Summertime 17

If you know me well, you know that making mixed CD's for friends is something I enjoy waaay too much. I believe that making the perfect mix is an art, and I take it very seriously. My mixes are always 17 songs long. Why? I'm not really sure. But it seemed like a good number when I decided to do it.

In any case, here is a nice little summertime mix for you. And yes, there are 17 songs.

In the event that you can't see the player, here's the list.

(Click to make it bigger)

Enjoy!

On Bakeries...

When discussing our wedding cupcake bakery options:
(condensed version)

C: There's a bakery in Sylvania... looks small town.
K: *looks at website* Yeah, not much better than a grocery store bakery.
C: Oooh... Walmart bakery?
K: No. No, no, no, no, NO.
C: You can't say no without looking.
K: I don't need to see a crack whore to know I don't want to be one.

Weekend Fun and Something New

Weekend fun:
Friday night I drove to my Mom's house in the steady drizzle of rain (that lasted aaaaaaaall weekend!) We got up Saturday morning to go to an "appreciation luncheon" in Washington for Lydia's wedding. It was quite nice for several reasons:
1. I got to see my Lydia, whom I haven't seen for two weeks, since she moved out of her apartment (right next door to me). So, it was good to catch up.
2. I sat with Lydia's other bridesmaids and got to know them a little better.
3. Granny cooked the food and it was awesome as usual.
4. I overheard Lydia's fiancee's mom say the words "stanky legg" in casual conversation. Priceless! (If you don't know about the idiocy that is the stanky legg, go HERE. I would say you won't be sorry, but you probably will.)

After the luncheon, my mom and I stopped by Granny's house where she gave me the quilt she made for me and informed me that she already has several wedding gifts wrapped for us, but that I can't open them yet. But she let me look at the packages. It was pretty funny.

After visiting a while, we stopped in Augusta to order a bridesmaid's dress for Abbie's wedding, then went home so I could pack and drive to Statesboro so that Chris and I could leave for St. Simons. Looooooong day.

We spent two glorious days at St. Simons and I can honestly tell you we did nothing productive and most of our time was spent eating and watching the Memorial Day marathon of Jon & Kate Plus 8. (Why is that show interesting?!)

Now I'm back home and I have class in the morning, but I just really wanted to blog a bit. I feel like I've been slacking off lately. I'm going to blame it on Twitter.

Oh! And I found this amazing blog tonight that just made me smile. Every entry is hand embroidered. This is my favorite post so far:
Seriously, check it out.

And lastly, I've been thinking about making a fun playlist to share some of my favorite music on my blog. I'll probably try to post it sometime later this week so keep an eye out for that.

But for now, bedtime!

Handmade is best!

Hello there!

First, I am so excited about this, I'm about to pee my pants. I got this picture message from my Dad this morning:
This is one half of a set of hand-carved wooden love birds that Chris and I are going to use as cake toppers for the wedding. This is seriously one of the things I'm most excited about for the wedding. I just know that in 30 years, I'm going to be pulling these out of a box for our kids to use on top of their wedding cakes. I know I should have kept these under wraps until the big day, but I just couldn't. I'm so proud that I'm going to have the coolest cake topper ever. Yay!

Next, my Granny made me a quilt! While I have several quilts that Mamaw has made for me over the years, this is my first quilt from Granny. I wouldn't love it more if it were made of gold and candy.
And look at the sweeeeeet inscription she embroidered! With both of my grandmothers so talented, is it any wonder I'm so crafty? Also, I've been coveting the camera strap covers from this Etsy shop for a while, but didn't want to dish out the funds to get one, so I made my own! Forgive the cell phone pic, I couldn't figure out how to take a picture of my camera with itself.... so I improvised.

Now my camera is more 100% comfy, and 12.4% more stylish.

I have a few other things I want to blog about, but I think I'll post them seperately and leave this post for fun handmade homemade things.

Busy, busy, busy.

I will be spending my Saturday in this fair town, at an "Appreciation Luncheon" for Lydia's wedding. Fun fun fun!


I'm just glad to have a break from the torture they try to pass off as summer classes.
Other weekend plans also include:
*visit Granny
*buy a bridesmaid's dress for Abbie's wedding
*play with my puppy while I'm at home
*study for accounting test on Wednesday
*homework, homework, homework
*find time to clean my apartment, even if I only get the dishes washed
*drive to St. Simons with Chris Sunday morning
*eat something that once lived in the ocean
*relax for 5 minutes (optional)

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everybody.

I'm gonna be, gonna be the man......

Also, I have had this song in my head all week. Ridiculous.

Camera Obscura

I can't get enough of:

This band:

This album:

This song:

Wedding Shoe Dilemma

Dear readers, meet my perfect wedding shoe.

This little beauty is everything I could want and more. She's pretty and dainty, frilly without being silly, not your typical dyed-to-match wedding shoe, she has a strap so I won't step out of her, and at only $45, a steal. She is the prefect shoe. She is the Sam & Libby Whimsy Satin Flower Mary Jane in gold, from DSW.com. I would be placing my order right now instead of typing this if I could. Unfortunately, this story doesn't have a happy ending. My perfect shoe is only available in a size 10. I need an 8 or 8.5. I've been scouring the internet trying to find this shoe somewhere else, but have so far come up empty. At this point, I'm beginning to lose all hope of finding her.
So, what do you do when you've found your perfect shoe, but can't have it?

On a happier note, we've found a possible (probable) photographer and a "pretty sure" piano player, started registries at Macy's and Target, purchased and locked away our wedding bands, and roped our "couldn't-be-happier" friend Taylor into singing at the ceremony.

So, I guess if I have to settle for less-than-perfect shoes, I can handle it.

Quiltttt!

I finally got around to taking some non-cell phone pictures of the LDQ.





I finally got around to taking some non-cell phone pictures of the LDQ.

I'm not done with the quilting, but I thought I'd go ahead and get some pictures up. I'll take more (and better ones) when it's completely finished.

Some of the patterns I used can be found at the following places (some are even free!):

Red Velvet Art (which you should check out anyway, because it's amazing.)
BadBird (check in the "free patterns" category in the sidebar)

Other pieces were either originals by me, or found randomly via Google Images.


Now, I have to go drop off my cable bill or they'll turn off my internet... and that would be bad.

Spiders on Drugs

Best YouTube video ever.



BTW, I took some pictures of my quilt tonight and will be posting them soon.

Old Favorites

I was going through some old photos I took for photography classes, and thought I'd compile a few of my favorites here.

The infamous "black paint" shoot. This was a series of five (I think). Callie was completely covered in black face paint by the end of it... and our shower had a slight gray tint for several weeks after.

Callie spinning in a field. It was about a thousand and two degrees when we were doing this and I was seriously worried that Callie might pass out from all the spinning.

Callie in the women's bathroom in the old Zach H. Library. This is a little bit of Georgia Southern history, since this bathroom/this part of the library no longer exists. Also, these are just a tiny fraction of all the weird things I had Callie do in the name of photography.

If I'm not mistaken, this is one of Lydia's favorites. The words are from magnetic poetry, and yes.. that is a real blow fish. It's covered in some sort of resin to keep it like that. I still have it somewhere around here.... More memories from the old library. This one also uses the magnetic poetry words. It's a bit hard to read, but I like it all the same. The finished project is a book of 20 of these prints with the words like that. Probably my favorite photo project I've done. They were so fun and random.


I honestly have no clue what the assignment was when I shot this picture of my unmade bed. There is no rational reason why I should like this picture, I just do.

This is outside Dressner's Cafe down at the village on St. Simons at night. I shot several rolls that night at the village. It was completely deserted since it was around midnight and the pictures always remind me of how quiet it was and how I could hear the waves... they also kinda creep me out.

And this is Kristen. This is absolutely one of my favorite pictures in the world. We were in the Marvin House, and I was shooting Kristen in the TV room and she just died laughing at something and in my own laughter, I hit the button. This came from that happy accident.

*Sigh* I miss old-fashioned black and white 35mm shooting. I really miss being in a darkroom.

Drawing Projects

I finally got around to taking pictures of all my drawing projects. Sooo... here they are.

This project was to draw a distorted self portrait in oil pastels. First in black and white, then in color.

This is a slightly better picture of my "She's in a Funk" project. The assignment was to create a "post-modern artwork about a social issue." Mine was about depression... and I embroidered the whole thing by hand (


And below is our final project. I can't take all the credit for this one; it was a group project. We had to create a manifesto, a la the Futurist Manifesto and then create a collage, drawing, or painting that was based on the manifesto.

Ours was about the lack of face-to-face communication now days. All our communication is sent through wires via text messages and the internet. Hence, the plush hearts, sewn by me from the softest red corduroy. If you know a thing or two about computers, you'll notice that the 1's and 0's in the background are actually binary code that translate into Elizabeth Barrett Brownings's poem "How Do I Love Thee?" Also, we spelled out internet-speak ("lol, omg, rofl, wtf, etc...") with wire.
Sorry the pictures are slightly blurry... I took them in a hurry right before we started critiquing the projects. Click on any of them for details.
So, there's my last 3 projects of the semester. I'm glad it's over and will be even gladder(?) to work on some of my own projects for a while. I still have a quilt to finish, you know.....