It seems that unless I own my own URL and host my blog and images elsewhere WordPress will continue to compress the images I post into oblivion. I’ve read several threads where other users are just as sick and tired of having their already optimized for web photos compressed to the point that they look like utter crap—especially photo bloggers. And I don’t even think I care if WordPress is working on the problem.

Turns out, I do own my own URL, hanasaurusrex.com, and I use Blogger to host it. So I’ve decided to combine at home with a hanasaurusrex & hanasaurusrex.com, which is currently my shop’s blog. The shop isn’t open yet, which means I am hardly posting over there right now, but I might as well just be blogging all in one place. I’ll be killing two birds with one stone—better image quality and one less ball to juggle. The one less ball makes me very happy.

So, I invite you, please, to join me over at hanasaurusrex.com. You can follow hanasaurusrex.com on Facebook and Twitter, with Google Friend Connect and bloglovin’. You can also subscribe via email for updates sent straight to your inbox! I look forward to you dropping by, and I’d love your feedback too. Thanks to those of you who’ve been a part of pixels and prose and at home with a hanasaurusrex over the years. Now, let’s start something new!

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I just had that feeling this morning. I was coming home from getting coffee after pulling an all-nighter trying to fix my computer. Being a graphic designer, my computer is practically my life. It’s my income, it’s my muse, it’s my baby. Well, two days ago my baby decided to have a fatal error and refuse to run my operating system. boo! I had that same sinking feeling when I realized it was something more than a mere glitch. But I refused to be intimidated by the temper tantrum. This time it wasn’t going to be a total freak out moment. For one, I had partitioned my hard drive into to 4 different disks, and after starting up from the OS install disk and running disk utility, I found only one partition was damaged. More importantly, at the time, I did have all my data backed up on my terabyte external… or so I thought. It seems through an innocent mistake, after backing up the damaged disk, I managed to reformat my external thinking it was my startup. I know.. I know… a total amateur move. I promise, I really do know what I’m doing.

Long story short, I was able to recover most everything—thank you DiskWarrior. It took me a complete day and night to straighten everything out and get this contraption running smoothly again. It won’t ever be exactly the same as it was, but I can now breath a sigh of relief, at least. And as I am constantly learning, change is one part of life you cannot change.

I’ve taken a bunch of pictures over the last two days, though. I have a butterfly report—with some gorgeous closeups of the two butterflies that hatched in my studio—and a crochet reef update (I’m making pretty good progress on that project too). I took pictures of our BLT lunch and I have some recent found images that inspired me through my debacle. BUT! Posting them will have to wait until tomorrow. Because right now… I am going to go to sleep. I want to hit up my knitting group tonight, to work on the crochet reef, so I’d better get at least a few hours in—minimize the mistakes in my stitches. ;)

Hope this photo strip makes you smile… it’s my delirious-sleep-deprived-self trying to show you some of the faces I wore over the last two days. The second face lasted by far the longest and the last face is me right now—headed off to bed!

How we make French Toast

Butter
4-6 Slices of bread (any kind *using real french bread is Ahh-mazing! but this time we used potato, and it was yums too)
1/4 C. Milk (or milk substitue)
1/2 tbls. Cinnamon
1-2 Eggs
Syrup (Blue Agave Sweetner is yum sans the spike to your glucose! Honey works too.)
Fruit if you’d like!
Powdered Sugar is also optional

Heat your skillet up on medium heat.

Next, in something with a flat bottom, pour the eggs and milk (or milk sub) together. You can add a little more milk if you want to stretch the egg wash to make a few more slices or you can use less if you want a more eggy french toast. We use this awesome round silicone baking thingy (called a thingy ’cause it’s not really a dish or a pan) but you can use anything that will hold liquid and still allow you to submerge the bread. Mix in the cinnamon and whisk them all together.

Now here’s where you gotta be kinda quick. If you have a helper that rocks! If not… it’s still totally doable. You just use one hand to submerge a slice of bread in the egg wash, wet on both sides, then lift it out of the wash and let it slightly drain off the excess wash. Then with the other hand, cut a small pad of butter off of the stick and throw it into the skillet. Place the slice of bread on top of the sizzling butter.

I guess this does seem a little complicated, but if you put the butter in first and then wet the bread the butter could burn off before you place the bread over it. Aaaaand I suppose we could butter the bread before we submerge it, but eh—it’s all relative—this works for us! Really, once you get the hang of it, it goes really fast and it can be done by one person, and it saves on using more butter than necessary.

Now that you’ve got that sweet piece of bread turning brown and smelling yummy you can sit back and enjoy some chocolate milk (or milk sub) and chat it up with your helper or make some eggs or coffee or flip the bacon. Depending on how brown you like your toast you can flip it when you like and then just repeat the above bread dunking, butter sizzling steps with each slice you want to french up. Add fruit and or powdered sugar to the plated slices and drizzle with your choice of syrup!

When we were in Austin last summer, we stopped by Toy Joy. Their website is a little crazy, but if you ever actually find yourself in Austin, you must check out Toy Joy! While we were there perusing, we found the French toast press made by Fred, who incidentally makes some of the cleverest devices. As a French toast lover, I could not pass it up! Simply press it into your slice of bread and voilà! Your French toast is instantly that much more French, which I know, is not really French at all. You can read the French bread history, of sorts, here, interesting stuff.

Yay for French toast dinner! Now who’s with me? :P

This news actually deserves its own separate post, which I will do when I have a few more pieces to show, but for now… I’ve recently joined the artists and crafters currently working to create Hawaii’s own Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef. Founded by two sisters in 2009, the HCCR was and is a project aimed at bringing awareness to the endangerment of the Great Barrier Reef and all reefs worldwide. Now currently on exhibition at the Smithsonian, the HCCR has evolved from being the work of the two sisters to now encompassing the work of thousands of people worldwide. A fact which can be directly compared to size and number of species actually seen in our ocean’s coral reef systems. The Hawaii HCCR will be on exhibit at The Arts at Marks Garage the month of June. A reception will be held on Slow Art Friday, June 17th, where I will have the pleasure of being one of the artists giving live demonstrations of crochet! The photo above is the beginning of my first piece, not completed yet, but it is inspired by Hawaii’s Knobby Finger Coral. If you crochet and are interested in becoming a participant in this project there is still time to join! Follow the link above or let me know and I can help you get acquainted with the group! I will definitely be posting more info on the show as well as more of my creations in the coming weeks.

I’ve also been watching this Eagle Cam! It’s live footage of an family of eagles, two adults and three chicks at the Norfolk Botanical Garden. It’s really sweet to see how nurturing the adults are with the chicks. The photos are screen grabs from the cam, one during the day and the other at night… Try it out! One thing to note, though, if it doesn’t work at first you can try again later. I’ve gotten errors a couple of time, but then later it would work.

Another fun happening around here is we are about to start painting the kitchen! The bedroom is on hold until the carpet comes in, so we figured why not start the kitchen while we wait! I am super excited to see the room all white with the pop of bright red. I’ve been thinking about covering the Formica on our homemade countertop with steel or aluminum? Hmmm… I still need to go check out the prices and sizes of what’s available at the hardware store here to see if it’s even a possibility.

This morning we went to Moanalua High School to watch the senior project presentations. I recently mentored a student from there who had contacted me last semester. She was doing her senior project on graphic design and the difference between graphic design and art. I was really impressed with her presentation. She was an organized speaker and made excellent points arguing her thesis very intelligently. I felt honored to be one of the designers there who played a role in her research!

Hope everyone has a great rest of their weekend! I’m going to go help empty out our kitchen now… tomorrow we paint! Yay!

I haven’t really written about my Mia before. She’s my 1+ year old mix puppy. Most people think she’s a mini Golden Retriever and want to know exactly how did we do that?! But she’s not. She is actually a mix of 5 different breeds! Here we go… so she’s mostly Corgi (body shape, coat, energy level) along with a pinch of Chihuahua (coat color, snout), Lhasa Apso (?), Pomeranian (coat, tail curl and haunches), and Jack Russel (her brain, energy level). All small dogs, she weighs 22.5 lbs. She’s smart as all get out and a great runner per her Corgi roots.

Today we went to the vet for shots and some kind of rash she has developed on her belly. She usually doesn’t do well in the car and today was no exception, but she managed not to get car sick until we got there. Poor baby. She was so well behaved while we waited, I was so proud to be her owner! There were many dogs in and out—we were there 2 hours because we were walk-ins—but she managed to sit or lay down the entire time, staying very close to me. She’s not a barker so no worries there. Thankfully, she did not inherit that habit from any of the small breeds in her genetic make up!

Now that I think about it, I wish I would have taken her picture in the vet’s office, but at the time I was trying to comfort her while the doctor checked the slides he made to evaluate her condition. She’s such a little trooper! I can’t imagine not being able to communicate to someone when I’m scared or hurting, but I could see it in her eyes. And I could tell she was so glad to be home when she proceeded to pass out… tuckered out from all the day’s excitement! Don’t worry Mia, it’s all better now.

This past Saturday, the neighborhood one over from us was having their annual garage sale event. My husband’s mother, Haidy, who is an avid garage sale shopper asked me if I’d like to go check it out with her. I figured, since I am in the market for a pair of matching nightstands for the new room and I hadn’t been to any in forever, this could be fortune smiling down on me.

This was an event for the serious garage sale lover! They had a map of the neighborhood and a list of which addresses had sales going on. More than a few streets had at least four homes with their garages full of possible treasures hopeful to find new homes. Some were even offering coffee and muffins for a hopeful donation or selling plate lunches. There were several raising money for various charities and one sweet old couple who said all the proceeds from their sale would go to aid the Japan tsunami victims.

It was a very popular place to be, I must say. Cars and people everywhere and the hunt was on for some serious deals! What did I find? Oh! Well, I’m so glad you asked!

I scored a cashmere sweater vest for .25¢, which I might “frog”, or unravel, so I can knit something new with the yarn! I also found a Diane von Fürstenberg wrap dress (not sure what season—like I care) for $7 bucks! I picked up a Calvin Klein dress for $7 and a CK black jacket for .25¢. A sweater from Ann Taylor, and two pairs for J. Crew capris (one pair with cute little martini glasses embroidered on them) both a quarter and a pair of turquoise suede Ralph Lauren loafers made in Italy for $1 dollar—win, win, win!

I promise I am far from being a fashion snob, although knowing my labels does help, and when I happen across something good, I know it. I was mostly stoked about the Fürstenberg dress because—like I’ll ever own anything that expensive—I don’t spend a lot of money on clothes. So that was a real win for me. Yay for me! Haaahaa…

Anyway… I also found some really great cigar boxes, books, cookbooks, some kawaii stationary from Japan, a couple cute belts and—shhhh… don’t tell the lady—a genuine leather purse. She said she didn’t think it was real leather and sold it to me for $2.00. Werd. I don’t really know why I bought an entire box of golf pencils—I guess I was on a roll? And I’ll probably make a patio pillow out of the vintage rice sack.

As we were leaving the neighborhood we drove by this really great old Dodge truck. It was so rusted out, but I was amazed at how perfect the grass was trimmed around it! The neighbor, who came out when he saw me taking pictures of it, said it was one of Kailua’s oldest landmarks; he was serious. He said the man it belonged to had tried to get it running, but parts here are scarce. I explained that, being from Texas, I have a soft spot for tough old trucks and muscle cars as well as lawn ornaments ;) so I had to stop and take its picture.

All in all it was a really fun day, and I’m definitely thinkin’ I should do this garage sale-ing thing way more often!

Ooooh… pretty lights… we had bought these lit branches at Ben Franklin last spring and were using them in the corners of the room for nighttime light. But they were propped up in an old wine bottle and a red vase, neither of which I wanted to keep in the room. While I was fumbling with them trying to figure out where to put them, I had a moment. I grabbed a staple gun and a couple old pieces of ¼ inch ply wood that I’d previously had cut down to paint on and in 15 minutes I had a new DIY headboard. Don’t you just love those kind of moments?!

The first picture is one of the lamps I found at Ross; I picked up the pair. It was fate. It was like the chair!!! Oh man, for those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter… I found this amazing chair at Ross—there is a picture of it below—and almost fell out at how perfect it was for the room. I chose all the room colors from our Alexander Girard duvet cover, the gold color to off-set the aqua and the grays for a touch of masculinity. But even after adding the sliver carpet, I still felt like I needed more of those grays present. And then, like a bolt of lightening, I turned the corner and there it was, that chair! A classic cut for not a lot of buck—it’s no Chippendale piece—but with the lamps, it totally adds a sweet little touch of wham-bam-thank-you-glam, without being too fem. I love it.

As it turns out my garage sale day last Saturday didn’t yield me any nightstands. But I was taking a friend to Saver’s on Tuesday and, on a tip from Haidy, decided to stop at the Salvation Army first. Immediately upon walking in I saw two matching side tables. They were small and round—I love round—dark like our dressers, a pair, they were perfect! Ouch! They were a hundred dollars. What?! Oh no! Where’s the manager…

I found the manager and argued a good case for why that price was totally unreasonable. I mean, I know it’s for charity and all, but geez. He agreed to mark them down to what I offered, which was $50 for the pair. Still a decent exchange, and whoo-hoo, my furniture searching is over!

Now we’re patiently waiting for the carpet. I still plan to hang some wall decor, although I am not sure what just yet. Also, we plan on antiquing the dressers with either the aqua or the cream… I think I’m leaning toward the aqua, but we might do them gray also? Whatever we decide, I’ll be sure to give y’all a look see into our lovely new room!

Outside my other window is a Milkweed plant, which every year around this time becomes a host plant for the Monarch Butterfly. My husband’s mother loves butterflies and she often will go out and find the branches with caterpillars, gather them up, and put them in buckets of water so she can watch their metamorphosis into the creatures she adores, ever careful not to disturb them.

So about a week ago my dear husband gathered some himself. He put them in a small bucket with water and placed them our office. When he told me about them he said they’d already been in the office for three or four days. To which I replied, “What!? You mean they’ve been there this whole time and I never noticed them?!” I’m usually a keen observer, but I guess when it comes to his desk, I’ve just stopped looking at the mess.

He told me how he’d hoped one of them would turn into a butterfly and surprise me one day while I was working—just flying around my desk. I know, how cool would that be? But I had unexpectedly busted him while he was watering the plant so the cat was outta the bag.

We now have one Monarch chrysalis. My husband super glued the leaf it’s attached to up high by my window. And two more caterpillars happily munching away… one is pretty big and will soon—any day now—turn into a chrysalis itself.  They are just lovely, and I will certainly take more photos as this one emerges. Hopefully I’ll catch him in the act! And when he’s ready to fly………… we will let him go.

I knew my husband was a sweetheart the day I met him, but he continually finds ways to show me just how crazy cool he is.

‘Cause that’s what I am. Seriously, this is my favorite way to easily kill a couple hours online now. Maybe you’ve heard about it… Pinterest? If not, Pinterest is an online community where you are the curator of your very own style boards—your collections of inspiring images.

A while back I had mentioned I was using We♥It to do this, which I did ♥. But after using Pinterest now, I can share the differences between the two.

The major difference—for me—is the quality of images I find in the Pinterest community vastly exceeds the ones posted to We♥It. And by quality I don’t mean megapixel; I mean relevancy, at least for me. While I really do like We♥It, I find the majority of the images are of hipster/emo tweens taking pictures of themselves. There are also a lot of images of bokeh, decorated finger nails and nailpolish, models and poses, depressing quotes, parties and oh, a TON of images of little sayings written on hands, tiny papers, or in notebooks of teenage angst, love, or the lack thereof. I am far from a teenager now, and I’ve started to find that it takes me way longer to, and only after sifting though pages and pages do, I find a few images I really ♥.

I know the idea of these sites are that I would be hearting or pinning images I find elsewhere online, thus creating my own curated collection of images relevant to me and thereby improving the relevancy of the site for myself and others like me, which I do. However, with We♥it, there must be way more people hearting things that aren’t relevant to me and I can’t keep up. Also, I like to spend time browsing through everybody’s posted images rather than only posting from outside the community. This way I find more things to inspire me and I feel more connected with the community I am a part of. I have found that Pinterest is just way more inspiring for me, in its collections and community.

Here are a few more attributes that make me more interested in using Pinterest. The site is set up to carry the source where the image was posted through each time the image is ‘liked’ or ‘repinned’. We♥It does this as well. The difference again, I believe, lies within the community. Most sources I try to follow on We♥It land me on a Tumbler page where there are no sources in sight. Where The sources I’ve followed on Pinterest have led me to blogs where someone has—wait for it—actually written information about the image, citing not only a source, but giving credit where credit is due. Of course, you are going to have the images where it is impossible to find where it came from. I found one the other day on Pinterest of a totally sick marble soaking tub, when I followed the source, it led me to a blog where I could find no link to the image. What I did find, though, was another really great blog full of more great content and images of home decor. Score.

Another difference, and a pretty big one, is how on Pinterest you can separate your pins onto different boards and categorize them however you want. So far I have 5 boards, things I love to love, I’m starving, fashion hearts, typOMGraphy, and sweet spaces. This is extremely helpful, not only for referring back to the images, but for sharing them as well.

There are a couple more ways you can share with Pinterest. There is a button to embed your pins into you’re own blog, which I used in this post :) and a button to email your pins to friends who maybe—yes there are still folks who—don’t use Twitter or Facebook. These are both great options, especially the embed, because it keeps the source intact.

What I love about both of these sites is that I can keep a collection of all the wonderful, inspiring images I find online all in one place for me to refer back to, ogle at, dream of, and share very easily. As an artist, I find this very helpful and a huge time saver! I mean think of all the hours I would have to spend online to find all these amazing images! And too, I am not trying to dog on We♥It. They, like all products, have a market they appeal to. In some ways, when I am browsing there, it makes me wish I were a tween again. But then I think, “Wait. What the hell am I thinking?!!”

Oh! Here is that amazing bathtub! I followed the source to the blog it references, but was unable to find the actual post. If anyone knows where I can read about it definitely let me know!

Here’s a sneak peek at one of the colors I painted yesterday! It’s called Feldspar and it’s paint by Martha Stewart—more on that later. I am really hearting on it, especially today after sleeping on it and then walking back into the room this morning and seeing it all completed :D whew! I always have those color freak-outs when I first start putting a color on the wall… I’m like, “Oh man, I don’t know about this color, eeek.” Of course, I never do the right thing and put a sample of the paint up for a while to see what I think… oh no, never do that. I should, but I’m kinda like go for it! It helps me to learn to trust my instincts.

Now I’m off to buy the new carpet our landlords (*wink* the parents who we pay rent to) are buying for us to put in! I’m sooooo excited! :D

*note: color may vary base on your monitor calibration ;)