I celebrated my birthday this past weekend with a dinner Friday night, house warming/birthday party Saturday, and spent Sunday recovering and watching Space Jam.
Here’s a round-up of some of the top-notch gifts I received this year.
Detroit Decanter and Glass set from City Bird
Wes Anderson poster
Mary handmade me this log carrier. I can’t wait to go camping this summer.
Pine-scented Pillow
Trevor
Mary and I have been neglecting the blog recently due to a sudden move to Hamtramck. Being busy setting up our new home and not having internet yet has led to blog updates being a little harder to post than normal. Hopefully order will be restored within the next week and the internet with flow once again.
In the meantime, here’s an ode to our new home of Hamtramck.
Hamtramck Disneyland from Detroit Moxie
Polish Village Cafe from Yelp
Hamtramck in the 70′s from Detroit Memories
Kowalskis from Flickr
A post dedicated to Hamtramck is especially fitting today as it’s Paczki Day and Hamtramck is known for having the best Paczkis pretty much anywhere. I’ve learned that Paczki Day isn’t well known outside of the midwest, so if you don’t know what this wonderful and gluttenous holiday is, see here.
Paczkis from Hamtramck.us
Trevor Walters
I had been hearing a lot about the Detroit Bus Company recently and happened to stumble across this video, which interviews its owner, Andy Didorosi. It’s a great story not just of the bus company, but of innovative start-ups in general happening in Detroit. It’s amazing to see what can happen from such a simple idea.
Urban Innovation Exchange: Andy Didorosi, Detroit Bus Company from DETROIT LIVES! on Vimeo.
Trevor
Nettin’.
Mary
I got these cool Michigan decals and pennant for Christmas and have been trying to come up with a cool project the decals could go on that wouldn’t damage them. There are a few doubles that I might put on an old suitcase I have, but for most of them, I’ll just have to keep brainstorming.
Trevor
In the fall, I was able to take a tour of the building at 2051 Rosa Parks, which includes the offices of Curbed Detroit, the future home of Corktown Cinema, and, the main reason I was there, the studio for ESP, a screen printing studio my friend helps run.
While ESP has been mostly working to create prints specifically for clients, they did come out with some of their own original designs this winter that are awesome enough I wanted to give them a second post to feature them here.
All images from ESP.
Trevor
Since Mary and I will be up north this weekend I won’t get to attend this event myself, but I wanted to spread the word on Metro Detroit Etsy’s Holiday Boot Camp happening at TechShop Detroit this Sunday, November 11 from noon-6 p.m.
The whole event focuses as a helpful guide on how best to sell what you make on Etsy. You can view the event here and I’ve listed the flier below. If you’re selling online and live in the Detroit-area, check it out!
Trevor
This weekend, I finally had time to go to TechShop and work on my first welding project; a pair of table legs for my soon-to-be-completed end table.
First, I cut a couple of longer square metal tubes into six separate pieces. I took one piece and laid it horizontally, and then welded two pieces vertically on each end of the horizontal piece. These three pieces, now welded together into one U-shaped piece, made the legs for one side of the end table.
I did the same thing again for the other side to make a U-shaped leg for each end of the end table. I also welded a thin piece of metal with pre-drilled holes on top of each of the four vertical pieces to make it easy to attach the wood to the top.
I’m sure any welder could tell me how terrible my beads look (where I joined the pieces), but they’re holding together well and so overall I consider it a successful first welding project. I’ll be sure to post a picture of the finished product once I find a piece of wood I like.
Trevor
A closed school in Southwest Detroit recently had an auction to get rid of its contents and I was able to go scour the school and find some really cool stuff. While it’s sad to have another school closing in the area, I can’t deny how fun it was to search an old, four-story school building full of treasures.
One of my favorite finds were these steel, green drawers. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to use it yet, but I have plans to build a desk in the near future, and I’m sure this will become part of it.
You can tell the seats on these stools are in pretty bad shape, but I’m hoping to replace them with some nicer, salvaged wood.
The bird is from an antique store I went to with Mary (mentioned here), but now I found this cool science bottle to accompany it. No idea what’s actually inside of it.
I love all these books, but the “Let’s Explore the Great Lakes” one specifically has some amazing illustrations inside.
My other favorite find was this school map. Unfortunately, this will have to go into storage until the day I finally have that dream home.
Trevor
I recently got a chance to visit a friend’s new screen printing shop in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. Much has been written about the building at 2051 Rosa Parks, from its history and the house that lays in the middle of it, to the future of the building, most notably the development of Corktown Cinema.
We got to take a tour of the building, and though development has been slower than planned, there are still lots of great things happening there, including ESP Detroit. The idea for the building was to be sort of an urban mall, complete with creative spaces, retail stores, and restaurants.
Former building sign
One of the available spaces in the building.
ESP Detroit, though a new business in the city, has already done the screen printing for projects like the newly opened, Green Dot Stables, and the huge city bike race, Tour De Troit.
Tour De Troit shirt from ESP Detroit
I also got to take a look at the studio space itself and snapped a few pictures of their workspace.
Thanks again to ESP Detroit for letting me visit!
Trevor
