The big blog makeover (or "blogover," if you will) - color schemes

I'm working on a blog makeover with lots and lots of awesomeness (is my slang vocabulary outdated? You'd tell me right?). My goal is to launch the made-over blog sometime in February or March. I'm excited to unify it, have an awesome theme, and some exciting new features (exciting to me, anyway). First things, first. I need a new color scheme. Since I'm addicted to wedding inspiration boards, here are some for the 2 color schemes I'm considering. Thoughts? Alternatives? 

Red & Aqua via HERE

Orange & Aqua via HERE

Yes, I like aqua. 

Happy Friday People!!

fave trip photo, originally uploaded by prideofazchick.

I'll be working on my 101 things list this weekend. Got great plans? Share them!

She's got budget constraints people, it's not just a clever moniker

Dana, a truly awesome wedding blogger, needs your help! She works her butt off finding deals and steals, hosting giveaways and just giving good advice and, in return, we all need to send her to Costa Rica for her honeymoon!

Go HERE for details. The contest holders change the questions you need to answer all day long so she has been updating her site so you have the most recent answers.

Go and vote!! It notes your IP address so if you have different computers, you can vote more than once!

Do something really nice for a stranger today. It only takes a minute.

P.S. Today is the LAST DAY TO VOTE

Dutch company to re-start polaroid film production!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

scenic highway 89 2, originally uploaded by prideofazchick.

YES YES YES YES YES!!!

Read more about it here.

Progress... a little, anyway

Hello sad, lonely blog!

I'm making baby steps toward accomplishing all of my 101 things. The list is a bit daunting! I started my photography class yesterday (#7!). The college has a brand new, beautiful facility and I'm excited to get started. Unfortunately, since I've already taken an introductory photo course, it was 3.5 hours of lecture on a bunch of stuff I already know. I'm itching to get some darkroom time, though, the facility really is great. Except they put an emergency door in the darkroom so I know I'm going to be that idiot that walks out of it, not thinking, and destroys everyone's prints and then gets tarred and feathered, or drawn and quartered, or other such nastiness. But, the fact that they have one of those gigantic epson printers with a million ink cartridges makes me excited to take a digital photo course at some point. Also, as part of the class, we take a field trip to the Art Museum (#27!) which should be fun. The professor also talked about the medium format and 4x5 enlargers that they have for the advanced class. Sign me up!! The only thing I'm nervous about are the peer critiques. Hopefully people are nice. I'm also hoping that a few people drop now that they found out how expensive photo supplies are (especially if you are developing your own stuff) because the class is a bit overcrowded. Also, I want my own darkroom.

I'm also attempting to walk more. Yesterday I walked from the train station to campus for my class. It wasn't bad, but I think when I have to cart photo paper and an archival box full of negatives in addition to my SLR it will definitely be harder. I'll have to carry Mike's day hike backpack and maybe ride my bike. Guess I'll have to do #29 first! I also walked to the record store downtown today, bought way too many LPs, and then walked back. I loved it! (the walk, not the store, I was disappointed in the selection). I did, however, see many photographic opportunities. Must bring a camera next time.

I'm loving this 101 things list... do it! It is great! I'm updating with notes so if you click on that obnoxious "101" sign on the right, you can see what I've done so far. I'll also be updating with (hopefully less wordy) blog entries like this.

101 things in 1001 days

Man, making this list has been an ordeal. It has been painful to think about how lazy and boring I have become. I really hope that making this list will help me get off my butt and get going! Posting this is both truly liberating and more than a little bit scary.

Well, here we go (I didn't organize mine like some people, I just went for it!):

1. Clean out bathroom cupboards and cabinets
2. Plan at least one extended family activity (either side)
3. Become a CPA
4. Travel outside the US
5. Watch all of AFI's top 100 movies (that I have not yet seen)
6. Take 10 dance classes
7. Take 2 non work-related photography classes - started "Intro to Photography" 1/26 and "Unravelling - Summer 2009")
8. Organize bookshelves
9. Read 30 books I haven’t read before (five should be "banned books") (30/30) - need banned books!
10. Participate in 3 Sunday Scribblings

11. Finish quest to read every novel Michael Crichton ever wrote - I know this is kind of a weird goal; it's because I used to work in a library and attacked the shelves author by author.
·Andromeda Strain, the (1969)
·Terminal Man, the (1972)
· Great Train Robbery, the (1975)
· Eaters of the Dead (1976)
·Congo (1980)
·Sphere (1987)
·Jurassic Park (1990)
· Rising Sun (1992)
·Disclosure (1994)
·Lost World, the (1995)
·Airframe (1996)
·Timeline (1999)
·Prey (2002)
·State of Fear (2004)
·Next (2006)

12. Make wedding album
13. Publish a blurb book
14. Finish wedding guestbook
15.Take 10 yoga or other fitness classes [2/10]
16. Re-read "Lord of the Rings"
17. Re-read the Harry Potter series (7/7)
18. Re-read the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy" series
19. Purchase 2 new business suits or blazers (2/2)
20. Do at least 1 closet clean-out - donate clothes/purses to charity
21. Take 1 intermediate ski lesson

22. Attend an opera

23. Sell something on etsy

24. Go on 3 significant hikes (3/3)

25. Purchase 3 new blazers to upgrade work wardrobe (3/3)
26. Double my blog's google reader subscriptions
27. Visit 5 museums (5/5) (Desert Botanical Gardens, 2/8/09) (Science Museum, Easter weekend), Art Museum, Other Art Museum, Maritime Museum
28. Participate in 5 charity athletic events (e.g. Race for the Cure)

29. Tune up road bike

30. Hang all art/posters
31. Put together a "through the viewfinder" rig
32. Put together a wedding slideshow DVD
33. Go on 3 dives not planned by my parents (2/3)

34. Paint downstairs bathroom and the stairway (at the very least)

35. Dress up downstairs bedrooms with new duvet covers over the old comforters and new pillow shams
36. Make that "photo wall" I've been meaning to with the IKEA frames
37. Make those fabric/stencil decorations for our bedroom
38. Pull out that dusty clarinet and practice at least 3 etudes until satisfied (and until I can play for an hour without embouchure death)
39. Redistribute couch throw pillows and try again - the current ones are beautiful, but too small

40. Visit 5 states that I've never been to before (Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska)
41. Create cleaning plan that is consistent. Maintain this cleaning plan until it becomes habitual.

42. Have a custom blog makeover done professionally (in process)

43. Wade into the Atlantic Ocean
44. Give myself a guilt-free out on 1 of these list items (could be this one)
45. Complete the 100 pushups training program (in process)
46. Make that recipe book with all the family recipes in it
47. Take a train in the U.S.
48. Take a solo trip

49. Sort through all the storage boxes

50. Clean/organize closet
51. Go wine tasting
52. Complete a NaBloPoMo
53. Start kitchen herb garden
54. Get a new cell phone
55. Get a new passport
56. Go to a drive-in movie
57. Take a cooking class
58. Plan meals/cook dinner every night for a week
59. Make lunch and bring to work every day for 2 weeks
60. Replace that silly broken orange chair

61. Eat at 25 new restaurants Count so far:25

62. Read 5 biographies
63. Cultivate small backyard garden (in pots – at least 5 of them!)
64. Inspire someone else to start his or her own list
65. See another Cirque du Soleil show
66. Take a spinning class

67. Make a trek to the farmer’s market 5 times (5/5)

68. Go sailing

69. Go to the zoo

70. Visit the Grand Canyon

71. Visit Hawaii

72. Clean the couch thoroughly with upholstery cleaner (hasn’t been done since we moved into our house)

73. Clean out and organize my home office
74. Buy filing cabinets and use them
75. Get a display case for my camera collection
76. Implement a “Monday films” requirement for myself – fulfill for at least 10 weeks (10/10)
77. Shoot with my SX-70 (accomplished 2/8/09)
78. Brush up on my Spanish
79. Finally buy that new car
80. Plan a picnic
81.Create blog/facebook page/twitter account for volunteer program 
82. Go to a Doctor re: my headaches
83. Go horseback riding
84. Try Sprocket hole photography
85. Stock up on polaroid film and store in refrigerator
86. Adopt a dog
87. Learn all the state capitals by heart
88. Stay somewhere that advertises itself as "haunted"
89. Learn 50 ASL signs
90. Transfer existing 8mm tape to digital format
91. Make a new 8mm video
92. Finally edit our video from Japan now that we have a new computer
93. Visit an aquarium
94. Go to a ComiCon 
95. Go one week without snoozing my alarm
96. Become a better communicator! Send 10/10 emails, make 10/10 phone calls, and send 10 notes to friends for no reason
97. Go to Disneyland - May 15-17
98. Brush up on "fast math" skills with flash cards
99. See an animal in the wild that I've never seen before - Fox
100. Go camping
101. Make a new list of 101 things when the 1001 days are over

Whew!

Movie luggage inspiration

As I'm watching "Catch me if you can," I'm totally inspired by the stewardess (back when they actually were stewardesses) luggage. Especially the cute little train cases (some of which matched their (apparently requisite) lipstick shade.

I found a couple of cuties on etsy vintage. 

(source)

(source)

(source)

I'm wondering if I could pull one of these off or if I would just look silly. One of my goals is to try to be a more chic traveller and I think these are so cute. 

Anyone have thoughts on the "chic traveller" thing? I always feel really sloppy or incredibly uncomfortable when I travel. For business trips, I would like to split the difference. 

Happy Friday

tree silhouette, originally uploaded by prideofazchick.

Here is some purple-y sky for you.

Have a good one!

STELLA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think that the Stella scooter is pretty much the most adorable thing ever. Someday, when the husband and I have our little ecocabin vacation home in the woods (possibly a treehouse?) with our lovely little mobile guesthouse, there will be a Stella scooter parked outside.

I can wait. Actually, I can't, but I will.

Follow me!

Hey guys, I finally added the "followers" gadget on the right so you can follow me if you want! I know people subscribe via different readers already. If you use google reader, it will automatically group your followed blogs together (it doesn't subscribe you twice).

Thanks!

Treehouse weekend getaway

(Images from domino magazine)

Isn't Linda Aldredge's treehouse retreat amazing? It was built by Linda and her friends with a budget of $12,000! This is one of the most beautiful and rustic economy-sized ecocabins (might have made up that word) that I've seen.

Enjoy the full story/slideshow here.

And another more in-depth article here.

What an amazing project.

I think I had a dream where this happened....

You have no idea how excited I am about Orla Kiely doing a target line. I swear to you, I was literally thinking "how great would it be if there was an Orla Kiely Target line?" just a couple of weeks ago.

I swear I did.

Seriously.




I'll take it all.

See more here and here.

They have bags too.

**Swoon**

White cake + Candy = Crazy Delicious

I made this cake Candy Cane Cake for our New Years Party. It had my three favorite characteristics of baked goods. It was 1) easy 2) pretty and 3) delicious.
Try it! Who cares that the holidays are over?

P.S. why can I never do topical holiday posts? They are always so far after the fact. Insert familiar "I'll repost this at a more appropriate time for next Christmas" mantra here.

Getting married? Need the cutest possible custom Invitations, Save the Dates, Thank yous, etc?

You're in luck!

Sara, over at Stinkerpants designs is having a OMG-the-holidays-are-totally-stressful-and-distracting-and-I-haven’t-even-thought-about-the-wedding-in-like-a-month-and-I-really-need-to-check-a-few-items-off-my-to-do-list SALE!

Isn't she adorable?

AFI 100 - The first of the super listy posts

"My friend Pete and I are doing this thing where every night we are going to watch one of AFI's top 100 movies."

"How many you going though?"

"Well I only have Star Wars and Tootsie, so we just keep watching those two over and over."

~30 Rock

Instead of unattainable, short-term New Years Resolutions this year, I'm resolving to participate in the 101 in 1001 project (more about this in a future post). I haven't completed my list, but one of my items is definitely to watch all of AFI's top 100 movies so I'm parking the list here in this post to update over the next 1001 days. I love movies and we go a lot but I feel like I've missed out on some of the classics!

Wish me luck.

10th Anniversary 2007 List
Citizen Kane
The Godfather
Casablanca
Raging Bull
Singin' in the Rain
Gone with the Wind
Lawrence of Arabia
Schindler's List
Vertigo
The Wizard of Oz
City Lights
The Searchers
Star Wars
Psycho
2001: A Space Odyssey
Sunset Boulevard
The Graduate
The General
On the Waterfront
It's a Wonderful Life
Chinatown
Some Like It Hot
The Grapes of Wrath
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
To Kill a Mockingbird
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
High Noon
All About Eve
Double Indemnity
Apocalypse Now
The Maltese Falcon
The Godfather Part II
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Annie Hall
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
The Sound of Music
King Kong
Bonnie and Clyde
Midnight Cowboy
The Philadelphia Story
Shane
It Happened One Night
A Streetcar Named Desire
Rear Window
Intolerance
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
West Side Story
Taxi Driver
The Deer Hunter
MASH
North by Northwest
Jaws
Rocky
The Gold Rush
Nashville
Duck Soup
Sullivan's Travels
American Graffiti
Cabaret
Network
The African Queen
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Unforgiven
Tootsie
A Clockwork Orange
Saving Private Ryan
The Shawshank Redemption
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Silence of the Lambs
In the Heat of the Night
Forrest Gump
All the President's Men
Modern Times
The Wild Bunch
The Apartment
Spartacus
Sunrise
Titanic
Easy Rider
A Night at the Opera
Platoon
12 Angry Men
Bringing Up Baby
The Sixth Sense
Swing Time
Sophie's Choice
Goodfellas
The French Connection
Pulp Fiction
The Last Picture Show
Do the Right Thing
Blade Runner
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Toy Story
Ben-Hur

Mike and I own these movies, I've just never seen them
On instant Netflix Queue
Seen prior to this endeavor

The collection thus far

Yes, I like photography. Why do you ask?

And yes, it's a bit of a sickness.

Photos via amazon and ebay

a very exciting prospect

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. I really like my job but I don't like the way it seems to consume all other parts of my life. For example, the husband and I have been considering the adoption of a canine companion for, I don’t know, 7 years now? I think this is as good a time as any. But that isn’t what this post is about (sorry to disappoint you).

I want to take a photography class at the community college. Old school, film SLR, black and white, enlargers, chemicals, the smell of fixer in the morning (or evening, as it were), the whole bit. I was actually feeling reluctant about talking to my career counselor about this. This troubles me on several levels: 1) I wasn’t sure I could take on JUST ONE extracurricular activity outside of work ONE night a week and 2) I felt the need to discuss it with my career counselor before enrolling. That’s when I knew I had to do it.

So I enrolled today! (yes, I still discussed it with my career counselor - just to cover my bases) I had to declare a major or else they wouldn’t let me take courses for credit (what the heck?) so I felt a little silly putting that I had a Masters in Accounting but was now pursuing an AA degree in Art with a Photography focus but, heck, whatever gets me in the class. Plus, it sets me up to take Intro to Digital Photography and Color Photography as well as Photo II in the future.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Hopefully I’m dedicated enough to scan all my negatives and post digital versions of my favorites as I go.

Wish me luck! I need to go buy schoolish things like notebooks and binders (and film and photo paper and negative sleeves).

Blog it forward - a fundraiser supporting St. Jude

Let’s Eat Cake, an amazing fundraiser hosted by Melissa Margarita-DiStefano, is coming up on Tuesday, February 17th at the Plaza Paramount Hotel in Gainesville. Let’s Eat Cake is a cake decorating competition with all proceeds going to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Learn more about the fundraiser right here.

This chainblog was created to get the word out by Unique Designs and I found it on Hostess with the Mostess. Yay for those bloggers for getting the word out!

So here's what you can do: Repost this post (or create your own new version) on your blog and ask others to post it on their blogs. Melissa will donate one dollar to the fundraiser for EVERY BLOG that posts about Let’s Eat Cake this week! With the power of the blogosphere, that can QUICKLY add up! Let’s make Melissa Pay! Once you have reposted it, leave a comment here, letting them know that you posted it along with the url to the blog. It’s for a great cause and it will be fun to see how far it will go! So let's do it… Let's blog it forward and raise money for a great cause!

Happy New Year

Mom's 10 11 08 016, originally uploaded by prideofazchick.

This photo was taken for a magazine with the baby representing the new year (1978, in this case) and my grandfather representing the old year, 1977. Pretty cool, huh?

Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there, I do not sleep

My Grandma lost her battle with kidney failure on New Years Eve. She did not make it to greet the new year with us. 

My Grandmother was a nurse, a teacher, and mother of 6. She loved so much in her 86 years and will be greatly missed. She loved animals nearly as much as people. We believe her little dog, Jack, has been hanging on for her after being her companion of 18 years. 

I am in charge of the slide show for her funeral. This was assigned to me months ago and it just seemed too morbid to finish before. Unfortunately, I didn't anticipate how hard it would be to complete it now. Here are my favorite pictures. 

I know it is selfish, but I am so glad that she made it to see me graduate from undergrad, grad school, and get married. This is my favorite picture of us from the wedding, it's much better than the posed ones. She is telling me that my dress is so beautiful.

I like this one of her motley crew (all except my aunt who was not born yet). My Grandmother looks so happy. She has the greatest smile. The boy standing in the middle is my Dad. 

My Dad's birth mom died when he was 2 years old and my Grandmother took on him and my aunt and uncle when she married my Grandfather. They then went on to have 3 more children of their own. The family is so well integrated that I didn't know that she wasn't my flesh-and-blood grandmother until I was 12 years old. 

I'm not much of a believer in an afterlife but my Grandmother certainly was. I hope that she is happy and in peace and that she is with my Grandfather and my Aunt. 

Love you, Grandma. Always.