still here

I didn't celebrate a gosh- darned thing in April because all of a sudden all my teachers decided they hated us and assigned 800 things each. Due immediately. Also work was crazy, the DMV has a personal vendetta against me and I think my Lyme's disease is coming back. So life kicked my ass this April, and I've developed a pretty constant eye twitch that is either due to stress, lack of sleep or the Lyme's. Or I have a tumor on my spine as WebMD so lovingly suggested. (I have an APP on my PHONE which has taken my inner hypochondriac to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL.)

But this weekend was wonderful- I scored some great finds at a book sale, sat by a river and ate sausages with my friends, did copious amounts of homework, watched this disgusting hematoma blossom during the UFC fight, and ate my body weight in frozen yogurt.

The weather is getting so nice out I feel like I'm a real human again. So in an attempt to keep up my relaxing weekend I'm going to try and take a picture a day. Even if it's something totally boring.  Just one.

Want to join me? I predict that 1. there will be at least ONE Yogoberry photo in there and 2. 90% of them will be edited with Instagram.

Aw shucks

Happy Birthday Donald Duck!

Taro Yashima

I missed a bunch of great holidays this month that I really wanted to celebrate so I'm going to cheat and go out of order. Sue me.

I recently (as in it was due at midnight last night and I started writing it at 7pm) had to write an essay on a children's book illustrator from a list that our teacher gave us. On it of course was Dr. Seuss and a couple other ones you may know but there were a couple who I had never heard of.

I wrote my paper on Taro Yashima, who wrote three Caldecott Honors books like Seashore Story(my fave of the ones I read), Umbrella and Crow Boy.

From Umbrella, found on Flickr

Taro doesn't draw the typical cartoony children's illustrations and I'm not gonna lie, at first I found his stuff a little creepy. (Most people have no faces except a couple of coal black eyes...) but then I read more and read about his life and started to appreciate it. I really recommend you check out Seashore Story, it's a Japanese folk tale and the ocean scenes are gorgeous.

I'll post about some more as the course goes on, but here is a blog that highlights some beautiful illustrations- The Art of Children's Picture Books.


so... HAPPY BELATED CHILDREN'S AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS WEEK!

Chocolate Mint

From we heart it

From we heart it

I know some people hate Chocolate and Mint together. They're weird. I admit the green dye is kind of unnecessary, but as long as it's not a peppermint patty, I'll pretty much shove anything chocolatey and minty in my maw. Especially those tiny little Andes mints, like the ones you get from Olive Garden (another love of mine).

And did you know that Andes makes chocolate chips? And did you know that you can shove some of those suckers into the middle of a yummy chocolate cookie and enlarge your waistline happily? Here's the recipe. I've made it multiple times before and it's easy and delicious.

Happy Chocolate Mint Day!

* How could I forget to mention Thin Mints?? Thin mints in the freezer, thin mints crumbled into vanilla bean ice cream, thin mints by the plastic sleeve. AND cookie season starts IN EIGHT HOURS. (I know this because the girl scout site has a countdown for sick sick people like me.) Now to stalk hunt down FIND some girl scouts near me...

Hedgehog Day!

Look I hate rodents. Their little scurrying feet and nasty fleshy tails make me want to vomit. But hedgehogs break that rule. They're cute, roly-poly and are also known as hedgepigs, furze-pigs and URCHINS. Ugh I love them.

I really enjoy that little "WEEEEEEEEE" pose they seem to make.

Have you ever owned a hedgehog? Are you as madly in love with them as I am? Love them or hate them (How could you possibly though...)


Happy Hedgehog Day!

2011

Favorite things that happened to me in 2010:

[January] Fell in love with Key West
[March] New baby cousin and took a road trip wherein I woke up in a clown named Meat's bed (these stories are not related)
[April] Explored Rock City and ate the best cupcake of my life in Chattanooga
[May] Saw a psychic who told me I'd meet my soul mate next fall, and then piled into a bed with my closest girls while watching a movie about midgets.
[June] My first guest post on another blog!
[July] Hershey Park
[August] Hosted our 2nd annual Pub Golf competition
[September] FINALLY went back to school (I'm on track to get my associates by the end of next year!)
[October] Had my best birthday ever in New Orleans. I was chased by a waiter who invited me to smoke weed with him on his break, went to a prison rodeo and ate Cajun food that made me want to move to Louisiana. Then I came home and had an amazing Chili Cookoff birthday party.
[December] Godson was born! Built a sweet indoor snow fort with my brothers during the Blizzard of '10, and rang in the New Year with vodka cranberry/champagne cocktails and ridiculous attempts at the Michael Jackson Wii game.

2010 was really the year that I stopped and said Wait a minute. WHAT the fuck have I been DOING? I haven't talked much about it but I used to be an idiot who ran around drinking everything but drain cleaner, giving up on anything that got too hard and avoiding looking at myself in the mirror. I was throwing myself headlong through life in the hopes that I'd make it out somewhere OK and maybe in one piece. I was a shitty person and had a shitty life.

Then one day I just sort of woke up. And realized that I was miserable, acting like a tool and that I was deeply tired. So I ended things with someone who had really been toxic and abusive to me for years, moved home to my friends and family and just CHILLED THE EFF OUT.

I truly feel like I'm taking the time to build my cocoon and fall in love with myself again and it's great. I still need to heal and there's more repair needed on the pieces of me that have been shattered or hidden for so long but I'm looking forward to 2011 as another year of scrubbing off the debris and filing away the madness of the past. I don't really believe in resolutions but here are some things that I'm going to work on in this new calendar year.

• Step up my celebrations project. I want to really push myself to be more active in my pursuit to celebrate something everyday.
• More photos that I've taken myself. I have a camera and I need to use it more. This also means I'm going to have to suck up my issues and put up photos of my gorgeous mug on here more often.
• Write at least a sentence a day in my diary/scrapbook thing. I like to paste in little photos or paper scraps from places I've been so it's less scrapbook and more random-book-of-rambles-and-places-I've-been but I want to adapt this DIY idea and write or add SOMETHING daily.
• Random act of kindness once a month. So far I've signed up for a monthly membership for Love Drop, have adopted a soldier through Soldier's Angels (I have to finish putting together my package after I post this!), and I want to leave a little gift card or small present for someone to find once a month a la Secret Agent L.

Do you have any resolutions or were you too hungover from New Year's eve to bother? Either way here's to an exciting year to come!

Goodnight moon

I have some sort of flu-like disease. I refuse to call it the flu because I got that stupid shot this year and if I didn't even make it through DECEMBER without getting it I'll get angry Hulk style and start sending angry e-mails to the clinic that charged me $40 for a month's worth of protection. You don't give me a shot that makes me feel like I got punched in the upper arm for nothing. And then I had to somehow drag my comatose body to school for a final where two guys behind me cheated. They were totally passing around a piece of paper that I can only assume had something other than their Christmas lists on it. Like my friend said- didn't cheat sheets go out in 95? We're in COLLEGE- get over yourself and crack open your books. Also, these guys were two of the ones who were always late and on their cell phones the entire class. PLUS our teacher pretty much reviewed everything on the test INCLUDING giving us the possible essay questions weeks before. Some random guy was the proctor of the test and I had no idea how to tell on them without asking loudly if they could stop rustling that piece of paper with answers on it, so I did nothing. And now I feel really terribly about it. I think I should have said something, and not cared about looking like a tattle-tale. What do you think? What would you have done? Should I still send the professor an e-mail?

ANYWAYS- today is the winter solstice.

Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Which means that the days are going to slowly start to get longer. Hooray! I was too sick to stay conscious during the lunar eclipse last night (did anybody watch it?) and I lit a candle. I'm also going to take some time tonight to write out my winter list of things I want to do. Kind of a WEAK celebration right? Maybe my huge ass mug of tea can count too. That's winter-y no? Anyways let me go ahead and lay back down before I pass out (for some reason every time I bend over or otherwise tip my head forward I momentarily black out, which is really horrifying. And all WebMD is telling me is that it could be anything from acute sinusitis to diabetes. NOT HELPFUL.)

So tell me, did you celebrate the winter solstice or watch the lunar eclipse? And what do you think about my moral dilemma of the day?

Hodgepodge

I'm running on four hours of sleep and have to get ready for a birthday party tonight so here is a condensed version of my latest celebrations.

For National AIDS Awareness Month I got HIV tested. If you're a hypochondriac/ overly dramatic that shit is never fun. Even if you "know" you've been safe or everyone you ever laid a finger on was just tested yesterday that waiting time sucks. Because really you NEVER KNOW and then while you're waiting for them to call back you start having all these nightmarish visions of your entire life changing and oh my GOD WHAT WOULD I DO? HOW WOULD I TELL MY FAMILY? WHY ARE PENISES SO DANGEROUS? (P.S. This is also reason #450 why I'm glad my mother doesn't read this.)
So anyway, I went in to the doctors office to get a physical and various vaccinations and shots (and shell out a good chunk of my bank account), and was introduced to the new HIV testing that only takes 30 minutes. Hooray! Only 30 minutes- surely I can't fit in too many panic attacks during that short window of time right? So I cheerily swiped the little plastic swizzle stick around my mouth and gave it to the nurse (double YAY no blood!) and she reassured me that she was sure I was fine (Which I know she meant to be nice but is that not the stupidest thing to say to someone??) and left. Except too bad first she dialed up a little plastic timer and LEFT ME ALONE IN THE EXAM ROOM WITH THE TICKING.
JESUS woman, why don't you just have a large hourglass with skulls or something? Maybe a raven cackling in the corner? Turn off the lights on the way out so I have nothing but a paper gown and my thoughts to accompany me? I felt like I was in the Telltale Heart. But thankfully once again my worrying was for nothing and all is well. I promptly left and bought myself a cupcake on my way to work.

So go get tested but bring an ipod and some headphones.

I'm probably not going to get to National Pomegranate month. In case I don't- have you tried the Chobani Pomegranate yogurt? It's gross. I wanted it to be delicious but not so much. That's all I got. Any pomegranate things I should know?

National Bundt Pan Day- I've realized I don't actually own a bundt pan. Sad because I wanted to make this.

I'll squish some American Indian Heritage and Peanut Butter Lover's month celebrations in next week. Probably.

Also I have the house to myself this week and you know what I've done so far? Bake 2 batches of brownies, a batch of cookies and looked up recipes for cheddar bacon scones. I'm an animal really is what I'm trying to say.

Also I won an award! I think it's clear that the lovely lady who gave it to me (Cindy over at The Martha Complex) is just nice, because she obviously has never seen my uber fancy outfits of yoga pants and clogs but I'll take it anyway. I'm not tagging anyone else because I'm exceptionally lazy so feel free to steal away and keep the chain going (I never ever felt any guilt at being the one to break those chain letters in middle school either in case you wondering.)

I have to share 7 things about myself so here goes. (I put this at the end for a reason- feel free to skip my chronic oversharing of the day.)

1. I am constantly in a state of dehydration or about to pee on myself. There is pretty much no happy medium. I'll either shank you for a glass of water or pee on your lawn. I'm terrible to take road trips with.

2. I hate organs. Blood, vomit, broken bones etc. don't freak me out (just to be clear they don't exactly DELIGHT me either) but hearing about, seeing, or anything related to things like intestines (I had to close my eyes for a minute just typing that) or those slimy things that reside in your abdomen make me want to die. I used to have to leave biology in high school when we started talking about it- I prefer to imagine that there's just a solid mass of body and not a great pile of smushy delicate things all entangled... OH MY GOD I'm done with this one.

3. I'm fiercely defensive of my curls. I don't straighten it, I rarely put any product in it, and one of my relationship deal breakers is if someone likes my hair better straight than curly. They'll have to LOVE my curly hair.

4. I was once verbally berated by a woman in a nail salon for how hairy my eyebrows were. It's a ridiculous story that made one of my friends laugh so hard she threw up when I told her and one day I'll get a couple drinks in me and make a video for you all because it's really best told with facial expressions. I have earned the nickname Mr. Man from it. So in short, I have forests growing above my eyes that demand maintenance.

5. Mayonnaise makes me want to throw things. I think it's on the top 10 list of terrible creations in the world. Like I hate it so much that if I were a super-hero, mayo would be my arch- nemesis.

6. I'm ridiculously superstitious. I refuse to wish people happy birthday before their actual birthday (bad luck for them), will walk into the street to make sure I don't split poles with anyone (means you will fight with that person) and wish on a star or 11:11 every single time I can. I blame my family for this.

7. I genuinely want to live in an airstream trailer, a houseboat and/or a tiny beach shack at some point in my life. I'm aiming for Key West in the next couple of years for at least a year or two.


Do you think I'm a TOTAL freak now? Do you have any of these weird habits too? More importantly, do you want to join my worldwide anti- mayonnaise crusade?

Excuses excuses

Whoops I missed National Santa Letter week but that's okay because it's WAY TOO EARLY. Look people I know Christmas is all roly poly snowmen and PRESENTS OMG PRESENTS EVERY WHERE YOU TURN YOUR HEAD but let's have a little respect for the turkey day okay? When you start to salivate over fir trees and jingle bells before the stuffing is even in the oven, it gives Thanksgiving a complex. Like it's Christmas' awkward little sister who will never be mom and dad's favorite. Stop that.

So my non-celebration of National Santa Letter week was a willful act of defiance against this eroding of Thanksgiving's precious self esteem. Not at ALL the fact that going back to school, working 40 hours a week and maintaining some semblance of a social life is slowing rotting away my brain and I haven't had a normal sleep schedule since September. No no, none of that. THIS WAS WILLFUL.

Cuppycakes

via We heart it

I was so excited to celebrate today's holiday- National Chocolate Cupcake Day. My favorite bakery was closed (clearly they don't do their research on baking related holidays) so I figured I'd make my own until I got home and realized I was missing a couple key ingredients. So foiled twice in a row, I'll have to celebrate late. Do you have a favorite chocolate cupcake recipe I can try tomorrow??

It's the thought that counts right? And trust me I DREAMED about chocolate cupcakes today...


Happy National Chocolate Cupcake Day!

Silly shutterbug

Today was National Toy Camera day!
Have I already lost you because you think by Toy Cameras I mean those Fisher Price deals? No no my pet, let me show you something far far better...

Lomography Diana F+ Medium Format Camera with Flash

This is a really popular camera and I don't know if it's TECHNICALLY considered a toy camera but I figured it was one most people would know about. It takes awesome photos like this one:

Found here

Lomography Split Cam

If I were a guy I would say "Um well... this camera has a good personality." Meaning I think it's ugly on the outside but how can you reject it when it takes pictures like this? Snap the shutter twice and it will blend the two images together into gorgeous products like this:

Found here

I really need to stop browsing the Lomography website- I could spend forever mentally buying and playing with the cameras especially when I don't break out the one I DO have often enough. I own the Action Sampler in Chrome and I love it! (When I found it in a thrift store for less than $10 NEW in the box and I almost threw my money at the lady at the cash register I was so excited.) It puts four exposures in one photo with four different angles and shutter speeds, so each ends up being a mini visual story. So fun.

Selling for way more money than I spent here

I don't have any of my own photos scanned onto the computer so I found this example online:

Somehow I never thought of using black and white film... found here

Not all the toy cameras of the world are from Lomography though. I've actually seen a couple blogs where the girls take a ton of super cute photos on a mini Polaroid type deal called the Instax:

...and there's a really awesome post here about DIY projects using photos from the mini one.

However, the one that I'm seriously lusting over right now (sorry Action Sampler, I still love you!) is this bad boy:

The Zumi Digital 2.0

I love the fact this one is digital because I always forget to drop off film to be developed/ I'm super impatient and would love to be able to upload my snaps immediately. Wouldn't you love to carry around that cute little thing and upload images like this??

So, do you own any of these cameras, or is there one I'm totally missing out on? OR did you not have any clue what I was talking about until I threw 800 pictures in your face?


Happy National Toy Camera Day!