Color scheming

Happy Halloween, 2012! Do you like Halloween? I enjoy the sight of kids dressed up and leftover candy. But this isn't about that.

This picture with the roses is extra, mega appealing to me. I keep thinking about the color palate. I like the coolness of it, the lightness, the crispness, yet the drama, the dark, the mysterious and tantalizing.

So over to my paint palate. I'm simply trying to match the color in the picture:

The pink selection did not disappoint. For green, however, I felt the options were more limited, and no one shade was exactly right. Perhaps the greens are complicated and you gotta layer them a bit. 

For the backdrop I liked this dark wallpaper. It kinda gives the hint of blue sky (although it's just billed as "black"). Altogether I would love this palate for a daytime daydreaming den or napping nook. So dreamy. 

Enjoy.

Perfection

Leaving LA at 4 am on a Super Shuttle van, Simon and Garfunkel blaring from the speakers, and every person who joins the van has an air of a story. A reason they need this shuttle. A hope that we don't speed off the road on a sharp turn. A hope they can get an empty seat next to them on the plane.

The Simon and Garfunkel was perfection. It was exactly what I didn't know I wanted then and there. It made me beam inwardly, as I probably projected a dumb/crazy look outward. Or maybe I looked peaceful. It was the bow on my LA escapade. It fit. 

Random songs that you didn't choose, hitting the mood so hard, your chest swells. Don't you just love that?

Update to an ode

It has come to my attention that "bun-helper" might be a Google search term for butt shaping.

Hahahahahahahaaaahahahhahaaaa

PS -- SQUATS.

Speaking of soft pink

Don't forget to stop and smell the roses:

what a lovely color scheme

Speaking of cardigans

This is Carrie in a cardigan. Carrie doesn't do cardigans like Ann Taylor does cardigans. Carrie doesn't do cardigans like the school teacher stereotype. Carrie doesn't do cardigans like I do most winter work days, when I fear that I must look professional (AKA uninviting of all potential comments) while maintaining cottony comfort.

She tends to pair them with unexpected underlayers - baggy sheer tops or logo tees or tight tanks. She adds... whimsy. She adds an element of rock 'n' roll - even in soft pink. Color me inspired.

In this scene she's telling her friends about the over-the-top romantic things her artist boyfriend does for her. The episode is called "The Ick Factor". Spoiler alert -- Miranda proposes to Steve AND they get married. Charlotte and Harry get food poisoning. Samantha wears a skunk. God I love Season 6.

Confessions of a non-hipster / Generation Whatever

At the ripe age of 32, I'm too old to be a hipster. Most of my friends are as well. As a member of this crowd just older than hipsters, I feel like I'm supposed to not like them. Hipsters get made fun of all the time. But men in skinny jeans with bad facial hair and buttoned up plaid shirts and cardigans... as targets... it's just too easy. I like a challenge.

I should confess that I was once the roommate of a hipster. This was before the term was coined. My little friend was younger than me, eschewing college, and prone to employ five finger discounts from Anthropologie. She wore funny clothes that made me scared the 80's were coming back (and did not understand why I might be scared about that). Her friends all had long bangs and the latest iPods and several part time jobs. Some were even vegans who made exceptions for bacon (I just made that up). They were nice. I always suspected they viewed me, a graduate student in cargo pants who paid bills on time, as an oddity as well.

But I don't begrudge hipsters. They give us shit like this, and this, and this, and this. They unknowingly have aided in the resurgence of grunge-wear. They're like new age hippies with a mastery of dirty hair and absence of health insurance. We should be supporting our hipster brethren. We'll need their contributions to social security one day.

Frankly I think all the hipster-bashing is jealousy that our generation (after mainstream X, before hipsters, and yes, I'm rejecting "Y" and "Millennials" for being too derivative) is lacking in a true name. I therefore have named us the Whatevers.

Like, hipsters? Whatever.

Locket love

Somehow somewhere somewhy I got it into my head that if a boyfriend in my life gave me a locket it'd be a supreme sign that he's "the one". Pretty stupid, right? I love lockets and never wanted to buy one for myself because, unless it's a mourning locket, lockets should be given to you from loved ones. Stupid, right? Which romantic comedy poisoned me I still don't know.

Behold some pretty kickass lockets I found on Etsy:

1-Compass, 2-Virgo, 3-Simple, 4-Poison, 5-Map, 6-Wallpaper, 7-Milk glass

Ode to bun-helper

Bun-helper is my most visited post by a really wide margin:

This is a glimpse of what blogger lets me see as a blog owner.

I guess people are trying to get really cool buns on their heads and are looking for help in achieving that look. It would make sense that "bun-helper" is a natural thing to type into the google machine.

Do you remember the first thing you typed into an internet search engine? That's another post.

Back to buns. Thank You!! Thank you to those who have come here and stayed here due to bun help. If you have any questions at all about buns please leave a comment and I'll be sure to give you my thoughts. 

As you can see I have very, very few viewers and I can expect that 1/3 of the viewers (readers) are myself and 1/4 are friends that I've told about this, which leaves 5/12 unknown- wow! addition of fractions with an uncommon denominator!

I originally began writing this blog as a way to talk to my friends who live far away. Friends are amazing... friends are everything. In the course of one day I always find myself wishing I could share or laugh with a friend. This blog was created for me to release what I might say to them. I've told just a handful of friends about this notebook / letter of mine, and it pains me to know that I wish I could tell more. I am still working out the kinks of that fear (but that's a different post).

But anyway, this is the ode to bun-helper. I'd like to offer bun people something more in case they stumble upon this post. Here it is -- some perspective -- not everyone likes our buns. Seriously. I've received some negative comments regarding how a high cool bun might not be "right", which I find kinda astonishing. Because I love it. Because who the fuck cares? Opinions. Everybody's got them. When is it right to impose the negative ones on others? (that's a different post)

So thank you again to bun-helper. May your buns be high and mighty!

Juggling

I have a fantastic idea for what to get your young kid involved in when they look at you with know-it-all boredom.

Juggling.

As an adult, I can't help but notice all the god damned juggling I have to do on a regular basis. Don't forget to get the soap to spray on the aphids and check on friend's garden and unload the back seat of the car and use the avocados before they rot and add that new deadline to next week's calendar. But time moves in a line, and you can only get things done one at a time (multitasking is a myth, yo)... until eventually you stop, leaving things "till later"... always feeling like something is... forgotten.

Some balls don't get caught.

Wake up. Repeat.

Not all days are like this. Hopefully you can shut down your brain once or twice a week and on vacations and such. That's important. I hear meditation helps achieve full, restorative shut-down. That'd be nice.

But juggling. I have to think that somehow, probably pertaining to the circuitry of the brain, learning to juggle at a young age must be a good exercise for the games of adulthood. And chess of course.

Can anyone attest to this?

Fall travels

Scotland in Fall

If I had my act together months ago I'd be traveling somewhere this Fall. Actually, I can't seem to escape these thoughts that I'm a lunatic/loser/idiot for not traveling whilst I have a job with vacation days and no kids to buy plane tickets for. What do I fear? Culture? Hell no. I love that shit. It probably has something to do with spending money. Today, watching someone as qualified as me get laid off, probably won't help alleviate that fear. Another problem is not really knowing how to turn off my brain, thus enabling enjoying a vacation.

It's starting to sound like backpacking might be the vacation for me.

Here's hoping you have your act together, the ability to shut off the thinking, and enough money to make it easy.

Please don't offer to show me your vacation pictures.