There Be Pirates

My apartment overlooks the Saint John River. It's lovely. I love looking at the glittery water and being able to gauge the traffic while I drink my morning tea. But I never considered the inherent danger in living so close to the water - no, not the notorious springtime flooding, something much more sinister...

Here's the story. I was sitting on our little patio yesterday, looking at our fairly average residential view.

Just a lot of overhead wires and a squeaky clothesline that I love. And peeling on paint on the neighbors house. Normal stuff. But wait a minute...

That flag, that flag that wasn't there the day before, it looks a little like the Jolly Roger...

Yep, there be pirates...

Polyvor-acious

Who uses Polyvore?

What?

You've never heard of Polyvore?!

Clear your schedule and prepare to start spending way too much time in front of your computer screen. 

This site lets you "shop" the entire internet at once!! And make little magazine style sets of your findings!!

This does not seem to be translating properly, even with the double exclamation points. Let's try a scenario.

You're looking for summer outfit ideas online. You go to "Polyvore.com". You click "Create a Set." Oh! Look! Clothing categories! Hmm, let's go with dresses, it's summer after all. You click "Dresses." Now you can narrow things down with a couple drop-down menus, "Price Ranges" and "Color Families." I can not emphasize enough how much I love the color categories. Like, seriously. But on with the scenario...

You're young and unemployed (I might be projecting a little here) so you click the "Under $50" category. And you chose the darkest blue color because you know, you're a little obsessed with navy blue right now. And ta-da, a lovely selection of navy dress available online for under $50. And you can type in something like "Stripes" or "Strapless" and narrow things even more. And if you can't find that perfect thing in the Polyvore database of stuff, you can use their little clipper tool and grab something from the world wide web itself for you and other people to use. But a lot of people have already done a lot of clipping so I don't often clip myself, but whatever you're into. Clip. Clip. Clip.

And now things get really crazy. You drag the image of the dress to the blank page and drop it and go looking for the perfect shoes, hand-bag, jewelry, jacket, etc. etc. And you can pile it all on your formerly blank page until you get something like this. 

And then you can do it over and over and over again. Making dream outfits and inspiration boards until your eyes bleed. Well maybe stop before that happens. Actually, please stop before that happens. I do not want to be in any part responsible for serious eye maladies. 

Polyvore. It's fun. Try it. Tell me your username and we'll follow each other and stuff. 

A Neighborly Kitty

This is Vida. This is my coffee table. This is not my cat.

My husband and I moved to our current apartment this spring. We did not know that the apartment kind of came with a new pet and while it may have been a deterrent at the time we kind of love her now. Vida actually lives with our neighbor M. Where she is loved and coddled beyond measure. But when she gets a case of wanderlust she finds herself on our patio, crying for attention, throwing herself against our dining room window or trying to scratch her way through the front door (the poor screen). 

And we never  let her in or, heaven forbid, feed her anything. 

That is to say, we don't invite her in, but we don't kick her out when she whizzes past our legs while we're carrying groceries either. Or when we accidently leave the door open or when we just turn a blind eye as we walk through the door. 

And that is to say, we don't feed her, but we don't let her starve when M. is away and she meows at the fridge. Or when she tries to eat our food or when she can be found drinking out of puddles of water on the patio. 

So yeah. We kind of altered our original dealing with Vida rules into no rules at all. She practically has a key to the front door and yes, we bought a bag of cat food. The fancy kind. No big deal.

I still tell unfriendly service people who let her in while they're working on the apartment that she is not mine and act all flustered and annoyed. But other then that, she's totally mine. 

Don't tell M.

It's time...

Clouds 1 by Kyu Hwang

Hi. 

I started this blog, like a million years ago, and I haven't posted anything. Although, I think about it all the time, thoughts like, "These cupcakes would make a great blog post!" or "This show is great, I should blog about it!" But, it never happens, even when my thoughts end in exclamation points they just don't get photographed or recorded here because, well, I'm probably being lazy. And distracted by all the shiny things on the internet. So many shiny things. 

But today, as it thunderstorms while I'm supposed to be at the Farmer's Market, things are going to change. I am deciding that even though there are shinier blogs out there I will still write this one. Because it's mine and I could use a place to record all the buttery, sugary creations coming out of my kitchen and all the wanderings I do online. And because what better thing to do on a rainy Saturday morning.

So, that's that. Done. 

Except, we all know how that worked out last time, like a million years ago...