keeping busy

I haven't got anything visually exciting to share today, but I thought a "hello" was in order. I've been keeping pretty busy lately. How are all of you? Here are some things I've been up to..

Wearing tights all the time. It's still snowy around here!

Trying out a new hairstyle for blah days -- It's really easy: just put your hair up in a ponytail and then tuck it back through .. if that makes sense! Even as the day wears on and it gets messy, it looks cute.

I helped Robert clean out his closet and then commandeered some of his unwanted pullover sweaters.

Here's the big reveal: notice what's going on in this last photo? Packing! If you've been reading my blog for the last year, you've already seen me go through 2 moves... but this one is different! I've almost mentioned it a couple of times here, but it seems like if I discuss it too much, I might burst the bubble! ("What bubble?" you ask. The imaginary bubble around the house we're about to buy, of course. It's a fragile thing!) I am incredibly excited, as you can imagine. It's not 100% final yet, but it should be by the end of next week, and we're going to start moving in immediately. So I've got a lot to do! I hope you won't mind if I'm a bit scarce. I will share more when I can!

happy shoes

A little while ago, Anne at a cup full of sunshine tagged me with the Happy 101 award. I'm supposed to list 10 things that make me happy. I started out doing that, but felt that things were getting a little repetitious. So I decided to cheat, and I hope no one minds -- I'm going to show 10 pairs of shoes from Etsy that make me happy!

These are in no particular order. I didn't even pay attention to size or price, because I'm in no position to be spending money on shoes at the moment. Feel free to buy any of these and then take lovely pictures in them so I can live vicariously through you! (Click the pictures to go to the listings.)

Saddle shoes!

Ah, the beads on the ends of the laces!

Exciting boots!

Fancy wingtips!

The embroidered Zodiac logo is killing me with cuteness..

So snappy and bright.

Perfectly awesome.

Aren't these beautiful?

Totally ideal boots.

A sweet pair of wedges.

Ahh, wasn't that nice? Ogling shoes is just therapeutic for me, somehow! I found all of these a couple of days ago when I was doing some comparative pricing for a pair of shoes I listed in my shop. I became highly distracted, as you may have guessed. Happy Friday!

the snowy weekend

Things have begun to melt and thaw out, but everything around here is so slippery that schools are still closed! This past weekend was really long and relaxing, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Caught up on sleep, compulsively worked crossword puzzles, ate too many snacks, and went on a few adventures in the snow. Since this is the South and no one knows how to handle snow, most people chose to go places on foot instead of driving. I think the snow got more people outside. I don't know what's with that, but I suppose it just feels like a bizarre phenomenon that must be experienced full-on! I seriously haven't seen snow like this in at least 10 years.

There was just a little bit of snow at first.

And then suddenly, everything was covered!

We went on daytime walks..

..and a nighttime visit to the cemetery! I wanted to experiment with flash. Spooky!

LOVE this. I haven't even seen this one in daylight before.

Everything had a perfect layer of ice.

And as if the sidewalk wasn't already slippery enough, look what we found! It made me laugh.

Another fun thing about this weekend was talking to neighbors. Robert and I are sort of hermits most of the time, but something about crazy weather seems to get everyone outside and talking. This happens in Texas around hurricane time too: everybody starts working together and having dinner together and playing outside in the crazy weather. I love it. Something about temporary inconveniences -- electricity going out, not being able to drive, school/work being canceled -- is just dead exciting. As long as there's not too much damage and nobody gets hurt, of course! This weekend was one of those nice little pockets of inconvenience that turns out to be exciting.

shiny buttons

At long last, I've done a very small update in my Etsy shop! Nothing too exciting, just a couple lots of buttons. I was going through an old sewing box yesterday afternoon and found plenty of things I don't need or want. It's small, but it's a start! My shop was really starting to empty out.



Today is turning out to be quite exciting. It's snowing hard and sticking! Robert was just let out of work early. I'm hoping to get some fun snow pictures this afternoon. It's probably not much snow compared to what some places get, but you wouldn't believe how excited I am. C'mon, I'm from Texas!! I did live in Colorado for a few years as a kid, and my snow memories are quite dear to me! I think that's why I'm so thrilled. I hope this keeps up on into the night, because some of my favorite times as a kid were laying out in the snow (in my hot pink snow suit) watching it come down. Happy Friday, everyone!

film scans

Anyone remember when I mentioned getting out my "real camera" and shooting a roll of film last month? Here are some of the photos! I was really disappointed to discover that the shutter on my Minolta XG-1 sticks [most likely from disuse]... and therefore most of my pictures were way overexposed. That's something I would like to fix before using any more film up, because charming as some of the mistakes were, they were completely unpredictable! That might be the fun of a toy camera, but this was once a dependably accurate machine and I'd like to restore it.

I recently acquired a scanner from freecycle - so exciting! Now, on with the prints! Here are the couple that came out the way I wanted them:

I gathered up some little friends for a group portrait. That's a mogwai in the back! I made the heart pillow guys.

Real gingerbread man (from dozen) with glass gingerbread person (vintage Avon)

This isn't quite right, but I like it anyway. Reminds me of the old food blog!

Now, onto the overexposed prints... These are the few that came out kind of nice even though I was going for something completely different. All of the other prints looked horrible! [And yes, I swear it's the shutter's fault. I made notes of the settings I used for each exposure; I have back-to-back photos using the same settings at the same time where one frame is perfect and the next over-exposed. Not my fault!] Oh, despite all my whining I'm really fond of the below pictures.

Franklin had this NOEL sign up downtown for all of December. Have I mentioned how cute this town is?

Crummy print, but look at that gigantic brussels sprout stalk! Is it not impressive?

I can't throw away light bulbs when they go out, so I collect them. Really like the shape.

There's that gingerbread man again, resting atop a stack of presents!

Thank you all for your kind words of encouragement on the last post! I'm doing fine: the person who died was a good-friend-of-some-of-my-good-friends, and the difficulty for me has been in comforting those who were closer to him. But thank you all, nonetheless! I'm incredibly appreciative of your support (in all ways).