Fall Comes to New England

Just a little taste of fall in New England on this rainy Thursday.

The Pits

My wonderful husband helped me at work on Tuesday, digging a pit for my after-school archaeology program.  Normally, I'd have to do this all by myself (twice a year), but he was able to knock out the first part in a few hours.

Museum Daily . . . are we even doing this anymore?

OBVIOUSLY, I'm not very committed to the Museum Daily photo project anymore, but I'm pleased that I at least kept with it for over a month (most of which was last fall) and have since posted a number of a-day-in-the-life photos of my museums.

In keeping with that, this was my view for part of the day on Saturday. I was hosting an archaeology open house event for Massachusetts Archaeology Month and was stationed in the 1677 house with some 17th century artifacts from an excavation done in that town about a decade ago. We didn't get too many people (rainy day and lots of other things going on in that county and town), but we did have around 5 or so interested parties. Not a total waste! :)

Storage Success Stories, Part III

More storage!  I know, I know, the picture below isn't very exciting to anyone but me.  I know that educational supply storage is very boring to most normal people.  So I shot the bottom two photos so you can at least kind of understand why neatly labeled storage makes me so happy.

OK, see how many rubber stamps we have?  And all those ink pads in the box already?  First of all, I had no idea we had so much of each.  If we did a program with stamps, I might have not been able to find all of these (they were spread out between three different boxes scattered throughout the dark supply closet) and bought a bunch more.  Now I know what we have!

And now they're nicely organized!  The small box in the lower left houses all of the loose alphabet stamps (smallest ones in the tin, larger ones in the box).  The ink pads are all consolidated at the top left.  All of the wooden handle stamps are turned the right way up so I can see what they are.  Doesn't that look so much better?

Now multiply the lift I get from getting one supply organized by 22 (for all the boxes completed already).  See why this is a treat on rainy days?  :)

P.S.  In both home and work organization, I get a lot of inspiration from the shelter blogs I read.  In particular, I've been gobbling up Chez Larsson lately.  The author has a lovely home and lots of good organizing ideas - check it out!

Modern Art

Lately, I've been loving this project:  WFNX & MFA acoustic sessions.  One of Boston's local radio stations partnered with the Museum of Fine Art to schedule a number of modern rock bands to play in the galleries of the museum.  As a fan of both the music WFNX plays and the art the MFA displays, I think it looks magical!

Love the juxtaposition of the shots below - one was taken by me on a tour of the MFA last winter; one is from the album of acoustic session photos.  The bottom one shows the band Taking Back Sunday in front of this amazing "Renaissance Revival reenactment" (the exact words of our tour guide) piece.

Storage Success Stories, Part II

Well, it's taken me since March (apparently) to get them assembled and start filling them with supplies.  However, I've finally put some of my IKEA storage boxes to work at one of my museums!  I assembled all thirty of them a few weeks ago and started filling & labeling them yesterday.  

I realize this is a very small thing, but I can't explain how nice it is to look at a box and instantly know not only what's in it (thanks to my lovely labels), but how much you have of a given supply.  Before, all the supplies were spread out everywhere and I was always buying more of things we already had because I didn't know we had it!  Hooray for small miracles.

Topical

Given that my second week of summer programming at one museum (coming up soon in mid-August!) is about Archie comics, I really enjoyed this.  That is all.  :)