What does it take to make Lauren blog?

How about getting in a car accident on your way to a date?

Last year, six days after our wedding day, our car was hit from behind and sandwiched between two cars. Ouch. This year, four days after our one year wedding anniversary, we were hit from behind, spun through traffic on our city’s major highway, to end in the fast lane pointed at on-coming traffic. To demonstrate, I have an illustration:

Keep your eye on the gold car. That’s us.

Idiots in front of us stopped because they were trying to figure out if they needed to get off at the exit or not. So they STOPPED.... COMPLETLY.

We move to the left to pass them.

Idiot girl doesn't realize we're all stopped and rams right into us at about 60 miles an hour.

Hubby and I are all in one piece. The damage to the car sure seems to be less than it was with the accident last year. It was nice to be hit from a little hybrid this time rather than a Ford F150. It was evil-y satisfying to see someone else’s car get more banged up than ours. It was nice to go out for dinner afterwards and laugh and smile about how happy we ware to be alive. It was not nice standing in the rain, though. Or screaming while spinning past cars. Or sitting in the fast lane looking at on-coming traffic. Or calling insurance companies. Ew.

All the plant lights, none of the pot.

How totally sweet are my new plant lights? I shall now have the freedom to have an indoor garden without it being in a constant state of death!






I love it. I love it. I love it. I don't care that it makes my whole apartment purple.

P.s. check out the spindley looking one held up with the Max & Ermas cup. Isn't that fashionable? I dare you to try to work that into your decor.


Also-- orchid. Not sure how I feel about this one yet.



It was left at the hotel by a guest and after a few days being indoors and bumped and shuffled it needed some love. I took it home and did my research and it seems to be doing fine so far. It's just a bit too high maintenance for my life. If I'm struggling with the hardy desert plants that are supposed to survive the black thumbed people and I just killed my last betta fish, you know, the kind they give to kids because they're supposedly impossible to kill... I don't hold out a lot of hope for this guy.

The world sure looks warm through my sunglasses

The other day Geoff and I drove to a park in Mansfield to see the newly blooming flowers. We're such park-rats. We go to a different park almost every weekend.





The other day was gorgeous but cold! We both had sweaters on but were shivering the whole time. We did manage a five minute power walk to the greenhouse, though. Their succulent room is AMAZING.




I just wandered around taking pictures of plants that are similar to the ones I own, except of course, theirs are in much better health. It's almost like what my garden would look like on steroids.





While we at the greenhouse Geoff bought me a new echeveria. It's spectacular! Three big leafy heads and one long winding stalk with beautiful yellow flowers all over.





And as a welcome home to my new addition, I've installed 2 fluorescent plant lights as per the advice of the internet. Please, everyone lift your glasses with well wishes that my plants start to live again. (See the scraggly one in the back held up with the Max & Erma's cup? It's like a zombie plant, it just keeps coming back from the dead).




And lastly, because it was just too weird not to share, check out the crazy storm clouds we had last night.

We're making the move!

With a little bit of Google research and some time I think I'll have all of LJ's Functional with Flare moved over to blogger. I know I'm going to miss all the different types of templates LJ offered but all in all it will be a good move.

Today is the first day of warm rain. Not a warm morning that turned cold and rainy, but a hot sunny afternoon that started drizzling fat raindrops on steamy asphalt. It's a beautiful, light, summer rain. Currently the view from our apartment only highlights the dumpster and the landscapers pile of dirt, but you get the idea.


It's a perfect day for some homemade Tex-mex. I don't really like Mexican food but I've got a little Texan Padre in my blood and a random urge for tortilla soup, so I'm gonna give it a go.

And for a spot of sad news-- yesterday was Hiro's last day. My sweet, pent up, hyper, aggressive fish died. Due to a bout of overeating, he had been suffering from a broken swim bladder for the past 6 months or so. Without his swim bladder he couldn't float and sadly became a bottom dweller. The fish doc's said he was okay, but as much as Hiro liked to dart back and forth (unlike his Uncle Toshi) I knew he was down. It sucked to have Geoff flush him away, but I'm glad he's not just hanging out and waiting to die anymore. He was two years and one week old.

Goodbye little blue-- you will be missed.

Flipping stamps

I've been crazy lately with switching back and forth between crafts. I can't seem to start one thing and keep with it. Last night, one little click lead to another and I found myself looking up artists on etsy who are making custom rubber stamps. The first thing that always pops in my head whenever I see something I like-- "Oh, I can make that". So, off I run to the store to gather supplies, run home, pop in some Home Movies, and get to work. It only took about 15 minutes before all I could chant in my head was, "Oh, I. can't. make. ANYTHING".
It's much harder than I remember it was in high school (I realize now it was because we only made one stamp and we had about two weeks to work on it and it was huge and devoid of detail). I made a few different little stamps but didn't realize until I was through about three stamps that lettering would need to be in reverse to show up properly. Duh. Re-do.







I'm having tons of fun with it, but they are all pretty sloppy and detail is hard. To practice, I'm going to continue making millions of little "throw your own head" logo's. I'd love to have a cute one for the etsy shop.

Our newest addition

The weather had us fooled a few days ago and I could have sworn it was Spring. The sun was out, the weather was warm-- it was just glorious-- except nothing has really bloomed around here yet. Today Ohio has backtracked a bit and it's turned cold and windy. I'm thinking our picnic plans for tomorrow will need to be changed to a few rounds of competitive darts or ping pong.





A beautiful byproduct of this coming of Spring is that it has been fueling my creative side recently. I haven't been able to stop making things. Below is our newest addition-- a tail-less hippo. He's super squishy and without a tail his backside is very smooth and huggable. We've decided to keep him. He will have his own little spot on the couch and will join us during scary movies.

I am a felter!

So it's official-- I love felting. It's in both ways harder and easier than I thought it would be. It's harder to make things look the way I want and to blend colors, but it's much easier to just get started and get the wool to felt into something solid. The first thing I made was a little green and orange pin that I have up in TYOH.



The second thing is below:



It's a skinny pink hippo. Or a dog or a cow. It kinda looks like all three. It's pretty sad so far. I'm going to keep working at it, though. I have high hopes of making something like violetpi's super cute tiny mice and bears.