Music Monday - Let It Go - Frozen - Alex Boyé (Africanized Tribal Cover)

I'm so late to the game, I know, but we only just saw Frozen last night, and it was as cute and sweet and charming as I'd been led to believe! And, you know, because internet, I'd already been sort of constantly in love with this song, and I think this is my favorite of the covers I've heard. 

I'd love to  hear one that's done in the style of the cultures in the movie--like, Finnish or otherwise Scandinavian, or Northern Germanic, or something like that.

Link Roundup #2

I adore these Katherine Tromans illustrations so much.

A lovely post about the Sharable City, an alternative sort of economy based on what we actually already have.
From that, these links:

• Public-tree fruit harvests
• Creating seed lending libraries
• Community currency
• Starting a worker-owned co-op
• Public Banks
• Biketopia

One of my fav journal-printable sites, Grace is Overrated, is at a new address, Adventures In Guided Journaling!

Look at all these reasons to love Amy Pohler! And also to listen to what she says, dudes.

A new parenting study.

Create A Wallpaper Look With A Geometric Stencil. Man, I wish I was allowed to paint my walls.

How to know when you're a grownup.

Foodie Penpal #1 - From Sheila in VA!

Such a lovely note! I wanted to find local stuff to send to her in my box, but our grocery store is apparently lame and I couldn't find a lot. But I love local stuff! 

This post is late because the box got delivered to the complex's office instead of to my door, but here it is and I'm thrilled to have it!

Here's what was inside! GF herb crackers made with flax and quinoa and rice that look awesome, a chia bar with coconut, a super snack that looks awesome, and the best-looking bag of almond toffee with chocolate, which I've already broken into! Toffee is my fav variety of burnt sugar! 

I'm going to skip this month because of slim funds, but I'm definitely doing this again in May or June!

Thank you, Sheila, for the lovely gift!

Time for a change - New hair color and a new tattoo

I've been feeling restless and looking for a change again, and since I can't move somewhere less stupid*, I decided to just go for it. I've been wanting to dye my hair purple for a while, and I've been craving a new tattoo for yonks, and my sister decided of her own accord to help me out with both. She took me to the neat little Korean Beauty Supply place up the road and I got some fab purple hair dye, and then she paid for me to get a tattoo that matches the ones she and mom were also getting (though it wound up costing twice as much as we thought, and though we all decided to get different interpretations of the theme).

First, the hair!**

Before and after! Wow, my hair's getting long! And wow, it's not really purple, but came out actually sort of a purple-leaning red. In a few weeks, I'm going for a bluer, deeper purple, and then it'll be awesome. Here's what it looks like in sunlight, the day after I dyed it...

And for the tattoo, My sister got a whole branch with twelve or thirteen flowers on it, but I had a smaller space to work with***, so I decided to go with three flowers. Three is my favorite number, and it's how many of us girls are in this immediate family, and it's how many kids we are, so it covers quite a lot of ground.

All my tatts are blue, so I went with all blues here, too, and I LOVE how they turned out! This is a good show of where they are and what it looks like (though reversed, because it's a mirror-shot, obvi). It's going to look SO COOL with tanktops and bathing suits this summer!

And this is my favorite of the pictures my sister took while the work was being done. I just love it. If you're in the Raleigh area, this was done by Dave at Immortal Ink in Wakeforest, and he's a trip. Sang songs to me about the work as he was doing it, joked with my mom and my sister, kept things goofy so I wouldn't get nervous or too tense, and his art is great!


Notes:
*NC is not as great a place to live as they'd have you think.
**These pictures originally appeared on my IG page.
***She did her whole back; I just wanted my shoulder, since my back is reserved for my wings that I haven't actually gotten yet.

Music Mondays - These nuggets

These were originally posted to my Instagram account about a month ago, and I just keep looking at them and smiling because they're the cutest nuggets out there. Go ahead and tell Ellen about how cute they are. I'll wait.

Ten good things about March 2014

1. I got a new tattoo! (more on that in another post)
2. I finally got around to dying my hair purple
3. StarGardener's journal pages subscription, the Right Brain Planner, a hybrid of art-journaling and classic planner-pages
4. The cold broke! Several times, actually, but still.
5. I planted the first part of this year's garden!
6. Adventure-time with the kidlets.
7. I found out that so many of my favorite authors are putting out new books this year that I shouldn't have anything to worry about, reading-wise.
8. The nail polish business is doing pretty well!
9. 100 Happy Days (more later)
10. I don't want to speak too soon, but I think I might finally be feeling less crappy after this long hard winter of feeling like something on the bottom of a shoe!

Link Roundup #1

Did you know Stash Tea has a whole bunch of chocolate-flavored teas? I didn't!

12 selfie tips learned from that pic that Ellen stole the internet with.

This wine-subscription helps you figure out what wines you actually like, and isn't all that expensive, either!

Tips on how to capture memories while being part of them.

Truth cards.

The Lady Of The Fountain sounds like a perfect summer cocktail.

This shirt costs too much for me right now, but look how cute it is!

Blog scheduling tips!

This Asian Chicken Salad sounds like something I really seriously need all the time.

Cats Through History, A Contrarian View

A foodie theme park? I want to go to there.

I love everything about this tableau--the eyepatch on the statue, the framed theme song, the feathers, all of it.

Fifteen delicious-looking vegan lunches.

Make Your Own Emergency Hangry Kits

I want a think tank

Or, more specifically, a brainstorming group, or an idea generator. I want people who I know and trust and who think at least a little the way I do--or know how I think--to gather around once a month or something, and we'll just spend five hours or eight hours goofing off, talking, bouncing ideas, and generating wonderful collaborations and solo projects.

I know I could get this very thing in the Puttytribe, and I really want to, but I know for a fact that I can't afford the monthly membership fee. If it was a one-time payment, maybe, but I just can't afford it over and over. And that pains me, because I want it.

But also, I want to find people who live here, where I am, who I can trust and connect with and have on speed dial*, and work with and have fun with, in person. It's incredibly gratifying to know that I'm not alone, that there are other people like me** in the world, but it's also wildly frustrating to find that those people who are like me are 3000 miles away.

See, I've never been all that great at making friends in person and without the structure of a class or a group. But now I don't have a class or a group to hold me up while I figure people out enough to see who I want to be friends with--casual friendships with little in common exhaust me, and if I can't just be myself, if we can't be weird and think of crazy things together, why bother? I have no idea where, here, I can go to meet people, and transportation in this city is a problem.

But more and more lately, I have been feeling the need for a group that bolsters and amplifies the creativity of the people in it. I had that with my LobbyGirls in undergrad, and with my Troublemakers in grad, but now that there isn't school, and we all live so far away from each other, I'm feeling the loss. I want a place where I can go to just be, to collaborate and share and get ideas and work with people who have resources I don't have and needs I can meet--in person. I miss face-to-face communication. The internet is a wonderland of awesome for people like me who have trouble with strangers in the real world, but I don't want strangers, I want friends. I want all my friends to live close by again, and for us to have standing engagements to do things and to make new ideas and to create things with our own hands.

Think how wonderful that would be.

So this is my statement to the universe: point me in the right direction.

And it's my request to my readers: where can a girl go to meet people in a non-skeezy, non-scary way in Raleigh NC? Somewhere preferably free and low-stress and geek-friendly?



Notes:
*Does speed dial still exist? I have no idea if my phone even does speed dial...
**People with many and varied interests, who have lots and lots of creativity but also are shy and awkward and have trouble following through, who people want to classify but who resist classification. Emelie in the link above calls us Multipotentials, and I like that word.

Things money CAN buy that contribute to happiness

1. An upgrade that gets you out of coach on any airplane

2. Higher quality food that aligns with your morals and better nourishes your bodies

3. Healthcare so you don't have to fear getting g sick or hurt

4. Vacations and other sorts of time off so you do t burn out from over work

5. A nicer house in a nicer area, where people better suit the life you'd like to have, rather than the one you're forced to endure

6. Education, for personal enrichment and job advancement

7. Body upkeep--aesthetic as well as medical or fitness

8. Freedom to move somewhere with better air, water, jobs, schools, land, whatever

9. Time to seek personal expression and fulfillment

10. Tea

GrazeBox!

I first heard about GrazeBox a while ago, from Cara McGee, who I follow on a number of sites, who draws the most amazing pictures, and who mixes wonderful fandom teas (that alone would have made me a fan), but at the time that I tried to join, they weren't accepting new members. 

Then last month, they were, and I signed up so fast I gave myself whiplash. 

The Setup:

• It's a recurring subscription for a set of four delicious and healthy snacks.
• It costs a flat 6$ each order.
• It comes every two weeks in most places; there's a few places where you can get it every week, but I am not in one of those places.

Pros:

• There are 90 different snacks you could get at any time, and I'm pretty sure they're adding new ones periodically.
• They're pre-portioned to be healthy even when the snacks are a little on the less-healthy side.
• They're really original snack items. This box was BBQ Pistachios, spicy nuts, dried apples and toffee-dip, and a bread thing I'm going to give to someone else because gluten.
• You can rate each snack they send you so you can get the ones you love more often, and get the ones you hate not at all.
• You can tell them not to send ones that have stuff you can't eat (I'm just going to share mine, because there's too many off the list if I exclude gluten, and not all of those have bread-things in them).
• The box is recycled, recyclable, pretty, and sized to fit in your mail box!

Cons:

• The snacks ARE a little small, but that's because snacks are supposed to be. It's just that they're so delicious I want to eat more!
• I wish I could have it more often!

So, basically, TLDR, I LOVE this whole idea and I'm keeping it.

If you want to sign up, use the code QQ5YP9K7B to get your first and fifth box free!