Hairdos

When I was in elementary school I wanted to wear my hair in two French braids like the girls in Toni Basil’s Mickey video. In hindsight, it’s not a great look. But my best friend Jane wore her hair in French braids as well as most of the girls my class. The problem? My mom couldn’t French braid. I was outta luck until I got older and learned how to braid my own hair.

So when I saw Girly Do’s blog & Hair Today I bookmarked them for future Daphne reference.  Yep, I think Daphne & I are going to have years of hairdo fun.   And for older girls, I’m loving Heather Bailey’s Trash Ties (she also designed the Fresh Cut fabric line).  I’ll never have hair long enough for something like that, but I love the different looks you can achieve, like the Tara bun.  Cute!

Editing

What are your plans this weekend? Me? I’ll be editing about a million of Chris’ photos. In fact, he just ran in from the Mayor’s Sackcloth and Ashes prayer rally and threw the SD card my direction while he was on the phone with one of his buddies who runs a Birmingham information/news site. He wanted to get the photos out before the major media outlets had a chance. Hey, no problem. Tomorrow I’ll start on his shots from the Magic City Art Connection. He only took 500 photos today in 3 hours. And he’ll be there a total of another 10 hours or so.  Not that I’ll have to edit all those photos, maybe only 10 or 20% of them.  Thank God for Lightroom presets.

I actually really enjoy the editing process. We went ahead and got a year subscription to Lynda.com, so I need to get back into learning more about Photoshop and Lightroom.  I constantly amazed at Adobe products.  You can do so many different things with them, if you just take the time to learn.

Living with Less

I really enjoyed today’s Oprah show about living with less. This is a topic that has been on my mind for a while, in fact Chris & I were just discussing our $10/week soda habit last night. We were a two income couple for many years and developed lots of bad habits- like paper plates, water bottles, wasting food, eating out, too many gadgets, wasting gas. Here’s just some of the areas I think we can cut from our grocery budget alone:

• We spend $10/week for bread (white & wheat loaves and usually a loaf from the bakery and rolls). I just got a bread maker and will make our own.
• $10/week for 1 lb of Boar’s Head turkey lunch meat (which sometimes doesn’t even get finished). We will get a bag of chicken from Costco ($13 for 6 lbs) and cook it for sandwiches, or a huge spiral ham for $20 and eat off it forever.
• $5/week for bottled water. There is nothing wrong with our tap water.
• $10/week for soda. Cut back to one soda a day
• $5/week for paper plates, napkins, towels, plastic ziploc bags, etc. I have at least 5 different sets of dishes which we will use, along with cloth napkins/towels and reusable storage containers.

This is going to sound completely crazy to those of you that know me in real life, but I’d love to start a garden. I’d want a little salsa section with tomatoes, red onions, cilantro and peppers. Then maybe some green beans, cucumbers and strawberries. Organically grown veggies and fruit can get pricey. I’d love to have fresh, cheap produce. Then reality hits me and I realize that will never happen. I’m a little too “Eva Gabor from Green Acres.” I don’t like dirt, bugs, being outside, you know.

I’m really inspired to see what else we can live without, which should free up more $$ to go towards retirement savings and Daphne’s college fund. Here’s the link to Oprah’s Living With Less Challenge rules if you are interested.

Crafty Links

Just some recent projects I’ve bookmarked and thought I’d pass along:

Shrink a T-shirt to Fit, from The Sewing Republic. Shrink down your large or men’s t-shirts to a fitted girly tee.

Girl’s Pettiskirts, from Martha Stewart. These are really popular and run $80-$100. Doesn’t look too hard to make them yourself.

Paint Chip Cardholders, from Designverb. I want to make one to carry my Moo mini cards.

Girls’ Spring Mini Tote, from Betz White. This would have been perfect for Easter.

$10 Scarlett O’Hara dress, from Craftster. So creative!!

Flat Iron Cozy, from Craftster. I like this idea, but I’d probably use my own fabric and Insul-brite.

Glass Terrariums, from Two Straight Lines.  I have these exact jars sitting in the basement.  I love this project and the plastic dinosaurs.  You know what would also be funny?  Little Star Wars people, like Return of the Jedi / Ewok planet scenes.

How do you keep your project links organized? I currently use del.icio.us. Is there something better out there?

Stuff White People Like

I’m always late to the party, so to speak, when it comes to internet fad sites. For example, I had never been on dooce.com until a few months ago (And still don’t quite get the hype). When I point out a site or video to Chris his response is always, “Yeah, I saw that years ago. It’s funny.” So anyway, apologies to everyone if you’ve already seen stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com. I saw it today for the first time and thought it was pretty funny. Apparently Chris & I are pretty white because I could identify with quite a few on the list: Arrested Development (um, yeah), San Francisco (LOVE it!), Outdoor Performance Clothes (definitely Chris), Arts Degrees (guilty), Whole Foods (right again), Kitchen Gadgets (I have the Kitchenaid mixer & Le Creuset, as well as things like an electric tortilla press), and many more.

Check it out.

Killer Stingray

Here’s a story I’m glad I didn’t read before going to Key West and the Bahamas a few years ago. (Especially since we were on a boat in Key West and swam with stingrays in Nassau.) A stingray jumps out of the water and hits a woman on the face, killing her. Link. WTH??? I already have a completely irrational fear of sharks, now I have to worry about things jumping out of the water. Fabulous.

Here’s one of those little boogers now, attacking Chris (the dark shadow in the water on his left):

Ok, I lie. It was just looking for some squid. I think they are creepy. I also think dolphins are creepy. I have marine life issues.

Baby Bisou

A saw a link to Baby Bisou baby carriers on Cool Mom Picks today and decided to check them out, especially since CMP was giving one away free. Check out their Almond Sparrows carrier:

Look familiar?? Here’s the fabric that I picked for my next mei tai. I’m just waiting on some fusible fleece to arrive for the straps before I start.

If you are interested in a Baby Bisou, check them out at thebabywearer.com. I’m not familiar with the brand. They do donate 10% of their profits to Half the Sky foundation, which supports orphaned children (mainly girls) living in Chinese institutions. Very cool. Speaking of China, did you see they have decided to keep their one child policy for at least the next 10 years? It will be interesting to see what happens with the gender imbalance over the next few decades.  And how/if it effects their adoption policies.

Simply Stated

I try to limit my magazine subscriptions.  Why?  Because I look at a magazine once or twice then it sits in a pile until there are 400 magazines to be thrown out.  Then I pile them all in one big black trash bag and Chris gets on to me for piling so much into one puny bag (those trash bags on the commercials that can hold a piano?  yeah, we don’t buy that kind).   Currently I get Lucky, Fitness, Parenting & Parents (they were free), Good Housekeeping, Cooks Illustrated, Cooking Light & Southern Living.  And did you know Daphne has her own magazine subscription?  Yep, my mom got her a subscription to Babybug.  It’s done by the same people that do Cricket magazine (which I had as a kid).

There are a few other magazines I’d like to get, but with the content available on the internet do I really need more magazines?  I have so many blogs already in my feed reader for baby stuff, decorating, cooking, crafting and photography (which reminds me I have 1300 unread items in my photography folder in Bloglines).  One magazine I like, Real Simple, just recently launched 8 new blogs called Simply Stated.  I’ve already added a few of them to my feeds.  Seriously, what did we do without the internet?

Project Runway Fabric

I knew that Project Runway and Brother had teamed together for a few limited edition sewing machines, but didn’t realize they also had a fabric line with Robert Kaufman. This is pretty:

Nanoo Nanoo

This is going to show my age, but when I saw this new car seat featured on ohdeedoh today all I could think about was Mork and Mindy:

I mean, didn’t Mork have an egg-shaped space ship.