happy weekend!

happy weekend!

boone and i are spending this dreary saturday the perfect way. we're going to be inside vegging on 1st season law and order episodes, blogging at mess of greens, and sermon-writing and then heading out to see an old fave band of mine tonight.  i hope your weekend is filled doing exactly what you want to do, as well. (or maybe filled with magic and fun, like this perfect photo from dara scully i stole from my friend's pintrest page)

mardi gras! (a little early)

 my WHOLE life (well..my whole adolescent life) i had mardi gras themed birthday parties. last year, i went all out and made a king-cake from scratch, and so this year i thought i'd bring back the old b-day tradition JUST SO i could make a kind cake. ridiculous? yes. fun for me? yes. with this in mind, THIS WEEKEND we're throwing a big b-day mardi gras soiree at our house, complete with king cake, beads, gumbo, red beans and rice, and hurricanes (plus wii karaoke and a bonfire) jealous? well, don't be! you're invited! as long as you dress like this:

 

we're starting to cook tommorrow...and i decorated monday night. when was the last time you had a themed party? what kind of party would you have?

images from imgspark.

getting carded....

hey darlings!
all my teachers have the holidays off, so things slowed down for me a bit friday which gave boone and me enough time to wrap presents, make peanut butter balls (his mom's special Christmas treat) and mail Christmas cards. i designed/ordered them ages ago and i've been dying to show them off, but felt like i couldn't before we mailed them out. now that they're in the hands of the U.S. Postal service i'm ready to share them (of course i accidentally deleted the final image, but this is pretty much* what they look like).... what do you think?

ridiculous? totally joyful? silly? a slice of the delta? i hope so! what do your holiday cards look like this year?

*the cards actually ended up saying "wishing you the joy of a mississippi snowball fight" :) 

unecessary quotation marks...

are my pet peeve.

which is why the "Blog" of "Unecessary" Quotation Marks is one of my favorite blogs in the whole world*... who wouldn't love photos and snarky commentary about other people's ignorance? i do! i do!



does that make me mean?

*also see passive aggressive notes for more fun.

twittering...

"suddenly, it seems all the world's a twitter." -newsweek

riiiiiiight. i think there's a prety good reason why ryan adams calls twitter "nerd gps." i've heard about it CONSTANTLY for four weeks straight but i refuse join it. refuse. absolutely. but if i WERE going to join twitter, here are the people i would follow (if they even twittered). in no particular order:

boone
orlegian snocones
ryan adams
my dad
harlan beckley
ira glass
pam and jim
kye risdol
krista tippett
gregory house, md
michelle obama
little bangkok
josh lyman
beth corrie
and
all my peeps (that's you!)

but i'm not going to sign up. nope, not ever.

wit...er... white.

i love irony, and stephen colbert, and outdoor performance clothes.
not to mention 80s night, microbreweries, standing still at concerts, difficult breakups, recycling, public radio, wes anderson movies, and going outside.
now, the folks from stuff white people like have done it again... of COURSE I have moleskin notebooks! SHOOT!

after reading this one i wondered, "just how white AM i?"
let me state for the record that I'm 83 out of 122 posts white. i invite you to gage your own white-ness by counting here how many things YOU like. post them in a comment so i know at what end of the spectrum i fall. ( because right now i feel casper-the-friendly-ghost-nearly-transparent-white...)

Since all white people consider themselves to be “creative,” they are constantly in need of products and accessories that will allow them to capture their thoughts. One of the more popular products in recent years has been the Moleskine notebook.
This particular type of notebook is very expensive and was quite popular with writers and artists in the olden days. Needless to say, these are two properties that are highly coveted in the white community. In fact, it’s a good rule of thumb to know that white people like anything that old writers and artists liked: typewriters, journals, suicide, heroin, and trains are just a few examples.
Much like virtually everything else that white people like, these notebooks are considerably more expensive yet provide no additional functionality over regular notebooks that cost a dollar. Thankfully, since white people only keep their most original and creative ideas in the Moleskine, many of them will only be required to purchase one per lifetime.
But the the growing popularity of these little journals, is not without its own set of problems. One of the strangest side effects has been the puzzling situation whereby a white person will sit in an independent coffee shop with a Moleskine notebook resting on top of a Apple laptop. You might wonder why they need so many devices to write down thoughts? Well, if a white person has a great idea, they write it by hand, if they have a good idea, it goes into the computer.
Not only does this help them keep their thoughts organized, but it serves as a signal to the other white people in the shop that the owner of both instruments is truly creative. It screams: “I’m not using my computer to check email and read celebrity gossip, I’m using it to create art. Please ask me about it.”
So when you see a white person with one of these notebooks, you should always ask them about what sort of projects they are working on their free time. But you should never ask to actually see the notebook lest you ask the question “how are you going to make a novel out of five phone numbers and a grocery list?”

I'm giving it up for Lent...

Being completely consumed and overwhelmed by wedding thoughts, that is.

Apparently engagement angst and wedding related loss of personality is going around. this weekend i found out through this post by Practical Wedding blogger Meg and this one by 2000 Dollar Wedding Guru, Sara that i am not alone.

Turns out that for the past few months nearly all of my thoughts turn to wedding details or wedding related issues. nearly half of my convos revolve around this stuff... i mean, when MY half of the convo is spent talking about wedding stuff? really? I have diverse interests.. i'm not boring! I don't have a one-track mind! but these days it seems like it.

and i'm completely disgusted with myself.

i mean, i started blogging about the wedding and marriage plans BECAUSE i didn't want it to dominate my real conversations... if I was spewing it out online, then i wouldn't feel a need to share it or be "the friend who only talks about weddings"

i promise, there are LOTS of other things going on in my life... i'm working on a really exciting thesis proposal, raising money and awareness for DV with Februhairy, reading really thought provoking books, and trying to get a rad job for next year... not to mention that fact that I watch house, the office, and 30 rock like a fiend.

but somehow i always end up talking about wedding stuff (this is not to be confused with marriage stuff). part of this is because people ask about wedding stuff... how the planning is going, am i nervous, etc. why can't they ask about marriage stuff? or other life stuff?

sometimes i don't bite the bait since I know people are just being polite and want to make conversations. This is fine with me and usually i can steer the conversation to something i know they care about more than my silly wedding plans.... you know: march madness or a funny news story, a question about their life

but when my close friends ask i usually totally spill all of my anxiety or excitement on them.

The thing is, you have no idea how good it feels to be able to talk about all this junk with the people who know you the best. BUT this is a REALLY bad and sort of unhealthy way to relate to the people you love the most.

so as my Lenten resolution, I'm working on finding a balance with the need to vent with the need to be me. this probably means that i'll talk about wedding stuff with my mom and through this blog... and then if someone really, REALLY, for real wants to know.

photo found via victoria with the roses

iamridiculous.

this is me getting into the februhairy spirit. :)


support your local dv shelter!

so behind...

i'm so sorry that my posts have been lagging this week...
the truth is that boone and I are in the middle of Febru-hairy at school, so I've been doing promotion and planning for that.

what's febru-hairy?
i'm so GLAD you asked!

it's the fundraiser that boone and i started last year for a local Domestic Violence shelter during the month of February. Basically, we're trying to get as many dudes on campus (and off, for that matter) that we can convince and cajole to grow moustaches this month and take donations and tell people about the issue whenever someone asks why they've got a 'stache. all the cash we raise goes to the shelter!

last year we sold tshirts and had moustaches and raised 1,100 with about 15 guys. this year we're going even bigger! I'll keep you posted on how things go.. but in case i fall behind or if you just want to know more, check out my other blog here!

now you know why i've had my obsession with facial hair. (previous posts here, here, and here)

photo from etsy

what boone got for christmas....

tooting my own horn (just a little)

guys, guess what?!?
i walked into anthropologie the other day and saw these...



remember way back when i made a post about them and how cool, fab, and eco-friendly they were?
i thought so.
well, apparently they really were cool, otherwise anthropologie wouldn't have had anything to do with them. let's just say i felt good about myself and leave it at that. ;)

Red (face) Alert! Mangoes= allergy

confession...i hate mangoes.

i mean, i love the way they taste, but apparently i have a horrific allergy associated with them. i thought i had one last year and avoided them like the plague, but then Sunday while I was making my fave black bean, sweet potato and mango stew i thought ,"hey, i'm probably not THAT allergic. i bet i can have a little taste."
nope.
now, three days later with an itching, stinging, completely red and bumpy face and swollen cracked lips, and i wish i'd never even been introduced to this most delicious, beautiful, tropical fruit.
WHY o WHY am i the most awkward person in the entire world? not only am i supremely clumsy, but i have a stupid food allergy to tropical fruit that gives me hideous face-hives!!! the good news is that i'm not the only one...do quick search for "Mango allergy" and all sorts of strange things pop up. apparently the skin of the fruit it's a lot like poison ivy or poison oak..so when you eat mangoes, BEWARE.

photo from flickr

why's paper so fun?

i just meandered into the paper source in my 'hood yesterday (just for a minute!!! i promise!!!) but I was there for waaaay too long. here are a few reasons why:

and then there was the lovely decorative paper section... (i'll spare you the gorey details..or save them for another post) i could have been there rubbing and looking and wishing all day!
and then, i saw these! a-dash mazing.


how many times have i needed one of these and never even KNOWN it?!? i especially wish they made them for conversations. if i wasn't the most frugal, least-likely-to-make-an-impulse-purchase person in the entire world, i would have gotten one of each, just in case...

our save the dates!

I told y'all we'd put in some serious hours last week to make progress.... in fact, on Friday, my mom and I made and mailed all of these! we sort of went for the cluttered desk of a busy person (and also used the pen, yellow paper and post-it as homage to boone and my fav TV show, the office!)
please excuse the poor quality...this is a copy of a copy. anyway, this part was big fun...but some of the other decisions are less so. anyway, i'm back from the land of dial up internet and hope i'll get to post more regularly! hooray!

a couple of gift ideas...ala a cup of jo

whew! two exams/papers down and 3 to go!

thought i'd celebrate by sharing this fab gift idea post by a cup of jo. apparently she is engaged to my boone...or a guy JUST like him!

Last year, boone and i weren't even dating but we got each other really fun, super cheap things.Usually i'm BIG into making my own gifts (ornaments, journals, meaningful sketches/drawings but i've been a little busy) Anyway, since this year things are a little different (but cheap is STILL VERY good) here are my Christmas gift ideas for "handsome, bearded fiances [with glasses] who always kisses you like it's the first time ever" but fyi, boone... not one of these is actually YOUR gift. or is it? ;)

without further ado... the list!

#1 a cooler than cool hoodie ('cause you stole his fav red one and aren't giving it back)

#2 a pair of tickets to see the most hilarious David Sedaris live in ATL since he enjoys great humor more than anyone.


#3 super masculine stationary (aka man notes) to replace "the way too fancy" stuff he's got.



#4 a manscarf in his undergrad alma mater's colors... because he knows he'd look good but thinks it might be a tad goofy.


#5 a new messenger bag JUST like the old one..because the old one is awesome (and is so very Jim from The Office), but covered in ink stains.


#6 a lifetime supply of his most favorite thing in the whole world...


#7 woodworking lessons because he's been talking about them since you met him and is really crafty and rugged...


and probably the best idea #8 make/commission a painting or drawing of the two of you for his wall so he never forgets how perfectly you fit together...


oh dear! i got carried away thinking about all the things i'd like to give to my man this Christmas! the thing is, he's so easy to please that he'd be just as happy (and so would i) if we just gave each other the gift of time and made dinner in then snuggled up with a movie...

but let's be honest, finding/making great things to give then suprising those you love with them is most fun!

mustache addendum..

the next best thing to a real one... i wish i knew how to knit!

a few more beards...

beard book from the world mustache and beard competition, beard disguises,
sexy beards tshirt, reForm School organic tee,

beards are really my favorite...

especially this last one...mostly because it's true.

beard hats, artbear, a Cup of Jo

More Mustaches!

fab etsy mustaches.




jack rabbit, bread and badger, avrilloreti