Help El Guepardo Loco, Kyle November 27, 2008

I’m starting to think that my friend, Kyle, has unlocked some way of slowing down time just for himself.  In addition to just finishing up his PhD, Kyle and his friend are also putting the finishing touches on a sci-fi book about how to defeat your clone.  You’ll see it on the bookstore shelves next year. 

I spoke with Kyle today, but instead of the regular weekly update, he surprised me with yet another opportunity for sprucing up his curriculum vitae.  By the time he has to use one again, they will think that half his claims are really lies. Then they will just google him and find out that indeed, he is a creative, intelligent and all around interesting person.

Although I had never seen one, there are some Dos Equis beer commercials out there. (Links from You Tube are below.)  These commercials feature “the most interesting man in the world,” and are fairly funny, depending on your preferred type of humor.  Well, Dos Equis decided that it would be a nice marketing ploy to take applications for an assistant to the most interesting man in the world, and incorporate him/her in new commercials.  Cool, huh? They got about 10,000 (ten thousand.  TEN THOUSAND!) applicants, and Kyle made it to the top 25!!!   Yes, that is the top quarter of a percent of all those people.  To get to the top ten, the 25 had to submit a video.  Fastforward some time, and yay!  Kyle made the top ten.

This is where you come in. All you need to do, every day until Dec. 7, is get on the Dos Equis website, and vote for Kyle.  They only allow one vote a day, so just do it.  Please. I’m making it as easy as possible for you.  There’s a link to the right.  It will ask you for your birthday to enter, and then take you right to the finalist page.  Click on El Guepardo Loco, and then click on vote! Simple!

 

To the people in California:  Vote for Kyle!!!  He is now a resident of your lovely state, and a UC Berkeley grad.

To the people in Michigan:  Vote for Kyle!!!   Born and raised a Michigan man.

To my family, all ten million cousins especially:  Vote for Kyle!!!  I’m asking nicely!

To any SHS people:  Vote for Kyle!!!  Then when you see him in the commercials, you can say, “I know that guy!”

To every other lovely person:  Vote for Kyle!!!  You obviously took the time to read this, so why not spend a measly 30 seconds every day until Dec. 7th, and see the results of your hard work… on the television!  How cool would that be?

 

 

EXTRA LINKS…

Most interesting man commercial intro

Most interesting man on mixed nuts

Kyle’s Video Testimonial

 

Hopefully you have been sufficiently persuaded to participate in getting El Guepardo Loco a spot on the telly.  So what are you waiting for?  Clink on the link to the right already!

 

Thanks, and have a nice day!

coasters November 16, 2008

The fabric remnant baskets at Jo-Anne’s are super places to find fabric at a cheaper price, especially if you’d like to experiment with some different kinds.  Some of what I’ve found include: pleather, wool felt (kind of expensive to get at full price), and thin clear vinyl (great to turn your parking sticker into a transferable window cling.)

Around third grade, it was the thing to make friendship bracelets from embroidery floss. Do you remember doing anything else with the embroidery floss?  I don’t.  Recently, I wanted to use it to make a design on a pillow I made, which I did, and also to try it out on the pleather and make some simple coasters.

When I make more of these coasters, I will not be sewing the edges at all.  Hopefully I will have some pinking sheers by then, and they will just have zigzag edges.

all different!

with one of my mugs!

Earliest art memories started with dad… November 9, 2008

I remember sitting down with dad in the living room of the apartment on Bembridge. While sitting on the comfy maroon couch, he would take one of the blank pieces of paper and whatever drawing utensil I was using, and become very focused and say, “I am going to draw something, and then you guess what it is.” Like every drawing he did before, he’d slowly sketch out the profile of a person.  With a pointy, slightly upturned nose, you wouldn’t know if it was a girl or boy until he got to drawing the hair. Upon completion, he would smile and say, “Oh, see?  It’s finished,” and declare the sex of the drawing, like he had just delivered a baby.  I remember these drawing sessions vividly, and just last week these memories were revisited when I came home to one of these pictures.  Dad had been showing my little cousins how to draw, and in green marker was one of these profiles.  I think it really had been at least ten years since last seeing one of these, and it made me smile.  I wished I would have been there to see the whole event through different eyes - eyes of an outsider who experienced the same small effort to share such a small joy.

halloween ‘08 November 2, 2008

For the second year, I wore my homemade katamari costume. Yay!  You know what would be awesome?  If Halloween came twice a year, just so I could wear it again soon!  When I had to run over to Trader Joe’s, the guy at the register said that he had to resist the urge to hum the theme song! So then I did it for him.  =)

For those of you unfortunate people who have not had the opportunity to be aquainted (for hours and hours) with any of the katamari video games, check these out:

 

the official katamari site

wikipedia’s description of katamari

japanese katamari commercial

video game clip

 

 

 

The entire exterior of the costume is made of felt.  The body part is jumper style with velcro in the back and a long sleeve shirt underneath.  The head’s shape is kept as a cylinder with the help of two wire hangers, poster board, and poly-fil.

 

Just a few more picts, only people with costumes on!

 

                      

 

 

  

Until next time!

oops paint October 30, 2008

When I moved into my apartment, I was instantly bored with the dull beige paint that covered every single wall.  This color made my dining room feel especially empty, since there were just a table and four chairs in it. Not wanting to add useless things in the room just to make it more cozy, I decided to put all those hours of watching HGTV to good use, and paint it a darker, space shrinking color.  Luckily, I had been collecting various cans of “oops” paint. 

For those of you unfamiliar with this secret, you can go to any Home Depot or Lowes and look for their mistake paint section.  This is paint that people return for whatever reason, and ends up on the shelf at a much lower price.  The only thing is that the store usually adds a different color to it to prevent people from returning and rebuying it just to get the lower price.  But who really cares when you will just be painting a smaller space and will not need a second can?  Another tip:  Home Depot “oops” paint is cheaper than Lowes.  Believe me, I have gone to many.  A gallon at Home Depot costs about ten dollars.

So, back to the room…

Donna, my sister, had these yellow curtains that she used in her dorm room. The flowers on the curtains are what I used as inspiration.  After I painted the walls the purple and grey colors, I decided more needed to be done, since the room still looked empty and uninviting. So with just a one inch sponge brush, I strategically free-hand painted giant flowers on the walls.

The feeling that I had when I was doing this is almost inexplicable.  I felt as though I was in another place, overcome by a sense of freedom and joy.  It was almost like sledding down a hill for the first time in the winter and feeling the crisp cool air on your face, or sitting atop a hill looking down over a beautiful landscape of a quiet lake surrounded only by nature, far away from anyone.

 

Here are the rest of the pictures.  I still have to do some touching up with the purple.

 

 

 

 

 

Look for the next post which will probably be over the weekend, after I take some picts from halloween.  After the halloween costume pictures will most likely be my mini tree landscaping project if I get going on it.  (Hopefully I don’t kill the tree before then!)

1st blog (creative title, huh? lol!) October 27, 2008

There were three blog site candidates, and this one is the winner.  Thank you to all who voted so promptly!  I value your opinion (although I may not always follow your advice.)

I want to have a place to put down my ideas and to share them with you, my family and friends.  Because so many DIM (do it myself ^_^) thoughts run around in my head all the time, and I always lose the pieces of paper that I scribble them on, this will hopefully serve as a catch all for every crazy idea I have.  And yes, maybe one day I will have pictures of colorful cat scratching posts on here, Aimee. LOL!

I’m still learning how to use wordpress, so help me out if you are even slightly familiar with it.  There are a couple of glitches with the widgets, I believe, so we’ll see how it goes. 

Put me in your favorites and visit!  Comments are also always welcome!