gnome g: a bad, bad blogger

I cannot believe the month of June is nearly over. I can’t believe where all the hours of the day while away to. I can’t believe I am such a bad blogger. I used to be so good! Life’s just been inordinately full and busy and hectic for the last month or two. It really amazes me how busy one can keep while being unemployed. It’s a little bit discouraging. Gone are all those thoughts and daydreams of “if I weren’t working, I would…” Because I’m not working in a cube farm and still I am not filling in that blank very well.

So what the hell have I been up to?

I have been working. I’m doing some freelance design work, which is really cool. I’ve been designing new goodies for The Walrus (check out my new blank notecard sets!). I’ve also been updating my resume finally (I really despise the act of creating and revising resumes; it should be pretty straightforward, but really, it never is) and hoping to submit it soon. It’s taking me forever to get just right. I’m not sure it’ll ever quite get just right. Blecch.

Other highlights…have caught a few summer blockbusters and a quirky documentary. Quite enjoyed Batman Begins (love Cillian, love Christian)*. Bewitched was sweet. Mr & Mrs Smith was a rollicking good time. Caught The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Amy and I liked it; Monkey and Ron, not so much. It appealed to the hopeless romantic and super softie side of me. Have been cooking, eating out at lots of fun local spots (will save foodie stuff for another post) and making more new friends (!). Have bought a new sewing machine (I am so excited, esp. since I still have not found my old machine in storage!!). Had fun creating just for the sake of creating for the Collective Souls Journal (it was such a nice break from making to make $$). See detailed pics of pages at Flickr. Have also received some super fun snail mail! Pics below!

A smattering of Walrus blank notecard designs (there are 9 different sets!):

  

 

My Believe Journal pics:

Snail Mail goodies:

 

Sweetpeas Jes sent me super fun housewarming goodies of paper lanterns (which you all know I love), blank notecards (can never have too many), seashell citronella candles (so pretty!), and a fab seaglass-green plant mister (yay!). Thanks so much, Jes!!

I ordered a few goodies from Hope’s fab shop, Paper, Scissors, Soul. They are now gracing walls in the guest room and my craft room (above where my new sewing machine will sit!). Hope’s collage genius is pictured in the recent issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors. How flipping cool is that?! Congrats, Hope!!

One thing we have not been doing is buying houses. Yet. We still are in limbo re: houses right now. Still waiting to sell the house in Chicago (Lizzie is househunting and just called just now to let me know she’s put in an offer for full-price on a house that just had another offer submitted, how House Hunters is that? It’s so exciting!! Happy homeowner vibes to my little sis!!). We did go back and have another walkthrough of the FSBO home, and we met our prospective new neighbors, who were super nice and lots of fun and in our age group. I could totally see holding some block parties with them (they let us in on a block party bbq rivalry they’ve got going with another party house down the block. how fun!). 

Ok, you can see that my blogging writing style has suffered some for lack of doing. Eep. I do promise to try to get over to all your blogs and pay a visit soon. Also, I aim to be a better blogger soon. My folks and then Lizzie are coming up for visits over the next couple of weeks. I’m hoping I’m a better blogger then. But if not, then after.

=)

* More Cillian references here and here and here. Hmm.

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illustration friday: summer

I actually have the images from the Summer Toesies cards all ready and fit for this week’s topic. Yay!

I have loads saved up to share in my next post; time’s just been scarce this week!

thursdays, the day to watch tv!

Well, I have developed a couple new addictions since summer season shows* have begun, but Thursday has become one of my favorite nights for vegging in front of the telly because of this (I’m glad they’re doing it for charity; seems somehow less exploitive that way) and of course, this.

house hunting and a conundrum

You talked and I listened. Kind of. I haven’t brought my digital camera with us for any of our house-hunting adventures (I have no good reason, other than I keep forgetting to tuck my camera back into my purse), so these pics come to you courtesy of their marketing agents.

the contenders:

House 1 is the fixer-upper. It’s built on a hill, so it looks teeny tiny in front but has the surprise extra level below street level on the back. Monkey and I were in love with the possibilities of this place. So much potential, such a pretty street, a great walk-to location to a local “hotspot” neighborhood full of fun restos, bars, shops, and cafes (it’s literally the street behind the neighborhood). But it’s not too cheap (location, location, location) and would probably take another $100k-$150k to renovate + a lot of sweat equity. We’d likely need to gut a lot of it. The gardens (both front and back) are intensely overgrown and riddled with squitos and other unpleasant insects. But there is a delightful huge deck/porch off the back of the house, complete with pale blue-painted ceiling and glow-in-the-dark stars. Behold:

House 2 has been rehabbed extensively by the current owners (who are relocating to Charleston, lucky ducks!). There are so many charming qualities in this beautifully renovated house. Plus a lovely yard and lots of pretty neighboring houses. And the Dollar Tree is a few feet away at the street corner. George (our agent) noted that just a few years ago there was a strip club where there’s now a Gamecocks goods store. So I guess the transition is still happening in this neighborhood. Not sure I’ll be wanting to walk to the shops in the immediate neighborhood so much (but I do like the DT)…The house itself is lovely. Same price as the terraced house above, not as sweet a location, but absolutely move-in condition. See:

House 3 is not really a contender anymore because of its location. I am IN LOVE with the house itself. Charming, quirky, wonderful and all renovated and basically move-in ready. But it’s the same one I’d mentioned we’d taken polaroids of way back in November of last year. It’s about $100k less than the 2 houses above, but it’s been on the market for this long for some reason. Plus, the neighbors were out this time, and they didn’t seem too friendly. The neighborhood looks ripe for investing into, but it may be quite a few years before we’d see the environment warm up. It’s a shame, because I love this house. Isn’t it so sweet?

And then…House 4 (no pics): Monkey and I found a house a few weeks back (when we had first just started working with George, who we really, really like) as we were wandering through some of the neighborhoods we liked. We really stumbled across this house on a whim, because it wasn’t much to look at from the outside (red brick cottage, looks tiny and lacking on some curb appeal), but it was FSBO and definitely in the area we were looking in (walking distance to nice food markets and restaurants), so we checked it out. There were info sheets stuck to the windows, and the rooms looked very intriguing. So we got in touch with the owners then, but we only just got a chance to get into the house this week (the current owners have relocated to FL because of the hubby’s work moving them from time to time, and they were back for one day). Oh my. So quirky and charming and cute. It looks teeny tiny from the front, but the house is a bit of rambler, with lots of small, usable rooms, which is perfect for what Monkey and I need (we’re both hobbyists and dabblers in too many things). It almost rivals the charm (on the inside) of House 3. And the homeowners were so nice (and very ecologically-minded and DIY handy, which I love) and renovated the house with such care and love. They left a few rooms to do (because they’d planned to do them but had to move), so that would leave a nice, manageable amount of DIY for Monkey and me. We like that. A lot.

I can’t stop thinking about this house. We could really make it our home. We would love it, and it would love us.

The conundrum is, the house is For Sale By Owner. And we found it ourselves before we’d fully gotten into househunt mode with George. But we want him to get a cut because he’s been great and has spent a good amount of time with us. At the same time, we don’t want to pay more for the house than we need to, which we would if we wanted to build a commission for George into it. Oy.

Did you really want to know all this? Probably not, but there it is. And meanwhile, Lizzie is at home spiffing up our old house for market there. She’s my dreamboat sister and I love her for being such a wonderful, giving person. Yay! Wish us luck in selling it!

And watch some telly tonight. It’s Thursday!

* I am liking The Next Food Network Star and wish we still had HBO to catch the new (and last) season of Six Feet Under. Nobody break my heart and tell me Dead Like Me is starting up again soon, please! We get a package cable deal with the apartment, so we are just going with it for now (it’s cheap and loaded with fun channels), but once we move into our house, we’ll be looking for some DVR+extended cable, because I love TV, but I don’t want it to run our lives forever…. 

sneaks
First off, thanks much to all of you who gave me so many great suggestions for new sneaks. My last 3 pairs were, in recent reverse chronological order, New Balances, New Balances, and Nikes. I may have had an Asics pair way way back. I guess I threw out my last pair of NB’s in our move from Chicago (I was purging things like nobody’s business. Those who know me would’ve been alarmed), because when I unpacked my big box of shoes here in SC, they were nowhere to be found.  I guess this calls for big-time shoe shopping soon (Melissa, I am hearing you on being properly fitted…Monkey is a huge proponent of that and used to always go to the running store at Clark and Fullerton for proper fitting). I’ve been going back and forth between a pair of Steves and my cheapie WalMart Starters. Neither are adequate for actually working out (too cute to be functional?), which Monkey has been persuading me to do daily (we’re currently on a very big healthy kick. it’s killing me).

anti-health…but not really
I wanted to share this chocolate with you all, because it is HEAVENLY. I am most certainly not one of those people who get all orgasmic about chocolate. I like chocolate, but only reasonably and without too much fanfare. I don’t coo and ahh at a good piece of chocolate, usually. At least, I never had before. Not even at really excellent chocolate. But this chocolate, oh my. It really made me coo. In particular, we had the Cherries & Almonds in Dark Chocolate. It is truly divine. High recommendation from the Gnome to you. Healthy or no, I say the endorphins released from munching on this chocolate will do you a world of wonder (added bonus for collagers and papercrafters, the wrapper has all sorts of fun doodads to cut out and use in assemblages).

house hunting
Monkey and I spent a good part of Saturday with our real estate agent, who we both think is the cat’s pajamas. He is so laid-back (which we really appreciate) and knowledgeable, but he is also 110% in tune with what we like (he was spot-on with the houses he found for us to see) and looking out for our investment in finding a new MonkeyGnome¹ home here in SC. We looked at 4 houses this past weekend, and every single one of them was wonderful. I could seriously envision living in each one. Monkey and I have become especially smitten with 2 houses. This is the part on House Hunters where Suzanne “Wiggles” Whang asks, ‘which house will this couple choose?’ We’re still up in the air about a gorgeous rehabbed house on the edge of a great area or a fixer-upper smack-dab in the heart of one of the prettiest neighborhoods I’ve seen down here. They both are listed for the same price. Monkey and I have turned into house stalkers and have driven past both of them several times now…we still have that pesky chore of selling the house back in Chicago! Eeee.

 happy wishes
Happy Birthday (belated, because I am not a blogger nor laptop surfer on the weekend, so much) to Leslie! Hope you are having a fab time in your new age and soaking up plenty of time for little people loving and crafting!!

Happy happy wedding thoughts to Princess Dawn! Yay! I love a good engagement story. So exciting and wonderful!! 

¹Have you seen this MonkeyGnome? I wonder where on earth the artist decided to make a MonkeyGnome stuffie. It’s such a serendipitous goodie!

more goodies

This time, for you, not for me. The latest round of Happily Handmade kicks off today! You can enter from June 1 through July 31. Go on, you know you want some cool handmade goodies!! Lots of great participating shops! Lots of luck!!

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I did receive this goodie in the mail a few days back. The incredible, gorgeous Believe journal made its way to the gnome home from Dallas. The pages in here are just amazing. Seriously. I am so so thrilled to have this beautiful piece of collaborative art in my little hands. Jill was the Collective Souler who last had the journal before sending it to me, and she tucked in a fantastic fabric flower pin for little ol’ me. Hee! =}

 

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We spent most of the holiday weekend soaking up sun (trying to even out the tan head/pasty neck & body thing), eating, and hanging out with Monkey’s work friends. We went to get ice cream after dinner on Sunday night, and Isabella (2-year-old daughter of Monkey’s boss) decided to repeatedly belt out her ABC’s in her outside voice when placed upon the big windowsill (which, really, is like a stage, no?). It was hilarious! She sang with extreme vim, vigor, passion. Full flourished fanned hands. Stompy dance moves with corresponding waves of the arms. Puts Liza to shame, really. You can see Caroline and Alex (super cute kids of one of Monkey’s colleagues) giggling in the background. Alex was super smitten (I’m not kidding!) with Isabella, who was running around giving many hugs and kisses to the under-10 set. Awww!

before the show:

during:   

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Other miscellaneous good things I’d highly recommend:

Honeydew Melon White Tea. We picked up a tin the other day from Earthfare, and I’ve been hooked ever since. So summery, light, and delicate. So good.

Poochie sidekicks are always the best. Even if I’m just sitting in the poof chair by the window, Casey is my sweetie pie who likes to tag along and just hang out. She keeps me company in my new adventure of trying to be self-employed.

 

 Casey also likes to snuggle up to aunties on the balcony.

I’m on the hunt for a good pair of real, functional sneakers for working out and such (do you have any suggestions? I’m not a big runner, but I will do light jogging), but I am really loving on this pair of cheap-ass shoes I am ashamed to admit I found at a Wal-Mart (what? I was looking for water shoes for sailing, at 11pm the night before sailing…who else was open?). They happened to be on clearance for nine bucks!

 I like them because of 1)the apple green coloring 2)no shoe laces to tie & no velcro 3)they look good with shorts and capris and those little footie non-sock gym socks. They’re not real gym shoes, but they’re great for walking the pooch and for schmoozing about town.

Some good reads I’ve really enjoyed recently: The Death & Life of Charlie St. Cloud, Coraline, Little Children,  The Secret Life of Bees, You Remind Me of Me, and my current read (quite juicy, but not too much), The Jane Austen Book Club. 

Hmmm. Yeah. That’s about it for now on the goodies. Don’t hate me for going to Wal-Mart (it was a moment of desperation; Monkey hates the place and won’t willingly go there unless mostly necessary without other options). I redeemed this post with the tip for free handmade goodies and cute dogs and kids, right?