Friday, April 23, 2010

Thursday Night Exploits

So, J has work and class on Thursdays and is gone from almost 8 in the morning to almost 10 at night.  This leaves me with some alone time on Thursday nights.  The last three weeks, between class cancelations and Spring Break, he has been home early.  So last night was my first Thursday night alone in a while.  I MISSED YOU, THURSDAY NIGHT ALONE TIME! 

So many magical things happened last night that can only happen sans J.  I love him, but Thursday night alone time is THE BEST.  Last night included crazy phone lady, breakfast for dinner, and reeses-induced coma.

You could stop reading right here, but if you want the full effect of my awesome Thursday night alone, please, read on.

I hate going to the mall, especially by myself, but especially with other people.  I like to get in and out.  The mall is a life sucker.  Artificial light and air - it's no good.  It's like you could be trapped in there for days not knowing what time or day it was or even what planet you were on.  But I needed to go to the makeup counter, so I forced myself to go. 

As I'm walking in, some lady stops me - "Excuse me, but do you have a phone?"  I was like, yeah, me and every other person in the parking lot has a phone.  Apparently she had been waiting for her friend to meet her for an hour and wanted to try and call her.  She was a little rough looking, but I couldn't really tell her no.

I myself had been in a similar situation back in 2003, before I had a cell phone.  It involved a stranger, my future husband, and a bar - always an excellent situation.  (And yes, I was a 20 year old college sophomore without a cell phone.)  Anyway, if this lady wanted to steal my phone, she would be really disappointed.  It's a piece of shit.

So I let her use it.  It was very awkward because I felt like when you're in school and you get paired up with the nerdy kid and you want to try to be nice, but don't want the other kids to see you're being nice to the nerdy kid.  So I just stood next to her, but not facing her for about three minutes (felt like an eternity) while she tried to call her friend.  I was also  trying to stay very alert, because I was pretty sure that at any moment a brown rapist/murder van would pull up and try to kidnap me.

Her friend did not answer.  I got my phone back.  Finally got into the mall.  Trip to the mall was followed by trip to Walgreens where I probably spent an equal amount of time because they have everything you didn't know you needed.  J hates going there because he was a manager there for three years, and doesn't appreciate the browsing possibilities quite as much as I do.

When I got home I was super hungry.  J has lost 20 lbs. since the beginning of the year.  He can attribute some of it to working out and not eating fast food for lunch every day, but mostly he has been counting calories and eating super healthy.  So I have been forced through lots of meals with ground turkey and egg whites lately.  That's why it was so thrilling to put a giant piece of ham and scramble two real eggs on the skillet.  To round it all out and cover all of the Jessie food pyramid bases, I also ate about 6 reeses peanut butter cups.  Surprisingly, I passed out on the couch for two hours.

Thursday Night Alone Time - I love u.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Handmade T-Shirt Yarn Coasters Tutorial

This is a super easy tutorial.  If you've used most of a t-shirt to make t-shirt yarn, and are wondering what to do with the leftover fabric at the arms, this is the perfect project.  No special skills required!

Cut arms off at seam
(Wondering what to do with the rest of your tee?  Check out these posts:

Cut hem off arm


Slice into equal widths


Stretch out resulting strands


I used a cork board to keep ends in place for weaving


Pull the end loops through eachother to finish the edges. 
A crochet hook makes this part really easy if you have one on hand.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Why Blog for Your Business

image from Gnipmac

A great blog post on SEO and how it can help your business:
A Startup SEO Lesson by Mike Sweeney. 

I loved Mike's post because it stresses the importance of content to increase your presence online.  As a freelance writer, this is great news for me because I can help people and businesses integrate their targeted keywords into well written content without sounding spammy.  It's great for business owners, because they already have access to tons of content - it just might not be online yet.  A super easy way to get your content online is by blogging.  So if you aren't blogging already, you should start!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Lunch Break Finds - Mustard, No Mayo

Had a wonderful Easter weekend - it just wasn't long enough!  It was incredibly hard to get back in the grind today, so I thought I'd share some lunch break Etsy finds.  Lately I've been drawn to mustard - both as a color and a condiment.  Here are some of my favorites:



Mustard Scarf by SR Design


I would love to pair either the scarf or necklace with this turquoise skirt from My Lola Fashion


love this dress from THIMBLE and ACORN


This listing is for the belt, but I love the mustard scarf with the dusty blue belt from Pretty Birdie