A Reflection of Stars Hollow

I am a Gilmore Girls nerd. I have been since a very young age. It was what I watched almost every day after school for many, many years.
Gilmore Girls is the show I put on for noise when I am doing things around the house, because despite having seen the entire show probably about 5 times now, I never tire of it.

Recently, Matt and I bought a little fixer-upper in South Charleston, West Virginia. The second Matt saw the neighborhood and it's little dead end culdesac, he had to have it. Now that we have accomplished most of the major fixings that were needed, we are starting to branch out a little and get a good feel for the town.



Today walking around I realized that though not as tight-knit and insane, we have found our own little slice of Stars Hallow.
To start with, our neighbors are very nice, but not overly intrusive. When we moved in they told us what we needed to know about the trash and the home association rules. Many of them made a point to introduce themselves and help us when we had typical "new homeowner" issues.
Recently, our lovely neighbor Eleanor (whoisinher90's) came by. I invited her in, but seeing that we were making dinner she didn't want to intrude. She just wanted to give us the cream cheese brownies she had bid on for us at a woman's club baking event....yea you read that right.
These people are kind and helpful and they make us feel safe, but not watched.
That's just our little neighborhood.

Within walking distance there is a beautiful bridge that descends into the small town. At the end of it is convience store and a cafe, perfect distance for a little walk and snack!
A few streets over is D Street, a perfect heaven of diversity, old junk and food.
D Street has two antique stores, three consighment shops, two Vietmanese places, an old soda shop style resturant called Happy Days and a nerdy shop with cards and board games.
Off of D Street is the Native American Mound, surrounded by pretty trees. On this street there is a Japanese Resturant we LOVE, a Chinese buffet and am Asian Market.


Also on D Street there happens to be an old theatre where the WVIFF is hosted and my bank.
I promised Matt when we bought this house we would stay at least 5 years to justify it and then we would see what we wanted to do. I don't see this being too rough of a 5 years.
I'm pretty happy here in our little faux Stars Hollow.

Going Black for Novel November

This weekend Matt (myhubby) and I finally painted my office. The bottom is red and, as many of you know, the top used to be covered in white wall wallpaper.
It took FOREVER to remove all of the white wallpaper and then when the carnage was complete, I had to figure out just what I would replace it with.
I didn't want to get rid of that vibrant red (or try to paint over it) so since there is very little that goes with half a red wall, I decided to paint the upper half with chalkboard paint.
Chalkboard paint is somewhat of a pain because it is so thick, but it was easy enough and we knocked it out in just one day.
Chalkboard paint can be used for many things, including repurposing bottles and making a calendar on your wall. It is also only 13 dollars a can.

This all fell into place right in time for me to get ready for Novel November.
I had no idea this was a thing until a week ago when Bianca showed it to me. While also a great site for networking and raising money for the creative arts, the website itself is host to National Novel Writing Month.



This contest is intense. You announce your novel, track your word count and aim for 55,000 words in just ONE MONTH. This sounds insane and you can bet I'm going to try it!
Nanowrimo is a fun and supportive website. You can win badges for all kinds of things, including how often you up your word count and fluffing up your personal profile.

I can't wait to start drawing and writing on my walls. I have created the perfect sanctuary where no one can tell my inner child "no".

My Un-Intentional Geeky Good Deed

Last week I bought three books on Amazon. I bought Library of Souls because ohemgee Ransom Riggs.

I bought A Monster Calls on a creepy whim.

 Lastly, I bought Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them, because I am beyond excited for the movie to come out and I loved the Beatle and the Bard. 

What I didn't realize until after reading through Albus Dumbledores Foreward, is that these books are printed for charity. According to the dedication, all of J.K Rowlings royalties and 19% of what scholastic gets for each book is donated to Comic Relief, a group started in Britain in 1985. Wow right? That's an awesome charity fundraising idea!

 I had never heard of Comic Relief, but I have heard of Red Nose Day. The U.S did their first one this year. 
Red Nose Day is where a large, typically comedic event, is held to raise donations for the Comedic Relief charity. 



Comedic Relief's mission is to drive positive change through the power of entertainment. Since 1985 they have focused on 
1. raising millions of pounds, mainly through their two big fundraising campaigns: Red Nose Day and Sport Relief. 
2. Spending the money raised to tackle the root causes of poverty and social injustice in the UK and across the world. 
3.Using the power and influence of their brand to raise awareness of issues where they feel the support can make the biggest impact. 

This is a great cause and the book isnt a wallet breaker. If you do not have a copy of Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them yet...you should. If you arent a fan, buy it for a fan. 
Do it. 

I will now bask in the karma of my itty bitty un-intentional good deed for the rest of the week. Happy Monday!

A book review, When We Were Animals.

Bianca tells me that lifestyle blogs are about writing about the niches in your life, what you know. This isn't a book blog, but I personally love to read, so you will just have to suffer through this one.

“For surely, I realized that is what we do. We start with one pure and concentrated version of ourselves, then we modify and mold, we layer defense over pretense over convention. By the time we’re done getting dressed in the morning, there is little left of who we really are. It’s all just art.” 

Little philosophical poems like that can be found on almost every page of When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord. It is quite possibly the most quotable book I have ever read. When We Were Animals is a young adult, horror fiction about Lumen Fowler. It is told in an almost auto-biographical format
of switching back and forth between her childhood and her adulthood by telling small stories that accumulate to a deeper meaning. 

Lumen is from a strange town she calls Pale Miranda where the youth go through what they call
breaching. During breaching their feral soul is ignited. They run free through the woods and often they have no want for clothes or their own safety. They run free. Breachers are violent and yet are sent into ecstasy by everything around them. 

"People fear those curious interstital creatures who are neither children nor adults."

Breaching happens every full moon for two or three days. The youth in Pale Miranda breach for a year or two and then they grow up and move on to their adult lives. When We Were Animals is full of beautiful analogies to our own obstacles of youth. In the story they go through obvious symptoms of puberty and yet habits of those breaching can symbolize many of the factors of maturing as well. For example, when Lumen’s best friend starts breaching her personality changes and she begins to hang out with people she used to dislike. This often happens to friends who go through puberty at different times.

"I walked out of his voice. Thats what it felt like. I opened the door in the room of my father's voice, stepped outside, and shut the door behind me."

As for the actual plot, there are a few twists. One of this twists I didn’t see coming immediately. I was embarrassed by how close to the reveal it was when I finally put all the pieces together. I also would not suggest this book to anyone who needs a heavily plot-driven story. The plot moves along slowly as bits and pieces are collected through Lumens memories.


"To endure suffering-it's the most romantic thing of all, don't you think?"
My favorite character in the story was in fact Lumen. I disliked most of the other characters in one way or another, but from her perspective you are really supposed to. The most interesting character is Blackhat Roy. He is the opposite of most everyone Lumen knows and he is truly an onion of layers upon layers of depth. 

"It was possible, I saw now, to be a grotesque, to be huge and free, to wander the streets in utter freedom despite your atrocity, as long as you did it when everybody else was sealed inside their little lit boxes."

When We Were Animals is not a book for modest people. There is nudity in many senses of the word and there is a lot of violence.  It is tragic story, but a beautiful one. It shows the true poetry that can be found in the most violent of actions, the beauty in blood that horror writers like myself ache for.
I gave this book a four out of five on Goodreads. For anyone with a strong gut and an open mind for a beautiful tale with sharp edges, I would definitely suggest When We Were Animals.

We Built a Wonderland for Rosi

This weekend I collaborated with my best friend and the awesome blogger, Bianca Prince aka Born in August. Our dear friend Rosi is getting married and she wanted to have a makeup testing lady night.
Bianca and I love themed parties, so we took this opportunity to try out our skills by making Rosi a Forest Wonderland! We secretly planned a forest themed party and I think it turned out wonderful. The key to theme planning is to cover the three key points. Food, decorations, and activities.
Decorations took little brainstorming, but lot's of creativity.
Bianca brought a beautiful bird cage, some mason jars, lights, vases, and lace lining. (There is a fancier name for this...)
I brought Kristopherson (my stuffed fox), candles and I bought some lovely fall themed flowers.

 

Food was fun because we picked forest themed snacks and gave them fun names like Bunny Buffet and Dirt Leaves.

Bianca made them beautiful signs, practicing her new calligraphy skill.
Our menu was:
Bunny Buffet (a veggie and cracker tray)

 Mossy Mushrooms (Tomatoes and mozzarella in a sauce of pesto and olive oil)
Heart of the Forest Stew (chicken and spinach tortellini stew) 

Dirt Leaves (Brownie Brittle).

 

For drinks, we had bottled water and my first attempt at apple cider.
When I went to the grocery store I couldn't get the original apple cider punch recipe to load so I made it up!
In a pot I boiled a jug of cider from Kroger, orange slices, apple slices, a dash of cinnamon and a dash of ginger. I laced a glass punch bowl with honey streaks. When the cider was hot enough I dumped it all in the bowl. Everyone loved it!

Lastly, we didn't really need "activities" because the point of the party was to test Rosi's make up.
I tried to help where I could and take pictures for Bianca's blog, but when it comes to makeup..I am clueless.
I was lost in a forest of brushes.
This weekend was great! And it proved that Bianca and I could totally do this for clients (hint hint).

 

Don't just snack, Graze.

I went through a period of talking about this a lot last year, but I haven't boasted these guys enough lately. You have probably heard of companies like Graze and Naturebox.If you haven't, these companies make healthy snacks that you get in the mail by subscription.
These are great because research shows that you eat what you see. If you have a healthy snack around the house you'll eat it instead. Sometimes though good ones are expensive or the common sense ones, like apples, can be boring.



Today I want to talk about two things:
1. Why you should snack smart and use companies like this
2. Why I love Graze.

We live in a busy world. People are constantly on the run. I myself am a student. On Monday's and Wednesday's I barely get to breathe between my three back to back classes, let alone eat lunch. I see a lot of students grabbing stuff from the vending machines like chips or candy, but can you blame them? I have zero interest in eating the hard as a rock granola bars they put in those machines.
I also know a lot of people, like my mom -coughcough- who have jobs where they are constantly on the go, they settle for drive throughs. I get this. We just bought a house and sometimes by the time it's time for dinner I'm like screw it... We can't do this though!
Companies like Graze are great because they send you pre-packed snacks. They create yummy alternatives, they focus on nutrition and they are often perfect little proportions. These subscriptions are also awesome because you don't have to think about it. You sign yourself up and for about the same price as Netflix you get snacks once a month, twice a month, every week, etc.
Think how great these snacks are for kids too. Pre-packaged, healthy and tastey.

I personally love Graze. The people who created Graze decided snack foods were crap. They decided to take foods we love, that are terrible for us and break them down into ingredients that taste great, but wont blow us up like balloons.
Graze has a lot of options. You can pick how often you get deliveries, how much is in the deliveries and what type of snack you get. For example, I do a calorie count box, so all of my snacks are under a particular calorie amount. The boxes even tell me how much each one is.
Graze is fun because you never know what you will get! When you sign up for an account you get to pick Trash, Try, Like and Love. The things you Like and Love will come through more. This forced you to try new foods, but also lets you go through and trash anything you know you'll hate so you don't get it.
You might think eating healthy is gross, but Graze does it pretty well. One of my favorite snacks is pieces of dried apple slices that you dip in hazelnut caramel. Yum right?

Graze is smart when it comes to their marketing. Each Graze box comes with little coupons to give to friends. When they use this code, you both get benefits!
Want one? I have a ton...

So, even if you don't get into Graze, take a look on the web, because there are quite a few companies like this that could make your insane life a little healthier...cause this could be you.

New Home Workout

Nothing is more exhausting than redoing a house. 

Matt and I recently bought our first house and aesthetically it needed a lot of love.
We have little time to get most of the work done so evenings and weekends is all about the house.
This weekend we painted a lot but nothing killed me more than steaming wallpaper. Why did the put white wallpaper on a perfectly good white wall? No idea. I do know that the process to steam it and then scrape it off though, is a serious arm workout.
All of this work is great for my body, helps to justify the crap food we eat for dinner because we cant cook and is worth it because our new home will be amazing!