Love of Friends 2012 from Ben Noftzger on Vimeo.

Happy Valentine’s Day!! Love of Friends is just hours away and we couldn’t be more excited for this year’s celebration! Just a reminder that tickets will remain available at the door for $25 all evening long!

So remind your boyfriend, best friend, coworkers, and cat – This year’s party at Bakery Square (with Big Snow Big Thaw, Melinda, Art, Food, Drink, and Friends) is going to be bananas <3

Sponsors

First of all, we would like to thank Bakery Square.   Bakery Square is providing us with a fantastic space for us to eat, drink, and be merry with hundreds of our closest friends while admiring local art and music. We are so excited to be in such a fun space this year.

Next, HUGE thank you to Revive Marketing Group.  The folks at Revive have been instrumental in co-producing this event with us. Recommending vendors, coaching us on our outreach, and generally keeping us from the “I am actually losing my mind” feeling that so often accompanies event planning. Gina, Eileen, and Jack- thank you for all of your help!

FUZE Beverages  are graciously acting as an in kind sponsor sending us delicious beverages to share with our friends.

Music

We are so thankful for our talented friends who will be providing music for this year’s party!

Big Snow Big Thaw performing Americana newgrass – combining rootsy songwriting, front porch harmonies, and stomping rhythms. For more information about Big Snow Big Thaw, visithttp://bigsnowbigthaw.bandcamp.com/

Pittsburgh native blues/rock artist Melinda performing a soulful acoustic set sure to cure any Valentine’s Day blues, along with guitarist Kristian H. For more information about Melinda, please visit www.listentomelinda.com

Artwork

We love being able to share the amazing work of artists in our city, and are so pleased to be spending Valentines Day surrounded by the following artists:

Stephen Knezovich <http://thenewgravycake.com/>, Sarah <www.smdjewelry.com>, Florence Smith <http://www.djoijewelrydesigns.blogspot.com/>, Nicole Y. Bloch <erracreations.blogspot.com>, Lucy McClure <www.belmonili.com>, Krystina Thomas <www.peepingthomas.carbonmade.com>, Justin Hopper<www.justin-hopper.com>, Carol Skinger <,www.carolskinger.com, Alanna James <http://www.etsy.com/people/alannaJackson>, Renee Greenlee <http://reneegreenlee.daportfolio.com/>, Andrew O. Ellis <http://www.andyrama.net/>

Food

Finally, thank you so much to the amazing Pittsburgh restaurants that provide food. We can’t wait to taste the treats this year from:

E2, The Enrico Biscotti Company, Pittsburgh Popcorn Company, Park Brugge, Chatham Food Studies Program

Once again, thank you to all who support and sponsor Love of Friends. We couldn’t do it without you. We’ll see you next week on the dance floor!

I just thought it was the best.  So I did this…

I mean it was just so great.  I had to.  I placed it here…

Come to Love of Friends!  You know you’re intrigued Love Tap.  You’re a creative, fun person.  This is just the place for you.

Thanks for being just how you are.

Love,

Alexa

During Love of Friends this year, you will see strung around the party space these little origami hearts:

Take one. They’re for you.  New friends I’ve met in DC, and friends I’ve known in Pittsburgh now living in our nation’s capital got together (and will continue to get together probably up until the moment I drive up to Pittsburgh for the party)  at various events to learn how to make the hearts* and to stuff them with a little message just for you.  We just wanted to bring a little bit of DC to Pittsburgh on the best day of the year: 2.14.

Group love: the process of making hearts.

* So, I’m team lead on the origami heart project…someone that is not linear…someone that has problems with assembly lines (though, I love them, and Fordism)…Someone who’s house looks like this after a crafting session:

In teaching others how to make origami hearts, and after a dear friend portentously said to me, “Regina, every year you say whatever you make for Love of Friends is going to be easy. It’s never easy.” (to which I replied, “no…I guess it’s not that easy…but there IS a lot of love involved!”)  the following conversation did occur:

Me: Okay, so you fold the paper this way (group does) then this way (group folds paper), and then you do this (group follows along) and then you…shoot…hmmm…I forgot…I thought I would remember…dang it…okay, let me look it up…[fast forward 5 minutes to finding the website with the directions] Okay!  RIGHT, so you do this, and THEN that (group, still with me, believe it or not, folds) and then you…oh, right…this part was kind of hard, I remember that…so you have to sort of do this thing…hmmm, let me find my prototype…where did I put that?…

As frustrating as that probably was for a lot of people, we made it work!  Now, a bunch of us know how to make origami hearts, and we now only need to make about 180 more! It’s going to be great.  So, when you unclip a heart at the party, know that heart was handmade with lots and lots of love.

We were given the go-ahead from the wonderful people at Revive Marketing Group to paint a mural on the windows at Bakery Square.  I’ve never done this before, so it was quite an adventure.  First I had to go to an art store and be dumb and ask questions like, “What kind of paint do you use to paint on windows?” and “Do you have like a wax-pencily thing, so I can draw level lines that don’t get erased by the paint?” I was really nervous about that (because I hate feeling stupid), but thankfully I went to Artist & Craftsman Supply.  The kind gentleman that worked there held my hand (figuratively) and helped me to figure out what I would need. He was really great.  You should buy all your art supplies there.

I’m going to let some pictures do the talking for the moment:

So that’s how it began.  Thank goodness there was a lovely aluminum ladder just hanging out in the space.

Here, I’m mixing the color for “Friends” or as you’ll see in the next picture, “Frienbs”.  Yeah, I messed that up every time I painted a ‘d’.

The full text of the message was “loveoffrienbs.com, Love of Frienbs, 2.14.12, See you on the bance floor.” until I noticed what I was doing and got severely annoyed.  I blame it on being in the zone; I’m not going to hate on myself for that.  No way.  Plus it looked great in the end:

I mean… seriously.  Cool.  It spans four enormous windows.

Plus the sweet peas at Revive Marketing Group said, “Love what u did!… The 3 of us passed it like 20 mins ago! It’s awesome!!”  I am such a sucker for compliments re: work I’ve done!

Come out to Bakery Square, Tuesday 2.14 at 7pm.

See you on the bance floor…  Wait, I mean dance floor.

This is a picture of the 200 tote bags made out of donated t-shirts.

The infamous LoF Craft

Have you ever tried to make 200 of something?  When asked a question like this, you don’t really need to ponder, I guess.  It’s not something you forget.  Have you ever tried to make 175 of something, or hell, 75 of something?

Each year, with the help of amazing friends, the Love of Friends team creates a goody for all of our friends to take home at the end of the LoF celebration. We’ve hand painted pins and hand-crafted magnets (many of which still adorn my refrigerator).  We’ve hand-painted wine glasses while drinking wine.

This is a photo of the billion intricate [read: time intensive] desk calendars we made for LoF5.

And then, a few years ago, things got real. We got serious about the goody and decided to make 200 LoF tote bags using tee-shirts all donated by our friends.  Getting the tee-shirts ended up being the easiest thing about this project.

Last year we made 200 custom-made desk calendars*.

A few things (but not 200 of those things):

a) Clearly we love our friends a lot and want to make something that represents how special we think you all are.

b) just like with the soundtrack, I’m not entirely sure why we’ve thought it was a good idea to let me handle any part of assembling 200 of something–oft with many little parts that all have to go together in a specific way. This is not easy for my non-linear brain. 2012, I’m not in charge of assembling the goody.

c) I highly recommend trying to assemble 200 of something. You’ll learn a lot about yourself, and why Fordism  is a great moment in our American history: the creation of the assembly line, and a wonderful product that everyone is proud of, and can afford to purchase.  You’ll also have lots of excuses to have some friends over to help–often (it can take awhile to create 200 of something).

d) The 2012 goody is going to be amazing. I can’t wait to see your faces when you take home your little treasure.

*Though I love America and I see the value in assembly line creation, I always was so surprised when friends would get together to cut out the materials to make the tote bags or make the calendars that everyone immediately began to set up the assembly line.  I also sort of was like, why? That’s too efficient, it’s too business-like for our fun, crafty gathering.  And then I was in charge of the 2011 goody…and I threw away the little templates for January 2012 (which is why everyone had to draw in that month) and we ended up with too many pages for one month and not enough for others, and though I still say I’m not a fan of the assembly line approach, I see the beauty in such organizing, and I’m no longer in charge of executing the goody…so, that’s helpful for everyone’s sanity.

This is a huge thank you to my friends who love music and share it with me.  This is a huge thank you to D.J. Zimmie for this song:  

We’ve all been there.. The days when your car won’t start, you have to move that piece of furniture, you really just need to vent.. you need some help.