Category Archives: Addiction to

Inspiration Boards

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Good Stuff, Listing, Muse, Random Shit

These last few weeks have been a doozy and this is the first week calm enough for me to rationally form thoughts. Not complicated ones, mind you, but thoughts. I did not really ever write all the things I wanted to write about “The Help” and all my childhood memories with Lula. The Internet is flooded with those and I don’t have anything truly unique to report, so perhaps I’ll save that for some other time when all this is gone and forgotten. (Incidentally, that movie is fantastic. Highly recommend.)

So in place of that I’ve been spending a lot of time looking around my house and being generally disgusted with everything in it. It’s kind of like how you look at your closet every season (or every Monday morning) and it’s full of crap but you hate it all and have nothing to wear. JUST LIKE THAT. Except it’s my house and I don’t want to invite people over because the furniture’s torn all to hell and the walls have nicks in the paint and old nasty grout makes us look like we don’t clean our bathrooms. (Which we do, I PROMISE. Every mofo Sunday afternoon. With Pinesol.)

I am not the crafty sort; the craftiest thing I think I’ve ever done was this jewelry hanger thing I made out of a picture frame and some old fabric. Today I discovered Sweet Paul and this amazing idea for repurposed jewelry. A couple of weeks ago I took some old gold to a local jeweler and got 59 whole dollars for it! The rest of the crap is all broken but not hideous, and now I have something to do with it. These magnets will hold stuff on my inspiration board.

What goes on it? Well, who the hell knows, y’all. That’s the beauty. I’m not so hot at the decorating, but I can copy the shit out of stuff. So that’s my new plan: collect pictures and fabric swatches and whatever else I can clutter up a board with and then COPY IT. All over my house. So that eventually it will look like this:

via Traditional Home

And this:

via Architectural Digest

And, of course, this:

via CasaSugar

HAHAHA. These are my dreams, y’all. NOT REALITY.

What do your inspiration boards look like? Do you have them? What goes on them?

A letter to you

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Anxiety, Daily, Good Stuff, Muse, Totally normal

First you need to know how much I love you. Next you need to know how much you are going to love yourself when all of this is over.

I am so proud of you for everything positive you’re doing in your life. I get lumpy crocodile tears when I think of the silent pain you must’ve been in for so long, and I wish I had known. But now, NOW!, you are doing yourself a solid and being your own best friend, which is a hard thing to do.

Growing up easy becomes sort of hard later on, doesn’t it? I wonder if you may have discovered this accidentally like I did. One day in college I stopped dead in my tracks, looked around and realized I wasn’t like everyone else. My hard part had yet to come, whereas their hard parts were over. Bastards.

I want to kiss your sweet cherub face and tell you to get a haircut. I want to hear you laugh because it makes me cackle. I want to ride in a car with you while you make me listen to some damn band I don’t know. Mostly I want to hug you and promise never to let go.When you pick up the phone to call me, you can bet I’m on the other end, dialing your number. (It usually happens just that way, doesn’t it? So weird.)

You are my new hero. You should probably know that I have a lot of heroes, but you’re new on the list and automatically you’re moving to the top! Congratulations! You and I are very similar though, so you should be warned of my steady non-hero status.

I love you and I want to hug your neck something fierce.

BlogHer At Home Giveaway

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Good Stuff, Shopping

I realize this is short notice, but Noteworthy Invitations, on my behalf, is one of the sponsors of BlogHer At Home ’11! This is the party for the non-party goers who are staying home from the BlogHer ’11 conference in San Diego this year. While everyone else is gallavanting through the Gaslamp Quarter with their swag bags, we’ll be here sweltering in the August heat BUT THAT’S OKAY Y’ALL. I am sad not to be there, yes, but not so sad that I can’t give away $50 in invitations/stationery/etc. tomorrow night!

Hit up Twitter at 9pm and follow along with the other at-home conference attendees.

The one where my book club still exists

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Beach, Good Stuff, Listing

So perhaps you may recall that early last year I formed a book club. My original intent was to make it this whole interactive thing where my long-distance pals could read along with my book club and we could talk about it online and such. But then, as I’m wont to do, I dropped the ball/got lazy/gave it up/what have you. The online part of book club never got off the ground, but OH! the real-life book club made it. In fact, we made it to well over a year and, as far as I know, we’re still going strong.

Sure, we’ve changed a little over the last year. We lost a lovely kitten who moved to Colorado (she was a ghost writer for some secret authors, and we never found out who they were, so there’s still mystery there). We gained a dear sweet gal I know from work, and we have the enthusiastic readers along with the somewhat rebellious readers who argue month after month about the book we’ll read and who will read it. (Keep up, dolls; there’s one who doesn’t like our format and wants to read something different from everyone else each month and there are several who can’t stand ideas other than the traditional format of a traditional book club. I’m in the last camp.)

Anyway, this summer has been eventful for our No-Name book club, because – and get this because we are W-I-L-D and you could NEVER beat our wildness – we took a girls’ trip to the beach! And we drank drinks and we laid out in the sun under hats and lolled about in the water and wore pretty dresses to seafood dinners. And in August we are planning the ultimate book club field trip to the movies to see The Help. COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED IF WE TRIED!

Lolling about the pool as any good book club does

Looking apres-sun gorgeous as any book club does

(In honor of The Help, I’ve just this second decided to do some posts about growing up in the South with help. If I remember and honor my plans, I’ll do them this week and will try not to be condescending or sugary or stereotype-y.)

(This is turning out to be quite the parenthetical post, and I’d forgotten how much fun parentheses can be. I told you: I AM WILD!)

As best I can remember, here’s the rundown of what we’ve read over the last year or so. I would love to know if you’ve read any of these and/or what you thought and/or what your recommendations are for the coming months.

  1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett This is the one that became the “book club sensation!” and has been made into a movie. Rightfully so, y’all, because it’s incredible. There are generally two reactions to it: “it tells the story of my life” or “it tells the story of a place I didn’t know existed.”
  2. South of Broad by Pat Conroy Right up there with the most terrible, if not the worst. Disappointing, cheesy and all the things Pat Conroy shouldn’t be known for.
  3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows Charming and delightful, to sound like a little old lady book critic. It’s a feel-good book written in letters between characters. Highly recommend.
  4. The Privileges by Jonathan Dee Most people hated it; I did not. The ending will surprise.
  5. The Hangman’s Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch and Lee Chadeayne This was too gory for several of us, but I really enjoyed it. If you liked The Tudors, this will remind you of it in a weird, different way.
  6. Bossypants by Tina Fey Really, this needs no statement except it deserves umpteen stars.
  7. Emily and Einstein by Linda Francis Lee I didn’t finish it. On purpose.
  8. Mystery: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman This is one in a loooong series of psychological thrillers, and I just wanted an official excuse to buy the book. I love all of these, but they’re not for everyone.
  9. Room by Emma Donoghue Eerie. Very similar to the Jaycee Dugard story, prior to her book coming out. Heartwrenching.
  10. The Outer Banks House by Diann Ducharme*

*We were supposed to read this prior to the beach trip but only one person did. We’ve postponed this one until next month because August, after all, is still summer.

Incidentally, these are all Kindle e-books because I received a Kindle about halfway through last year. It honestly changed my life as much as the Keurig did. FOR THE BETTER, obvs. Are you in a book club? What’s it like? Do dish!

A passionate return

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Anxiety, Good Stuff, Muse

I’ve been waiting around for a while, waiting for this itch to return. Waiting for the desire to come back to me and call to me: WRITE. Write about what you know and what you don’t know. Write about what you love and what you despise. JUST WRITE.

One of the first exercises you learn in creative writing is the “free write.” Basically a stream of consciousness is what you’re doing, and afterward you edit to make it a coherent thought. Or you don’t edit it and instead you look to it for inspiration for another writing exercise.

(Let me interject here and say, with some authority because I can do that now because I HAVE A MASTER’S DEGREE HAHAHAHA, that writing is in and of itself an exercise. Writing is not something we are ever finished doing. It is something we practice; it is a skill within us that evolves. Sometimes writing evolves from school-writing to check-writing to will-writing and that’s it. Or writing can evolve into something we enjoy. To go a step further, writing can also evolve into a passion. And in that case, you practice and practice and practice, just like piano. When your fingers are numb and stiff, your body has indicated to you only that you are out of practice and you must push harder. Our brains are like that too; when we stop pushing and we sit around and wait for the exact moment to hit us with some big, important exciting idea, we will sit on our asses for a lifetime.)

See above for “stream of consciousness.”

I have missed blogging, which is a statement I make about every six months. And I mean it every time, but I mean it in the sense that I feel obligated to provide something for the people that come here to read. And my cop-outs are getting a little tiresome.

So the point of all this is this: I am back, bitches. I am back to writing as a practice. Some days I will write real sucky like. Other days I will be smart and coherent. Still other days, I will be inspirational, irreverent and will cuss a lot about motherfuckers that piss me off.