Glassy

CHEERS: Yesterday evening and this morning, our latest art project involved doing a project for a neighbor. The neighbor had posted to our local Buy Nothing group, asking for help making a custom gift, etching a wine glass, for a wine aficionado. 

Christian and I had done some glass etching before, and I knew Annabelle's Cricut machine wizardry could make it possible, so I volunteered us.

The neighbor came over and we selected a font. It was an all caps font - and if you look at wine bottles, it's amazing how many of them are all caps. Like 80 percent plus, I'm guessing.

Annabelle programmed the Cricut to cut out the words, and then carefully 'weeded' them to get the stencils ready.

After that was the trickiest part - applying the stencils to the wine glass. Just saying, trying to put a linear stencil onto a rounded surface is really not easy.

 Fortunately, Annabelle made it work. After that, it was time to apply the etching cream.

Mercifully, the process worked just fine, and she churned out a pair of custom glasses in good time. Hooray!

BLUE BIRD: A couple of months ago, we were in Costco and saw some pretty, big bird feeders. I impulse bought one. We have had it out back for about eight weeks now and have really enjoyed the steady stream of feathered friends who frequent it.  (We have less enjoyed the squirrels and occasional rat. Shudder.)

Anywhoo, we often have black-headed blue birds out back. We learned that those are called stellar's jay.

But yesterday morning I saw a bird out back that was not one of our black-headed friends. I took a photo with my cell phone and used the Google lens feature on the image.  It almost immediately told me the backyard visitor was a California scrub jay. 

Pretty cool! We're enjoying learning more about our feathered friends. 

It's a Blur

REWIND: As I look back on the last couple of days, I can understand why I'm a tad tired as I type this. It feels like it has been a marathon at a sprinter's pace. I'll try to hit a few highlights. ...

Monday, we took a break from working on the house and in the yard to go play a few holes of disc golf at a new-to-us course, Lakewood King County Disc Golf Club. It's in the White Center neighborhood, which is south of Seattle proper and east of West Seattle.

Frankly we hadn't gone to that course before because of the word 'club' in its name. We thought it was for members only or we'd have to pay to play. But Kennedy went and scouted it out a couple of weeks ago and said it's a public park open to all. 

Unfortunately, the course has no map posted on site, the tees are not well marked (and in some instances they're not marked at all), so we wandered around a bit. (Eventually I found a map on the ground at one tee, so that helped us.)

One thing that makes this particular course unique is it features some water hazards. 

We were pretty happy we didn't lose any discs that day.

We pretty much had the whole park to ourselves. As we were leaving, I noticed a gentleman with a disc golf bag wandering around the park's entrance. It's what we'd been doing an hour or so prior. I told Christian to go give the guy the map we found. Boy, was he grateful!

Tuesday was all about cake. Horrible, terrible, troublesome cake.

Last week, Annabelle had perused the Birthday Dreams website and signed up to make a cake for a local child. The kid had chosen a galaxy themed party from the list, but there was a note that they really loved narwhals. 

Annabelle remembered that we had seen a cosmic-themed narwhal plushie at a video game convention awhile back. It was called a starwhal - how clever!  So we decided to make a starwhal cake.

There were two big problems, however. One was that somehow Annabelle got the due date wrong, and it was due more than 24 hours sooner that I thought it was kind of a big deal, because making these custom things is a process and takes time. 

The second super big problem was that on the day we *had* to make the figurines and decorate the cake, it was over 90 degrees. Icing and modeling chocolate do NOT like heat. Things literally kept falling apart. And when they fell apart, they'd land somewhere and ruin something else. Bad words were spewed and tears were spilled. It was really unpleasant, unfortunately - and uncharacteristically. Honestly, normally making these donation cakes is a fun experience. 

Anyway, we eventually got the cake to a 'stable' point and were happy to drop it off and put it behind us. Let's hope the birthday kid enjoyed it at least a little. In the photo below, I've blurred the name on purpose, for confidentiality.

Just minutes after dropping off the cake, we had to head north, to the stadium district. We had signed the kids up for the Bills, Budgets & Baseball event sponsored by our credit union, BECU. It's about a 90-minute event where teens participate in a simulation where they make real-life budgeting decisions people face every day. They are randomly assigned a persona, complete with a career, and, sometimes a spouse and/or kids. The challenge is to choose which housing, transportation, clothing, and other important purchases that make sense for you and your family. 

It was held in the 'basement' of T-Mobile Park, home to the Seattle Mariners. 

And by attending the event, our family 'earned' four free tickets to that night's game, as well as four $10 gift cards to use on stadium concessions. Pretty good deal!

After an orientation, the kids used an app called Bite of Reality 2 as they worked their way around stations for different expenses. In the end, CJ wound up in fairly deep debt. He didn't seem too worried about it, though. ... 

On the other hand, Annabelle seemed super proud she'd managed to stay on budget, and even save some.

After the exercise was over, we headed into the stadium. Rather than go to our assigned seats, we decided to see if there was seating available in the Hit It Here Cafe, above right field. Turned out there were plenty of open spots, so we parked there for a few innings.

Actually, we were there longer than we'd planned on being there, because there were multiple issues with our meals. Annabelle's wasn't served with the rest of ours, and then didn't come and still didn't come despite our repeated inquiries. (It was just a burger and fries, nothing that complex.) Meanwhile, the nachos Christian and I were served were like STONE COLD. They were gross, and we sent them back.

Fortunately, I complained to the right people, and our meals ended up being comped, which was appreciated. So that meant we had free game tickets and free food that night. So that wasn't bad - but the Mariners were terrible. They were shutout big time by the Yankees.

Fast forward to Thursday, we were heading out the door at 6:45 to Queen Anne Hill in the heart of Seattle. There, we helped set up for a back-to-school breakfast for staff at the kids' former learning center. The event had a 'rap' theme. Breakfast wraps were on the menu, and rap-inspired decor adorned the tables (think gold chains, boom boxes and such). CJ put together an hour's worth of 'clean' rap music (honestly, that was quite a challenge). I made four pounds of bacon, brought six different hot sauces, a dozen tomatoes from our garden, some cilantro, cotija, sliced mini bell peppers, tortilla strips, and more to contribute to the table (which also included scrambled eggs, sausage, potatoes, black beans, etc.).  

After the breakfast was served, I took the kids to the International Fountain at Seattle Center for a little splash time. 

We all realized just a couple of days ago that summer is almost over and we hadn't been to the fountain once yet this year. We had to fix that, as it's a tradition.

Parking was a little tricky, because there were hundreds of workers everywhere, getting the grounds ready for the big Bumbershoot concert this weekend.

Lots of vendors were already on site. The kids and I were intrigued by this Keen trailer. Apparently they make and sell shoes right on site. Interesting.

It wasn't as warm as we were expecting it to be today, but that didn't stop CJ from getting full on soaked.

He's the biggest kid in the fountain. :)

Space Art

SHOW TIME: Sunday afternoon we headed toward what seems to be our home away from home lately, The Museum of Flight. Our reason for being there was it was a Space Art celebration.

The museum had put out a call for youth artists to submit works to be considered in the show. Annabelle submitted a design and was happy to learn she'd been chosen to participate. We dropped her canvas off last Wednesday, and it was on display at the museum from Friday through Sunday.

We were super busy all day Friday and Saturday, as well as Sunday morning, but we finally headed to the museum on Sunday afternoon to check out the art show. It was pretty cool to find Annabelle's canvas under the nose of the space shuttle trainer in the space art gallery!

We were really impressed by all of the artwork on display. I took a couple of quick videos of them.

It was really fun for Annabelle to be a fly on the wall as people were looking at the art on display. As luck would have it, during the five minutes we stood there, three groups that passed through the exhibit stood in front of her canvas and commented on it and took photos. She was very flattered. 

There were a number of arts-and-crafts activities for Space Art Day, but we arrived too late to participate, having been busy before. However, we were just in time to see a really interesting biopic movie in the MoF's theater. 

Here's the trailer for the movie. ...

And here are reviews from the resident critics. Annabelle is up first. 

On August 25th at the Museum of Flight, my family and I had the privilege of getting to see the film “Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future”. The documentary follows the life of Chesley Knight Bonestell Jr., whom is considered the “Father of Modern Space Art.” He was born in San Francisco in 1888 and showed his prowess at painting as early as high school. This upset his grandfather, who wanted him to take over the printing mill when he came of age. Chesley instead began to study architecture in New York, where he could put his talents to work in bringing other students’ designs to life (such as the now-famous Chrysler Building). He soon began applying his newfound knowledge of camera angles and modelling to his own personal artwork, coinciding with the beginning of the Space Race. You can see influence from his extraterrestrial landscapes in almost every example of space art, and it even inspired some NASA employees to pursue their careers.

While the film did do a wonderful job at documenting his life, I do wish it spent a bit more time focusing in on his art techniques and paintings. It seemed rather heavy on the biography side of things at times. Despite this, the film is gorgeous in terms of visual presentation, truly bringing to life his artwork and influence. I would recommend the film to people who are interested in space travel history or biographies, but it may not be as interesting to you if you were expecting an art film. I personally enjoyed it, and found it fascinating that someone who has had so much influence on the art world has been virtually unknown for so long.

And here's what CJ had to say ... 

Throughout the 20th century, Chesley Knight Bonestell Jr. was a highly influential and important artist, often referred to as "the father of modern space art". Chances are, if you're even remotely familiar with space art, you've seen some of Bonestell's work, but probably didn't know his name. Chesley Bonestell was born in 1888 in San Francisco. While he had been making astronomical paintings since 1905 (after seeing Saturn through a telescope), though space would not become the central focus of his art until the mid-20th century.

On August 26, 2019, the Museum of Flight held a "space art" event. Among the activities occurring that day was a screening of Chesley Bonestell: A Brush with the Future, a documentary about Bonestell's life and career. The Museum of Flight's website described the documentary as follows:

The amazing story of Chesley Bonestell, a forgotten artist who worked on the Chrysler Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, movies like “Destination Moon,” and then helped inspire America’s space program with his futuristic paintings. His mesmerizing depiction of "Saturn As Seen From Titan" became known as "the painting that launched a thousand careers."

Told by the people who were influenced by or knew Chesley personally, and punctuated with rare interview with Chesley himself, this documentary chronicles the extraordinary, nine-decade life of a quiet, artistic visionary, whose beautiful paintings continue to inspire us to reach for the stars.

Among the first publications that Bonestell illustrated for was a "railway magazine", a(n antiquated) type of magazine designed to encourage people to move to the western states, usually via train. Due to pressure from Bonestell's grandfather, Bonestell moved to the field of architecture, where he would design the iconic Chrysler Building in New York City. Bonestell also made elaborate illustrations of what would become the Golden Gate Bridge, to promote the concept to potential funders. Later, Bonestell began designing complex "matte paintings" for notable films such as Citizen Kane (1940). Matte paintings would sometimes be used in place off backdrops that would be highly expensive and time-consuming to build.

Beginning in the late 1940s, Bonestell began making illustrations of scenes in space for various magazines, among them Life Magazine. Bonestell's illustrations often depicted astronauts (when present) as tiny explorers in the vast expanse of space (or even just a single planet). Bonestell's illustrations of space inspired many people to pursue careers as astronauts, or otherwise work in the field of space travel. While Bonestell died several years ago, many of his paintings depict astronauts exploring areas and planets (such as Mars) that humans have still yet to set foot on. Until then, Bonestell's paintings represent the future.

On our way out of the museum, we got to see a mural that was so new, we could still smell the paint drying! Done by Henry, whose murals are famous throughout the Seattle area, the larger than life work depict animals who have played a role in the space race.

And here's another shot, with the kids this time, for scale.