LOTR love

It is no secret that I am a HUGE Lord of the Rings fan. I grew up reading the books and watching the cartoons so obviously when the full length movies came out my family and I died a little bit out of pure joy. (Why am I divulging all of my nerdy secrets, why?!) Lucky for me, here at work I have some fine fellow employees that too share this obsession (thank you Becca for geeking out with me). I would like to bring to your attention that, yes, the ring is wearing a track suit. Also note our pure joy at said ring kicking the bucket, as it were.

This year, just like last, did not disappoint.

(ugh, fine, maybe we made a video too. Don't judge.)

words to live by

yes, yes and yes!

(image found here)

if you build it, they will come

These are the kind of fantastic things I find when I come home from work.

in my little corner of the world

I tend to get crazy busy in my life, which is how I like it, until of course I start getting

the token eye twitch. It is at times like this I wish I had a big kitchen that I could

bang pots and pans around whilst I cook up a culinary fete that completely bakes, fries,

broils or steams out all the stress I am feeling.

Even better I would love to have a big bewindowed studio dedicated to cutting, pasting, painting and any and all forms of creative creation. Here I would slap on paint and with

each stroke turn what I feel into burnt umber, cadmium red, and ultramarine blue.

Here's to creative therapy, and here's to the hope that I will find my own little corner of

the world to do it in.

(top painting by Matt)

bloody jack

My mom and my brother have gardens. In these gardens grow plump delicious tomatoes and lucky me, I am often the recipient of these harvest rubies. With so many tomatoes at once we feared they would go bad before we could get to them all. In walks blender stage left. I am generally, and by generally I mean always, very averse to drinking my vegetables. Matt on the other hand, drinks it up.

Our take on fresh tomato bloody mary's? They pack a hefty tomato punch-more so than the canned alternatives-but when was more tomato a bad thing?

beating drums

After seeing these images I am on the hunt for a pair of suspenders to wear with an in your face feminine shirt. I love seeing juxtapositions in clothing like that. Speaking of juxtapositions-wouldn't it be nice to rock out on these drums in such a fancy room?

(images found via here and here)

stuff we did

For valentines day while Matt and I were still dating he gave me this book called "Grunt & Sparks". Incidentally these were nicknames we had given ourselves at the time, which we now realize do not conjure up the best of images-we really have no good explanation for them either. Silly us. Anyways he had water-colored notable or particularly fun events that had happened to us since we had been dating. Cute, right?

Well to make a cute thing even cuter he just finished this little video that again documents all of our dating memories. I love this little world he created and even more so I love that my character looks so good sporting an orange jumpsuit. Thanks Matt for thinking I could pull off that number.

haunting delights

It is no secret, Halloween sits pretty high on my totem pole of holidays-and with holidays, come holiday decorations. I remember one year my brother and I made legions of paper bats to transform our house into a cozy little bat cave. This year Matt and I opted out of the bat cave (a basement apartment is cavelike enough, thank you) and have been whipping up a few ghoulish delights of our own, starting with this "skeleton in the box".