crafternoon.

Necessity is the mother of invention. And being broke is the mother of necessity. 

I had to come up with a housewarming gift for Faber and Josh last month, and being recently graduated and unemployed, I decided to paint their names on these mustachioed mugs I found at Urban Outfitters. Thankfully Dave still had all his brushes and acrylics from when he used to paint and couldn't care less about them now, so all I had to buy was sea foam green paint... Obvious choice. Dave, for some reason, did not already have this color in his possession.

So here we go. How to paint ceramic mugs.

Materials: 

• Q-tips
• rubbing alcohol
• masking tape
• ceramic acrylic paint
• plastic cup/paper plate
• thin-tipped, stiff paintbrush
• ceramic mug
• oven

Procedure:

1. Clean the area that's to be painted with a Q-tip soaked in hydrogen peroxide.
2. Stick masking tape onto the mug to act as a guide to write centered and in a straight line.
3. Squirt an iPhone home button sized drop of paint onto a plastic bath cup or paper plate, and dip the tip of the paintbrush in the paint.
4. Write/Draw/Design. If you mess up, dip a Q-tip in hydrogen peroxide (but make sure it's not dripping) and rub off stray marks. Blow dry (with your mouth, not a hair dryer). Start over. I did this about 25 times for these two cups....

but it was worth it.

       5.  Place mugs in a cool oven to prevent cracking or shattering                from drastic temperature changes.
       6.  Set the oven to 350 degrees F and bake for 35-40                                    minutes.
       7.  Turn off the oven and allow the mugs to cool in the oven,                    again to prevent cracking.    
       8.  Once completely cool, remove the mugs from the oven.                      Hand wash with mild soap to preserve decoration.

Then you're ready to wrap them. I used a shoe box and wrapped it by unraveling the brown roll that holds the wrapping paper, making sure to wrap the box and lid separately. Line with tissue paper. Fill with joy, or in my case, I used squiggly lunch bag confetti. Pretty much the same thing. Nestle the mugs in the box like you would a baby in a cradle.

Put the lid on. For even more cost-effective cuteness, use the box to double as your housewarming card. Dress it up with some ribbons and bows.

And now time to party. Happy loft warming, Daniel and Josh! 

schedule.

I failed at writing in my blog the number of times per month I meant to during January, that high number being two. So to remedy my deep neglect of blogging I have set forth a schedule.

Soiree Sundays
Music Mondays
Craft Tuesdays
Work Wednesdays
Thrifty Thursdays
Food Fridays
Service Saturdays

These are tentative because A) I would have nothing to write about on Wednesdays, B) I still need to assess the necessity of alliteration, and C) I don't actually plan to write in my blog every day. But hopefully this will be a start.

i hate reading...(?)

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."
— The History Boys


I've never seen this movie. Also I found out it's rated R, so I guess I never will. I always say I hate reading, but I'm determined to read all the books I bought and never read for school, or otherwise sell them. But last semester I read On The Road for pleasure in the midst of going to school, working, and pioneering, and since graduating I've finished two more books, so I'm beginning to question the veracity of my own insistent claims. I guess this quote from The History Boys pretty much sums up why I sometimes like reading. My most recent read was Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty. I bought it for an American Lit class on ekphrasis. Obviously I never read it when I was in the class, but I remember liking the prose and the cover art and besides that, it was short. 

This isn't really a book that has anything to be given away. It's more or less an exploratory essay in 70 pages about the relation of still life paintings to objects in real life to which we latch on and assign memory and delegate meaning. The still life's "lesson, ... is to remind us of the strangeness and singularity of things, and therefore of ourselves. Singularity, they wish us to know, resides in the physical, the particular, the seen; this knowledge can be looked at, can be held" (55). The objects in still life paintings inspire inward reflection, which seemed so counterintuitive to me before reading this because I had a strong prejudice against still life paintings as being the most boring of all painting genres. 

Doty's highly elegiac prose changed my mind though. Still lifes are tangible representations of memory infused by death. "Not that grief vanishes -- far from it -- but that it begins in time to coexist with pleasure; sorrow sits right beside the rediscovery of what is to be cherished in experience. Just when you think you're done" (47). Just when you think you have no willpower to go on, you go on, because life goes on. 


It's not enough just to live your life, though. Meanwhile you have to "Say what you see and you experience yourself through your style of seeing and saying" (67). I keep recognizing now the importance of the English major -- the importance of harnessing the talent of description and expression as a reflexive exercise. Experiencing yourself. Leaning that much closer toward understanding who you are by your reactions to environmental and emotional stimuli. Because there are so many times when you don't realize what you think or how you feel until it's been verbalized. If only prospective employers could see this importance..


I feel like I'm doing homework, except it's self-imposed..You can take the girl out of school, but you can't take the school out of the girl...? Where's Eugene to misapply idioms and scriptures when you need him. Maybe I really am starting to like reading. Good thing Colin just added me to their book club...since I haven't been in various makeshift book clubs for the past three years and never read the books..also known simply as "English classes." I'm getting lost in my own sarcasm.


In any case, I wish I still lived a train ride away from the Met so that I could see this painting. I need to test out this new way of looking at still lifes to make sure my prejudice is gone. In the meantime, I'd really like some actual oysters and lemon. I think Roux on Canton is still on scoutmob. Only problem is the 50% that I still have to pay for...

road trip, redefined.

It appears the side effects of reading On The Road are lasting longer than expected. I worry for when the movie releases... I realize that most car rides under a three hour duration are not technically called road trips, but for my purposes I am going to go ahead and designate any trip to explore anywhere new as a road trip, mini though it may be.

Jenn and I have been feeling guilt-ridden for always conducting our Bible studies and then running off and never taking our students out or spending time with them. Now that I finally have time, I wanted to do all the things on my list of Things I Want to Do More of Once I Graduate. Among them was spending more time with Grace. 

So we took her on a mini road trip to Athens:

bast frands!

And then on a mini-er road trip to downtown Roswell on a Bible study double date with Jenn and Miranda:

i love this girl.

our budding Bible scholars.

And what better way to teach them about the Bible than to eat raw oysters. Because they're from the ocean. Where there's fish. And we are fishers of men...

clockwise from top left: shrimp and grits w bacon,
cajun chicken bacon wrap,seafood pasta,
& crab cake sandwich

Next up: downtown Dahlonega.

dating ice skating.

This is an ego boosting post for Karen. Because she has such remarkably low self-esteem as it is.

Today was basically a daylong date with Karen. We had all three meals together. I brought her yogurt and granola for breakfast. She bought me a cappuccino. We talked to a police officer who thought all Jehovah's Witnesses were black. I had a conversation with a Mexican man in my broken Spanish about the preaching work. We went to Virginia Highlands and looked at houses we want to live in. I dropped Karen off at a Starbucks while I went in for an interview for a part-time job. Meanwhile, she secretly bought me this cup I've been wanting for a long, long time:

I didn't know you got me the big cup! :D What a sweetie.

I got the job. We went to our original date spot in Decatur and had Farm Burger for lunch. We went to the Urban Outfitters on Ponce, which was a pretty sizable loophole to the usual after Christmas crowd. Karen doubled up on sweater purchases while I wasn't looking. So sneaky. I went to my RV. Karen went to hers, aka Jenn Wang who is the best. The three of us made plans to go shopping for our imaginary apartment. Karen even left Jenn a cliffhanger question to answer on her next visit like the best pioneer.

We drove back to my house for dinner and ate leftovers from last night's party. We had double fudge brownie ice cream for dessert, compliments of Mike Lim. Then Karen did the dishes like a good housewife and may have demanded documentation of it, which is so unlike her.

Then Karen left my house and sent a goodbye text from her car while she was still out front to tell me what a great time she had today.

Great friends are such precious gifts from Jehovah.

athens bucket list.

football game.
service in athens.
mama's boy.
the royal peasant.
five star day.
georgia theatre show.

georgia theatre rooftop bar.
clocked.
schoolkids records.
wuxtry.
walker's.
open mic night.
pauley's.

40 watt show.
five & ten.
last resort.
trappeze.
cine.
the national.
farm 255.
farm cart.

heirloom cafe.
the grit.
white tiger.
ohh, boy!
agora.
minx.
boutique shopping.
silver lining cupcake co.

ike & jane.
big city bread.
little kings shuffle club farmer's market.
bishop park athens farmer's market.
park hall rooftop.
hotel indigo.

last year's pup strut.

It's getting close to the home stretch. It's a little upsetting that there are a few things on this list that will never happen. Not until at least next year, if at all, and not while I'm still a student here. And there are other things that will never happen again because they've gone out of business. What's the English word for 아쉬워? I thought it was somewhere in the neighborhood of bittersweet, but Google Translate tells me it's 'disappointed.' Not quite what I was going for. Maybe I just never understood the proper connotation of the word. In any case, it's been a good enough 2 1/2 years. Time to make these last 2 1/2 weeks count. And figure out how to get rooftop access to Park Hall.

hide & boutique.

It's been my mission to explore every clothing boutique and thrift store in downtown Athens for some time now. The past three years to be close to exact. My tendency to procrastinate - what I prefer to call working well under pressure - led me to hit up all of them in one day, a meager month before graduation. I went in search of a dress. Here's what I found:

Community.

An unassuming door, a winding flight of stairs, and another door later, a secondhand women's clothing and accessories boutique appears, promoting local and sustainable fashion with reworked pieces and vintage originals located in a sweet loft above Jittery Joe's overlooking North Campus and Historic Downtown Athens. In short, I wish I lived here:

community.

Or instead of my giant run-on description, this tag neatly summarizes what this boutique is all about:

The owner is a tall hot blonde German woman. No boutique snobbery, just friendly and genuinely welcoming, which never goes out of style. I saw this lovely number in the revamped section and tried it on even though it was a size 4, but even vintage has its limits I guess. I had to hold my breath to fill out the dress with my expanded diaphragm, but I quit the swim team after a week back in 7th grade and never smoked anything in my life, so my lungs never got the training necessary to hold up this gorgeous dress:

goodbye, beautiful :(

Dynamite

Next door neighbors with Community, give or take a floor, this thrift store featuring new, used, and local goods was way bigger than I expected from the tiny door that leads into it. I think I spent the most time in here, but it seems this is all I have to show for it:

these reminded me of sarah.

Highlights from other boutiques:

you can't really tell here, but this dress @flirt was an impressive shade of evergreen.

beading on a potential grad party dress @flirt.

i want this dress from pitaya for my actual grad ceremony.
with my red patent leather stiletto pumps.

or these round toe pumps, also @pitaya.
i'm obsessed with velvet lately.

And to round things out, I went to a coworker's CD release show at the Caledonia after my meeting:

tumbleweed stampede @the caledonia

And played a trombone for the first time! Thanks to the trombone player at the far right who gave me a crash course after the show. Really amiable group of guys. Fun show. Fun day. Super tiring. I was once again reminded that I hate shopping and I love Athens.