Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix

I know this post is a little premature (as we're expecting another cold front next week), but I just can't help it - today it feels like spring!!

Every year there is a quick moment in which I remember how much I love driving around with the windows down, music blaring. It conjures happy memories, not of specific occasions, but of familiar feelings: content, bubbly childlike joy, and mischievous adolescent glee. Of course, I was driving to rescue B, whose car battery was dead across town, but I didn't care, it was fab!

Here's the first moment of what we'll call pre-spring here at our casa:



Changing seasons are always times for other sorts of change! In addition to my re-fashion challenge and my goal of continually cleaning, organizing, and packing my house in prep for the upcoming move, here are a couple of other things that the seasons will change:

It's almost officially time to let Tori out of the box. Spring is for redheads! I'm going to stick with the green for 2-3 more weeks so as to not jinx the seasons, but look out for glam photos soon!

Time to switch drinks! The time of bourbon and dark beer is past (as any of you who suffered my incessant chatter on Friday night will appreciate)! Bring on light summer cocktails! Look for my famous iced teas and lemonades at parties soon!

Time to clean out the carport! Now that it won't be utter misery to step outdoors, I have to prep our fave party space for springtime fun!

Time to get back to the gym! With fab travel opportunities upcoming and the prospects of short skirts and sundresses looming, it's time to zumba away those holiday pounds!

Alright, I've been inside too long while writing this! Going outside to play!

Weekend project: Striped Pajamas

I started working on Colette's free mini bloomers pattern Thursday during Runway. My material is a thrifted yellow and white striped bed sheet (99 cents!!)Decided to finish the shorts last night, and they are SUPER cute, but SUPER skimpy...



...So I made a fun babydoll top based on a design of my own to go with. All together I am really pleased with my new pajamas!



Hmmmm, what next???

My Crafty Week!...and some fun pics!

Whew! This week has been a whirlwind! But somehow I've managed to get caught up on work, tidy the house a bit, and do just enough thrifting to keep me crafting this weekend!

B and I had fabulous news this week! Nothing official yet on our moving destination, but we're getting MUCH closer! Decision to hopefully be revealed soon!

I babysat for a friend this week (two boys, 3 and 10), and learned several things about how non-child-proofed my life is!

a) I cleaned like crazy, picking up every cat toy and fuzzball that I thought might cause problems for my 3 year old charge....but somehow didn't notice the GIANT bowl of candy on my coffee table. Let's just say, the little guy noticed.
b) I gathered together all sorts of craft supplies to occupy the boys, but the most popular item by far was a 79 cent bag of balloons...



c) FYI - Windex gets bloodstains out of children's t-shirts really well!
d) FYI - I don't own a single dish appropriate for feeding children.
e) FYI - I don't own many DVDs appropriate for family viewing (go figure)...we ended up watching my favorite classic "Swiss Family Robinson"

Last night one of my besties and I watched Project Runway!...and also some of that Olympics thing...I wanted to show B one of the male skater's ridiculous costume, so I took a photo of the screen. Never done that before, and it doesn't show the costume well, but I thought it turned out cool...



Oh, and one more thing! Here are the objects of this weekend's re-fashioning! I can't wait to take some scissors to these thrifted beauties!!!





After shots coming soon!

Bad Shoe Day

Once again, I've been betrayed by my shoe-a-day calendar. Already miffed at the epically clinging-on winter weather, and feeling uninspired, this is what I was greeted by this morning:


Nothing about this shoe, in and of itself, really bothers me that much. It's clearly not my style, but I can appreciate it. However, it's cheerful summery colorfulness on a day that actually looks like this:



...is just downright irritating.

I know I should't complain. I have many, many friends enduring much worse and much more epic winter weather. But y'all, I live in the south for a REASON!

A weekend to blog home about!

Wow! This weekend has been a whirlwind of exciting times! For week's I've been anticipating "A Night at the Boom Boom Room;" a local BURLESQUE and FIRE show!!! It was amazing!!!! I only wish we had more fabulousness like this in Oxford regularly! After the show we went to the Jucifer show at Larry's. This was possibly the loudest show I've ever seen, but with ear plugs (I'm no longer 18, y'all) it was a decent time.

Unfortch, because I had SUCH a good time at the Boom Boom Room and subsequent Scandinavian Death Metal extravaganza, I was pretty much out of commission all day Saturday. So that night, B and I rented a soon-to-be classic: Saw VI, and got us a hot-n-ready Little Caesar's cheese pizza!

This morning, I felt refreshed and crafty again! Hoorah! I made my first ever amigurumi, which looks absolutely nothing like the picture on the pattern, but I'm still proud of my attempt. Then I got really ambitious...

Baking is something that I've always been very wary of. There is too much chemistry involved, and therefore WAY too many opportunities for me to create catastrophe...but I decided to go for it today!

I made FROM SCRATCH Iced Spiced Pumpkin cookies (recipe from allrecipes.com)...and they are TERRIFF!!!

I packed up some cookies and got dolled up. B and I had a fab V-Day dinner at Taylor Groc! Then we dashed to a friend's house to watch Big Love (LOVE slutty mormons!)Now, home-again-home-again and crossing fingers that we get some winter weather so I don't have to go to work tomorrow!

Oh, and I made this hat during polygamist drama...I call it the "Mrs Olsen."

As I sit at work, daydreaming about craft time!

I've been in a winter funk. As my shrinker friend, Sweet Pickles, would put it - this weather has given me a major case of the SADS. I'm proving myself a lazy slob by not fulfilling my self-promise of returning to my pre-holiday workout regime, and all of our work and travels to plan for B's return to school has me tired and stressed (albeit pretty excited too!).

I've been inspired by the creative people around me and am just itching to do some major crafting! As you know, I'm relatively OCD about these things, and will disappear for days on end, ignoring everything in my life that is not craft-oriented. I'm trying to think of a way to keep my life productive and creative at the same time. So, I'm going to try to dangle a carrot before my face...so to speak...

I really want to buy myself a new dress form (tried to upload fab picture here, but couldn't get it to work). But my house looks like an episode of Hoarders as it is, so I've decided that I can buy myself the form if I manage to get the spare room cleaned up enough that there is a place to put it. Granted, the spare room currently functions as the cat room, the craft room, the shoe show, my closet, makeup station, office, and general hidey-hole for stashing things when company comes. This could take a while. Wish me luck!

Feeling crafty...

Maybe it's because it's Thursday (Project Runway night!)...maybe it's because I'm procrastinating at work (shocking, I know)....maybe it's because I'm a crafty sort of girl....and maybe it's because I've been feeling like this blog needs a little bit of a theme.

Whatever the reason, I've been exploring fabulously themed blogs (celebrity gossip, movies,sewing, crafting, more crafting), and trying to get inspired about something creative. Helping my friend set up his blog last night made me feel like writing some fiction, reading about re-fashioning had me off to Goodwill, where i purchased some fabulously bad dresses to experiment with, looking at ugly tattoos just made me feel giggly, and realizing I'm badly in need of a haircut...made me wish my girl BH still lived here...

I don't think my blog will ever have a single theme, but I'm going to try, for the next few weeks, to incorporate some of these ideas into my blogging. My hope is that this pledge will inspire me to do creative things outside of the blogosphere....wish me luck!

Wherein I help Charles set up his new blog

As CHe and I sit on my couch, drinking cheap wine and setting up his new blog, I realize how few of my fab blogger options I utilize. I feel as though I'm in a competition with CHe for who is the most tech-savvy, and as we are both relatively deficit in this department, I'm going to attempt to embed a link to a much more successful blog.

Upon a remeniscence of a moment in the video store...

...While watching a decidedly non-horrific film ("New York, I love you" - really good! Check out "Paris Je t'aime" as well!) B and I began discussing our usual video rental habits. I remarked upon the unnaturalness of us renting a non-horror film. He argued that we often watch other genres. I responded with the memory of a moment in Blockbuster...

B and I were renting an epic drama (what B refers to as a "life movie"). The pock-faced 12 year old clerk took the familiar 1 Night Rental case from me and looked at it for an awkward amount of seconds and then glanced again at our membership card. "I thought you only rented horror movies," he stated. He typed our account number into the computer, scrolled down, reading, and nodded, as if confirming his own recollection.

It was true, I realize now. We really do rent horror movies 98% of the time. Tonight, Bryan clearly articulated why:

With horror movies there's no risk. You can enjoy the hell out of a bad horror movie and still feel like you got your money's worth. The same cannot be said of dramas, comedies, or (god forbid) romances. Horror is an equal opportunity genre; anyone and everyone can make a horror movie and the result will always be entertaining...I'm fairly certain that's a genre-specific phenomenon...an interesting thing to consider...

Film: A month in big and small screen diversion

It's too late for me to be up, playing on the internet. I have too much work to do, and too little time to finish it.....so, of course, it's time for a little more procrastination...

Here's a quick lowdown on what I've been watching lately.

In the theater:

The Lovely Bones: Beautiful....brilliant....yet, somehow, left me unsatisfied. Stanley Tucci is unrecognizably amazing.

New on DVD:

The Surrogates: Timely and fun. Drawing on recent themes of cultural relativity and fears of technology making us less human in some way, this was a relatively lamely executed film with a smart underlying plot.

Pandorum: More sci-fi interpretations of the horrific yet somehow inevitable nature of the loss of humanity feared to come with technological exploration. Pretty entertaining overall, if mildly predictable.

Paranormal Activity: The Amityville Horror in the style of The Blair Witch Project. Yawn.

Deadline: Rented from Redbox on a whim. One of Brittany Murphy's last films, and sadly forgettable.

Jennifer's Body: Surprisingly witty for a one-time watch. I appreciated the satire, but not Megan Fox.

The Carriers: The only thing Americans fear more than terrorists right now is the swine flu. This one pretty tidily addresses the dehumanizing nature of disease and the inescapable demise of careless, uninformed people.

On TV:

The Red Carpet at the Grammys: WTF
The premiere of RuPaul's Drag Race, Season 2: There are prettier queens at Ole Miss.
The premiere of Caprica: Waiting on my Tivo. Clearly, I'm not that excited.
The premiere of the last season of Lost: I hate you. I love you. I hate you.