Archives for March 2015

Painted Black?

Not unlike nose piercings or bullet-proof coffee, the black painted wall trend is something I have always been happy to admire on others. From afar. For somebody else. It’s one of those things you hear about people doing and think it’s really neat, but in equal measure, you’re delighted you don’t have to mess around with it. Until now. I’m thinking about it. If you follow me on Pinterest you might have seen me staying up half the night pinning images of black walls (and if you follow me on Facebook you know why I was up). There is nothing like a good long night of Pinterest porn and the start of open window season to put a bug in your ear about paint. Amiright?

House & Home | Oh Happy Day

Last summer, after extensive research and internet stalking, I painted my living room Benjamin Moore’s Super White, which is, I am told, the brightest white you can get in a can. I’m not happy. It’s supposedly ultra luminous with a lot of reflective qualities. And while I’m not saying it isn’t really bright, it’s not really doing anything special for my living room. Maybe it’s because there is already a decent amount of sun exposure, or maybe because I didn’t go high gloss on the moldings, or maybe because 70% of the walls are hidden by furniture and frames and doors and stuff…hard to say. But it’s a bit of a thud. I really dislike the way my art looks on it, so it’s gotta go. Question is, what to replace it with?

I am through with sewing the seeds of ultra colorful walls. The hot pink kitchen of 2012 was my last hurrah. These days I’m into brightly colored doors with ultra neutral walls. White. Off white. Whispers of pale gray and pink. But what about black? It didn’t occur to me before, and now it’s all I can think about. In my anxiousness last night, I photoshopped my living room a warm charcoal gray to try and convince myself the idea was nuts, and surprisingly, I’m digging it. I am really digging it!

So maybe not black. Maybe just dark gray. Or inky-black indigo blue. That desk up top is actually a super dark green, and it looks awesome. Mind = Blown.

Have you ever painted a room black or nearly black? Tips? Tricks? I’m all ears.

Happy Monday: Evanston

by aunt peaches 13 Comments

One of my favorite things to do is gather weird facts about places I have never been then spot them come up in pop culture years later. We’ll be watching TV and a character will reference Ivydale West Virginia as a place where someone got murdered, and I’ll known Ivydale West Virginia as the place a truck driver mentioned getting lost on that episode of Joanie Loves Chachi. It’s a weird habit but sometimes it pays off on bar trivia nights. I’m guessing there are a few of you out there who also collect town-specific factoids, so I thought it might be fun to share the 411 on my favorite place. Home.

I live in Evanston Illinois, which is a Midwestern college town wedged between Chicago and Lake Michigan. People like me dig it because you get all the charm and conveniences of a small town with all the privileges of living near a big city. I like it here. Sometimes Chicago folks write off Evanston as a fancy place where people go when they can’t handle the city –and don’t get me wrong, there are areas of Evanston that look like the living definition of White Privilege– but there are other areas look too rough to get mentioned on Good Times. Most of it falls in the middle. My neighborhood, my block – actually, includes folks from every age, race, religion, sexual-orientation, and socio-economic strata the IRS can dish out. Which is exactly why I want to live here. Weirdly enough, I was born just a few blocks from my current home but didn’t actually live here until I was 32. And as much as I like travel, I would be totally okay to never move again. Very few people love this place as much as I do, so, with that in mind, I thought it might be fun to use this week’s Happy Monday post to share some stuff about this little town by the lake. Not everyone can come for a visit, but this can be my way of giving you a taste.

Welcome to Evanston!

Do you have March Madness on the brain? Interesting fact: The first NCAA championship game was held in Evanston. A lot of bad stuff was going on in the world in 1939 (I’m looking at you, Hitler. Side eye on you, Stalin)….so folks got together and said, “You know what we need? A distraction. Let’s distract folks with an elaborate scheme to get good looking men run around in shorts putting balls through nets. That’ll do it!” That’s a direct quote. I’m not saying that first NCAA championship game changed the outcome of WWII, but I’m not saying it didn’t.

In addition to it’s NCAA heritage, Evanston’s Northwestern University is home to Dillo Day which is the largest student-run music festival of it’s kind. The event brings in some pretty major names and takes over most of downtown each May, which the locals don’t really like, but it’s a big deal. Northwestern also boasts some pretty big name alumni, including these weird kids who once plastered my street with fliers for a missing unicorn named Yolanda. You should totally come hang out!

Last year, Evanston was voted the second smartest suburb in America. I really don’t like calling it a suburb, but yeah. Okay, it is.

Evanston is often considered the birthplace of Prohibition as it was ground central for the Temperance Movement. Their latter-day incarnation can still be found at the historical Woman’s Club of Evanston, and on a very different end of the spectrum, the newly founded Temperance Beer Company (which has a very charming tap room, btw).

Speaking of religious people over-regulating drinks…Ice cream sundaes originated in Evanston after a local ordinance prohibited the sale of ice cream sodas on Sunday. Not wanting to lose business, drugstores started selling them without the soda, called it a sunday then later sundae…and the rest is history. And by “history” I mean “in my mouth.”

Speaking of local ordinances: It is illegal to spit on the sidewalk in Evanston. People think that is one of those weird ‘You Can’t Keep Three Goats in a Truck on a Tuesday’ type of arbitrary law, but no, it’s real. If a police officer sees you spit on “any public conveyance or upon the floor or wall of any theater, hall, assembly room or public building” she can arrest your butt, take you to the station, and shake your tree until something bigger falls out. So, get your civil liberties together and whatever you do, don’t spit.

Also. Whistling is forbidden between 11pm and 7am.

Did you ever wish you could be an Oscar Mayer wiener? Well now you can buy his house.

Here’s a thing! Few toys can claim to have been responsible for more architectural innovation than Tinkertoys, which were invented in Evanston in 1914.

I cannot believe I never knew this until I was ~~stalking~~ watching an interview with Mandy Patinkin: The Princess Bride takes place in Evanston! While never stated in the movie, according to the screenplay, the story is told in an Evanston bedroom (remember the grandfather Peter Falk/Columbo telling the story to his grandson who is actually Baby Fred Savage?). Locals will have guessed this by the Chicago themed sports paraphenalia hanging in the room, but yeah, it’s supposed to be Evanston. Sometimes I pretend it’s my house. Shut up. You can let me have my dream. You have seen my Mandy Patinkin on black velvet painting, yes?

Also set in Evanston: the movie Mean Girls took place at Evanston Township High School, although the movie was filmed Canada.

Tina Fey (who wrote Mean Girls) knew Evanston well after working a day job at the local YMCA for years, while spending her nights on her comedy career at Second City. She goes into this quite a bit in her book Bossy Pants, which is an excellent read for a lot more reasons than name dropping her favorite Evanston landmarks (shout out to Gigio’s Pizza!).

Evanston is the birthplace to an unusually large number of seriously nifty people like, Seth Myers, Eddie Vedder, John Cusak, Charlton Heston, Bill Murray, Donald Rumsfeld, and my personal favorite: Countess Cora Crawley aka Elizabeth McGovern, not to mention a slew of Nobel and Pulizter prize winners and some nifty athletes I don’t recognize but maybe you will. Even though Marlon Brando was not born here, he considered it his childhood home.

If you watch the PBS series Mr. Selfridge you may know that it is based on a long-time Chicagoan Harry Gordon Selfridge (later of Selfridges department store in London, based on my former employer – Chicago’s Marshal Fields), and is played by Evanston’s current favorite native son Jeremy Piven, who once drunkenly goosed my ass while I was waiting on his table, but I got over it because his mom is really nice and still runs the local playhouse: the Piven Theater Workshop. Before his PBS success, Piven might be best known for playing the character of foul-mouthed Hollywood manager Ari Gold in HBO’s Entourage, which was openly based on a real guy named Ari Emanuel, who was born next door in Wilmette like his brother to Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago. That last part has nothing to do with Evanston I’m just running my Chicago-incestous Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Introduce John Hughes movies and I could do this all day.

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So that is all I can think of right now, but I’m sure there are plenty more.
Do you know anything weird and wonderful about Evanston? Chime in the comments!
Do you have an idea for another person, place, or thing suitable for Happy Monday exploration? Holler. I want to hear!

12 Spring DIYs and My New Favorite Blog

by aunt peaches 10 Comments

Hello fancy possums! We are one week down to Easter and I’m up to my eyeballs in eggs, peeps, and paper flowers. I can’t wait to share them soon. In the meantime, check out these 12 ideas for springtime lovelies.

1. Resin heart necklaces 2. Easter chandelier 1. Flower crown.

4. sweatshirt 5. Minimal sew DIY kimono 6. Decoupage eggs with napkins and eggs whites

7. Hot pink Easter Tree 8. Pineapple favor bags 9. beaded Easter eggs

10. Jewelry Box 11. fleece blanket 12. stamped bracelet

ALSO. I need to share my favorite new blog, Tedags hos Tant Ninette. Most if it is written in Swedish, and even though I can hardly read it, it is the best rabbit hole I have found in ages. Ninette is a treasure. Get your Google Translate on and check her out!

Made by Monica

by aunt peaches 37 Comments

One time, about 1989, my fifth grade teacher’s mom got “the sugars, “ which is another way of saying “diabetic seizures,” and she had to take a month off school to travel home to take care of things. Long-term subs were hard to get so they hired the father of one of my fellow students, Mr. Ocwat, to take her place. I don’t recall why they chose a man with zero teaching experience who had been laid off from his job at the rendering plant, but I think because he had some military experience they figured he could handle a room full of kids. Because that made a lot of sense.

So. Anyway. Three days in, he got tired of teaching the traditional curriculum and decided to teach what he called, “Ocwat Life Lessons,” which included things like using pennies to whittle sticks into spears, beer can archery, auto part dissection, and one time he got the local grocer to give us a pile of too-old-to-sell cantaloupes so we could play what he called, “a real man’s dodge ball.”

So that was fun.

On a rainy Tuesday, after he skipped the pledge of allegiance to karaoke the pants off Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, Mr. Ocwat rolled in the TV cart and explained to us that we would learn about ancient Rome by experiencing the greatest film that was ever made. A movie, “So true in heart, even Jesus would weep his own blood upon the cross thinking of this man’s journey.”

The movie was Stanley Kubrick’s 1960, Spartacus.

Now, I don’t know if you have seen this movie, or maybe you saw one of the remakes, or the televison show, or the video game, or some clips on Youtube, so I’m going to give you the recap (*spoiler alert ahead*):

Dude is born a slave and gets sold to a gladiator trainer.
Lots of blood and death.
Dude gets good at gladiatoring and killing people and turns on trainer.
More blood and death.
Dude frees slaves.
Not so much blood for a while.
Dude and slaves run.
Big blood and death.
The end.

In general, gladiator movies are wildly inappropriate to show to classroom of fifth graders, but I’ll admit there is something to be said for the learning curve. I would tell you it’s a hero’s story of survival, but the hero ends up dead. So yeah. Not so great on the survival front.

There is a famous scene at the end when Kurt Douglas has to reveal his identity and essentially volunteer to get his white butt killed, so he regretfully steps forward and is all, “I am Spartacus” and then one by one all the slaves stand up in their dirty chains and say “I am Spartacus.” “No, I AM SPARTICUS!” “No dude, I am Spartacus!” and it goes on an on until all of them all join in. It’s VERY emotional. And even as a 10-year-old, I totally cried at this moving gesture of loyalty. Oh my lord, did I cry an ugly thing. That movie may have been the first time I cried at a movie for something other than a dog dying or a horse getting swallowed by mud (HOLY CRAP WAS THAT MOVIE TRAUMATIZING). Anyway. I have a point here. Thing is, Spartacus, the movie, starts with scene after scene of gruesome violence and death for sport, and it ends in violence and death for kindness. The contrast is staggering. There is a very clear moral divide between the good people and the bad people and that divide is what drives the story. It’s probably what drives most stories, but I digress.

My 10-year-old takeaway on that movie was this: Only bad people enjoy watching others in pain and struggling; only good people do not enjoy seeing others in pain and will always, always, defend those when they are most vulnerable.

Ever since that movie, I have assumed I was a good person. I would never expect another person to suffer for my entertainment and I would look down on those who did not know better. Even as a child, I watched the gladiator arena spectators and wondered who in their right mind would find entertainment in watching another human being torn apart? Who are these idiots? Why would people seek this out? Who would ever volunteer to be a participating audience member to something so merciless, painful and mortifying?

Who are these people?

Fast-forward 26 years to today. This afternoon. After just now watching Monica Lewinsky’s Ted talk and I realize the horrifying truth: I am these people.

Look, Monica Lewinsky is many things, and I don’t pretend to know all of them, but I do know that she is arguably the first person to have her life ruined by the internet.

And I contributed to that.

Back in 1998, when she was all over the news, I spectated with everyone else. I made fun of her. I made fun of her dress. I blamed her for giving interns a bad name. I scorned her for capitalizing on her infamous name by writing a book and becoming a spokesperson. I don’t think I ever blamed her for what my then-roommate Lena called, “Bringing the whole damn country down. That b*itch should to be tried for treason!” but I didn’t vocally disagree with Lena either.

Deep down I think I always felt a certain kinship for Monica Lewinsky. As someone around the same age, and as a fellow member of Team Chubby Girl, and as someone who had skeletons in her closet from a too-early age, I felt something for her. Also, she had really good hair. Even with that, I felt sorry for her, but not sorry enough to back off. Watching that woman being humiliated was a blood sport, and back then, I enjoyed every minute of it.

Knowing what I now know about humanity, it is wonder – no, a miracle – that she survived.

If you have not watched Monica’s Ted Talk, I would encourage you to schedule 20 minutes this week to do so. If you can watch it with a young person, even better. I don’t care where you stand on the political spectrum, but if you are anything like me, you’ll find yourself at least a little bit humbled. It is funny that her speech is self-refrencially titled The Price of Shame, and here I am the one who is feeling shameful.

I made lots of notes from her talk, but one of the most noticeable is the concept of Upstanders – this is a new term in my vocabulary – people who are the first to demonstrate empathy with those in their moment of humiliation, however unsympathetic the case might be.

And perhaps that is the issue there; sympathy verses empathy. If shame cannot survive empathy, then certainly empathy is what we need to make most. I know you guys come here looking for some DIY-decorative-crafty thing with glue guns, and that’s usually what I’m doing, but sometimes, like today, I need to work on making empathy. I need to work on making compassion. I set up this blog hoping it would be a learning center for woman like me who love to create and share over the internet, but, if there is one thing you ever learn how to make on this site, I hope it will be what I learned today. I hope it will be something made by Monica.

Egg Shell Bud Vases

by aunt peaches 3 Comments

My house has been Easter egg central for the last month, which I lurvvvvve, but it has made it difficult for me to draw the line between craft material and food. There are plenty of things you can do with a hardboiled egg or a the guts of a hollowed out egg, but sometimes you just need to crack one into a bowl. Now, what to do with the shell?

Isn’t that precious?

It’s pretty easy. I’m pretty sure you can figure this out, but just in case, here is a little video I made for Paas.

I was thinking this would be a super cute idea for collecting those early spring buds like baby daffodils or lilies of the valley, but alas it is still snowing over here and I made do with store-bought forsythia. I don’t think the Easter Bunny will mind half as much as I do.

Happy Easter!

Aluminum Picture Frames

by aunt peaches 2 Comments

You don’t know this yet, but I am on a picture frame binge. Granted, I need more frames like I need a hole in the head, but I find myself itching for frames and thinking it’s only a matter of time until I find something nifty to put in them. This means I now have a basement and sun porch filled with empty frames, which is now driving me to make art from the frames instead of waiting for the art to come to me. This is how my brain works. This is also why I am a functional hoarder.

Anyway! A few weeks back my friend Angie asked me if I would be interested in participating in a Crafty Hangout campaign with Consumer Crafts. This is one of those pre-organized Google Hangouts where you do stuff on video and share it. LIVE. No editing out the ugly stuff. This is sooooooo not my style, but Angie is really good at making it look easy, and Consumer Crafts has some nifty stuff, so I thought, what have I to loose? Let’s do it. Let’s get over our hangup and hangout.

Fast forward through a month of procrastinating, to last Friday, the last possible day to record this goggle hangout business, and I’m laid up in bed with a busted hip, strung out on pain meds and muscle relaxers. Clearly, if there was ever a time to not dive into the world of live video THIS WOULD BE IT. And yet, I sucked it up.

Never mind the fact that my face and hands are puffed up on steroid injections. Never mind I was hunched over in an awkward position trying to wedge my hip bone under the armrest in my chair. Never mind that I keep rolling my eyes around like a crazy person. Never mind that I forgot like half the steps…I did it. I made a google hangout. Welcome to the 21^st century. It was not a graceful entrance, but like the grizzled old prospector, I have pioneered this hard-fought territory and it’s mine, goshdarnit. Mine!

Anyhooters. The frame came out nice. Nicer than I expected. This is like an upscale version of the notebooks I made a while back, only I used hot glue. Speaking of which, as you might have seen in the video – my hot glue gun is about to bite the dust. Does anyone have a recommendation on a good brand for high-volume gluing? I want one that heats up glue super fast so I don’t have to wait a minute between each section. Mama has no time for double fisting.

Thanks to the folks at Consumer Crafts for making this post possible! And be sure to check out some of the other Crafty Hangouts and see what other niftiness is going on today.

Happy Monday: Peeps

by aunt peaches 9 Comments

After last week’s Girl Scout Cookie rodeo, AP reader Stephanie sent me an email suggesting this week should be about everyone’s favorite marshmallow Easter tradition: Peeps. I’ll admit, it’s been about 20 years since I have eaten a Peep, but I am always happy to celebrate puffy things dipped in sparkle sugar. Let’s do this!

Before you buy a package of Easter peeps, look at this photo essay from inside the factory. Fascinating.

13 Hilarious Peep dioramas. (Even lawyers love a good Peep diorama).

Did you know there is an entire Lord of the Rings movie done with Peeps? And by “movie” I mean “outdated slide-show” but it’s worth a gander just the same.

Peeps are known for their two-year shelf life and for being considered “indestructible.” In fact, scientists at Emory University tested their dissolve rates in various liquids and found that Peeps “wouldn’t dissolve in anything.”

Did you know the company that makes Peeps is called Just Born? No clever link here. I just thought that was sorta weird.

Three words: marshmallow candy vodka. (They also double as champagne garnish).

Do you work with someone who hates peeps? Thought so. Let’s play a prank: Easter Monday, go to the market and buy all the leftover peeps for half-off. Then use them to fill that person’s desk drawer. They will be dusting off yellow sprinkles through Christmas. You’re welcome.

Not into pranks? Just buy up all the Peeps and make a wreath.

You can also turn them into homemade playdough.

Do you have an interesting way to use Peeps? Let’s hear about it!

Happy Weekend

by aunt peaches 18 Comments

Happy Friday everybody! Apologies for the radio silence over here. A screaming case of hip bursitis landed me bed bound for a few days. I know. Does that sound like fun?

Thanks to doctors who make house calls, four separate injections of steroids into my hip joint, and a steady stream of Judy Garland size servings of muscle relaxers…I am on the road to recovery. Praise God! I’m still not quite “with it” enough to drive or operate machinery or even read a proper book, but I figure I can sputter out a blog post to share the greatest news ever: the Iris Apfel movie. It is here!

I’ll be chilling out in bed with Netflix for a couple more days (viewing recommendations welcome). I’ll see you guys next week!

Grassy Green Egg Cups

by aunt peaches 1 Comment

Every year I try to find new and interesting ways to display Easter eggs. My favorite will always be the old Paskris tree, but there is something to be said for a humble hard-boiled egg that deserves a place of honor. Not that I don’t love a colorful jumble of eggs in a basket, but you know, sometimes you have an egg who deserves a shot at a solo career, up on the mantel with the other treasures.

Paper grass and Easter eggs are old friends, so this just seemed like a natural combo! Best part? They are crazy easy to make.

All you need is an 8.5″ by 3.6″ piece of paper (that’s one third of a standard letter size sheet) with fringes cut 2/3 of the way down. Now fold back the fringes, circle it around a couple of times and dab with glue. Presto! Grass eggs at your service. You can make one to display a single egg, or make a whole bunch and then it will look like you are trying to grow a garden of Easter eggs (don’t act like you aren’t).

As always, this post is brought to you by Paas, America’s favorite Easter tradition. Go see some of the amazing eggs they are cooking up on Facebook (like these fancy eggs I made with their Flashy Foil kit). Yeah, cool huh?!

Happy Monday: Girl Scout Cookies

by aunt peaches 16 Comments

It’s Monday, which is usually the day I round up a bunch of my favorite links from the past week and share here. This week, there is really only one thing on my mind worth talking about: Girl Scout Cookies. Mostly because I don’t have any. This is because, 1. I’m trying to be good and not do things like buying enough cookies to warrant little girls to ask me, “Are you building a fort?” (<<–that really happened) and 2. My so-called-friend who usually tells me when his daughter is selling cookies didn’t tell me (YES I’M LOOKING AT YOU BRENDAN) (AND NO FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATES DO NOT COUNT).

Everywhere I go this week, I see people carrying these little over-priced boxes of fudge rippled rainbow happiness. It is maddening. This morning I was driving and I saw a woman with them loaded in her bike basket on her way to work and it occurred to me, for a fleeting moment, that it would not take much effort to knock her bike over with the car. Would I kill her for cookies? No. Of course not. Would I strategically bump the bike thus sending 12 boxes flying out of the basket thus allowing me time to scoop them up and get back in the car before said bike woman was back on her feet? Absolutely. Let’s just take a moment to sit back and admire the strength it took for me to not do that. That’s pretty effing admirable. And yet, despite my admirable restraint, everyone has these cookies BUT ME.

Can you even imagine the horror? The horror. I’m okay with this, but I thought now might be a good time to talk about everything Girl Scout Cookie related that we don’t talk about the rest of the year. It’s a seasonal thing. And people in Canada probably won’t understand so let’s just bundle it all together and get it out of our system, K? K.

And yes, Girl Scout Cookie needs to be in title case. I don’t care if you can’t cite that in the Chicago Manual of Style, some things are just common sense.

Does your dog want too dress up and sell Girl Scout Cookies? Yeah. She does.

Take the quiz: What kind of Girl Scout Cookie are you? PS: I’m a Thin Mint. I knew it!!!

A comprehensive list of beer pairings for Girl Scout Cookies.

Talk about ambition: Congrats to this 11-year-old for hustling her way to selling 18,000 boxes. (Watch the video – Mom looks exhausted).

If you were outside a vintage typewriter shop in Los Altos California last weekend, you could have bought your cookies from Tom Hanks!

Speaking of vintage…interesting fact: In 1942 the Girl Scouts sold calendars instead of cookies because of WWII flour and dairy shortages.

Another fact: for the first 90 days of the year, Girl Scout Cookies are the #1 cookie brand in the USA. Oreos are #1 for the rest of the year.

Another less perky fact: For many years Girl Scout Cookies were made with a controversial ingredient — palm oil. Harvested by major commodity middle-man Cargill, the palm oil used to create Girl Scout Cookies was linked to the destruction of thousands of acres of Indonesian rainforest every year. Good news: after a handful of renegade Girl Scouts recognized the problem (and the whole “make the world a better place” hypocrisy) and demanded change, Girl Scout Cookie adult people listened, made adjustments, and are now are majorly choosy about where they source their ingredients. Way to go, girls!

More good news: Put your zip code in the “Find Cookies” box at the top and it will tell you when a troop near you is selling. This takes out all the serendipitous joy of stumbling into a GSC sale, but this is what it has come to. I have also heard you can buy them online and on Ebay, but you have to go through somebody like you are buying Avon and it’s unnecessarily complicated, which is a lousy way to teach our girls capitalism so I’m keeping it in person.

Thin Mint fan? There are about eleventyseven hundred ways to scratch that itch with recipes you can make at home. Like; this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

There is also a recipe for samoa pie that I may or may not be having for breakfast tomorrow.

And while I’m eating it, I may or may not be watching these lost scenes from Troop Beverly Hills!

Now everybody, get on up. It’s cookie time!

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Archives for March 2015