Mod Mischief

  Our friend Kate caught us examining something at Prom Chris and I have both been feeling a little under the weather, so we haven't been terribly productive over the last week or two, but I thought you might appreciate a run down of all we did in preparation for Promdemonium. As promised, here is the full how-to for the party clothes party lights .   In addition to the vintage clothing lamps, we also made a bunch of other decorations: -Pop-up paper flowers like these and giant bows (large versions of this ) from phone book pages, magazines and old architectural plans - Paper pompoms from phone book pages -Toilet paper roll art like this , but we used a glue gun to put them together faster and then we spray painted them fun colours -Fabric bunting (as mentioned here ) -Silhouettes cut out of used contractor bags - I wish I would have gotten a good picture of these as they looked incredible in all the windows. We first took photos of the Prom volunteers in funny...

For a Pearl Jam fan. The photo is also showing off our new-to-us turntable courtesy of freecycle .

I guess I have a habit of taking apart cute stuffed animals . I recently took apart two Furby Babies I picked up on kijiji for $5. Unfortunately, Furby Autopsy wasn't much help since the Furby Babies are put together in a different way, but I was able to figure it out. Much like the full-sized Furbys (funky pluralization, I know...), Furby Babies have one motor that runs a bunch of gears to get all the adorable animations moving in sequence. When you get rid of the circuits that control when the motor starts and stops it simply cycles through all the motions continuously. It's this feature that I plan to exploit for my dinosaur. Did I forget to mention that the dinosaur I'm building is going to be animatronic? In case you're wondering, I've already given away everything from the pressure sensors to the Furby pelts on freecycle . I'm hoping they'll be used to build an awesome robot but they might just wind up as misguided cyberpunk art.

The tta’s first party was this weekend, on the eve of my birthday. Inspired by the Lewis Carol craze, we hosted an Allison in Wonderland Tea Party.  What we ate: I was still baking and assembling sandwiches in the kitchen when the guests started to arrive. We served mint cucumber tea sandwiches smoked salmon on rye toasts prosciutto and goat cheese tea sandwiches deviled eggs (we used whole grain Dijon and it looked so pretty!) and for dessert lollipop flower cupcakes , and eat me cookies (made with this great recipe from Martha )   Most popular drink: Well, it was a tea party. But on top of the orange pekoe and earl grey, we made skittles vodka . The shots didn’t make me grow any taller but they did have certain magical qualities. How we set the stage: Freecycle delivered in a big way! Chris and I lucked into an entire box of silver teapots, serving trays and cream and sugar sets. We picked it all up the day before ...

It seems that whenever I help someone out through Freecycle I wind up later getting something great for myself. Last week I gave someone a router and the very next day I was lucky enough to get this awesome typewriter. Isn't it cute? I'm looking forward to using it for greeting cards. Now that the costume craziness is over, Chris and I have finally started to set up the apartment and we're discovering more and more stuff we don't have room to keep. This weekend our porch looked like under a Christmas tree with rows of bags labeled with different names. I hope my lucky streak doesn't continue or I'll wind up bringing in more than we got rid of!

I'm still stiff and sore but the move went relatively well on Wednesday. Yes it took forever because two days really wasn't enough time for me to pack up 3 years of accumulated junk, but the whole ordeal was casualty free if not totally painless. Here's what the place looked like before I filled it with cardboard boxes and disassembled furniture: Front Hall These stairs look very long when you've got another box of records to carry up them Living Room That ceiling fan has got to go! Bedroom The previous tenants left us their bed (and some other stuff), but freecycle took care of that in no time Chris takes note of the situation Kitchen The stove is rather inconveniently placed in front of some cupboards. The fridge is also in a strange location Bathroom Who thought this would be a good combo?! The place does come with some pretty cool retro features including big baseboards, cool textured ceilings and pretty air vents.

Chris spent at least an hour last night showing me his favourite posts on cute overload . I like a man who is secure enough in his masculinity to enjoy looking at pictures of fluffy kittens. In honour of all that is cute, here are some pics of Nim and Noi enjoying their new cage . Last weekend, Chris and I took some steel wool and a lot of elbow grease to the GGGS find and the girls moved in on Sunday. Their old cage is now making some other rats happy through the wonders of freecycle . By the way, that adorable little house was only $3 at Giant Tiger!