Today's Weather: Rainy And Sad

Today is one of those gloomy, rainy days I love so much. Never mind the little tornado warnings a mere 12 miles from me. It's dark and dank, perfect candle weather. And because I didn't have much to do today during my hours at the day job, I decided to get caught up on some greatly backlogged blog reading.

Sadly, it seems people's lives are as gloomy as the weather. In the blogosphere and in real life people are sick and dying, or it's the anniversary of one person's death or another. You can tell me all you want about how "to everything there is a season," blah blah blah. It's just downright depressing and assigning the logic of nature and/or of God (if you can assign logic to God) doesn't make things any more cheerful.

Despite the fact that I am down in the dumps with the anniversary of my brother's death, the news of a friend's mother's death, a terminal illness in Husby's family, and reading nonstop about blog friends who are dealing with death and dying, the rainy day is still my favorite kind of day and I'm determined to cheer myself up with it.

So I took on a project...

Cathe, author of Just Something I Made, has become my new secret blog girlfriend. I could read her blog for hours on end. The other day I found a project I thought I'd like to try, and so today, in my despair of grief and loss, I followed Cathe's tutorial on transferring images to little wooden nickels. You can find that tutorial here. It works! Plus the blending pen smells really good.

While I have no pictures of my project (I really must get a camera phone!) you can believe me when I say Cathe is onto something here. It's really fun, it is a magical process, and the possibilities for this technique are endless. Even if you don't want to take on the project, go see Cathe's post and see how cool this is.

Thanks, Cathe, for making my day a little brighter. Nothing cheers me up as much as a happy craft project on a rainy day.

Building Projection

This completely freaked me out the first time I saw it. Then I watched again and just looked at it without trying to figure it out. So, so cool...

555 KUBIK facade projection from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Vote For Me! (Because You Know You Love Me)

Hey everyone! I'm shamelessly begging for your votes. The members of HandmadeMN are conducting a contest where you can vote for your favorite entry in the Monthly Challenge. This month's theme is Circus. I've entered my most fabulous Circus Wagon Wheels bottle cap magnets. It's a set of six, and not only is it an entry to the contest, it's also up for sale at my shop.

HandmadeMN is a group of Minnesota (and some fringy Wisconsin) artisans. We all work hard to keep beauty, funk, and sass in the world. Support your local artists by buying directly from them. They'll love you for it, and you'll love what they have to offer.

Even if you don't vote for me, check out the contest and all of the cool entries. Vote now. It's your duty and privilege. Voting ends midnight, August 18.

Dive Night ~ Grampa Tony's

Dive Night is a once monthly adventure undertaken by me and Husby, along with our friends Ruthie and Ray. Each couple alternates choosing a restaurant, one which must come under the category of "dive." Our definition of dive: a neighborhood gathering spot hiding under the radar. Casual atmosphere and good food. We're out to find the best food in the Minneapolis/St Paul area without having to pay a fortune or dress up. A sip of beer or wine doesn't hurt either.  See a list and links to the previous dive night posts here.


So here’s the thing – I’ve got a weird hang-up about the fact that I live in the same town in which I grew up. It’s not that I don’t love living where I live, and growing up here was the best. I just want people to know I haven’t been here the whole time. I did actually move away for a while. Not far away, but far enough to be wildly independent and a little less suburban. I spent fourteen years in the Highland Park area, on the corner of Snelling and Randolph, across the street from Plums, in an apartment above Bridgeman’s Ice Cream Parlor. Sadly, Bridgeman’s is no longer there. But I digress. The point I’m trying to get to is that I went back to the old neighborhood for a monthly Dive Night with Ruthie, Ray, and Husby. It was divine.

Grampa Tony’s was the restaurant of choice. I remember many nights where I would just pick up the phone, call Grampa Tony’s, and have them deliver the most mouth-watering sausage and mushroom pizza imaginable. Sometimes I would take dates there and we would eat in (it was a short and pleasant stroll from my apartment), which is what we did on our Dive Night.



The interior of the restaurant is quite compact and is one of those places that has pictures of famous people everywhere; makes for interesting conversation and reminiscing about those has-been celebrities. Our waitress was sweet as could be, although I think she was a little scared of our somewhat boisterous behavior. I don’t know why we were so squirrely that night.

Now, on to the food. All I can say is…yum. So, so yum. We started out with appetizers, as usual. The picture is a little blurry as I was so weak from hunger I couldn’t hold the camera steady, but I can tell you the chicken wings and pesto cheese bread were scrumptious. With a mostly Italian menu there was lots of pasta and pizza. As I mentioned before, I nearly lived on the pizza back in the old days, and my co-divers opted to try them out. Ray and Ruthie shared a hand-tossed number, and Husby took all to himself a thin-crust.

As much as I wanted to savor and relive that pizza, I decided to get something new, and something different from the rest of the group. The gigantic, enormous, monsterous Italian submarine. Of course it was enough for two. I didn’t share – I deserved the whole thing even if I had to take two days to eat it. Husby didn’t eat his entire pizza either, so we got to eat Grampa Tony’s fare two nights in a row. Heaven!

I heartily suggest you try some food at Grampa Tony’s. You won’t spend a lot of money, you won’t go away hungry, and you won’t have to cook dinner the next night.

Addendum: For dessert Ruthie and Ray treated us to some ice cream at Cup N Cone in White Bear Lake. I'm so glad that little stop is always busy. It was Husby's first visit, and he's been begging me to go back ever since. We'll have to get there again before the close of the season.

To Go Or Not To Go

I went out with some old friends from high school last night. One of these friends you've heard of before, Ruthie. The other was Margaret. Ruthie and I haven't kept up with Margaret the way we have with each other, so the reminiscing overtook talk of current happenings in our lives. We had thirty years to cover.

On the calendar, in pencil, is my 30th high school reunion. It's scheduled for September. I still have yet to decide if I will be attending. Ruthie and Margaret are pretty much on board.

I've heard a rumor that one of my best friends in high school was so traumatized by the ordeal that is adolescent education she disappeared and has not desired contact with anyone connected with that era of her life. On the other end of the spectrum there's a girl (well, woman now) who has to connect with everyone from high school on Facebook and has kept tabs on the comings and goings of all her classmates throughout the years.

High school wasn't horrible for me, nor was it the pinnacle of my life. It just was. There were some fun times and not so fun times. The thing is, it seems people revert back to their high school roles during and event like this. The cliquey people will be on one side of the room and the nerdy losers will be on the other. Perhaps I project my own insecurities and am myself reverting to a time when I didn't have much confidence.

The bottom line, going to a reunion for the first time after all these years seems kind of like going back, something in which I have no interest. Maybe if I didn't have something pressing the following day I could take a little stroll down memory lane and show those cliquey cheerleaders how a homely nerdy girl can turn out okay. And I could take my time and make an entire evening of catching up and reminiscing rather than having to race off to an early bedtime.

I think I've made the decision. Now I'll just have to get Ruthie and Margaret to take pictures of everyone. We've got to have something to talk about over the next Cosmo!

Friend Me, Fan Me, Follow Me On Twitter

Where did the summer go? Oh, I know we're just in the midst of it, but I'm already shopping for fall/winter/holiday candle fragrances. Seems like Christmas is right around the corner!

In the news, I was recently featured on the HandmadeMN blog. You can read the interview here. It makes me feel so...famous.

Also new for me are Facebook pages and a Twitter account. I resisted as long as I could, but now I'm kind of into it. Still have a lot to learn and so many more friends to find in the sea of millions.

Click on the links on the right side bar to Friend me and/or Fan me in Facebook and to Follow me on Twitter.

I'd also like to send a mid-year word of thanks for all the support you've given me. Gloria, Rhonda, and Lori, you've been keeping me busy with your latest requests, and Lord knows I need something to keep me out of trouble. And to all of you other internet shoppers and craft show browsers, thanks for stopping by, looking, laughing, oohing and ahhing, and finding from my selections those special gifts or treats for yourself.

Before I get too verklempt I'm going to head to the studio and pour some Spruce Tree candles. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Did You Know? Shop Categories

I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who are like me who look in the middle of the screen when browsing on the computer to avoid some pretty obnoxious ads on various websites. I've trained myself to ignore the flashing ads at the top and around the sides of the blog post, article, or e-mail I'm trying to read. But because of the tunnel vision I've developed, I tend to miss interesting and sometimes vital information on the sidebars of sites without intrusive ads.

Take my Etsy shop...anyone's Etsy show for that matter. Did you know there is a much easier way to shop for what you want without scrolling through page after page of listings from a buyer? It's true!

Right now I have sixty items in my shop. Compared to other shops on Etsy, I'm pretty tiny. But even so, scrolling through sixty items can be a somewhat time-consuming job, and we all know computers are supposed to save us time. Here's where it gets fun. When you're at a shop's front page, look to the right. Dont's worry, you won't find some ad showing an animated belly flubbering around trying to sell you weight loss pills. What will be there, over on the right, is a list of categories the seller has created to make your shopping experience more efficient.

Using my shop as an example: The first page of my shop (any every page for that matter) contains a little bit of everything I sell. If a buyer comes to the shop and sees a candle she likes and a bunch of bottle cap magnets that she's not interested in, she might not feel like going through many pages to find more candles. That's where the seller's categories come in. You just look to the right and you'll see how the seller has categorized all of the items for sale. If my buyer wants to look only at candles in my shop, she just needs to click on the Candles section and only candles will come up on her screen.

Not only does this area show categories, but also how many items are contained in that section. So the lady who wants to look at my candles can look through twelve candles rather than sifting through sixty items of things she might not even be interested in.

Jewelry sellers could categorize by earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. Photographers could categorize their work by subject matter. And it's all in an effort to give you a stress-free shopping experience.

So even if you're like me and avoid the sides of the computer screen so you don't have to look at those most hideous stretchmark ads, be sure to look to the categories section next time you're shopping on Etsy. It will save you tons of time and might even help you find something you didn't even know you were looking for.