Like...with...jetpacks?

After watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World two and a half times, I feel like I’ve seen it enough to be able to accurately express my opinions on it.

First, I love the movie.  Love it.  So much.  Despite this, there are some things that I really don’t like about it, but we’ll get to those eventually. 

First, the things that are awesome.

1. It’s medium-bending.  I love that it’s a combination of movie, video game, graphic novel, and whatever the fuck else that comes into play.  It doesn’t take itself seriously as any of these things, and it’s great.  I should really read the graphic novels someday, but that’s neither here nor there.

2.  Hipsters, hipsters, hipsters.  And then some more hipsters for good measure.  God, I love hipsters. Seriously though, extremely relevant to my interests.

3.  Nerd things.  All the nerd things.  Again, relevant to my interests. 

4.  Ridiculous hair.  I do love me some crazy hair.  If I’m being honest with myself, Ramona’s turquoise hair inspired me to dye my hair turquoise.  Yes, I’m influenced by pop culture sometimes, shocking. 

5.  Michael Cera.  He’s so awkward and wonderful.  People give him shit for it, but no, he’s great.

6.  Ramona Flowers is adorable. 

7.  It’s not often that I find myself identifying with female characters, but I could identify (at least to a certain extent) with most of the female characters.  It was kind of refreshing. 

Now, for the things I didn’t like.

1.  Regardless of anything else, this movie has the same essential plot as every other romantic comedy ever.  It’s done really well, but it’s still the typical plotline.  Boy is scarred.  Girl is scarred.  Boy finds girl, falls immediately in love.  Girl is unsure.  Boy fights for girl.  Girl is still unsure.  Boy follows girl.  They ride off into the sunset.   I know that’s really simplified, and I’m ignoring some things, but you can’t deny that it’s a romantic comedy.  Hipster romantic comedy, but still romantic comedy.  Now, that’s fine, but not necessarily my cup of tea.  I would have loved for them to not end up together, but that’s life; people don’t watch romantic comedies for the main characters to end up alone.

2.  Ramona is essentially defined by her relationship to men, and her hair.  Actually, now that I think about it, most of the female characters are defined by their relationships to men, and their hair.  I understand that that’s the point, but I’m still not totally comfortable with that.  Yes, they have other defining characteristics, but also no, no they don’t. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love this movie, and I didn’t feel the same sense of cynicism that I usually feel after watching a romantic comedy, but I still felt a nagging sense that although this movie tried to be different from the typical rom coms, it essentially ended up being the same.  I know that most people will probably disagree with my negative opinions, but what can I say, liberal arts education. 

Life sometimes gets in the way of things...

Oh my gosh.  I'm super failing at this.  But there are extenuating circumstances, so you can just deal with it. :)  I really will create something again, soon, I promise. 

Hamburger time

Oops, fail.  The bad mood from yesterday lingered through today, so instead of creating something after I got off work, I hung out with my friend.  We "created" some delicious nachos, but I didn't bother taking a picture, because my camera was at the bottom of a bag of clothes.  I'll make up for this sometime over the weekend.  I might have to change my goal to creating seven things per week instead of one thing per day, but we'll see what happens.  Also, I watched my first episodes of Metalocalypse today, and it is fantastic.  I'm considering being Murderface for Halloween.  I do love me a good ridiculous accent. Metalocalypse!

Kay....bye.

           Once again, not feeling particularly creative.  Earlier I realized just how unprepared I am for being a responsible adult, aka paying for everything that I need, like glasses and car insurance, and that put me in a bad mood.  The air conditioner also broke today, so it's been hard to concentrate on anything, although it's fixed now and feels slightly less like whichever level of hell has fires.  (I haven't read Inferno since high school, so sue me.)  I was briefly inspired earlier and made something simple, but I'm not sure I feel like putting it up.  Then I realized that my room was ridiculously messy so I decided that cleaning it would sort of count as making something (I'm making it less dirty, get it? ...yeah, no one said this blog was always going to be clever.)  I gave up on that after about 20 minutes because it's too freaking hot.  So, once again, it's the evening and I have nothing interesting to post.  I don't think I could even reasonably count this post as creating something, because it feels much more lackluster than the last two.  Have I failed in my attempt already?  Perhaps, but even if I have, that won't make me give up.  If you fall over in the field while putting on your horse-riding boots, shouldn't you get up, put your boots on, attempt to get on the horse, fall off, and then get on again? (That was an attempt to make clear just how much I failed if I can't even create something interesting for 3 days in a row, much less 365, but I think it just ended up sounding a little silly. Well, you can't win all of them.)   

I've decided to share my tiny craft project with you, even though it was even less work than the paper towel roll flowers, at least it counts as creating?  

Ta da, cute envelope:

 Yikes...I am not good at taking pictures. But, you can at least tell that this is an envelope.  Maybe you can't see that it's light turquoise, but it is.  I traced the envelope onto some red paisley scrap booking paper, cut out the piece, and then glued it inside the envelope.  It's much cuter in person, I promise. 

Thus ends my third day of blogging.  Not a complete failure, right? I promise that I'll be back tomorrow with something better, or at least something photographed better.

Paper towel rolls: Not just for paper towels

         Okay, so to be honest, I can't create anything today. I'm just utterly and completely uninspired. But, fortunately, I have a few things that I created recently, so they almost count. Like I said in my first post, I will often slack off, and this is one of those times. But, the things that I created are adorable, so totally worth it.
     I've been reorganizing my room lately, and I've been trying to find inexpensive ways to decorate my walls.  When I found a tutorial to make paper towel roll flowers, I knew they were perfect.  I don't remember where I found the tutorial so I can't give credit, but I think I've seen it in a few places, and honestly, it's so easy that you barely even need a tutorial.  So basically, you take paper towel rolls, flatten them out a little bit, and cut them into a bunch of smaller cylinders.  If I was a good blogger, I'd have pictures of these steps so that this would make more sense, but like I said, tutorials abound on the internet.  Anyway.  Next, you take two paper towel sections and glue them together.  Bobby pin or clothes pin them together, and then keep gluing pieces on until you have a flower shaped thing. The number of paper towel sections needed depends on you. I made two with six sections, and one with seven, and they both look fine.  It all depends on how small you cut your paper towel sections, I think I cut mine into 1 inch sections.  Wait for the flowers to dry, and you could be done! I, however, had a fabric covered button..thing? (It's a kit with three metal buttons and backs to make fabric covered buttons. I got it at Goodwill, so I can't tell you where to get one, but I assume most fabric stores would have something similar). I made the buttons and glued them to the center of the flowers.  Now you're done.  I feel like this...well, I won't call it a tutorial, but whatever it is, isn't very coherent, but since I made them before I knew this blog existed, you'll have to bear with me.  I suppose you could also paint the paper towel roll sections first, so they would look less like paper towel rolls, but I think they look fine just plain.  You could also glue the paper towels into any shape you wanted.  If you just glued them into a sort of blob, I think they could look more modern and less cutesy.

 Pictures!

 Yep, that's my bed. I don't have a fancy place to take pictures of things yet, plus so far I've only managed to blog after the sun has set, so the lighting isn't great.

 At least the sheets are a cute color? I guess I could have kept taking pictures from above and maybe no one would ever have noticed that my backdrop is sheets, but oh well.

 This picture would probably make a "real" blogger pee themselves in laughter, but it gives you more of an idea of how big they are.

Ooh! I just realized that I have another tiny thing I created recently. 

 

Note the slap bracelet in the background. An important part of making your crafts look better is to have junk in the background, like body spray, deodorant, or even a slap bracelet. Doesn't the picture frame look better in comparison?

Did anyone else read The Boxcar Children books when they were younger? Well, I found one at a thrift store recently and I bought it for nostalgia's sake, but then I realized that all the silhouettes in it could be put to good crafting use.  This is a silhouette of Benny (the youngest Boxcar Child-bonus points if you can name the others) drinking a glass of milk, which I cut out and put into a thrifted frame. Like I said, simple, but cute.  And a good use of a terrible book. I loved these books when I was younger, but man, are they poorly written. (Clearly I, the master blogger, has the right to judge a published author, right?)

 I hope at least one person out there is at least mildly interested in one of these projects, if not, I'll try to remember that I have a blog post to write before 9 o'clock at night next time...

I feel like I should have some kind of sign off, maybe that's what I'll create tomorrow.

-Creatypically yours (Cheesy enough?)

I'm never sure what to title things, so I usually just ramble on until you can't even tell it's a title anymore.

          In the pursuit of several things, I’m embarking on a blog project.The plan is to create something every day. (This is the ideal plan, but I’ll probably slack off sometimes.) This “something” might be a thing I’ve crafted, written, played (I’m a pianist), cooked, made friends with, or anything that could be said to have been made by me. I’m sure sometimes this will simply be a place to record my thoughts, but hopefully no one gets too bored. In typical fashion, I’ve already started to lose interest, simply while writing this. This is one of the reasons I’m forcing myself to do this. Now comes the “sharing personal information with strangers on the internet” part.  For the past several years I’ve been dealing with depression, anxiety, stress, and all the baggage that comes with them.  Recently, I reached a point where I felt like nothing was going right and would ever go right again. I wasn’t suicidal, but the combination of everything was severely affecting my daily life. I felt like my life was stagnating and I needed something or someone to save me from drifting away. I felt as if I’d been waiting my entire life for something to happen. I wanted to run away. My life wasn’t mine anymore. Finally, I said fuck it! and decided that I wasn’t going to let life pass me by.  A cheesy and unoriginal statement, perhaps, but still true.  I decided to be happy again. I looked back at all of the experiences that had caused me pain, and I let them go. I forced myself to see the good in them.  That experience had made me a more confident person overall, even if it felt like my life was ending at the time.  That one had allowed me to realize what I truly cared about.  Others had perhaps not led to good things, but dwelling on them couldn’t make anything better now.  Each experience that I reanalyzed through my optimistic lens made me realize that my life wasn’t awful, in fact, it was pretty fantastic. Everything that I decided I wanted, I got. If I committed fully to a dream, I made it happen. I had supportive parents, a small but amazing group of friends, and skills that although sometimes seemingly less than useful, at least made me happy.  I sat down and wrote a bucket list of sorts.  This bucket list is now clothes pinned to the lamps in my room, and as I complete the items, I’ll take them down and…well, I haven’t really decided what to do with them after that, but I’ll figure something out.  I took some pictures of the lamps, even though my camera is probably going on 10 years old and you have to stand completely still while you hold a button down for what seems like an eternity, so often the photos are less than crisp.  This project isn’t the fanciest or most well executed, but I think it’s still pretty cute. In case you’re interested, I got the paper and clothespins at the Dollar Store. I think the paper was for a birthday, or something, except that it consists of cupcakes, cakes, birthday presents, balloons, happy birthday signs, and…lady bugs? I’m not sure what lady bugs have to do with birthdays, but the paper was cheap, so I can’t complain. Anyway, enough rambling, on with the photos:

As you can see, some of the items are simply reminders to me, like "Breathe" and "Don't second guess yourself".  Pardon the headbands, but I've never found a better place to store them.

   Although it may appear that I have the room of a twelve year old, I really am in my 20's. 

There you have it, nothing particularly special, but having something tangible to remind me of my goals will hopefully keep me focused, even if many of them are for the future. 

Bucket List:

1. Start a blog- Done!