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There are some absolutely beautiful blogs out there for artists, crafters and DIYers. This is not one of those blogs.

Star Wars Eggs

Yesterday, my husband and I decided to color Easter eggs. Hang on… Yesterday, I decided DUG and I should color Easter eggs, and when I was bouncing up and down in front of Michael’s shouting ‘oooh, can we?!’ and ‘let’s!’ DUG smiled and said ‘sure.’

You see, I was thinking of this compelling blog post on Decor8 by the incredibly talented artist, Leslie Shewring. I recently had the pleasure of taking an inspiring weekend class led by Leslie and Holly Becker of Decor8, and I’m still a little bit star/awe-struck. And so I thought, for just a moment, that I could make eggs this heart-breakingly beautiful and then have this fabulous companion blog post with amazing pictures. But, of course, my crafting never looks like Leslie’s crafting.

First off, we step into Michael’s and after an interminable amount of time (during which I’m feeling guilty since poor DUG is waiting ever so patiently, with the simplest and most disheartening answer in hand, a PAAS dye kit) I have unshelved and reshelved hundreds of dollars worth of glitter and paints. In the enormous line to pay, just as we are getting to the front, I have a change of heart and DUG lets me run back to the glitter aisle for a swap. Whoo. Panic attack averted. As we go down the escalator I tell DUG how proud I am that I only spent $14 and change and have the correct supplies we need to communicate my artistic vision, STAR WARS EASTER EGGS. Did you know there is a Star Wars color scheme? There totally is! And it’s primary colors! I am ready!

This is the first thing my husband has heard me say in the last 45 minutes because it started with Star Wars. That and we were finally reaching the fresh air from the recirculated air of the craft store.

So we get home and I go get 2 cartons of eggs. One to prick with a pin and blow out, because I still think I’m going to make eggs like Leslie’s. And one to hard boil and let DUG handle in his big mitts to paint like Star Wars characters. He’s still yessing me at this point. But it’s ridiculous that he would doubt our ability to make this happen since we totally made an x-wing fighter out of gingerbread for Christmas! On Hoth. And DUG made this crazy, incredible Wampa without any assistance from me.

x-wing gingerbread house

Afternoon Interlude: Enter Tricia with a 3rd carton of eggs. Little Miss A (minus 1 tooth) ripped open the PAAS kit, and we mixed all the colors and dyed a dozen eggs super quick. By the way, this stuff is way more fun to do with a 5-year-old. You should get one. I’ve got dibs on A, so find your own. (I’ve also got dibs on Chase.)

 

sweet little ones

Now, at this point, I’m realizing, there is little chance of my eggs, or my photos, looking anywhere near as professional as Leslie’s. How do you people keep your crafting spaces looking like that? So pristine like? Mine looks like a tornado and a pterodactyl flew through. Seriously.

Mess!

This is not going well. Enter, self doubt. Enter, tequila. And as I’m getting light-headed from blowing the center out of the eggs (yeh – we’ll talk about that another time), I get another ill-advised wave of positivity. I can totally do this. We can totally do this. Bring on the googly eyes!

Mess!

And the rest was totally fun and normal! If decorating eggs inspired by Star Wars characters can be construed as normal. I had some moments of genius: brown glitter Chewbacca fur and 1-eyed R2D2. And some moments of failure: Yoda (hangs head in shame, she does). And I think Dug had huge wins with Emperor Palpatine and his guards. I was having so much fun, that as I stood on the terrace with my Spray Mount, patting myself on the back for coming up with the best method for the fixative coating for glitter, I never even cared that I was covering my whole hand in adhesive.

This crap would never happen to Leslie Shewring.

So it’s 24 hours later and my left hand is still covered shmutz. Last night it was like I was a human version of one of those sticky goo hand swatters you had as a kid, the kind you used to grab papers and such from a far. The kind that would get covered with lint and tissue and detritus from whatever it touched. Yeh. My hand has accumulated a fine coating of dust and lint and tissue fiber – so along with the already present glitter and adhesive, it’s fuzzy. And still sticky.

My husband absolutely refused to believe that the shit wouldn’t come off. He was all, ‘Did you wash your hands?!’ And I’m all, ‘Snap! Genius idea!’ as if I hadn’t already washed my hands like 10 times. Two of those times with straight rubbing alcohol. And when he could no longer stand my whining about my fingers sticking together and my not being able to knit because every piece of fabric was adhering to my skin, he took me to the bathroom and washed my hands for the 11th time. You know. To show me how it’s done. Seriously.

When was the last time you had your hand washed for you? It’s totally weird and nostalgic and I couldn’t stop laughing. Mostly because I was right. And really that’s all that matters. Being right. It didn’t make a difference how hard he scrubbed, and then as the water got hotter, my hands just got stickier. And I laughed harder. So then he just started scratching at the Chewbacca-colored, glitter-covered areas with his big man hands and I laughed even harder. But this time really to cover up the suffering.

Star Wars EggsJust so you know, for future, in case you’re ever making a glitter Chewbacca egg, these are the directions on the can of Spray Mount for skin contact: Immediately flush skin with large amounts of water. Get medical attention.

So, just to be clear… Using your teeth to scrape off the adhesive is frowned upon?

Also, to be clear… I’ve run out of tequila.

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Meet Oscar Wild.  Get it?  Oscar because he’s green and sort of in a trash receptacle and Wild because, well, it’s a pun, see?  I got this super incredible awesome gift from Trish and fam for my birthday. She might have heard me mention I LOVE TERARARARARIUMS. Maybe once or twice.

Oscar Wild is already a member of the family, firmly entrenched in our new digs. As you may know, we recently moved to an apartment building. We have all sorts of fancy, incredible things like a concierge, a pool, floor to ceiling windows, a million neighbors who only know Chewie’s name and not mine, toddlers living upstairs, etcetera, etcetera. Our first dinner guests were Trish and family, including of course, Little Miss A.  She’s quite the Miss now that she’s 5.

Last night, when I was thanking Trish for the 5th time over text for my incredible amazing gift, it kind of went like this:

T Happy birthday, love Chase {visualize adorable 6-month-old toe grabbing diaper pic}

M YAY!!!! {visualize Instagram terrarium photo complete w big pink bow}

T Love A too!! {visualize Chase and A smooshed face photo}

T Little Miss A thinks you live in a hotel.

M Oh. Yes? Like rich people. Who live at The New York Palace? Or poor people. Who live at sleazy motels. Like hookers?

T Like Eloise… Less like Pretty Woman.

{ummm… in case you didn’t know, because you were never a 5-year-old girl, Eloise lives at The Plaza, people!!}

M Rich people it is! Rich FUN people even better! Hug her for me!

You have to be amazed by the crazy awesome absolute logic of the 5-year-old set. One of my favorite things is hearing about the way little ones view the world. And girlfriend will tell me if my makeup’s good too.  She does not mess around.

You can meet A here when she was brand new and we attempted my first baby shoot.

Here when she helps me learn high key lighting with Gnome Chomsky as her Stand-in.

Here when she contemplates The Meaning of Life.

Or most recently here when we had some fun at the beach in anticipation of her new baby brother.

So back to my uh-mazing terrarium. Oscar Wild. I’m trying out different resting places for him, but it doesn’t really matter because I’m always moving stuff around anyway. And because I have very limited surface area in my small-ish apartment, AT THE PLAZA, Trish was thoughtful enough to choose a terrarium large enough to be placed on the floor if desired. Here Oscar’s taken over the table previously occupied by DUG’s satellite radio contraption, so now Howard is on the floor. And Hedwig has relocated to join Mr. Wild.

Oscar Wild

This blog does not pretend to be a design blog, but for all you design-y creatives who come here, I’ll give credit where credit is due, possibly just this once.

The prints are from Sharon Montrose’s Animal Print Shop – I love love love her. I don’t know her personally, but when I daydream about who I want to be when I grow up, I go to her site among others. I gave them to DUG one Valentine’s Day; his are Donkey and Pig.  Mine are Fancy Cat and Bunny.

Hedwig was Harry Potter’s. I caught him when he got Avada Kedarvad and had him taxidermied after he fell from Hagrid’s motorbike… Fine. He’s from Home Goods.

Oscar Wild, the terrarium if you haven’t been paying attention, is from Fleurescent in Milford, via a friend who always manages to find the most incredible gifts.

The reclaimed railroad tie table is from a Viva Terra set, a hand-me-down from someone who didn’t need that size.

In the photo up top, well, Chewbacca, the grumpiest puppy around, is a one of a kind.  I do not put him in every photo.  He follows me around and demands to sit in my lap. When I am not sitting he will settle to be in my direct line of vision. Which is also my camera’s line of vision. As a result, he is in almost every photo of my house.

The blanket is Donna Karan. A wedding gift.

And the chair was my Grandmother Eleanor’s and I had it recovered in animal print and silk.

Whoo. That was rather ambitions. I’m going to make a tequila sunrise now…

 

We are still not fully unpacked. But as of the big push we made this past weekend, we have retrieved all of the gnomes. Which is good because I was tired of hearing them yelling and grumbling at me from random boxes.

 

Let me not bore you with my New Year’s resolution/goals/adventures, which are plenty… and include brushing up on my Spanish.  See, already I am boring you.  Dug’s list is much more exciting as it includes traveling somewhere (I can’t remember where exactly) into space with Chewie and me in the Millennium Falcon…

photo booth

I’d like to just say thank you.  To all of you.  And to God and the Universe, for this incredible year we’ve had here at Sequined Asphault Studio.  May you all be blessed with love and good fortune in the year to come.  I’m excited to see what’s in store for us all.

 

I am an avid reader. Have been my whole life.

*Points to Goodreads app over yonder left.  Feel free to friend me.  I also love to see what other people are reading.  See how I’m 30 years old on my profile. wink wink *

Recently I have rediscovered the library.  Did you know there are still libraries?  Where you can get books?  Actual books.  Made of paper.  Torn from murdered trees.  Sure, you don’t need the Dewey Decimal System for the card catalog – which is a total disappointment for a nerd like me btw because I had a lot of fun learning about that in school and I love the way the card catalog smelled, mmmmm.  The catalog on the computer is fine though because I can put books on hold from home my phone and renew books from home oh, anywhere – that’s the really great part because I’m one who is generally mired in late fines of all sorts.  Trivialities.

So, I hopped around different libraries in my realm, and the Main Branch of the Fairfield Public Library is my first string (look DUG, sport!) for best all-around performance, based on quantity and quality of selection, best climate control, best lighting, and highest marks for people leaving me the fuck alone.  (oops, too much caffiene today)  I even attended a free small business seminar there one night, which I thought was a great idea, but the guy talked for so long that his usefulness expired when my eyes glazed over and I could no longer hear him over my growling stomach.

someecards.com

(If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a moderate hand-raiser and a complete over-achiever.  Case in point, today CawfeeGuy sent me this.)

Well, since we have such a good relationship, my library and I, that is, I decided to take things to the next level.  Yes, folks, I friended Fairfield Public Library on Facebook.*

And you know what?  They’ve been good to me.  They did not warn me in advance of yesterday’s earthquake.  And I think they feel pretty bad about it.  Because today they’ve let me know that Hurricane Irene is coming.  And they’ve given me all sorts of handy tips about preparing to possibly evacuate my home.  And that maybe the water levels of my coastal town will be up to 8 feet over normal tide levels.  *sigh*  I mean, that’s a good Facebook friend.  Not one of those stalkers or random commenter who hijack your status updates to have full-on conversations with other people on your status – take it to your own page, Mister.  I mean, next level would be actually coming over to pack up my shit and/or prep that emergency kit whose importance they tout but know I am never ever going to prepare on my own because, well, if I need that emergency kit I’m going to have way bigger problems than not having that emergency kit.

So, Fairfield Public Library, I thank you.  And while I’m an over-achiever for certain things, I am an under-achiever when it comes to Hurricane Irene.  I take your concern for me under advisement, and as a result I will stock my fridge from the Fairfield Cheese Shop, and when I go to sleep, I will leave on my engagement ring.  Because, in the case I have to run from the rising tides, I am not going anywhere without that rock (and Chewie) (and possible some Red Hawk).  Oh, look!  Seems I have an emergency kit and I didn’t even know it!

*Speaking of libraries, and because this is technically a photoblog,  I give you these crappy iPhone photos of one of my other favorite local libraries, the Pequot Library in Southport, CT.  They clearly don’t have enough money to keep this place in the condition this charming building deserves, but they do their darndest trying.  There are so many magical moments in this building and here are a humble few.

Pequot Library

Pequot Library

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