m'appelez belle

Call me beautiful. That is  what I want to hear.
I want to know that I leave an impression. I want to make a difference. If I am nothing else to the world but beauty, at least I will have been that.
Don't call me pretty. Pretty is petty. Beauty is all encompassing. Beauty blooms, from the inside, out. Calling me beautiful is like calling me meaningful.
When you call me beautiful, you tell me you care. When you tell me I'm beautiful, I know you noticed. When I am called beautiful, I feel strong.
If I am beautiful, I am useful.
As a beautiful human being, I am kind. As a beautiful woman, I am inspiring. As a beautiful sister, aunt, daughter, friend, I am loving.
With my beauty, I hold purpose. With my beauty, I captivate. With my beauty, I love.

l'avenir

It's a slippery slope, living for the future. The farther you get into it, the farther you feel from it, the farther you start reaching. I was inspired by Yeah Dave's guide to livin' the moment when I read it a couple years ago. Reading some of his stuff was like a revelation. There were some obvious things that I remember having heard all my life and I feel would be common sense even if no-one ever told me but there were also some things that I felt brought me to life.
I haven't focused on it so much in the day to day life lately but he recommended to each and every day enjoy: something beautiful, something humorous and something delicious. Within a few months after reading this, I was noticing to myself all that was beautiful, all that was funny and all that was yummy in a day. I often felt proud of this and would even share these things with my friends. Whether that meant sharing the actual experiences or sharing my tales of these experiences pretty much depended on where they were. I remember feeling energized and revitalized. I felt as though I was I doing something good even if I didn't really have a purpose.
It is hard to be happy when you are weighing yourself down with the pressure of having to matter to everyone. To be honest, if you didn't try at all I would be willing to guarantee that you would still matter to at least one person. And it's the people that you matter to without trying that you should be happiest about, should be closest to, should try to matter for.
It takes a really decent person to care about and care for other people. I don't mean to just care about and for your family- that usually comes naturally. And I don't just mean someone who does things for others. A lot of people do things for others just for the gratitude. Some don't help others out for others' sake. Some people do it for some sort of self gratification in the end. It's the people who just do it because they see a problem out there and they hope for a better ending. The people that share concern for the future of not just themselves but of others.
That got off on a tangent. I was talking about the future so I guess that was coming back but still. What I am trying to say is that I am finding it very hard to live in the now.
In interviews, people like to ask where you see yourself in five years. It completely freaks me out that I have absolutely no idea. It freaks me out thinking that if I were to instantly jump five years into the future, it would be like waking up an amnesiac with no idea of how I got there. I don't know where I'm going and I don't know what I'm doing to get there...

les temps froid

There are many reasons why winter sucks. The first hundred reasons? Snow. Snow makes driving (and walking) dangerous. It makes your daily commute at least double. It gets dirty and ugly quickly and covers everything that reminds you that there is still  or ever was an eco-system, a life form, on Earth. It's a bitch to shovel and scrape  sidewalks, driveways, cars, etc. Need I say more? No. Everyone else living in a wintry climate knows. And for the rest of humanity, why should I bring 'em down? The biggest reason I hate winter is because the cold means I cannot wear my "good" clothes. I love dresses and skirts more than any other clothing item. Some days, I even like crop tops. Especially those passed down by a friend. Or super vintage, passed down by a great aunt.  I guess I have been kinda lucky this year with the "lack" of snow but I went to wear this shirt one day and then realized that I would freeze as soon as I got to work. Because the doors don't always close. And/or the heat doesn't always feel warm. So, instead I took some pictures. To remind me of days to come.  In the summertime, I like to dress up in my creations and set-up self-modeled, self-shot photoshoots. It's fun to play dress up and work on sharing my creations with others. These, in the pictures, are not my creations. Some jeans from work, shoes from Macy's and super cute shirt from one of my best friends. I love the yoke and buttons on the back <3 And I am liking how the shirt , standing with arms down, just meets the jeans. Like they were made for each other.

Brother-face bought me a domain name last year. We are currently working on setting it up. It is mostly just him writing code and whatever you do to set up a web page. I'm more like the creative director. Which is always fun of course.  More to come. I'll share the link and stuff when it is more presentable : )

les biscuits et les verres

Thanks to Pinterest, your average Joe can dream up all sorts of creations. Or mimick all sorts of others' creations. Here is my Peanut Butter Hug "cookie". 

I was going for a sweet pink so the hug looked more like zebra stripes but I got a humble rose color. I'm not disappointed. They taste pretty good. I used an idea that I found at dailynibbles.com. However, I did not read it well enough to find that I should have used gel food coloring. I used some target off-brand liquid drops. Probably the cause of the humbled mumble-bumble rosy pink instead of the hot look-at-me pink.

(That was just what I had at the house.) And when she refers to the Peasandthankyou.com recipe I again used just what was around the house. So dairy-margarine instead of not and plain creamy Skippy peanut butter instead of natural. Things like that...

I also tried breaking beer bottles down into glasses. I read about this technique in a magazine my cousin had last year or a couple years ago. Seeing it on pinterest reminded me that I wanted to try that. So I finally did. Once again, I used what was around the house instead of what was recommended. For this, I looked at about.com's several pages on "How to cut class with string"/similarly named topics to get the gist of it. I ended up soaking some pink kitchen cotton crochet yarn that has been sitting in my sewing room for a while now. After a few different trials -oh there were errors, obviously- I wound the yarn around the bottle a couple/few times, cut and tied it and took it off to soak in, in the end, lamp oil. I tried nail polish remover but it just didn't burn long enough. Maybe not enough acetone. 

I don't know why but there was an unopened gallon of lamp oil in the basement. It has to have been sitting there for at least five years. Probably. I used some machine-washable gloves that I bought for my printing and dyeing class to push the soaked yarn back into place. Sitting at the side of the bath tub with a metal tub full of cold water under my arms, I took off one glove to strike a match and light the yarn. While sliding my hand back into the glove, I watched and turned the bottle as the yarn self-extinguished. (Note to self: Oven mittens are not necessarily flame retardant. But I learned that a different way, don't worry.)

As soon as it was done, I dunked it in the cold water. After some attempts, I heard the "pop" that I read about and the glass was broken. But not neatly like I thought it would be. And repeat. ish. I'm planning out working on the kinks. I think the big chunkers of edgy glass are from the yarn-knots. I plan to trim/tuck them better next time. Also, I am thinking that it would create a more consistent/leveled break to put the glass in the water vertically instead of randomly rolling it into the cold. Trying to make sure that the hot ring goes cold all at once should work. Hopefully. We'll see. I gave up for the day after two failed-ish attempts. And then made the afformentioned cookies. That failed-ish.

 This was my first attempt (above). It went through a few different burning yarns and cold-dunkings. There were a lot of rugged edges left and as a result a lot of little pieces were still breaking off in the sanding process. For once in my life, I actually kept my gloves on for the project (except of course to light the match).

The one with the label was my second attempt. You can see that it is smoother but still not necessarily something someone will want to drink out of. Oh right, did I mention that instead of a diamond emery, I used a 400grit sandpaper? I'm looking into getting the emery. I sanded out the sharp parts, it is perfectly safe for rubbing your finger all over. Trust me, I did so again and again and again. It just needs a good sanding down for obvious aesthetic purposes, you know?