The Chronicles of the Geeky Art Princess

The Blog Recap of all Recaps

Okay, so I slipped off the Blogwagon, so what? Everyone falls once in awhile, give a girl a break, sheesh. In getting emails, texts and what-nots of "Hey, what's up with your blog?" "You alive" etc. etc. I have all these blogs in my head but unfortunately they got stuck there. I'm going to categorize and highlight the past monthish. Bare with me here. It may run out of order... I'm not the biggest fan of order :)

*Via Arte
*Pumpkin Carving with Family & Framily
*Halloween Night
*Gratuitous Polly Blog
*YAY she got a job! Oh wait...
*Run for the Hills
*Courtney & Patty say Merry Christmas: Animal Crossing Style
*Gobble Gobble Wobble Wobble
*I stayed up for 24 hours and all I got was this T-Shirt... thumb drive, measuring cups, mini mp3 players, iPod alarm clock, wrapping paper, cat carrier... oh *hahaha*
*AJ can paint which is like Yan can cook but not really even a little bit.

So that whole, grab a blanket, some popcorn and a big drink with a bendy straw, yeah, go do that.

Via Arte

So each year at the Marketplace, companies & people sponsor artists to create in the parking lot, Chalks of Art. They really are amazing. A few of my friends had their squares.

HB aka Jenn

Above, see the ghosties? Alix colored those :)

Darla aka DisneyChica

Trish aka LeFty

A mere wonder what some people can do with some chalk. There were a lot of really neat pieces out and maybe one year, I'll get out here and do one too. For now, I'll stay on this side of the lens.

Pumpkin Carving with Family & Framily

Check my blogs from previous years and there is some mention of pumpkin carving the night before Halloween and moms homemade chili beans and cornbread. For those of you that are new, I'm not really sure when it started but I know I look forward to it just as much as Halloween night itself. This year I decided it was time everyone got together and my mom was a little excited at the idea of meeting all of my friends. So out went the invites... mom says, "okay, what's the count?" My response... 5 chilren, 18 adults *SMILES* She said, okay, 2 crock pots it is. I told her Alix and I would take care of desserts. The Patty even brought over some homemade potato cheese soup...mmm.

Since the weather was touch and go, we set up tables in the garage. It was great. It made me so happy to see everyone laughing and carving and just overall having a great time. *sigh* YAY

Here were the invites :)

Here are a few of our masterpieces :)

All Hallows Night

So I took 2.5 days off this year for Halloween. I hosted Halloween bunco Wednesday the 29th, Pumpkin Carving was the 30th and Halloween... well duh. I hate rushing rushing all the time so this was great! I did alot of cooking and baking and I loved it. So we headed over to mom and dad's around noon and with all 4 of us working we were done by 3:30 and had plenty of time to go find bubbles for the bubble fogger machine. Oh yeah, you read that right, it blows little bubbles with fog in them and when they pop they literally go "poof" and you get to watch the fog dissipate... oooooohhhhh preeeeettty. This actually turned out to be the hit of the night, from 2 yr olds to dads being called away trying to swat the bubbles, hilarious indeed.

This was Alix's 1st Halloween in CA. When asked when is the last time you carved a pumpkin, she honestly couldn't remember which made me a little sad. I mean I love me some Halloween but it's so different in the city, they can't have Christmas trees in most of their apartments. Yes you heard me right, don't get me started on that one. She carved her some major pumpkins. I did 4 this year and wanted to do more but I couldn't find anymore. I was so pumpkin drunk LMAO I'm finally getting faster and more efficient. I hollowed out 2, carved, then rinsed and reapplied... no wait. You know what I mean.
What I've learned so far about this year is it's all so much easier... Happy 1st (of many) Halloween's Lex.

Gratuitous Polly Blog

This little kitten is funny. I've never had a female kitten and they are definitely a lot different than males. She is very princess like. Her full name could easily be: Princess Polly Poofy Tail. We thought she was going to be a long hair but just her tail, it's pretty cute the way she flaunts it around and curls it around her when she's cold. She looks like a squirrel.
She also prefers bags as much as I like them; our recyclable grocery bags, my messenger bag, my lappy bag and especially my gym bag as displayed below. I think her plan was to hide to attack our feet as we walked by but then she got cozy sleepy.

YAY! She got a new job... Oh wait.

So we got to rest easy for a few days because Alix got a new job courtesy of framily. The thing is the only real leads we've had have been through framily only and we are quite thankful for that. Through some major impressive insecurities and basically one big jerk, they had to retract the job offer. So for 24 hours we got to relax about things and feel some ease. That was really nice within itself and even though it didn't work out, it isn't nixed completely, just for now. So keep good thoughts for us.

I struggled the rest of the week. I just liked seeing her so happy. It had been awhile and although near all other parts of our lives are so great this was the last thing we needed. So Thursday night my mom called me to check in and asked if I wanted to help my dad out in the mountains on Saturday, I was still so "bleah" I said sure without even asking what for. Come to find out, it was to chop and load wood. Uh... yikes.

Run for the Hills

So in further findings, there are 4 of us and 3 trucks to fill. *blinks* The boys used the chainsaws for obvious reasons that I am a big klutz and handling something that can cut my leg off in one swoop. I chose to chuck the wood closer to the trucks. We drove and drove and drove and 5000ft above sea level later, we made our first stop. Lots of pine, dries quickly, cuts easily but also burns kinda fast. So we didn't want too much of it. 1 hr and 25 minutes later we had 1 truck full. Moving on down the road...driving... trees pine cones trees... ooh LOOK mini Christmas trees. Pull up *inhale big sniff, mmm Christmas*, walk into a not so clear clearing cut some more pine, load it and move on. Note: There is a super huge fine AND jail time for cutting or even hurting the Christmas trees hence the reason I don't have a Charlie Brown little Christmas tree in my living room right now.

It was cold up there and I was sweating and it felt good. I detoxed all the negative crap that I had been feeling from the week. Something about hauling your ass up and down hills with less oxygen makes you see things a little different. Well that and to watch yourself because poison ivy sneaks up on you. And Damn it all to hell if every furry big ass stripey jumping spider didn't come out to welcome us... oh and the termites. Yummy. *smug face* The maggots of trees.

So we ate cold burritos, chips and had lots of electrolytes. The boys met guys about horses or something like that and I held it the entire time, we're talking like 8 hours. It was fun. I got to wear gloves that were about 3 sizes too big so once in awhile when I was tossing logs my glove would go flying off or if George went to grab a piece from me when we were passing in lines, he would pull it half way off. It was funny. I got to see a lot of leaves fall, some of the season of itself giving way to winter and once again, I was truly feeling like "it just wasn't meant to be for now."

The Indians have a lot of land near the sequoias and have since developed since last I had visited. They even had a gas station/store/subway setup as you go in/come out of the hills. I vowed we would stop on the way back. My dad happily stopped and I got to PEE! I got a sandywich from subway and it was super yummy. I always forget, no tax, so the price is the price. I got a little bit of headache on the way home but the food seemed to fix that problem.

I never got as sore as I thought I would. Thankfully, that coulda jacked me up! The boys found some serious oak at the last stop and I couldn't move those pieces, hell it took 2 of them to lift one piece if that says anything. I just ran through the road killing spiders, those damn things are speedy and I think on crack. Overall, I woke up the next day feeling a lot better. Yay for some good hard work.

Courtney & Patty say Merry (early) Christmas: Animal Crossing Style!

Meet Willow in the Town of Crayola!

I think these girls like me or something. I'm thoroughly enjoying this game, it's so cute. I like shaking the trees and finding bells. I also like picking weeds, these ones don't make me itchy. THANKS AGAIN GIRLS!

Gobble Gobble Wobble Wobble

I still have trouble grasping that the year is almost over. Thanksgiving is here and as I look around I'm thankful for everyone that I have been blessed to surround myself with. Lucky in love and life and it's filled with laughter.

This also marks, Alix's first Turkey Day away from home. As much as her "MA" drives her nuts, I knew this would still be tough. We got up late, started the pies a little late and had some "discrepancies" about foil lmao (always funny a week later). All for not of course because they came out fine and were eaten heartily.

The yam/sweet potato thingies were different, it wasn't near as formal from what I can tell but overall it went well and she will be home for Christmas even though my mom wasn't very happy to hear that lol

So we ate, turkey, ham, mashed taters, corn, gravy, stuffing and rolls, there was also cranberry "sauce" and those orange things but I opted out of those :) We also had a grueling game of Ticket to Ride Marklin and by round 3 Alix had declared she quits because supposedly we made it impossible for her to complete her routes but ended up almost lapping us. *RIIGGHHTT*

I stayed up for 24 hours and all I got was this T-Shirt... thumb drive, measuring cups, mini mp3 players, iPod alarm clock, wrapping paper, cat carrier... oh *hahaha*

So I enjoy the Tulare Outlets, it's a nice little drive north. I heard on the radio they were opening midnight Thanksgiving night! Assuming I didn't HAVE to have something from Best Buy that might be an option. Can't tell till we get the ads and see what everyone else wanted to do. Since Qrt was working, Patty was going to ride with us so they wouldn't have 2 cars out and Darla wanted to go because she had never been out for Black Friday before and neither had Alix. No one could set where and when we were going, we just knew at some point we were going to meet up. Alix and I tried to go home to get some sleep but we ended up tickling and laughing in bed so we got up, got dressed, sent some txts out and headed to Tulare. Our plan was to be back around 3:am when Qrt got off work. Turns out time flies when you're shopping in the middle of the night. Next thing we know we're heading back to Bako and it's already 2:30am. We meet Qrt at Patty's house, then decide to go to Best Buy and sit in the cars until everyone goes in and not even bother standing in line. We played "would you rather" through our car windows and next thing we know, it's time to head in. Best Buy is so good at gettin' their shit organized vs. some other stores that let people get trampled to death.
We were in and out by 6:15 and headed to Target, got a few things wandered aimlessly, got in line and then headed to Michael's to do the same. Courtney & Patty caught up with us then, Darla called Nessa to see if she wanted to meet us for breakfast around 9:am. Grumpily she agreed :)

As we were waiting for our table and Nessa, some guy walked up and shook hands with Alix and said hi to Darla. Turns out, it was Vanessas' bosses lol So we joked with them for awhile, they got seated... then we got seated some what next to them, go figure. We were fairly quiet, ate our food and then I was ready for bed. Next thing we know, the waitress is telling us our breakfast has been paid for... awww Nice Vanessa bosses :)

So we headed home, lugged our stuff upstairs, changed into comfy pj's and crashed out. That was the night we didn't go to sleep and shopped it all away.

AJ can paint which is like Yan can cook but not really even a little bit.

So there are various galleries around town, most of them in the district of 19th street. This one is a little further out and is in the Chain Younger Building. They wanted artists to paint ornaments, 1 large or 4 small with a 40% comission. Sure I'm game, sign me up. So here is what I came up with.

Here are some sketches of what they will kinda look like.