Garsot

During our epic Greektown eat-a-thon, we came across a brand new art gallery.
We stopped in and interrupted an artist going to town on a huge canvas.
It was Sotirios Gardiakos, aka "Garsot".

He welcomed us in, and insisted that we weren't interrupting him.
After getting his permission, I started snapping away as he explained the meanings behind his beautiful masterpieces.
Some were Greek mythology, others were about keeping our planet clean, several were completely abstract, but his explanations all made sense (at least I nodded as if they did). For the most part his paintings look straight forward, but there are secrets hidden in them.

This one has women hidden in the background.

This one is about Greek history and mythology.

This one has something to do with music between the planets.

This is an "appealing woman". He wanted to steer clear of anything anyone could find offensive, so he didn't add a face and kept her neutral.

This one is about keeping the Earth beautiful.

This one is based on Greek mythology. It only looks like a man chained, but when you look closer you can see someone hiding in a Lion's pelt coming to release him.

His paintings range anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000  but he sells tiny prints for a cool $250.
Garsot has sold paintings to people all over the world, and we were lucky enough to get a personal tour of his art gallery.
By the end of our meeting, we had talked about art, food, Greek culture, and I was pretty sure a dinner invitation was going to spill out of his mouth at any time. It never did, but he did invite us back to hang out and enjoy his new work.

Greektown Eat-A-Thon

My Dad and I came up with a plan to eat our way through Chicago's Greektown.

The idea was to not repeat any orders at any of the restaurants. You know, in order to maximize the number of meals we could try. 

Three of us ordered a different appetizer at each restaurant and we split them.

We started at Pegasus with tiropitakia (feta cheese and spices stuffed into Filo dough), soutzoukia (meatballs with spices and a tomato sauce), and kolokithakia (pan-fried zucchini with a side of a rather garlicky tzatziki sauce).

We walked off the first round and popped into Roditys.
We ordered Mavrodaphne, but sadly the batch was bad, so we settled on Chateau Ste. Michelle for our wine. Next up was saganaki (flaming cheese), dolmades (grape leaves with a thick egg-lemon sauce), and some rendition of moussaka (eggplant and meat pie). I missed the picture of that last one.

After passing several more restaurants, we were ready for more and poked our heads into the Parthenon for egglemon soup, olives, feta, spinach pie (I think), hummus, and the Mavrodaphne I had been waiting for.

We walked the block and noticed a brand new art gallery had just opened. That's a post for another day though. Once we were done chatting with a phenomenal artist, the sun was setting, and we were ready for dessert. Ok, we kind of forced it down after all the deliciousness we had earlier in the day.
Artopolis happened to be on the same side of the street as us, so we obviously had to stop in.
I had almond baklava, M had traditional walnut baklava, and my Dad had galactoboureko (lemon custard with orange blossom syrup).

So, my favorite dish of the day (besides the olives and feta that I'm pretty sure I could live off of), was the tiropitakia from restaurant numero uno.
My favorite restaurant was a tie between Roditys and the Parthenon. The waiters were personable and the atmosphere was comfortable. Pegasus was a little place I'd like to have dinner dates, not exactly somewhere to go to get a sloppy gyro or be elbow deep in tzatziki sauce.

Overall, it was a great success. I can't wait to do the same with Little Italy, Chinatown, the German village, etc, etc, etc.

Stay tuned for my post on an amazing artist they call Garsot…

Changes

I'm afraid of color, therefor, I have color commitment issues.
When M and I found out our offer was accepted on the house, we went room by room picking colors and layouts.
Nothing went as planned. We were changing colors the night before tinting the paint and couldn't agree on any curtains (not that he really cared about the curtains, he just knew what he didn't want- basically everything I liked).
Our color scheme went to the wayside when we couldn't find any of the colors we originally wanted in curtains, pillows, etc., and we ended up with earth tones everywhere.

Then we got a little loco. We started over with a new color palette.

Since our family room and kitchen already were the dark and light browns, we thought it was perfect.
We decided first that our foyer and adjacent hallway color should be purple.
We picked a shade, had it mixed, and began painting.
I HATED it after one stroke of the roller.
I had a little meltdown, but M insisted that if we kept going, it would look better.
After the entire hallway was painted, I was in panic mode.
Holy Barney, it was awful.
A little purple goes a long way.

After a mini meeting of how we can save the paint and use it somewhere else, we decided that maybe if we only did the foyer it would be a lot less purple-y.
And somehow it was.

Then we turned our attention over to the living room.
It already had one wall painted due to not having any good stopping point while painting the family room accent wall.
We thought that would be the best room to have be our bright green room.
Neither of us could really pin-point the right shade between sage and lime, so we picked one we could both agree on.
It works for now.
Here you can see all three of the colors together.

The light coming in makes the colors look a lot darker than they really are. They're pretty light, yet bright.

And recognize those curtains? They were previously in our family room… we'll get to that later.

Moving back to Barney the hallway. Something had to be done soon because I could see the purple mocking me from behind the primer I put over it.

M finally let me have some gray in the house. I wish it was named "Elephant" because it seriously could not be any better of a match to the animal.
It's a perfect mix of dark and light, it's kind of brownish, but mostly gray, and my favorite (non?) color in the house.

Don't mind the wall on the right, we have lots of touch-ups to do.

I really wanted stripes in the bathroom that comes off of that hallway. I've seen it done a few times on Pinterest, and after much coercion, M approved my idea.
I marked off the lines and painted the bright white areas, then taped off, and went in with the same gray I used in the hallway.

I'm in love.

Eventually I'd like to either stain the vanity to a very dark color, or just paint it black.

Remember how I told you M and I had given up on our original color scheme?
It's back.
For my birthday I was given a Pier 1 gift card from my in-laws.
M and I took a trip to see what we could pick out for the house. What did we find?
Aqua (our original favorite color), purple, and limey/sage EVERYTHING.
Pillows, curtains, blankets, place mats, napkins, decorations, etc.
I realize how scary the colors all sound together, but look it up. It's quite appealing to the eye.
(Here, here, here, here, here)

We thought it over and decided we should throw the teal/aqua color back into the mix. I ordered the curtains and am so happy we finally found something with color that we could agree on. This picture doesn't do them justice. They're vibrant without being obnoxious - exactly what we were looking for.

And now the obligatory before/after shots:

That's what we've been working on for the last month and a half.

Up next: the dining room (maybe).