Have you been thinking to yourself : “If there is one thing I need, it’s a tee-pee, so that, instead of sitting in my living room, I could sit in my tee-pee in my living room, or instead of sitting on my deck, I could sit in a tee-pee on my deck, etc.”?

Well today is your lucky day, because all your teepee desires will be fulfilled.

Yes, I’m going to tell you how to build your own wicked-cool “3 person” tee-pee.  I put “3 person” in “quotations” because while getting blottzed last weekend we managed to fit 8 people in this tee-pee, but it was less than comfortable, and I’m pretty sure we almost destroyed the tee-pee.

But if you are looking for a semi-private location for three people to discuss politics and the socio-economic state of the world, say, while, doing shots of cinnamon whiskey, than this teepee is perfect.

I originally found my inspiration from Smile and Wave here, but made some modifications to make the tee-pee a big bigger and changed the design a little bittle.  Ok so go to the hardware store/craft store/dollarstore and buy these:

• 6 x 8 foot framing beams (1″ x 2″)
• Biggest canvas drop cloth you can find (I bought a 9′ x 12′ and it still wasn’t big enough… had to go back and buy another)
• A bunch of ribbons
• Twine or leather lace
• Paint and a paintbrush

Here is my fancy tee-pee pattern.  It’s pretty damn simple.  Figure it out.

Now that you’ve cut out all your shizz, time to sew.  Make sure that your sewing machine is not broken, because if it is broken, you’ll have to take it apart and put it back together after drinking two glasses of wine, and then the bobbin casing might get all fucked up due to your drunkenness, and the needle might get stuck and threaten breaking off into your skull or eyeball socket.

Remember that you are going to be sewing those ribbons to the INSIDE of the tee-pee (i.e. the seam-side) because you’ll want to tie them to the poles to keep them in place.  I basically folded by ribbon pieces in half, and stuck the folded end through the front about 1/2 an inch.  You can see it on the other side, but I think it looks all like cool and professional, like there are little tabs on the seams that I purposely put there.  I think about things like this way too much.

Now lay out the tee-pee on the floor and marvel at your ability to make unnecessary things.  Put your small dog on the tee-pee fabric shell to take a cute picture.

Then Instagram it.

Now it’s time to paint.  I was inspired by some tee-pee I saw on Pinterest with like, black and white Aztec stuff all up on it, and I put this triangle-sun thing on the top.  You know.  Just bein’ bad ass and all.

Ok, let that dry and make sure you don’t step on it while wearing socks and then put your shoe on then discover several hours later that you have “paint-glued” your sock to the inside of your shoe. 

Take your poles and drill a hole in the flat side about 6″ – 8″ inches from the end, then lace your leather or twine piece *loosely* through the holes and circle it around them to hold them in a triangle-ish type thing.  You’ll need to keep them loose because you’ll need to finagle them around while you put your fabric on.

Throw your fabric over and tie the inner ribbons to the poles to hold it in place.  I also tied twine between the poles at the very bottom of the structure to keep them equidistant and stable as drunken friends pile in.

NOW YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DECORATE IT MORE.  With, like, beads and feathers…

And maybe a suede blanket and a furry sheepskin…

Now take a picture of it and Instagram it.

FUCKING-BAD-ASS.

So P-Hops, my best friend in the world, had an “important” birthday on Friday, and her fantastic man and I cooked up a little party to celebrate.

My house is a pretty good party house, and people (hopefully) enjoyed themselves…

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Tami noticed the Fleetwood Mac hangy-balls, too:

I was trying to get a picture of Pam and she kept moving around. So I said “STOP MOVING AROUND” and she did her patented “tree blowing in the wind” dance.

Since I tend to over-plan and become obsessive about everything in my life, I decided to make this a fun little theme party and cook up some southwestern-native-what-have-you inspired items to add some pizzaz to the party. Basically, it gave me a wonderful excuse to get my deck all ready for the summer, and since I had done absolutely nothing with it so far, there was a lot to do…

About 30 yards of fabric bunting had to be made and mounted. OBVIOUSLY. I mean, like, what kind of plebian deck doesn’t have bunting cut from pinking shears?

I had to build some deck furniture so that there would be a place for people to sit and eat… I’ll tell you how to make some in a later post. Seriously – it’s so easy and cheap. TAKE THAT LEON’S!

Lots of cacti… daisies… reeds… you know, the things that you would imagine in some “Vintage-Southwestern-Canadian-Hybrid-Deck-Utopia”

And some bourbon-based lemonade with mason jars for glasses. It was steee-rong. About a liter of Jack Danny in there.

AND OH YEAH. I built a Teepee.

I’m not going to lie – I’m pretty proud of myself for building this unnecessary teepee. At first, everyone was sober, so, like, no one went in the teepee. But then everyone drank the lemonade and we starting teepee stuffin’ and trying to get as many people in the teepee as possible.

For the record, it’s eight.

Don’t worry, I’ll post a DIY about it this week!

PAMMY! I hope you had a good birthday! You are the best.

 …..JUST SAYIN’.  I’ll only charge you $6900.00 and a case of Hoegaarden.  I’ll even put it up in my underwear*.

*Please note that I am referring to ”Full-Body Victorian Underwear“.

Oh hi.  These are my new friends.  That’s Kenny on the left.  Lenore’s hanging out in the middle.  Stu’s keepin’ it real on the right side.

Remember when I had this random idea to find mugshots and put them up in my kitchen?  Of course you do.  Mostly because of the picture of nude boys.  I know.

But the mugshots.  What?  You thought I just FORGOT about that?  Have we MET? 

I basically spent the next month searching for mugshot images all around vintage stores, craigslist, internets, and what not, and finally stumbled upon these beauties from etsy shop LarkenDesign.  Being just as wonderfully creative as me, they had the same idea, found some mugshot negatives from Cincinnati in the 50′s, and sell them in poster-size.

It took a little while for my new friends to arrive in the mail… and then I went to Argentina… and then I spent about two weeks getting drunk in my underwear on the couch.

Then, last week I finally got my shit together and bought some frames to introduce my new friends to their new home, my kitchen wall.

I just want to say that it does feel slightly creepy putting up mugshots of strangers in your old Victorian house.  And, since I’m irrationally superstitious, I kept thinking that there were demons or something who were trying to sabotage my long-seeded desire to have weird art on my wall.

This is the SECOND time one of the frames shattered.  How many frames have I put up in my lifetime?  Hundreds.  How many have shattered?  Two.  Both with my mugshot pics.  DAMN YOU, KENNY AND LENORE!

Then, a couple of days after I put them up, Stu’s picture nearly crashed off the wall because the screw came out, but I saved it in time. 

Here they are,  chillin’ out maxin’ relaxin’ all cool, watching me secretly eat cheese in the middle of the night.

 I took fewer pictures than I should have this weekend.  I should have taken it upon myself to capture the pure, magical, sunshine-induced love fest that was festering all over the city.  But I didn’t and now you’ll have to trust my description.

I spent hours at a St. Patrick’s day party on Saturday, and of course, took no pictures.  The only picture I took was in the hardware store across the street, where I ran drunkenly at 3:00 pm in a mad frenzy because I had lost my hammer somewhere the day before and needed to hang a picture IMMEDIATELY when I returned home, and thought that this would be the only time I would have to go buy a hammer.  I know.  It makes no sense to me either.  But then I saw this at the cash register and I thought it was hilarious:

Anyways.  that was the only picture from Saturday.  I basically got wasted, ate a trough of Vietnamese food, and fell asleep at like 7 pm.

Then Sunday.

Oh Sunday.

You make me so happy with your sunny, sunny bordering-on-sexual love for me.

First, remember my garden?   The out-of-control mystery garden that I spent some time cleaning up in the fall?  Well, I still have no idea what is planted in there, but this week I started to see evidence of fantastic flower-planning.

So Sunday morning I spent some time clearing away the old dead leaves, like a good little domestic girl, and my garden is already the envy of the entire neighbourhood.  AND I’VE BARELY DONE A THING.

SO MANY CROCUSES, just poppin’ their heads out, being all perfect and beautiful, bein’ all like “Whatever.  I’m in your garden.”  I can see hyacinths creeping up, too, and a whole bunch of other plants that I know nothing about.  Finally, remember the tulip bulbs I planted in an effort to feel like I was contributing something? 

They are busting through the ground with so much intensity, they are CRACKING PLANET EARTH IN HALF.

Then, I hung out with Sarah and Lauren in Trinity Bellwoods.  You know, just basking in the sun, eye-humping hipsters, and drinking super-wienery beer.

And then I ate two gigantic sausages with sauerkraut, ketchup, mustard, and relish, and drank a whole bunch of Anchor Steam.

What a day.

I’ve been a bit lazy around the house lately, but I have a few little things up my sleeve.   You’ll notice that I haven’t spent a lot of time setting up the kitchen yet, which is going to change soon.  The office has been getting gussied, mostly through the installation of my big pipe shelving unit, which has made so much of a difference – it made the room seem twice as big and bright, which is a good start.

One of the biggest issues with the office is the lack of light.  There is a small window off to one side that faces the side of the house next door – the sun never gets to it, making the room constantly frigging dark, which makes me want to scream.  I can’t standing living in a dark house.  I painted the room white to help brighten it up, but I’m trying to play with the artificial light.  It’s hard.

So, when I was at Anthropologie, I saw this huge industrial floor lamp that I fell in love with.  Of course, it was an antique from France or some shit, and was $5800.00.  Yeah. 

Then, while wasting time in Homesense, I found this floor-mounted spring lamp on supersale.  Why was it on supersale?  Because the shade was missing, the base wasn’t screwing in properly, and it needed to be re-wired.

I bought it, with absolutely no real understanding on how I was going to fix it up, but confident that I would figure it out.  As you know, I am obsessive and if I want something done, I do that shit.

Task #1: Find a new shade

I wanted a big industrial shade like the one I saw at Anthropologie.  It had to have an easy way of attaching to the light, and it had to be super-light so that the spring arm wouldn’t droop down with the weight of it.

Hellooooooo Ikea.

I just bought this $13.00 bad boy, and threw away everything but the shade.   Then I found a socket that would hold it properly.

2. Re-wire that shizz

Ok, there were two problems here: first, I don’t know anything about re-wiring lamps, and second, I needed to completely change the socket to make that Foto shade fit on the base.

Turns out it is SO EASY to rewire a lamp socket.  I was convinced that I was either going to kill myself, or completely destroy my $33.00 lamp. 

Seriously.  You just re-strip the wires.  Wrap the stripped cords on the correct screws in the socket.  Tighten the screws.

Look how beautifully I stripped these.  Such a good stripper.

I MADE LIGHT!

Put that bad boy back together, and I love it.  A great addition to my “70′s music corner vignette”.

PLUS – he looks a little like this.  Which is awesome.

 I’m going to start this post by flopping a couple things right out there on the table:

1. I am very, very proud of myself for making this shelving unit, and you might get annoyed with me as I puff up my chest in self-satisfaction throughout this post;
2. It is much harder than it looks; and
3. Although I take credit for the actual planning, prepping and construction of this particular unit, I really did get the idea from The Brick House, a blog that is much, much better than mine.  Check it out for materials lists and stuff.

I want to tell you the harrowing tale of the planning and construction of this thing… not just to revel in my success and to stroke my vanity (chest… puffing…), but also as a public service announcement for those who would like to also plan and construct this thing.

 
BLA-BLAM!

First, let’s visit The Brick House blog, and point out a couple of things that I idiotically chose to glean over in the ”bordering on sexual-level” of excitement that occurred within my loins when I decided to construct this unit:

 Yeah… she says right in the post that it was a super-huge monstrous unforgiving mega-bitch to make… and being a stubborn and “focused” (read: obsessive) person, I just put my stupid head down like a damn bull and starting forcing myself through this process like an idiot. 

That being said, I am really good at preparing for things, and spend a LOT of time working out the correct math for my specific wall measurements.  I wanted the unit to be custom built around the reclaimed barn board table I had made a couple of years ago, and I managed to fit that sucker in there like a glove.  You also have to be SUPER DUPER careful when you measure and drill the holes in the planks to feed in the black piping… because if you screw that shit up… you have to start the whole wood process all over again.

Do not try to decipher my complex mathematical code. 

Alllright.  First things first. You’d THINK that the materials required to construct the shelf would be readily available.  Black pipe, some elbowies and flangies and fittings.  And some wood.  You’d THINK.  The Brick House post seems to indicate that they are easy to get… not unlike walking into a store and getting different sizes of shoes, or maybe buying delicious coconuts at the store.

HA HA HA.  Not so fast, you! 

First, I recommend you call all of the three Home Depots within driving distance of Toronto and ask them if they have pipe.  BEFORE you drive to them all.  Because sometime they don’t stock them so frequently.  Just sayin’.

SURPRISE! 

And, I mean, black 1/2 inch pipe IS “easy” to get.  It is “easy” to get a 10-foot long piece of black pipe, a 24-inch piece, or a 6-inch piece.  But to get 6 – 12″, 7 – 18″, 1 – 32″, 3 – 30″, 1 – 43″, 14 – 8″, and 4 – 9″… is not that easy.  And I know, because I’m a very focused and resourceful person, and I called EVERY plumbing supply place in Toronto.

YOU NEED TO GET A TEN FOOT PIPE, AND HAVE EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF PIPE INDIVIDUALLY CUT. 

Which means you have to go into Home Depot, and ask the very surly Home Depot service man to spend THREE HOURS cutting 4 ten-foot long pieces of pipe into small little pieces, then individually threading each and every pipe end, while trying to answer other customers’ questions.  I’m pretty sure that the guy spent 2 hours and 30 minutes fantasizing about whipping me “pinata-style” in the face with each of the carefully cut and threaded pipes.

Note that you have to wash and spray paint the pipe, which is dirty and greasy and messy and takes longer than you’d think.  But don’t they look pretty!???

Second, the wood.  You need to get planed pine planks that are 1″ x 12″ - two planks at 6 foot (cut down to 4′ 3″ for my measurements) and two planks at 10 feet (cut down to 8′ 10″ for my measurements).  The six foot plank was a breeze – just go to Home Depot and pick that shizz up.

The ten foot plank?  Nope.  Nice try.  It’ll take more effort than that.  Home Depot… and I mean all three Home Depots within driving distance of downtown Toronto… don’t sell 1″ x 12″ planks longer than 8 feet.  Nope.  HA HA HA. You so crazy, Home Depot.

Of course, you’ll have to spend an entire morning calling home improvement stores and lumber yards trying to find the right plank dimensions.  Oh, and make sure you ask for “planed” planks, not “rough” planks.  Because they might leave out that important piece of information, then when you drive all the way to the damn store and they show you the plank, it looks like it got chewed up by a rabid silver back gorilla, and it will give you a billion splinters.

That fucker hurt.

But then I found Danforth Lumber, who are AMAZING and totally friendly and hooked me up with a ten footer.  And cut it for me.

OH YEAH ONE MORE THING.  Make sure you communicate the length really, really carefully.  Because the guy cutting the wood might think you said “8 foot” instead of “8 foot 10 inches”, and you might not realize it until after you brought it home, minutes before you start staining the wood, and you might have to drive all the way back to the East End to Danforth to get another 10 foot pine plank.  And they might not have any left, and might have to spend 1 hour digging some out from waaaaaaay back in the “miscellaneous wood pile”

Just sayin.

Then you have to sand, stain, and varnish the wood.  Get ready to breathe in poisonous fumes for two days, unless, that is, you have a covered outdoor space that would shield the wood from… oh I don’t know… a snowstorm.  Which I did not.  So the stained and varnished wood sat in my family room for two days.

Also – and this is the last thing I’ll say - make sure you buy a 7/8′ inch drill bit, not a 3/4′ bit like it says in the post.  3/4′ is too small.  And make sure you drill a pilot hole before trying to drill out that bitch of a huge hole, or else wood chips will explode into your eyeballs and the drill bit will get jammed up and you will be scared that the bit will detach from the drill and fly into your skull.

Sigh.

Seriously, though, enough complaining.

It really is getting everything bought and prepped that makes this thing really really hard.  Putting it together was a breeze.  It just all screws together like a tinker toy.  Tami came over to help, because she is wonderful.  The whole process (including pancake-eating) took about 2 hours.

Tami is wonderful!

Not only can I construct shelving units, but I can also make banana-pecan pancakes from scratch.  Dream woman, I know.

I do not recommend you take the “one footer” approach to ladder-standing like Tami does.

I assure you that I drill with much more hutzpah than this picture would indicate.  Also, for some reason I look like a butt-ugly hippie-man in this photo, when in reality I am an ethereal woman-nymph.

I’m not going to lie, I felt like a super-amazing, strong independant woman when the whole mofo was all installed and ready to be all vignetted up.

She is very sparse right now, and I have big plans for my upcoming vignette… some Scheurich vases, maybe?  Some graphic prints?  THE WORLD IS MY VIGNETTING OYSTER.

I am awesome.  I just found this listing on craigslist for wooden theatre seating:

Remember THIS???

Yeah, here are my wooden theatre seats.  They are 3-seaters (not piddly, losery 2-seaters).  And beautiful.  AND THEY WERE $40.00.  Anyways, just feeling super-smug, so I thought I would radiate my smugness here.

SMUGNESS!!!!!!!!!!

I needed some kind of side-table thingamajig for beside my couch, so naturally, I have been spending inordinate amounts of time on craigslist looking for something appropriate. 

I had my eye on a teak side table for a week or so, but the guy was charging something completely ridiculous like $125.00, and since my existing teak side table was procured for $20.00, paying more that five times that for essentially the same table made my heart hurt with money pains.  So I scrapped that.

Besides, I think I’m “over-teaking” it in the loft right now.  Teak credenza, teak coffee table, teak lounge chairs, and (the $20.00) teak side table… I mean I really like teak, but it’s starting to look like someone had teak diarrhea.

So then, I thought I would try to find a vintage trunk and “carelessly place it” next to my couch, so that it looks like I’m all laid back and have a trunk, and like, just keep it as my side table, like a trunk-having badass.  But then:

1. Nice vintage trunks are fucking expensive; and
2. For some reason I’m convinced that all old trunks have bedbugs/earwigs/centipedes/ghosts hiding in them, and they freak me out a little bit.  Like, I’m worried that one day I’ll randomly open up my trunk and find a bunch of skulls with worms crawling out of their eyeball sockets, and I’ll hear a child’s voice whispering from the trunk with the faint, barley audible whistle of the wind, saying “yooouuu’re neeexxxt”.  Yes, I am crazy.

One of my main problems is that I always look to buy new things instead of just re-working the old stuff I bought for no reason months ago.  For example, two months ago I bought four old apple crates from UpsideDive in a frenzy because I felt I needed to have something to fill up some space in my office for my housewarming party (in retrospect, I’m pretty sure that everyone was too drunk-slash-marvelled-by-my-social-poise-and-effervescence to notice the pile of dirty old crates in the corner, but whatever).

This weekend I finally got my shit together and built a shelving system for the office (more on that later), and my poor dirty apple crates were left homeless.

DOUBLE SUPER HAPPY SOLUTION: Make one of the apple crates into a side table.

Step One
Get the apple crate, and buy four casters.  Try to simultaneously entertain small dog who refuses to leave you alone, despite seeing you occupied building fancy apple-crate side table.

Step Two
Screw the casters to the bottom of the apple crate.  I only used one screw per caster because I only had four screws that were short enough and I’m too lazy/cheap to go buy more. 

Step Three
Take arty pictures of new “apple-crate-side-table” and sit back, absorbing multiple compliments from guests who think you are like, totally creative and stylish.

I seriously think I have some kind of mental disease.  I am not able to let my brain relax. 

I have to be making something.  Or fixing something. Or painting something. Or cleaning something.  Or planning the process of doing one of these things.  It’s super annoying.

So of course, even though I didn’t need to, I made some side-projects this weekend.

For some reason, I wanted to buy some vintage arrows and make some art.  So I found some vintage arrows.  And I made some art.  My arrows have real metal tips. It’s like “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” styles.  They probably killed things before.  No “safety nubs” for me – I don’t half-ass my arrow art.

Check out those real feathers.  They make the arrow go in certain directions.  You know how I know?  Because in the film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” starring Kevin Costner and Christian Slater, they had this one scene where Kevin Costner had to shoot an arrow at some guy who was trying to chop off Christian Slater’s head with a big axe and because he needed to make the arrow do a curve-shot, he pulled off one of the tri-feather tail thingies and shot the arrow and IT WORKED.

I just used my Girl Guide string-tying skills and I tied my arrows up by wrapping butcher string around them.

BLA-BLAM.  Arrow art.  Kevin Costner would be proud.

I also made some neon-striped wood vases.  They are didn’t turn out as well as the arrow art.

A word to the wise – if you are going to try to paint neon stripes on something that is dark, PRIME IT first.  Because I didn’t prime it, and then I painted like sixteen coats, and it still looks like shizz.  Then I primed it and was done in 5 minutes.  But the other sixteen coats below the primer got all bumpy and goopy and then it kind of made the stripes look like shit.

ARTY PHOTO OP:

Finally, I planted some more plants in some wall-planters.  Suddenly I am a Green Grower, reborn. 

So far none of my other plants have died.  A couple of brown spots on one leaf.  I decided to rectify this problem by watering the shit out of the plant.  It will likely soon rot and die.  However – this guy appears to be happy:

So does this guy:

Plants and beer.  And neon.  And arrows.  It was a pretty good Sunday.

* Also, this.