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Archives for September 2013

8 of My Favorite Costumes

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I can’t decide if I’m going to dress up for Halloween this year. I’m too old to get a costume just to wear it to a bar for one night, too young to sit on the porch in my bathrobe handing out candy to the neighborhood kids.
“Lady, what are you?”
“Fifteen years too early for menopause. Now take your candy and get the hell off my porch.”
1 Goblin King
David Bowie’s character from Labyrinth, the ultimate 80’s movie. This looks super cute on a little girl, but I would give a finger to see a grown man dressed like this. 
2. The Birds
Don’t act like there wasn’t a weird piece of you that wanted to be Tippi Hedron in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The gal looked sexy at all times, even under bird attack. That’s some scary business.
Under the category of Things That Should Never be Made Sexy, we have; Sexy Elmo, Sexy Ninja Turtle, Child’s Sexy Cat Costume… these are all real things available for purchase. I digress. If we are going to insist of sexifying Halloween, I say we put dudes in that category as well – Sexy Hulk Hogan is a fine enough place to start. Next I want to see a Sexy Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas or a Sexy Donald Trump or a Sexy Cast of Duck Dynasty. Yeah.
4 Eye Monster
I feel like this is actually some Hindu Goddess or something I don’t know the name of, but either way, I like a good make-up only costume. Allows for some artistry and it’ll creep out the neighborhood trick-or-treaters when I answer the lookin’ crazy.
I double especially like this idea for a little girl with a bald-headed dad or baby sibling – a natural Daddy Warbucks.
Okay, it’s probably a little weird and impractical to put a baby in a ski-mask style costume, but Mr. T is awesome and that is that. This kid wins. Everything. Everything.
If I knew an easy way to make the plastic bubble part I would do this in a heartbeat. Swap out the hula girl for pictures of your home town or state? I need it.
Crap. Is this family cute or what? Family costumes usually creep me out a little, but this one is a keeper. Too. Flippin. Cute.
Some more that look fun and super easy to make: Crazy cat lady, Medusa, Dry Cleaning, Goody bags,  Baby Moose, Paper Doll, Identity Crisis.  
I am working on making costumes for my niece and nephew. If anyone has any ideas on the 13-month-old-friendly Captain Hook costume, I’m all ears.

Bramble Patch: September 2013

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This is a pink church I saw in Italy earlier this month.
…and these are a bunch of awesome links I saw all over the interwebs last month. Check ’em out!

26 Things you didn’t know about The Princess Bride (thanks to Ann for pointing this out!)

Another reason why women make less money in the workplace.

This door. Hubba Hubba.

Your long-term boyfriend says “Babe, you’re like, 300 sandwiches away from an engagement ring.” What do you do? Start blogging about sandwiches, obviously.

Speaking of weddings, what happened when they cancelled a wedding at one of the fanciest venues in town? Everyone wins. (Hat tip to Katie for leaving this in a comment – it’s pretty awesome).

You gotta see Dee’s DIY Birkin bag on the cheap. Love it!

This is why you will not catch me buying Barilla pasta. 

Easy wrapping-paper-turned-wall-paper project. Sensational! Sort of remind me of this project, but better.

This is why the Oxford comma is important.

The Shining continues. Tony is excited. 

Crafty ladies of Chicago unite! Let’s all pitch in a little to help make this happen. 

This is why I refuse to own Tupperware.

Yoyo Ma on the bathroom floor with a wombat. I need more of this in my life.

13 Simple steps to get you through a rough day.

Were you a fan of the documentary Queen of Versailles like I was? Check out what Jackie has done with the house lately.

19 Cases of nail art gone wrong. Whoa.

One of my favorite artists, Katie Daisy (you may know her from Lola’s portrait) is going to be featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday and I can’t wait to see it! Katie has such a grounded and inspiring view of the world around. I just know you will want to watch it. Tune in Sunday at 11am eastern on OWN.

Have you seen any interesting or inspiring links this month?  

So Here is a Thing

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Here is something I like: Shaving my legs.

It’s not that I enjoy it, but it keeps people from thinking I’m a centaur.

Here is something I dislike: Rusty pink razors, clogged with soap sludge and hair goo.

And don’t act like you have never seen one. You know the drill – you finish shaving your legs then set the razor on the ledge with the shampoo and business and don’t you know, they just sit in their own soup and rust up and get clogged and nasty. The next day you go to shave your legs, find the thing of razor hair soup, then skip it altogether out of frustration. BAM – Now you are day closer to living as a centaur.

What to do? Get thy self a pan flute rubber band.

Rubber band + shower curtain ring = instant razor hanging doohicky.
Don’t have shower curtains? Don’t like rubber bands? Use a zip-tie around a door handle. 
I doubt I’m the first person to think of this, but I feel very smart for discovering it all on my own.

Damn, Gina. We did good.

Happy Stripes

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Tracy emailed me to ask about the stripe painting in back of the bottle light I posted a couple weeks ago. It seemed like too-simple of a tutorial to make a thing out of it, but now that someone has asked and my ego has been stroked, why not? Why not make a thing? Tracy wants to know. Here you go, Tracy.

It’s stripes. You’re like, No crap it’s stripes. I can paint stripes. What’s the whoop?


The whoop is that I painted the stripes on the back of a piece of plexi glass, otherwise known as a whale poster from Goodwill.

Why paint on the backside of a piece of plexi? No brush strokes. No messy. No unpolished product. What you are seeing is actually the reverse the real painting – the underside, which is actually a lot more interesting than the front.

Part of me is annoyed at myself for making art-for-art’s-sake. I don’t really like making stuff to fill up space or to match the furniture. This wasn’t really intended to go on display, more catharsis, but I liked it enough to put it up there. Next week it might end up as a headboard or a tabletop. Weirder things have happened.

Filed Under: Art

Soup

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It’s not like I was looking to ugly cry at work, but then a friend posted this on Facebook and I wasn’t about to resist a good foreign commercial with subtitles, now was I?

It’s like they want me to keep back-up mascara in my purse.  

Bastards.

Cow Town

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When we were in Switzerland we visited Gstaad for the Promenade Party, which is somewhere between a parade, a beauty pageant, and an Oscars after-party. For, ahem, cows.

I took a lot of pictures, but sometimes video makes for a better illustration.

Technically, actually, it’s for cows and goats.

And it’s not so much a pageant as it is an election. The super manly cowherds dress up the cows in flowers and parade them down the main street in town, and the kids follow with the kids (kid is a baby goat –see what I did there?) and everyone is wearing a number and showing off the goods. “Pick me! Pick me!” they cry, only they don’t say it in English, they say it in French or German or Swiss-German or Romage, because they all speak eleventy languages like that. And, not like our small-town parades, the locals aren’t lined up in front of post office and the Piggly-Wiggly, they line up on the stoops of the local retailers like Rolex and Ralph Lauren and Cartier. It makes Rodeo Drive look like a run-down strip mall. And not the nice one with the chicken and waffles place — look, I like that place. 

And then, at the end of the parade, instead of heading off to a barn, the animals trot up a red carpet and hang out at a huge outdoor party while the local hotel serves free food and champagne to anyone and everyone in sight. It’s swell. Ladies with Hermes handbags and fresh facelifts are given the opportunity to inspect the cows and goats before casting their vote and tossing their ballot into a silver wine bucket. Even I got to vote, and I don’t even live there!



This the cow I voted for. Tall hat Number Five. She lost to that one in the sunflower belt, Number Four.

Would you look at the udders on that one? What a tramp.


 I wrote a story about the tradition of the Des Alps cow parades a couple years ago, you can read it here, or better yet, go to the Gstaad Promenade Party website and check into details for the event next year. A pooped up red carpet is something everyone needs to see once in their life, at least once, and I don’t see the Hollywood folks taking up the lead on this one.    

What a Dump

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I’m taking my sweet time coming back from vacation. It’s been a long, long time since I have taken a real no-other-purpose-but-having-fun vacation, and it’ll take me a minute to get back in gear.

One day I will look back and think, Remember that time we ate our way through Europe?

Yeah. That did not suck.

Switzerland has been good to me, as it always has been. To me, to everyone. When she isn’t blowing your mind with awe-inspiring beauty, she’s stuffing your face with cheese and chocolate. She’s sort of like your great aunt, the rich and eccentric one, who likes to be on time.

I’m missing her already.

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

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Y’all, I’m taking a few days off from the blog here to go on vacation.

Actually, I already went on vacation, and am on vacation as you ready this, I’m just a tricky one a scheduled a few posts ahead. Ahaha! That’s me, Trickster McGee.

I’ll be back later next week to talk about chocolate and the cat circus, but in the meantime, if you are interested, you can follow along in pictures from Instagram.

Hugs!

The Toothpaste Trick

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I have recently become a silver enthusiast. Blame it on Downton Abbey, all I know is it’s great stuff. And cheap. It’s hard to find a thrift store without a piece or two of the goodstuff. To my amazement, nobody appears to be scooping it up, which is fine because it just leaves more for me to choose from.

Thing is, I am hella tired of dealing with stinky, chemical laden, silver polish in a bottle. I tried the baking-soda and foil trick a few times — worked fine on new tarnish, no luck on the old stuff. Then I ready about using toothpaste on silver….
 
To my amazement, not only did it get the tarnish off, it worked better than the commercial stuff. And faster. And cheaper. And it didn’t smell or anything! I smeared it on and waited maybe 30 seconds. That’s it. No elbow grease, no nothin. I used Sensodyne because that’s what I keep in my house, but as I understand, any white paste toothpaste will do the trick. Blue-gel glittery toothpaste, not so much.

Something tells me someone will say that toothpaste is too abrasive for silver, and that’s fine, but I say, if it’s good enough to put in my mouth twice a day, it’s good enough for a silver platter I found ast the thrift store. As for the other Silver Platters, well, they don’t need any extra polishing now do they?

Well, maybe Jan. Poor thing, she can’t help it.