Sunday, February 28, 2010

Badum-ching!

Outfit loosely inspired by The Waves.  Blouse:  Thrifted.  Jeans:  NY&Co.  Boots:  Jeffrey Campbell.

Today was spent at an all-day comedy workshop and festival.  Even though my not-too-terribly secret ambition is to one day to stand-up, improv, or hell-- maybe both, I was feeling neither here nor there about going to the thing.  Spontaneity is not my forte when it comes to going places. 

But my brother-in-law drug me from my cave and we commenced to workshopping.  First we did two hours worth of improvisational exercises, which are a ton of fun if you don't mind making an ass of yourself.  I totally don't mind.  Then we did an hour of learning about stand-up comedy, then practiced writing jokes around prompts.  My prompt started, "I used to date a guy that worked at White Castle..."

 
Meow... I iz expanding my repertoire of pozez...

"...He was cute, you know, he was nice.  Nice guy... but the smell he'd come home with-- steamed onions, hanging in the air, on his clothes, on his... fingers... wet meat, homelessness.  It was an olfactory mess, and you know, you can only be so nice, I mean at the end, it was just not what I crave."

Eh?  Eh?

The rest of the evening was devoted to watching some of the local comedians and improv troupes do their thing and it was good-- actually great, I wasn't aware there was such comedic talent in my little burg!  And good people, too.  To be continued...?

Yours,

Elissa

Thursday, February 25, 2010

What steel wool and roman candles have in common...


I am certainly not a stranger to the art of light-writing, but Dana of Twin Cities Brightest has taken it to a whole, other level. 

 

Singing in the rain-- of showering sparks... most of his images are created with sparklers, roman candles, and ignited steel wool swung at the end of a string.




 




There is an awesome DIY tutorial here.  I have a hankering to do an outfit photo like this, but methinks my array of non-flammable clothing is sorely lacking... 

Feeling sparkly,

Elissa.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Something is better than nothing.

In a year in which success is measured by how much liquid hand soap you've saved by diluting it with water, and making 2 meals out of a #4 at Wendy's; dressing well, if you can manage, seems to make all the difference.  For instance, upon learning today that most of my assets are tied up in a gift card to Anthropologie, I was met with a minor frantic moment of despair.


Two is better than one.  Blouse:  thrifted.  Skirt:  NY&Co.  Tights:  Gift.  Shoes:  MIA.  Coat:  Dollhouse.  Scarf:  Anthropologie.  Jewelry:  thrifted.

Suddenly, I was distracted by something pink-- as you may or most likely may not recall, my artistic venture of the year is a taking a picture every day; each month is assigned a color theme.  February's is pink.

 

I pulled over to get a picture of the patio furniture my favorite restaurant put out-- unused, still, and will be for awhile-- but our recent rainy days have washed out most of the snow and people are starting to feel optimistic.  As I snapped away, I thought to myself; I've got my little crocheted tights on and my pink shoes and my swingy red coat, and still taking the time out to do something non-essential that I enjoy.  I felt Grey Gardens poor, not 8-Mile poor.  And besides.  I see that I have some assets that need liquidating, in the form of this, this, or this.

Mmmm.... ruffles, toile, and pastels, oh my!,
Elissa.




Sunday, February 21, 2010

Z, Z, X, Z... damn!!

 
www.johnvidas.com

I think that reaching the last level of Castle of Illusion signaled the end of my video game playing days.  Since, I've dabbled in Loderunner and The Incredible Machine, but I really don't get wrapped up in it.  I find that the advent of a third dimension in video game play is a little too demanding of my willingness for involvement-- sort of like dating a guy without a car.  You're always going to end up putting more into that situation than you'd like.

 

However, a friend of mine has turned me on to the magic of Adult Swim's Robot Unicorn Attack-- starring a close cousin of what I imagine to be a Spandex Pony.  With a happy soundtrack, and comfortingly nostalgic side scrolling action, this is a game I could easily play for 5 minutes or 30, and not risk exacerbating my acne or smelling my room up with stale socks.

 

And the soundtrack?  Why, it's Erasure's "Always".  I thought you might also enjoy the horrifically awesome video; so timely in it's transitional setting of winter to spring...

Trying to beat my high score of 23340,

Elissa.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Elissa and her Sweets' Pastel Pastiche

A month or so ago, I mentioned that my friend had taken pictures of our house as part of an Apartment Therapy reporter-audition.  Well.... the post is finally up there so I'm free to put it on here... welcome, all-- you can check out the Apartment Therapy post here, as well!


"White house, red door". Could be a shop at the mall. To the right, a little 1960's serving cart on wheels that our mail normally ends up on in the winter; in summer, I intend to put a pitcher of cucumber water on it. Up above the cart is a large chalkboard on which we normally write "Welcome" and then if we expect anyone, their name underneath-- "Welcome Jenny" for example. Usually when these folks leave they end up drawing boobs and things on it. I'm sure the neighbors (old folks, a pack of drag queens, homeless people pushing shopping carts) love us.


Herrrrre's the living room! The couch we got on Ebay, and I have to admit that I hated it when I first saw it-- being much more a Hollywood Regency kind of gal, I recoiled at its rectangularity, it's lack of... velvet upholstery. But in the context of all the other colors of the room I've grown to love it. Whenever it needs reupholstered, I'd like to keep the color, but maybe do it in suede. Almost everything else was gotten at a thrift or antique store, except for the rug (Ikea) and the Frank Lloyd Wright-style lamps at either end of the picture (Home Depot).


The main difficulty with the living room is that because of this fireplace (semi-nonworking), it's hard to find a good place for the TV. Putting a TV on a mantle almost seems like sacrilege, but there it stays, and, like Republicans to the plight of the poor, I have turned a blind eye. We temper its harsh newness with the cat's chair, which is ONLY the cat's chair. It was picked up off the street and reupholstered with faux fur.


She LOVES this chair.


One of my favorite things about the house is looking from the living room into the dining room. I just love, love, love these colors (which are Dutch Boy's "Green River" and Valspar's "Rainwater").


My Sweets formerly had a pretty good-sized collection of these types of buffets, or record players that looked like buffets. This is the one that remains, and it mostly holds records, DVDs and mail we'd rather ignore. The chairs and dinette I picked up off the street and reupholstered.


From the dining room to the kitchen, here we have a rotating display of our favorite glassware, which would be our biggest indulgence, if you could call spending $7 on a set at the thrift an indulgence. But nevertheless, we have a hulking collection of glassware. These are our current faves, resting on a cutting board we got from Canoe in Portland.


A cooking book with rad illustrations, skewers we use for parties or to grab a bit of what we're cooking out of the pan to taste it. The vase comes courtesy of housewarming gift we got from a friend, originally filled with daisies.



We have two sinks in our kitchen. This is the original one; a newer one is on the opposite side of the kitchen.


I love the built in wooden cabinets... don't love the holes in the floor from where the previous owners removed a swinging door. I didn't choose the valance, it came with the place, but with the blue, I don't mind it. I fantasize about replacing it with a white one that has lemons on it, or better yet, bananas.


A view of the pantry... above which my sweets hung a couple of love birds he found at the thrift...


Here's where the cat takes prandial refuge, in front of a portrait he did of her. Perhaps we're projecting our desires onto the cat, but who wouldn't like a large portrait of themselves in the dining room?


And continuing our journey, up the stairs which are currently decorated with a Tord Boontje garland...



This stained glass window was a gift from my parents for our wedding... it regally presides over the top of the stairs.


Now, I'll be the first to admit that all of the upstairs rooms need help. We worked on the downstairs first, because when people come over, it's usually all that they see. So much has happened since we moved in 3 months ago, that proper attention has not been (able to be) paid to all of the rest of the rooms, but a couple of things, nonetheless, are going right. In the bathroom you see above, the magazine rack and a picture of an ice cream cone hanging out on the door of the non-functioning laundry chute. The ice cream cone belonged to the same swinging-door removing folks who have a top-notch ice cream joint in town. The infamous window is where Stella the Cat spends most of her days, and our most recent addition, a mobile of little ships that we got in San Francisco.


Here, a little detail shot of the top of my dresser in the bedroom..



And here, a closeup of one of a pair of mid-century bedside tables which are both generously huge, being nearly 2.5 feet on each side, and insanely cheap for $30 apiece at my favorite antique mall. We seriously need to get to work on getting the bedroom just right. Til then, just know that it is incredibly white.


And, last but not least, the office, in its undone state. I plan on painting it in the next couple of weeks, and maybe finding a red (or cheetah!) slipcover for the pull-out couch where guests spend the night. The table is huge, but amazing-- we got it for $25 and repainted it.


As you can see, the surface of the table is amazing, and what originally drew us to it. Since the office is mostly "my room" (his is in the basement) this is where I keep my girly accoutrements, like a bowl-full of nail polishes as a centerpiece on the table. I painted my nails today with the L'Oreal one to the far right. Fleur de Lis, is what it's called.

Well, nuff of that-- now I feel naked, but I really loved the photos my friend took for us and wanted to share them... they'll definitely go in a memory book for sure.

Even if you know where you are is not where you are going to be, it's worth the time to make the present digs livable and lovable. What do you love about where you live?

Yours,

Elissa.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

After much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair...

 

Do not adjust your RSS feeds...  I'm slinking back into the blogging mode.  After taking a sabbatical that resulted in me taking more photos and getting intensely into Twitter, I feel like I'm ready to hop back on.  Coming back to this, my original blog, was not really my intention... in fact, I started Tumblr and Wordpress blogs in the meantime, because I was starting to get that crusty feeling from Blogger.

If this, my first post back, can help you with anything, it's this:  If you're thinking of starting a blog or switching platforms, here's a short, non-expert's guide on Blogger, Tumblr and Wordpress:

Blogger:

1) Best for journal-style blogs.
2) Incredibly easy to use, publish, upload photos, monetize, and add widgets.
3) Extremely limited number of themes. 
4) Not so much of a blogger community. 

Tumblr:

1) Extremely fun, community-based blogging.  The dashboard rules.  A jillion, great themes.
2) Best for "scrapbook" style blogs, sort of a more image-oriented Twitter.
3) I love the "share on Tumblr" button you can get for your tool bar, blog pretty much anything instantly. 
4) A good dose of code-knowledge is necessary in order to do things that are pretty basic on Blogger, like create a blog roll.  Also, uploading pictures from your drive was a pain in the ass. 
5) Difficult to monetize.

Wordpress:

1) Considered the best option if you eventually are aiming for your blog to become superbigtime.  
2) Fairly straight-forward posting, great community
3) Adding widgets a bit trickier than Blogger.
4) I felt like the Dashboard was dull and didn't get me interested in writing.

In fact, I weighed whether to come back as "Spandexpony".  It didn't feel like "me" any more, and what's more, it doesn't "mean" anything.  Also, I had quit.  

That all changed today when, I was watching a live feed of the Isaac Mizrahi show thanks to Mary Rambin of More Than Mary... I was tweeting little things about it all throughout, when, at the end, she thanked her Twitter friends on camera for their support and I was in there!  Yes, I'm an extremely huge dweeb, but hearing "Spandexpony" mentioned in a room where I know Russell Simmons and Isaac Mizrahi both are was kind of a thrill. 

So, I decided, what I've got is good, and I'm going back.  With an improved attitude.  I can't be what I was, but I am what I am.  If you liked me before, you'll probably like me now, unless you're pretty stalwart.

I look forward to again being able to express myself in the best way I know how-- writing, and also the second-best way I know how-- visually.  Also, I can't wait to get back in touch with you all, and meet quite a few more of you along the way. 

Yours,

Elissa.