i bought was too cheap so...not possible. BUT! i made a nagel mask! 

i think it works particularly well with the sunglasses.

bwahahah

here's one last spooky lewk from last week when i did a zombie pack.

christ, i love this holiday.

edit, 11/4/17--  i tried putting the stupid nagel head in places that might scare leff (on the mirror, in a cabinet, etc, etc) but nothing worked so i decided to turn it into a kite simply cause its disembodied head reminded me of rokurokubi . i gave it a twine neck/string to accentuate the yokai-ness of the thing and also some andy warhol dollar signs and glosticks  cause they made it tackier.

i mean.

it kills me it is so terrible.

halloween cookies

today i made three kinds of spooky cookies, spider chocolate chip (inspiration), 

eye and tooth red velvet (recipe)

and a some black heart stained glass jack o lantern cookies. (*whew* so many descriptors.)  here is the backlit version.

and the unlit version. i used black cocoa powder. it worked so well!

stained glass cookies are usually a xmas thing but i thought they'd lend themselves well to the best holiday.  it's still weird filling cookies with hard candy tho.

esp after you've ground them in your mortar and pestle.

happy early halloween!

last botw pumpkin is link!

finished the last pumpkin of the year this afternoon and it's link. hooray!

here are all three of the "breath of the wild" pumpkins all together.

four pumpkins this year! (final pam being the first that i carved this year) being able to get them delivered is SO AWESOME!

more halloween stuff coming up in the next week!

second botw pumpkin is zelda

another day, another pumpkin. this time it's botw zelda. 

is this not the best part of pumpkin carving? (leff says no. lol)

anyway, i'm still getting over this weird illness so, at one point, i seriously considered leaving zelda to look like this.

but i soldiered on. carving, hacking, painting, drawing.

now there are two down and just one left until i am finished with pumpkins for the year!

ps-- don't forget about final pampkin also from this year!

first botw pumpkin

finished the first "breath of the wild" pumpkin tonight. yay! a sheikah slate! 

if time allows, i'm planning on carving two more zelda pumpkins by the end of the week. check back soon!

sweet failure

i'm trying to get the apartment cleaned up before winter gets here but i keep getting distracted. for example, today i found some old chocolate from aldi that needed to get used up. did i bake with it? nah, i attempted to make some mcdonalds old skool halloween pail pops. 

i mean, two of them turned out ok. 

but, um.....when i pulled them off the silpat, the pumpkin...well...

LOLOLOL i feel like this is the greatest thing that i have ever made. 😂 or at least it's a pretty good self portrait.

*actual* halloween content coming up soon-ish.  rn, i am going to laugh at that pumpkinhead some more.

open house chicago 2017

it's my annual joke but it's true that you can tell it's open house weekend in chicago by the flooded sidewalks

and the fact that i'm sick. thankfully, this year it's just the flu but it still limited my and leff's architectural exploration to our immediate neighborhood and six miles of walking.

NEXT YEAR we branch out a bit. i don't care if i am in a cast, i'm going to carbide and carbon! hrumph!

anyway, edgewater still has some great buildings!  last year, i went to colvin house before the refurb. i returned on saturday to see how the interior looks after a ton of work. guys. GUYS. it's a++ so good! they've kept a lot of the really cool interior details

and updated others to reflect the house's past. it looks FANTASTIC!

our next stop was sacred heart schools, driehaus center (conway house) and, while not much of the building was open, i enjoyed what was viewable.

i am kind of in love with the pattern of this wallpaper.

and, of course, this stairwell.

most of my photos from sacred heart didn't really come out (it was crowded, my lens was foggy due to torrential downpours lol). check out leff's ig if you'd like to see more!

after a quick stop at home to change clothes (i wasn't kidding about the downpours.), we hoofed it to st ita! i almost went to the cathedral a few weeks ago when the st pia relics were on display  but, despite having taught at a catholic school, i still get nervous about how to behave in those situations, so i waited for open house. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ita didn't disappoint one bit. the stained glass is spectacular. (i wish my picture of the rose window had worked, sigh. here's a b&w that shows how it's framed by the pipe organ, if you're interested.)

i felt like a bit of an intruder at st ita since there was a mass taking place. i tried to be respectful and not take pictures of people so you'll get a lot of these sorts of images instead of statues, closeups of stained glass.

i love sixth station of the cross (veronica wipes jesus' face) paintings. don't ask. just accept it.

really great cathedral. i'm glad i finally went inside! (i've passed it many, many times.) here's st ita herself! 

on the way to our last site, leff and i passed an accidental goldsworthy.

here're the edgwater beach apartments. i've been into one of the street level areas before for an art fair but this place is too unique to not tour.

i had heard about their beaux arts pool and, tbh, that was my main draw to this place. (i LOVE pools! haha) isn't this one cute?

the gardens were, sadly, closed due to the rain but, hey, the chandelier in the main lobby made up for it.

(i have actually seen peeks of the garden before since i take the trail behind these apartments from time to time so nbd.)

and that was ohc 2017 for me and leff! pretty fantasic, weather and illness considered! again, can highly recommend visiting if you ever happen to be in chicago on the weekend in question. here's the full list of sites from this year in case you're interested.

NEXT YEAR i'm totally going to bronzeville cause i am smitten with the first church of deliverance. that interior is AH MAY ZING!!!