Sage, Naomi – Author at Plaster & Disaster

We don’t usually post on Tuesdays, but we wanted to pop in today to wish everyone a happy Giving Tuesday! For those who aren’t familiar with it, Giving Tuesday is a celebration of giving and generosity that falls the Tuesday after Thanksgiving each year, a chance to think about our contribution to the world and the organizations working so hard to create positive change.

Whoops! Sorry, wrong photo.

Giving Tuesday - Image by givingtuesday on Instagram - Plaster & Disaster

(Image via givingtuesday on Instagram)

We hope that you will consider contributing to a cause or organization (or several!) that you believe in today or this season. Giving can mean a lot of things. Financial contributions are always appreciated by nonprofits, but you can also give your time (volunteering) or your talent (helping out with a particular skill you have, like graphic design).

We aren’t going to list specific organizations that we think are great because we both work at non-profits that we could pitch for hours, but if you’re looking for some help finding effective non-profits then we highly recommend Give Well as a great resource for finding and researching organizations.

Additionally, while doing some research on Giving Tuesday resources we came across the Family Dinner Project and wanted to mention it as a really cool resource. The basic idea is to encourage families to talk about challenging issues together, with prompts and ideas for how to do this on a regular basis around the dinner table and how to frame the conversation in age-appropriate ways for kids. (Here are some resources from them specifically on talking about giving.) But you don’t need to have kids (we don’t!) to find this a helpful resource for fostering meaningful and challenging conversation with loved ones.

We could get really sentimental about the importance of the social sector (feelings!), and we could also get super intellectual and academic (business degree!). But we’ll spare you both, and just reiterate our hope that you consider using Giving Tuesday as an opportunity to recognize and support the causes and organizations that are particularly meaningful to you. Because the season of giving is about more than that coffee maker you’re really excited to give your spouse for Christmas (good thing Sam doesn’t read the blog!).

Honesty and integrity, dear reader, is what we want you to think of when you think of Plaster & Disaster.

“Integrity’s a neutral value. Hyenas have integrity, too. They’re pure hyena.” – Jonathan Franzen

Shut up, Jonathan. Here at Plaster & Disaster, we think that honesty and integrity are the highest values. That’s why we try so hard to share all of our mistakes and disasters with you (like that time Sage sawed her table top in half by mistake, or the time Naomi’s craft failed on every level imaginable.)

Truth Behind the Photo - Plaster & Diaster

Is that you, Naomi and Sage?

But the truth is, we lie to you in practically every post. Not outright lies, but little misdirections and lies of omission (e.g., the big mess lurking just outside of the frame). We had so much fun with our first Truth Behind the Photo post, when Naomi shared what was going on behind her recent photos – so we thought we’d do it again!

First up, here’s one from Sage:

So remember when I shared the hanging shelf and desk unit that I built as part of Sam’s office makeover? First I showed it from an angle:

And then I also shared a head-on shot:

Well, that room is tiny. And it’s basically impossible to get a wide head-on shot like that. So how did I achieve it? Well, here’s Sam taking a photo of my photo-taking setup (so meta):

Want to know what his photo looked like?

Yeah, there’s a crazy person outside taking a photo through the window. And that crazy person is obviously me.

But this window is not on the ground floor — our house is raised up so that even the first floor is a ways off the ground. So from the outside, it looked like this:

That’s how committed I am to you, dear readers. And how insane I am. The bummer is that it was so gray and cloudy that the shot turned out fairly dark (and since the camera wasn’t on a tripod, I couldn’t slow down the shutter speed to let more light in). So I ended up liking the angle shots that I got on the tripod better. So basically I behaved ridiculously for no reason. But it was kinda fun….

Next, one from Naomi:

When I shared my adventure using embroidery to update a boring $5 mouse pad from staples, I was pretty proud of my progress and final photos, shot against a white background.

Maybe it looks like I did this project in a stylish, all white craft room?

Well, the truth is that, because we don’t have real heat in our house right now (a long story that I’ll share another time), I actually did this project in our totally run-down, never-updated, plywood floored, marsala colored “sunroom.”

This is the only room on our main floor that we haven’t done anything to update, and it is pretty much exactly like it was when we bought the place a few years ago. It is a dumping ground for mismatched or broken furniture, and other stuff that we don’t really know what to do with. However, it is also the only room with a wood burning stove, so we’ve been spending a lot of time in here waiting for our heating system to be up and running.

I made the calculation that it would be easier to embroider a mouse pad if my fingers weren’t frozen solid, so I carted my supplies and a photo backdrop out here to do the project. I think the broken chair really added to the atmosphere of serenity and peaceful creativity.

And, of course you remember the ridiculous (but beautifully shot) fall crafts that we made together and shared two weeks ago.

Okay, okay, we know that these are absurd. The real embarrassing truth behind that whole endeavor is that we actually spent a whole day together making wreaths out of mason jars and adding mid-century legs to pumpkins. We kept saying, “do you realize what we’re doing right now?!” But we just couldn’t stop ourselves, it was so fun.

But marvel, will you, at the skilled photography? Take this cute little progress shot, for example:

Blogging is absurd, because we actually stopped the DIY process, and staged this little pumpkin with its stem wrapped in painters tape.

This isn’t easy, people. Direct light had to be avoided, cats had to be distracted. Our lives are super hard.

And, of course, despite the idyllic vision we provided of these projects, we totally trashed the space. Mason jar pumpkins, cat toys, and mid-century modern legs were everywhere!

All that for a little snark!

(Okay, we’ll be honest, we’ll do just about anything for snark.)

Did you enjoy seeing what is going on behind our recent shots? Hopefully this has restored a little integrity to this blog, even though it has thoroughly destroyed your blind trust in the idyllic vision of our world that we present to you every day. I know our relationship is stronger for it.