Hershey's Kiss for the Holidays

A post I love from the archives...simple and sweet.

Every day deserves a Kiss! Happy Holidays.

Be sure to check out the SALE going on now in my shop!

Don't miss the Holiday Planning guide for your next gathering.

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Party Like It's 1999

Happy Birthday to my friend, Cindy... Woo hoo... it's party time!

Are you the same age as you were in 1999? That's funny, I am too.

The fact that I have plans tonight is so ironic, b/c usually I am in my pajamas by 8pm. This saying is SO me! {and Kelly, Cindy, Lynley and Amy who are on my same wavelength!}

Have a bright bold and beautiful weekend!

photos: coco+kelly, flourish design + style

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Unplugged: How long can you last without Electronics?

First let me say that Modern Family is my absolute favorite show on TV. I connect with this family on so many levels... Here is a sneak peek on next week's episode. The question is, how long can you go without electronics? Can you last a day without your cell phone, TV and computer? I know I would not be winning any awards in this category, yikes!

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10 10 10

What are you doing today on 10-10-10? Help record this day on Flickr!

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View more art work by Laura Trevey on lauratrevey.com

Do you Love Scrabble?

I l o-v-e these inspirational messages made from Scrabble tiles...

What would your note say? Mine would say Happy Friday!

photos via my modern met

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Chess Anyone - The Boca Resort

Chess anyone? I love this life size chess set on the grounds of the beautiful Boca Resort. Enjoy a game with your afternoon tea...

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Perfectly Timed Photos

Sometimes you capture the shot at the right moment! Check out Perfectly timed photos for more. Have a bright, bold, and beautiful weekend!

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Beat the Heat

What do you do for Summer fun? Right now all I am doing in Richmond is hanging by the pool. We are having record temps over 100 degrees with no rain...

I hope it's lovely where you are!

Be sure to enter the giveaway here.

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{via bbb flickr}

Impatient for Spring

March 2, 2009 - Impatient for spring and inspired by Mother Earth News, I planted three kinds of lettuce (obtained at Seedy Saturday). Green oak, red deer tongue, and mystery lettuce (from the seed exchange).

March 21, 2009 - Off to a respectable start:


The first to germinate was the mystery lettuce, followed by the oak leaf. Red deer tongue still hasn't germinated. Bad seeds? Wrong germination temperature? Once the first round germinated, I sprinkled more seeds randomly.

Today:


They are such beautiful babies!


p.s. Can you imagine only having spring once every 30 years?

BBC's The Big Read top 100 books

A friend passed this on. She says the BBC believes the average person will only have read 6 books from this list. At least 6 of these I had to read for school. It is definitely a British list but there are several important books on it.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – X
6 The Bible - X (though I may have skimmed the begats)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X+
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (started but didn't finish)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - hahahaha! About 5 or 6 of them
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - X+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll – X+
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy -
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis – X+
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini – X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – X+
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood -X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X+
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville -
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens -
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - (I tried, oh how I tried!)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola - (I tried this one in French but didn't finish)
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - X (I think so)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Read - 31
Loved - 9

Recent reads that I really enjoyed:
Eva Hoffman - Lost in Translation
Heather O'Neill - Lullabies for Little Criminals
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Sara Gruen - Water for Elephants

Currently reading (both nonfiction):
Tony Horwitz - Confederates in the Attic
Ronald Wright - Stolen Continents

On my reading shelf just waiting for me to get to them:
Isabel Allende - Eva Luna
Marie Phillips - Gods Behaving Badly
Dionne Brand - What we all Long For
Alexandra Fuller - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Purple Hibiscus

Anyone else have any good reads to suggest?

To participate, say on Facebook, copy and paste into your own notes then delete my comments add your own and tag the friends you want to share this with.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star '*' those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
5) Tag your friends including the person whose list you saw!

Interested in becoming more self-sufficient

but live in an apartment? or don't have time to make that commitment? How about trying self-sufficientish living?

The idea behind self-sufficientish-ism is although many of us would love to live on a farm, grow all our own food, brew pea pod wine, live the 'Good-Life'. Not all of us have the means the space or are perhaps unwilling to give it all up and suffer the highs and lows of going it alone on a smallholding.

Although total self-sufficiency is appealing the thought of giving up the little luxuries in life may not be. I grow a lot of my own food eat wild foods and when I have the money buy organic fruit and vegetables but I still enjoy beer in a pub and like to go to the cinema or eat out occasionally.

Self Sufficientish-ism was created for these reasons. It is for all those who have limited time, space or money but would like to have a go at growing their own food or brewing their own alcohol or want to know which wild foods are good to eat. We also aim to offer advice on a whole host of other subjects from a low-ecological impact perspective.

Benefits include saving money, sustainability, good healthy eating, a chance to play farmer in the city, and it's kinda fun!

You'll find tips like 66 uses for a bread bag, natural pest control, flat dwellers guide to being self-sufficientish, lots of recipes, and how to brew. I want to try making sage and seed bread. mmmm

Via eco worrier

Post #503

This is my five-hundred-and-third post on this blog. I started it in early 2005. Boy I have a lotta crap to say!

Nobody ever celebrates 503. Poor left out number. Let's have a toast to #503!

Love Food Hate Waste

My new favourite site: Love Food Hate Waste

Around a third of all the food we buy ends up being thrown away and most of this could have been eaten – it's not just peelings, cores and bones.

90% of us just don't realise how much good food we throw out, yet in the UK we throw away 6.7 million tonnes of food each year.

It's not just an issue of good food going to waste, or that this costs us as consumers a significant amount of money, but that there are serious environmental implications.
...
The amount of food we throw away is a waste of resources. Just think about all the energy, water and packaging used in food production, transportation and storage. This all goes to waste when we throw away perfectly good food.

I really hate wasting food, and I can't compost at the moment, living in an apartment not yet serviced by the city's green bin collection. I try to eat everything I buy. I freeze leftovers if I know I won't be able to finish them before they go bad. I make stock out of vegetable scraps (keep a bag in the freezer until it is full, then pop it in my crockpot with some water and herbs overnight... mmm). I make muffins out of overripe bananas and not-so-fresh yogurt. But sometimes I just don't know what to DO with my leftover food.

This site has all kinds of great tips. They have a portion planner for those who never know how much to cook, ideas on how to make food stay fresh longer, and all kinds of recipes to help you use up those odds and ends in the fridge.

Canadian F-word Blog Awards now accepting nominations

Know a good feminist blogger? Get thee to the Canadian F-Word Blog Awards and nominate her (or him).


Many Categories:
Best Canadian Feminist Blog
Best International Feminist Blog
Activist Blog
Environmental Blog
Entertainment Blog
Culture Blog
Group Blog
Individual Blog
Women of Colour -centered Blog
Reproductive Liberty Blog
Family Blog
Political Blog
LBGT Blog
Humour blog
Best Comment Thread
Most Poignant Comment
The "Why the fuck didn't I say that" comment
Best Snark Comment
Most Regressive "Progressive"
The Support Bro

Plus, if you donate to WISE, you can be entered into a contest to win these fabulous handcrafted tit pillows.

Fun Stuff at Laboratory Andre-Michelle

Too much heaviness. I need some fun. Fortunately the interwebs have no shortage. This is all from Laboratory Andre-Michelle.

Scratching

Scratch a vinyl with actionscript. Unfortunatley you need a fast computer, since I tried to implement a very low latency time.

Chillout Planet Earth - very zen

Need a rest? Watch these cute sound particles, representing notes from different patterns, which are mixed together to keep the suspense. This experiment is completely synthesized running a polyphonic synthesizer, based on this study and a stereo-delay on 16Bit, 22.050Khz.

They are no external sources, just code. The size of the SWF is about 8kb. If your computer is too slow, try the video I’ve uploaded to youtube.

Chill out planet earth!

FL909

FL909 attempts to simulate the original sound of the Roland TR-909. This drumcomputer hits the market 1984 and was a long time the state of art in house and techno productions. Shift-Click the Step-buttons for accent triggers. Shift-Click-Move knobs for smoother resolution. Press Save to store a snapshot of the current settings to a flash cookie. Restore snapshot by pressing Load. Clear to delete all patterns and reset all knobs. Drag and drop a pattern button (invisible) to copy a pattern to a new location.

And here's a 303

Flanger Audio Processor

This is a very simple Stereo Flanger algorithm I developed last night. However it has a nice bright tone color. Keep playing with the parameters. I can listen to it for hours. Move the MIX slider to the left for the original loop sound (dry).

Color Traces - beautiful

Move you mouse to attract the particles. They will leave a color trace on their way. Click to clear the canvas.

Interactive coolness.

Rabbit of Seville

This piece of nostalgia found via Torontoist: Everything Bugs Bunny Didn't Teach You About Opera

American Electoral Politics - Mortal Kombat Style

Considering how the media covers elections (much like a horse race), this cool flash game is probably better for exploring the real issues. Watch the intro, it's pretty funny.

Unfortunately I keep losing. Damn Hillary is too slow. Her Bill Clinton attack is cool though - like a big blue ghost. Next up - I'm going to play as McCain.

Via Neatorama

Other political video games

Guess Who's Running for US President?

Hint: last week, before he announced his candidacy, he said:

I am not ready to announce yet — even though it's clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.

It's true. Stephen Colbert is running for '08.

He'll be almost as good as this guy.

In other breaking news (via PoliticsPlus) Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters.

World's Smallest Cars

Of course, I prefer no cars at all, but failing that, and all other things being equal, smaller is better.

Here are many teeny weeny itsy bitsy street legal cars.

Let Me Just Slip into Something More Comfortable...

Hooray for condom fashions!