Making a Wreath: The Death of a Dictionary

Pinterest has changed my life for the craftier. Look, LOOK what I made! Yeah, I saw it on Pinterest, you know it!

Pinterest inspired Dictionary Wreath

I've been so busy with college...my love of making has withered. Cue not so optional art class! Suddenly I'm running around with a paintbrush and pencils and cutting things up and learning about "value" and "space" 

Mix that with students and friends who were all "how on EARTH have you not heard of Pinterest???!!??" and wham bam I'm trying to rip apart an old dictionary (which nearly gave me anxious fits...book ripping was fodder for bum whacking when I was a kid). Turns out dictionary pages are really fun to Mod Podge all over the place. It's all I can do to NOT Mod Podge them to the dining room walls. 

If you want to learn how to make the cool "page rosettes" Check out this Vid Rosette How-To

It has been a long hard year. I lost a dear dear friend. I made a few new ones. I swam in the ocean and went white water rafting, and saw a bald eagle on my way to sell jewelry my friend makes for Blossoms Bejeweled at the Clearwater Festival on the Hudson River in NY. I fostered orphaned kittens, I met Michael Franti who is amazing, and Nic Cowen whose song "Hardheaded" is now my husband's theme song. 

In this year I've become a possibilitarian instead of a waitandseer!

And so I say to you all.....

Best wishes,

Rebeccaflys

We grow bugs. And worms.

So...a few years ago a friend called and said "you like lizards right?"  A few hours later we became the happy keepers of a tribe of 4 Leopard Geckos.

Thing is, it's expensive to keep these little buggers. The closest Petco is 45 minutes away, and frankly their "super worms" are not that super. They smell funny and you have to open an lot of little containers to find one that appears fresh. Well, as fresh as a yogurt sized container of worms is likely to get. Also, the lady at Petco told me I should CUT THE HEADS off of the super worms so they don't bite my Tribe members. So...I was considering switching to the little mealie species to avoid cutting heads off of big mealies when...


Insert a friend of my kids, whom I adore, who came to visit and brought us bugs. Beetles to be exact. And some pupas. And a fancy plastic bug keeping device from the dollar store. This young lady has been our worm and bug growing MUSE. She has also saved me a ton of money in gas and stinky, yogurt-container, dried-up meal worm purchases. She IS my Geiko Gecko! We are growing our own little mealies now!


The white container has three trays. Each tray is full of steel cut oats.  I keep a fresh apple or potato slice on a cleared off corner of the tray for water and a slice of bread for food.

The beetles only live for about a month. They'll eat their own eggs and the baby mealies too...my Muse says so! So...I'll be shifting each stage to the next drawer. I had SO many mealies born this summer I haven't had to buy worms since. I also grew crickets, but they stink terribly and they get loose easily. It was a pain. Mealies don't get out, neither to the darkling beetles they become, and they smell like oats and apples.

This is the lifespan of the Mealie; worm, pupa, beetle. The beetles turn black as they "harden" and become ready to be mommies and daddies.

Here is one of the little guys this whole bug keeping program is all about! This is "Skinny" he is a fussy eater. He will NOT eat anything with calcium powder on it. His cohorts are fatties. And I try to feed him seperately so he'll eat a lot.

He's a good Gecko, but no he won't save you a ton of money on your car insurance. (Bet you didn't see that joke coming! HA!)  Here is another view of Skinny, eyeballing a tasty morsal!TY to my Chickadee who took these great pics!

The following video is gross and disturbing. And it happens at my house every day.  This is one of those posts where I hope that after I hit "Publish" nobody thinks I've lost my potatoes!

Best wishes,

Becca

Leopard Gecko eating & Pupa hatching

Shame on Aberslutty and Fitch

I was reading this blog: Mommy Wants Vodka.com and due to her creative take on billboard type advertizing....became inspired to put on my big girl panties and have a say on something that rather bothered me, very much, nay a lot, this Christmas Season.

You know what advertizing KILLED me this winter? I mean, left me wondering what on Earth people are thinking "these days" a form of thinking which actually made me feel my barely noticable age!?!?!

The guys in swimsuits posing by the doors of Abercrombie at the mall. Abercrombie has HIRED models to stand outside their front doors, two days before Christmas, IN swim suites, in NY in winter.....need I go on? Mostly, their hands were crossed in front of their crotches and since they were bare foot and had been standing a long time on the bare marbley mall floor, it looked like their feet hurt. They rocked back and forth a lot.

I created a reasonable facsimile of what went on.

So, truth is, I'm 35. I want to enter Abercrombie to buy a scarf or a post-pre-ripped shirt for my nephew and/or son and ......I cannot....CANNOT.... enter a store flanked by teen male models. There's just something inapropro about someone my age taking perfume samples or coupons from half-naked young boys IN THE MALL. So, as middle school age girls oogled them and the cooler older girls leered a bit as they strolled by repeatedly... I had to hustle to the other side of the walkway due to shock. My husband (40) thought this was funny.

Note the Build-An-Overpriced-Stuffed-Toy store next door.

Families with children shop there. Note the lady with a baby walking by

Where the models were.

Yeah sure it's funny. But having to walk like literally a foot away from those naked model guys to GET IN THE STORE...it's creepy and I'm no creeper. Hell, I wished those kids would put some clothes on. What would be wrong with fully dressed cute guys with Santa hats on or something...at the door...? Nothing! I advocate that NOTHING would be wrong with some Christmassy/societal modesty. 

After fleeing to the other side of the walkway, I stood, juggling shopping bags and evil-eyeing my husband, who obviously thought this whole situation was as funny as our cat jumping IN then OUT of a full bathtub...we noticed the tide of shoppers flow towards us as other women and men were breaking the mall pedestrian road lanes to get away from Abercrombie's dark & solicitious front doors. One woman even said "Oh My God, what has the world come to!?!?!" and she wasn't even me, I mean...I didn't even say that outloud! Literally someone else beat me to it!!!! 

Honestly, now that perfume commercials on TV during the holidays are pretty much soft-core porn, I guess red light districts in the mall shouldn't come as any big surprise. Oh, and I went to American Eagle for scarfs and used looking shirts. Their sales guys are fully clothed.

Best wishes,
RebeccaFlys