Let's go to Space!

Man have I had all things space and physics-related on the brain this week!  Not sure if it's the Large Hadron Collider all up in the news, the presentation I just had to give on the dawn of astronomy, my job working with rocket scientists or what...

Anyway, I was cruising around the interwebs and this caught my eye:

It's one of a series by artist Steve Thomas, more of which can be found here.

I love the design - I'm a huge fan of vintage product and travel posters, and the blend of future ideas with older graphic style is really intriguing!  Plus, it's just fun to imagine jetsetting around the solar system, skiing on Pluto, etc.

I promise a more relevant post later this week with photos of the Boston Ahts Festival that happened this past weekend.  We had a blast and met a lot of very cool, talented artists and crafters.  And as always we enjoyed chatting with our customers too!

I'll also post more info about our upcoming participation in Baked Fresh, an awesome craft market that is part of the SOWA Open Market family.  It's happening on Sun October 5, so mark your calendars now, because it'll be a good one!

sweet summer time

Now that the move is done and we're settling in to our new home, Seth and I are taking some time to chill, go to the beach, camp, hang out with the family and try to relax...since the busy autumn is fast approaching!  It's been great, and much needed.

Aside from all the relaxing though, we've managed to set up shop in the barn, and tshirt printing has again commenced.  I'll try to snap some pics of our new barn studio soon, now that we're working there...it's pretty rough, but Seth has started to put down a new floor and frame out the space for walls and a ceiling.  It's really awesome to spend time out there now though, printing in the evening with the hayloft doors open and the sea breeze blowing through...

The rest of the summer should be quiet for FDF1, but we will be gearing up for the Boston Arts Festival...appropriately called "Ahts" this year.  We'll be selling our tees there Sept 12-14...so come by and check us out.

Lastly I'll leave you with a pic, so there's at least something to look at  in this post:

My brother Ryan, who is visiting from LA, made himself a Halloween costume a bit early...any guesses?

FDF1 in the Boston Globe!

Family Dinner for One is proud to announce that we were featured in the Style Section of the Boston Globe yesterday, Thursday July 24. Check it out here: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/fashion/articles/2008/07/24/fit_to_a_tee/

We are absolutely over the moon...the pix are awesome and the profile by writer Chris Muther is fantastic. There's also a great slide show of tees and photos of the 5 designers covered at: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/fashion/gallery/shirtdesigners/

Congrats to our good friend Adam Yothers of Dyslexic Press for his fantastic coverage in the article too! Go tshirts!

Another MSR2 Post: What I bought!

Because the quality of crafters at Make Shop Rock 2 (see post below for more info and links!) was so awesome, I found myself unable to resist the urge to not only Make and Rock, but...shop.

I photographed my purchases to share because I was so thrilled with them!

A sweet, tiny handmade bird from Miaow

Earrings and a feather necklace from Early Jewelry

A hand screen printed tee by Crystala Armagost

A beautiful hand made messanger bag by RayMin Shoulderware

You can find links for all these great crafters in my previous post!

Make Shop Rock 2!!!

I've got a bit more to say about Make Shop Rock 2...although Seth said quite a bit with those 2 pics, haha. First of all, the whole weekend was a blast. We spent some much needed quality time with our good friends from RayMin, and our other crafty pals.

Second of all, you may be wondering what that heck Make Shop Rock 2 was? Basically, in 2007 myself and Minette of RayMin wanted to put together a trunk show for a small group of designers of hand made goods. We added a musical element as well and came up with Make Shop Rock. It took place in April 2007 in Pittsburgh and was a hit, so we decided to invite more designers, add more music, and expand the show to 2 nights this year.

Night 1 this year took place at the home of Ray and Min of RayMin...each designer set up their own area and music was provided by Raymond Morin of Sort of Records.

Night 2 was at the Brillo Box on Penn Ave in Pittsburgh. The night was full of great music from DJ's Pete Spynda and Klaus (from Boston), and local Pittsburgh rock sweethearts Triggers.

















And of course, our crafters were in full force!

Built in Pittsburgh

Crystala Armagost

Fresh Popcorn

Miaow

RayMin Shoulderware

And last but not least, Family Dinner for One: We had a lot of great kids rocking our tees that night, both official MSR2 models and customers!





































All in all it was a really great time, and a success for our crafters and musicians alike! Hopefully we can do it all again next year!

make shop rock 2 7-12-08

all I have to say.

worst bloggers ever...but we have a new house!

I know I need to stop obsessing about what a negligent blogger I am...but...there it is. This will be the last time though, because I do actually realize that it's getting boring.

But, I have a good excuse this time. I've been a little tied up because Seth and I just bought a house. After jumping through the final flaming hoops last Friday in order to close, the house is now officially ours. We are really really excited.

And now a little back story...About 8 months ago when we found out we'd be losing our amazing art studio at Fort Point in Boston, we decided to move out of the city and into the country. The potential loss of our studio was a huge blow to us...Seth does all of his woodworking and sculpture there, and it's where we do all the screen printing for FDF1. He's been there since he graduated from MassArt in 2003. Just about every year the urban condo giants who bought the building have threatened to kick all the artists out and build their evil condos... and then extended the lease...but this year they were serious. We knew we'd never find another space for the crazy low rent, and couldn't do the type of work we do in our apartment, so the decision was made...after 10 happy fun years of city life, we would move on to greener pastures.

I was a little freaked out at first to leave the city...actually a lot. But 8 months of thinking it over has changed all that, and now that our beautiful house has been found and bought, I feel a lot better. But who wouldn't be cheered at the prospect of moving into an immaculate farmhouse near the beach, built in 1889 with a 2-story barn on a pretty lot with stone walls and a slate patio...sigh...love it.

Our new suburban home on the south shore will also be FDF1 headquarters...specifically the 2nd floor of our new barn!

Here's what it looks like right now:

We've got a bunch of work to do to make it a better place to screen print, but we have lots of ideas! Consider the above shot a 'Before' image...'After' images will be posted in the next few months.

Anyway, that's that for now. We are thrilled to be off on yet another exciting adventure...and promise to blog more!

earl grey leads me to post funny pics

How, you might ask?  Being that I am at my most alert and dexterous on Monday mornings (esp after a crazy weekend ending with a sweet Piles show last night) it's no surprise that for my first trick this morning I spilled about 2 tablespoons of hot Earl Grey tea into my G5 keyboard.  Long story short, my computer pretty much had a stroke (caps lock only, behaving as if I was holding down option at all times...finally freezing and opening in safe mode only) and I had to replace my keyboard (duh).

After the catastrophe, when I was checking around on my computer to make sure all files were still intact, I came across a few images that I had saved as tshirt inspiration, that really made me laugh...

Okay that's all for now...I promise to blog more often!  We've been really busy getting ready for the Make Shop Rock Show which is coming soon to a Pittsburgh near you, plus buying a house (ahhh!) so I still haven't gotten into the hang of posting regularly...but I'm trying!

busy.

There's been so much that I've wanted to blog about lately, but I'm afraid I've been terribly lazy this week. After three insane weeks of getting ready for the ArtStar Craft Bazaar, attending it, gearing up for a show with my band Mane, and dealing with a really busy time at my 9-5 at MIT (commencement, yikes!) I decided that I'd go on strike this week, and do nothing. Unfortunately it has worked, and most of my time has gone to lounging in what we've dubbed 'the sanctuary' (our bedroom with a/c) finally reading Atonement by Ian McEwan, drinking wine and lemonade at intervals, and going to bed early.

But I'm all for being productive tonight, so I thought I'd post some pics from ArtStar, which took place in Philly the first weekend in June. It was a great event for FDF1, and we had a blast hanging out with our good friends Raymond and Minette of Ray-Min Shoulderware. If you've never heard of them you should check them out-- I promise to blog more about them later, but they create and sell the lovliest handmade purses, totes, clutches, messangers...you name it. Very sweet, talented kids.
So here are those pictures...

The Bazaar was at beautiful Penn's Landing, right on the river. It was great to interact with all the cool, friendly market goers...Philly is definitely a very hip city, overflowing with amazing tattoos and a great sense of style. I saw more than one outfit I would have liked to take home.

It wasn't all selling at the market though...I also did some buying, which was lots of fun. I picked up a great hand printed shirt for a friend's baby boy from 1 Girl 1 Boy (I got the one with the grasshopper!), some beautiful green ceramic earrings the likes of which I've never seen from Olaria Studio (from Boston!) and some fun, yummy smelling handmade lotions, lip balms and soap from Bunnybutt Apothecary.

Aside from some severe weather warnings, a few showers and the imminent threat of our tents blowing away, it was an awesome weekend. Big sellers for us included our Lil' Lobster tee and our new Kittens Insanity tees, which are one of a kind.

Whew, this is getting long, and I've got burritos calling my name from down the street, so I'll end here for tonight, with a couple of pictures from the Mane show last weekend...our drummer Paul is wearing an old school FDF1 tee!

new pieces kids!

I just finished laying out a bunch o' images in photoshop. Beth's gonna get'em up on the site real soon, so watch out for the latest in FDF1 t-shirt technologies.

Hello!!!

We at Family Dinner for One, purveyors of fine t-shirts, have decided to start a blog. I know, exciting isn't it? We've been meaning to for a while, but with our 101 other activities it's been hard to find time. But today is the day.

So who are we, and why should you read our blog? In less than 100 words, we're Family Dinner for One, sometimes known as Beth and Seth. We hand silk screen and design t-shirts in the Boston area. Here they are: www.familydinnerforone.com.

So a lot of this blog will probably relate, at least loosely, to that. But we'll probably write about a lot of other stuff too...which is why you should read our blog. I suspect that you'll never know what you might find here....I don't even know now, as I write this! All I know is that from day to day, both of us come across awesome things that inspire us, excite us, things that confuse us, enrage us, dazzle us, sicken us...you get the idea. So now we have a place to write about it.