more gifties!!!

the gifts just keep coming! here are the lovely things my sweet heather and mike (aka the baron) gave me for christmas:


a full color Knox gelatin recipe booklet (loads of unpleasant looking foods in molded forms!!) , Santa Claus!!! (squeal!) on dvd and a large spider web stamp. it's wonderful to have friends that get me and know what i like.

i also got this sweet dress that heather thought would make a great apron. i have to say i agree.


close up of the print:


in christmas clearance news, i got 2 of these cute robot kid aprons at old navy for 3 bucks for pumkinbutt and myself. I have plans of us making up an army of cookie 'bots some day soon whilst wearing them.



i am so overwhelmed and busy folks... i'm going to try my best to not let the "house" here get too dusty. sorry for all the waaaay late christmas posting, but that's just the way it's going to be. if you don't like it you can leave me a rude comment with your email as your name calling me a poser for my lateness (huh?) and then delete it, and then not be bright enough to realize that the comment still gets sent to my email reguardless....and reminding once again that you leave your email as your name....wow.

just for you

a forgotten holiday jingle... They Might Be Giants - Santa's Beard :

christmas gifties! stuff i made...

here are some of the christmas gifts i made for the fam and friends:

2006 edition pumpkinbutt ornaments:



an altered purse for my mom. i bought the black gingham purse at target and added a pocket to it of her hollywood heart throb, trace adkins, using iron on trasfer paper. i also made her a matching headband.

below are simple cardstock magnets i made for my mom as well. they are copies from stickers made by blue Q. i got the idea to do these from my friend heather, as she made me some for christmas last year.

As i have mentioned before i am currently in school finishing up my bachelor's degree in fine art (which is why "the house" here is a bit dusty) . my emphasis is in ceramic sculpture. i decide to make some pieces for the fam this year, even if they didn't really get it. they are platters but also function as wall art as well. it's hard to tell in the pictures but they have curved middle/edges and two oppesite sides wrap under to become the legs/wall attachment point.




the two below are smaller sushi platters:




i am really happy with the way they turned out and am now going to use this idea for a series of wall hangings for my final show. I think they lend themselves toward a fossil/relic look so i am going to work with that. i'm not sure if it was clear or not but the images on the platters are of women's bras. All of my work has to do with personal space and thoughts/emotions. I use a number of tangible items as metaphors for this, one being female undergarments. I choose bras for the fact that they are very personal being close to the skin and the fact that they are revealing but not entirely, like my pieces are. I am also into the idea of layers. Personal thoughts are often hidden under many layers as personal garments are. i generally portray this concept of layers through my work visually by having the surface treatment appear old and stripped down. hopefully this little explanation helps get across some of what i am going for.

christmas gifties! what i got...

it's a bit late, but here are some of the things i got for christmas:

my mom got me a lot of neat stuff as she always does. Here are a couple of things. This chapstick by blue Q called Boss Lady(above). The packaging is so cute!
And! she got me a little black tree (below)! I had to decorate it up fast-like for a picture. Pez would be a really cool idea for decorating a tree actually.
my mom also got me lots of smell purty products, an autograghed copy of Martha Stewart's housekeeping tips book, a velveteen grey jacket and handed down her manual pentax slr camera to me.
I got a couple of vintage cookbooks that belonged to a great grandmother i never had the chance to meet along with an inscription from my great aunt inside them.


I bought this myself. a print of the Krispy Kreme building recently demolished in my town that i have been ranting about so much lately.

Cine Mexicano

mary ann sent me these tarjeta postal precioso... which, if i recall my high school espanol, means beautiful post card ( can't remember how to do plurals, help me out peoples!) they are of vintage horror/thriller type films and are very suitable for framing!






i believe they came from this set : cine mexicano postcards. i really like these mary ann, thank you. i kinda have a thing for vintage mexican stuff like this. (as you may recant...these)


i am hoping to put up posts on christmas loot given and received soon, but all has not been doled out. i have a case of the holiday blahs and bah humbugs still lingering, along with a cruddy cold so bear with me please.

memo: my regular email (whistlebait(at) cox(dot) net) has done broke down. i think someone tried to shove a package in it (hope it wasn't anything perishable!) and it's wedged it's self in there fairly well and i don't know how to fix things like that. so my point is that if you have sent me an email in the last 3-4 days i haven't been able to get it and may never be able to. i am going to be using this one in the meantime: myhouseiscuterthanyours(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Jingles

holiday greetings kind readers! For your viewing and listening pleasure i offer you my favorite songs of the season.

everclear - i will be hating you for christmas . this is my all time favorite, i listen to this song when it's not christmas. i designed the above ornament last year based after lyrics. (hopefully the song will just start playing when you click the link, but if not, you will need to scroll down to the music player and select it)

the Ramones - "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)".


The Pretenders - 2000 Miles


Chris Isaak - Washington Square


MST3K - Patrick Swayze Christmas


Enjoy! now back to egg nog (spiked of course) and the fruit cakes (i don't mean the ones with the candied fruits).

i'm dreaming of a black christmas

i just discovered the coolest thing ever! black christmas trees!
i can't imagine a more perfect thing. i have never been a fan of green trees, artificial or real. Here's a slightly amusing story about me that relates to that. When i first moved out on my own it was near christmas. i bought this small cheap artificial green tree to put up in my apartment. I wanted a silver tree real bad... so you know what i did? yeah, i spray painted that thing silver. I don't recommend it, not at all. It looked like a crappy green tree with silver spray paint splotches...so are you slightly amused? i have since then acquired a number of white trees and aluminum ones and now... i need a black one. i NEED it....

this town sucks

You see this?

Well it now looks like this:

When I posted a few days ago about the remodeling of the krispy kreme, I didn't except that they were tearing the whole damn place down. I just got back from digging around in the rubble and deflecting bums. It's prolly not such a great idea for a 105 lb gal to be out at midnight balancing on broken timbers and glass shards alone but I did scored some lovely bricks as mementos for myself and a couple friends. These glossy red bricks were one of my favorite features of the building.

The strange thing is that the wreckage still smells like "HOT DOUGHNUTS NOW".....

Rorschach Kitmass Trees

Pumpkinbutt and i came up with a interesting holiday craft...Rorschach Tree Art!

Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist , was the creator of the infamous inkblot test used for psychoanalysis. He believed that a subject's response to an ambiguous and meaningless stimulus (inkblots) could provide insight into one's thought processes; detecting such conditions as thought disorders, mood and anxiety disorders, personality disorders, and psychopathy.

yes....psychopathy and the holidays...they are familiar bedfellows are they not?

"What might this be?" was the question that Rorschach coined as an introduction to a patient viewing his inkblot cards.

Here are a few renderings along with my pondering the question "What might they be?" in terms of the holiday season:

Plate I

This might be bubbles and fireworks....but it ends in a puddle of disappointment.

Interpretation: Yearns for mistletoe and several cocktails, but from past experience views that combination as generally having an undesirable and regrettable next day outcome.

Plate II

This might be an angry bearded face donning a pointed hat and doing quite a bit of scoffing.

Interpretation: Suffers from the fear of being on santa's naughty list.

Plate III

I believe this might be santa.. laying flat on his back with mittened arms out stretched, after being hit by a car, and left for dead.

Interpretation: Possible outcome of future events if i don't find these under my tree this year...


However, on the surface, these trees can be given as cutesty art, perfect for sending to fam this year in lieu of commercially made cards.....They don't have to understand why they are overwhelmed with their own personal demons when viewing these trees...Psychopathy and the holidays, my friends...Let's embrace it.


The How-To:

*cut out trees or other symmetrical holiday icons of your liking from construction paper.

*apply glue mindlessly

*fold paper in half. squish. open.

*apply shake 'ems (glitter)

*review the images and come to terms with your inner mind's workings.

My Astro Olive Tree is on Charles Phoenix's
Astro Weenie Tree DIY club blog:

check it!

Astro Holiday Anguish Alleviation Hors d'oeuvre Tree

It's the Holidays again and people are starting to have that need to throw get-togethers, parties and other such forms of beguilements. Some of these parties are quite enjoyable, meaning they involve an open bar. But then there are some that are dreaded and you know attending will be like having the very life sucked out of your ever loving soul. The likelihood of being invited to a party or two of this type is just inevitable. To help ease some of the discomfort of those awkward moments when you have to be civil to your ex and his need to bring his trashy skank ass new girlfriend (who invited them anyway?!), I present to you a show-stopping, attention getting, ice breaker (yeah, it does all that!) appetizer center piece to lighten up the need for antidepressants and cure the misery. It works like this:

You: "Oh, Steve...Hi, I see you brought a ' friend' "

Steve: "Yeah, that's Jenni. We met in a chat room for girls that like to dot the i's in their names with hearts but are sadden by the fact keyboards don't have that function. It is a real tragedy to her."

You: "Ah ha.. nice...Wow, well she sure seems quite friendly..."

Steve: "Why do say it like that?"

You: "Well, because she has been making out with the DJ for the past five minutes...(this is that awkward moment I spoke of)..... Hey! Have you seen this marvelous Astro Olive Hors d'oeuvre Tree I made?"

***The Astro Olive Tree***

I based the idea after Charles Phoenix's most amazing Astro Weenie Tree (that's him and his tree below). I opted for green olives, pepperoni and cubes of Muenster cheese instead..... No weenies. I'm a bit surprised at myself for missing an opportunity to use weiners again but I gotta mix it up a bit, ya know?

Charles Phoenix

Doesn't he look like a fun guy?

He got his idea from this vintage slide. Pretty funny!
By the looks of things, that tree is the life of the party.

But wait! There's more! An added bonus of merriment! If you make an Astro Weenie Tree you can submit a photo and accompaning story to Mr. Phoenix's blog for show and tell!

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The How-To:

For a visual guide watch Charles Phoenix's video. And it is true, the jars of toothpicks make wonderful percussion instruments.

The basic idea is to cover a styrofoam cone in aluminum foil, "glue" the base of the tree down to a plate with peanut butter (I used honey and it worked well) and just stick a bunch of food on toothpicks in to it.

********************************

Forward my calls...

I'm over at the Swapatorium today! Hurry, before the hors d'oeuvres are all gone! And Thanks Barb for cluing me in on Charles Phoenix!

Creature Christmas!

Pumpkinbutt decided that the Kitmiss (as he calls it) tree theme this year is going to be The Creature from the Black Lagoon! (I did kinda do some persuading)

He got this Creature around Halloween and loves him. He sleeps with him, dances with him, and today was feeding him a bowl of water.

And as odd as it may be, I find that the creature has got a really nice ass:

okay back to the tree... Since my newly acquired aluminum tree has red glass tips I wanted something green for contrast. That is when the creature came to mind. I printed out a number of posters and film stills from the movie along with images of the creature onto cardstock. I then trimmed the borders in red or green glitter.



I thought the French poster (seen bottom right) was pretty cool looking. Pumpkinbutt helped to make the topper by doing the "shake 'ems" aka glitter on it.




(click on images to enlarge if so desired)

signage

I am terribly distraught to learn that the Krispy Kreme in my town is going to be gutted of all it's cool midcentury neatness to be turned into boring cookie-cutter blahness. I thought I would share a photo of the sign before it's gone:
And for the fun of it, here are a few more cool signs I've photographed in past years. These are located around the Ocala, FL area.

Caption This!

This game is quite fun! You all left such funny captions on the last one. Here's another:


Dear Lord baby Jesus, we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell. I just want to take time to say thank you for my family. My two sons, Walker, and Texas Ranger, or TR as we call him. And of course my red hot smokin' wife Carley, who is a stone cold fox.

Oh, it's fun!

I haven't really had alot of time for my typical shenanigans lately. To fill the void till then I thought it may be fun for us to play "Caption This!" games...

During a tender yet revealing moment while working on their dishpan hands, Jimmy revealed, "Darling, I find having to breath the same air as you revolting. " ...and Sally agreed, returning the sentiment whole heartily.

Newly Acquired

Hello dear readers! I recently acquired a bunch of pretty cool vintage doo-dads that I thought I would show off to you all.

These containers...Please disregard the fact of it being a crappy photo.

ice trays. I am very fond of the ones on the right with the detailed handles. I'm not going to use them for ice. I think they could be repurposed somehow...

HATS!...16 of them. Once I have a decent hairdo I'll sport a few.

A cute "Made in Japan" Santa decoration. Some neat old detective pulp novels.

An Asian robe that is in mint condition.

Now for the best ever! Drum roll please!.....ahh, drum roll?!....

A 6 1/2 foot aluminum Christmas tree!
Check out the neat red glass balls attached to the tips. The best part of the story is that it was rescued from a dumpster!