I'm Dreaming of a....

....Clean shop! and Christmas came early, my friends. Let me illustrate:


This is the inside of the retail side. The place where we try and sell ourselves, really. We cleaned and fixed lights and hung stuff up. There's still more to do, but it is FAR better than it was.

Desk Decoration. New tree from my mother.



Disney Candy!



Nice and clean :)


Our Christmas Decorations









We Finally have posted hours. Unbelievable.



The shop side decorations.








And finally, the man in his domain.

wow. i suck!

...at updating! it would have been 10 times cooler if i said ".....blood!", it being SHOCK-tober and all...

i don't have much to say - i've been very busy - so i'll leave you with some pictures of some sweets i made this weekend:









i think they ended up pretty good without having the "correct" supplies etc...

Today i embarked an a quasi artistic adventure: snail mail! god. i love recieving things by post. i have the stamp collection to prove it. it's that stamp collection that motivated me to become pen pals with my friends that live far away. And since i have the place to myself this weekend, i thought i would concentrate on said adventure. Perhaps i will post pictures. or perhaps not.

if you'd like to be pen pals, comment, and i may send you my address.

this post is a big ME party.

Wow. i've been so busy that i haven't had time to do this here blog thing. perhaps that's why my blogs never last...

Work at the frame shop has gotten harder and easier at the same time. Last week, we were doing at least 12 hour days...every day. but it was reorganizing the office and everything else and cleaning the hell out of the whole place. that was the hard part that i mentioned. the easier side of things is the fact that we are more organized. We can find stuff now. We know when stuff is supposed to go out (as in to the DAY. we weren't completely stupid, but we never knew the exact turn around time). And there's more space to work. it's just that much more enjoyable to work here.

And everyday i become that much more invested in the shop. i'm even reading small business books (i enjoy reading that much, that i'll read anything).

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Lately, i've been concerned with me, myself, and i. not that i'm turning into a selfish crazy person, but i'm doing more things just for me. like today i gave myself a manicure (boring i know. note: i'm not girly girly. i did it because i was sick of seeing the dirt beneath my fingernails from working in a shop all day)
But it's been said that if you're good to yourself, you're even more good to the people around you. meh. let's see if that works.

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My boyfriend is leaving in a week to go visit his sister for 5 days. i'll be in the shop all by myself (read: more of that me time i was talkin' 'bout). but it's going to be so weird. it's not that i'll simply keel over without him, but ever since i met him, i've seen him almost everyday at work, and we spend all our time together. it's one of those relationships that feels like years when it's obviously been considerably less. it will just feel awkward/boring/possibly lonely when he's not here. i bet for those five days my whole rhythm will be off. stupid WEAK relationship stuff! [shakes fist to the sky]

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wow. and again, wow. i should like go back to like my livejournal and like go whine about how i'm not like, you know, like popular.


and with that i leave you with this:



our city hard at work. ha.

p.s. screw fixing capitalization!

When the shop is left to it's own devices, idiocy abounds...

With my last post, I fully expected myself to once again create an atmosphere full of tantalizing promises and then not deliver. I do it all the time. Why should this blog be any different? But alas, once again, Life and the Right Frame (the frame shop where i work) have conspired against me! So now, another post with some of the things i promised. The results? Behold:

That's Right. It's exactly what you think it is. And yes, that is bacon.

If you haven't figured it out yet, it is indeed a cake made out of (mainly) meat. Why this strange concoction? It was my friend Dave's birthday on Thursday. And birthdays = cake.

But the thing was, I couldn't make him your normal birthday cake. He's on the Atkin's diet, and that pretty much means cake is a no-no. I used to work as a cake decorator before coming to the frame shop, so I know my way around cakes and am pretty confident that I can make a "cake" out of anything.

Thus the MEAT cake was born! The main cake layers are two giant patties made of a mixture of ground beef and breakfast sausage (think hamburguesas). The middle layer is a pork rind, sauted pork quiche (that = eggs + cheese + the aforementioned ingredients). Those layers were then topped with a round breakfast sausage pattie (normal size here, i'm not crazy), and everything was covered with the outside layer of bacon. Sauted onions were placed on top, and then covered with melted sharp cheddar cheese. After everything was cooked, two more small breakfast sausage patties were put on top, and deviled egg smooshe (i don't think there is a technical name for it) was piped on. Ketchup was used for the final piping of his name and the hearts. And those are grilled peppers on the sides. Oh yeah, and Slim Jims too.


I know, I know, this sounds extravagant (which it was, not to mention RIDICULOUS) and maybe just a little bit gross. But it actually turned out okay looking and pretty tasty. The man loved it, and that's all I care about. It was meant to be a joke, but he absolutely loved it and thought it was delicious. I just don't want to think about how many animals died for that cake (there was at least 4.5 lbs of meat in there....and that's just the stuff we could quantify. not to mention all the eggs i had to hard boil for the piping).

I'd say pretty good for drawing up the plans on the shop table and building it the day of...

and here are some more pictures from the celebration:

(to come in a moment)


oh, and we neeed one of these for the shop. any donations?

"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."

The title of this post is a quotation from Winston Churchill. I chose it not because it had anything to do with the man or the context in which he said it. (...but it may very well have to do with the fact that i don't have enough creativity to come up with my own title.....) I chose it because at this time in my life my mental eagles are silent. Perhaps that is why i haven't posted in quite some time, and it's probably why I deleted the few old posts that were here.

But what do I mean by "mental eagles"? That sounds ridiculous if you say it out loud. What I mean is that my preferred brain activity is in a horrible recession. It's not to say that I have slowly become more stupid or that my life is somehow worse off than it was since the last time I blogged. Quite the opposite in fact: I have a wonderfully engaging job, a hospitable living situation, and a boyfriend who may possibly be the best friend I have ever had. In other words, I'm extremely happy.

Extremely happy in most ways, except for the fact that my creative output (i.e preferred brain activity) is at an all time low. I've been in this decline for quite some time, probably since high school. Sure, there have been upswings, but the decline has been constant. Since I am at this high point in my general life, I'd now like to make up for the slack in my creative life. That's where the parrots come in.

Since my mental eagles are silent, I'm now going to depend on my parrots to jabber my eagles into action. By taking random and sometimes (more like probably) horrifying stabs at creativity, it may jump start my creative motor.

And I think I'll start here: my blog.

It seems like a fairly non-threatening place (or I will make it that way by deleting comments!! ha.) to take poorly aimed throws at my creative dartboard. Who knows? Maybe stuff will start to stick and my decline will reverse itself.

I guess am warning you: This will be a ridiculous blog filled with my inner musings, and hopefully a steadily increasing array of my creative endeavors. It will be filled with far reaching mind-mapping, things that interest me, photos, artwork, rants (some spiteful, and some retarded....oh. and long winded.), and any other droppings that fall from my brain, past my mouth, and out of my fingertips.

So, come on my baby Sun Conures, start jabbering.

("Cracker Capers" By Gil Elvgren. 1969. Oil on Canvas, 76 x 61 cm.)