Dirty Harry

We watched Dirty Harry a few nights ago - I'd never seen it before - it's quite good!

But, check this out...

I'm just sayin'... 

Oh, this scene right here was awesome.   

I've actually seen a ton of movies lately that I haven't had time to blog about. I'll try to do a quick and dirty recap soon (for my legions of fans!)

Pillow Spree

I have been on a pillow spree lately!  I recently learned that it's not too difficult to put a zipper in a pillow -  in fact, I would say that it's actually easier to put a zipper in a pillow than NOT to, and it looks better as well - so... zippers in pillows, all the time, yo.

balls on the inside

I bought this vintage tablecloth at my local shop and have been putting it to good use for years.  You may recognize it from the curtains in my kitchen.  I've been wanting to make a pillow as well and finally it all came together when I was admiring my trim hoard.

It was quite easy to make - I just free-handed the trim around, then pinned it down and then sewed it down, then trimmed off the extra fabric, cut a coordinating fabric and sewed that on, right sides together, balls stuffed inside, and... voila!  Bob's your uncle.


Then I made another pillow so that one wasn't lonely and because I was on a ROLL that could not be stopped after merely one stunningly fabulous, Grandma Chic pillow creation.  This one I made out of some cute orange fabric I've had laying around with some adorable blue stripes on the reverse.  Plus a little yellow rick rack from that aforementioned Hoard o' Trim.

The front

I only wish I had finished this when my sister and my nephew were in town because I think he would have liked those turquoise  pom poms.  He did something very funny with my lavender eye pillow which was to first try to throw it like a bean bag and then, after being admonished that it was not a "play toy" and meant for "meditative relaxation" (I remain, by the way, a favorite aunt, even after that conversation). Then he enjoyed running into our room, leaping and bouncing on the bed, and then throwing himself down and shouting, "Look at me, Auntie!" Whereupon he would grab my eye pillow, slam in it on his eyes and pretend (N.B.) to relax.  For about 10 seconds.  

The back... or the front?

So happy together!

Those are not even ALL the pillows I have made recently!  Stay tuned for more... pillows!  And more zippers.  And, possibly more stories about my adorable nephews.

Fascinating New Years

Here's a pic of me and M at New Years - we had a little party at my parent's house.  Before the party, the gals made fascinators - they were really fab, but I didn't get many pictures, as usual.  Alas, in this picture, my fascinator kind of blends into the tree, although my fascinator was called Winter Wonderland, so, maybe that's good?

Skins (some spoilers)

Has anyone seen that British TV show, Skins?  It. Is. So. Fantastic.  Season 1 and 2 were my favorite - I really liked that cast.  I love love love Tony (the actor is that kid who played that kid in that movie with Hugh Grant, knowwhaimsayin'?) and I really liked Maxxie, and I liked all the girls.  And when Tony got hit by that bus,  I was like, NO WAY!

first cast

 Then, when season two started and there was a whole new cast, I was like, WHAAAAAAA?  No!  and I thought I would never like the new people.  But, then, it turns out, I really love all those characters too.  Especially Effy and Pandora and Cook and Freddie.  And Thomas.  And then when they all went camping and got high and Effy clocked whatshername over the head and left in her in the woods for dead, I was like, NO WAY!  And then, when Effy and Cook go on the run I was like OH MAN WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN NEXT?  and meanwhile, I really wished they would give us some clue about what had happened the previous cast, but, it's like, too bad, you're not going to find out.  I got one of those weird, pervy, old-lady crushes on Freddie.

2nd cast

Then, at the end of Season 4... do you know what happened?  Imma drop a big spoiler, so stop reading if you're going to watch this series, which you really should, but I REALLY want to talk with someone about this so I hope a loyal fan reads this.  So (OK, here's the spoiler):  Freddie gets killed? oh. my. gawd.  How could that have happened?  Then, Cook goes to the guy's house and it's like, OMG, GET OUT OF THERE, COOKIE! But, he stays and has what I would call like, one of the best moments in televised history?  Personally, I think Cook defeated that guy.  I mean, he's Cook, he's strong, a loose cannon, and he just found out his friend got murdered?  Dang, man, but the end of that series came rough.  Even M, who happened to watch that episode with me, wanted to watch "the first five minutes" of the next one, to find out what happened.  "They're gone," I said, "We'll probably never find out."

kinda lame

Then, I was crushed for a while.  And I didn't even think I could WATCH season 5.  But, I reminded myself how I never thought I would enjoy the second group of people, but I totally loved them, so I would probably love the 3rd bunch too.  But, it turns out I didn't enjoy that cast as much.  I thought the whole bit with the Mean Girls was dumb, and I didn't like Alo or Rich or any of the girls except Franky.  Also, it didn't have any of the sort of extreme teenager-craziness of the previous story-lines.  No major drama that made me shout and feel weird and pervy.  Did really love that song at the end of season 5, though...

pixel portraits

I saw this article in Martha about how to make little cross stitch portraits - if only they'd published it in like, July, I could have made them for everyone I knew!  As it was, I couldn't make nearly as many as I'd've liked to, because they're just BEYOND cute and I think everyone really liked them.  Here are some...

D, C & D

M & R

G&G (with cats)

Millenry

My friend M showed me some fabulous hats by an old friend of hers.  They inspired me to "make" some of my own hats.  Actually, this gal creates her own hats start to finish, but I bought some plain wool hats and embellished them myself.  I made this one for my friend, J.

cute, right?

I was quite pleased with the results.  A small tragedy is that I made one for my sister and forgot to take a picture.  Also, my mom made a Winter Wonderland on a red wool cloche that's pretty incredible (also undocumented).  What I really like about this designer is that she really goes for it, where I'm much more inclined to scale back.  So, she kind of inspired me to go for it a little more than I might normally.

PS, here's how I learned to make those fabric flowers.

When all through the house...

Well, we are return'ed from a long trip to Indiana where we just plumb exhausted ourselves with visiting and whatnot.  It was a great trip but we are always happy to come back out our little cottage and our little darling, Kaya (in great shape, due to being with friends next door!)

I did some mad crafting in advance of Christmas, which I'll share with you over the next few days - the first was this little antique bed that needed a mattress and bedding.  I was so pleased with the results I wanted to take a tiny nap in it myself!

Before

Adorable detail

After!

Reversible blanket

We demand ... a Shrubbery!

So, recently I had a delicious drink that had a "shrub" in it.  What is a shrub? you ask.  Well, it's very simple.  It's a couple cups of apple cider vinegar, which has some fruit in it, you do some stuff, and two days later, you put it in a drink with some booze and some sparkling water, or, just sparkling water, if you're some kind of prude or something (j/k) and then, Oh My.  

I made a raspberry shrub and mixed it with some whiskey.  It's very refreshing.  If you like vinegar even a tiny bit, I think you're going to go completely bonkers over this.

Here's a treat

Some would even say it glows

Here are some pics of our Pink Christmas Tree* - it's FAB-u-lous!

It's hard to capture the color just right - it is really quite... something... to behold.

KTM said I should get a Barbie ornament, which, I already happen to have!  A Barbie Shoe Tree on my pink Barbie Tree?  Yes, please!

My mom had a great tradition of getting me and my brother and sister an ornament each year and writing our name and the year on it, when we left home she gave us our ornaments.  So I have a lot and some are (ahem) rather old.  M & I continue the tradition - these are our ornaments for this year.  I got him a cat because this year we were consumed with poor Kaya who was ill and thank goodness recovered, and he got me an Eiffel Tower because I love Paris.  Awwww...  We actually have so many ornaments we decided we'll just get one ornament for the family in the future.   Those snowflakes you see are wooden die-cut ornaments from my friend MZ.  They look perfect in pink.

My mom actually puts up THREE trees in her house which some may consider overboard, but... isn't that just about right?   I'm thinking about putting our green one in our bedroom, but so far have been too lazy. 

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie rosa sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie rosa sind deine Blätter!

*NOT part of the war on xmas...

Just paint it

I've been so in love with this great furniture redesigns that folks are doing lately (there are some good examples on one of my pinterest boards).  On this blog I'm addicted to, Better After? They have a lot of before-and-afters of this nasty furniture that somehow looks amazing after you just flat-out paint it a cool color.  Although, sometimes Better After drives me nuts because some people have a tendency to paint shit white and it's really boring.  And I get mad and say they should rename the blog justpaintitwhite.com. 

Anyway, it makes every trip to the Salvation Army an exercise in creative thinking, and I wish I had a big truck and a giant garage and also one of those nifty spray gun things so you can spray paint ANYTHING.  And, then, oh, man.  The stuff I would paint.

So, I was on the lookout for a little dresser with nice lines and I found one fairly quickly.  Bought this for $15 and painted it with left-over blue paint from our living room.

It looked pretty terrible before but I knew it would look really cute because it has some nice design and details.  Originally I thought I would get new handles, but the more I looked at the old ones the more I liked them. 

cute, right?

I redecorated the bedroom this year - took me ages to find the duvet cover and drapes that I wanted, but now that it's finally done I think it looks pretty fab.  Here it is before...

before

It wasn't so bad, but it was kind of boring.  I was going for like Exotic Elegance, but it never quite landed.  I think I needed to go way overboard to get that.  

Here's After - I was going for French Chateau...

After!

 I really love the duvet cover - it's from Pottery Barn and supposedly based on "A 250-year-old hand-blocked textile from Provence".  I got the pile of pillows from Pier One, and that bedside table on the right I found at a Salvo for $15 - it looked really crappy but now I think it looks really adorable.  The paint is "Revere Pewter" by Benjamin Moore.  It's just a nice, cool grey.

I LOVE the drapes - they're gold and old fashioned, but, whatevs, that's how I roll, yo. They're pintucked and have a really nice shimmer and the valence has a gorgeous trim. 

So, that is mostly it.  I still need to have framed this little print we bought in Paris last year but, for the most part, I have my Dream Bedroom.  Next up:  Dream Bathroom.  (:

piggies

Going back to work after a 4 day weekend was kind of the pits.  Sitting at my desk, I feel like the energy is being sucked out of my body by my eyes.  And I haven't even blogged about all the fun stuff we did! 

Thanksgiving day was great - we were with friends and had a really terrific vegetarian meal of all "sides".  Then we essentially didn't eat for two days after, we were so full. 

M & I saw The Muppet movie - that was really great.  I thought it was really funny and totally in the spirit of the "old" movies, of which I was and am a big fan.  Great songs that I kind of want to memorize and sing in the shower.  Very funny song by Gonzo's chicken ladies clucking  "F*ck you" (or is that Cl*ck You?  GET IT?!?)  Miss Piggy: funnier than ever. Jason Segal, good sir, I thank you. 

 I have been reading a lot, but mostly so I can concentrate on Eugenides The Marriage Plot, which I haven't had a moment to crack yet.  This weekend....


We remodeled out bedroom and I'm going to post pictures VERY soon, but I ordered a new rug and I'm waiting for that to come in.  OMG, it's so pretty.

In other slightly bizarre news, marijuana appears to have been decriminalized in our little hamlet.  Not sure what that means - will it be like Amsterdam? 

Spring Awakening

Today I saw the first preview of Spring Awakening by the Griffin Theatre - if you're in Chicago, I encourage you buy your tickets now, I have a feeling it's going to be BIG!  It's based on a German play from the 1890s, but recreated as a musical by that dude from Duncan Sheik (surely his name is not Duncan Sheik, right?  Too lazy to look it up...) who did that song, Barely Breathing back in the 90s?  Which I am not ashamed to admit that I love and have in heavy rotation on ye ol ipad. 

Anywho, even though it was written in the 1890s, it's amazingly topical (sadly topical) and deals with teenage sexuality, sex education (or lack thereof) and some other heavy stuff which I won't mention for fear of spoilers.  Check out the wikipedia article on the play if you want more background.  One of the characters wants to know where babies come from and can't get her mom to tell her - another boy gets in serious trouble at school for writing out some details on reproductive systems for his friends.  It made me  sad and angry to think of all those ridiculous schools in the US which are trying to decrease sex ed and give out erroneous and dangerous information, over 100 years after this play was written.    Gah.

I guess this is the play that Lea Michelle from Glee started her career with.   I thought this Chicago cast was terrific (including my friend L.L.!) My only complaint might be that the stage seemed a bit small for this show, but, it was really intimate, which was nice. 

image via

Breaking Dawn movie review

I saw Breaking Dawn (part 1) with a couple of girl friends. "Ladies," I said before the movie, "We need to get drunk."  I was expecting a big crowd but our opening-night theatre wasn't even full.  We sat next to a woman with a gaggle of tweens.  She was amused by neither her daughter and her friends, nor me and my half-drunk friends.  Poor woman.  

After previews for the new Mission Impossible movie, followed by that Snow White movie (the Charlize Theron, not the crappy-looking Julia Roberts one), and the Hunger Games we were pretty excited.  I'm not kidding you, that Hunger Games trailer is THRILLING.   Then, Breaking Dawn started, and, I have to hand it them, presumably without irony Jacob tears off his shirt in the first ten seconds.  We all laughed.  We laughed through most of the movie which is, yes, completely ridiculous.  If you ask me, there are two reasons to watch this movie (spoilers coming): 1. Bella and Edward finally have sex (after getting married, natch) and 2. Bella gives birth to a vampire baby.  I think they could have gone a LOT further with both, but, it was fun to watch on the big screen. 

Me and my pals spent a lot of time talking about what an effed up person Stephanie Meyers is - in this book, her character fulfills this bizarre lady-child fantasy - to marry a guy who looks like he's 18 but is emotionally mature (sort of); to look 18 yourself for ETERNITY; to have a baby but pregnancy only lasts 1 month; instead of gaining weight, you loose it to the point of dangerous emaciation; and, after you have the baby (another spoiler) you don't even have to raise it because it rapidly grows to (you guessed it) an emotionally mature 18 years old in the space of a couple months.

Dan Kois wrote a hilarious review of Breaking Dawn in the Village Voice.  Although, even though he just eviserates the movie, he also acknowledges that he actually TEARED UP during the wedding scene when one of the corniest exchanges of the entire movie takes place.  Bella says, "Don't let me fall." and her dad says, "Never."  Really?

Other ridiculous lines from the movie include, but are not limited to:

You'll kill her!

"You'll kill her!" shouted by Jacob re: honeymoon sex between vampire and human, wherein Edward might presumably loose control in mutual virginity-loosing with his soul mate and kill her for some reason.  Instead he just completely destroys their marital bed and gives her a few bruises. 


"It's destroying you from the inside!" Warns Edward to Bella re: rapidly growing fetus.

"If you kill her, you kill me!" Jacob again, after being "imprinted" on their baby.  My friends, who haven't actually read any of the books but are just good sports, each turned to me in the theatre: "What's imprinting!!?!?!"  But, it's too idiotic to explain.

See: Angel, season 1

Maybe this comes from watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer for all those years, but to me, the silliest thing about this franchise is how the vampires, particularly Edward, dress.  There's a line in one of the books that goes something like, "There's nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis." (Again, I point to the bizarreness of Stephanie Meyers) and for some strange reason, each movie has been going with this whole Vampire-As-Lands-End-Model thing.  In a honeymoon scene, he's even wearing Sperry Topsiders, for chrissake!  Look, I mean, vampires wear leather and distressed designer denim.  Everyone knows that. 

Sperrys

 

But, back to that teary-eyed reviewer from the Village Voice... despite this clumsily told story, Meyers did manage to stumble upon some universal truths that many of us find appealing/touching, despite ourselves.  After the movie, my friend said sometimes pregnancy does feel like that - that you're being overwhelmed by an alien being inside you.  Would I like to be 18 forever, beautiful and thin, with perfect skin and hair, for eternity, with nothing to do but watch my stock portfolio increase over the centuries and hang out with my husband in his Sperry Topsiders?  Sure I would. 

Why would they bite there?

A few days ago I posted about a vampire-bite necklace - and now look at this!

Actually, this seller is kind of creeping me out. 

the hair isn't quite right

His hair is a lot spiker than that... but... otherwise...

$22????

 What?!  Why?

O.M.G.

 Will. You. Look. At. This?

AHHHH! HAHAHA!

via

Ouch

haha - this necklace is hilarious.

Why am I covered in feathers?

 This crafter made a couple of quilts inspired by Edward and Bella's honeymoon to "Esme Island" - an island owned by the Cullens where they can sparkle all they want to and knock their houses down while they're knocking boots *groan*

Actually, the feather quilt looks quite nicely made, so.... I hate to make fun...

One of these days, Alice...

Jupiter & moons, nasa.gov

I got M a Galileoscope kit for his bday and we just went out in the garden and had a little look around the universe.  We saw a nice view of the Moon, Jupiter, and a cluster of stars that I think was Alcyone.

Jupiter was really cool because we saw her moons too - we couldn't see them with our naked eyes, but there they were in the telescope!  This gift, I must admit, is partly for me too because I always wanted to have a telescope myself. 

BTW, if you have a smart fone, you MUST get Google Sky.  It's the best app in the entire world. 

I can't wait for the Earth to keep spinning so we can see more stuff.  (:

w00t PaWn: Rage

A few days ago M asked me why I hadn't reviewed his video game and I said, "Because you haven't been playing anything new." and he said he'd be playing this brand new game for several days, with something akin to outrage.  And I was all... Looks like the same ol' crap to me, yo.  But, apparently, it's this new game called Rage. 

If you ask me, it's completely derivative of all the other video games he's been playing lately, it has some FPS* and some driving bits.  I've asked M several times what the story's all about but he's never been able to tell me.  Occasionally some people will talk - I think Danny Devito does one of the voices. 

One day we were walking by a Red Box and I was like, Hey, your game is a movie, too.  But I guess they have games in those Red Boxes. 

this could be anything.

I don't really have that much to say about this game because it's total snores-ville, but M seems to like it.  It has given me multiple opportunities to whip out some Dylan Thomas, so there's that.

Rating: Unbearable and indistinguishable.

*First-person shooter.  OMG, so, it turns out, there's also a third-person shooter style, in which the "camera" view is just over the shoulder.  M was playing Warhamer 40-something and it's in that style.  I quite liked it because frankly I think it's very confusing when it's first person and your guy gets killed or whatever and you're like, WTF just happened?  Nahmean?

You guys are gunna like this

I'm really exccited because I have another crrrrrap I mean crrrrrraftastic Twilight special coming up for the next Twilight movie!   I'm planning on organizing the grrrrrrls to see this movie
and still trying to decide what my tshirt should say (any ideas?)  The crrrrafts will
probably start the Friday or Monday.  Stay posted!

Whaaaaaat????  I can't wait!

M's bday

For M's birthday I rented a limousine and went out to one of his favorite tiki bars with some of our best pals.  Here we are enjoying the ride...

The girls.

He's how old?

O. had a special shirt made that said "NOT 40".

He's the best!