Distracted By Something Shiny

So yesterday Sis & The BFF & I all went to the Detroit Institute of Arts to see a Star Wars costume exhibit. It was the real costumes from the real movies! The lightsabers in that one pic actually had buttons you could push to make them light up. And look how freaky the Emperor’s costume looks. There were more than costumes, it had lots of info & draft sketches of concept art - you see there is one of Darth Maul that is creepy af & later there are 2 different concepts for Chewbacca I took shots of. Speaking of Chewie, his costume was made of yak hair and it was so warm in there they had to put a cooling system inside the costume to keep him from getting heat stroke.

For Princess Leia’s original white costume, they wanted her to symbolize royalty & purity, but in an accessible way that made her ‘one of the people’ not ‘above the people’. There were a set of green robes that were Bail Organa’s in the prequels and I can see where they were making him look royal, but again not too far above the people. But then for Queen Amidala’s robes, they were suppose to be very regal and elegant and absolutely symbolize her position above the people. But they did start to soften her in the second movie - as she and Anakin fell in love, as he gained emotional intimacy with her - they wanted the audience to feel that intimacy as well. There were so many details on her outfits too, that you will never notice when it’s on screen, but that they put on her gowns anyways. (I’m not a fan of the prequels *at all*, but I do love the costuming for Queen Amidala). For Leia’s hair, they actually did that with her own hair, but it took 2 hours and any time it came undone, they had to halt filming. So when they did Queen Amidala’s hair in the prequels, they just went with a hair piece, lol. Also, I love the boots on Leia’s bikini outfit.

For the droids they just used spare metal trash, any found objects they could, but Lucas wanted each object to be something, not just there for show, but if you were to ask, “What’s this do?” you could get an answer - even if it was non-functional in reality, it was meant to be something on the droids. Also, BB8 is bigger than expected. And somewhere in there you can see the sand-people. Note how there is a costume for a male sand-person & one for a female sand-person. They put a lot of thought into each costume, and for these they worked on what would protect these creatures from the sand, sun & sandstorms, so the costumes were realistic for the setting. I tried to talk the girls into a photo of us all with Yoda, but they are spoil sports!

( Pics under the cut! )

The exhibit had crazy lines - thank goodness we bought tickets ahead of time, but we still had to wait in several lines - but it only took us a half hour to get in and once inside, it didn’t feel crowded at all. It was all accessible and relaxing and a great nerdy afternoon with my girls!

Hey gang! Need opinions here. I am making business cards for the publishing career and trying to get them done and ordered so The Nephew can hand his out at school before the school year ends. So here are three options - sorry, they wouldn’t let me save directly, in case I was stealing the design, so I had to take photos of my screen.

My thought process was that I would give him a single box - like 100 for $20 - with his name on them and the job title “Author & Creator”. He’ll think that’s so cool. I was thinking I might do his cards in a different color than mine - like I can be purple and he can be blue. Or I can be bright blue and he can be green. But the design I like the best - the black background with bold colored lines - only comes in those colors, no alternate options, so we’d both have cards the same except for our names being different. The other two do offer multiple color options though. But I like the bold one the best, with the black background and bright lines. However, that’s the one Sis likes the least! She likes the simple conservative one the best. We both picked the box geometric shapes one as our second. Which makes me think I should go with that one, but before I spend money on this big decision, thought I’d see if you guys have a preference. Price is the same on all, so that doesn’t factor in.







Help a gal out and vote!

Well this is me officially doing my first Dreamwidth/LJ crosspost. I wish it was under better circumstances. (I’m so glad I made that happy post about finishing my book, or I’d only ever be on here when someone was sick or had passed on, I swear.)

My great-aunt Kate passed away on Monday. She was 99. If you just thought, “What a great long life,” you are not wrong. And an amazing life to boot. Aunt Kate was the youngest of all of my greats on that side of the family. She is the last of that generation of my family to go, on either side. She was my maternal grandpa’s youngest sibling. He passed away in his early 70s of cancer, but my mom was close to Aunt Kate even after, so I was as well. She never married or had kids, but was everyone’s honorary mom or favorite auntie. Her sister married an alcoholic and Aunt Kate was the one to step in and help those kids when they needed, so after their mom died, they officially adopted Kate as their own. She lived here in town my whole life, until eight years ago, when she bought a house down the street from her niece a few towns over. They ran an antique shop and Kate helped out and as she aged, her niece made it possible for her to stay in her home and not go to a nursing facility. After her niece’s husband passed of cancer a few years back, she moved in with Kate and became a regular caretaker for her. At 99, Aunt Kate was able to pass away at home.

( Read more... )

I loved her. I admired her. And I will miss her.

Lay down now, on the green rolling hills, and go home.

So, for Thanksgiving this year, we are doing nothing. My little brother decided that it was bullshit that he never gets to see his wife and she never gets to see the kids, so since she has two days off, she's making a small meal for the four of them and they are staying in their pajamas and they are not leaving the house or going anywhere. Which gave us a good excuse to say that we weren't going to do Thanksgiving with our parents either, since the kids won't be there or anything. We know we're going to have to make up for it at Christmas, but for right now it feels awesome to have four days in a row to just hang out, me and Sis. We got all eight of the Harry Potter movies used on DVD and we are going to spend the entire weekend doing nothing but watching Harry Potter, which is awesome!!

Now as you can see, it is Thanksgiving in Smurf Village. Papa Smurf and I have even sent special Thanksgiving banquets to the off-laying areas, like the island, the mountain and the moon. Even though we are a communist dictatorship, we like to keep our smurfs happy, so they will be productive for us. If you notice in the first picture, on the left-hand side there are pilgrim costumes for the smurfs to wear, and if you look closely in the second picture you can see a Smurf wearing one of those costumes.





While we're here, I'd like to take a minute to focus on all the Native Americans. This holiday is kind of bullshit, tbh. I'd give up pumpkin pie if it meant the Native Americans weren't struggling so hard, so let's remember them when we eat today. Here is a link for where you can donate directly to the people of Standing Rock, to help their fight to keep pipelines away from their water.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I am thankful for each and every one of you!

As I write this - Tuesday, September 27th - it is one month since my Grandma Ava passed away. It's been a long month of funeral planning and estate selling. Of family drama and family love. Of dealing with the grief of watching my childhood safe space get tucked away and put up for sale, the family farm, the place where my heart was able to find a true home. Of finding time, moments, briefly, to grieve and mourn the loss of my grandmother. She was the last of my grandparents to go and it feels like a chapter of our family just closed shut. She was an amazing, adventurous, witty, funny, flirty, stubborn woman, who made our family everything it is. I will always, always love her and be grateful to her for everything she gave me in life, everything she taught me, everything she was.

I wanted to thank you all for your support this past month. It means so much to me. I hope to be onto happier times and I wanted to start with two wonderful memories - one of grandma herself, and one of her mother, my great-grandmother.

Now you all know my sister and I are Cat Ladies, indeed. And my grandmother, oh she loved all animals. But she loved cats best of all. Among the photos we found when sorting through her albums, we came across this gem, showing, in fact, just how much of a Cat Lady my grandma truly was. As my sister said, we come by it honestly.



On another note, my great-grandma wrote poetry, so there is another thing I come by honestly, though I think my great-grandma's are far better than mine. I never knew her - I think she had passed before I was born - but I wish that I had. I wish we had been able to share our words with one another. Grandma had a folder of her mother's poetry and we sorted through them to find something to read at Grandma's service. This one that was read at the opening of Grandma's service was utterly beautiful and perfect and had us all in tears. How, well, poetic that it was her own mother's words that sent her on her way.

( Grandma's Specs. )

Thank you, my friends. It makes me smile to think of how delighted Grandma Ava would be to have people read her mother's words like this. (She might be less pleased of people seeing her holding a lap full of cats, especially if she thought even a hair was out of place on her head, but I'm going to get a print of that made and frame it for my shelf, yes I am.)

Grandma, I'll be along to the farm for a visit with you and Grandpa again, I can promise you that.

Well, I finally did it. I put them to bed one last time. Two years invested, at the least. My sweet little children. I may upload the games on my new iPad and 'adopt' some new cat children, but until then - yeah, until then I'm probably gonna play Smurf Village.

Watson was older by a few months. He was a scientist for NASA, played the piano, was a pilot, liked to cosplay and legit, literally every time you signed on he would wave and yell in joy at 'seeing' you again. He had these adorable little nerdy hipster glasses he would wear too. He also went from having a tummy as a toddler to being a skinny teen to having a middle aged man belly, for real.

Cordelia was a code breaker for the NSA, a video game nerd, liked puzzles, went through a weird water skiing phase, enjoyed playing with bubbles and had a pet fish. She also had a ton of different gorgeous outfits and would legit, literally clap and jump up and down whenever you dressed her in something new. And she could 'travel' to Paris or the aquarium. She also was obsessed with having her teeth brush, she was always protesting her bad breath, for real.

I will miss my sweet little cat children. ( Pics under the cut. )

In loving memory of Cordelia and Watson.

(No, seriously, you guys, they are fun to play and have great mini games. You should all check it out - My Talking Tom and My Talking Angela).

I am getting tired of making these. We have lost too many good ones this year. And the year before that. And the year before that. I feel like ever since Cory Monteith, it has just been one loss after another. And like Cory, this one was taken far, far too young. I remember first seeing Anton in an episode of ER. So young and quiet and conveying the oldest soul, like watching a boy with the wisdom of thousands of years under his skin. But then I'd see videos of him behind the scenes or on the red carpet, and he just seemed like a silly, sweet dork. Good-hearted, very intelligent and just plain sweet. Having watched his work since he was 11 years old, it is very hard to think of him as being gone. We can only hope he didn't suffer. I honestly can't believe we lost another one. This has to stop.



“Who would have thought I’d live so long in such a short time?”
- Pavel Chekov, Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II
RIP Anton.

So there is this site where you can turn yourself into a PowerPuff girl - here. I saw it on vikingprincess's journal and it looked super fun, so I made some PowerPuff Dodgers, which I need to post here, they came out super cute. But then, every year on Mother's Day, I try to do something nice for my sister. She's not my mom, but she had a big hand in raising me and now she cares for me every day and I take it as an extra day each year to tell her 'thank you' , (besides Valentine's and her birthday and Christmas!). So this year I made PowerPuff Kids of what all of our pets would look like and turned them into little pictures for her, as her Mother's Day gift. I am so lucky they all agreed to have their 'photos taken' for their mommy!

Actually, oddly, this morning my sister walked into her room and saw this going on and got the first set of pics of all four of our babies together! It was a Mother's Day miracle!


In order, from left to right, Ripley, Pippin, Hiccup & Kirk.

So, by comparison, here is their Family Photo I 'took'. Whaddya think? How cute are they?


In order, from left to right, Hiccup, Kirk, Pippin & Ripley.

( More PowerPuff Pets under the cut! )

So, that was her Mother's Day gift from me! I also made little e-cards/wallpapers out of these and had the 'kids sign them'. Those were a bit of a challenge because there was an actual background and I had to hand color over where Hiccup's leg used to be, lol. Anyways, I could hear Sis cackling like mad from her room when she opened her email, so that went over well. Hope your weekends were good, lovelies! Kisses to all the Moms on my Flist!

I made it back from Chicago. You guys would not believe the weather we hit. I'll tell you about it later, but eventually we got there, had a great Galentine's, went to the planetarium today and are home now, unpacked and in bed with like 10 minutes left to Valentine's Day, so here is a little something for all of my lovely Flisties!

This is the Valentine's Day card I got from The Nephew! Look, look, it's Wicket! Awwww. This is too cute!



HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, MY FRIENDS!

Yesterday we lost a great one. Not only did he have an impact on music in a way that can't be measured, but he also had an impact on fashion, sexuality, gender boundaries and on my childhood, first through his role as The Goblin King and then through his music, opening my mind to the idea of what rock and roll could be. He was a beautiful man, in spirit, talent and body and he will be sorely missed.



Graphic by me. Images from the internet.

There is an empty spot on this earth now, but not in the sky. David Bowie has gone home.