Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas... if you can!

Things are crazy around the holidays! Seriously I always think I'm doing so well and then at the last minute things get crazy and I'm scrambling for everything. I hope my friends don't mind that this year I did more usual and unique gifts. Lots of handmade things and also lots of weird gifts that I've found throughout the year. Of course my friends know that coming from me you just kind of take whatever you can get and enjoy it however you can! Tradition isn't necessarily a strong word in my vocabulary for those of you who hadn't already figured that out!

So, anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone and enjoy your holidays! Don't get too stressed out and just think that you can indulge in all the cookies, candy, food, and goodies you can handle right now because for the next few months there won't be any around anyway!!! :o)

Merry Christmas!
Michelle

Festival of Trees Pictures

These are pictures from the festival of trees in Fort Wayne at the Embassy Theater! Enjoy!
This tree is called the Penguin's Parade--not sure what it is supposed to be exactly, but the tree is on it's side and it's really kind of different than anything we've seen there in the past!
This was our favorite tree--it was done by children at a local school and the entire tree was done with a theme of mice! The ornaments are so cute--sponge cheese ornaments, mice houses from milk cartons, felt mice with candy cane tales, not to mention they took groups of three round bulbs and put them together in the shape of a mouse. It's so cute! I think these kids did a wonderful job!!!
That is Ben wearing my mom's hat. (He thought he was Indiana Jones.) His favorite tree was one with a spanish theme including pinatas, sombreros, and a little Santa playing a guitar, wearing boots and standing by a cactus. It was cute!
I love the top on this tree--I'm going to have to look for one like this at the after Christmas Sales this year! This tree actually was done by a dentist's office and if you look closely you will see the cute ways that they used dentist office items to decorate this tree in a really bright, festive sort of way!

If you don't have your tree up, let me know if you need ideas! I'm sure to come up with something--although whether or not you like it is another story all together!!!

Merry Little Christmas Tree!

I'm having issues blogging today--it keeps getting turned down! Wish me luck this time! :o)

Okay, so here is the top of my Christmas Tree this year. It's done in origami. The ornaments were done by my friend Stephanie, but the top was done by me and Ben. He made the pinwheels and I made the ninja stars, then we glued sticks to the back of them and stuck them inside of a couple of rubber bands that were stuck to the top of the tree. Then we made the cute little origami fan flowers to go around the tree and hide the rubberbands and sticks.

I won't lie. It didn't turn out quiet like I had expected, but honestly it's still fun and cute and I have to say that I really love it! It's nice just to have something bright and colorful and creative around! Merry Christmas little tree!



This is my Christmas Tree this year--the total cost of the materials was less than five dollars! The ornaments are all from an origami-a-day calendar that my friend Stephanie did for me. Then I paid $2 for a string of white lights and $3 for some cheap snowflake garland and a set of little plastic icicles. I love it! It's colorful and cute and non-traditional! Plus it was so cheap--that's how I can continue to come up with a new theme for my tree every year!












Here is a picture of Ben and I before we went to the Nutcracker Ballet in Fort Wayne. He's wearing a Grinch tie and I'm in a nice little black and red shirt that I love!!! I wish you could see it in the picture, but you can't and the ones that I took that showed out clothing made me look terrible or made him look goofy--so I'm keeping those private so I don't have any blackmail pictures out there! :o)

Happy Holidays!!!

Aprons, aprons, everywhere!!!

Alright so Apronista is my new favorite place to look at on the website! There are the most lovely and beautiful aprons ever! I swear that everytime I see the website it really gets me excited to go to a thrift store or out to some random garage sale or something and try to see if I can find the most adorable little apron to add to my collection. So I'm posting some pictures of fun aprons that I've seen recently so people can see the wonderful creations I've been coming across and as always if you are interested in seeing more then go to the Apronista blog and check them out!

http://apronista.blogspot.com/

Christmas Tree Idea!

So over the summer last year my friend Stephanie made me a bunch of silly little colorful origami items--like a dress, a box, a basket, stars, flowers, a turtle--whatever was on her origami calendar of the day she made and gave to me. They are super cute and I have had them sitting in my closet for awhile now and I think I finally came up with a use for them--I plan to use them to decorate my Christmas Tree! I think the more outlandish the tree is, the better it will be. So I've decided to put on colored lights (maybe--I have to admitt that I really secretly hate colored lights though!) and then I'm going to get some sort of silly, shiny garland that has some sparkle to it and then I'm going to decorate it with lots of fun little origami items. I think my tree topper might be some homemade pinwheels sticking out of the top too. They aren't Christmas related, but that's fine with me. My tree is small (4 foot) and it's just a fun way for me to express some creativity and to act silly. I love non traditional Christmas trees. I think I got that from going to the Festival of Trees in Fort Wayne every year, as a matter of fact I think I might go to the festival this weekend and thus up my creativity quotient even more..... although the downside of that is that I will most likely end up coming up with other ideas for Christmas trees and I will want to do three or more of them this holiday... I have been known to do that before. :o)

*****Okay so today is 11/28/2007 and I have to say that I LOVE making these little Ninja Stars--they are so fun!!! I've gotten to the point that I can make them without a pattern and of course in any kind of paper that I can find! Today at work I was showing them to my coworkers and we were testing out their flying skills--it paid off too because we found an item that had been lost because the ninja star flew under a counter that we don't usually check under--way to go Ninja stars! Who says they can't be used for good? :o)

Christmas Wish List

I love this website! It is www.thefarmchicks.com and it's fantastic because they have this on a t-shirt that is pink. It's so cute!!! I heard about it on the apronista blog page and all that I can say is that if I don't win one then add it to my Christmas Wish List because I love it!!! That fabulous pink fifties graphic is so darling. And the ladies at that website are great too because they are all about aprons and crafts and strong women--three of my favorite things!!!

Apronista

Alright, so I recently found a blog called Apronista and I am absolutely in love with their website! They have these fantastic give aways where they allow one of their readers to win a fabulous apron--check out the Apron they are giving away this week!!! I'm going to put my name into the mix and try to cross my fingers that I get lucky and win--I think it's just so adorable and fiesty and it really makes me happy! It's terribly expensive to buy, but if I had the money I would go on out and buy myself one! How gorgeous!!!!! Oh and that is a cute little garter belt too!!!

Wish me luck and check out her website if you are curious about it all!

http://apronista.blogspot.com/2007/11/this-weeks-giveaway.html

Happy Trees

So lately I'm really wanting to paint something! I don't know what that's all about, but I think I might try to create something and paint it. Bob Ross is just floating around in my mind telling me to get out those brushes and show off the Happy Trees in my mind! I feel like I have so much to do though before the holidays that I probably shouldn't be thinking about painting anything!!! I don't even know how to paint!!! I should be thinking about doing something far more necessary than that--like Christmas shopping for my out of town relatives or getting those dying basil plants on my refrigerator to come back to life, or preparing for the holidays by getting my apartment cleaned up and cleaned out! I love to get rid of stuff and donate to different organizations around the holidays. I'm hoping to find a fun one to get involved with this year. I might go make a donation at the food bank or do toys for tots or something though. Those are great organizations that always need some extra help! Last year I encouraged friends and family to donate to the Animal Shelter, but this year I want to do something different. Any one have any great ideas? I like to encourage my friends to do it too--not that they do, but still it's something!

One holiday down, two more to conquer!!!

So today I realized that the craziness from Halloween is completely done at this point--yeah!!! I'm so happy about that just because I am ready for the next holiday. Speaking of the next holiday, that means that it's time to start thinking about Christmas presents for my friends and family. I'm trying to do some homemade gifts this year. First I told myself it was to conserve money, but now I think I'm just fooling myself because every time I go to Joanns Craft Store I end up spending a ton of money! Yikes! I wish I could go there and buy everyone a gift though! Seriously that would be heavenly!!! And so easy!!! But if any of you have any suggestions for fun gifts to give my friends let me know! I'm always up for more ideas!!!!!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Photo Blogs Rock!!!!

Okay, so I have officially found something that I love online!!! It's the whole idea of Photo Blogs--they are amazing!!! I love pictures and photographs and it's awesome to go see the photos that people are posting daily on their blogs. This whole idea of sharing a photo a day is so great to me!!! Seriously I like Flickr--it's an awesome site to get to see some really different and unique photos as well as to share photos with your friends, but the idea of just posting a random photo every day online is also really interesting to me! This might be something I would have to work with. I am going to have to think it through a little bit... perhaps I will start asking for a computer for Christmas again. It almost worked last year! :o)

Until I figure out something though you should go check out:
http://2007.photobloggies.org/
You can see some of the most amazing photo blogs out there!

Twitter & Delicious (with weird dots in the middle)

Okay, so I did go on Twitter today and also on Delicious. I don't really think Twitter is my kind of thing. I guess I'm just too wordy--I would rather blog about something if I have something to say. Perhaps if I was living in this country and my significant other were living in another country I might think about Twitter as a means of sharing the day to day details, but lets face it--I'm not 13 and have a million things to say to my friends all the time, and I'm not facing an extremely long distance relationship in which I would like to share the tiny details of my every day existance. So basically although it's a decent site, it just doesn't seem like something that is going to work for me. Besides that I'm wordy and I like to talk a lot--so I might as well use something else that let's me get it ALL out there! :o) As for Delicious. It's okay. I can see some good use to it. Especially for places like Grabill that use it for their staff as a means of connecting to different reference type resources, but I guess for me as an individual I can't really imagine using it. I know what it is now though so that should give me bonus points, right? ;o) Oh, and I wonder if I still get a library 2.0 Genius T-shirt--I kind of want one as dorky as that sounds--that could have been a great Halloween shirt--I'm sure I could have come up with a costume involving that shirt! Dang, I'm always too late!

I'm going as a blog for Halloween!!!

So it's Halloween and I think that maybe my costume this year should be me as a blog. I'll just take a T-shirt and write BLOG SPOT on it really big in magic marker and then take and glue pictures and messages to myself. It should be pretty easy to do! But until I figure out what I'm really going to be, I will just leave you with these pictures of my Halloween celebrations thus far. Enjoy!

My boyfriend and I carved pumpkins on Halloween--here they are--including a picture of him carving the pumpkin while my dog stares at him as if though he is crazy--which he is! Guess which pumpkin belongs to whom.












This is Gussy the Dreaded Pirate of the East Side--argh!!! Don't mess with his Booty!!!

Great Blog Debate over All Consuming

So I tried out All Consuming today. I've actually used their sister site--43 things before. It's a cool place to be able to make some goals for yourself and get to share a bit about them. It's kind of cool to see that other people out there have similar goals too. Although personally I just write mine down in a journal and then cross them off when they happen. Here are a few of mine though:

Plant a Tree

Sew an apron

Learn to cook a perfect meal

Ride in a Monster Truck

Travel to a foreign country again

Lounge in a hot tub or jacuzzi sometime this year

Make a completely from scatch Pie--oh wait,

I did make a Cherry and an Apple pie in the past, but it's been a long time....

Okay, so back to All Consuming. The problem with that site is that I just don't really get why you want to go online and tell people that you ate sushi for dinner or whatever. I guess I do that with my friends, but it seems weird to tell complete strangers what I had for lunch and what I plant to have for dinner, etc. It is pretty nice though in terms of making potential readers advisory suggestions. It's interesting to see if other people are also enjoying the things I enjoy as well. I don't know, but it's kind of cool. It's another website that I don't really imagine myself using much. Perhaps just looking at it every once in awhile when I get bored, but otherwise I can't imagine logging in to let the world know that two minutes ago I finished eating Fish Sticks and watching the movie Lilo and Stitch! :o)

This blogs for you Mr. Tomlinson!

I do like Flickr. Nice website, I should use it since I don't even have a computer--that would mean that I could just go to anyone's computer and bring up my pictures to share with friends. Although I really love actually being able to hold the photo in my hands, that makes me really happy! I love having a goofy or fun or meaningful or beautiful picture sitting out and just being able to walk by it daily and smile. It might be fun to have them on flickr too so that when I get annoyed with some dweeby patron at work I could just go take a break and laugh at my photos! :o)

One more thing about Flickr--it really makes me feel kind of sad because I get to see some really amazing photos on there from professionals and it makes me wish I could take more photos and photos of a better quality and composition! Seriously wish that I could afford to take another photography class. I enjoyed it so much in college and poor mister Tom Tomlinson is probably retired now or else still sitting around wondering how many dumb Ball State Communication major students are going to begrudgingly take his class--although for the record Mr. Tomlinson--I was not a Communication Major! I did not HAVE to take your class! And I loved having you as my crochety old professor!! So take that!!!!

What's up Blogger?

So today I did the IGoogle thing and also the Google RSS feeder. It's been interesting. I'm not really sure about the RSS feeder--I don't really have any websites that I look at all the time--other than checking my own personal email and checking the new books page on the library website, I don't do anything repetitive online. In real life of course I might be a creature of habit, but online I'm not that interested in coming back again to the same sites! Who knows though! I might end up finding that I love the habit and want to use it repetitively! I also played with IGoogle. It's cute. I liked it well enough, if I had a computer at home I would probably use it. I have to say that I'm a Google user in general because it's so easy to use and it understands me--it's nice to know that something does--I mean just because my spelling is atrocious that doesn't mean that I should never be able to find anything ever! So thank you Google for being my best friend!!!! And someday when I get a real computer of my very own I might even set my homepage to IGoogle and enjoy playing with your fun little asian fox creature that was on my set up today! Until then IGoogle.... until then...

Blogging about other Blogs

Dang, I really like using the word Blog apparently, but I did just look at the other ACPL blogs and do that portion of Learning 2.0. It's interesting to see the difference that different blogs have within the system. You can definitely tell who the intended audience is for most of them. I have to say that at this point I have NO intended audience and my blog is really really really boring! Yikes!

Blogs, blogs, everywhere!

Well I have now completely added a picture to my blog so that everyone who isn't sure who I am can look and be like, "Oh, yeah, it's that girl!!! I know that girl.... she used to work at that one library. She was always dancing around acting goofy and saying silly things."

I have read a few other people's blogs too. Most of the ones from the library are ones that I wonder if people will keep up with. I can't help but feel like this has the potential to be an exercise in futility for a lot of people here. I think I'm going to try to use mine though... Of course you know what they say about good intentions. Although I'm honestly wondering what I would say on here that would even be useful or worthwhile for other people to read. I guess my opinions are just goofy and don't really make much difference in anyone else's life. They just make me laugh. Oh and by the way I'm pretty sure that if anyone from the digital collaborative at the library is actually reading this then they are probably currently banning me from anything library related because I clearly lack the extreme enthusiasm necessary to complete Library 2.0 like a real enthusiast! I'm gonna get my blog blackballed... dang!!!

Welcome to the world Baby Blog...

So I'm doing this for work, which probably means I will start it and not actually keep up with it--because that's how it is when you have to do things for work that are supposed to cut into your free time. I usually don't end up getting to keep up with them. Besides, I don't have a computer at home--always a negative when you are supposed to be keeping a blog! :o)

Regardless, I have now started this blog and atleast if I do keep up with it I might be able to indulge in my new obsession which is aprons!!! There is a website of great crafters who are working hard to bring the apron back and you can join their apron swap if you like as long as you have a blog, and follow a bunch of other rules! So now I guess technically they can't keep me out! :o) We will see about that though... especially since I haven't actually done anything on the blog and I haven't actually made an apron yet. Lots of things going against me....