Help!

Calling all computer savvy peoples!


So, for the meme sent to me by The Caped Tirader, I decided to make the tag tie-dye. And then I started playing around with Flash, and made a super cool flash button. Little did I know, blogger has a hate on for .swf files. So I tried numerous things... uploading to a different free site; fail. Converting to a different format; fail. And creating an image map in place of a swf file; only got about 2 steps in before I was completely confused so...fail!


So..... can you, lovely reader, help me? (please take in account my somewhat short-bus status)

I promise there will be a badge of your own if you provide (one of) the best solution(s).

The contest is on until I get a decent answer :-)

A few of My favorite things

so I just discovered Happy Tape

















How freakin' awesome? I immediately wanted to buy it in every color and pattern.

And they have a blog. The Happy Tape blog!

And they had this post about a tape artist- Chris Hosmer

And then I find the flickr stream of another tape artist - BUFFdiss

And then I found this blog- I LOVE STICKY which is all about tape artists.

And then I found some of my own pretty tape (on clearance!) at Michaels








And now to go create.

Any suggestions?

Mi Igloo es Su Igloo

(don't forget your toque eh)




Well, eons ago one of my favorite bloggers Mr. Condescending invited his readers to his home, and now I am finally returning the favor.

First, I have to admit- i don't really live in an igloo.







Because it melts during our *month* of summer.

So now I live here:




(and in reality this has become my weekend home)

This is the living room:



The kitchen:



Our Neighbors:





The scenery:








For reading material we have this:





and this:


(what I was reading when I got bored of fishing... so I was really too bored to fish, not too fat to fish)

for "movies" we have:

Bambi









Grizzly Mountain





Buffalo Bill



Buffalo Bill rides again



and the Fox......



.....and the 'Hound'




I would be happy to serve you some fish:






Maybe some bacon?



Maybe not...



And some s'mores.





Here is what we have to drink:



The wine is Naked Grape's(located in BC)Chardonnay. Its a pretty decent table wine and I can buy it for cheap in bulk.

I'd like to serve it to you in my special wine glass:


(you can see my reflection hehe)


And now we can sit in the "living room" sing "living room" fire song, while polishing off the drinks and then tell ghost stories.

I'm loved *sigh*

So a very special Aussie lady-blogger (who I have a total lady crush on) has shamelessly stroked my ego on her blog :: the girl with the pink teacup. I highly recommend to check out the post about me her witty and insightful blog. Warning: not for the faint of heart; she can be a naughty lady.

Here is my closest approximation:



sexy, and colorful.

She also brought to my attention that I STILL don't have an etsy store up. So, my delimma (without going into too much detail) is that in order to be able to sell my beads in good faith I have to put them through what is called an annealing process. For this you need a kiln. I don't have one of my own (try I'm about $1000 too poor) but I thought I had access to one. But that kiln was moved from its home, and supposedly not up and running. So then my incredibly talented fiance was going to make one. Well, that may be a ways off, and I'm about $300 too poor for that. But, I am sick of all the beads just haning out in the basement (although the MJ beads started a choir with the goddess beads. I should really make them some instruments) so...


I am going to find another temporary solution. Monday. (hold me accountable because I'm much better at doing things when I'm constantly being yelled at)

First- I an going to check on the eta of the kiln I was going to borrow. If I can't use it in the coming week, I will seek out any possible glass artist and beg and wave around some mulah.

Well, thanks for reading my ramblings. I'm off to go fishing with my man! Have a great weekend :)

Save the Date!

Hello folks. So I haven't made any beads lately. First, because I played golf for the first time and my arms and hands hurt from smashing my club into the ground, but also because all my creative energy has been going into making save the dates for my upcoming wedding! I used adobe illustrator for the first time in like 4 years- so it really did take a lot of my energy!

Here's a sneak peak.

Front:

Back:

(the graphic is a map if its hard to tell with it blacked-out!)

They'll be made up to look like luggage tags. I thought that might be a good idea since everyone, including us, will have to travel to get to the location.

I also made some stickers!




You can even download this pdf template to make your own stickers- they don't have to be for a wedding. They'd look pretty on your calander for any occasion. Just download and add your own text.



The font of the text is called Christopher hand from dafont.com. You may have to download it to get the same font on your stickers. The site is worth checking out anyway if fonts get you excited. Also, the template should work with Avery 3/4" round stickers. Enjoy!

Life is Good

First off I have to say- I love you Canadian Government! Thank you for sending me, an American guest in your country, a piece of paper (a full month earlier than expected) that allows me the privilege to get a job like a regular person (except I can only work 20 hrs a week during school). I did a happy dance all the way back from my mailbox.

In all seriousness, I am very excited about it. Pretty much made my day. That and I got to eat spinach from my garden today!

Mmmm hard work (my fiance's) pays off.

Now for the progression-

And a recipe for my Canadian* spinach salad:

Ingredients:

more fresh picked spinach than 2 people can handle
2 hard-boiled eggs
bacon to taste
1/4 a cup of each: maple syrup, olive oil, apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper

method:

Cook your bacon in your preferred method. Crumble when cool, or just burn your fingers because you don't like waiting. Clean the spinach in the awesome yellow salad spinner you just bought at Value Village. Peel and dice the eggs. In a large bowl whisk together the remaining ingredients. Add the spinach, bacon, and egg and toss. Eat.

*disclaimer: in no way do I know if this salad is "Canadian" or not, but it does have maple syrup. and bacon. So there you go.

Tag you're it!

I have a post that I've been working hard on, but I've been tagged (with my very first, and thus far most cherished award) by Jen at Uberly Ecstatic, so now I can procrastinate my post another day (Muhahaha).

And now for my picks:

I Took The One Less Traveled By...
West Coast Newlywed
Under a Different Sky
One Modern Girl
Herding Cats

Happy Friday everyone- until tomorrow!

What are you listening to!?

So music is a big thing for me if you haven't noticed. Stuff I make reminds me of songs, or I find a song I'm listening to influences what I make. I am also a former music major and have had the intimate relationship with music only produced by theory, ear training, and scouring the library for info on some obscure French chamber music composed for saxophone (my piece not listed on wikipedia of course) for your program..

I still continue playing music with my college's jazz band, but what I am curious about today is what do you listen to while you work? I've been listening to Last.fm for a while, because I can type just about anything and there is music with that tag- also because Pandora is not available in Canada (jerks). But since Last.fm started charging (which I eventually gave in to) I started searching for alternatives and came across We Are Hunted. This site tracks the most popular songs online by collecting info from blogs, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, forums, and more. So, 1) check it out, 2) tell me what you listen to while you work in the comments, and 3) say why it inspires you!

Three things

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS:

Miss Jennifer at Uberly Ecstatic is in a crusade to start a new word. I mean if 'Muggle' and 'Grrl' can be added to the dictionary we can certainly think of an equally good, if not better word. I remember when I bought my first dictionary (oh yeah, I'm that cool) in the front section where they had the new words there was "Going Postal". Also- if I haven't become nerdy enough for you, while you're brainstorming check out Charles Hodgson's podcast "Podictionary". He goes through the history of everyday words. Some of them have some pretty crazy origins. So post your creative new words over at Uberly Ecstatic!

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS:

I've been tagged!!!

The lovely Krysten and her hubby Dustin at After 'I Do' left me these instructions in my last post (which coincidentaly was related to her picture): Open your FIRST photo folder.Now find the TENTH picture.Post that picture on your blog and then tell us the story of the picture!The tag FIVE friends and have them do the same!

So I kinda cheated because as it turns out there were only nine pictures in this folder so this is actually the ninth pic, not tenth, but what can I say- I'm a rebel.

This picture is just before my first time surfing!
That's me on the end there standing next to my dad, sister, fiance, some random dude, and my little brother, and that's Uncle Brian on the Surfboard (picture taken by my wonderful mother).
We were at the North Shore of Oahu in March and got surf lessons from Uncle Brian (not my Uncle- that's just part of his name), and I have to say that was one of the most awesome experiences ever. The lessons were great- a little expensive- but totally worth it because there was so many pro-surfer instructors around helping that made it really easy. We all stood up on the board a dozen times or so. Uncle Brian is pretty crazy, so that's always fun too :)



THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS:

Beads!! I know this blog is supposed to be about my beads so I better show some pics eh? Unfortunately a week away from my torch + lack of inspiration= beads that may belong in the bargin bin, but here are some pics:

Ok- now back to torching so I can make some really awesome stuff to post soon!