There's a party in my tummy!

     (So yummy. So yummy.) Ok, if you didn't go youtube Yo Gabba Gabba like I told you to on Friday then that will have made no sense to you, but you're here, so things making no sense is probably nothing new to you. So the plan for the kids' birthday party cake got changed a bit along the way. Namely, the idea to do Brobee's whole body was scrapped when I realized I wouldn't be able to fit his arms and legs on the slab of cardboard I was using to transport the cake unless I seriously wonked up the proportions. Since I didn't want to do that, I decided to just do a headshot instead! Here's some pictures of how it turned out (if you're wondering why the pictures in this post look five hundred times better than normal, it's because my very talented friend Stephen took them -- that link goes to his photography site, in case you're interested -- and he's profesh as hell).

     As far as the smash cakes go...

     I'd say they were a pretty big hit with the kids. 

Friday Favorites: Five Senses Edition!

FAVORITE SIGHT: LOOKET THESE GREMLINS IN THE WAGON OF MY YOOOUTH

     This cracks me up, not least because of how it compares to this picture of me and Amanda when we were wee tykes. 

     Right? The mischievous goblin-face, it's apparently a family trait. 

FAVORITE SOUND: THE BOB'S BURGERS INTRO SONG

     Yep, that's a thing that's happening now. I remember when this show first aired I thought the ads for it looked incredibly stupid. But people kept telling me I would like it, so I did and here we are. I relate strongly to Louise, the somewhat psychotic youngest child, because of course I do. So yeah, it's kind of a cheat to slip in a favorite tv show under the heading of "sound," but I do walk around humming the theme song a lot, so it sort of counts. Just roll with it man, be cool for once!

FAVORITE SMELL: MIIIGHT HAVE TO BUY THIS PERFUME SOME DAY

     This was just one of the little stink-good pamphlets that falls out of every magazine on Earth, but for some reason I decided to smell it instead of chucking it immediately as per usual, and I'm really glad I did. It smells like a fancy grown-up lady with her shit together walking through a park in fall. Or something. I dunno, it's kind of cozy but also sweet? I just like it a lot. I'm thinking of getting the little rollerball size of it to wear in the cooler months.

FAVORITE FEEL: THE DRESS SO NICE I BOUGHT IT TWICE

     I liked this dress from Kohl's so much I bought it in black and white. Part of the reason for that is it's surprisingly soft and floaty. The other part is that it was on clearance for like NINE DOLLARS. That's ridiculous. I couldn't afford NOT to buy it in two colors. White for when I want to look like I'm going to a very casual hippie wedding, black for when I want to look like a sassy cool witch who's a big deal on Tumblr. 

FAVORITE TASTE: TRY NOT TO BE TOO SHOCKED BUT IMMA CHEAT AGAIN HERE AND PICK AN APP AS A TASTE

     Hear me out though. My favorite taste-related app is the Chipotle mobile ordering app. I downloaded it when it first became available for Android an absolute age ago, and it was so horrible and unusable that I ended up deleting it and just waiting in line for my burrito bowl like all the other plebes. But on a lark the other day I re-downloaded it and THANK GOD it is so much better now. It's much more streamlined and intuitive, so it's really easy to put in everyone's order, name them so you can save them for later, pay online, and just bust up in there half an hour later and skip the line to pick up your food like you're Oprah. Or Oprah's assistant, let's be honest. 

Bring me all the stuff and junk and doodads you can find.

     I made a thing this weekend! And by "I made," I mean "I had the idea and bought parts for, then asked my dad to help me with anything that could end in me drilling off part of my fingers." Technicality. Anyway! 

     So Ollie and Evie are at an age where they've gotten really into....everything. Ollie in particular is fascinated with doorknobs and drawer pulls, and Evie likes to just stare at various mechanisms with her hands up by her shoulders, twisting them around in circles in the air while she thinks about what to do next (I feel you, girl. Me too). So I figured one of these "busy board" type deals would probably be life-alteringly delightful for them. Or at least they'd enjoy smacking things around on it for a few minutes. Either way, worthwhile pursuit. 

     If you're not familiar with the concept, a busy board is basically just a hunk of wood that you slap a bunch of....things to mess with onto. I picked up two kinds of door locks, a drawer pull, a twisty ring drawer handle doojig (world's tiniest doorknocker?), and a bunch of large washers, then went rootin' around in the garage and came up with a hinge, two wooden handles, and that little...thingzer at the bottom right. Can you tell I'm basically useless in a hardware store unless I'm buying paint? I kick ass at picking out paint. Beyond that, I cannot help you. Once I had all that gathered together, it was basically a matter of sticking it onto something. My dad sanded a spare piece of wood down nice and smooth and took off the eye-poking threats at the corners, then helped me attach everything securely so there's no risk of any choking hazards coming loose. And here's where we ended up! 

     In case you're curious, here's a labeled guide so you can learn something today. 

     Just kidding, told you I was useless. 

Happy 4th of July!

     Here are some super cute, thematically dressed babies because yesterday and today are also Jen and Amanda's birthdays, so I've been busy.

Oops.

     For your consideration, a helpful visual of the approximate face I made when I realized it was 1:06 in the morning and I'd forgotten to put together a post for today. 

Friday Favorites: A random sample of things from various technologies!

AKA let's look at stuff from my phone and what I've been playing on my tablet lately! 

     I had to take a picture to document that this is a real show that was on, because it's basically the pinnacle of television as an art form. Everybody else can stop trying, it's all downhill from here. You can't top that. You just can't. 

     Ditto for this headline. I didn't even read the rest of the story because I didn't feel like I needed to and there's no way it could even be a real story. This has to be a story they generated by picking words out of a hat. Has to be. This cannot be real life. 

This is the game I've been into lately. It's exactly what is sounds like. You start out as a reef shark and eat everything you can to grow into bigger sharks, eventually getting to MEGALODON. I'm sure it's not the point of the game or anything, but there's barrels of toxic waste and explosive mines and a bunch of random human junk all around the ocean floor and it makes me kind of want to eat all the people floating in their donut rings just because hey, humanity, stop ruining all the nice things like oceans. Team sharks 4eva.

    On a related note, I'm also really into the OCEARCH app, where you can track sharks and see where they're hanging out and stuff. Like, check out Genie, a 14 ft. white shark hanging out off the coast of Virginia. 

     What, you thought I was going to do a Friday favorites and not include some specimen of stunning baby cuteness? Nah bro, that ain't me. Here's a clip of Evie trying to decide if she likes applesauce or not. Spoiler alert: she totally does. 

Curiouser and curiouser...

    So the theme for Evie's nursery is... Alice in Wonderland! Jen and Jason figured that she should get a similarly literary nursery to keep the bookish theme going from one nursery to the next, and Jen has always loved Alice in Wonderland, so it was a natural choice for them. But they wanted to keep it classic, not Disney, and ended up with a very classy, subtle take on what could be a crazy over-the-top theme. Let's peruse! 

     My mom made these curtains from scratch when shopping around didn't turn up any inspiring options. The Alice in Wonderland clock on the wall was ordered online, but it doesn't actually keep time, so I don't think I'd recommend wherever it was bought from even if I knew. 

     Jen's had this old chair since college, and the pillow is hand-made, again by my very talented mom, from a fabric panel and leftover scraps from the curtains. The baby blanket on the back of the chair was crocheted by Amanda, because GOD WHY IS EVERYONE I KNOW SO DAMN TALENTED, and the rug is from Target.

     More amazing custom things! My parents collaborated on this tea party chandelier. It was originally just your standard builder-installed light fixture, but my mom painted it green, added some crystal trip to the top, and hunted around various thrift stores for teacups and saucers, then my dad drilled holes in them so they could be attached to the lamp. 

     Are you getting tired of "oh, it's custom" yet? My dad made that picture frame after we saw one in a store that was similarly shaped but cost well over a hundred dollars. 

     I guess technically this isn't directly thematic, but it was cute and Jen liked it when she saw it at Hobby Lobby (can you tell we like to shop there for home stuff?), so once it was painted the room's main colors, up it went. 

     Finally, this cute little detail. This lightswitch cover is from Etsy, and it's just a tiny little thing that adds a ton of personality.

     I don't know the names of the paint colors in this room, but the walls are a creamy warm beige and the ceiling is a classic baby pink that reflects softly onto the walls in a really dreamy way! 

Harry Potter Nursery II: Now in 3D!

     Ok so it's not actually in 3D, I just like to make my post titles sound like summer blockbusters sometimes. But let's be honest, 3D blog posts would just give you a headache anyway. The reason this gets a sequel title is because Jen and Jason moved a few months ago, so the nursery situation underwent some shaking up. It's mostly the same elements, with a few new things thrown in for fun. The biggest difference is that this room is so. much. bigger. than the old one. Let's have a look around, shall we?

 

     Hello, friend! This is the same owl light and bird cage from the previous house. The cage is from Hobby Lobby, nobody remembers where the owl lamp is from because our heads are filled with air dead flies and bits of fluff (obscure Harry Potter reference: engage!). 

     The wall art is custom, made by my best friend Stephen because he's at that level of talented where you want to hate him for it but then you're like "ehhh, he's a good kid." 

     This is new! They're a bunch of Harry Potter character illustrations from Etsy, framed in deliberately mismatched frame styles to visually reference the paintings in the staircase at Hogwarts. 

     And over here is the old-timey style trunk, which is also from Hobby Lobby, and an ornately framed Ikea mirror. 

     The wall color in this room was color-matched to Benjamin Moore's Woodlawn Blue. In the old nursery they didn't want the walls to be too blue because it would look like a boy's room, but that's the other exciting thing about their new house: the twins each get their own nurseries now! I'll be showing you Evie's on Wednesday, and it went in an entirely different decor direction...

"So Jacki, how was your weekend?"

(Jen had a cookout. I played with babies. Lots and lots of babies.)

Wednesday...Unfavorites?

     Yeah, that doesn't exactly have the same ring to it, I know, but sometimes you just need to have a good complain. So! Before we get to Friday and back to being all positive and stuff, here's some of the things I have not been enjoying lately. (This post dedicated to Jen, who suggested this be the post for today, and who is also a cluster of stardust and rainbows and happiness wrapped in a human husk.)

THIS HURT SO FREAKING BAD

     That, my friends, lurking beneath the bandage I put on because I'm not actually gonna fill this blog with minor day-to-day gore, is a cardboard cut. Akin to the paper cut, except more horrifying and sucky. I was opening a package from Amazon and I screamed obscenities so loud that Amanda thought I'd cut my finger off with the boxcutter. Nope. CARDBOARD. Ugh. I don't even know how this is a thing that happens; it's like cutting yourself on a pile of cooked spaghetti. The whole function of a cardboard box is to provide a degree of protection from harm when shipping an object. If I mailed you an apple in a cardboard box, it would not arrive shredded to ribbons from that sharp, slicey cardboard (it would probably be a little past ripe though. Post is so slow these days. Unless I paid for premium shipping, I guess, which let's be real, I'm not gonna do. Can you even mail fruit? Is that allowed? As long as you're not shipping internationally I guess, since customs doesn't want anybody shipping fruit-borne insects and plagues and funguses on accident. What is this post even about? I forget). Oh yeah.

GOOGLE BETRAYED ME, WHICH ALSO HURT

Here is an unrelated picture of Evie being cute but disgruntled to get you settled in, because I'm about to rant for a WHILE. 

     Last week I woke up and checked my email as per usual, and discovered a lovely little present from Google saying my Adsense account (what puts the ads on the pages and gives me a couple cents when people click them) had been suspended for "invalid click activity." Usually what they mean by that is clicking your own ads, asking people to click them, that sort of thing. I hadn't done any of that. I had actually told everyone under this roof "don't click the ads on my blog, it'll be on the same IP address and Google will think it's me being tricksty." So I immediately sent off an appeal form and started panicking. Why my account? I hadn't done anything wrong, and it's not like I was raking in the big bucks and they didn't want to pay me or something. You don't actually get any money until you hit $100, and over the course of months and months and months, I'd gotten up to almost $80. I was really freaking excited about it. So I was pretty upset to think that not only would I lose any opportunity to ever make money from it again (once they kick you out, that's it. No new accounts, no trying again), but I'd never see my eighty dollars. I know to most people that's not even that much money, but I'm a freelance editor living at home. Eighty dollars is a fortune to me. That's like ten trips to Chipotle. Gone right out from under me. But they said they would look at my appeal and the additional information I'd given them, and I'd hear back in about a week. 

     The very next morning I got an email saying they looked at it and couldn't reinstate my account. Which basically means a real person didn't even look at my case, my stats, my blog, at all. Because if a real person had looked at it, surely they would have realized "Oh yeah, this is just some girl writing silly rants about mattress commercials and drawing pictures of anthropomorphized animals, she's probably not the mastermind of some grand scheme to con us out of like 14 cents a day." And I know they must have an insanely high volume of cases to get through, so if a real person was looking at them it would have taken a little longer to get to mine. So. That's that.

     I went through like, the honest-to-God stages of grief about it. I spent a lot longer in "Anger" than I think you're supposed to, but whatever. I dealt. It is what it is, and it ain't what it ain't. And all that anger led me to discovering a new favorite thing, which I'll tell you about on Friday (don't worry, it's just an app, it's not like "shooting birds out of trees with a bb gun" or anything disturbing).

THERE SHOULD PROBABLY BE A THIRD ITEM TO AT LEAST MAKE THIS A PROPER LIST BUT IT TURNS OUT BEING NEGATIVE DOESN'T REALLY COME NATURALLY TO ME

     Uh...yeah. I'll do better on the favorites list.

Friday Favorites: I stink so goooood Edition!

FAVORITE VIDEOGAME: LEGO THE HOBBIT!

     First, a confession: I haven't seen either of the Hobbit movies, and I never finished reading the book. I got about halfway through it and then lost interest because the writing style was...somehow not as magical and descriptive as I had expected it to be? I dunno. Also there's no girl characters, and I ain't about that life. But I do plan to see the movies someday, in the same way that I plan to have a cool little cottage in the woods where I can grow flowers and cooking herbs and let the local children think I'm a witch, by which I mean I have taken no action to make this plan a reality beyond thinking "yeah, someday." But whatever. You know I love me some Lego games. They're super therapeutic because they're not particularly challenging and you get to run around smashing stuff all willy-nilly and collecting shiny things, which is basically all I ask for in a pastime. 

FAVORITE CONSUMABLE: DISCOUNT EASTER CANDY!

     Having bulk quantities of candy around the house after any holiday whose traditions dictate the exchange of sweets is one of those little things that make me proud to be an American. Oh, what's that other countries, you think we're fat and stupid? Well this stupid fatty just got like ten pounds of Cadbury mini-eggs for a nickel, who's stupid now? 

FAVORITE ONLINE PURCHASE: I'M A SEA GODDESS, IT SAYS SO RIGHT HERE

     I ordered a set of five choose-your-own perfume samples from this Etsy shop called Alkemia last week. Most of them were a bit of a let-down for me, and I'm not sure if it's because I just have crap taste and picked samples of things that I don't actually like, or maybe I was smelling the carrier oils in the samples or WHAT, but 3 out of 5 of them had a note of...bathroominess? To them? I'm doing that upward inflection because I have zero confidence in my abilities to describe scents. I've gotten many a strange look when trying to explain to someone that I don't like a particular popular perfume because it smells "newsprint-y" to me, in a way that reminds me of my dad fanning me with a newspaper while I had a bloody nose in the lobby of the church we went to when I was a kid, and I'm allergic to newsprint, so the paper made me sneeze and it was a mess. So...bad vibes, is what I'm saying, I guess. What?

      Anyway, back to the good perfume. The one I did really like was called Sea Goddess. The website says it has a bunch of fancy things like "saline aquatics" and junk in it, but to me it just smells like a beachy floral, but not old-lady floral at all (not that that's bad, I have a hand lotion that smells like Social Security in a bottle and I don't even care, I put it on every night). It's not going to be my forever-and-ever signature scent or anything, but it was only twelve dollars and it's definitely going to be my "this summer" signature scent, so that's an accomplishment. And they sent two new samples with my order, one of which still had the icky smell I don't like, but the other was really interesting. It's called "Mist Becoming Rain," I believe, and I immediately gave it to my mom because it smells like her interests: fresh and outdoorsy, kind of like you just watered the garden where you grow your arugula (it has kind of a peppery smell, I didn't just pick arugula out of thin air).

SURPRISE FAVORITE: I WENT INTO A TRADER JOE'S AND DIDN'T RAGE-TWITCH AN EYEBALL OUT!

     It's not that I have anything against Trader Joe's as a corporation or anything, my prejudice is based entirely on the fact that their parking lot is like the nexus of all assholery. It is a spawn point of assholes. Every time you've ever been cut off in traffic or tailgated, it's someone on their way to or from a Trader Joe's. They are born in the Trader Joe's parking lot, they go out into the world to spread misery and strife, then they come back to Trader Joe's at the end of their long lives of hooliganery to die. This is known. The one near me is located in an itsy little shopping center next to Ulta, and every time I have ever had the misfortune of finding myself at Ulta on a weekend, the ENTIRE parking lot for the WHOLE shopping center is taken up by all of Trader Joe's rudest minions. I can tell that's where they're going because they'll take the front spot at Ulta, then get their reusable sustainably sourced shopping bags and their aluminum water bottles full of spring water charged with "healing positive ions" out of the trunks of their Prius's and start hiking across the lot. All this I could forgive. I understand sometimes a store ends up in a shopping center whose parking lot just can't keep up with demand. But they are the single rudest identifiable subset of drivers I have ever had the misfortune to observe. They steal spots from people, don't observe any sort of common courtesy at multi-way stops, don't yield to pedestrians, honk at me if I yield to a pedestrian in front of them because how DARE I put ten more seconds between them and artisan-shelled fair-trade pistachios! Basically they suck. 

     BUT. The other day I realized I was running out of jojoba oil, which I use as moisturizer because I have idiotically sensitive skin and if I put normal-person moisturizer on my face-suit I basically become Professor Quirrell, clutching at my burning face screaming "What is this magic?!?" I usually order it online but somehow I had approximately none left, and it takes a while to get here. So I googled, and Trader Joe's seemed to be the only place I could buy it that day. Thus I ventured in. 

     I did end up actually getting it, but the surprise favorites were the two other things I found once I had braved the dreaded parking lot (which is kind of a pun, because they did have a white guy with "dreads" working there). The coconut body butter I bought because it looked like it would smell delightful (I have great purchase-justifying skills), and because there was an old guy who picked up two tubs of it as I was perusing and I thought "hey, he doesn't look too dry and crackly, it must work!" (told you). Then I picked up the "espresso pillows" waiting in line, because the fact that they call them "espresso pillows" cracked me up with how high on the pretentious scale that hits. You couldn't just call them espresso bits, or pieces or something? There's not even anything particularly pillowy about them, they're crunchy for God's sake. I dunno man. It's a weird place. 

     POINT BEING (I'm so sorry I just wrote three paragraphs about Trader Joe's, I just have a lot of feelings. About everything, apparently), the espresso ~*~pillows~*~ are tasty and the body butter is straight-up delightful. That is all. 

BONUS FAVORITE: THIS PICTURE FROM MY PHONE WHICH SHALL SLAY THE MASSES WITH ITS ADORABLENESS

     I don't even have anything to say about this, I'll just leave it here without comment to counteract the Homeric Saga I wrote above. 

Happy Easter...Monday?

     AKA "Jacki spent Saturday working and Sunday driving and hanging out with family and playing with babies and eating delicious things and driving again and by the time she got home and sat down to write a post her brain had already pretty much checked out for the night and this was all that was left because it's weird in there and no one was around to stop her."

     I regret nothing. 

Friday Favorites: Viking Edition!

FAVORITE SHOW: VIKINGS

Plot summary, basically. 

     I started watching this History Channel show around Monday, I guess, and I'm really into it. It's about...you guessed it, vikings! The main guy kind of looks like Brad Pitt, if that's your thing, and his wife is a total badass, if that is your thing (badass female characters is so totally my thing. You ax that sumbitch in the head Legertha, you git im). It's also inspiring me do a lot of weird braid things in my hair, but that's kind of the norm for me anyway, so I guess it's a win-win. If you like Game of Thrones, you'll like this show. Like, I'm not gonna say it's exactly like it, I'll just say that I've been watching this show at night and waking up with the Game of Thrones theme song in my head. Draw your own conclusions. 

FAVORITE MATERIAL POSSESSION: THIS...THING?

     I'm not sure what to call this now that I've thought about it, because I know the trend is referred to as a kimono, but it's really not. A kimono is an actual super-detailed amazing specific cultural garment, so I feel weird using the term to refer to this that and the other. It's more of a...sheer...layering...thing...robe...sleeved shawl? I don't know. The point is I got it at Target a while back and now that the weather has become tolerable I've been wearing this thing non-stop. You wouldn't think it would be a basic, but in my weirdo wannabe Stevie Nicks wardrobe it acts like one. I really like it because since we're just emerging from winter I'm feeling a little...doughy, shall we say, and I'm not too keen to bust out my upper arms just yet, so this provides a little security blanket of sorts. 

FAVORITE PICTURES ON MY PHONE: OH MY GOD LOOK AT THESE FACES

     I actually have a ton of really cute flattering pictures of the twins when they're smiling and being photogenic, but my favorites are always the outtakes. 

     Hope you all enjoy your weekend! I'll be doing something silly that you'll be getting to laugh at me for on Monday. 

To the dump to the dump to the dump dump dump!

     I've been pretty busy this week, so I thought we'd just chill here and discuss some of the random pictures I dumped from my phone. I dunno if that sounds like a good time to anyone but me, but I for one love seeing what people keep pictures of on their phones. Tells you a lot about them as a person. Mine's all animals and babies that aren't even mine, which tells you I'm a loser nurturer. 

  
     I don't know why, but I thought it would be the funniest thing to put my hair on Bess's head, like she was wearing a tiny little curly wig. Sometimes I also think about things like giraffes sitting around a table having tea and laugh out loud at the thought though, so I might be kind of easily amused. Anyway, she didn't much care for the idea. 

     I was pulling flowers out of my glass head to put in my hair (as you do, you know) and when I came back to clean it up I realized I had accidentally made a pretentious freshman year art-school project in my floor. It symbolizes the leeching of humanity's link with nature by big corporations, man. It's totally meaningful. And I took it on my cell phone because it represents our dependence on technology and furthers the visual metaphor of detachment from naaaature! And if you don't get it it's probably just because you're not an artist so you don't understand pain and suffering and torment.

     This one's because I had to go to a work-type thing where I had to look grown-up and like I have my life together and my mom wasn't going to be home and wanted me to send her a picture so she could see if I pulled it off, so this is what I sent her to reassure her that I'm totally capable of being mature. #success

     This is one of the tin ceiling tiles that my dad is going to put up in the kitchen so it looks all fancy and historical and junk. Sitting on two bags of dog food because do I know how to compose a shot or what?

     Speaking of dogs, this one's not mine. He showed up at our house the other day and was just playing with our dogs like it ain't no thing, then when I came out to see what was going on he basically decided we were his family. He tried to follow us in through the garage, was chilling on our front porch for at least an hour, and wouldn't go home, even when I walked him a good ways down the street to see if he recognized the way home. He didn't have an address or phone number on his tags, so my dad called animal control. I took this picture while I was sitting with him on the front porch waiting to hear back from them. He was super content to snuggle right up in my lap and try to give me kisses. Fortunately the animal control people figured out where he lives via his rabies tag number, and it was just a ways down the road, so we took him home. Yay, happy endings!

     This Buzzfeed quiz told me I was Neville Longbottom and I was like "Whatever, I'm clearly going to MARRY Neville Longbottom, so how can I BE Neville Longbottom?" But the description is pretty much accurate, so there's that. I take it to mean we'd just be super compatible. 

      Here's a cute picture of Evie and Ollie wearing xbox headsets like little gamers. But my favorites are always the outtakes. 

     Like this one where they both look like little drunks, especially Ollie with the drool and the random sock he's clutching, like he passed out right in the middle of putting them on. 

     But this is the best one. Little drunkard Ollie dribbling on his chin in his half-sleep, and Evie looking downright MANIACAL. I laugh out loud every time I look at this one. She looks like she wants to eat the camera. I love it.