Keep Calm and Wait for Spring
Etsy crushes are about as close as I feel to being creative right now. February!
via Blue Dove Studio
via jillian1984
via mom2twogals
Oh, to be four again. Oh, for it to be the right size to wear to brunch right now.
Venus Direct
City Living
I Love wikiHow, or, “this how to look in a club so boys will rock your life”
WikiHow is the greatest thing on the internet.
How To Look Simple Yet Stunning
Get some neon tee shirts from a thrift store.
If no handgrips or purses are available you can get a bookbag with glitter.
4. Love the other person.
Oh, right!
How To Survive Under Martial Law
Things You’ll Need
- Common Sense
Bolded emphasis not mine, but original. Indeed.
How To Share The Road With Cyclists
Don’t be in such a hurry.
How To Dress Up That Little Black Dress
Want to read the dowdiest style advice in the history of the internet?
3. Add pantyhose. Pantyhose even out your skin tone on your legs and provide the finishing touch to the look. For evening wear, sheer black or gray tinted pantyhose are an excellent choice.
Ew. By the end of this article, you will have put on pantyhose, jewelry (the plural), a belt, a scarf, gloves (white for daytime!), a bag, makeup matched to "the main color scheme arising from your accessories, shoes, and pantyhose" (that emphasis is mine HA), and headwear and hair accessories (they suggest a well-placed hat for, among other things, royal events).
Guys, how you dress up a little black dress is getting one that fits you and then putting on one awesome accessory, preferably either a family heirloom or something enormous and sparkly you bought at Claire’s. Tell ’em Melissa sent you.
Also, one of the girls in one of the pictures is wearing a dress that is decidedly blue.
How To Dress To Make Yourself Look Skinnier
Nail polish is very important.
How To Get Your Overly Sensitive Boyfriend To Dump You
Carefully consider whether this method is right for you. The steps below will cause your sensitive boyfriend a great deal of pain and trauma, much more than ending the relationship directly. It may even scar them permanently. Your mind must be made up that you want to cause this pain and trauma, or you may be unable to go through with it. This is also a good time to consider whether this is right for your relationship. Consider a direct break up. Using these steps as a first resort could backfire on you, causing strain between yourself and others, who may perceive you to be creating an abusive relationship.
Okay. Look. Okay.
Actually, I love this one.
Through being kind, you take a stand by affirming that caring for others, for our environment, for yourself is the right way to live life. It isn’t about immediate effectiveness; kindness is a lifestyle choice, a constant hum and rhythm accompanying every single thing that you think and do.
January Resolution: To-Do
I rang in the new year with a rough cold and have had little to say. I still made my January resolution, though….
This very frightening to-do has been on my list for a long time. I think the dentist I had as a kid wasn’t very good, and then I didn’t go at all in college even though my teeth weren’t mature enough to take that time off. Now every dental appointment is a terrifying, painful lecture session that precedes a terrifying, painful and expensive surgery. It’s embarrassing, too – I mean, who has bad teeth anymore?
All the fear and pain and embarrassment creates a lot of procrastination, and my January resolution was to make the appointment. It ruined my day – I keep having scary visions of dental torture and weird physical jolts, like daytime hypnic jerks – but anyway the appointment is made. Check! I’ll have to think of a fun one for February….
New Year’s Resolution Action Plan
It’s that time of year again, I suppose. I generally do some odd, half-hearted attempts at New Year’s resolutions. I do love a goal, a project, a challenge, most of the forms resolutions take, but each year I seem to struggle.
Realistically, I manage my money and weight at a pretty regular equilibrium, neither putting myself in any shocking danger nor keeping any virtuous habits for long. I am much happier maintaining this equilibrium than abusing myself for imperfections real or perceived and I am not going to commit to a year of such self-abuse no matter what it is called.
Also, I feel like my life changes too much each year to make any sort of year-long plan. Certainly since the beginning of college, I have found myself at the end of each year someplace completely different from where I started, and it looks like this year is going to do the same thing. Maybe one day, when I’m older, this will slow down. Maybe?
Anyway, I’ve come up with a new New Year’s resolution plan for this year that I think is going to achieve unprecedented heights of fabulousness – twelve resolutions. I’m going to pick a mini goal or project for each month in 2011, and end the year a holistic well-rounded spectacular new woman. (Maybe?)
This way I can do some fun ones and some serious ones, be flexible and keep doing things that are important to me. I’m not planning them out in advance, except that I think I’m going to do something really easy in January, a gimme so I can lay a foundation for success. I think that kind of gentle cheat will be the overriding theme of my twelve resolutions project – but that’s okay, we’re only here for fun.
Last Night I Took These Hilarious Pictures
I love how the flash makes it look like she’s being chased by a police helicopter.
That is all for today – thanks for your patronage and Merry Christmas.
Weekend Adventures: Bike Rides, Shopping, Arrests, Cup Holder!
The winter doldrums finally broke and let me have a great weekend. My girlfriend and I went out on Friday and Saturday nights, spent all day Saturday and Sunday riding around having adventures, watched football, danced, ate every delicious thing. Adventures included, but were not limited to:
I finished mad Christmas shopping at Eastern Market and downtown. Besides being super productive, I got to see all sorts of things – like the cupcake truck!
Usually I regard random cupcake truck sightings as a sign from the universe that I am loved and deserve a cupcake – but I was full from lunch and opted to take a picture instead.
I also took a picture of some stranger’s super-sweet cruiser bike.
That decal on the top post says "Pabst Blue Ribbon." I love you and your bike, unknown hipster kid.
I had some surprisingly awesome customer service experiences. Usually when shopping in December I think of mall-related misery. When I entered the Ace Hardware on 5th street, the greeter asked me what I was looking for and, after directing me upstairs, muttered, "Coming upstairs for zip ties," into the radio at her neck. I was buoyed through the store on a current of charming employees saying, "Zip ties? Right this way!" It was a miracle. The little things make me happy, y’all.
I tried the new Harris Teeter on M street, too. It is full of shiny produce and free samples and tempting hot food bars. And it has sweet ample bike parking.
The lady and I went out and danced like fiends. A friend’s birthday party started at a salsa club. To be honest I know about one one-thousandth of a percent about how to salsa dance, but a few rum and diets and a lot of energy more than made up for the lack. We moved to Chief Ike’s, where the hip hop is a little more my style, and then had a transcendent experience at Amsterdam Falafel. We hailed a cab at a shocking hour and had the unique delight of watching some people get arrested outside of Tom Tom’s from inside the cab’s warm confines. It was, all in all, one of the most fun nights out I’ve had in a hot minute.
But all of these adventures pale in comparison to the epic purchase I made. That’s right, as promised, I bought Farrah a cup holder! I find I spontaneously add an exclamation point every time I type the words cup holder! That, my friends, is how excited I am about it.
My first hint of the magic was in some of the photos on Simply Bike. As it got colder I started to crave a warm bev to help me along. By the end of this weekend, my obsession had reached a fever pitch. (Seriously, I wouldn’t shut up about it.)
It took a few tries, but I finally found one available from my friends at BicycleSPACE. It is everything I dreamed it would be and more – I got into work this morning on an exhilarating caffeine and exercise buzz, chirping "Good morning!" at everyone in a very un-Monday fashion.
Like I said – the little things.
Snow!
Snow! I spent most of yesterday taking and editing photos of it for work, and it was thrilling. I felt like a little girl at play. Two harmless, beautiful inches helped to exorcise some of the trauma from last winter’s blizzards – it was just lovely.
And I think it shook me out of my funk a little. I’m feeling inspired to have this charming, photo-ready winter. My next purchase is definitely going to be a cup holder for my bicycle (how about one of these, y/n?) to hold hot coffee and tea while I ride around looking glamorous in my teal coat. The problem is that it is just a little bit more work to be alive in the winter. I think the solution is to, if nothing else, make it look effortless.
Sugar, December, Yoga
Strike up the New Year’s Resolutions yall, because I have hit my limit. I managed a couple weeks of bike-inspired eating right, and then the deluge of holiday alcohol and sweets swept me right under. I had a little bite-size cookie this afternoon and it was the exactly wrong teaspoon of sugar, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Which is all to say – I feel sick. And perhaps also – green salaaaaaaad.
Why does this happen every year? The time changes and it’s dark when I leave work in the afternoon, and then it’s a four-month uphill battle to be anything except sluggish and moody, buzzing and crashing my way to Spring.
I am telling you I will not stand for it! This is my year, the year I fell in love and got a raise and had civil interactions with my family, so it can be the year I get some exercise and eat some vegetables and go out to do things and am not hungover every daylight hour of every Saturday and Sunday. These are simple aspirations, even if everything seems difficult in 30 degree weather.
Here’s my tiny next right thing, so you can hold me to it – for the next seven days in a row, I’m going to do ten minutes of yoga each morning and afternoon. Even if I just stretch the achy bike muscles, even if I just lie there in savasana – ten minutes, twice a day, seven days. Next stop, the moon.
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like…
For some people, the miserable weather on Sunday was extra miserable…
…but we stayed nice and cozy…
…and got our decorate on.
-
- bee
-
- gingerbread roof
-
- gingerbread wall
-
- hedgehog
Venus Direct 