random house

That's me and my dad above. Andy and I just spent a few days in St. Louis where we attended his retirement party. (Congratulations, Hoss!) He worked as a sugar salesman, and was given "vintage" bags of sugar as a gift, which was pretty funny. He was also serenaded in Italian by the owner of the restaurant where the party was held, which was pretty awesome. The people who have worked with my dad over the years universally praised his all-around niceness and excellent customer service. Any pleasant customer service you receive at the hands of Small Earth Vintage is pretty much directly attributable to my dad, so cheers and thanks to you, Hoss!

Anyway, the reason this post is full of randomness is that I'm all at sixes and sevens due partly the trip out of town and partly to the fact that Andy has begun our long-overdue home improvement project (first mentioned here). But we took a break from the scraping and painting and photographing and listing to go check out The Girl Who Played with Fire at the UICA. The UICA is moving to a new location, and I can't help but wonder what will happen to the neat sidewalk mosaics in front the building.

We had a delicious dinner at Bloom afterwards. Andy took this photo of me in front of the Civil War statue near Bloom.

And I took this photo of a cool old building across from the statue. The Kendall sign near the top made us think it must be an original location for the Kendall College art school, but having read up on the history of the school I don't think so.

I also love the yellow cornices on this old building, which sits at the corner, directly across from Bloom.

However, the neon strip mall signage of the tan and wax joint on the ground floor? Not so much.

Oh, but I do love the hiliarious tag I found this week on an old western shirt!

My plan for next week: get more focused! And as work on the house progresses, I promise to post some scary Befores and (hopefully) beautiful Afters!

xo

K