MariaGrace : Dad and I are doing a crossword together. Aww... - 8d.19h.26m. ago
May 23, 2008 Grace’s Love List - 5/23
If you’ve ever wanted to learn the keyboard shortcuts to Photoshop and other Mac apps, visit Photojojo’s store and order yourself a keyboard shortcut skin. I’ve already ordered myself one for my MacBook Pro laptop and can’t wait to skin my keyboard with color.
Speaking of skins, a great site for them if you want to mod everything from your iPod to your laptop is Skinzini. I like skinning my gadgets to escape the monotony of metal and white and black.
Found this post on Abduzeedo - tons of free Photoshop brushes. I’ve been feeling a bit moddish lately and am enjoying the designs offered. These are must downloads. And you’re welcome.
Just as I enjoy the muffin hat on muffins, I enjoy the crusty edges of brownies. And if you’re a brownie-edge lover, too, then the Baker’s Edge Brownie Pan is for you. I know my favorite piece from this pan will be the very ends because then you’ll get crusty brownie on three sides. Score!
I love this bubble necklace from the MoMA Store. It’s beyond beautiful. I’m not usually big on necklaces, but when I see one I like, I know it’s one that speaks to me. And this one does.
Meet Amy. See the amazing wedding toast Amy’s family and friends made for her. She is a lucky girl, this Amy. And you can watch the video of this toast below.
A Girl Named Amy: A Wedding Toast
THE FUN STARTS TODAY
Because my summer has officially started. This weekend, Chicago. Next weekend, my birthday and a new blog design. Fun, fun, fun! Stay tuned!
I’m on my way to Chicago! To meet up with Joy! And do fun stuff! Whee!
Yeah, but not yet. I’m stuck in Oakland waiting for my flight. It’s been delayed two hours, which means I won’t be landing in Chicago until close to 3a.m. Poor Joy since she has to pick me up.
So while I’m waiting, I’ve connected myself to the interwebs and am now catching up on episodes of Top Chef: Chicago on You Tube. Is that legal? I don’t even know, but if someone puts it up, I will watch.
ART THERAPY
I need some. Like right now. I’ve been so busy at work that I haven’t had the time to just create random acts of art. Haven’t had the time to even blog. No excuses, I know, but there you have it. I expect I’ll be messing around in Joy’s stash so we’ll see what the weekend brings.
LABEL TULIP SHARES
Layouts! That I did as the guest designer this month for Label Tulip. I really love this club because the girls on the team are awesome. They love to scrapbook and they show it off well. Fantastic team, fantastic talent, fantastic product choice. And I’m honored to be with them this month.
“One Day at a Time”
“Daily Routine”
Personalized Gift Tags
THAT’S ALL FOR NOW
Until tomorrow and a new Love List. Same bat time. Same bat channel.
Yay! Just today I downloaded from iTunes the remaining album tracks to Jason Mraz’s new release “We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.” I had already purchased his last two EPs from this album and now own the deluxe collection. Since I pretty much want to marry this guy, I’ll assume that he wrote this album for me.
Color is my thing. I love lots and lots and lots of color. And I sincerely love Rhonna Farrer. And by extension, I seriously adore her new paper pack, “Spring Vibe.” I have a series of weddings/wedding showers/graduations/birthday parties/baby showers to attend this summer, and I’m planning on making gift tags using the designs from this collection. I’ll share once I get a stash done.
According to this Marital Rating Scale, I would fail as a wife. I would fail on a scale so embarrassing, I might as well not marry. According to this 1930’s marital scale, that is. Really? Who dresses for breakfast anymore? I eat breakfast in my pajammies until I’m forced out of them. That’s how I roll.
I’ve seen a lot of knitting sites sharing patterns and designs of knit caps of cute animals. And when I was browsing through shanalogic.com, I saw this knit cap of a cute frog. To me, this cutie looks a lot like Keroppi - my favorite Sanrio character. I must get this hat. It will add to my cuteness.
I hope cupcakes aren’t a fad yet. Cupcakes have been a popular design element in scrapbooking, from the releases I’ve seen from the past two CHA shows. So if you’re a fan of the look, visit the Tea & Cakes section of dotcomgiftshop.com. I have a friend who’ll I’ll be purchasing a gift for from this site because she’s such a cake-foodie.
Who saw the Today show this morning? Who saw my once-upon-a-time husband Joey Mc Intyre performing with the rest of NKOTB? Eeeee!! My 6th grade self is so happy that they’re getting back together. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to score tickets for their reunion concert, but I’m praying more than a few of my friends will get the hint that I want those tickets to be my birthday present.
NKTOB, baby!
Second, my database woes. I’ve been struggling with my database for this blog. It went caput on my last night and I struggled with it all night long. I was able to salvage everything, except the comments count. If you scroll through the previous posts (for the last 3 months, I think), it looks like I’ve lost all the comments you’ve left. They’re actually still there when you open up individual pages, but the count on the main page is gone. No worries. That’s not a deal breaker. I just love reading everyone’s comments, so I’m happy they’re still there.
But cross your fingers that this blog doesn’t pain me anymore. It’s a love-love relationship between us and I’ve got more design changes coming. Expect something new by the end of the month, a design more user-friendly, I hope.
Apologies for all Internet Explorer users. I think I’ve found the bug on my site and you should now be able to open up for more momentarybliss.com goodness.
(Trying for a nod to Scarface. Did I pull it off?)
Got my Copic markers late last week and I actually took a photo of them to share. Such perfect, pretty pens. Endless possibilities. They work beautifully with stamps and they blend seamlessly.
You know there’s something wrong with me when I go ga-ga for markers.
Without a doubt living green should be a way of life. Now that’s gotten easier to do with these glass “disposable” cups from Up To You, Toronto. I apparently have this thing for things that look like other things. And this faux-plastic will be added to my collection.
Have I missed the boat on these “Honesty Stamps” by Dan Wilcox? If you can find them, grab them because they’re hard to come by. They’re that cool.
Let me apologize right now for directing you to ManBabies.com - a blog showing photos of the heads of babies swapped with those of their fathers. Yeah, nothing much else to say but that.
I love sushi. I live by sushi. So I’m pretty sure that I’ll be giving this “First Book of Sushi” to some kid I know when they come of age to hold chopsticks. Miso in my sippy cup, tofu in my bowl. Crab and avocado fill my California roll. Cute.
I was scoping around the Museum of Modern Art online store and found this ridiculously simple and mobile blackboard. Loved the blackboard wall clock that I posted last week. Loving this blackboard on a hanger now. Perhaps I am reverting back to my childhood, and if so, then I’ll be the first to usher in Childhood 2.0.
Totally rad. Sic. Gnarly. Freakin’ sweet. I can’t be anymore eloquent when describing the Done Daily Design Workout website. It’s a daily dose of inspirational art. The site is very well designed and bursting with color. I love me some color. And I visit this site every single day.
That’s it from me! Big plans this weekend of cleaning, 1st birthday celebrating, face painting, and more cleaning. And since I seem to leave every Love List with a video, here’s what I’ve got this week:
Something’s oddly familiar about this..
Have a great weekend everyone! Be good. Be creative.
I got my Moleskine for The Sketchbook Project today. I have until August 1st to turn in my tricked out Moleskine so that it can be included in the gallery showing. It’s 64 pages of very intimidating, very naked pages. I don’t know if my creative mind is up to the challenge, but believe me I’m going to try.
Joy and I just finished our National Scrapbook Day chat over on 2ps. One of the games I’ve decided to host is a photo scavenger hunt, interpreting the following words in photo form:
sweet
scent
harsh
simple
constant
If you want to join in, post your photos to the Photography Gallery by 10pm Central time tonight!
Here are my photos for this challenge:
Sweet: My nephew. He’s not having it from me and you can see it on his face. So cute and sweet!
Scent: I love me some Vietnamese Pho.
Harsh: Love this shot taken from a low viewpoint. Gotta do more low-viewpoint photos.
Simple: Big blue sky + lonely windmill = simplicity
Constant: Sunset as seen out of my kitchen window.
Maps are a hot design trend right now; they’re a timeless look. I was glad to find this free vector download from MacDaddy Designs of a world map. I’m planning on making a mini-album of my travels and intend to print the design out on 5×7 cardstock to use as the pages for it.
What’s your favorite color? Right now mine is #FF496C. If you want to know what that color is, then check out this fun article from Colourlovers.com. And since I’m such a factoid-kind of person, I enjoyed the read a lot.
I love this blackboard wall clock from Eco-Artware. It’s such a simple and fun idea. I don’t know if I’ve told anyone, but I exist on Grace-time. For me, 1:15pm is actually “Take a Nap”-time and 7:42pm is “Take a Moment to Breathe”-time. This wall clock is just the thing to make Grace-time fun for everyone.
Recently, I went on a girl’s weekend scrapbook getaway trip with a few girlfriends. They scrapbooked. I printed photos. Lots and lots and lots of photos that had been sitting on my hard drive. And the printing was made possible by my beloved Epson Picturemate. This fabulous 4×6 printer is a wonder. The color print is brilliant and vibrant and I love being able to print out a photo whenever I want. If you’re looking to add to your scrapbooking/design stash, then consider this toy for your collection.
I’m a huge fan of Law & Order: SVU because one of my favorite actresses is Mariska Hargitay. And if you’ve never visited her personal site, then you’re missing out. Her website is filled with illustrations and watercolors and I love it all. It’s such a cool design; definitely one that has me going back to look again and again.
I couldn’t exist without Google Reader. I visit all my websites by subscribing to their feeds and viewing their pages through Google Reader. I love it because the reader is fast, iPhone-friendly, and integrates well with my own workflow. Viewing my favorite sites through a reader saves me a lot of time from clicking through my bookmarks list, and that’s a good thing.
When I was a college student, I lived through index cards. The system worked really well for me because I could just grab the cards of notes that I needed and go off and study. The drawings on the index cards on the Indexed blog reminds me of those days. But these cards are much cooler. And thought-provoking. And sometimes so on point it’s both scary and funny. Check the site out if you want wisdom on a 4×6.
My snack of choice are dried mangos. My family in the Philippines has owned mango plantations for generations, so you can say this choice of food runs in my blood. And my favorite brand of dried mangos is this one. I eat bags of these the way people eat Cheetos. I eat Cheetos, too, though. I’m not a hater.
What’s with my fascination for Wonder Woman? I mean, seriously, what’s up with that? Because now I have a need to get me these Wonder Woman undies from Webundies.com. Someone talk me out of it.
I have lots of software in my computer that I don’t use often enough and the reason for this is because I really don’t know how to use many of them. Genius, huh? So I’ve subscribed to Lynda.com because their online video tutorials are exactly what I need. I like the videos because they’re very comprehensive and I’m free to learn at my own pace. Yeah, I’m going to do some mock-ups, and then turn those into thumbnails, maybe do some splash frames? I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I’m excited.
I GOT IT! The book!Photographing Children Photo Workshop. I love photographing families and wanted to add this book to my collection to help me better connect with kids. I don’t have any kids of my own and I think I relate to kids well-enough, but I appreciate this book because it helps give me another approach to photographing children. And the biggest plus is that Lisa Russo - one of my most favorite people in the whole world - contributed photos and techniques to it. She’s awesome, her work is awesome, and I love having this in my collection.
Sincere apologies for missing last week’s Love List. Ugh. I’ve been so very busy at work -insane hours!- and simply didn’t have the time to create a post. So hopefully I’ve made up for my oversight with this week’s list. And here’s my gift to you, a video of kittens bobbing their head to music.
