Things that go bump in the night..

For as long as I can remember I have loved all things scary. Well, scary movies or books. I wouldn't love being mugged or trapped somewhere. Geez, how awful. I have fond memories of watching the Friday the 13th movies with my best friend, Shawnna, when she would stay the night. Back then we actually had to have my mom drive us to the video store so we could rent those wonderful bloody slasher flicks. There was no Netflix or internet so we could pirate what movie we wanted to watch.  Certainly if my mom knew what our young impressionable minds were seeing in these movies we would have been watching The Sound of Music instead. Back then movies were far more scary than they are now. As kids we were terrified from the very first scene. Watching these films in complete darkness was a stupid idea. We would find ourselves looking at all the dark corners of the room and out into the even darker hallway, waiting for Jason and his butcher knife to casually walk out of the shadows and chase us off, probably to steal our air popped popcorn. Going to bed was even scarier. We would sleep in the middle of my grandmothers queen bed, as close to each other as possible. We were smart, nothing could get us if we were in the middle of the bed no matter how big their butcher knife was. The monsters would have to just lay there under the bed or in the closet, frustrated with how clever we were to have the insight that we were safe if we stayed in the center of the bed. Obviously these wretched creatures fell asleep when we did because they never did come out of hiding while we were asleep and naturally drifting away from the middle into more comfortable positions. Maybe they just got bored and went next door to try and eat the neighbors.

These days those movies that caused so many sleepless nights for us are rather cheesy. I find myself laughing at Jason or Freddy now instead of fearing I would be the next victim. I was blaming this on age, I'm not 10 years old anymore. I am a rational adult. We adults know better. Yesterday proved that theory false. I went to the $2.50 movie theater, formally the dollar theater.  I saw The Woman in Black. Great movie. None of those awful special effects that usually look so fake it ends up ruining the movie. These scares were subtle. I did have a hard time believing Daniel Radcliffe was old enough in the movie to have a wife, and also to have had sex with said wife since he has a child in the movie. In reality he is 22 years old, but I still think of him as a teenage wizard. Being it was the middle of a Wednesday afternoon there was only one more person in the theater with me. I ran into her in the bathroom after and would guess she was quickly heading towards 80 years old. She laughed and said that she knows she will be sleeping with the lights on that night. I wonder if she knows  about the sleeping in the middle of the bed trick.  I did like the movie, but still didn't have that wonderfully terrified feeling like I did when I was a kid watching Jason hack his way through all those hormone raging teenagers partying at his lake. I'm hoping the older I get the scarier movies will seem again. Hopefully I will be peeing in my pants from fear and not incontinence.

Hair today...

I feel the need to blog about my hair. First of all my hair is amazing. No, it's not Jennifer Aniston hair amazing, no one will cry "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!" and it will never cover my naked body while I ride my horse through the city like Lady Godiva. It's amazing because of the abuse it takes from me and never tries to leave home or just lie down and die altogether.

 My hair abuse mostly comes from coloring. I can't stop. I have a serious problem when it comes to coloring my hair. Is there a 12 step program for hair coloring? I'm not sure there is a color left that I have not had it. It's been all your natural shades from blonde to black and all of the not natural shades, pink, purple, blue, green and my favorite, fire engine red. I love my red. 'Hi, my name is Teri and I can't stop coloring my hair'. "Hi, Teri!".

Oh yeah, it was PINK. 

I think somewhere in my family someone must have been a ginger. My own natural hair color is a very dark brown. No matter what I color it red tones always come through. I really love dark red hair, not the faded almost orange red hair, but a true rich red color. Unfortunately when I dye my hair any lighter than natural color it fades into that light orange mess.

One of my better self dye jobs. 

Feria has been my favorite dye in a box brand for years now. I love their colors and how soft their uber after dye conditioner makes my hair. If you are dying your hair all one color I don't think home box dye is all that bad. Highlights however are one thing best left to the professionals. I try sometimes, and sometimes succeed, but it's never as good and someone who knows what they are doing.

That blue was so pretty! 

A few weeks ago I found a deal on Living Social for a cut, color, highlights and a deep conditioning hair masque from Fringes Salon and Spa here in Knoxvegas. It was a deal I couldn't pass up so I went to have my self hair coloring disaster fixed and a much needed cut. I had it dyed to a more natural color with some caramel highlights and my beloved red. I usually think I do pretty good with my dye jobs, that is until I have it done by someone who knows what they are doing. Kaydee at Fringes ROCKS! I love it and might even stick to the pro's for all my hair coloring needs. I will still be in that 12 step program though.

Hair before. The ends are looking pretty bad here because I had to wait awhile to get it cut because they were so busy. I'm not sure how I can see with those bangs, and probably shouldn't be driving. The color here isn't that bad, but my roots were really showing.

Hair after. Smoother and sleeker looking with the dead ends chopped off. Eyes now visible. My nose looks like a ski slope from this angle. Ugh. 

In all, I love my awesome hair. I love that it doesn't fall out and that it provides me with endless opportunity to change the cut, color and length. I know a lot of people who are afraid to do anything to their hair. Even if it means they have had the same style since high school. You know who you are and I urge you to go get it cut and colored! Let them do what they want. (I do recommend a good salon, no super cuts for this!). It's only hair, it will grow out again.. 

Cherry Blossoms

Ahhh Spring. That wonderful time of year when the winter blahs turn into spring allergies. Everyone opens their blinds and windows and comes out of hiding with tissues and eye drops in hand. Everything comes out of hibernation with a wash of color. This year I was in the Caribbean when the magic of Spring came alive. I know, the Caribbean! It was rough, but I somehow made it through 14 nights of island sun and turquoise waters.  I missed the blooming Dogwoods and Flowering Pear trees, although I did get a brief glimpse of some Eastern Redbud trees while driving home through the Smoky Mountains. Gone were the Tulips and Daffodils. So I decided I needed to bring some of what I missed into my home, something that would last more than two short weeks. At least until the layer of dust is so thick I can no longer tell what color it's suppose to be. I made this pretty and easy (pretty easy!) cherry blossom centerpiece. I'm going to put this in the middle of my dinning table, which just happens to have a cherry blossom table runner on it. Well, I will once I take the Easter decorations off it and put them away. It might be awhile.

Start off with some tissue paper. I used a two different shades of pink. Of course you can use any colors for this, it doesn't have to be pink. Any colors would look great, except maybe brown. Usually brown flowers are not a good thing.  You're going to cut out the petals. I suggest folding the tissue paper to be able to cut more than one petal out at a time. Don't worry if the don't look perfect, it's not going to matter. Mine were around 2 1/2 inches across.

Happy little petals. 

Next you want to put two sheets together to make your blossom. I used the darker pink for the outside and lighter on the inside. Lay them so they don't line up with each other. 

                        Now you are going to grab the center part and twist the two pieces together. 

I made some with both colors and a few single colored ones for a little variation. 

Next you need some sticks. If you can find a dead tree or one that has not bloomed yet grab some off of it. It's a pain to try and remove all the leaves. I wanted this to look as natural as possible so I didn't look for perfectly straight sticks or all the same length. Besides, I don't have the patience to search for sticks like that. 

To attach the tissue buds I used a hot glue gun. I'm not a fan of hot glue guns because they are messy and I hate that glue string that always ends up all over your masterpiece. In this case I figured it would look natural, like a left over spider web in the trees. I glued my flowers on to the sticks where the leaves would have been budding from if I hadn't killed these branches by ripping them off the tree. I didn't glue them to every single bud point because I didn't want an overflow of flowers, just enough to look like they were just beginning to bloom. I also used a lot of the single light pink pieces of paper along with the pieces with both colors together. 

Finally I picked most of the glue webs off, peeled the glue off my fingernails and placed all my finished branches in a vase. I stuffed paper around the branches in the vase to keep them in the center and placed my unused tissue flowers on top. 

Even though these are not real allergy inducing flowers my right eye is still itching. Eye drops here I come. 

Happy Easter!

Sometimes I like to be crafty. As in arts and crafts, not "Hide your gold, the girl is crafty like ice is cold". What I really like to do is make things and give them as gifts. I like to make things for a specific person in mind and I really do put my heart into my work, despite the fact the things I make really turn out looking like a grade school art project.

This is what I decided to make my husband for Easter. I'm not sure I've ever really made him anything before, at least not for a gift. I really love this and so I thought I would share with the maybe 2 people that might be reading this. Although now that Easter is almost over you  have to wait a whole year to try this yourself. I can't think of any other egg appropriate holiday's. 

First you need to "blow out" an egg. I have no  idea how you are suppose to do this, but I took a nail and make a small hole in the bottom and an even smaller hole in the top. I then literally blew into the top hole which pushed all the insidey parts out. 

Next I painted the egg with acrylic paint. 

After the paint dried I added some pearl button stickers to it. You can decorate it anyway you like or just leave it a solid color. I just had these laying around already. 

Next you are going to write or print out a message to your victim..errr, gift recipient. Try to limit your message because you are going to roll up the piece of paper and shove it up that eggs.. I mean, gently push it into the larger hole you made to clean out the egg. I suggest letting the egg sit over night to dry up anything left on the inside. 

                                                   Still with me? We are almost done. 

I boxed my egg to keep it from accidentally breaking before Jonathan had a chance to see it. Of course you can put it in anything you want. I got a plain brown box from the craft store for less than a dollar. I added some scrap booking stickers I already had. I love cherry blossoms and thought it looked more Spring like. 

I added a little of that weird Easter basket plastic grass to the box since the egg looked lost in it and added a n instruction label to the inside of the lid. 

I put the complete package in Jonathan's Easter basket. I'm sure the bunny didn't mind I was stealing his thunder. 

Finally your masterpiece actually has to be destroyed for your victim, damn it, recipient to read your heart felt sentiment inside. It's o.k. though, just take a ton of pictures like me to remember the time you actually did something romantic for your significant other without cracking up (HA! cracking, egg.. ) or getting annoyed while you thought about the work that will be involved cleaning up all those rose petals strewn around the floor and bed or you have to skim them off the top of the water before you drain the bathtub, not to mention the wax from all those candles is about to drip onto the carpet. This is far less messy. 

                                                            Happy Easter everyone!

Eggcellent!

Last night I had the urge to color Easter eggs. I have colored eggs since I was just a wee lass. I'm patient when it comes to coloring eggs. I know the longer you soak those baby chicks in the colored water the darker the colors will be. I can wait. I'm the bomb when it comes to waiting for colored eggs.  It's about the only thing I can wait for.

Egg coloring peeps around the world know that PAAS is the best egg coloring kit on the planet. They have the best colors and the most brilliant dye. I use them every year, except this year!! *GASP*! (I promise PAAS,  I will never stray again. I will stay faithful from here on out!!)  O.K. so I caved. I saw a kit that made these pretty metallic designs on the eggs. I had to have it. I knew that my eggs would turn out exactly like the eggs pictured on the box. I would post pictures and people would come from miles around to see my beautiful eggs. Tears would flow from the eyes of those as they looked upon my metallic wonders. Easter would be forever changed. Then reality hit. First the dye sucked. They yellow was more like orange, red was more like pink and purple was just a slightly different shade than the pinkred. In all fairness I did like the blue. After dying and drying you had to spread a thin layer of their special magic glue on the egg and let it get sticky. The magic glue actually rubbed most of the color off the egg. Then you take the metallic sheets, press onto the magically messy glued egg and the metallic will flake off the sheet and stick to your egg! OOOOOH PRETTY! Well no, not really. What they didn't tell you is the glue will not be tacky enough to accomplish this until 4 seconds before it completely dries, which takes about 7 minutes, in which you will have those 4 seconds to try and get enough metallic flakes on the egg to come close to matching the stupid picture on the box. Don't forget your fingers are not only colored from the dye that the magic glue takes off the egg but the magic glue itself which the metallic sheets stick to, and anything else you may touch. Almost an hour later, the help of my husband and running out of patience we managed to make 3 1/2 eggs look slightly less than the amazing vision in my head.

Most would have given up at this point, but not I! I'm still determined to make the masses weep. It's time to get crafty! A little ribbon, some glue dots and other scrap booking accoutrements and I am now Martha Stewart! Again, this is only in my head. I did manage to put together a few cute eggs, that are now sitting in their pretty ribbons and bows in my refrigerator where the next time someone sees them it will be without their pretty shells all mashed together between two pieces of bread in an egg salad sandwich. Hopefully no one cries after eating it.

House Cleaning

Cleaning house is on of those necessary evils.  Well, at least to most people it is. After being gone on vacation 2 1/2 weeks, procrastinating unpacking another week and a few more days to procrastinate cleaning I finally decided to conquer my kitchen. Although I wont be cleaning the top of the refrigerator or freezer I do give my self kudos for cleaning the inside of the microwave.

Like a lot of you I figured cleaning will some how be more pleasurable with some good music. I usually resort to the Hair Guitar channel on my satellite T.V. They play all the awesome glam rock from the 80's. That way I can clean and mourn my passing youth all at the same time. Ahhh multitasking. Of course I know all of the songs, but they occasionally thrown in some obscure song that has me wondering why I don't know all of the words, whether I sing them correctly or not. Today that song was 10,000 Lovers in One by TNT. I paid attention mostly because it sucked.  "But Teri! That song rocks! It was totally my favorite!". Save it, it sucked. 10,000 lovers..really? TEN THOUSAND? Who the hell could handle that? At least pick a more reasonable number. What's wrong with 100 lovers in one? Still a lot, still getting the point across, yet not so many that one session of love making is going to last 3 months. By not knowing this song is it possible I was not the rocker I thought I was? Who am I kidding, I rocked then, I still rock now.

I'm going to go finish cleaning now while I relive the big hair, black eyeliner awesomeness that was my teenage years.

Blogging

I've decided to start blogging these random thoughts that filter through my brain compartment.