ants in my pants

Before I begin this post allow me to take a moment to apologize... for my internet:

Read or skip, either way is fine.

I use Google Chrome, ok? Ok. Every since I got my laptop back from repairs a few months ago, when I leave a comment on a blog post, nothing happens. I type the comment, hit 'submit' but no comment gets submitted.

So now when I read blogs I use Internet Explorer but the problem is, when I click on a blog I get a "page cannot be displayed" page. I have to refresh the blog post at least twice before anything comes up and at the "high speed" of Internet Explorer we all know how frustrating it can be waiting for a blog to load.

I CAN leave comments with Internet Explorer, however when I hit 'submit' I get the same error page and I have to keep reloading the page over and over before the comment is submitted.

So if you see a comment from me on your blog be aware that I went through great lengths to tell you I think your dress is pretty.... because I like you.

 Now, behold. ME IN PANTS!! Yes pants!

Me and pants have never gotten along. All my life my thighs have been very large and my bottom rather flat so finding pants that fit my awkward figure has always been a hassle. A couple years ago I just said 'to heck with it' and stopped looking. Now it's all skirts and dresses for me and I love it. I love the freedom and I love the breeze between my knees.... but I hate shaving. That's why I wear leggings or tall boots when I go out. Gotta conceal my deadly werewolf gams. 

So a couple weeks ago whilst browsing my favorite clothing site www.599fashion.com I came across these colorful elastic waist drawstring pants and found myself strangely attracted to them. I took a $6 risk and I'm glad I did. I loooove these pants!

(I'm not being paid to pimp this site - I'm just sharing.)

Entire outfit under $30

Vest and pants: www.599fashion.com

Tank: Old Navy clearance

Shoes: Walmart Clearance
Necklace: Ebay, from India. The price was low and the quality is high.It came with matching earrings but I  need to convert them to hoops so I can wear them in my metal ear hole thingies.

((135 days of pregnancy left))

 After strutting about in my trousers and stunning new jewelry, I tried my hand at making Posole for dinner: a Mexican soup I saw on Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Minus the jalapenos, ground pork instead of chunks and chicken broth instead of beef broth, it came out amazing and paired well with some bean burritos. 

 Later that evening before bath time I let River color the tub with washable non-toxic markers. He had a blast. The water came from a rubber duck he invited into the tub so we ended up making some pretty cool watercolor tub art.

 When he was done I just sprayed the ink down the drain. Easy, peasy artsy fun.

Ok folks, I'm off to go sign some autographs for the hundreds of adoring fans waiting outside my window... and by sign some autographs I mean vacuum the living room. Bye.

late on the green

Happy Day After St. Patrick's Day!! 

This day is completely unimportant, but I figured I'd use it to share a bit about my St. Patrick's Day since I was unable to make this post on the actual holiday. 

 If you know anything about me then you'd know that I loooooove holidays and I always do my best to dress accordingly - but I have nothing green... well, I mean, nothing that FITS anyways. I have two green sweaters and a green skirt but they're all too small - but my favorite green eye shadow still fits. 

I enhanced the color in the first photo so you can see what a pretty green it is but the photos still aren't very accurate. It's a bold shimmering emerald that is out of this world.

Since going out drinking and partying is out of the question for a few more months, we stayed in and just watched crime investigation shows on Netflix.

 For dinner I made scotch eggs with green hollandaise sauce, green mashed potatoes and broccoli.

Never had hollandaise on scotch eggs? You're missing out! Give it a try! As gross as it all looks, it was pretty fantastic.

All this green madness was followed up with my famous handmade strawberry shortcake. And by "handmade" I mean I used my hands to assemble it.

It's so easy to make. You want the recipe? Here it is: fresh bakery angel food cake, strawberry glaze, fresh strawberries and whipped cream. So simple!

So how was your St. Patrick's Day?

rock, paper, scissors, alligator, spider, dynamite

 Saturday me and my boys went to Shreveport for a little outing. It was great but it all got started off sitting in the parking lot of Academy Sports for almost and hour. My husband needed to meet up with a guy to buy a gun from him for his friend but the two men's attempt at arranging the meeting was pretty poor. That's what happens when you try arrange something like this all through Facebook instead of using the old fashioned method of exchanging phone numbers. So we waited and waited and waited...

To pass the time we played "rock, paper, scissor, alligator, spider, dynamite (featuring Abe Lincoln)" and sang along to the Producers soundtrack. While waiting I saw a hot air balloon for the first time in my life floating across the sky all majestic and... floaty...  I was super excited.

Oh yeah, I also gave myself a weird Sharpie tattoo during the wait.

After the gun swap we moved on to the Shreveport Boardwalk for a little bit of food and shopping.We went into the massive Bass Pro Shop in search of a steakhouse restaurant that we later found has been converted into a Sonic fast food restaurant for some strange reason.

One side of the elevator in the store is glass so you're greeted by this little fellow when you go up and giant ugly lake fish when you go down.

By now we're starving and there was an hour wait at Joe's Crab Shack... as well as darn near every restaurant there.

We decided to go Italian since there wasn't a seating wait. The restaurant turned out to be buffet style with some of the most mediocre pizza and pasta I've ever had. No wonder no one was in there. I say mediocre... let's face it- the food sucked.

After choking down crappy fettuccine alfredo and mushy shrimp we headed to the Oshkosh store to find River some new clothes. By the way, he just turned six months and weighs about 20 lbs so his clothing selection is pretty slim at home. He can wear up to 18 month clothes now. When we go out in public people always ask his age and when we tell them they look at us like, "Really? You sure?" 

Yes. He's big. No fat. Just big.

The Oshkosh store was having a killer sale and it also has a way better selection of baby clothes than any of the stores here. No stupid puppies playing baseball or frogs on skateboards! Just good cute clothes. I got him four new pieces for $11.

 We then went to the Earthbound Trading Company and I scored this incense burner, incense matches, an elephant ring holder and two letter "Zs" for about $8.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with the Zs.... I just couldn't pass them up for less than a dollar each.

On the way out we saw two teenage girls freaking out and saying, "what was that?! It scared me! Some kind of beetle thing!" I looked down and stopped my husband just as he was about to squish this demonic looking massive roach thing with the wheels of the stroller.  Even with my husband's hand in the shot for size comparison, you can't really tell how enormous that thing was. I'm not afraid of bugs at all, in fact I kind of like them but that thing was a little too big and too ugly for my taste.

Have you seen this kind of bug? What on earth is it?!?!

So how was your weekend??

kisses for the misses

You know how I'm always griping about my troubles with thrift shopping? Well, I actually had a pretty good run at Goodwill the other day. I've just come to accept that yes, they've raised their prices, but it's not going to kill be to buy a used dress for $5 or a pair of shoes for $3.50. Man, I'm cheap. When I go to a retail store and I see an awesome dress on clearance for $20 marked down from $80 I'll say to myself... "mmm, I bet I could go somewhere else and get 3 dresses or 5 shirts or 2 pair of shoes or 6 purses for $20."  So I'll go to a an even cheaper store with an even better sale and I usually don't find the 3 dresses or 5 shirts or 2 pair of shoes or 6 purses for $20... and I'll come home empty handed every time.

Ok, these are self-taken photos. How the heck did I manage to reset the camera and then run back and get into the same stance in the exact same spot?!?!?

 

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Dress: Goodwill

Vintage rain jacket: garage sale

Leggings: Walmart

Boots: hand-me-downs

Speaking of being cheap, I've been going .99 jewelry crazy on eBay lately. I can't even keep up with how much jewelry I've bought over the past couple of weeks or so. People tend to shy away from cheap jewelry like this because it'll fall apart after just a couple of wears, but now that I make jewelry I feel totally comfortable buying cheap jewelry because I can just fix it myself if it breaks or reuse it to make something else!

I found these adorable shoes at my Goodwill run. How do you like my rush-job airbrushed legs??

The red leather wrist band is another one of my .99 eBay purchases.

...another .99 eBay score. Every since I bought a pair of 50s chiffon gloves from Bella's Etsy shop a couple of weeks ago, I've been going glove crazy. I have another pair of white lace gloves with ruffled wrist cuffs on the way.

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Dig this all-Pinterest dinner I whipped up last week.

Just click to get to the recipes.

Oven roasted corn (AWESOME)

Black Bean Fritters with Creamy Cilantro Dipping Sauce (A vegetarian dream)

Honey lime shrimp (SUPERB)

If it wasn't for Pinterest, we'd probably have tilapia and broccoli every night because I'm an impatient and lazy cook. Thank you Pinterest.

Wanna know something crazy about me? This is as far that I can stick out my tongue.  Hee hee! I'm tongue tied, meaning that little bit under my tongue that attaches it to the bottom of my mouth is almost at the very end of my tongue. I do indeed have a very light lisp because of it- but it's nothing major. No one seems to notice and I couldn't care less about it, so it's all good!

Do you have any fun "deformities"?

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what kind of bees make milk? BOOBEES!

What's going on party people? I hope everyone is fantastic. I sure am. Always!

I'm in the middle of planning our town's very first beard and mustache competition. It'll be a fundraiser for my faire of course and I'm pretty stoked about it. I'm studying how to judge and all the rules and technical stuff.  I'm wondering into a whole new realm of event planning and I can't wait to get it started!

Speaking of faire, I've been getting some pretty fantastic entertainment lined up for the 2013 faire. I've got my blacksmith and poetic pirates again, my wondering gypsies on horseback and an awesome fire-spinning group from Memphis, TN called Radiant Spirals. YAY!!

I also started a new blog called "Events In Texarkana" which is a MUCH needed site for what's happening in  town and the surrounding areas. It's catching on slowly- I mean, it's only been a few days since I started it but I'm more than sure it'll be a success.

So here's what else I've been up to lately:

I've been on a serious Pinterest recipe kick lately.

Here's some er, what is this? Oh yeah, cilantro lime rice with chicken and avocado sauce, I paired with edemame and toasted flour tortillas.

Salmon sweet potato burgers. I topped this with an avocado sauce and sauteed baby bella mushrooms. I deep fried the patties instead of baking them like the instructions say to do so they came out crispy on the outside and mushy on the inside... so the burgers fell apart and needed to be eaten with a fork and lots of napkins. 

My new favorite drink! I've only seen it in Mexican grocery stores but I recently found it at the Dollar Tree. It tastes like thickened lemon-lime Koolaid with bits of tasty stuff in it. Mmm... that's honeslty the best I can do it describe it.

Now that my office/craft room/baby room is clean and set up, I've been making a lot of steampunk jewelry and accessories and revamping my Etsy store. I also opened a Storenvy shop to try to get rid of some books and other little stuff I don't want anymore.

So today me and the husband are off to do our taxes so that we can (hopefully) get our tax return in time to pay for our trip to New York for my sister-in-law's wedding in June. Great, now I have to comb my hair and look presentable. I've really been digging the dreadlocks I've been developing since Easter.

Have a superdeeduper day my lovelies!

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Bonus River Shots: 10 weeks old already!

"Whatchu lookin' at?"

you get pretty eggs when you turn 88

Now that the office/baby room is finally complete I have a new place to snap some pics!

I'll share more photos of how this room turned out later. I'm so proud!

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Yesterday me and the husband went to Tyler, TX to join my family in celebrating my grandaddy's 88th birthday. I didn't know he was that old! That just goes to show how awesome he is.

I wanted to dress festively but comfortably (and warm for the occasion) because Tyler is two and a half hours away. I dressed for travel.

I'm enjoying my new office so much! No more tiny bits of metal from my jewelry making stuck in the living room carpet. No more beads and charms lost in the couch. Hooray! You're probably wondering why I would want to do such crafts in a nursery. Well River is only two months old right now and won't be getting into anything hazardous anytime soon. But when he gets to that creepy crawly stage, I'll probably just move my operation into the kitchen and let him have the room to himself.

Sweater: thrifted recently for $2

skirt: Target

undershirt and boots: hand-me-downs

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At his birthday party, grandaddy got to hold his great-grandson for the first time. He was so tickled that he got a smile out of him. Aren't they cute together?

Clockwise:

River being held by his step great-grandmother for the first time

What cake can hold 88 candles??

Grandaddy and baby River

My sister holding the world's smallest and useless salt and pepper shaker set ever made.

Me, of course.

Granddady and River again

My mom and River

The gorgeous deviled eggs I made for the party

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Bonus:

How to make pretty deviled eggs!

I saw a photo of pastel deviled eggs on Pinterest and figured I'd give it a shot. There were no instructions on how to make them so I just took a wild guess. 

I'm terrible at DIY instructions by the way...

Prepare your deviled eggs like you normally do but soak the whites in a mixture of food coloring and water for about ten minutes. I think I used about 8-10 drops of food coloring in each glass.

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Instead of just adding mayo to the yolks to make the filling I add all sorts of awesomeness: Miracle Whip, pickle relish, a little yellow mustard and precooked bacon bits (at the request of my mom and husband).

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Tip: you don't need an icing bag to fill the eggs, just put your filling in a ziploc bag, cut the tip off the bottom corner and squeeeeeeze.

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Top your eggs with a sprinkle of paprika and there ya go!

Pretty eggs!

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Have a great week party people!

I'm going shark hunting with Morgan Freeman in the arctic tundra now. Peace!