Week 19: Spring Decorating

 Unlike most people who use spring as a chance to clean, I opted to add to the clutter by making totally unnecessary butterfly garlands! This was more a product of my inability to sit still and just watch TV than anything else. Also, I have a tough time throwing magazines away, and this project was perfect for justifying my collection of back issues of O, Real Simple, Shape, Elle Decor, Better Homes and Gardens, Traveler, and The Atlantic. Note to self: consider cutting back on magazine subscriptions.

Anyway, as Tom and I vegged out one evening last month, I whipped up a bunch of these guys. I got the idea and instructions here (how I came across a German blog in the first place is beyond me). In case you aren't fluent in German...

Find a colorful page and rip it out.

Cut out a 10cm x 7cm rectangle and an 8cm x 8cm square (those wacky Europeans with their crazy metric system!).

 Diagonally fold both pieces accordion-style.

Stick the rectangle on top of the square and connect them. I used floral wire.

Do that 10-12 more times, and - boom - butterfly garland!

Week 17: Pinterest Project

On Week 17 (way back in April), I had to run to Michael's for a non-fun, non-crafty reason (specifically, I had to buy 5x7 envelopes for work), but when I took a lap around the store, I found some inspiration in the toy section. Technically, I didn't so much find inspiration as I was reminded of something I had pinned a while back. You see, according to whomever decides these things, brass animal figurines are the hotness right now. Meaning - if I were the type of person who "styled" her home (and, trust, I wish that I were), I would definitely have some sort of a brass animal figurine placed just so on my credenza (naturally, I would have a credenza), or bookshelf, or coffee table...

{ 1 - 2 - 3 }

Apparently however, these delightful, albeit totally nonfunctional, brass animals (branimals?) are pricey, so the internet is full of examples of people making knock-off versions. This is all to say that when I spotted a rubber giraffe in the clearance bin at Michael's, I knew that he should come home with me. This wasn't the first time I have turned a Pinterest pin into reality, but it was the first time for this particular craft (if you can call it that), so I decided that it could count for my new thing of the week. Now, pay attention because this is a blink and you'll miss it type of "craft."

Start with a giraffe. My giraffe is called Melvin, but I don't think it matters if your giraffe has a different name.

Introduce him to some spray paint.

 

Go to town.

Place Melvin (or Phyllis or whatever...) atop a pile of books and call Elle Decor or House Beautiful to see when they would like to come over for the photo shoot.

Week 16: Country Concert

I'm not sure why keeping up with this has been such a struggle lately. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I am easily distracted... I have started to write this a half dozen times, but then a thought buzzes by and I am off on another tab working on something else. Well, sometimes working, sometimes looking at photos of micro piglets hugging strawberries...thanks, Jaime!

{I mean...seriously. Have you ever?}

My friend the internet does present some unique hazards that are particularly dangerous for someone with my highly distractible nature and desire for constant innnnpuuuut (Johnny 5? Anyone?). See. Right there. I just did it again. I felt the need to verify that I am correctly remembering the adorable robot from the '80s classic, Short Circuit, so I turned to YouTube and lost four minutes watching clips. It's a problem. I really do identify with Mr. 5 though, which is, of course, an issue in itself.

                          

Annnnyway, point is, I am going to try to update more consistently because I really do like being able to look back and see what I was doing and thinking at this time last year or two years ago. For example, I'm sure that when I look back on this particular post in a year or two, I will be proud to reflect on the amount of time I once spent thinking about the ways in which my life and personality overlap with that of a fictional eighties robot... Moving on.

I have actually kept to my New Year's goal of doing something new every week, so I have some catching up to do. So, after a ridiculous digression, here's a brief summary of my new thing for week sixteen, which was like a month ago at this point... On April 15th, Tom and I went to see the Zac Brown Band in Irvine.

This was the first time I had ever seen this band, but it was also the first country show I had ever been to, a fact that I find rather surprising considering the amount of Garth Brooks and Mary Chapin Carpenter I listened to in high school. Although, at that time, I am pretty sure that I kept my country music habit on the DL (do people say that anymore) while trying to convince myself that I liked the Grateful Dead more than I actually did. I have matured since then and am now an out, if not quite proud, country music listener. The guitarist plays Yamaha, so we had killer seats.

Now to be totally honest, the Zac Brown Band is not that country. Imagine if Lynard Skynard and Jimmy Buffet had a love child and that love child grew up to form a band with his college buddies...it's kinda like that. They sound something like this:

                           
And this:

                          
So, yes, I realize that this is more pop than country, but their bass player is legit.

{His beard alone has to give them some serious southern street cred.}

Anyway, the show was a lot of fun, and I would definitely see them again. There was plenty of bopping and stomping to be done, plus they played The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and that's always a good time.
                              

Placeholder

I fell off the blogging wagon again. Oops. Clearly, I need a a better sponsor. Or more self discipline. Anyway, I miss it, and I have some catching up to do, so, I will be back shortly.  In the meantime, here is yet another example of the awesome that is the world wide web.

People doing the conga? The worst. Baby bears doing the conga? Amazing. Without the internet, I might have gone my whole life without seeing a sleuth (collective noun for bears, look it up) of bear cubs turn grooming time into a conga line. Turn the sound on if you want the full effect.
           
Is that a forty second vacation or what? God bless the internet.

Week 8: Fun with Clay

So I'm two months into this little project, and my goal of posting my new thing every Sunday is already well out the window. No matter. Deadlines aren't really my thing anyway. I'll be happy if I end up with all 52 weeks documented, besides, starting every post with some sort of half-baked excuse for why it's late is beyond dull. So I hereby renounce any commitment to scheduled updates on this matter. Moving on.

Last week, I looked to Pinterest for new thing inspiration, specifically, new crafty thing inspiration. I went in search of a project that would make use of the clay I had from my attempt at Christmas ornaments (results were mixed on that one). I wanted to attempt something slightly more sophisticated than than the ashtray I made for my non-smoking father in the fourth grade, but not so sophisticated that it would require a potter's wheel and Patrick Swayze's ghost to complete. I looked through all of the crafty things I've pinned and decided that something like this or this seemed relatively doable.

This is what I was going for.

Source: honestlywtf.com via Kate on Pinterest

My finished project looks nothing like that. In fact, it looks more like the aforementioned ashtray than that charming little bowl, and I really wanted to do it over in order to have something more presentable to share here, but... I needed to prove that a new thing was, in fact, attempted in week eight.

So, while I definitely did not create a masterpiece, it was still a fun, easy little project. I mean, really, I like any craft that can be done whilst watching Bethany Ever After or the Real Housewives of Wherever because I feel like trash TV is more easily justified when enjoyed in conjunction with another, slightly less mindless task.

Whatevs. Here's the (entirely self-explanatory) lowdown.

[Side note: I thought that a feather would make a cool pattern, so I went on a forty minute walk around my neighborhood in search of one. Nada. I did not find one single feather. For some reason, I had expected to walk outside and have my pick of feathers...probably because my soon-to-be brother-in-law seems to always have a feather tucked jauntily into his cap.

I will have to consult Buckley on the best places to find wayward feathers. Anyway feathers were a no-go, I tried leaves but they didn't really work, so I went the doily route. Side note on the side note: Do doilies have a use outside of craft projects?]

Bake. Or air dry depending on your clay.

I attempted to sand down the edges but quickly realized that my bowl was destined to be wonky. I will most likely trash it because, as it turns out, I have no real use for a tiny, shallow, wonky bowl. Nonetheless, playing with clay is fun. Took me back to the Play-Doh days.

Dude. Nature is awesome. (And so are collective nouns.)

Thanks to the internet, nature is really blowing my mind lately. [I am not unaware of the irony in that statement; I am simply choosing to ignore it.] Since I do not like to have my mind blown solo, I am sharing these discoveries with you. You're welcome. Prepare to be amazed.

So, yeah...this is sand.

What?! Sand, you say? I do say, and so does Dr. Gary Greenberg, the artist/scientist/magician who uses a fancy-pants microscope to take micro photos of individual grains of sand, among other things.

  I mean...really. Who knew? I am never going to look at the beach the same way.

You can see more of Dr. Greenberg's work, buy a book of the sand grain images, and order prints of his work on his website.

I like this next example of nature's awesomeness for two reasons. One  - The title of the video is Murmuration, which besides being fun to say, is the word for a flock of starlings.

This delights me because I am a nerd, and as a nerd, I like learning collective nouns. I blame my parents for reading us A Cache of Jewels and Other Collective Nouns when we were little. Who am I kidding? I loved that book and will definitely be reading it to my kids. In fact, I will probably treat them to all of the books in Ruth Heller's World of Language series (Many Luscious Lollipops: A Book About Adjectives, anyone?).

Thanks to this book, I know that a group of penguins is a parcel and when peacocks get together, its a muster. I don't recall, but I doubt Ms. Heller covers a murder of crows.

{How cute is that?}

Holy grammar tangent. Moving on...the second reason that I love this video is that it just shows nature being awesome. Apparently my verbal abilities have deteriorated to a level associated with your average pothead, I blame the aforementioned mind blowing. In all seriousness though, this is really breathtaking. I think I was literally holding my breath at the end. The video was shot by Liberty Smith and Sophie Windsor Clive on the River Shannon in Ireland.

                          

I have no idea how that girl managed to keep such a steady hand. I'm pretty sure that, had I been in her shoes, I would not have been contemplating the magnificent beauty of the natural world because this is all I would be able to see.

Gratitude

{Without the internet, I might never have seen this, and that would be tragic.}

                                                                                               Source: bayanjargal.com via Kate on Pinterest

As I did last year, I am going to use November as an opportunity to reflect on all of the many things I have to be thankful for. I remembered that I wanted to do this around midnight on November 1st, so I'm getting off to a late start, but that's pretty par for the course.

Because I'm getting off to a late start, I'm going to start of with an easy one. I'm thankful the internet. Occasionally I have fantasized about what it would have been like to live in days of yore, days when women wore flouncy dresses and men wore...hats, but the sartorial benefits would not be enough to make up for the lack of the internet.

The wonderful worldwide web makes my life infinitely easier, and the instant access to a seemingly unlimited supply of information satisfies my every curiosity. In addition to all its practical uses, the internet offers an endless supply of happy diversions, things that I wouldn't miss if they didn't cross my path but that inspire me or make me smile or make me nod my head in agreement. I've shared some of my favorite internet finds before, but there are just so many of them that I may have to make a habit of posting them from time to time.


So, without further ado, here are a few reasons that I am thankful for the internet:

*There are whole websites devoted to sharing pictures of interspecies friendship. It's almost too much...I mean...it's just...have you ever?

                                                                                              Source: animals-zone.com via Pinterest

{This is a cute story; you can read it here.}

                                                                                             Source: isuwannee.com via Pinterest

                                                                                     Source: bannedinhollywood.com via Pinterest

*It is full of like-minded people who validate my strong feelings about grammar.

                                                                                                    Source: google.com via Pinterest

                                                                                                      Source: polyvore.com via Pinterest

 (On a related note, there are many blogs dedicated to exposing rampant grammatical abuses. These include The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks and Apostrophe Catastrophe where I found the next three images. Knowing that I'm not the only who is constantly corrects signage makes me feel a little less alone.)

                                                                                          Source: unnecessaryquotes.com via Pinterest

                                                                                      Source: apostrophecatastrophes.com via Pinterest

                                                                                   Source: apostrophecatastrophes.com via Pinterest

*It provides a place for super-talented people to sell their wares to everyone without having to schlep to hundreds of craft fairs around the country. Seriously, I could lose hours on Etsy.

 

                                                                                                 Source: etsy.com via  Pinterest

                                                                                                 Source: etsy.com via  Pinterest

                                                                                                        Source: etsy.com via  Pinterest

                                                                                              Source: etsy.com via Kate on Pinterest

*There is never a shortage of crafty inspiration.
                 I saw this:

                                                                                                 Source: etsy.com via Pinterest

         
And then I made this:

           I saw this:

                                                                                              Source: cafemom.com via Pinterest

         
         And then I made this:

         
           I saw this:

                                                                                     Source: craftycpa.blogspot.com via Pinterest

         
          And then I made these:

          
        I came across this recently:

                                                                                         Source: witandwhistle.com via Pinterest

       
          And...I'm workin' on it.

 *It is an endless wellspring of inspiration, and it fills me up with ideas about...

  ---places I want to go

{Mammoth Cavern, Vietnam}

                                                                                 Source: ngm.nationalgeographic.com via Pinterest

       
---recipes I want to try

{roasted eggplant with tomato and mint}

                                                                                           Source: smittenkitchen.com via Pinterest

---gifts I want to wrap

                                                                                                Source: blogs.babble.com via Pinterest

---parties I want to throw

                                                                                            Source: marthastewart.com via Kate on Pinterest

    
Finally, without the internet, I would not have been instantly alerted to the fact that Kim Kardashian had filed for divorce. Ok, so maybe that's not exactly a point in the internet's favor...

                                                                                             Source: someecards.com via Katie on Pinterest

In all seriousness, I could go on and on. Clearly. Thankfully, the internet, in its infinite wisdom, has graciously provided us with a place to store and categorize all of the wonders it offers. You can see many more of my favorite things from around the internet here.