happy birthday!

a few weeks ago my friends annemarie and lorraine turned 17. lolo stole my camera and took some pictures...:
ellory,heather,annemarie, gavin in the oakley sweatshirt, kelly-blur









above: birthday girls!
right: lorraine and me...if only i hadn't blinked. haha

make a wish!

last year, i started making these covered glass bottles. i call them wish bottles, and you can put your wishes in them. and i have made a goal for myself that im going to give them to all of my friends before we all split and "grow up". i know that it is sad, but it is a fact of life, and i just want them to have a piece of me, to know that i cherish them in my life. i even put my own wish in there for them before i give it away... here are some pics of my latest:

yummy!

well now that ive given a couple of my homemade christmas presents, i fugured id post some of them. my friend annemarie {one sweet mug} is really in to living green and naturally, so i made a book of natural and organic and healthy recipes for her. i even decorated the pages. here are some pictures! :





i mainly used watercolors. the cover is a brown paper bag!

stuck in my head...

in my head
recently...









Oh, got to see, got to know right now
What's that riding on your everything?
It isn't anything at all
Oh, got to see, got to know right now
What's that writing on your shelf
In the bathrooms and the bad motels?
No one really cared for it at all
Not the gravity plan
Early, early in the morning
It pulls all on down my sore feet
I want to go back to sleep
In the motions and the things that you say
It all will fall, fall right into place
As fruit drops, flesh it sags
Everything will fall right into place
When we die, some sink and some lay
But at least I don't see you float away
And all the spilt milk, sex and weight
It all will fall, fall right into place

lenka, modest mouse. Gravity rides everything

pic:flickr:betti: http://www.flickr.com/photos/betti/

make your own snowflake!

look what i just made! snow!
make your own snowflakes, even email them on this website! Let it snow let it snow let it snow!

http://snowflakes.barkleyus.com/

peace on earth...

i also made this peace sign...kinda christmasy, kinda fun...i like it. this is just a piece of cut cardboard that i covered with red magazines and glue... and then i used a white ribbon to hang it. easy as one two three really.

How adorable...

i am helping decorate for a christmas party for this week and one of the things i made for it is this cute and totally recycled {happy holidays} banner...and here are some step by step instructions:

Supplies: you will need old paper grocery bags. cut them into triangles, and keep in mind that you will need to attatch them to the string, so make them a bit bigger than you actually want them to be. also, you need string, i used a cute string i got from the anthropologie gift wrap... you can also use hemp or twine...or get creative. for the letters, if you do not have letter stencils {which i didn't} then you can make your own {which i did} by typing the word REALLY big on your computer, in whatever font you want. i used times new roman. then, with great patience, cut out the black, so you are left with a stencil. {rememer with o's and p's and b's and anything with a hole in the middle that you need to keep a tiny strip to hold the hole in}


nextly, go outside and spray paint the letters onto the triangle flags. i used silver, but any color would work. the stencil will not be perfect but the imperfections kindof make it look cool...or at least with the silver. let the flags dry a little bit.

when the letters are done, it is time to attatch them to the string. there are many options for this:
a. use the handy dandy stapler. it is the quickest way, and the method i used.
b. use glue. requires patience, but looks tidy.
c. glue gun, quicker glueing method
d. sew the flags on... i just thought of this idea, and if you use fabric as your string, it would probably look pretty cute.
e. get creative...





now all that's left is to find a place where the banner looks good, and enjoy it this glorious christmas season!






happy crafting!

look!

i saw a shooting star on the way home tonight... it was so magical... and it gave me hope! which i needed tonight greatly...

goodnight!



photo: Kaddy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaddy/

summer

i think that i miss those summer nights...where we could all sit around and watch as the sun burned down and out of sight, creating beautiful and almost unreal colors in the process....

a long day coming...

oh my. i had a long evening. nothing bad happened, but it was just long. and i dont know how i feel about getting up at eight tomorow and perfoming until 930 pm... that is a long day, and trust me. i know. because i have been doing this since i was eight. wow, that is a lot of gcn winters. but i set a goal for myself that i am going to be happy tomorow no matter what does or doesnt happen. i will keep a smile on my face and a song in my heart!

lets see how it goes... ;)

stuck in my head

well...it has been a long and stressful week and im trying hard to keep a smile on my face...but this song has been helping


I don't know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I'll sing along

falling slowly- the frames

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPmIaNLVcWI

Autocue ...

so, i have a new buddy. his name is timo. and he's in this pretty tight band that i just looked up. and i like. i like alot. def. adding them to my fav's list...
anyway...timo is the drummer...and theres a couple other guys in there too, including his brother. i love the name... autocue. it sounds so legit, and it is! i wanna go see them live now, so bad. they played at Gallery 5 on november 14 as their "record release show"...but i have missed that one by about a month so hopefully there will be something on the calendar coming up soon.. and if there is i will deffinately post info! :)

check out their music at:
http://www.myspace.com/thisisautocue

{my favorite track is vexing}

photos: PJ Sykes

thank you Mr. reid!

mr. reid, my friend's dad, has been taking TONS of pics from gcn rehersals, etc. and i wanted to post all my fav's...

lorraine and thomas

timo

heather

josh

me and annemarie

student by day, angel by night...

wow. i can't wait to have time for the blogging world again...pretty much, my to do list is growing by the minute. i still have to...:
1.buy christmas presents for friends and family
2.read Age of Innocence
3.finish my judication portfolio
4.write my christmas cards
5.do laundry
6.tidy up my room
7.make window draperies of some sort
8.mail stuff to my aunt
9.knit an ivory scarf
10. take my friend out for coffee
11.finish sewing my owl doll
12.....

i would continue but it gets boring...

anyway..hopefully i can get everything done and more after Glorious christmas nights ends..

sweets and treats....

i got baking today! sugar cookies and chocolate pretzels....and i took some pics of the process!

stuck in my head.....

Don't turn away
Dry your eyes, dry your eyes
Don't be afraid
Keep it all inside, all inside
When you fall apart
Dry your eyes, dry your eyes
Life is always hard for the belle of the boulevard

-dashboard confessional

the original

im having an extrremely busy and slightly stressful week, so i apologise for not posting much, maybe this weekend. but, today, i have a few spare moments. and i decided to spend my time watching this...



maybe i will post another version, {made by some friends of mine} later this week...if and when i can find it...

take me back to toyland..

i have officially begun the difficult [yet so enjoyable] process of getting christmas presents together! Sofar, i have made a cute set of stationary for one of my friends who loves writing letters, two little headbands, and a decorated jar for...well...i don't know yet. i just had the idea so i made it.

for the stationary i just took some plain colored cards and envelopes, and made them pretty and unique.

and for the jar, i grabbed a square bottle i had sitting around, then crinkled up many many red and green magazine strips. then, i stuffed all the little magazine balls into the glass bottle. to top it off, i tied a piece of hemp around the fabric, and attatched a to/from tag...
p.s. that bottle is a lot smaller than it looks...

...easy free and creative gifts for the holidays!! {my favorite}

Happy Thanksgiving!

i love todays! because they make me remember how fun it is to be a part of a family. There is something magical about circling around a table with eight other people who are so intimately connected to you. thanksgiving also makes me want to have a family of my own... i cant wait until i can find an adorable man, and get married, and have a few bright eyed freckly children and we can live in an adorable little house... excited!

there are an amazing amount of leftovers all packed away in the fridge. like, i'm not kidding. i don't know exactly why my mother thought it was necessary to make two huge cans of yams...because we have one and three fourths of those yams left..
my uncle pulled out the video camera to video us all saying happy thanksgiving, and he went around trying to get every one of us. it ended with my sister in her karate uniform?? i don't really know how or why that happened. i guess all that turkey got to her head...

let the wild rumpus start!

so my mother surprized me yesterday with two of the most adorable kittens! and so my sister and i have been thinking of what to name them... and my brother wanted to call the little boy max... and i decided that the little girl should be ira. then they can both be named after characters from the wild things! so in honor of my two new kitties, i present quotes from wild things:


Ira: Hi, I'm Ira. I put the holes in the trees.
-------------------------------------------
Max: Did you make this?
Carol: Yeah, yeah.
Max: It's very good.
Carol: We were gonna make a whole world like this. Now, everyone used to come here, but you know... you know what it feels like when all your teeth are falling out really slowly and you don't realize and then you notice that, well, they're really far apart. And then one day... you don't have any teeth anymore.
Max: Yeah.
Carol: Well it was like that.
--------------------------------------------
Carol: Hey King! What's your first order of business?
Max: Let the wild rumpus start!


p.s. i'll post pictures of my kitties tomorrow!

Cuz baby, it's cold outside....

time for another party! My friends, annemarie and heather, and i got together last night and made invitations to our christmas party! and i am already pretty stoked about it! i love making invites! and i love the way we made them because each one was totally unique, and we personalized them even more by putting the names on them! and we made the names part of the design, which is a cool way to keep track of who gets an invite while making your guest feel extra important and wanted! haha... well, here are some pictures of them! hope you feel inspired!
p.s. sorry that the pics arent very pretty... my camera didn't want to cooperate with the lighting and i was too tired to deal with it... :)

Let's go!

i went to dc thursday! and i discovered some great art museums and shopping areas...and i also took some pictures! I went to the Renwick and the National Portrait Gallery and the American. These are some of my favorite pics of the day