Lisa: Google search: Google search

Some days are just like this.

Sarah: The Latest in Geocaching

Kaeleigh, Dave, and I did some good work tonight.

Sarah: Overalls

Dear Gap,

Are you sure this is the direction you want to go? Are you sure you want to be the one responsible for doing this to our nation, nay, the world?

Because I really think you should reconsider.

Sincerely (and sincerely considering a denim jumper),
Sarah

Sarah: Camera photos and Napkin envy

Today marks one week of living in New York, or as I like to call it: one week of resisting the empanada place down the block. No seriously, those empanadas call to me every afternoon, but I have stayed strong thusfar. But you will be mine, empanadas, and I won't regret the $1.60 or the slightly tighter pants. If you guys don't believe me that the empanadas are worth at least $2.15, just ask my friend here, who enjoyed one filled with macaroni and cheese.

I've done a terrible job thusfar of documenting my adventures. Let's recap with grainy photos, where available:

Some highlights of the day that I left Salt Lake City. Yes, it was really sad. And yes, the sight of a clumsy woman maneuvering 4 bags out of the airport and into a taxi isn't something you should have to see. But a few cute things include my brother, and my carry-on bag. Tied for first place.

My first day in New York was mostly spent sleeping and walking around Manhattan with Kaeleigh. She took a photo of me saying that New York was too loud for my phone call. I took a photo of the fancy visitor passes required by her building. And then blurred out any incriminating information.

Work:
This week I had my first job interview. I looked like a school marm, but I was fine with it.

Food:
If you're in the area sometime and like things that are delicious and made with butter, try Cafe Katja. They have spatzle. And Austrian meatballs. And we only got slightly yelled at by a drunken homeless man for not respecting veterans. And then my two 20-something comrades and I were home watching Downton Abbey by 8:30. We party hard.

In other food adventures, we discovered you can have a pound of shrimp delivered to your home. Peel and eat, my favorite.

Between fried food and the apartment, I took this photo of Kaeleigh documenting weird, homemade signage. It's almost like catching the Sartorialist snap a photo of Anna Wintour. I'm almost positive that those were all words.

Shopping:
When I got to town, I gave my NY friends their belated Christmas gifts. When Kaeleigh opened hers, she gleefully exclaimed "I don't already have one of these!"

Failure.

Kaeleigh and I also tagged along with Angie while she did some maternity shopping. Baaaaaabyyyyy! That fake belly really suits her. As does the sleeping dude in the Dad Zone. Hey baby? That's not your real dad.

Our satisfaction with Angie's clothing purchases, however, paled in comparison to the ecstatic conversation between these two women over one's paper napkin purchases.

Trust me, she was ecstatic at the time.

Lisa: Well played, Melinda Clarke's publicity team

UPSIDE: If your television or low-budget movie production needs an attractive, seductive brunette of a certain age, you're in luck! There are three nearly identical actresses who have been capably filling that niche for years. One of them is sure to be free (probably Musetta Vander).

DOWNSIDE: If you are Polly Walker or Musetta Vander, all your acting credits are going to Melinda Clarke, because NOBODY KNOWS YOU ARE DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

THE CANDIDATES

Sarah knows Melinda Clarke as Lady Heather, the so-called "Moddom" from CSI. Melinda played another brothel owner on Firefly, but you might remember her best as Julie Cooper on The O.C.. IMDB says she played a Siren on Charmed. Obviously.

When I see Musetta Vander, I can't think of anything but the praying mantis substitute teacher on Buffy. Apparently she also--like Melinda--played a Siren (this time on O Brother, Where Art Thou?) and some kind of corset-wearing villainous lady bodyguard on Wild Wild West.

Before some extensive Googling, I'd pretty much forgotten I'd seen Polly Walker as the "elegant" Jane Fairfax in Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma and (much further back) the beautiful but jaded Caroline Dester in Enchanted April. More relevantly, she appeared as Atia of the Julii on Rome, a character confusingly but aptly dubbed Julii Cooper on Television Without Pity. She hasn't played any characters named "Siren," and there don't seem to be any photos of her online in fetish wear. If there weren't so many completely nude stills from Rome, I'd be forced to call her the classy one.

YOU BE THE JUDGE

Honestly, if I told you these were all the same woman, you'd believe me, right?

AS IF FURTHER PROOF WAS NEEDED

I explained to Sarah that I was doing a little research in preparation for this post, and she inadvertently proved my point:

Lisa: "I had to physically stop myself from searching the Internet for photos of Polly Walker in a corset. Ten pages of Google Images results and nothing!"
Sarah: "What? There MUST be screen captures of her in a corset from CSI!"
Lisa: "Yes. The problem is that was Melinda Clarke."

EDITED TO ADD:

Blake peered over my shoulder at these three photos and emphatically stated they looked completely different. Then he pointed at the middle one (Musetta Vander), and said, "That looks like the lady who played Julie Cooper (Melinda Clarke). You know, the girl from Rome (Polly Walker)." SERVED, SERVED, SERVED.

Sarah: And then I moved to New York

The fun part about being a mild hoarder is finding stuff like this, a thank you note from my brother and his new wife from 2008:

It may have taken almost four years, but earlier this week, I managed to get myself and four suitcases on a plane to New York with no immediate plans to move back to Utah.

Hopefully they were serious.

A few observations thusfar:
1. I'm not good at public transportation. I get total anxiety that I'll miss my stop and you haven't seen pure confusion until you've seen me emerge onto the street with absolutely no idea which direction I'm pointed.
2. One good thing about the subway is that I'm afraid to touch my face after I've touched any of the surfaces. It's at least partially due to this photo. I'm notorious for rubbing my eyes until the mascara on the eyelashes of the people around me flakes off, so this is really going to improve my appearance.
3. This is really going to improve the frequency of my blog posts. That last one you've probably heard before.

Sarah: When Parents Text

So there's a website called When Parents Text. I think that the initial idea behind this website is something like "oh parents, they're so old and have a hard time grasping new technology." And that's a little funny, sure. But the best thing about this website is that, possibly by accident, it's more about "parents are actually super funny." And I like that a lot more.

Some of my favorites:

Sarah: On Tuesdays, we wear pink

An otherwise fruitless trip to the thrift store was saved when Valori and I checked out a Series of Unfortunate Events notebook. Jackpot.

When your cheer squad needs a communal notebook, you find the first notebook around and make it work.

See? Fixed.
Now, what belongs in a cheer squad communal notebook?

Obviously. And now, the highlights:

Unconditional love. Except for burn victims (gross).
I support the showering rule, though.

Don't bossy. And also, don't bee a pig.

These are really just rules for life. Thank you, high school girls everywhere.

Sarah: Helpful Tip

I'm reporting from the thick of wedding season with an insider recommendation: if you're attending an outdoor wedding, go ahead and assume that there will be a gravel walkway.

That means it's best not to wear stilettos with shoddy faux-cork covered heels. That covering will get stripped right off when your feet sink into the gravel.

Farewell and goodnight, nude heels.

Lisa: our life now

A month ago, life at our house changed forever, and--I think--for the better. On June 21st at 7:46 pm, Hazel Madeline Smith was born. While I was in labor, Nora wrote Hazel a message in my notebook. Jeff helped her spell it, but I think the idea and the words are all Nora.

There's something so difficult but so incredibly magical about a three-year-old opening up room in her life for a new baby sister. I can't wait to see their relationship grow, and I can't believe how lucky I am they're both mine.

Sarah: Haiku for men who dress like Criss Angel

You think you look good
In your True Religion jeans
But, alas, you're wrong.

Lisa: 2010 ornament: Dita's Sleep Mask

As you probably know, Sarah hosts a Christmas ornament exchange every year. I know she still has some to show from this latest exchange, but take my word for it--the ornaments are just getting more and more awesome and we have so much fun coming up with something and then seeing what everybody else has made. Before I let it get too much later in the year, I wanted to show those of you who weren't in my swap group what I ended up making this time.

Preface: it probably doesn't mean anything to anyone but me, but for each swap I try to make an ornament that represents something that has been influencing me in the last year--either in subject matter or in technique. The first year we did the exchange, I had recently discovered knitting and was getting excited about the crafting potential there, so instead of glass balls I made little balls of yarn, each topped with a tiny pair of knitting needles and the beginnings of a miniature scarf. Our second year, there had been a LOT of discussion about zombie apocalypse preparedness plans, and I planned to buy Blake largely zombie-themed presents. A zombie ornament seemed like the next logical step. For 2009, I got obsessed with amigurumi and nerd culture, and crocheted tiny Cthulhus for everyone.

In 2010, I started getting more into vintage beauty, burlesque, and specifically the incredible Dita Von Teese. I drove away the few male readers we had left babbling on about it, and the rest of my free time sewing dresses from vintage patterns. Sarah and I and some of our girlfriends also had fun checking out a local burlesque troupe, the Voodoo Darlings. And don't tell her parents, but a certain like-minded friend and I actually went to see Dita perform at the Crazy Horse in Las Vegas. So fun.

But I digress. When it came time to decide what to make for the 2010 exchange, I couldn't stop thinking about an image Dita had posted on her twitter feed, featuring her beautiful self holding up a glamorous Moschino sleep mask over her eyes. I decided (because I am possibly cracked) that miniature versions of the sleep mask would make awesome Christmas ornaments. The fact that I had a lot of the fabrics I needed already on hand made it an even more attractive option, since we were pretty broke at the end of the year.

I copied the shape of the mask and the style of the lashes and writing as best I could, swapping out "Dita for Moschino" with the more fitting phrase "All I Want for Christmas." I'm sure these details were hand-embroidered on the original, but in my slacker way I substituted carefully-trimmed printable iron-ons. I decided to line the back of the mask (which you can't see in either Dita's photo or the photo of my finished product) with a dark red satin, and I stitched in little loops of black satin ribbon on each side to accommodate either ornament hooks or a longer ribbon (for practical use by the very small-headed).

Once I had the system down and the materials in hand, I decided to make a few full-size sleep masks as well, as Christmas gifts for some of my friends. The larger version has sewn-in long ribbon tails instead of the little loops. I hope Dita would approve!

Lisa: It almost looks like we're real adults!

The dining room really only got an accidental makeover, when Sarah and E helped me paint it green along with the living room. Again, though, the only photos I had were really old (and never before posted here), so I thought it would be fun to post those along with some updated ones.

Before:

These photos were taken soon after we moved in, with our little apartment furniture awkwardly trying to fill the spaces of a real house. The green and white table was a hand-me-down from my dad's mom, but it was stained dark brown before I repainted it to go in the kitchen of our second apartment right before we moved. You can spy it in its original home in the background of these photos. The black locker-style IKEA cabinet was purchased in 2004, when Blake and I took Sarah and David to Balboa Island. This is the trip when Sarah got the worst sunburn I've ever seen on the back of her legs, but still trooped around IKEA with me the next day and then rode all the way back home with flat-packed furniture on the back car seat between us. The accent wall was painted that dark green when we moved in, and it's been bugging me for SEVEN YEARS.

After:

The rug that matches the one in the living room (they're two sizes of the IKEA GEDSER) was an awesome surprise Christmas gift from my parents last year. The updated chandelier is also from IKEA, and I blogged about installing it back in 2005. Blake and I bought the dining table and chairs in the summer of 2006, and he gave me the little table that holds cookbooks and Miss Petunia's tank for Christmas--possibly in 2007, since you can see evidence of its existence in these photos from 2008. The white cabinet that has doubled our kitchen-related storage capacity was a windfall from Blake's company when it was shut down last April. The painting of pomegranates in a bowl is one of the two Jamaica Trinnaman pieces I got for graduation in 2005, and you've seen it before surrounded by Christmas decorations. And...the roses are left over from a baby shower I hosted for a neighbor. I think that's it!

Lisa: Living Room Makeover

On Monday, I mentioned how excited I am about my progress on the house list, and today I want to share the room that I think is the most drastically different. Here are some very, very old before photos I found deep in the bowels of my laptop:

Now, these aren't really fair before photos. They were taken very soon after we
moved in to our house, and if you haven't actually been in my living room it's going to look like I went and bought a TON of furniture and art. There's no way we could afford to do that--in fact, we've been slowly acquiring everything over the years.

Proof:

1. I bought the Jamaica Trinnaman painting over the fireplace in 2009, and it's been mentioned here and seen on Facebook here.
2. I mentioned the big Jamaica painting over the buffet I got for graduation in 2005 (and it showed up behind the cardboard Jeffrey here).
3. My amazing family and friends chipped in on the Kathy Peterson painting (over the chair) for my birthday in 2009, as seen on Facebook here.
4. The rollerskate-themed prints have been seen on twitpic here (they used to be in the dining room, and then moved in to the living room on a different wall than where they are now). Sarah bought me the Leia Bell derby girl as a Christmas gift in 2009, and I bought myself Rollin' by Ryan Brinkerhoff early in 2010. I tried not to, but I couldn't fight it.
5. We temporarily inherited an upright piano when my brother David moved to New York for grad school in 2008.
6. Blake and I bought each other the leather armchairs for Christmas in 2007 (when I also made the throw pillows for them), and my parents gave us the coordinating leather storage ottoman that year as well.
7. When my parents moved to Spring City they didn't need their tan chenille sofa from the music room any more, so they passed it on from storage to us (possibly in 2007?). The green couch (and its ottoman) went down to the basement family room soon afterward. A lot of swearing was involved.
8. Blake bought me the side table next to the couch as a Christmas gift in 2005.
9. The family photos above the piano are new this (2010) Christmas from Busath, tweeted here (But I love the photos! Sorry about the angry tweet!).
10. I bought the yellow bird on the mantel at Craft Lake City in 2009.

BUT. The point is that you can see the original wall color and the basic dimensions of the room. The major differences from what we had a few weeks ago are the addition of the bookcases, the subtraction of our green TV cabinet (and some surface clutter), a little rearranging, and the new sage-y green paint.

Without further ado, the afters:

Lisa: I couldn't find a pun about blinds that didn't make me cringe

I have to admit, I kind of love watching Get It Sold. We're not selling our house, so I don't need to follow all the advice about neutralizing and depersonalizing, but a lot of the updates Sabrina does are very inexpensive but make a big impact on the overall look of the house. And when I say inexpensive, I mean stuff that real people could do--in a weekend--not a $20,000 budget for a glorious HGTV bathroom. It's also a great reminder that the unfinished projects you've been putting off/living with forever don't really take that much time or money to finish, and they can make a real difference in how happy you feel in your house.

Naturally, we had one such project hanging around that I decided to give the Get It Sold treatment. We have white wood-look vinyl blinds in our bedroom. I don't know if you're intimately familiar with the workings of these babies, but the top of the blinds (which is metal and holds all the mechanisms for tilting, raising, and lowering the blinds) is supposed to be covered with a decorative strip of vinyl molding. This strip is held on with two or three little plastic clips. Unfortunately, these clips are really brittle (especially after a few years), and it's almost impossible not to crack or break one as you take the molding off (or put it back on) when you're removing the blinds to wash them. At some hazy point in the past, the broken clips from all over the house got replaced with ones from the (admittedly more hidden away) bedroom, and we didn't put back those molding strips. Now, I'm sure you can just buy more clips wherever vinyl blinds are sold. The bad news is that the molding strips themselves (not sold separately and custom-cut to the size of our windows) got thrown away or lost somehow when they weren't attached to the window. DUN DUN DUN! The good news is that this was even easier than I thought it would be to fix. Photos and easy-peasy instructions below!

1. I carefully measured the length we would need the new molding strips to be.
2. Blake and I went to Home Depot, hoping for the best.
3. The regular molding area didn't have anything like what we needed, and after asking around a bit we headed back to where they sell blinds.
4. The blinds guy first told what we didn't want to hear, that those pieces are not sold separately. Then he thought for a minute out loud about how Home Depot custom-cuts them to size when people buy new blinds. He motioned us back to the area with the cutting saw.
5. Sitting right there out in the open next to the saw were two fairly long strips of vinyl molding, left from an earlier customer's sale. The blinds guy picked them up, measured them, and asked if they would work for what we needed. THEY WOULD!
6. We crossed our fingers and asked how much Home Depot would charge to let us take those off their hands. WHAT'S THAT? WE CAN HAVE THEM FOR FREE? Awesome.
7. We stopped in one more aisle for a pack of industrial-strength Velcro. I knew I wasn't going to mess with those stupid clips any more if I could help it.
8. When we got home, I cut the molding to the exact dimensions we needed with our trusty miter box and saw.
9. Then I applied one side of the Velcro pieces to the metal top bar of the blinds (a strip at each end and a piece in the middle of the longer section), and the corresponding other side to the back of the molding. This way you can get the molding off with a good tug, and the metal clips holding the blinds into the window frame aren't impeded in any way. BAM.
10. Press the new molding into place.

And that's it! No more visible metal bars with stickers listing the dimensions and previous owner's name! Pretty, finished blinds for only the cost of a pack of Velcro. We're not mentioning the paperclip situation for now. Ahem.