happy birthday, monsieur

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cute enough…

… to be a fashion blogger? Maybe. We’ll see how long I can keep this up. Who knew a hair cut could be so inspiring?

Happy Easter and such.

 

Pardon my clothes being flung every which way. Early morning. You understand, don’t you?

 

I love my new hair. So easy.

P.S. My shingles episode is starting to go away, but I’m still having a little pain and starting to get ITCHY! And I’m getting some pain on the left side of my face and the middle of the left side of my back. But nothing I’m really too concerned about. We’ll see how the rest of the week goes.

visions of sugarplums and delusions of grandeur

via anyonecanquilt.typepad.com

I'm ready to be a little bit more girly. It's the holiday season, and that just brings out the dreams of baking cookies, watching classic Christmas movies like Miracle on 34th Street and Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, and pretending to be the best 50's housewife ever, as anti-feminist as that last bit may sound. All this talk about the holidays and family has me wanting to snuggle up next to a fire with a cup of hot chocolate and a quilt. 

A quilt that I don't have. 

A quilt that I want to make. 

Too bad I don't know the first thing about quilting...

via anyonecanquilt.typepad.com

via anyonecanquilt.typepad.com

Who are you kidding, Mel?! You don't have time for this! You don't even know your way around a sewing machine that well anymore! (Yes, at one point, like in 5th grade, it was a damn good seamstress. As good as a 5th grader could get, I guess.)

via housewrenstudio.typepad.com

Maybe embroidery. I can do that, right?

via housewrenstudio.typepad.com

Even if my embroidery would be something more like this? 

via craftycrafty.tv

Probably not as cute as little flowers and houses, but more me. Geeky, internet-lovin' me.

Good luck to those that are taking finals, like me!

cotton candy dream

Omg, I am so invisible. I just got stepped on, pushed into a wall, and hit with a binder all in less than 5 minutes. My roommate says it's because I'm short. I think I've got an Invisibility Cloak that never comes off. Explains why I don't have a boyfriend!

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Hey, does anyone mind if I just leave school to live in one of these paintings by Will Cotton and dive head first into a sugar coma? Really? Kthnxbi.









Katy Perry, anyone? Will Cotton was actually the Art Director for her video, California Gurls, and did the cover art for the album Teenage Dream.

Just some current thoughts of the day. School's ok. I'm going to pick up an application for the Visualization program tomorrow so I can change my major!! I'm kind of nervous about it. And with that, I'm off to Intro to Literature!

taking a day

(because, obviously, being on summer vacation isn't enough)

For a nineteen year old, I have some serious body pain issues.

When I was about 16, I started having back problems. Like bad, debilitating back problems. I could hardly run and even walking was a burden. I went to physical therapy and used a lot of ibprofen and IcyHot and it helped. For a few years. Last year the pain came back. So I went to the doctor. X-ray time. I laugh. My back looked like an S. I wish I had that X-ray to show you. Anyway, he prescribed a muscle relaxer because he thought a spasm was causing the tissue to pull my spine to one side. Again, that worked for a while. Since then, it's come back with a vengeance, never letting me be fully comfortable.

When I was 17, I jammed my right wrist while trying to snowboard. More X-rays. Nothing broken. Unfortunately my wrist never felt quite right after that.

Today, at 10:30, I went to a myopractic therapist, which is like a chiropractor, but for your muscles and ligaments, but they aren't rough like chiropractors who yank and twist. He told me right when I walked in that he saw I had a problem with my hips and I was way too young to be having these problems. He said the likely cause of my pain was a rotated pelvis. Your body is supposed to be straight up and down for the most part. My hips were rotated to the right, throwing lots of stuff out of whack, like making my right leg shorter than my left, moving my spine. So he got to work, rotating my legs and arms and pushing and tugging a little. He rotated my hips and pulled them, and I could instantly tell that they were better.

He got to my hands and wrists, starting with the left one. He asked me which one I jammed and I told him the right. He laughed because the left one was really messed up too. When he got to the right one, it popped really loudly and hurt just a little bit, but oh baby, does it feel a hundred times better than it did before.

Among other things that were jacked up: right knee, collar bones, jawbone, right elbow, an intestine valve, my neck, and of all things, my uterus was moved over to my left side. Yeah. At least I have great abs!

So I had a lot of stuff to do today, but I'm going to take it easy and chill so I don't screw up what was just fixed.

And I'll leave you with a pretty picture. Look what I finished yesterday!!






Now I just need to actually hang it!

art & copy

When I got onto Netflix about two hours ago, I thought I was going to be watching Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. But, the movie gods smiled upon me and granted me a long desired wish via my Instant Queue and made my night. Ask my roommate.

I've been waiting for the documentary for about 6 months, since I first saw the (ironic) ad for it on the internet. I don't even remember how I found it, actually. My English prof assigned a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Niel Postman about the proliferation of the image and pictures dominating the written word and how the computer and television are "taking over the world." Pretty grim stuff, but so interesting. Definitely a recommended nonfiction read. Anyway, when I researching for topics that were related to some of the subjects mentioned in the book for a paper, I immediately thought of advertisement. The epitome of the short, image saturated communication media. My art teacher during my senior year worked in advertising before she became a teacher, and we actually did a project that involved making a company identity and making an advertisement for it. And when I stumbled across this documentary, I knew I had to watch it. Unfortunately at the time, it was only screening in certain cities, none of them remotely close to where I get at it. 

Advertising it just one of the most interesting phenomena. It's this message that a bunch of people create, then send out into space, the world, and hope for a response. Too bad a lot the advertising done these days is complete shit, pardon my language. There are really only a few that I like. Those funny Intel commercials, because I can personally relate to that, I think, and those new tampon commercials that point out how stupid tampon commercials can be. That's pretty much it. It's such a shame because an ad can be so much more than that. Think about it. Apple's "Think Different." Nike's "Just Do It." Both of those grew into so much more than an ad. They were revolutionary and became mantras to live by. It's an amazing thing to think about.

"The frightening and most difficult thing about being what somebody calls a creative person is that you have absolutely no idea where any of your thoughts come from, really. And especially you don't have any idea about where they're going to come from tomorrow." - Hal Riney (1932-2008)

You will be enlightened. And if not, at least you will have seen some good ads instead of the crap that's on TV.

spontaneity

......So......

I've had this craving for truffles since at least Monday.

And then I watched "Julie & Julia" today.

Inspired? Definitely. Mmmm.... truffles.
Here they are:

They may seem daunting and intimidating, but they are certainly far from it.
Here's the recipe I used: {link}
I find irony in the URL address considering my major.

And I definitely freaked out when I saw this in Julie & Julia:

When I went to Paris, this was Samantha's must-stop-and-browse places (find her in my sidebar!). Trust me, it was so worth it!!!

That's my shot of the inside. Books from top to bottom in that place. And if you stand in that doorway facing out, you get a spectacular view of Notre Dame. And it's English-speaking. Such a relief!

*ani-r

a feature

One of my favorite digital artists goes by *ani-r on DeviantArt.com. If you watch my Inspiration photostream long enough, you'll see some of her peices.

What I love about her art is the intense colors, like you could probably never see in the real world. Perhaps, if you're lucky, you might glimpse them in a sunset or in the ocean or if the sun catches an object in just the right way.
Just look at the brightness of this girl's dress near the stairs and how it actually reflects all the way to the wall. The colors remind me of a goldfish, but so much more saturated.

And everything is perfectly messy. In a way that seems to be careful, but not really (if that makes any sense...). Colors are haphazardly layered and smeared together, but in a way that look natural. Lines don't really end where they are "supposed to but it just looks like it was meant to end there. The stringiness of the lines, their flowiness, the high contrast, the texture, it all makes every piece she does, whether it be an hour long speed paint or a piece that took 2 or 3 weeks. In the above painting, I love this water making it's way down and around in the stream. You can distinctly see the rocks it flows around. It also looks very luminescent, like it's creating its own light.

I also love her exotic landscapes. Again, something you could only dream of. The outline of that one rock face is what first caught me about this piece. It's just beautiful, like a sunrise in the desert.

Look at that blue! The only place I've seen anywhere close to that same color is the deepest part of the ocean with the brightest sun shining down. It seems really intense, but looks perfect in the piece.

Hope you all enjoyed a little eye-candy.
Want to see more, you say? Check her out at http://ani-r.deviantart.com/

sketching

image via

I love these. Just leaves, nothing else. Nobody thinks of doing just the foliage, even though it's just as beautiful as the flower.

On a little side note, I really need to get back into sketching regularly. It makes me sad that I let it go this long. Drawing is a passion of mine and I've just let it fall away. Shame on me!

Women's Day

Happy Women's Day!

Give thanks to the women in your life and those that came before you.

My favorite women in history

Firsts
Clara Barton - founder of the International Red Cross
Pearl S. Buck - First American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Good Earth
Marie Curie - First woman to win the Nobel Prize
Amelia Earhart - First female aviator to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean
Anna Robertson Brown Lindsay - First woman to earn a doctorate
Sandra Day O'Conner - First woman to serve on the Supreme Court
Sally Ride - First woman in space
Margaret Thatcher -  First female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Activists
Susan B. Anthony - Activist
Rosa Parks - Civil rights activist
Coretta Scott King - Activist and wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Anne Frank - Young girl remembered for her bravery

The Arts

Grace Kelly - Actress and Princess of Monaco

Ingrid Bergman - Actress of acclaim

Jean Harlow - Actress

Bette Davis - Actress

Audrey Hepburn - Actress and activist

Frida Khalo- Artist

Emily Dickinson - Poet

Harriet Beecher Stowe - Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Jane Austen - Author of many beloved books

Mary Shelley - Author of Frakenstein

Mary Cassatt - Artist

Artemisia Gentileschi - Artist

Georgia O'Keefe - Artist

Catherine De'Medici - Patron of the arts in Italian Renaissance

Politics

Queen Elizabeth I - Influential, powerful Queen of England

Princess Diana of Wales - Remembered for her activism and kindness

Eleanor Roosevelt - Civil rights activist and First Lady of the United States during the Great Depression

Laura Bush - First Lady and advocate for children and reading

Michelle Obama - Advocate for American children and First Lady

teamwork ftw!

Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders "Excuses" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

One of the coolest I've seen in a long time. Amazing.

quite a week...

Judith Slaying Holofernes
An almost perfect representation of how I am feeling right now. 

Love for
Artemisia Gentileschi
the Original feminist.

Sorry, this just came up on my Art of the Day and I though it appropriate for the mood I am in. Today has not been a good day for me... More than just today. This whole week. And it's is only Wednesday.

Wish me luck on my Calculus test and Physics test because I will surely and desperately need it.

"Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream. "

 Sorry for my long absence. School. It's getting ridiculous again. I'll try harder to stay on top of things!

 

I think most people know about my strange obsession with orchestral soundtracks. I've got lots. And I picked this one up yesterday from Walmart. Delicious. Lot's of light strings, marimbas, choir. Very ethereal and completely other worldly. Perfect for studying!

P.S. It has been a very long time since I left a theater so pleased with a movie. Avatar is simply genius in just about every way. Groundbreaking.

Favorite song: The Bioluminescence Of The Night

James Horner also did the music for Titanic. It's got the same Celtic piccolo/flute influence that Horner is known for, but with touches of tribal and even some electric synth thrown in. It's simply gorgeous. I really recommend it if you are into film scores.

I May Be Crazy, But I'm Moving to Oregon Someday

It's been raining.

I love the rain.

I love the atmosphere; cozy, romantic and safe and dark. I love the sound; asymmetrically rhythmic and calming.

I'm getting a shower like this just to turn it on and sit there, listening.

I guess if I had that, I could live in Arizona if I wanted.

...one of my home priorities is a badass bathroom.

Sorry to ruin a poetic post.

And It Was All Yellow

Tumblr Makeover
Ummm... you should check out my Tumblr blog now... It's super YELLOW!!! Me gusta mucho.

Yeah... I'm a tad bit bored. And I really should be cleaning my room up right now because it is an absolute mess and I'm expecting people tomorrow. Woo hoo.
But just felt like redoing my Tumblr while listening to Coldplay. Ironically or serendipitously, whichever you prefer, I chose the color yellow before the song even came on...

P.S. If you are wondering why I've got two blogs, I don't really know why... I've been thinking about turning one into a sketch blog with photos and drawings and artsy stuff and the other will just be cute stuff....? It's a work in progress.

Creativity

Found at random on the web

I love stuff like this!!!

Ok, ok, ok,  please check this out! It's amazing! I love creative people!!!

The Daily Haiku

WHOOP!

**I will preface this post with an apology. It has been a while since I've posted and I've been super busy, so please forgive me for this post if it turns out to be uber long. I've got a lot to tell you.

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First and foremost, a huge thank you to Sara-Jane for bestowing upon me the  

"Brighten My Day"

award! Whoop! I'm honored.

The rules...
Name 10 things that make me happy
Pass it on to 10 blogs that brighten my day

I will try my best! 

1. Hot chocolate and a warm bath with relaxing music.

 

2. Concept art for Disney-Pixar movies. I would kill for one of these books. 

3. A pair of really good-fitting, comfortable jeans. Thank you American Eagle. The last pair I bought from you fit both of these requirements wonderfully!

4. A clean, uncluttered room. I need to get on that...

5.That first big stretch when you get out of bed in the morning that energizes you. Amazing.

6.Being creative and my imagination.

7. Music. Any and all kinds. Well, except almost anything played on the popular hit station. Like Austin's KISS FM or College Station's Candy 95.

8. Team 17 minus Adam, plus Nathan! Well, Nathan is not in this picture. Daniel, me, and Javi at a Quelf party. Without these guys, I would have lost my mind months ago because of engineering! They rock my world!!!!

9. Sleep. Did not get enough of that this semester. I'm going to try harder next term to get more because I know I'm a better person when I've slept for 8 hours.

10. Smiles and laughter. Always the best. Being around happy people makes me happy.

Blogs that make my day brighter: 

Rae Gabrielle

Shelby: College Life Rantings
and I'm now going to use a cop-out and tell everyone else to do it because it's fun to think about things that make you happy! Get in the holiday mood!!

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So, the personal life has been a little crazy. Jacob and I ended. Daniel and I began. I'll tell you more in person if I know you. ;) And I'm really only posting this so NOBODY ELSE can accuse me for not telling them about my life!!! I've had it!

I'm kidding. It's nice to know that people are curious and concerned and care about what's going on.

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CHRISTMAS IS ONLY 5 DAYS AWAY!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!

What are you wishing for?

My list consists of Daisy by Marc Jacobs perfume, a yoga mat and a bag for it, a Jane Austen anthology, an art book of any kind, Glee Soundtrack Vol. 2, a Chi Low EMF Hairdryer, world peace, possibly a Kindle or Sony E-Reader

... and a New Year's Eve kiss. I'm hopeless, I know!

We shall see... I'm just excited to be home and with my family, out of school. No more tests or homework or projects to worry about. No more horrible food. Although I do miss my roomies and my friends terribly. But it is so nice to sleep in my own bed and have a car. And knowing that any food I want is in the pantry!

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 And a very happy birthday to my mother! It was actually yesterday but better late than never!!
I guess that's it for now! Have wonderful holidays and feel the love!!! 

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HOLY MOTHER EFF!!!
One of my favorite artists started following me on Tumblr!! Please check out her stuff!!!
Lois Van Baarle
I'm in total shock right now. Excuse me while I get a paper bag...