30…31

As if 2011 didn’t already come too soon, January also had to end without fair-enough warning. At least I’ve kept busy. And there’s enough happening in my February to keep me so super-excited as to disregard the annoying speed with which January sped by. Happenings such as…

- going to a home basketball game for my brother’s team this coming Friday

- teaching a design class to some ladies in my church

- finishing up some sewing/design projects that currently loom over my head

- visiting my sister in the blustery state of Wisconsin

- missions month at our church, complete with missionaries and sure-to-be-great messages

- anti-Valentine’s Day celebrations

- after-Valentine’s Day chocolate sales

- pending leaps and bounds of progress on my sewing website

- starting an internship with the super-cool and lovable fashion designer, Pamela Ptak

- Oh, did I mention visiting my sister in Wisconsin?

It’s a lot to cram into the shortest month of the year. But I’m gonna make it work.

 

I admit…

…I’m a bit infatuated. Over the past months and years, I’ve heard people talk about Etsy. I finally got around to looking at the Etsy site about 3 months ago. I know, I’m a bit slow. And now I can’t stop looking at it. The night I finally checked it out, I seriously spent about 4 hours perusing. It made my creative side go absolutely crazy! I am signed up for their daily “Etsy Finds” email. Every day. New amazing creativity. I’m hooked.

Hast thou a hankering for unique clothing designs? (Yes, I do.) Look no further! Etsy holds hundreds,  if not thousands, of unique handmade garments by artists around the world! Here are some  of my favorites for today. They inspire me so. If I had the money, I’d probably buy them all in every color. Maybe. But since I have expertise instead of money, I’ll probably just end up making similar patterns and maybe one day making the actual wearable garment.

Hast thou a yen for personalized jewelry? (Yes, I do.) Look no further! Etsy has it all! From jewelry sellers who can personalize jewelry for you, to jewelry supplies sellers who can sell you stuff so you can personalize it yourself. I had jewelry-making tools from a 3D design class I took a few semesters ago, so it’s only natural for me to want to get more use out of them than just a good grade in my past. Here are things that currently captivate my fancy.

Hast thou favorite things that thou thinkest art favorite to thee alone? (Yes, I do.) You are not alone! It is practically guaranteed that *someone* is selling something on Etsy that resonates with that exact favoritism! It’s truly a beautiful network of eccentric artists who create wondrous things that are for sale to the common people. No one can be artsy in every area of creativity, so Etsy will connect you with people who are artsy in ways you never could be. I want these.

Hast thou a hunger for tasty and yet artistic delicacies? (Yes, I do.) Look no further! Artists on Etsy do not limit themselves to crafts that will last a lifetime! Buy cupcakes! Buy chocolates! Buy supplies to make your own! And then share with me. Especially if you buy any of these.

The best part about Etsy (in my opinion) is that almost everyone selling stuff on there made it themselves. They care about their product. They can and will create something to meet your creative needs. This is unlike eBay or Amazon, where people are trying to “get rid of” things that they no longer want or need.

Etsy is a never-ending art fair full of succulent goodies. Grab some cotton candy and peruse its venues.

(Start with my favorite shops: Brookish, dazeychic, and LoveToLoveYou.)

To whomever may be concerned with any copyright issues with my posting of these photographs. Yes, you people do exist. I post these pictures, NOT for my own profit, but so that those viewing this blog will be tempted to buy the items, resulting in profit for the person to whom the picture belongs. This is free advertising. And I could not be more tickled to be able to promote these wondrous products.

just the facts

I’m always amused by my blog stats. Seeing the line graph of hits per day excites the mathematical side of me. And it’s fun to see which totally random auto websites are sending me spammish business. But the search terms are the best. Who really searches for these things? And for what purpose? And did my blog satisfy their pondering?

“how to make elephant”

“fun jacket lining boy”

“face of a mad man”

“your eyebrows are so amazing mountain”

“how to spell achoo”

“achoo…blame it on the rain!!”

“beef slaughter”

“emoticons with a nose are weird”

“oldest working slaughter house”

“квадратная кружка” <— True story. This is in Russian…something to do with a square mug.

“blank square pillows”

The absolutely most popular search that brings viewers to my blog is “Lindt,” leading them to this post from almost two years ago. I was curious to see how close to the top of the search results my blog currently is for “Lindt,” but I got tired of looking after scanning through six pages of results. So I don’t know how long ago it was that my blog was a top result for “Lindt.”

But my blog is the eighth result in a Google search for “achoo.” This could be classified as exciting!

My most popular post of all time is “Of postage stamps and politics,” which is from many, many searches for “trumploid,” which isn’t even a word. But at least I’m not the only one who thought it was spelled that way. See? I’m not the only one thus convoluted.

Fact: This entire post was written in a frenzy of procrastination.

The Perfect Cookie

“I demand the perfect cookie! Serve it upon a silver tray. It must be the perfect cookie, fit for a king in every way! Not too chewy, not too crunchy, not too big, and not too small. If it’s not the perfect cookie, it will never do at all!!”

Those who are well-versed in the clever songs of Patch the Pirate will recognize this song from Harold the King, of which recording I own the cassette. In the song, King Harold proceeds to tell how many chocolate chips are required to make a cookie absolutely perfect and worthy of a king. At least that is how I recall the song going. I no longer have a cassette player and therefore cannot listen to the song and correct my possibly-misled memory of the song.

This post was actually not intended to be about a cookie, perfect or imperfect.

It’s about a salad.

(commence unpaid commercial) At Panera Bread, they are currently serving a plate of summer freshness, nutty goodness, and delectable crispness. They are calling it their Strawberry Poppyseed Chicken Salad. Not very creative if you ask me. But you didn’t ask and neither did they. If I was going to name it, I would call it the Spangled Pollo Fruit Salad. Not that much more creative, but I’m in the mood to use the word “spangled” so I think it’s quite the proper name for the salad. Which is quite the perfect salad. Strawberries, blueberries, pecans, pineapple, lettuce of course, mandarin oranges, delightfully-seasoned chicken, and a tastebud-tantalizing poppyseed dressing.

You know when you are eating a salad and you eat a good bite? I mean with some foods, every bite tastes a little different than the last. Maybe better, maybe not better. Salads are one of those foods. One bite has lettuce and a blueberry and you swipe it through the pool of dressing. The next bite is mandarin orange, strawberry, and lettuce balanced precariously on a pecan. Each bite tastes so unique. Not uncommon is the cry, “That was a good bite!”

Go to Panera Bread! Have lots of good bites of their Spangled Pollo Fruit Salad! But don’t call it that, for thou shalt confuse them profoundly.

one of THEM! (gasp)

Yes, my dear and loyal readers, this is one of *those* posts – those totally random and disjointed ones. Sometimes I blog with purpose; other times it is a menagerie of dogs, pigs, ducks, and monkeys. This would also be a menagerie except for the fact that it does not reference any animals. So I will can only vouch for its arbitrariness. Which it invariably contains.

I am pleased to announce to you that I have broadened my vocabulary horizons. I now receive daily words delivered via Twitter to my phone, a delightful link from my Twitter feed leads me to another daily word, my sister has given me a book chock-full of words, and my usual inlet of words has remained at a constant on my homepage as a feed from dictionary.com. So now most of my conversarions are interrupted with long pauses as I rack my brain in quest of “that new word I just learned that means what I’m trying to say.” I have a long way to go. ;-)

I have a picture for you. As soon as I saw it, I thought of you (whoever you may be, you’ve been sufficiently thought of for today). Such thoughts compelled me to post it.

I kid not. I speak not in jest. Nor do I josh. This is the puzzle I was given and expected to solve in order to confirm that I am a person and not a spamming computer. I am a person. I am not a spamming computer. However, it shames me to admit that I could not solve it. So I did the cowardly thing and refreshed the page. But not before I took a screen shot so I could chortle at it later.

And the last tangent I am going to go off on today (I think) is in regards to life’s happiness-bestowing substance, of which there can be no accusation of substance abuse should you ever manage to overdose on it. Oh look – another picture or three!! How awesome is that?

     

My mouth is watering. In a very extreme way. At least I have the leisure of having this chocolate sitting next to me, unlike you, poor deprived soul that thou art. For the first two pictures, the brands of chocolate are as follows, top to bottom of stack: Lindt Intense Dark (70% cacao), Ghirardelli Twilight Delight (72% cacao), Dove Dark Chocolate (40-50% cacao – I called the Mars candy hotline for this info), and Nestle’s Perugina Dark Chocolate (less than 70% cacao – I also called Nestle, and they emailed me a response several days later). In the second picture the order is slightly different – Dove, Lindt, Ghirardelli, Perugina – but it’s all still the same chocolate pieces. I could totally diverge here and go on and on for several ages about the thumbs-up, wavering-hand-in-air, and thumbs-down qualities of each of them, as well as interesting things I noticed while sampling these chocolate bars. But for now I will spare you, seeing as you may not be able to handle it. (Pssst! Wipe your drool off the keyboard while no one is looking! I won’t tell anyone that you were salivating over pictures of chocolate.)