wallcar: October 2010

Sunday, October 31, 2010

November Guest Designer

Please join me in welcoming Julie Bonner as our November WIP Guest Designer!!

* My name is Julie Bonner. I live in Maryland with my husband Justin, 3 year old son Ryan, and 3 toy poodles. We are expecting little man #2 this January!!!

* I have been scrapping for several years but didn't really immerse myself in the hobby until my son was born.

* My scrappy style really varies - I LOVE to try new techniques & products but I think I really stay true to having a structured design to my pages. I like things to appear balanced & typically don't glue anything down until I have cut & pieced out the entire page.

* My favorite Halloween candy is Snickers - I never buy them but "sneaking" them from my son's Halloween bag is such a treat :)

* My top 3 tools are my ruler, paper piercer, and CutterBee scissors.

* Can I have a gift card to Etsy??? I suppose that is kind of cheating because their are multiple vendors, but I LOVE so many things on that site - I would have so much fun shopping!!!!

* I would love to visit Prince Edward Island - I grew up adoring the Anne of Green Gables series & would love to actually see the area in person.

* Choosing favorite manufacturers is a tough one - there are so many I LOVE!!!! Currently I am enjoying playing with October Afternoon, Jillibean Soup, My Minds Eye, Bella Blvd., and SEI - but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy them all :)

* I am currently obsessed with alphas - love 'em, love 'em, love 'em. I also adore journaling tags/tickets & am so excited to see so many companies carrying these within their paper lines.

You can check out more of Julie's work on her blog, or at her awesome 2 Peas Gallery! Thanks so much for playing with us this month, Julie!!

And the rest of the Design Team's amazing creations can be found at the Gallery. Grab a cuppa coffee and check them out!

Happy Monday!

Cupcakes

I have been getting loads of cupcake questions over the past couple of weeks and thought that I would post some pictures of my faves!
Do you have a favourite cupcake flavour?

Happy Thanksgiving Parade Coloring Pages

Happy Thanksgiving Parade Coloring Pages

Trick-or-Treating

Here are some pictures taken of the 3 houses we went trick-or-treating at in our neighborhood before it rained so hard we were forced to turn in early.

Despite the rain it was quite picturesque, when the sun was setting it gave a gorgeous golden glow on the tree lined streets.

This particular neighborhood is in the historic district of Kaysville. The house below is amazing. It was on the market at the same time as ours almost a year ago. We looked at it yet we wouldn't have any $$$ to restore it to it's "proper" beauty.

We spoke to the owners today who said that they would be happy to give us a tour of all their renovations whenever we got the chance. I am going to take them up on that offer soon!

I can't help it, it is in my blood...but if I had the choice I would purchase an old home and renovate it before I would build a new one. Anyone else out there with me?

Max, ninja

Mimi, vampire/spider/Dracula princess

Henry, a cute chubby pumpkin

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Happy Halloween!!

Secret 80s fan - Episode 11

Little Katrina, aged 5-6, standing in the living room in Adelaide; mum in the kitchen cooking and radio plays this song.....I am pretty sure it was a silver radio.
Don't you just love it when songs remind you of specific points in time? This one reminds me of that everytime.....
Do you have songs that remind you of the little things like that? What are they?

Minicomic

Overview

Minicomics are a way for making comic books on a small budget. They are usually hand made. Creators usually use photocopy to make the panels fit on the small pages. The term has a bit of a complex history.

History

You're probably thinking a minicomic is a small comic -- what is so complex about that? Well there is more to the tale. Originally, there was a standard size. Digest Comics were 5.5 inches wide by 8.5 inches tall, while a minicomic was 5.5 inches by 4.25 inches. But, nowadays there is no standard size. Sizes can range from slightly smaller than a "normal" comic to the size of a U.S. stamp. Most of them have unusual sizes and graphic designs. Minicomics are usually photocopied, but in larger amounts, offset printing might be used. Currently, the term "minicomic" emphasizes the handmade aspect, rather than the actual size. So, by loose definition, one could say a single photocopied page could be a minicomic. Also, it important to know that most creators directly sell these comics (as opposed to getting a comicbook store to do it). They can be sold through the mail, ordered on websites or even sold by small bookstores and publishers that sell zines(in this context it means that is a small circulation publication). Usually, minicomics have no editors, giving the creators more freedom. The United Kingdom has a similar concept, but their version is called "British small press comics".

Alternate Meaning

The term minicomic has also been used to refer to small comics given away with toys, such as the Masters of the Universe and two of the Transformers toylines.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomic

http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Personal/Hobbies/Comics/Cynicalman.gif

Happy Thanksgiving Coloring Pages with Chicken

National Candy Corn Day

Happy Halloween Eve! October is Halloween Safety Month and today is Checklists Day so before you take your precious little goblins out trick-or-treating please read this important Halloween Safety Checklist from Reader'sDigest.com, because we want all of our little boys and ghouls to come home safe and sound on Halloween night.

Today is also National Candy Corn Day, and whether you like 'em or leave 'em they are an iconic part of Halloween (and just about every other holiday as well).

Candy Corn was invented in the 1880's and was first commercially produced by the Wunderle Candy Company of Philadelphia. However, the company most closely associated with candy corn is the Goelitz Confectionery Company which began commercial production of candy corn in 1898 and is the oldest candy corn manufacturer.

I happen to like candy corn but even if you're a candy corn hater (as many people are) you can't deny that they make adorable costumes, cute jewelry, and fun decorations. And here are some recipes you might enjoy:

If you want to get the whole low-down on how candy corn is made just watch this interesting video from Food Network Unwrapped.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Some Classic Disney Halloween Fun

Getting Broo-ed!

My friend Amy is a genius. And she's funny as all get out. I just love her.

She'd heard about a friend who had been "broo-ed" in the neighborhood, and it prompted her to write this amazing poem. I had to share.

Many a neighborhood this time of year goes through a "Boo-ing" where you leave a mysterious package at someone's doorstep (usually candy and goodies), ring the bell and run. But this one is for adults only. It's meant to be left with a 6-pack of beer for a friend. Cute idea!

You’ve Been Br-oo-ed!
A poem for adults

Soon it will be time to trick or treat,
With excited children under your feet.
For the costumes and candy we make a big fuss,
But outside of walking, what’s in it for us?

Lucky for you, a drunk ghost came to call
To ensure that you also have a festive, fun fall.
This beer might be the best you ever have tasted
But as you walk ‘round the neighborhood, try not to get wasted.

Pass this on or not, the drunk ghosts don’t care.
But if you do, heed this warning and just be aware
To only “B(r)-oo” adults who might like to drink
Or you might spend a spooky, dark night in the clink.

Making Halloween fun for adults is our mission
By starting a grand new drinking tradition.
So just pop a cold one on Halloween night,
And while you might stumble, your mood will be bright!

Happy Halloween!!

Pinwheel Sandwiches

These are our cute pinwheel sandwiches. They are white bread, dark rye bread, butter, cream cheese, herbs and smoked salmon.

And they are soooo lovely on the plate and they are extremely easy to make.

1 piece of white bread
1 piece of brown/dark rye bread
cream cheese
butter
parsley or dill or chives
smoked salmon
pepper

Method

1. Roll out the white bread until half the previous thickness.

St. Regis, Atlanta

Yesterday and today my dear husband has been on a business trip in Atlanta. And these pictures are of the Hotel he stayed at....HELLO!!! So while he was soaking in his Jacuzzi tub watching TV on the bathroom mirror, yeah, you read that right. His bathroom mirror was also a huge flat screen TV!

I was at home cleaning the kitchen and washing clothes, not soaking in a bathtub in a beautiful 5 star Hotel. ;)

But...I am soooo happy for him! I feel like I have had so many opportunities in my life to go places and stay in beautiful hotels so I am happy he is the one getting that opportunity. So no, I am not a "playa hata". True-dat!

Witch With Broom Stick Coloring Pages

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Me, Zombified

Do you know about Picnik? If you don't, head on over there before Halloween and zombify--or vampirize--yourself. Picnik is a fun, free online photo-editing site that has some really cool effects, and for Halloween, they've added some special effects. Here's me as a vampire:

And here I am zombified:

Creepy!

Here are some examples of the same photo altered using some of Picnik's more "normal" photo effects:

Okay, so those two weren't so normal, but they are cool, right? And the Duo-Tone one lets you choose the two colors you want to use.

And my favorite:

I used this a while back for the photographs on this layout:

There are tons more photo effects and frames you can add, in addition to the regular photo-editing features, like cropping, resizing, brightening, fixing red-eye, and many more.

So what are you waiting for? Go zombify yourself!

Suzie Dickinson - 19 Steps

Suzie Dickinson's cd plays during our deli mid-morning to keep all the customers happy and calm. Alan and I went to see her a few months ago when she was releasing her new album and she is extremely talented and I just LOVE LOVE LOVE her music. (Dave, the producer, you are pretty awesome too!)
Suzie just told us recently that this was on youtube.com and I just had to share it with you all!

Too Much Coffee Man

Publication history
"Too Much Coffee Man" can refer to a comic strip by Shannon Wheeler or the main character of the latter. Too Much Coffee Man started as a minicomic that was made, photocopied and published by Wheeler. At first, each issue of TMCM had 300 copies, then it went up to 12,000 copies. During the first run, to save money, Shannon stapled all the issues by hand. He swore (publicly) he would never do this again. Shannon and three friends formed Adhesive Comics, but Shannon became the sole owner when his friends decided to quit. From 1994 to 1996, Dark Horse Comic (they published Hellboy and various Star Wars comics) published the strip in Dark Horse Presents # 92-95. Several issues of TMCM were also publish by Wheeler. The comic was renamed How to Be Happy, with Too Much Coffee Man with the Jan. 23, 2006 issue. The name was simplified to How to Be Happy and TMCM didn't appear again until Jan. 21, 2008.
Overview

Too Much Coffee Man (the character) is an everyman who spends most of his time at his apartment or a coffee shop talking / debating about politics or exchanging thoughts. He has also been in a U.S. prison and outer space. Due to excessive amounts of caffeine, his nerves are shot, so he very rarely sleeps. He wears a spandex version of red long johns (referencing how superheroes are sometime called "long-underwear characters"), with a flap for restroom purposes. He has a mug on his head (although it's unclear if this just part of the costume or not).
Other Characters

Too Much Espresso Guy- He is a cold-hearted and cynical friend of TMCM. Their friendship seem to be based on a shared pessimism and mutual loneliness. He has an espresso cup strapped to his head.
Too Much German White Chocolate Woman With Almonds- She is a mutual friend of TMCM. She worries a lot. She has pale skin and large almonds on her face.
Underwater Guy- A parody of Aquaman. He is another friend of TMCM. He has the ability of staying underwater for indefinite amounts of time. However, he wears a wetsuit and diving snorkel and mask.
Mystery Woman- She is TMCM's secret love.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Much_Coffee_Man

http://wpcontent.answcdn.com/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d9/TooMuchCoffeeMan21.jpg/250px-TooMuchCoffeeMan21.jpg

SLimeWire

Lime Wire, the P2P, Gnutella & Torrent Client is under a court-ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software. In case you forgot, downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorization is illegal.

The company says it will comply with a court injunction to turn off “the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and/or file distribution functionality, and/or all functionality” of its software, which remains one of the most popular methods of finding free–and illegal–music on the Web. The company’s moves won’t affect other open source clients that run on the same Gnutella network, like FrostWire.

Meanwhile, LimeWire’s parent company, Lime Group, is prepping a new music service that it says will be legal, and should be due out in a month.

I've never used Slimewire. It seemed like it was virus infested anyway.

National Chocolate Day

Today is National Chocolate Day... I think.

State Symbols USA, one of my favorite food holiday and observances websites, states that today, October 28th is National Chocolate Day. And there are various sites that back them up. But... another of my favorite go-to sites, Brownielocks.com, claims that July 7th is Chocolate Day, and she gets her info from the Big Kahuna, Chase's Calendar of Events. Yet a third favorite site, Holiday Insights, proclaims December 24th as National Chocolate Day.

By golly! I think what we have here is a colossal chocolate conundrum! So what's a chocolate lover to do? Well, we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings now do we? So I guess we'll just have to celebrate on all of the afore mentioned dates. If celebrate we must, then celebrate we shall, with all the chocolate loving gusto we can muster! Have a happy and blissful National Chocolate Day!

Image: annalucylle

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

your color personality

I found this fun quiz via how about orange? via REAL SIMPLE. Go here and take the quiz and find out what color you are. :)

I took it and I am an Earth Personality, which means I am loyal, honest, steadfast yet also self-conscious, reserved and stand-offish. I don't know if those things are completely true but there are definitely elements of those traits in my personality.

The crazy thing is that when we bought our house, I painted the kitchen toasted nutmeg which is very similar to the terracotta color from above, our Living Room "Ash" similar to colors above, our Office " Slate" similar to colors above and our Dining Room "Spanish Moss" similar to the green from above. Hmmm???? I guess this test knows what it's talking about!

Silky Chocolate Tart

When I was an apprentice I was on the Channel 7 tv show My Restaurant Rules. We were in the restaurant on Fitzroy Street in St Kilda (the top end of the street) and it was called Two Words and then Whisk. It was the best three months of my apprenticeship! It was hard, it was so busy and of course it was on tv. And as some of you may know that is where I met my husband. Yes! We met on a tv show.

Nevermind The Bollocks

On this date in 1977, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols was released in the UK. It is the Sex Pistols only studio album. Fans and critics alike generally regard the album as an extremely important album in the history of rock music. In 2003, Rolling Stone named it the forty-first greatest album of all time on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

The album was released on 27 October 1977 through Virgin Records.

Older versions of most of the album's songs also appeared on a bootleg album called Spunk, which consists of demo recordings the band had made during 1976 and January 1977, and which was released shortly before Never Mind the Bollocks.

Blogload: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977) - lyricalsolace.blogspot.com

Blogload: sEX PiStOLs ; Spunk Demo`s - www.some-product.com

The Punk Rock Movie

The Punk Rock Movie (this link will stream the entire movie FREE on Google Video)
Tip: Use Firefox, install the Video Download Helper add-in)

Assembled from Super 8 camera footage shot by Don Letts, the disc jockey at The Roxy club during the early days of the UK punk rock movement, principally during the 100 days in 1977 in which punk acts were featured at The Roxy club in London.

Watch it here or follow the link above.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Halloween drink labels & edible postcards

This last weekend we went to my cute nephew's 1st birthday party. He was lucky enough to be born in Oct. and so it was a Halloween themed party. My brother-in-law works in a restaurant and brought home a bunch of empty wine bottles, which were washed and filled with differnet colored fruit punch. My mother-in-law then bought these fun Martha Stewart Halloween Beverage Labels at Michaels and put them on the front.

My mother-in-law (I swear she is Martha) showed me these wafer papers she bought here from fancy flours. They are pictures of victorian Halloween postcards printed on edible wafer paper with edible ink that you put on frosted sugar cookies!!!

I first saw these about a year ago when my sis-in-law Christie showed them to my sister and I. Genius!

Monsters!

Halloween is only days away. My little ones are over the top excited. We have several parades and parties over the next few days to celebrate this fun costume day.

I really got into decorating our house for Halloween this year with the kids. I whipped up this "Monster Tree" in one evening to surprise the boys. They were thrilled when they woke up to find the Monsters waiting for them. The boys live by the rule that everything is better if it has Googly Eyes on it.

All of the Monster ornaments were created with the new Monster Stew Papers and Journaling Sprouts. The vintage tinsel is Pink Paislee and I purchased the Spooky Tree from Joanns.

Old Skool

Here at the P5 it isn't just about Punk and New Wave. While Punk Rock and New Wave was the big scene Downtown, Old Skool Rap and Graffiti culture was starting to emerge Uptown.

By the 1970s, poverty in New York City was rampant. The middle-class fled the area and the local black and Latino gangs began to grow in power. Hip-hop music originated in 1970s at block parties in The Bronx. Old school DJs would often sample disco and funk tracks such as "Good Times" by Chic.

In 1979, graffiti artist Lee Quinones and Fab 5 Freddy were given a gallery opening in Rome by art dealer Claudio Bruni. For many outside of New York, it was their first encounter with the art form. Fab 5 Freddy's friendship with Debbie Harry influenced Blondie's single "Rapture" (Chrysalis, 1981). And who can forget Malcolm McLaren's unlikely foray into hip hop in 1980, when he first met Afrika Bambaataa on the streets of Manhattan. Then later released the album "Duck Rock" in 1983 (too much of that snow white!).

STYLE WARS is regarded as the indispensable document of New York Street culture and subway graffiti art of the early '80s, It is a record of a golden age of youthful creativity that exploded into the world from a city in crisis. http://www.stylewars.com/

Watch the entire movie here or see the Videoload below.

Videoload: Style Wars, A Movie About Graffiti Kings sundasill on USTREAM. Hip-Hop/Rap (this link will stream the entire movie FREE on Ustream.tv)
Tip: Use Firefox, install the Video Download Helper add-in)

Check This Out: www.at149st.com - An extensive list of Old Skool NYC Graffiti Artists with pictures their bombs and tags.