The perfect morning.

This is the perfect morning.  Breakfast tacos, topo chico and blogs.

If only I could start every day like this...

Last night Hannah needed something for a Halloween party, 

so she borrowed the infamous skunk costume.  She looked so cute!

She was trying to fit her purse under the costume so she could ride her bike.

I think she looks like a pregnant skunk.

Now all I have to do is find a party to go to.

I've had some killer ideas over the last month or so for Halloween costumes, but they've all been really complicated (and time intensive and potentially costly and seriously awesome!)

I just found a picture that will be awesome and funny and easy and original (well, except for people that have seen the picture on the website that I saw it on) and cheap and awesome and easy.

So, who is having a party on Monday for me to show off my genius?

(Pictures will be revealed Tuesday.  Lucky you.)

I will show you things I considered, but ultimately rejected.
(Just joking, I never considered them.  They are awesome, however.  By "awesome" I mean horrifying.)

Sexy Nemo?

Ghost?

Sexy Sponge Bob?

Sexy Big Bird?

 

Fraggle Rock! 

(At least it's not "sexy" Fraggle Rock...)

Of course, last Halloween was the beginning of it all...  If I dress up, I still have to continue the"being awesome for Halloween" trend I started.  I never dressed up for Halloween as a kid, and in college half-heartedly threw something together if I had a party to go to.  Last year, however, I decided I had to be a skunk.  I had seen someone the year before having a blast in a mascot-style skunk costume (the ever amazing and always gorgeous Lori - Child!  We have to start our cheap fashion blog!) and I really wanted to make my own.  (Of course, I couldn't rent or buy one, I had to make it.)  So, I took a black hoodie, made ears and white fur circle for the stomach and then made a giant tail.  The tail was my crowning glory (so to speak) and stayed up with little backpack-like straps I added on.  The worst part was, after sewing and working on this for forever, I got super sick with strep throat.  I almost didn't go out at all, but after lying in bed for a few hours, I realized that I had to show off my labors.  I went out for about 45 minutes, but it was worth it.  Hannah put in her dibs for wearing it next year about 5 seconds after I finished it, so it'll get another moment in the spotlight.

Told you it was awesome.

I was seriously proud of this thing, but it wasn't very funny or clever.  This year is gonna be awesome.  And hilarious!  And easy!  (Did I already say that part?)

I seriously miss downtown.

Dear god, I do not mean downtown as in Sixth-Street-party-time-so-many-crowds-and-drunkeness. I mean the city. I love my apartment in north Austin, and being able to hop on the highway to get to work is really convenient. That's all well and good, but there's something I miss about working and living in and near downtown.

The tall buildings, the people rushing to and fro, the little mom and pop pizza stands, the fancy bars and restaurants, the buses, the guys playing their guitars on the street corners, the museums, the Capitol, the everything! (Oh, and of course the people on every corner asking you to sign a petition or donate some money to get some bill passed/make sure some bill isn't passes/save the whales/kill all the whales/elect some dude/stop some dude from being elected/etc. Can't forget those guys.)







I love it.

I love that I go to my favorite little Italian place and they remember what I ordered for lunch practically every other day, even though I haven't been there for years. I love that the baristas at the hole in the wall coffee shop (that make the best Italian sodas ever!) are as excited about the beautifully designed new menu on the wall as I dorkily am. I love that the guy sitting on the shaded bench, dressed like he may be homeless, isn't sneaking a quick nap, but engrossed in a well-worn copy of The Plague by Camus. I love listening to the woman in a sharp business suit debate Ethiopian vs. Guatemalan coffee beans with a bra-less, long-skirted, hippiest of the hippie chicks.

I love it all.

And as I take my favorite route up Congress, north of the river to the Capitol, I watch who I walk by and wonder, "Am I part of what they love about this city too?"


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I love Josh Groban so much for this.

I think my sister sent me the best Kanye West tweet of all time...

While that's pretty awesome, I do love this one as well:

 

Even better than Kanye's ridiculous tweets about things that normal people never have to deal with/think about/put any energy into though, is this little gem of a video.

 

You're welcome.

Best bathroom graffitti of all time

My favorite place to be in Austin in the middle of the night (beside my comfy comfy bed) is at Epoch, a 24 hour coffee shop on North Loop.  I used to live practically across the street from it (and used to practically live there.)  While I don't frequent it as much as I used to, it's still my first choice for all-nighters.  It's got a great vibe, killer soy mexican chocolate mochas, and the best bathrooms ever.  One used to be heaven themed, but it got repainted, so now it's just starting its graffiti-ing.  It's walls are empty and bare compared to the other one, but it's got a few gems...

(I also enjoy whoever went over each of the pieces of graffiti and 

attributed them to Dan Akroyd.  I'll get a picture soon.)

The other one, though, still has the hell theme, and it's awesome.  There are some pretty funny things, like a reference to some board game I've never played, but have been assured I'd love.

 

And yes, before we go any further, I know it's weird to be taking pictures in a bathroom.  I'm also aware that it's a little gross.  It is funny, however, and funny will almost always trump gross for me.

So, this is my favorite graffiti in this entire bathroom.  For some reason, it strikes me as the funniest thing ever!  Every single time I'm in there, I have to read it, smile, and then ask myself why I think it's so funny.

Here's the general look of the bathroom: a mural background, with lots of quotes about hell done by the person who painted the mural and lots of other random lines of graffiti (some about hell and some about I-don't-know-what-the-hell-it's-about.)

So, whoever painted this mural put Jean-Paul Sartre's most famous quote on one of the walls.

"Hell is other people" -- Jean-Paul Sartre

Well, then a few other people got on it.  My favorite part is that it all seems like different handwriting, and I just love thinking about the inspiration (while, sitting on the toilet, obviously) of these three people coming up with these quotes.

"Jean-Paul Sartre is hell"  -- People Magazine

"People is a hell of a magazine" -- Jean-Paul Sartre

Brilliant.  (And weird.  I know, I know... Stick to design and lay off the bathroom photos.  But it's funny!)

I'm a really bad blogger. Sorry. (But I have pictures!)

So, I've been super busy with work and school and life and such, so I haven't posted in a while.  But!  Exciting things have been happening.  As soon as I get the photos off Hannah's camera, I'll show you the bookshelves I made.

(inspired by this photo)

 

(you've already seen this before)

It's very exciting to get all carpenter-y and such, but the best part is that I have a whole new area to play with!  I have so many little stuffs and art and pretty books (as well as plenty of normal, not-so-pretty books) and it's so fun to arrange them (and re-arrange and re-arrange and re-arrange, ad nauseum.)

I also threw a party in Dallas for a friend's 30th birthday this last weekend.  Loryn already put up a post with most of the pictures (but that doesn't mean I can't use the exact same ones.)  I have few of my own, but that's because I was busy decorating, cooking, lighting sparklers for birthday cakes, and being a generally awesome hostess... duh.  (The "duh" was for the general awesomeness part.)

I was in charge of the decorations for this shindig, and I tried to stay as DIY as possible.  I think I succeeded pretty well, because I ended making almost everything we used by hand.  I got a lot of inspiration from Oh Happy Day, because everything she creates makes me want to hop and plane and go to Paris and lock her up so I can just live her life for her.  (Dude, don't look at me that way.  I wouldn't actually do it.  And if I did, I would apologize to her very often.)  

The color scheme was white, metallics, and glitter.  (My floors will never be the same after all that glitter and my sister may never forgive me.)  My first thought was to do streamer upon streamer upon streamer of these from Oh Happy Day (of course) but I couldn't find the crepe paper sheets she uses.  I did find some crepe paper streamers (only in white though) but I ended up dousing them in spray glue on accident right before I left for Dallas, which kind of took them out of the equation.  

(I think I'm gonna save these for something where I need girly and frilly and make them in a million different shades of pink.  So pretty, huh?)

Loryn, I found your soulmate.

Haha.  But really, I think y'all might make it.

This photographer, Ursus Wehrli is writing a book called The Art of Cleaning Up and I am loving the pictures in it.

He takes everyday objects like this soup,

 

and OCD's them up like this.

 

Amazing, right?  I love this branch

stripped down to this.

I think I'd like the second one of these sunbathers

 blown up really largely on a wall in my house.

I'm loving, loving, loving this. I'm not super organzed, but I am pretty all or nothing.  So, the part of me that says, "If I'm gonna actually clean this up, it'd better be super organized!"

I found a few more on some blog.  It's perfect.

I'm feeling stressed out right now.

Not because I have a giant test in 6 hours and I've been up all night studying.  Not because I have more hours of lecture tapes I should be listening to than there are hours before the test.  Not because I'm a little hyped up on caffeine from soy mochas.

But because I brought the wrong notebook to do my work on.

I like legal pads by Knee Pad with 3 holes already in them and the rigid back.

 

This kind.

Not this kind.

No matter that I am currently writing on a table, so there isn't a need for the stiff back.  Nor does it matter that someone invented a 3-hole punch, so I don't even need to stress out how I'm gonna put these pieces of paper in my notebook.  I am still annoyed that I picked up the one crappy legal pad out of the huge stock I have of my favorite ones.

I do have a grapefruit Izze, however, so that helps calm some of my neuroses.

Dude. $5. Seriously.

Just thought I'd let you all know that Amazon is having a serious sale on magazines right now.  $5 for a whole bunch of them (good ones too!)  I just picked up Elle Decor and House Beautiful (for like, $.40 apiece.  For. Ty. Cents.)

Cray cray.  Gorgeous.  Cheap!  (the subscription, that is.  Everything in that magazine above is over a billion dollars.)

So, go to Amazon.  Get some gorgeous magazines in the mail every month.  Say, "Stephanie, this cost me forty cents.  I should get you a present to say thanks."

I accept flowers, original sonnets and motorcycles.

I'm so a Texas girl.

I saw this shirt on some t-shirt website.

Right?  Right?