Crayons in US Cellular Commercial!!!

I was commissioned by Publicis & Hal Riney to work on a US Cellular commercial. It was a great collaborative experience. I LOVE the result, the shots, the music, everything! I believe the commercial will air this month nationwide. Unfortunately not in Seattle, but you can view it here! This is a 30 sec spot and starts about 10 seconds in... the earlier video I posted has been put on hold for now until it airs. :)

A great big thanks to:
Adam Koppel, Richard North and Debbie Chin of Hal Riney Publicis.

Kevin Berve the wonderful gentleman who did the molds and melting... I'm glad we had a chance to connect. I hope you and your wife get to visit Vietnam one of these days!

**Update**
Some behind the scenes photos
Images of the crayons involved

Done!

Recent commission just completed... 2 more little guys into the world. I'm quite happy with these. Hope she likes them!

The Yard: BEFORE

This is our yard... it's about 10' by 20' and is mostly shady. As made apparent by all the mossy ground cover! We love our stepables! I didn't plan this garden, the previous owners did. I love much what's there, especially the stone path. But it's not a very usable space, the gravel is always damp and it's too loose to set a chair on. I mostly go out there to weed and some of the plants are RAGING growers. I had to pull out all of the Euphorbia and chop down the cherry blossom tree (yup it was me). You can't see it in this picture, but it's the tiny trunk in the upper right corner. It had very aggressive shooters and casts a huge shadow over an already shady yard. I'm glad I did it!

I'll post some in-progress shots later this week... I took out most of the gravel and paved center of the yard (where the rain barrel is). I kept the stone path and I will be putting in a few raised beds where the tree was. Not the ideal place to plant veggetables, but it's the sunniest spot there is in our yard.

Urban Gardening Part 1

I bought this "Earthbox" when we lived in our tiny apartment. I was dying to grow something, ANYTHING! It's a self watering container... basically a 2 compartment planter, you put the soil in the top compartment and there's a water reservoir below. I've had this box for over 8 years and it's held up GREAT! It's a very efficient way to plant, wasting almost no water. I've planted veggies as well as flowers and vines. The only downside is the price tag, at about $50 a pop. If you can afford it I would recommend getting one, but if you can't here's a great tutorial on how to make your own self watering container!



Here's mine, with few little amendments. The tutorial calls for buying 2 plastic containers and I thought that was a bit wasteful... I only used one. I cut the lid to form the divider between the soil and water. I cut a few plastic supplement jars to serve as a platform for the divider. **I made these 2 years ago and they've held up well, but the lid divider is a bit flimsy**



Assembled and planted... the first year I did peas and zucchinis. The peas did well and the zucchinis got attacked by mold :( The second year I did tomatoes and peas... we had about 20 pounds of tomatoes from that one box. My balcony is East facing and is in the shade for much of the day, so I would say that these are VERY EFFECTIVE!

It's finally getting sunny in Seattle, this is a fun and CHEAP weekend project you can do. Cost was about $14-16 per box, that's including soil.
Plastic bin $5
Soil $7
PVC pipe $3
I had a lot of the misc stuff like wire already... I also reused a lot of stuff that was destined for the recycle bin. HAVE FUN!

A Little Distraction

My dog Guy. He keeps me company while I work, he's a good distraction. We got him at Petfinder 6 years ago. It's a great place to find a pet, although I couldn't believe how hard it was to adopt a dog! We had to wait months and there was a home visit... I thought they would ask for medical records and a bank statement!!! All-in-all I'm glad they took the time to find a right family for Guy. I can't imagine life without him.