Handmade Detroit Holiday Market 2007
Congratulations to all involved for another successful Handmade Detroit Holiday Market! Beth and I had a blast (and here’s the pictures to prove it).
College
All right class… Hands up if you remember when Beth looked like this? Or when I was a punk rock superhero or top-ranked amateur armwrestler? Didn’t know that Beth has a tattoo on her head? No? Sounds like you need to take another look at the ever-updating “Holy Shit, I Can’t Believe Beth and Dan Looked Like That in College” set on flickr.
A DIY wedding
On Friday night my best friend Monica got married. She and I have known each other almost our entire lives (we met in kindergarten), and I always knew she was a crafty girl in a crafty family, but I never expected Monica and her husband Mark to have a truly DIY (and really beautiful!) wedding with a little help from their friends. The favors, centerpieces for the reception, decorations for the church, flower girl baskets, and the bridal party bouquets were all handmade by Monica and her friend Julie - but they looked like Martha Stewart had made them herself!
Dan and I had a great time, and I was honored to be a member of the bridal party. Congratulations and best wishes to Mark and Monica and the whole M&M family!!!
The Funeral Home
A couple of weeks ago, Jeff and I went on a bike ride from his place in Rochester Hills toward Pontiac on the Clinton River Trail. The trail is an abandoned railroad track (Our section of track here in Pontiac is unfortunately still in use.). As we crossed Auburn Road in Auburn Hills, I realized that we were right across the street from the Davis (apparently now Pixley) Funeral Home. I know it sounds strange, but I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid. My grandparents lived in the apartment upstairs for most of the 80s.
I know that I must’ve driven past it sometime in the past twenty years, but I’ve definitely never stopped. I wanted to get a closer look and reminisce for a bit, so we rode up.
It doesn’t look like the building has done anything but rot since the last time I was there. The windows to the apartment upstairs were covered over, and I wasn’t about to risk the stairway to take a peek in the door.
Walking around the back to the pool area was the topper though. They didn’t even bother to take out the coping around the edges. It was just filled in and forgotten. Our family has a lot of summer birthdays, and many of them were spent here at the pool. Even though I grew up on a lake, swimming at Grandma’s was always a special treat. (Lakes don’t come equipped with diving boards!) It was totally surreal to see the pool this way. It seems so much smaller than when I was a kid.
Being there brought back a lot of memories. Grandpa, Mark and I used to watch the trains go by on the tracks that have long been abandoned and since reclaimed as a bike path. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish that my grandparents still lived in an apartment above a funeral home. (They now have a much nicer place next to a cemetery!) It’s just a bummer to see a place that was a big part of my childhood so neglected.
Tahquamenon Falls, MI
Last weekend, the boys and I re-enacted a Great Lakes Myth Society album, and headed up north, across the bridge and to the woods for a couple of days away from the city. Read the rest of this entry »
We stayed at Tahquamenon Falls State Park (which actually ended up being a little too cushy - What?! Flush toilets?!) and spent an entire weekend asleep in lawn chars. The trip was originally planned around a 40 mile bike ride out to Whitefish Point, but laziness prevailed and we decided to just do some light sightseeing and some heavy eating. I can’t wait for that whole “being independently wealthy” thing to kick in so I can spend all my weekends like this.
Test shoots are fun!
Today Dan and I went into downtown Pontiac to try out something new for photos for Reware Vintage. I gotta say, I’m sold on the “artsy urban decay” idea after our shoot tonight! Check out a few of the shots on our Flickr and let me know what you think!
