Things I'm Digging: Nice People and Hex Values

So a few weeks ago I blogged about the awesome-sauce "Sharktopus" poster that we purchased from Wonderbros' Etsy site.  Not only was the poster fabulous, exactly as advertised, but the proprietors (the aforementioned Wonder Bros) proved themselves to be super-nice when we had a momentary panic about the poster going to the wrong address and, maybe, getting rained on.  They actually offered to send us duplicates on the house.  That's customer service, peeps.

So I blogged about Sharktopus, and I mentioned that I had - um, not buyer's remorse, because that implies that you bought something - REGRETS that I did not throw "Picasso Wonder Woman" into my cart when I bought art for my own little Wonder Bros.

Today a second delivery arrived from the WBs, and for a minute we thought that they went ahead and sent duplicates anyway - but then we opened the tube and found the divine Ms. WW, in all of her Cubist glory, face smushed up against the contours of her invisible jet.

Given that my birthday is on Sunday, my first thought was that Spouse bought her for me - but he said that he didn't, and when he said it he used his "I'm actually being serious" voice, which, after eighteen years, is easy for me to tell apart from his "I'm being cute and coy" voice.  So then I suspected that one of my girlfriends saw the blog post and decided to surprise me.  I attempted to call her (whoever "she" was) out on Facebook - but all I got was a series of messages that read, essentially, "You'd better safeguard her, or else I'm stealing her."

Then I got on Etsy (for reasons I shall explain later) and found a lovely note from the Wonder Bros, thanking me for taking the time to blog about them, and letting me know that they had sent me a little sumptin' sumptin'.

How flippin' cool is that?

As it turns out, the reason that I was on Etsy was that PJ is so enamored of Sharktopus that I decided to have two "Keep Calm" posters ("Keep Calm and Love Sharks" and "Keep Calm and Call Batman") custom-printed IN COLORS TO MATCH SHARKTOPUS.   Specifically, the Batman print will be the dark blue that's in the background behind Sharktopus, and the shark one will be the gold color that's in the text on the poster and also on PJ's ceiling.  Oh - did I mention that we painted his ceiling to coordinate with Sharktopus?  BECAUSE I AM - I MEAN, WE ARE - JUST THAT AWESOME?

Anyway, to make sure that everything coordinated, I downloaded Color Detector 2.0 and then pulled up Sharktopus and pointed my cursor at strategic areas, and Color Detector informed me of the hex values of each color highlighted.  So now I can inform the folks who are printing the Keep Calm sign of the exact "formula" for Sharktopus blue and Sharktopus gold.

Total awesome-sauce.

So here's the plan for new indie art for the new-and-improved casa:

Kitchen:  Two eye-chart prints - one with the lyrics to "You Are My Sunshine" and the other reading, "No Pressure, No Diamond."  The latter is easy to explain:  diamonds are a sorority thing for me.  The former is a little weirder.  When Spouse and I were dating, he used to sing "Sunshine" to me.  And I told him to stop, because the song is all kinds of depressing:

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
But when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
So I hung my head and I cried

THAT part is depressing; the rest is just desperate ("please don't take my sunshine away").  Nevertheless, it kind of stuck in my head as one of "our" songs, so now it's going on the wall.  Unless I decide to go with "I love you more than ice cream," which is more of a PJ concept.

On second thought, PJ already will be represented in the kitchen, because he picked out a tyrannosaurus rex butcher chart (you read that right) after I informed the kids that WE WERE HAVING SOME VARIETY OF DINOSAUR BUTCHER CHART IN THE KITCHEN, AND THEY GOT TO PICK WHICH ONE.  Personally, I was leaning towards the triceratops, because I think that they would be juicier.  I mean, they were the cows of their day, right?  Eating a T-rex would be like eating a puma - stringy predator meat.  Not that I have ever eaten a puma, but you can kind of imagine.

[Insert joke here about raptors tasting like chicken.]

Spouse does not particularly see the need for a dinosaur butcher chart in the kitchen.  But Spouse was outvoted, 3-1.

Big Kid's room:

Awesome retro "Ghostbusters" movie poster print from the Wonder Bros.

Eye chart (red with white lettering) reading "All You Need is Love is All You Need."   [Kid's crazy about the Beatles.]

"Keep Calm and Grow a Stache" sign (in navy and white).  [If Spouse appeared nonplussed by the dinosaur, he REALLY looked at me crazy-like over the stache.  BECAUSE HE DOES NOT GET THAT HIS TWELVE YEAR-OLD SON THINKS THAT FINGER MUSTACHES ARE THE FUNNIEST THING EVER - with the possible exception of lolcats, which has me thinking that instead of the stache, we could go with the "Keep Calm" poster featuring Ceiling Cat?  I threw this out as an option, and Spouse merely shrugged - but I know his body language, and the shrug translated into, "WHAT IN TARNATION IS A CEILING CAT?"  Yes, Spouse sounds like Foghorn Leghorn in my head.  And one of our cats is totally Eric Cartman from "South Park."]

Retro-looking boxing-style poster featuring a matchup between Cad Bane and Boba Fett.

The Danish Modern-looking "New Hope" poster (in a greenish-gold color palette to match HIS ceiling) that I referenced in a prior post.

The last two items are giving me fits, because they are A3 (European) sized, and I am striking out at finding A3 frames short of having them shipped across the Pond.  (Okay, they probably have them at IKEA, but I am really trying to complete this project without having to go to IKEA, because if getting our restoration project across the finish line is already stressful, injecting an IKEA trip is a sure recipe for "triple murder-suicide.")

Little Kid's room:

Sharktopus.  Duh.

The aforementioned "Keep Calm" posters.

The two Warhol prints of himself that he created.

Yes, I realize that these clash with Sharktopus.  But he was insistent about using green, and you just don't argue when you're dealing with a small, temperamental artist.

If you were wondering about the bottom photo, those are iced sugar cookies that he is holding to his head like ears or antlers. They were fleur-de-lis-shaped, for Mardi Gras.  And they were delicious.

I really have no business buying art right now, or anything that could wait until after we move in,on account of how it's crunch time, and we are pulling triggers like crazy - on  countertops, appliances, etc., etc.  And everything is coming out of our pockets, because we can't get our mortgage company to release insurance funds to us until we achieve substantial completion and obtain lien waivers, and obtaining lien waivers translates into making final payments to subcontractors, so that's more money out of our pockets.  I knew that this day would come, and I guess I should be glad that (1) it's finally here and (2) for the last seven months we've made purchases and paid draws out of monthly cash flow without having to access savings even temporarily, which is pretty remarkable when you have a remodel foisted upon you with zero warning and/or time to squirrel away funds. Nevertheless, writing so many big checks in quick succession unsettles me - and when I am unsettled, I find myself wanting to nest. So I have made a deal with myself and Spouse:  as a reward for turning in reimbursement receipts at work, I am permitted to retain a certain small portion of my reimbursement check for application to quirky art (and framing therefor).

And now I can add Picasso Wonder Woman to the framing list.  But she's not going to the house - nope, she's going right over my desk at work.  And if anyone wants to read "glass ceiling" subtext into her face being smushed against her jet, well, that's up to them.