Quickie Friday post before bed (plus a little Friday Hotness)

Goals for the weekend:

get over the cold.
get to the library for new stuff and returns(let me just say, new Apartment Therapy book, I am so glad I did not buy you)
try #1 local craft store for some feathers (cue ominous music)
suck it up and go to the gym.

And on that note, here is some motivational weekend eye candy.





Do I have a type? Hmm...

The trouble with Etsy

I'm only moderately crafty. But I have been doing some thinking. I suddenly have a pair of weddings to go to in June, and I am trying to repress the urges to buy pretty dresses for both. So I have been doing the oh-so-trendy "Shop My Closet", and I think I can come up with two attractive outfits. But I want something to spice them up. Something cheaper than jewelry.



I swear I could make something like this myself. And it makes the "What to do with my hair?" conundrum slightly easier. What are the odds it would be cheaper for me to make a couple of little feather hair clips than to get them (with shipping) on Etsy.

I suppose we also have to keep in mind that I will be too picky to be able to find the exactly right thing on Etsy and assume that I will be able to find good feather options in Reno. Hmm.

Or should I just do some specific requests for my birthday and save myself a project... but that's no fun.

Weekend recap/ the joy of having a card reader

Ok, here's the holiday weekend recap with pictures finally! I went home to see the fam on Thursday night - my mom has Fridays off. So Friday we went to the city and met my sister at the Asian art museum for the fantastic Afghanistan exhibit, followed by lunch at Citizen Cake (very nice but a bit overpriced/ overly full of themselves). Then we got to go get my grandmother out of the convalescent home and take her back to her house, which we were all very pleased about (especially her). We watched Kung Fu Panda instead of going out, which was fine by me. The animation is gorgeous and mostly makes up for the weak-ish story. The casting of the celebrity voices, however, distracted me at times trying to figure out who they were.

Saturday I went and cooked my grandmother breakfast and hung out while she got her medications and things sorted out. Then the parents and I went and had some camera practice time on 17-Mile Drive and a super nice lunch at Roy's (not cheap but worth every penny). I cooked them dinner for once and then we watched Get Smart, which was much more entertaining than I expected (other than a few wince-inducing gags). Also, Anne Hathaway is gorgeous and I want all of her costumes. And props for a minor role for one of the Reno 911 guys!

Sunday I went to Namama's in the morning again to hang out and then we went to the city to go do some more camera practice at the Conservatory of Flowers. Parking was INSANE due to the recent reopening of the California Academy of Sciences bu we found a spot eventually and I am always a fan of the Conservatory of Flowers so that was really fun.

Then we rolled across to Berkeley and had lunch with my sister before heading home. Monday I got to spend the morning with my grandmother again and that was nice because that meant I could schedule her physical therapist to come and I got to talk to him before I left, and that meant that she was distracted having him there so it wasn't quite so sad when I had to go. Of course my flight was delayed and I bought the world's most revolting energy drink at the airport, but now I am home with my sweetie and although it was a great weekend, it is nice to be back.

P.S. Click on the pics to enlarge.

Sigh.

I was going to do an awesome post about my wonderful weekend and the amazing pictures from my fabulous new(to me) Nikon D70 camera. However, new camera is apparently not new enough to talk to Vista. So instead, Happy Inauguration Day! Hope everyone is getting to see as much or as little coverage as they wanted to, I will be watching it tonight in reruns, I think.

Early weekend post

Since I am taking off for the weekend after work, I leave you with a weekend song. I'm not sure if this is the real vid since the lips seem to be slightly out of sync, but it doesn't make the music any less great:



And an incredibly hilarious post via Daddy Likey.

Have a good weekend everybody!

PSA (public service announcement)

Holy crap go see this movie while it is still in theaters. It is not worth waiting to Netflix it, it needs the big screen. Go now. I haven't seen a movie this good for a long time. And that absolutely does not do it justice. It is epic, and not like Australia (slightly saggy with gratuitous hot Jackman to keep you interested). It is so full of plot that I basically can't explain it. It has elements of fairy tale but in the old-fashioned (one might say Grimm) sense of the word, and so freaking well done. I promise it is worth your time. The last movie that made this kind of impression on me was Children of Men. But this one is way less of a downer. Visually fantastic and so gripping I was hiding in my turtleneck for half of it, but I needed to know how it ended so I had to watch (yes, from the edge of my seat, most of the time).

Edit: The movie is Slumdog Millionaire, by Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, neither of which I have seen.

Supplemental info for yesterday's question:

This is the rug that I don't want my chair to fight with. It is really this bright.


And, as I was totally going to post earlier, this is my beloved new couch not fighting with the rug. It is totally neutral and boring, but SO comfortable, and way less hideous than the gray recline-y one that Matt wanted (it literally looked like a dead elephant and was only going to get uglier with age).



So maybe a modern botanical with black and one color out of the rug? Sigh. This was never going to be easy, but I didn't think it would be quite so hard. One color out of the rug could basically be any color in the rainbow, that's how I justified my leafy green accent wall on the facing wall in the entryway. Maybe leafy green and black?

I do ask for help on here a lot, don't I.

So I think I have nailed down the "style" of our house decor. I am going to call it Bohemian Modern due to my tendency to lean towards dark wood and Jetsons influences combined with Matt's leaning towards brightly colored rugs and tapestries. However, we just inherited a 100+ year-old family heirloom that is going to make things even more complicated.



The Ikea chair has been retired, and this is its replacement. The in-laws have promised to pay for reupholstering the seat as it is currently concave with springs dangling from the bottom. The question is, where do I go with it?



I am in LOVE with this fabric from Door Sixteen's adorable living room pillows. I would be tempted to order it in a green and make a spare pillow to go on the couch out of whatever was left. If it wasn't so darn expensive. And I wonder if the pattern will look just a little too wack-a-doo on such an old-fashioned chair. Which makes me leery of using a pattern at all since I passionately do not want a pattern of the same vintage as the chair (I am picturing brocade flowers, and gagging). And I also will not be pulling an AT makeover and staining the chair a darker color or painting it white or a bright color. The couch and the loveseat are now both shades of tan microfiber, so there will be no more ANYTHING in tan or beige coming in to my living room.

So should I suck it up and do a solid in blue or green so it doesn't become another piece of diva furniture? At least a plain navy would not fight with the rug or anything. Or am I just being too safe and need to take some risks? That antenna-shaped cutout in the chair back kind of goes with the fabric pattern...

Sigh (semi-book review).

There is a part of me that loves books that tell me how to get dressed. The same part of me that had to get kicked in the shins before the rest of me could cancel my Glamour subscription a couple of years ago. As I have determined that spending time on my appearance does not make me a bad person, these parts of me have learned to coexist a little better now, and thus I picked up the following from the library:



Let's start with the good. Isaac Mizrahi is a funny guy. The ladies he makes over are legitimately different shapes and sizes, and they all come out of it looking gorgeous. It makes me want to go buy lots of skirts and start dyeing my hair again. It is a fun little book, like reading a magazine with fewer weight-loss tips. The pictures are gorgeous and well-shot.

However, most of these ladies have a darned good start and there is just a level of inapplicable-ness (yes I just made that up) to the real world that I can't get over. Yes, fire-engine red lipstick and a lacy bra peeking out of your button-down are very stylish and dramatic. But who the hell can wear that stuff to work? It's just too unreal - yes you look great as a platinum blonde, now either make peace with your roots or prepare to drop beaucoup bucks at the salon every three weeks for touch-ups. Lots of people would look better in miniskirts and heels than in baggy jeans. But they have to live in the real world. Isaac, you gave me no real-world options here. I do not live in a photo shoot. You are not showing me how to have style for my everyday life. I can have style on a Saturday night when I'm all dolled up, I need to figure out how to add it to the rest of my life.



So in sum, not a bad book as long as you're getting it from the library and don't expect any really useful advice. I mostly like looking at the pictures. And wondering what I would look like as a platinum blonde.

Douglas Adams, we hardly knew ye.

This will only make sense if you are a DA fan. But if you are, it is worth it. Or you may have already discovered it. If so, never mind.

Today is a day when it is particularly nice to be working at home (all week, suckas!), as it doesn't seem to have decided between rain and snow outside so there are periods of particularly nasty sideways sleet-y hail stuff coming down (clear, but chunky).


Edit: now it's snow. Still sideways. Makes Matt's tickets to the basketball game tonight slightly less exciting.

Karma (is probably not the word I'm looking for here). Maybe "Giving Back" or something.

Lest you think that my holiday was all frivolity and festivities (which, fair enough, is all I have posted about), there was a little meat there too. Or at least food for the soul of some sort.

Yes, this is the token do-gooder hippie holiday post. With a dash of self-improvement too.

We didn't buy fancy presents for anyone except eachother: this means family all got homemade stuff, granola, spiced nuts, peppermint bark, or locally made jam from the co-op. If they didn't get stuff like that, or sometimes along with that stuff, we got the Reno family all memberships here. They need the $$ to stay open so we figured memberships there would be at least as cool (if not cooler) than something fancy that they wouldn't use. Also, yay for supporting local organizations!



I started my first week of volunteering at the co-op. They now have over 1300 members and over 200 volunteers and I am spending a couple of hours of my Sundays there helping out now. Local food is something that makes sense to me so I like the idea of putting some time in there. If I can get it somewhere local I would rather, even if it isn't as pretty sometimes, it all still tastes good. And as close as we are to California, they do supplement the local stuff with slightly less local organic produce just so they have a selection. But that's where I was able to get my locally made jam for Xmas presents too! They support local farms and businesses so I like to support them back. They also give me ideas for new things to cook and/or plant in my garden come springtime. When I was doing some filing I noticed that several local restaurants are also members. Now I think that is super cool. Also, yet again, more supporting of the local organizations.

And for my improve-y type New Year activity, I have found a photography class at the local art museum that I am going to sign up for. The in-laws gave us a pile of cds of vacation photos and I was poking fun at the spotty quality until I realized that I really can't do much better. This is a getting-to-know-your-camera class designed for people who got new digital cameras for Christmas and I am totally going to get to know my camera, even if only to post better photos on here!