You Can't Take it With You

This was a great film. I absolutely loved the "kooky" family that Alice belonged to and the cyclical relationships between the characters. And who doesn't love a good courtroom scene a la Miracle on 34th Street. I would definitely recommend it.

I missed the beginning of this one, and spent the rest of the movie going "wait, who's that?" and "what's going on?" to Adam. He just kept "shhhhh"ing me and then asking me what I thought character's names were. We did highly enjoy some of the characters names and with the help of imdb.com were able to match most of them up. There was Gruffydd (pronounced Griffid), Angharad, Bronwyn, Gwilym, and Huw (pronounced Hugh). But what I found most entertaining was the making of the movie extra feature which included interesting facts. Here are a few:

The moive was supposed to be a four hour Technicolor epic (think Gone With the Wind)
It was supposed to be filmed on location in Wales (the setting of the film)
Because of WWII, the movie could not be filmed in Wales because of the threat of attack, so it was instead filmed in the California desert. This desert is brown and not the lush green of Wales (hence How Green Was My Valley) and so instead it had to be filmed in black and white in order to appear green.

We are getting to the point of the beginning "ugh, another movie" watching. It's still fun to see all these famous movies I've never seen, but I'm also starting to say, "go ahead and watch that one without me." How can something so fun suddenly become taxing?

Next on the list?

Yeah, I've seen it, but as Adam likes to point out, I actually fell asleep for the last 15 minutes, and therefore, haven't really seen it.

Another Quiz...

I saw this quiz posted on one of my new favorite blogs How About Orange and had to take it.

What Font Are You? (Standard Fonts)

Arial - You're pretty normal. That's certainly not a bad thing, as a lot of people like you.
Take this quiz!

Well there you go. Apparently I'm pretty normal.... I knew I could prove it sometime.

This is the Type of Flower I am

You Are a Carnation

You are down to earth and grounded. You tend to be more traditional than trendy. Your confidence gets you through anything. People trust you and are very loyal to you.

What Flower Are You?

Adam may beg to differ about the down to earth and grounded part.... don't know what I think though. What do you think?

A movie update too

Thought I should update you on the movie scene.

It Happened One Night is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Be prepared to say, "______ (fill in recent movie title) stole that from this movie." ALOT of movies have stolen ideas from this movie, but I assume it was out of love for this movie.

Gone with the Wind is our current movie we are in the middle of. One of my all time favorites. Oh, Clark Gable...... (sigh). On top of that Adam had never seen it, so he's said a few times, "there's not enough Clark Gable in this movie." (I keep saying, "Just wait a bit, there's more of him later.")

Next ones I've marked to see:

You Can't Take it With You with Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Barrymore (I liked him in The Grand Hotel and he's Drew Barrymore's great-uncle). This may start a stint of Jimmy Stewart movies, I think there's a few that one. But it continues a Frank Capra theme we've been following off and on as well.

How Green Was My Valley I don't know anything about it, but it looks good.

Arts and Crafts Movement

Many of you know for the past six months now I've been in a ridiculous arts and crafts move. It's got me OBSESSED with many things and techniques that I'm striving to learn. Hence, this started the ridiculous need to crochet every pattern I can get my hands on and now I'm moving slowly but surely into crafting things that are a little more practical all year round.


I've always loved cross stich, scrapbooking and cardmaking, and who can forget in high school when I decided I would make all my own clothes, including my homecoming dress that had to be sewn on me because Mom and I forgot to put in the zipper.


But I'm learning to venture out into the unkown.


I've had this fabric that I love and its been moving with me for years and I suddenly had this vision of a wonderful summer tote that would keep me happy all summer long, would be a great airplane bag for the travel I'm doing this summer, and could tote all my crochet madness with me to work and back.


So I went to Jo-Anns and knowing enough to know I don't know anything, asked the really nice lady to help me. I told her what I wanted to do and she gave me an education in interfacing to make the bag stand on it's own, so to speak. Then I had this vision that I would like to try my hand at embroidery on the bag as well. Something free hand instead of from a pattern like most cross stitching (or at least what I've done) is.


So then I decided to pull out the design from the fabric and stitch that in a larger version on the bag itself. Then I decided that I didn't know if it would stand out enough. I remembered thought about the hankies that were still in the package that I was trying to think of something creative to use them for. But, darn it, they are bright white and the background of the fabric is more of an off white.


And then I (are you still following this? I swear it's almst over) thought about how I was reading about tea staining to tea stain my birthday invitations to make them look like parchment (the whole Harry Potter birthday thing is going to be awesome) and so I decided I would try my hand at tea staining a hanky and see how that worked out. It was perfect!! It also used up some of my Lipton that I don't drink ("Life's too short for cheap tea") and so it was a win-win all the way around. So I'm going to try to embroider on this hanky to make the embroidery stand out more against the pattern on the fabric and wait to figure out the shape of the bag until I get the buttons my dear dad (in law) found antiquing in Tampa for me that I'm so excited to see them, hopefully there's one i can use for the closure on the bag (did I mention I'm not good with zippers. See the homecoming dress mention above.)


So here are some pictures of all my adventures in tea staining. I hope embroidery is as fun as it has always looked.

Tea, Yum!

the fabric the bag is being made out of

the tea stained hanky next to an original hanky.

Here are some pictures of the other crafts that have been keeping me busy.

finished green baby kimono and hat

finished red baby kimono and hat

pink Baby Ella hat (she doesn't have it yet though)

white baby hat with cute little flower (thanks for the idea Eleamar)

Gryffindor scarf for Harry Potter events this summer

What is it about "free" Chipotle that makes everyone act like it's a holiday? The office is a-buzz with hatching plans on how everyone can get Chipotle for a non-perishable food item today. Me? I'm waiting for dinner to go. Adam gets Chipotle twice in one day. He'll be sick tomorrow.

We've started what I am dubbing "The Summer of Movies" or "Movie Bonanza" for Adam's thesis. We made another big movie purchase earlier this week and have begun to watch movies. Adam asked me to tag the movies I wanted to watch with him, and after tagging almost every movie (excluding war movies, I just can't get into them) he's making me choose day by day which I would like to see.

Last night's feature?

The Grand Hotel

I L-O-V-E-D it. I was a little unsure about it at the beginning, but it was truly a good movie. Then the special features on the DVD had a reinacted musical version where they spoke in verse and had a chorus line of bellboy girls. I think I liked that one even better. The musical one (unfortunately) did not win any awards and therefore cannot be analyzed by Adam.

Tonight it's either:

It Happened One Night

Mutiny on the Bounty

So many Clark Gable movies, so little time.

Things that make me sad....

I know that not everyone is taught well by their English teachers. But honestly, these are too much....
Hilary... you make me sad.... (This in no way reflects my political views, just that she needs a proofreader.)

"Let ARE Kids Walk" ???? These are parents who are protesting Texas school boards to allow their children to graduate even though they have not passed the state exam.... Maybe the kids should graduate and the parents should have to go back to school.