Today, I pretended to be a real live self-sufficient adult.

I kinda win.

I did a massive load of laundry, made my bed, took out the trash, and cleaned out some nasty old food from my shelf in the fridge. Didn't take too long other than the fact that I probably spent at least half an hour trying to figure out how to change the favicon for this page. [See the bunny next to the web address? Cute, huh?]

But, the downside to all of this is that I have severely procrastinated on finishing homework and work related business for tomorrow.

Also, our garbage disposal may be broken.

Let me just go crawl into my bush-house over there and avoid being a civilized person.


Sidenote: here and here. The first is the how-to and the second is the handy tool to creating a .ico file.

I love my coworkers.

This lovely gem was left on our lounge whiteboard. Those are days of the week magnets with a "daily agenda" written under each one. It says "kill worms" under each day except Sunday where it says "break". Reminiscent of Eddie Izzard's "Dressed to Kill" standup?

"Death, death, death, death.... lunch.... death, death, death, death.... afternoon tea...."

Video contains language and mature themes, reference starts at 3:00 minutes into the video.

I have no reasonably useful life skills.

So, I have come to the conclusion that I possess no reasonably useful life skills. Why do I say this? My roommate asked me if I had ever actually bought groceries for myself, I thought about it, had to answer no.

Also, I am sitting here eating bread and cheese. I cannot function the stove or anything that does not simply require boiling water. And sometimes I fail at that, too.

Example: In high school, I wanted to bake a cake for a friend's birthday. I won enough sympathy from my sister that she made it for me. She left me to do the frosting and decorations since she was going to sleep. I discovered that we had no frosting whatsoever, and I really didn't want to get out the mixer to make some. I decided to melt some chocolate chips and use it as a sort of chocolatey drizzle on top. I poured some into a glass measuring cup and heated it for 30 seconds. No change. They looked exactly the same. I decided 3 minutes would be sufficient to melt them into a molten pool of chocolate. After 3 minutes, I opened the microwave door, and a huge cloud of smoke bellowed out. It smelled like burnt happiness. In any case, I panicked and grabbed it with an oven mitt and dumped the contents onto my lawn in the backyard. Remember that it's the middle of the night. So there's this black oozing pile on my lawn now, and I have no cake topping. I ended up sprinkling powdered sugar on top, but I think the cake was still too hot, and I covered it with aluminum foil, so it melted into a sticky mess. That cake looked very much less than appetizing. And I've just remembered that it was for AK's birthday when we were still "going out."

Also, I've only recently tackled laundry by myself. I'm far from mastering it. I did have some white towels come out sort of orange hued because of a futon cover that was not color fast.

On the other hand, of my not-very-helpful-skills-in-everyday-life, I can crochet, MS Paint like a fiend, and hoard ephemera like a crazy person.


Here's my friend, the bus stop bunny:

Getting picked last for dodgeball. In college. Again.

And when I say dodgeball, I really mean that as a metaphor for class teams. Specifically: my ASL class split up into 3 teams with team captains to pick people who they thought had the best comprehension and understanding of video stories as a classroom exercise. Thus the dreaded fear: being picked last. Being implicitly told that we are the worst at something. Who said we were going to have to keep reliving elementary school nightmares nearly 14 years later?

It's just been one of those days.

Take me far away.

Real Simple is Real Awesome.

I came across the Real Simple article about 50 new uses for old things. Which, I love. Their series is always really useful, but when I read too many of them, they all start to sound pretty redundant and sometimes not applicable to my life, but my friend showed me this one and I immediately ran and got a bottle of nail polish. Lucky for me, my house has a couple of polish aficionados, so I didn't have to search too hard (or else I might have gotten distracted along the way).

We have this problem, in our bathroom, with any metal items. Namely, they rust. And if it's a can, it leaves a rust ring on the counter. No biggie, wipe it with some 409. But, we ran out of 409. And now, we have some pretty unattractive rust rings hanging out by the sink, and it just looks bad when we have people over and they need to use the bathroom. Real Simple's solution was to coat the metal bottom with some nail polish. Genius. And so simple. I had been thinking of a way to fix the rust staining, but I couldn't think of anything other than glue some plastic to the bottom, but even then I would have rigged up some sad looking contraption. Plus, nail polish is waterproof so I don't have to worry about replacing a paper towel liner (which I tried for a little while).





I just grabbed the least fancy looking bottle out of our basket and started painting away. I can't believe I didn't think of this/see this sooner.

Fold: Kusudama Flowers

I found this great tutorial somewhere online for these beautiful paper flowers. I have this perfect little stack of colored note papers that I use for notes and other random things (like making origami!) right next to my computer. There are some failed/half-folded things littering my desk, but surprisingly, I actually finished this one. This one is pretty simple compared to some of the more elaborate paper crafts on their site.
















Process photos and full tutorial over at Folding Trees. link here.

Aren't those great, especially the ones made with patterned paper? I don't think I'd ever have the patience to finish a whole ball of them though! I'll just have to stick with the one and put a stem on it for some year round cheeriness.

I used Elmer's white school glue (which btw is pretty much the best thing ever! in my opinion of course) and bobby pins to hold the petals together while the glue dried. The glue stick slowly came apart even after it dried, so I re-pasted with the white glue. I folded all the petals at once, let them dry overnight, and then stuck all the petals together in the flower shape, glue and bobby pin, dry overnight. Pretty easy especially because I don't have a lot of time to spend crafting.

My post titles are getting wordier.

Why is it that my blog posts increase and my productivity goes down when I feel the impending doom of midterms coming up in a few days tomorrow?

Some wistful looking-out-my-window scenery. It's lovely outside, and I'm stuck inside.

Only a third grader would opt to paint her room completely pink.

My room at home that I moved into when I was in third grade has this awful/lovely shade of pink paint on the walls. Overwhelmingly pink even though my mom thought to artfully dab some white/light pink sponging over the pink. It's so pink that even though I tried to change the decor when I was in high school, it still looks like an 8 year old's imagination exploded in there, complete with unicorn stuffed animals and glow in the dark stars. At least I got rid of the twin bed with the pink cast iron frame. Oh and I was the one who wanted to paint it pink. My sister's room is purple but somehow came out more tasteful than mine did.






























And there's my cute little stone giraffe from Nigeria. I tried to spruce up my room with little things from around the house. That retro Pepsi-Cola glass was snatched from the kitchen cupboard.

A little bit of [actual] sexism in the modern day and age.

I was over at my good friend (from high school!) AK's place last night having dinner and catching up. We were making the good ol' stand by: pasta with ground beef. AK's roommate/apartmentmate, Steve, comes home from dinner out with his family. They're all chatting and standing around in the entry way, Steve and his gf, Christine, are getting out bowls and spoons and things for ice cream. AK and I are doing our thing in the kitchen. Steve's little sister Kari, who is about 10, hyper and super friendly, comes up to me and introduces herself and starts talking to me about Rockband. I'm stirring the ground beef and mushrooms which are starting to smell awesome at this point.

Christine: "Wow, that smells so good, good job."
Joking and somewhat indignant, AK: "How do you know I didn't make that?!"
Kari pipes up, "Because she's a woman, duh!" [referencing me as the woman in question, of course]
Me: "Haha, uh yeah."

I'm not at all offended by this, and I'm not going to go all girl-power! on anyone, I just thought this was super funny. I was pretty much unaware that these kinds of "spheres of influence" thoughts and values were still perpetuated in modern society. But she is 10 after all. Probably doesn't even know what sexism is.

All in all, I still find philosoraptor funny.

Nerdy and Cute

For my P.I.'s (the lab boss) birthday the other day, we had cupcakes at our lab meeting! I work in a worm lab, so, appropriately, they were all decorated with little frosting worms. So cute. They were super delicious: white/vanilla (?) cake, lemon gel in the middle, raspberry hidden underneath the fluffy lemon frosting, and sugar sprinkles and a hardened frosting worm to top it off. The best part is that they were homemade! Amazing.















The first picture was a hasty camera phone picture, that's why it's all blurry :/
I also saved the little worm to eat later, it's hanging out with some cookies.
Side note: the worms that I work with are not blue and green.

Science in action!

Have you heard of Ecospheres? So, this was a gift to my lab from a member who left recently. They are a completely self contained ecosystem with sea water, algae, phytoplankton, and you can see at the bottom 4 tiny brine shrimp. The only thing it needs is light! Pretty neat, and they'll continue to coexist for about 2-5 years according to the manual. The shrimp will never reproduce so the lifespan of the shrimp translates into the lifetime of the Ecosphere.

And, what kind of nerdy lab would we be if we didn't name them appropriately after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? (or the famous Renaissance artists if you want to go with that)

I wish I had gotten a picture of this.

This kid was sitting in front of me in class. Halfway through, I realized what his shirt said on the back. The college A-G requirements. I kid you not. It literally listed "English 4 years, Math 3 years, etc." And the kicker? The very bottom statement.

"Earn a 'C' or better in every class!"

Kid turns around at the end of class, and of course the witticism they printed on the front is "got college?" Who still wears their high school shirt 3 years into college? Yeah, I am occasionally guilty of wearing old tennis team shirts, but this is just appalling.

This is where I work.

10am to 7pm everyday. What's not to love about this job?

Whirlwind Weekend in DC

Just a little taste of a quick trip across the country. Landed Thursday morning, had the day to explore, rehearsal on Friday with rehearsal dinner and bachelorette party following. Saturday was the wedding plus reception, then left on Sunday morning.

A Walk in my Neighborhood

I got off work early today, and played around with my camera for a while. It's amazing how many pictures I can take without realizing it. Good thing I got a 16GB memory card ;)


New herbs for the patio/balcony












pretty little web being spun by my front door.










This little guy was so excited to get out of the car and go to the park.












My favorite part about this sign is the "Free Exercise!"











I didn't even see this until I looked at these pictures on my computer. I was just taking pictures of the clouds for no particular reason, and now I see a familiar face!










Diana lens makes all the sunlight look like twinkly jewels











These are the baby "sunflowers" that we're currently growing on the patio. They're doing admirably considering we neglected a few other potted plants.

Amigurumi Friends: Baby SunGod

This is a cute little guy that I crocheted based off of a 2d graphic. He's the baby version of one of my school's unofficial mascots, SunGod! And, he's less than 4 inches tall, the perfect pocket size.

I like things that are practical.

I think this would be a super sweet hallway table for catching keys, mail, etc. right by the doorway. You get a functional built in ledge to prevent things from falling off, like in an earthquake, as California is prone to have, and you have a pretty little table that is unique.

IKEA Klack Tray
Vineyard Bracket via Anthropologie
Paeonia Wallpaper via Anthropologie

Since I am currently renting the apartment I live at and plan to move out in less than 2 years, I, sadly, have no pictures. This is just a concept that I think would be lovely and fairly easy to do.

I would primer/paint the wooden part of the tray white, sand to distress (to match the brackets), then apply wallpaper to the base of the tray. Add a layer of glass, probably stolen from a picture frame, just to protect the paper. Then mount brackets to wall, and for added security, drill 2 holes for screws into back side of tray to be screwed directly into the wall. This is probably easiest using a tray with straight sides, not ones that slant outward.

Or forgo the wallpapering for a lovely vintage wooden tray like this one on etsy with a hand painted sailboat.

Behind the Curtain

Hello!

I'm Laura and this is all about my crafts, photography, and life.



Primarily, I crochet! But, I also dabble in the other fine arts including photography, papercraft, painting, sewing, and occasionally jewelry making.

I especially love making DIY projects on the cheap. I try to stay with materials that are pretty ubiquitous or that I already have on hand. No special trips to the craft store for me.

Also, I love kitties. And I love taking pictures of kitties. This baby is one of mine.


I will also be playing around with my newest prize possession: my Canon Rebel XSi with f1.8 50mm lens. And sometimes the Diana F+ super wide lens with Canon attachment (I know, I know, it's an analogue lens for a digital?! I don't have the energy to go for a film camera right now).

So, without much further ado, follow along as I learn my camera and make some crafts.