Bison, Go With Ka-Rip!

In just a few short weeks, incoming freshmen will migrate to Bison Hill for Welcome Week. This year marks 17 since I myself made the trek. I can't believe I'm that old. 17 years! Yikes! It's nearly half my life.

Anywho...yesterday morning I headed over to my friend Kara's house where five lovely ladies with ties to OBU gathered for a craft session. On the agenda: freshmen beanies! It's an OBU tradition for freshmen to wear them during Welcome Week. On average I'd say beanies are worn for about 30 minutes. Max. But every year somebody, somewhere, cranks out hundreds of these puppies for incoming students. And this year I helped!

I hadn't pulled my $14.14 sewing machine out of its box since sometime before I moved. I rediscovered that it came with its manual, a treat for those of you familiar with thrifted goods. And the manual came in handy since I was experiencing some tension issues. Even more handy than the manual was Christina who lent oodles of sewing expertise. After some fiddling with the machine I cranked 39 beanies out. Sans seam binding. I was the first one to leave so I don't know how many the rest finished.

But it sure did feel good to cross something else off my list and to know that I'm giving back a wee little bit. I wonder if one of my beanies will land on the head of someone who, 17 years in the future, will find herself whipping up a few of these babies for someone else.

Go-To Tee

Going through some photos from this summer I began to notice a pattern emerge...

Kristin's visit in July

My brother's visit in June

Valerie's birthday party in May

I almost always wear a black knit skirt with it. I'm fairly certain I wore said outfit this past weekend at the garage sale with Kara and at countless other undocumented events in the last couple of months. I wore it when took M to swim lessons one day at the beginning of the summer to find my coworker there (her daughter was in the earlier session) wearing a vintage Mickey tee and black knit skirt, too. How random is that?!

Overall, I'd say it was a $7 well-spent.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Earlier this month Little Miss M and I hopped in the car and headed to T-Town to celebrate my nephew's birthday. There was tons of rainfall around that time and, sure enough, drops began falling just about the time we got onto I-44. Not too much later we saw a big rainbow off in the distance. I pointed it out to Miss Priss and she oohed and aahed for a little while.

Like all rainbows, this one seemed super far away but then the road must have curved a little bit and out of nowhere, I saw the end of the rainbow! Right. In. Front. Of. Me. Can you see it?!

I mean, it ended right smack dab in the middle of the Interstate! I don't know, maybe this isn't as phenomenal as I think. Has anyone else seen something like this? All I know is that it was as close to a rainbow as I've ever been. And, in case you were wondering, there was no pot of gold on the road. Alas. And as much as I wanted to (and even tried to!), I wasn't able to actually drive through it. Hmpf!

The House That We Built

I have a confession to make. I played with Barbies for a very long time. Well beyond any of my friends. My favorite thing was to decorate their living spaces. I never had Barbie's Dreamhouse or Malibu house or even the RV but I found all sorts of places for her to live. More often than not she lived on my vanity table. The one with drawers on each side and the middle shelf that dropped down a bit. LOVED turning that piece of furniture into her New York loft. So you can imagine how delighted I was when I stumbled some homemade doll houses like these...

from Ohdeeoh

from Craftastica

In a recent round of thrifting, I picked up a bag full of Polly Pocket dolls (excuse me, Holly Pocket dolls according to Miss M). I thought that this little craft would be perfect for them. Because they're so small, we could work on a smaller scale. I decided to make two houses. One for M and one for me! I mean, er, for the dolls, of course. I chose to make the second style of house because it could easily be disassembled and stowed away.

First, I unfolded a box that originally housed a tower fan - tall and skinny - and cut four rectangles out. Two rectangles = four rooms = one house.

In the middle of each rectangle I cut a slit halfway up/down. This is where they slid together.

Then I cut out doors, doorways, and windows.

I spent the other day ripping out pages from old home decorating magazines and catalogs. Scrapbook paper works great too!

M and I grabbed our scissors and glue sticks and got our decorating on! M called herself a "builder" during this phase. "So that peoples could live there."

M brought the dolls out and we had a "reveal" for them!

M's house:

And mine:

I can't tell you how much fun we had doing this activity together! I have a feeling this is only the beginning...

Another New Toy

I've been so good lately. No excess spending. Not even shopping for entertainment! I know, I can hardly believe it myself. But yesterday I did happen to wander into Wall's to kill some time before picking the little one up from daycare. I started digging through bins, saw the word "Holga" on a box, and snapped this bright little puppy up:

It's from the "Holgawood" Collection - I think this color is the Sunset Boulevard one. Wall's got a shipment of Urban Outfitter's stuff awhile back and they have been sneaking out random bits of home items and accessories over the course of a couple of months. Originally $48 at UO, Wall's had it priced at $6.99. But that's not all, folks! It was 25% off that. So I got a cool new toy for the low, low price of just $5.25. Oh yeah!

I love all the Holga shots I see on people's blogs. So pretty, soft, blurry, ethereal. We should start a pool on how long it takes me to actually try the thing out. Yes, my "new" DSLR is still in its box...wah wah.

In other news, I went outside at 11 PM last night to take the trash out and ended up killing this fairly ginormous creature:

It was just off my porch, on its back and flailing its legs all about. At first I walked by it and said, "Man, that's a big spider," and then I went back inside. But I kept thinking about it and said to myself, "Man, I bet that thing's bigger than a quarter. I'm gonna go measure it," so I went back outside with a quarter and a camera in hand. And then I went back inside. But then I got to thinking again, "Its belly was so swollen and it was stuck on its back so maybe it's about to start spurting out hundreds of spider babies that will be small enough to scamper inside the house underneath the cracks in the door and then all those hundreds of spider babies will grow up to be bigger than a quarter. You know what you're gonna have to do, don't you? You're gonna have to kill it, Court." So I grabbed a pair of flip flops and headed outside again. But it was so big that I knew it was going to creep me out to feel it squish underneath me. So I grabbed Little Miss M's SpiderMan scooter and rolled over its fat little body three times.

Then I turned around and realized I had locked myself out of my house. At 11 PM. With a child sleeping peacefully inside. Awesome.