Thursday, May 31, 2012

Today, I am a Grownup

If you want to know what two hundred bucks will buy a girl these days...



Shoes.... shoes... shoes....

 Paint for the back door
Ten pounds of Mrs. See's Chocolates


Windsor & Newton art supplies

 Lots of DVDs including Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman in your living room


A hot stone massage and maybe a pedicure.


Or two hundred bucks will buy you one very pissed off cat with the flu pumped full of antibiotics and fluids, and a car that smells like sick. (And a pizza and a bottle of cheap wine.)

 Guess what I got... Today, I am a grown up.

Monday, May 28, 2012

Vickiy's Wonderland


 This is Vickiy. She lives in the Hollywood Hills. I used to babysit her when I was in high school, a very long, long time ago. My friend Max and I made her a rag doll with bunches of doll clothes, when she was six, and she says we got her interested in sewing. Who knew?

She invited me and my art pal Connie to come up and see her amazing studio. So after a tasty lunch with her and her dad Kim, catching up on the last thirty five years, we took off to see art.

Up the stairs... Vickiy's hub made these beautiful partitions from recycled sixties building salvage.

 
They like pirates. (Actually, they may even be pirates.) 

Vickiy creates amazing art using traditional needlework and embroidery techniques.

 


Beadwork heaven...


 This is the sewing part of the studio. This photo doesn't begin to show how glorious a space this is.



 Drawers of art and lovely things.


 Papers and prints

A Kimono work in progress... Vickiy's seams are perfection.

A work in progress, each leaf is made by hand.

 

 Little treasures everywhere...


 Garden gnomes


This was an antique workstation from a high school chemistry lab. How cool is that?

  

 Thanks Vickiy, you creative goddess, for sharing your beautiful world with us. 
Hope to see you again soon!

It's good to be creative.


Friday, May 25, 2012

How to dress for the prom.

What a day! Went to the mall with a handful of big time hula dollars courtesy of Uncle Bud and Aunt Barb. My mission? Get my adorable nieceypiecey ready for the prom. She a star student, completes in the academic decathlon, sings like an angel and runs cross country. And she draws and reads books.... lots and lots of books.


Step one = The dress. A little internet research told me that prom dresses these days aren't the parade floats of a few years ago. Most of them are pretty much tube socks cut in half. We found this little navy classic at Macy's. It has straps so she won't have to worry about it scooching down all night. You can't really tell from the photo, but the front is all lovely piece work, so a shopping high five!


Step Two = Shoes. We tried a mountain of boxes on. (Not me, my high heel days are long past.) The trick was to find a pair that not only went with the dress but also blinged it up a bit. We looked at a lot of white and cream colored pumps but they were boring. We finally settled on this beautiful pair from BabyPhat, which added a bit of sass to a classic dress.



# 3 Next stop = Makeup.  Again, the challenge was to take the basic navy blue dress and snazzy shoes and tie it together with style. We went to Sephora and bought a lovely lavender nail polish and eye shadow that tied back to the flowers on the shoes. Nicey went with a pretty pink gloss lipstick. The people there were really nice and didn't try to sell us a zillion dollars worth of stuff that we didn't need. All in all = win!





#4The outfit was coming together but we still needed some spice. After looking at jewelry at bunches of places, we ended up at Jessica McClintock and hit pay dirt.  We found a beautiful chunky pearl necklace and earrings in the same creamy colors as the shoes, as well as a ivory colored clutch, all on sale! Love! 




#5  Finally she needed a wrap. We looked for a lace shrug but couldn't find anything. Most of the things we found were either too old lady sweatery or looked like something a flight attendant from the eighties would wear.

For cool California nights, a real pashmina shawl is lightweight, soft  and warm. It can be worn lots of different ways. The color picked up the purples in the shoes, plus it's portable.If I would have had more time I might would have ordered her a pale lavender, cream or pink. (Shameless plug = http://www.the-real-pashmina.com/) They have over eighty colors.


Tomorrow, hair will be styled by younger Nieceypiecey in ringlets. :-) We bought some diamond sparkly things at Claire's to go in her hair.



The whole outfit? Head to toe... $260 bucks.  Have fun tomorrow, adorable you!

Auntie M.

--


I love pretty things and clever words

Monday, May 21, 2012

It's not easy being a cat.

 It's not easy being a cat. It's a lot of work. You have to take a lot of naps.

And chasing string is so exhausting.

So I need to stretch and exercise... I keep in shape by yawning.


In the morning after breakfast I like to do some serious daydreaming.

 

 In the afternoon I have drinks with friends.

Refreshing!


Stop making so much noise!

 
It's a tough job but somebody's gotta do it.

---

There are no ordinary cats. - Colette

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Eclipse

There was a wonderful eclipse of the sun tonight.



It was very mysterious.



Even though it was light out the light all changed to a blue hue.



Everything looked very surreal. The birds stopped singing for a few minutes. Then, all was back to everyday golden light.

Did anyone else see it? 

--

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling. ~ Walt Whitman