Bolt of Blue

Where do I begin?

For months now, I’ve been helping my husband and two friends build an epic LEGO recreation of the The Last March of the Ents from The Lord of the Rings movie. We unleashed the photos online on September 28, and then displayed it for a public exhibit that very weekend in Seattle at BrickCon. BrickCon was an insanely fun and exhausting time hanging with new and old friends. The drive up to Seattle and back was long… but surprisingly nice to just spend time with my husband and little Baxter, who came along for the trip. And our creation won Best in Show. Really amazed!

It’s been a smashing success and one of the most fun creative projects I’ve ever been a small part of. I hoped people would like it after all the hard work put into it, but never expected the reception to be as enthusiastic as it’s been. We’ve been interviewed for a podcast, made CNN and a ton of blogs, and we’re getting close to a million views on the photos.

We got the crazy idea after watching a marathon screening of the trilogy at the Egyptian Theatre earlier this year. One thing I will always love about Los Angeles is that there so many amazing revival movie theatres. Any night of any week, you can pop into theatres all over town to check out classic, cult, weird, obscure, popular, indie or new movies…

The idea was just to build one Ent. This snowballed. Quickly. It’s been a real labor of love though and came together so seamlessly. We’re pretty proud. And it’ll be on display again at a local event in Pasadena called Designer Con.

What else have I’ve been doing since my last ages ago post? Took a week long road trip exploring the California coast as well as attended several events celebrating the opening of the new Dinosaur Hall at the Natural History Museum. Still going to shows including Fiona Apple, Jon Brion, and the members of Nickelcreek put on one of the best I’ve ever been to in my entire life! Oh, and in between all the LEGO madness, I still managed to see Duran Duran at Nokia Theatre. It always comes back to Duran Duran in the end…

Been a very busy October so far. BrickCon started things off. Seriously fun time hanging out with old friends, making new ones, and seeing some incredible LEGO creations in person.

I built an elephant. Mr. Elephant, as I call him, which won Best Small Art Sculpture. I was so surprised. Right before I won, Remi won for his much more impressive and cool creation of Dueling Robosaurs for Best Large Art Sculpture

After perfect weather in Seattle, we headed up to Vancouver for a week in Canada. Which included 2 magical days in the Sunshine Coast. The perfect weather continued. Will post photos soon but they can never do such a magical and gorgeous place justice.

Once we returned, there was work, concerts (more on those later), birthdays, get together’s, life… almost no end in sight. Would we really want it any other way? Not entirely sure but life is swimming along pretty good right now.

Yes. Still around. Alive and happy too.

Busy with the usual: work, family, LEGO, movies, OK Go.

To start off, my Zelda mosaic won the best large mosaic award at the recent Bricks by the Bay LEGO convention.

Fun weekend surrounded by friends and bricks. Plus it was a chance to share this whole LEGO world with the nephews. Totally worth the boring drive up the 5. Thankfully, took the lovely drive down the 101. Even with rain, it was so beautiful. Green hills, valleys, the coast… you believe the happy cows commercials.

Fun con. Looking forward to BrickCon even more now.

Friday night was magical fun.

Premiere party for OK Go’s new video at LACMA… featuring pieces of the Rube Goldberg machine from the video, a DJ set by Tim, and an acoustic set by the band (minus Dan).

Half the party was on a rooftop terrace with the lights of Los Angeles all around. The short set was lovely and included my favorite “Last Leaf” and a cover of the Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation”.

All that and I got to find out just how big a fan of LEGO a certain lead singer truly is.

Start of this month was full of Discworld goodness.

Start of October will be full of Lego goodness.

In between: amazing Flogging Molly show at the Greek, work, work, work, catching up on TV shows (Dexter, I’m not digging this Lila chick) or getting into new ones (thanks Flash Forward for giving me goosebumps), and lots of building, building, building.

A peek into the world of AFOLs.

I got a total kick out of this. Had to share.

While we didn’t attend the last BrickCon, Remi was there in spirit. He sent along two MOCs that were part of a coordinated massive display devoted to Battlestar Galactica masterminded by Ryan. Remi built two green and white Vipers that Ryan brought up to Seattle to add to the amazing display.

The other day, Brothers Brick posted about the display. It was a surprising treat to see them link to a photo of one of the Vipers Remi made. Then the news spread… Gizmodo blogged about it. Two familiar green Vipers can be spotted in the opening photo. DVICE blogged about it next. Again, two green Vipers are in the opening photo. And then it made it to the front page of the official BSG website. And crazy enough, you can also see two green Vipers in the photo used there too.

TOTALLY AWESOME!