Treasures by Mail

Have I mentioned lately how awesome you all are? Seriously, you dudes rock. The best part about blogging is the community (both within IA and beyond). Now, I won’t go saying which of you is my favorite before you’ve all had a chance to mail your bribery checks, but one lady who will always be in the running for the top spot is Rebekah of Jaunty Dame.

We’ve sung her praises before, but let me give one more verse: this lady is amazing. Funny, insightful, and stunning with a shaved head, I adore her. Even more so since she sent me presents!

Lookie!

Inventory

• Copies of Bust and Bitch (training wheels for heavier feminist discourse)
• Assorted body washes and lotions (I’m totally going to make The Rocket Scientist smell like “Twilight Woods for Men”)
• DevaCurl “Set it Free Moisture Lock”
• Sally Girl pale pink nail polish
• A fake and furry mustache
• A tiny screwdriver and socket set
• Mineral makeup (the products are made in Portland. And, yes, they put a bird on it)
• The Jacqueline Touch – “the First Lady’s charm, beauty, and fashions: how you can adapt ‘the Jacqueline touch’ to your life”
• A gorgeous head wrap (that got left out of the photos because its wrapping camouflaged with my sheets, but I plan on wearing it all summer so you’ll see it soon enough)
• SHRINKY DINK PLASTIC!
• A lovely note in an envelope sealed with wax. Classy, 16th century style.

Because of Rebekah, I will now be clean, tidy-haired, potentially-mustached, empowered with feminist knowledge, channeling my inner Jackie, able to fix things involving tiny screws and have shrinky dinks for everyone! Really, what more can this blog ask for?

Birthday Necklaces

The Rocket Scientist and I are going to Casa Bonita (“food [poisoning] and fun in a festive atmosphere!”) tomorrow night for what is getting to be approximately a 15-way birthday celebration (followed up by Beatles Rock Band, at which I am awesome). I’m trying to squeeze my birthday into the roster, but since it was back in October that’s probably stretching it.

Since three of the birthday peeps are girls, I spent last night making them necklaces while watching Season 1 of Pushing Daisies. I think the show definitely inspired the bright color combinations I chose.

Zen and Lemon Drops

• Sterling silver chain
• Turquoise tear drops
• Czech glass beads

The turquoise reminds me of visiting my Grandmas in Arizona, and the way the stones are stacked makes me think of all the big rock outcrops, with boulders perched precariously on precipices (oh yeah, I’m awesome at alliteration. Ha! Just did it again).

Oysters in Algae

• Sterling silver chain
• Green freshwater pearls
• Czech glass beads (there’s a green leaf bead on the end of the extender, but it was heavy and sunk into the snow)

One of the birthday girls just got engaged on New Year’s, and her gorgeous ring is the same acid-y green as the Czech glass. I may redo this necklace tonight and cluster the pearls so they hang down instead of horizontal. Not sure yet…

Cherry Acid Flashback

• Sterling silver chain
• Cherry quartz
• Czech glass

I tried a new wire wrap technique with this stone – a “T” wrap vs the “triangle” wrap that’s more common. I think it turned out well.

It’s a shame that the color-combo of red and green is so dominated by Christmas, as I think those are two gorgeous colors together. This variation on those colors is dedicated to my high school Calculus teacher, who once told us about an acid-flashback he had after drinking a cherry soda when he was in Alabama marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

More jewelry in a later post (if I survive Casa Bonita, that is).

Present Wrapping the Classy Way

This year I tried to get a fancy with my present wrapping – a production of sparkle paper, rubber stamps, glue and, on occasion, a limb or two (usually when I’d gone and glued it to the sparkle paper). However, it’s easy for creativity to go awry, and it behooves us all to remember that a different idea does not always equal a good idea. To whit, I offer the following:

The following is an actual conversation that took place between the minutes of 2:43 and 2:54 (with some creative license because it’s funnier that way). Names have been changed to protect the innocent (and because it’s funnier that way).

Katie: Hello?

Gustav Schnickelfritz: Hey, I have a question about wrapping presents.

K: Certainly, good sir. How can I help?

G.S.: I hate wrapping presents. Paper’s annoying and I have no other use for it, and I always end up walking around with a bow stuck to my butt for two hours before anyone tells me it’s there. And gift bags are a waste of space, and were obviously invented by the evil alliance between Band-Aids and the tissue paper industry because they’re never the right size and you either get a paper cut trying to cram presents into a bag that’s too small or you have to fill up all the wasted space with tissue paper. So…would it be okay for me to wrap presents in bed sheets or a t-shirt because that’s more eco-friendly?

K: If the sheets/shirt are new and part of the present, sure. If you’re going to pull the top sheet off your bed, throw all the presents into a bundle in the middle, walk into the house like Santa on his way to the laundromat, dump the presents in the middle of the floor and then take the sheet back…no.

G.S.: I’d grab a clean one from the closet. It’s green that way!

K: (in her head:  It’s green because of the mildew growing on the dirty sheets.) You’re a stingy one, Mr. Grinch.

G.S.: Fine. I’ll go to Target and get gift bags.

K: Don’t forget the Band Aids and tissue paper. I like pink!