Black And White And Loved All Over

I'm really sick. I couldn't even muster the energy to surf the Internet or return texts today. Scary. I got a stomach bug that Tessa had over the weekend. I guess that should have been expected since she literally puked all over me. The funny thing is I didn't even mind. I was just worried as hell. She is fine now. I'm the one who feels like death.

Anyway, here's a quickie little post with some links to stories I've written recently. Check them out if you have a minute. Hopefully, I'll be back in the blog saddle tomorrow.

Recent Stories:

1. Bonnie McKee: The Eternal Teenager
   Loved doing this interview. Bonnie writes bunches of Katy Perry songs and told me that Katy Perry has the hottest body she's ever seen in person of any human being ever. And other such deep things...

2. 5 Rainy Day Women: Bob Dylan's Muses
   The story in which my fictional love affair with '60s era Dylan gets pretty much extinguished because, it turns out, consensus has it he was a cruel and heartless boyfriend...

3. Heard But Not Seen: How Indie Songwriters Can Make It Big On-Screen
   A fun how-to story for BMI's songwriters...

4. 10 More Things You Might Not Know About John Lennon
   An interesting story that came together last minute with the help of my new-ish friend Robert Rodriguez, an authority on all things Beatles...

5. No Strings Attached: How to Reuse Your Guitar Strings
   Loved getting to exercise my crafty muscle in my freelance work and met a very cool chick -- Hannah Garrison from Wear Your Music -- in the process...

And lots more news items and features for Gibson.com that you can check out here if you're interested.

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So I always think we've taken the best Tessa picture ever and then we take the actual best Tessa picture ever.

Source: Nutri Plate

 This one too! Less chiding and more fun, this one's called the Food Face Dinner Plate.

Source: PerpetualKid.com

These moccasin boots from Yuketen. Out of my price range, but they'd be pretty perfect with skinny jeans.

Source: Yuketen

This photo.

Source: Alexandrena Parker

This light. This tutorial on Design*Sponge shows how to make one yourself. I don't think I'm capable of that, but I've always loved big, cheesy light-up signs and dreamed of having one in our kitchen. Nekos needs to learn to operate a jigsaw. Although it was also pointed out to me that letter lights can be ordered from Urban Outfitters.

Source: Design*Sponge

Teen Vogue DIYs. This week I found some cool DIY fashion projects on the Teen Vogue website. These are my two favorite ...

The jewelry designer behind Lulu Frost posted this tutorial about how to string together several vintage necklaces and broaches to make something like this:

Source: Teen Vogue

The two designers behind The Veronica Beards offered this tutorial on sewing together a schoolboy blazer and a hoodie:

Source: Teen Vogue

This decanter set. I wish I drank whiskey or bourbon or something cool. But I'm really just a beer girl. If I did join Nekos in his love of Old Fashioneds, it would be pretty rad if the whiskey was poured from this decanter set by Love & Victory. P.S. This set is being offered as a giveaway from Miss James over at Bleubird Vintage.

Source: Love & Victory

Source: Wee Squeakers

Source: Wee Squeakers

The weather this weekend. Ready for this? 52 degrees tomorrow, 54 degrees on Sunday and 51 degrees on Monday! I am so psyched. We're planning to hit up Lake Radnor for a hike and to take Tess to the park for an inaugural swing in one of these puppies:

Source: Garnet Girl Designs

Handmade floral romper from '60s or '70s found at Pre to Post Modern in Nashville

Vintage coat, found in Flagstaff, AZ

... there's this coat. I've talked about it a couple of times already. I found it waiting for me in a shop in Flagstaff, AZ. We'd underpacked and I was freezing cold and driving Nekos nuts griping about it. So this coat solved a problem and became my favorite coat. (It does look pretty similar to the fur coat I got late last year, but who's counting?)

Even if she was, she would probably just say things like: These new baby wipes taste reallllll good! Would you like to watch me stuff one in my mouth?

A mom I know told me that her baby is her best friend. I thought, That sucks. My baby is not my friend. She's my kid. She's delightful, but she's my responsibility. And because I spend all day with her -- this poor conversationalist -- I need my friends more than ever.

I had coffee with my friend Joy yesterday. She's a new mom too, and while we drank our lattes we sat on the floor of the coffee shop and consoled the babies and entertained the babies and chased the babies. As we were leaving, she said, I always find myself longing for more time to chat, sans babies. That's the plight: We've spent our adulthood longing for babies, and we spend their babyhood longing for a moment to ourselves. Or a moment with our friends.

Getting out of the house is ridiculously important. Joy and I were talking about that too. And I told her that I feel silly even saying it. Like I'm some housewife who has gotten bored of making pies and diapering the children and I need some fresh air. There's not fresh air to be had in January though. It hit me like a ton of bricks this week: Tessa is old enough to put her in one of those swings at the park. One of those swings with the holes cut out for the legs! How friggin' fun would that be! But if I took her to the park and put her in one of those things today, it would be considered child abuse. It's 30 degrees out. So I'm looking into legal, inexpensive ways to entertain Tessa and me during the day.

For now, there are quick, distracted meet-ups in coffee shops and for those I am grateful. But mostly I am grateful that even though she is a terrible conversationalist, I have Tessa to talk to. She also happens to be my very favorite person to talk to (besides Nekos).

Yay, my first DIY tutorial! Here goes ...

Yesterday I wore a Free People cardigan to lunch that I have literally had since I was 15. The reason I've hung onto it for so long, besides the fact that it's this cool light seafoam green color, is the pretty beading along the shoulder and up the abdomen.


I thought I could probably replicate the embroidery and beading, and so today I did. I'm a cardigan junkie and I especially love vintage beaded cardigans. Plus I had two plain black cardigans in my closet and didn't mind sacrificing one to a craft disaster. Fortunately, I really dig the way mine turned out; here's how I did it:



What You Need:

- A plain cardigan
- A skein of embroidery thread and a needle
- A handful of seed beads
- Tailor's chalk or fabric marker


1) Draw your pattern onto the cardigan. I used tailor's chalk and used freehand to copy the basic pattern of the embroidery on my Free People cardigan. You can barely see the marks in the photo below because they were very light and not meant to be really precise. It just gave me a basic outline to follow.


2) Use four threads of your embroidery floss to back stitch the "stem" part of the pattern. It's OK if the stitches are a little uneven because you can fill in the gaps with the leaves and beading later on.




3) Use a chain stitch to add "leaves" at random. You can use these leaves to mask any imperfections or gaps in the back stitching you used to create the stems.




4) Add beads. I had to swap my needle for a smaller one that would fit through the bead. I used small pearls but any seed bead would work. I used just two threads of embroidery floss and placed the beads all along the vine at random.


 5) Rock the sweater with just the shoulder embroidery or add more along the other shoulder or up the opposite side. Enjoy!

Tessa Jean is 10 months old today. I always tell my girlfriends who live out of town that she is more than her milestones, that it's hard for me to sum up "what's going on with her" in words or by listing off her achievements. I do like that my Lil Miss Independent has grown more attached to me lately, clinging to me when I try to put her down. I think our road trip bonded her to us even more because it was such an intense, hands-on time together. I love that she's become more affectionate. She will sit still longer so I can cuddle her in my lap and she'll move her little, open rosebud mouth toward mine for a kiss and wrap her little fists around my neck for a hug. She laughs a lot more now. She's still not walking but she is standing up on her own and she'll stay standing for a few seconds before plopping down on her booty. I secretly fear that she'll only accept pureed food for the rest of her life because she's been so slow to take to big people food. But there are no adults that I know of that require that all of their foods be put into a blender, so surely this will pass.

These two are crazy about each other.

OK, it's bed time.

These days we've been hosting a lot of dinner parties. Nekos and I both require lots of social interaction but we can't go out as often now that we have Tessa Bean so we have our friends over. Last night Nekos made avocado-topped burgers, our friend Leslie contributed the baked beans, and I made an apple crumble pie topped with vanilla ice cream. We played Uno, doodled on the wall in the kitchen, and laughed a lot. It was so fun, and we were still in bed by 10. (I secretly love it when everyone leaves by 10, no matter how much I love them.)

Here's what our night looked like:

Before she went to bed, Tessa helped me make the apple crumble. (If I knew how to use Photoshop, I would use it to digitally diminish my ass. But I don't and this picture of Tess was too cute to leave out.)

Making pie crust.

These movies. We watched two movies this week -- one in the theater and one on our couch. Both were super good.


Blue Valentine was gloomy but spot-on its portrayal of what happens to a relationship when one person loves the other person more, when one person stays still and the other keeps moving. I loved it.



The Kids Are All Right was the first mainstream movie I've ever seen that ever really captured a "normal," loving lesbian relationship. I had to just use a picture of Mark Ruffalo for this one because he is pretty good and fine in this film. Loved this one too.





These books. My mom just gave me my Valentine's Day present. Three weeks early. That's how we roll in this family. But I am soooo excited about these guys.




Projects to make. I made it to the fabric store this week to stock up on some stuff for projects I'm wanting to knock out.

First, my idea is to take the pattern for this skirt but to use navy fabric for mine and use gold buttons and chains to make it look something like the Band Practice Skirt from ModCloth:

Source: Jen Loves Kev

Next, I want to make this felt pansy headband, using the tutorial on my friend Blair's blog, A Case of the Mundays. I am floored by this girl's creativity. And isn't she cute as pie?




And lastly, I want to make this little pink felt house for my ... house.