Sumthin' New

Sorry I'm not sorry for the crappy phone pics...

I'm trying out a new look for this year's faire. Since I've stepped down as director I'm still Daniella Noir the Gypsy Queen and head of the gypsy camp so I'll have more time to perform and entertain and all that jazz soooooo that means I'll need a more practical costume.

The shenanigans I wore last year consisted of waaaaay too many layers, needed constant readjusting and didn't look very "gypsy". 

I need something super fancy and lightweight. I need to be gaudy and stand out so people will know I'm the  queeeeen.... but I need to be able to dance in it. Late September heat cools down to about 85 or 90 but when you're dancing in layers, temperatures don't matter.

Hot it hot.

A cool but about this belt:

After almost passing out whilst performing in a boned corset at the pirates ball, I realized I need something that won't cover my chest, something that will tuck me in and also cover the fact that my skirts are pulled up right under my boobs so I'll have more skirt to dance with.

A regular under-bust corset will still be too tight and my boobs would hang over it in the ugliest way. I searched the internet for days couldn't find what I envisioned I needed. 

One day I was looking through some faire photos and I saw a belt hanging behind a merchant in his booth:

Gasp! I need that style in black! I messaged him on Facebook and my custom belt was at my doorstep just a few days latter!

I'm not going to wear this necklace as a crown again this year. It's not looking right with my head wrap. I might just do a smaller necklace or a string of coins or a cool brooch in the middle and add more flowers and drippy bits.

The whole deal isn't finish. I'm adding some shiny bits to the vest and green over-skirt. Tassels and mirrors and beads and stuff.

So what do you think of my new look?

It's it more "gypsy" that last year?

Would you change or add anything to it?

open the gate and seize the gay

Aw man, I've been doing things and stuff. And stuff and things.

I finally bought the domain to my Quirky Bohemian Mama blog. See when you do that, you're waaaaaaay more visible in searches and therefore can spend less time promoting and begging for attention and stuff. So this is the move I've really needed to make but I've had several posts go viral on Pinterest and that brings me like 95% of all my traffic. If my domain name changed, then the pins would be linked to nothing and all my traffic would drop off to nothing. 

Soooo.... what I did was made a copy of the blog so no links will die. 

In a nutshell, the Blogspot blog is still up and its newborn twin is at  www.quirkybohemianmama.com. 

The problem was I was unable to import my blog to the new domain so I had to copy and paste the HTML to almost aaaaaaaall my posts by hand. It took me 5 days and I finally got it done! 

So to celebrate, here are some completely irrelevant photos to this subject. 

If this outfit looks familiar, well it's because I wore a pink version of it in my last post.

These pics are from my Soul Flower Vibe Tribe (NOT an affiliate link)  blog post for the month. I'm sporting a pair of organic cotton leggings with this great design on them. 

I'm not pimping a product - just bragging about my freebies.

In other news, my diet's going good. The juicing thing caused me some serious digestive problems. I lost a ton of water weight but then packed it on almost overnight when I stopped and started my cycle. I was super miserable.

Has there been a blog post yet where I haven't mentioned my monthlies? Sorry!

So I've gone to a more traditional diet and I'm actually sticking with it: 1,290 calories a day + 10-30 minutes of dance 5 days a week. I'm keeping track of everything on MyFitnessPal and I'm pretty proud of myself.  I've lost 8-lbs in two weeks. Yay!

Don't use these pics to judge my weight loss. If I look thinner in them it's because I've edited the heck out of my enormous bosom so I'll look a normal human being for a bigger audience over at Soul Flower. You guys know I have massive knockers, so I don't have to hide them from you.

Some of you have been with me for years and I feel like we're at that special part of our relationship when I can start peeing with the door open.

I love you guys.

I don't have to edit my boobs for you.

Let's move in together.

Hollie wears a pink dress and pink shoes to another bad festival.

This weekend we went to another failed attempt at a food festival downtown.

Guys, I love festivals and I rarely get to leave the house so that's why I keep trying them out.

I think I'm done now.

This one was the best of the worst. 

It was supposed to be a Cajun catfish festival, right?

But there was no cajun catfish!

There were two vendors selling catfish - but for a CAJUN CATFISH FESTIVAL there was a terrible lack of CAJUN CATFISH aaaaand FOOD.

There were about 8 food vendors, it was the same ol' same ol' corndogs and stuff and they were sooooo spread out over a very large area it was ridiculous.

Let's give them an "B+" for effort - there was a magician this time. He was great but there was hardly anyone there to make a decent audience for him. 

And there was an (Albanian? Hispanic?) Elvis impersonator. He came under the magician's tent and took all the poor guy's attention away. People started swarming him for photos and followed him when he walked away to hide in his pearl-white Escalade.

We ended up getting two boudin balls (boudin rolled into balls, battered and deep fried), a Nacadoches meat pie and a whole tilapia.

So here's really why I'm so frustrated about this festival in particular. The hosts did not and WOULD not advertise the event! Almost as if they didn't want to succeed!

When I heard they were looking for vendors, I made a vendor call post and posted on my Events in Texarkana Facebook page. I asked them to make an event page so I can share and they didn't do it - so I did it for them. Their flyers were missing important info like admission and times and people were coming to me for more info about the event because I was the only one advertising!! I stepped up and helped them promote the event, never letting them know that it was me pushing the event info so hard. 

Even after all I did to help - the attendance was still low and I'm sure it's because people have learned their lessons about these "food festivals" that keep coming up. The vendors leave early because no one is showing up and no one is showing up because no one knows about the events!

So when people come in the afternoon or early evening, almost everyone is already gone.

 

Hispanic Elvis knew about the festival though...

Hispanic Elvis didn't sweat in leather in 97F Texas weather...

Hispanic Elvis is not human.

No worries, River. I'll find you a good festival. Even if I have to create it myself... er, again.

So what are the festivals like where you live?

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Grab yer booty and say "aaaaarrrrrrrrrrr" + VIDEOS!

You know what time it is....

Pirate Ball Stuff time.

Here are some photos and words and stuff and at the bottom of the post are two videos of my performance. Enjoy.

About the outfit:

I'm wearing a long sleeve sheer wrap top but despite the top being a 2X it still wasn't enough to cover my bosoms. So I wore a bodice over it for support and extra color. I tucked the sleeves upwards into my bra straps to keep the bodice straps from slipping down when I dance. Make sense?

The sheer top and 35 yard skirt are from eBay. Yes the skirt is made from 35 yards of material!

The yellow bodice was handmade by a friend. I'm wearing it inside out since the outer part is a dull orange - just not bright enough.

Me and husband.

The turnout was bigger this year. There were a lot of unfamiliar faces and many people came from out of town. Yippee! We did our usual live music, silent auction and costume contested hosted by Jack Sparrow.

Here is the official crew of the Pirates of Texaaaaarrkana.

And you asked for it so here it is. Me dancing!
I am performing two Russian Gypsy influenced dances.
(Prepare for my list of excuses)
As my skirt is too gathered, I was robbed of a little yardage from my skirt and I was unable to flourish as much as I would like. Had I have known that beforehand, I would have had a much bigger skirt made.

In the video you'll notice a distracting bosom gap in my bodice. Sorry - just giving you warning. I loosened the side laces of the bodice and ran a dress rehearsal and realized I needed to let it out more so the front would fully close... but I forgot to do that. So yeah... bosom gap.
A no no in rennie costuming.

The first  dance is to a traditional Gypsy song, Hai Ne Ne Ne.

The second dance is to Gogol Bordello's "Start Wearing Purple".
I just couldn't give 100% in this routine.
At the very beginning of the dance my feet cramped up horribly and I was extremely out of breath from the tightness of the bodice. I pushed through this routine praying I wouldn't black-out. I was getting tunnel vision and my chest was aching but dang it I made it. I clipped out a little bit of the dance and improvised with some crowd interaction to give myself a break.
Improv.
That's the business of show folks.
And lesson learned:
I will NEVER dance in a boned bodice ever ever ever again.



The part with my husband was improvised as we decided not to do the "pull purple scarves from wife's bosom trick". I failed to replace that gag with something else.  He had no idea what I was going to do and neither did I.  I saw his standing there and thought,  "Sure, why not?"
SMOOCHY TIME!

Bodice free is the way to be!!

(end of the night strip time)

Bragon Doat

Saturday we went to our town's first dragon boat festival. I had never heard of dragon boat races until  I saw the event being advertised and thought it sounded pretty cool.

 Local businesses form a team of 20 - plus 1 person to beat a drum rhythmically at the front to sync to rowing. 

And then they compete against each other in these beautiful long boats - just a few at a time and then they move on to the next round and then finals and then...

Well... I don't know. We only saw the end of one race and the next one wasn't for another hour.

It was hot as eff out there and we didn't plan to stick around an hour more.

The event wasn't really my ideal festival (are they ever?). There were some bounce houses, and just a couple food vendors and a few others selling crafts but there was no live music or anything like that. It felt like the event was really more for the people participating in the actual races.

Each team had their own tent and chairs and barbecue pits and food so it was kind of hard to tell who was an actual vendor and who was just chillin' with their teammates.

The turnout for participants was massive though! I wouldn't think that this kind of event would stand a chance in Texarkana because it's so new to us -  but with it being fun and sporty - it was perfect for this town. 

I forgot to charge my camera's battery before we left so these are pretty much all the pics I managed to get.  We didn't have a blast of a time or anything like that but it was a nice family outing. Since the event was by a lake and in a well maintained public park, the scenery was pleasant enough to make it worth the stay.

ON A VERY SERIOUS NOTE:

As many of you have probably already heard, one of the worst mass shootings in US history happened last night at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL.

50 people were killed and over 50 were injured.

It was an Islamic terrorist attack conducted by one man.

He gave warning of his attack three days in advance but no one listened.

I've heard claims that a man in California was stopped by police and was found to be carrying large amounts of ammo and pipe bombs. He possibly could have been headed to a gay pride parade.

I'm terrified there might be other attacks planned as this is Gay Pride Month.

Please keep our nation in your thoughts and prayers.

...but do you REALLY know the muffin man?

Hot diggety dawg. Watch out ya'll - she's wearing pants again!

These pants have been in my closet for a couple of years and I was mostly just hanging on to them for costuming purposes. I'm not sure what kind of costume I would need them for but if you know me - you would know that I would need them for a costume. That's just how things work around here.

As you already know - I hate pants but I've got nothing against and nice pair of loose fitting trousers every now and then. The problem with these is that they're white with pockets and the pockets show though horribly and my undies show though no matter what color I wear and I've never had a top long enough to cover that fact...

Or so I thought.

I totally forgot about this dress shirt thingy.

The pants and top were handed down to me and I'm not a fan of either items but together I think they did ok. I got a lot of compliments on this outfit today after church though. I think it was the shocker of seeing me in pants. Do pants make chicks more attractive?

...or is it just me?

Let's choose the latter.

So in other news, the fruits and veggie diet didn't go as planned. 

Eating that much fruit and bland veggies drove me to the point of break after just two days so I just started throwing it all in my juicer.

So now I'm juicing and eating a super low cal vegan cabbage soup for substance - sometimes a simple paleo meal like a veggie-egg scramble if I'm too too too hungry.

Although I've cheated a few times, it's actually a pretty easy diet to follow. 

 And the cheating as for a reason! I was sick to death of having to go to the bathroom every thirty minutes and I don't mean to just go wee. But things are kind of starting to erm, balance out I guess you could say.

I have no idea how much weight I've lost - that is if I've lost any at all but I do feel a little happier and more energetic. I'm going into my second week and I'm pretty sure I can keep this up!

In other news, my city got an Asian market!

If you know anything about Texarkana then you'd know how impressive that is!

This town is LACKING in culture so hard it hurts so everyone has been totally flipping out over this place.  Yesterday I totally broke my diet with some canned eel and shrimp chips but hey, I say it was worth it! I was cerebrating! 

And plus it was like 100 calories for all of it so no big D.

Do you have an Asian market where you live? Do you go to it?

If a theme song played every time you entered a room, what would it be?