back to school, yuck

tis the season for books and short nights of sleep and sore bones from being bent over homework. i opted to take an additional class beyond what i essentially took last semester, forgetting that the math & chem i had then was super easy basic material... so i'm pretty much feeling flustered already. while i love homework, i've been much more beat than usual lately. it doesn't help that i had to go to the doctor today (what else is new!), which resulted in my first missed class of the semester... three days in! i'm hoping this semester will be a lot less, hm, health intensive, so i can keep my work on track. i had a dang b+ stinking up my grades and can hopefully get ALL a's this time around.

so basically, if you think of lilly as homework and scuz as me, this is a pretty good metaphor for my week.

(there is a whole series of these, taken by my poor roommate, that i've posted on my flickr)

i am hoping to do some silk screening patterns on fabric soon... when i can scope out the time. hope everyone is enjoying the last handful of days of january!

merry

xmas 2007 b
Originally uploaded by juliepeach

this picture from last year cracks me up... lilly's face. one only a cat mother could love. right now she's sleeping across my notebook, keeping me from studying...

i miss that apartment, every day. it was SO, just, me. small, but perfect. soooo clean. everything where it needed to be. and i decorated the heck out of it.

if all goes as planned, nyc christmas light/window display extravagaza this weekend! then home a week from tomorrow! tis the season, but how did it get here so fast??

chilly tuesday

weather's been sooo cool! i mean, i shouldn't be surprised since it is three weeks into october (wow!)- but i am loving wearing my trusty gray boots that ryan hates, lots of layers, and scarves... so happy :)



i think the best purchase i have made recently has to be that huge bag of birdseed. i guess the south philly birds finally all got the memo, and at any given time there are about ten little birdies and 1-2 pigeons on my roof! lilly loves it. it makes me so happy that she has birds to look at again, since it used to be like her favorite thing ever in my old apt. right now she is sitting on a pair of folded jeans on my radiator, peeking her head over the windowsill... i think she realized that all the noise she makes getting up and sitting in the windowsill scares most of the birds off! ha she is so fat and cute! it's just amazing considering i saw NO birds whatsoever in this neighborhood when i moved in, and now there are bunches!



i had a really fun (hallo)weekend-- i actually went to another haunted house, something i swore never to do again, and it wasn't terrible! i was a big baby and almost backed out, even after paying, but it was a few house walk-throughs, a forest walk through, and a haunted hayride. plus, it was a little trip to delaware so that was fun, too! i also got to help ryan make a pumpkin cheesecake from scratch, pick pumpkins with ryan (and bridget & dan) at linvilla orchards again, then got together with a huuuuuge group to carve them (and eat pumpkin seeds and drink pumpkin beer)! mine is the second picture, and it was from a template in a CVS carving kit. ha! it was messy and cute fun with everyone. and i actually got to bring my copies of hocus pocus & earnest scared stupid along! nobody but me likes the latter, though, eep- we turned it off 15 minutes in.


also! lastly! i finally scanned in all of my polaroids (that i could find) since i bought my camera, back when i was like 13... and i decided on a new way to display some of them, rather than hanging them on my art-clothesline. i am starting a new blog at http://polaroidsandnotes.blogspot.com that i'll start updating a little bit when i find time this week-- lots of homework, studying, work, and finally some orders trickling in. whew! busybusy.

thoughts on moving

i have nearly finished unpacking... this is probably the slowest i've ever packed & unpacked, but there's just so, so much stuff and i keep getting so distracted! i wish i had a picture of lou's living room on move-in day, it was amazing to see the heart, soul, and guts of my old apartment disassembled, bagged, and in puzzle-packed three cubic feet boxes.

lou's cat, scuz, is having a hard time adjusting to his first real interactions with another cat. he's taking it out on everyone, (mostly lou) but is calming down a little more every day. i feel so bad because it's his home and lilly bumbles around like she owns the place.
she thinks she is in heaven with all of the snooping and adventuring that a new house & moving boxes provides. not to mention carpet, hello! she just rolls and rolls and massages it and rubs her face on it- in my next life i want to come back as a fluffy overfed ugly cat.

(lilly in her second fav spot in the new place. she loooves this bathroom window)

just spoke to my mother for the first time in about a week i guess, and she was asking me about the move and and the house and all... and she started asking me about lou, since i referred to him as the nicest guy in our group of friends- and she said "WHAT i thought he was MY AGE! i thought he was old! like in his fourties or fifties!" and then started asking if he had a girlfriend, if he was a "nice guy", and if we shared a bathroom. so apparently she's thought that i was moving in with a 50 year old man for some time and never thought to ask any questions, but because he is around my age group she starts to think suspiciously? seriously, she thought i was going to live with an old dude?

i am quite tired and trying to get on track with this wedding order & a custom order. i just want my room to be doooooone. and before i go, here is the finished al borland painting. it's been done for many weeks but i was too lazy to cut it down, photo, and post it.

animal friends & crafting

everything has been such a blur lately- i've been so busy packing, crafting, & warm warm adventuring. such a nice change from the dark dreary winter! because i yacked so much last post i'm going to make this one primarily photos-



keeping up with summertime fun, lilly has had a new adventure of her own making friends with mistie's ferret, herald! he's only been over once but they got along really well, except for the fact that he was totally uninterested in paying attention to her so she kept yowling at mistie to pet her!



& i managed to do a little crafting that will help make packing a little easier- ryan and i built one of those wooden organizers from ikea (you know, the ones that come in like 400 pieces?). a while ago on apartment therapy (link http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/look/look-ikea-decorative-scrap-paper-box-drawer-047557) i saw a great idea for giving it a new look. i just decoupaged with neat paper from ac moore before we assembled, so it was soooo easy. and now my desk space is just as neat a the rest of my crafts!



speakin' of. i finally sat down and made a more traditional linocut (as opposed to just stamps) and it was a blast. i have little to no real illustration skills but it's kind of hard to screw up a happy little narwhal. used it for a bunch of notebooks that are up on my (rapidly growing) etsy.

so that's that! it's a friday night so hopefully after this my plans will come together and i can enjoy my last real weekend living in this apartment... sad!

i am full of okra!

georgia! on my mind! it's recently hit me that i am just a month shy of it being a year since i've last been home. i miss gidget so so much, my little tiny baby doggy- she still apparently looks for me in my old room sometimes. sigh. i haven't seen any friends or family, except for my aunt & uncle that i drove up to the catskills with for christmas. i missed my great aunt's (we call her droopy) 90th birthday bash that my aunt organized- i love her so dearly, she's such an amazing sweet funny old lady and i'm really bummed i couldn't arrange/afford to fly in. somewhat of a relief from homesickness, tonight, last minute, i got to see the braves (um, hello, in these amazing free seats ryan snagged via his aunt) beat the phillies! to celebrate i came home and made up some fried okra- i almost never, ever eat it anymore. i've only found it one other time since i've been up here, and it rotted before i found corn meal to bread it with. so that's a good 2+ years without having my favorite childhood food.


speaking of food, ryan and i had a stuffed pepper night the other night! he is really into that wilted spinach/feta orzo i posted a picture of before. we saw trader joe's use little bell peppers as bowls for orzo, so i grilled up some halves and we scooped it in. then we found a "low fat" recipe for jalapeno poppers, that calls for low fat cream cheese, cheese, and baking rather than frying. while we cook a lot more glamorous things (truly, we grill a lot and make stunning kebabs) they were such a cute pair that i couldn't help but take a picture.


(lilly doesn't want to leave! & my excessive packing supplies.)
they've rented out my apartment and i've got a little over two weeks to pack up & move. i'm pretty bummed about it- so so much has changed here, and even though mistie and i technically had our first apartment for six months... i still really consider this my first. it's too expensive for me to renew my lease, so. we move on.


so other things- this has been a really great week. ryan and i went to see ben folds play at drexel for $5 on saturday, totally last minute. yesterday we met up with dan and had a photo adventure around the nicer, greener parts of philadelphia (see above!) then tonight the three of us went to the aforementioned braves' game, in probably the best seats i've ever sat in. this weekend ry has the kanye/lupe/rhianna/NERD tickets for free, i think- so i'm finally moving at my preferred speed again, and feeling really good about it. especially since it's all been virtually free!

wow, this was soooo wordy. i hope everyone else is enjoying their start to the summer- love love.

illuminations

so, although pressure really should be on with planning my almost immediate future, i have been reading warm with the windows open, leisurely crafting, and visiting with friends. i am feeling a little better that my lease is two weeks longer than i previously thought, as well as that my last month's (may) rent was paid when i moved in. i still need to get serious about this, but i can't help but sit by and wait for something big and dramatic to point me in the right direction.

i made a few more sales and put up a few more items this week- the more i make, the better i feel like i am getting at it! and today was really exciting- i finished up card sets, did the photo/posting for them, pulled out/color-coordinated all my fabrics and started four fabric collages, did a little doodle and design, and burned a screen full of images to use. i love days full of diverse crafts. not to mention i ran errands for a few hours in a sleeveless sweater while drinking lemonade iced tea! i mean, everyone else was in jackets and uggs still- but don't they know it's spring in the south?



after sending out a few care packages last week and being in utter panic that everything wouldn't make it in one piece (even after stuffing bags in plastic bubble wrap envelopes for insane cushion), i started making some gift boxes. my first one is here, and i actually made it simply by eyeballing with no real measurements. so i was excited with the results! as well as it gives me a use for stamp patterns that i've decided i don't like enough to cut into tags.


other things: i splurged a week or so ago and picked up some woodsy lights from target.com that jamie said reminded her of me. she was right! my mantle has been really bare since christmas season ended, and i was stuck with what to put up next. i admit they are a little, um, autumn-y but i intend to make them my nonseasonal default decor. sooo precious!


lilly really liked the box the most, and will probably continue napping in it until trash day.


and here, speaking of lights, is one of the few projects i liked at uarts. the assignment was, simply, to create a kind of lace (knit, cut, crochet, burn, etc) that interacts with light (natural, artificial) in an interesting way. i ended up slowly, slowly xacto cutting these greeeeat big sheets of fragile paper with some vintage damask patterns- then i glued/decoupaged?? them over a frosted plastic- i just turned the sheets into lamps bc i had to idea how else to show them. i really want to make more, because they are really beautiful (sorry if that's snooty to say!) in both light & dark. click here! for them in the light, they are great shades of blue.

i hope everyone had as delicious and pug-filled easter as i did, but i really doubt that's possible! i had soooo much food and three friendly pugs to smooch at ry's family easter. okay, back to golden girls and then trying to get some zzzzz.

on cats, cameras, knitting, and zooey.

+this friday, ryan and i went to buy cameras together. i finally used my best buy credit (from returning all of my christmas presents) and got a sony cybershot. i was really holding out for a DSLR (which ryan ended up getting, and it is so gorgeous) but i realized i should start by having a camera i am likely to pull out and use. one of the things i've regretted most about the time i've spent here is the total lack of pictures i have to account for it. right now it's just allowed me to take more pictures of my cat, but soon it'll be worth it. i bet. hopefully.


+i am trying to use my out-of-school and (unwillingly) unemployed time for creative efforts, but it's been so hard to get myself in shape. i have been dying to make the ridiculously cute knitted bangles from see mi knit, but have somehow still not found the right bracelets to start with. check out the link if you're even remotely interested in knitting. it's nuts how easy it is.


+before i go, i have to do a terrible thing and suggest you all run out and download the new zooey deschenel project, she & him. it's twangy and motowny and zooey's vocals are every bit as dreamy as you'd expect from her. just download the early release now and then go buy the real thing when it comes out.