Eh Gawd I Can't Stop

Goodbye sweet wedding dress.



Hubby and I planned our elopement in less than a week--very little time to hunt down a wedding dress. The one I fell in love with, conveniently happened to be a $16 summer dress from Forever 21. I wore it to the wedding, rolled in the grass afterwards for wedding pictures, threw a tank top on over it to our after-wedding-dinner, wore it to a cousins graduation, out grocery shopping, park walking... and today, I've chopped it in half. The top part of this darling dress always required a more-complicated-than-I'm-interested-in type of bra work. So, I've loped off the top bit and made a skirt.



It's reversible between wedding-dress-white and some pretty blue knit I had in my material box. Besides the wrinkles and the loose threads I still need to tighten up the waist band so the dress doesn't become an ankle bracelet and figure out how to make the double layers look more purposeful and less like a wayward slip is inching down. Though, trying to figure out how to make finished edges and a seamless waist band on a reversible skirt gave me an awful headache, so I'm not sure that I want to work on this any more.



I also made some pomegranate-purple shorts and tried my had at an aqua dress. The dress came out so meh, I'm not quite willing to photograph it yet. Hopefully I'll have this sewing bug out of my system soon. Since I don't have a dedicated sewing room, my sewing machine has taken over the dining room table and my cutting/measuring/re-cutting area has taken over half of the living room. Pretty soon we'll be engulfed in scraps and pins.

Who would have figured?

Other Like Hiro to Help Me Lose Weight


I mean really… who would have figured that I’m not alone in listening to Snow Crash while working up an aerobic sweat? It’s soothing and exhilarating and at the same time just makes me want to slam pavement.

The sorry part is I only have up to Chapter 5 in my beloved Sarahetc version.

1 Year Anniversary

Can you believe that these two hams have been married a year already???


Check out some anniversary roses:


And a little sympathy for the beaten car:


And now I'm off to get more repair estimates and maybe go sun myself. Adios dear world.

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.