Monday, November 8, 2010

Catch of the Day!

Some of you may know our love, (and my obsession) for sushi. And some of you may know my love for fish, the alive- and swimming- kind. But what only some of you know (as it is oh-so-shameful of me) is that I do not keep fish for very long. It's ridiculous, I cannot even begin (or admit) just how many casualties I have had from my tank that I purchased back in 2006 as a gift to myself. It was to celebrate my first job out of college and I was ready to become the fish expert I had always wanted to be. But I think I'm the exact opposite. I started way back when with a cute lil guy I named 'Samule'. But unfortunately, I went through far too many Samules before I finally retired the name and moved on. There was Lucy, Talula, Franny, an adopted fish from a friend named 'Einstein' and re-named to Francesca, Norm - yes, named after Tommy's brother, Tito... oh man, I have to stop before PETA contacts me. Anyways, to put it lightly, whenever Tommy and I would go to the fish store he would put his face up to the glass as I eyed them up and would continue to say "Swim away! She's going to kill you!"

It seriously has brought me to such levels of aggravation as to how many fish I have gone through that after my last and present fish, 'Flo' I have contemplated of getting rid of my beautiful 25 gallon fish tank...of death. I feel like I'm known as the 'fish killer', with or without Tommy taunting me at the fish store, and the fish experts clearly know who I am, because they know how big my tank is and how many (or lack there of) fish I have in it (this is a standard question in the world of fish sales) as they are always very willing to try and help the crazy fish killer.

Anyways, no, I did not get another friend for Flo, risking the (knock on wood) chance of killing her and sending her to the porcelain Gods where all my other cold-blooded friends are, but we did get two new unique fish to welcome to The Blooming House.

The first one: both Tommy and I are very happy to welcome into our home because it came from over seas and is quite the beauty. And not to mention it weighs about 25 pounds. So, NOW you ask, umm... isn't your tank 25 gallons? Yeah, I may kill fish (on accident of course!!!) but I'm not that dumb. We packed it up quite nicely in our carry-on suitcase, were stopped by Bahamas' Customs and traveled back to the great state of Minnesota with our beautiful honeymoon souvenir.


We absolutely love this hand carved, wooden fish by a local artist while in the Bahamas. We even asked the artist to carve his name and date it so we'll never forget how special this big guy is to us. We got a few questions bringing it back as it is the size of a small suit case, but we love it!

The second welcomed fish took some prep work. Being that he's 73 inches long, we had to get The Blooming House ready for this guy! We inherited a beautiful mounted Sailfish from a family member who had caught it off the coast of Mexico during his world travels in the 60's. After repeatedly asking Tommy's parents if it was okay to do what I was about to do, being that the family fisherman and previous owner of the Sailfish had passed away this year, I began my biggest (again, 73 inches) craft project of all time!

I wanted to mount the big lug none other than it's true home, above a great big mantel. But I wanted it to pop off the freshly painted "graceful gray" and "fashion gray" to be exact, living room walls and give it a more sophisticated look. So we picked up a can of glossy white spray paint and began our extreme, but extremely easy makeover in the garage.








Tommy's giving him a lil spay of 'Fin-aca' breath freshener here.

This was after only one coat, but he was definitely on his way! And we couldn't be happier.

We wanted to put just a few more sprays here and there to make sure we would catch any signs of blue from under the belly and whatnot so I trucked out to the garage one night, where he was safely stored away to do some touch-ups. After learning that spray painting in the cold does NOT do wonders, we ended up with some bubbling action, which made me feel like I just killed the already dead fish. I just could not catch a break! 

We decided to haul it into the basement to thaw out and do a couple rounds of light sanding in the bubbling areas and then hit up with some primer and then again with the glossy white paint and he was back in action!

We hung it up tonight proudly, as if we had caught it ourselves, but really we just graffiti-ed the heck out of it. And as I have said in most of our reveals, voila!



Unfortunately, this shot shows my laziness of not getting to the bottom half of our two-toned gray wall paint, but eventually we'll get there. I'm just hoping the 73 inch Sailfish on the wall will distract you from it for now. We are still working on getting the basement done. (new project post to come!) We haven't finished the upstairs living room because of the basement renovations so we have a few random items stored in not-so-practical locations. (notice our stairway railing seated at the foot of our fireplace)

(Sigh)

We're moving along with projects in the house, checking off plenty of little (and big) tasks as we go, but in the meantime, we now have what I like to call "Mantel Jewelry". And it truly is a piece of art for us as weird as it may be to some of you reading this post. We like to think Mr. Sailfish is a great catch! (Thanks to my brother for letting me steal that line. I couldn't resist!

2 comments:

  1. I love this! It's very YHL. :) I think I might need to jump on this bandwagon and spraypaint some kind of creature white... it just looks so fresh and modern.

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  2. OMG WHAT!!!
    Thanks for commenting and linking me to yours! LOVE!

    ReplyDelete