Thoughts on the New Year: Motivation

One of my goals in the new year is to find motivation and not get stuck in lazy slumps.

I greatly dislike when I get to a particularly busy part of the term and think "Why didn't I do all of this earlier? Was I too busy?" and proceed to realize I had just been being lazy up til then.

So this year I hope to fix that, with better scheduling, planning and use of my time.

This winter term in particular is going to be a good challenge of that. This will be the first show I have Technical Directed at this school and I am swamped with organizational whatsits at the moment. Everywhere I turn there are schedules, budgets, materials lists, drafts.

 So if I can keep that up- and add a bit of that organization to my real life, in school and out of it, I'll be golden. I hope that if things are all laid out for me, the motivation will come naturally. Things are so much more appealing if they are easy, right?


I've got a secret too, the Mellow Fellow secret of getting things done. That will be my first post of the new year though. :)

I hope your year has been lovely,
La Mer.

Thoughts on the New Year: Insperation

With the year coming to an end I thought a bit of reflection and thoughts for the new year would be in order.

I've always had quite a bit of frustration with inspiration. I find I go through quite a lot of it in my life, and sometimes replenishing that store is not as easy as I would like.

There are little things all over the place that bring me joy and remind me about the beauty that can be found in the strangest of places. Come to think of it I waxed a bit a few months ago on that exact subject.

What frustrates me more is of course, any time I want inspiration right now. When I'm sitting in front of a blank page, ready to go and draw a blank. I is this moment that scares me most when I think of going into some sort of creative field.

I've always planned on doing something creative, whether it be painting, sculpture, teaching art or design. The original plan was to focus on art, but I worried about losing focus and the frustration that may come as a of lacking inspiration.

I ended up in theater, designing and constructing sets, a task I've found to be a good compromise of sculpture and a large chunk of logic. The logic keeps me sane and the challenge of being asked to design something with certain parameters can be a wonderful challenge.

The trouble I have been running into is this; the creative demands of set design tend to be spread out, and technical direction requires a fair bit of creative thinking but not direct creativity.

Now the point to all this, because there must be one somewhere, is that I've been hunting for ways to augment the creative demands I am put under through school. A few things I've been up to have been...

-Crafting, which can be found for sale on my Etsy, as well as a local shop Three Penny Mercantile.
-Decorating the ever fluctuating house, and perfecting my new bedroom.
- Painting a bit, when I have the time.

Things I hope to spend time doing in the future...
-Expand my crafting. I hope to soon obtain a shop in the local Artisan's Emporium.
-Continue painting. More often, more subjects.
-Get back graffiti. I'd done some stickering a few months ago, but I'd like to experiment with wheat pasting as well.
-Of course continue organizing and decorating my home.



Hopefully these things, keeping organized, doing art and the like will keep me inspired. I am looking forward to getting a start on all this creativity!

Do you have any plans for the new year? Maybe some excellent projects to work on...

-La Mer

Forgetfulness and Crayons

I'm forgetful and keep not taking enough instagram pictures. Today was a lovely day, but I've only got one picture in addition to my words to tell you about it.

Delightful doodles.

This morning I met up with a few friends from high school. We chatted over coffee and afterwards perused some of the near by consignment shops. I didn't come across any wonderful finds today, but my friend purchaced a wonderful New Years dress, full of sparkle.

As we wandered back towards our bicycles we caught a whiff of American Dream (some of the most fantastic pizza in the world) and were compelled (quite literally) to pop in for a slice. We chose one of the tables with paper on it so we could doodle. We ended up with some lovely dragons, whales, pregnant kangaroos with pockets and snails.

In the end I did find a few purchases at goodwill, all for my upcoming New Years Eve costume. Perhaps this time I'll make sure to document a costume before, and not after the party.

Ta,

La Mer

Button Box

I'm quite a fan of buttons, in fact I have these three boxes full of em.
I got these boxes last summer at a garage sale, and I was thoroughly excited as I'd been wanting to add to the few I had floating around my trinket jars.

Excuse the coffee stains.

They are, of course, organized quite well by color.

White, clear, black, grey and metallic for the first.

Brown, blue and green for the next.

And lastly red, pink, yellow, orange and purple.

What do I do with all of these buttons? There have been various projects here and there that I've failed to document. The longer lasting of those being my phone case, which I encrusted with many a button. (I stripped them all off this past week as they were chipping, and rather bulky.)

But my primary project with these buttons has been making hair clips.

A few I put together so far over break.

I could say oodles about these hair clips, and since that is the case I think I'll hold off until another post to go further into them. But you know, if you're really interested you should just pop over to my Etsy and have a look.

In the days of living with parents there was always the awesome button jar sitting above the laundry room sink, full of a wonderful collection of vintage, replacement and odd buttons

I'ts got many lovely treasures.

Do you have a button collection? What all have you made with them?

La Mer

Its a pug's life.

Comfy Cozy Finals Week.

I've got something exciting planned. And I'm excited for it. Are you excited?
But since I had this exciting idea in the begining of finals week, and don't actually have time to start it (other than the half a post I already wrote this morning), here is my outfit in the mean time.

Its cold lately, and I'm lazy. The past three-ish days have been compiled of moving (more to come later) and doing homework, so comfy/warm clothes have been the thing to wear.

So here are some comfy cozy things I decided to wear today.

Blazer- Goodwill. Part of an awesome skirtsuit set.

Sweater- Passed on from Ginger last night at the laundromat.

Skirt- An awesome flouncy thing I probably got at some second hand store somewhere.

Boots- The infamous Riker boots.

Hat- My most favorite shirt sleeve beenie. I've been wearing it non stop for like a week. My bald little head gets cold!

Jewelry- A leathery/pearly thing from a clothing swap party. A goddess from OCF and my "Super Beekeeper" pin- from a childhood board game.
Nails- Its been done before. Both ORLY colors. Minty tips with a gold ring finger.

I hope you're keeping cozy and warm, and surviving finals if you've got them.
Le Mer.

Baldy Heads

So this bald head I'm sporting. Let me tell you a bit about it.

I first shaved my head about four years ago, in high school. I'd had some crazy hair styles before, dyed all sorts of colors, been long, been short, but never shaved.
At the time I had about shoulder length hair with a bad dark purply brown dye job. My mother and I were discussing what I should do next and she jokingly said "Why not just shave it all of?" So, thats what we did. We shaved it all off fairly short, then she and my father went off to do some errands. While she was gone, I found a small patch of long hairs that needed to be trimmed and pulled out the clippers once more. Unfortunately I forgot to put the guard back on the clippers and shaved two beautiful bald patches on the side of my head. My mom added a mohawk to try and hide it a bit, but my glorious friends made sure it was quite visible.

 You'd think I'd have learned my lesson from this mistake, but it seems at least half of the times I've shaved my head I've shaved some accidental bald spots.

From this point on I've shaved my head about once a year. It takes me one year to get from shaved to shoulder length hair, and shoulder length is about the longest I can stand before stray hairs drive me crazy (I've got a pet peeve about shedding head hairs.)

From my first choice to shave my head, as you can see I have no big motive or huge meaning behind my shaved head. I'm not raising money for cancer, I have no illness. I just like short hair. Is that too much to ask? I get frustrated about it sometimes. Mostly because when people ask me why I shave my head, they usually don't accept that answer.

 I've learned to shave my head around some sort of excuse or reason. Two years ago I waited until "Crazy Hair Day" at the summer camp I work at, where I shaved half of my head, for a crazy do. 

This year I waited until Halloween, and was Evey Hammond. Very sadly, I have no picture. But here is the mask I carried around with me!

I also wore a navy trench coat and carried a red rose. There was a bit of makeup involved to make my eyes more blood shot and tired looking.

The other excitement of this head shaving was, as seen in my previous post, I attended a Marine Corps Ball, two days after Halloween.

We figured there were two people with shorter hair then me, and they were the two who were fully shiny bald!

And there ya have it. My lovely bald head.
-La Mer

Seattle and there abouts.

I've been trying to figure a blog post to write. Something other than, this is what I wore today, and finally I remembered I can tell the world (who doesn't actually read this blog) about my adventures in the previous weekend. 

The premise of this trip up north was to attend a ball, celebrating the 237th birthday of the Marine Corps, to which my significant other is currently part of. It required bribing friends, Amtrak, Greyhound, ferries, sleeping on friend's floors and figuring out how to ride in a taxi, but I do believe it was quite worth it. 

I woke up at some ungodly hour (no god I know gets up that early, not that I know many gods.) And a very handy friend who I owe many favors to gave me a ride to Klamath Falls to the Amtrak station. The ride up was so comfortable and the first hour was filled with beautiful views of Mt. McLaughlin. 

I drank some coffee, watched some movies and ate a decent lunch in the dining car. Finally got into Seattle at around 9 where I spent the night at another wonderful friend's apartment. 

In the morning it was across the sound on a ferry to meet up with my favorite person in the world.

The ball itself was later that night, so let me tell you about what I wore.

I bought a fancy shmancy dress. There was a bit of research as to what sort of dress to wear. There are some handy blogs out there that will tell you exactly what to wear, or more often then not, what not to wear. Too shiny, too much skin, not floor length, that kind of thing. One thing highly suggested to those worried about color (and egads to I ever worry about color) was to choose a dress that would match the dress blues (navy, black, white or maroon). I ended up finding a lovely navy blue dress at a consignment store, and my mother tracked down some beautiful shoes on Etsy that she ordered for me. 

The dress is One Clothing and the shoes Garolini

I also wore a vintage, black, velvet cape that I believe used to be my Grandmother's. 

By the way, I had hair when purchasing the dress, I wont in future pictures. But that's for another post. 

The ball itself was lots of introductions, smiling and nodding, standing up and sitting down. To counteract this odd combination of things I began to analyze people's handshakes. Primarily the men's that is. I could sadly predict the conclusion of analyzing women's handshakes before hand (ah ha.. ha... Sorry.)  So for men I broke it down into three categories, which surprisingly came out fairly even in results. Good, strong handshakes, decent, medium pressure handshakes, and the unfortunate "you're a woman so I won't bother putting any effort into this" really weak, floppy handshake. As before stated, they came out about even with one third of the handshakes I received being each type. 

Now the obligatory cute pictures.

It was a pretty good deal. 

The following two days were full of adventures, a major city for each. Saturday we spent poking about Seattle, primarily the Seattle Art Museum. 

This was my favorite painting, unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the artist/title. 

We poked about an amazing little bookstore- Left Bank Books. I think I'm in love. I just want to live in their Gender/Sexuality section. Due to lack of money I bought no books, but this little patch couldn't help but follow me home. 

Sunday was spent in Portland (from where I was catching the Greyhound back home.) We went to Ikea. It was beautiful. I love Ikea. A lot. 

I didn't take many pictures. But I do have documentation of my father's favorite "Swedish Festive Drink" which is a soda flavored with hops, as well as the best product name in the world, the "Pugg".

Side note of distracted-ness. In the "Pugg" picture you can catch a glimpse of my nails. Navy blue with silver moons at the top. a repeat of something I did last month but with gold and a matte top coat.

Anywho, how was your weeknd?

-La Mer

Currently

I have been feeling obligated to write a blog post. There are things I could talk about that would follow a good theme, but I'm kind of too lazy at this point, so I'll do a lazy blog post.

Here is what is going on currently, in the life of Mer.

Listening To: The sweet crooning of a french accordian. I have once again broken out the Pink Martini pandora station, which ends up with lots of Edith Piaf and Ella Fitzgerald. It makes for some lovely, soothing morning and afternoons.

Creating: I made some new pins this morning. One usual flower and feather one, and a new one with some metal and beads. They will make their way on to my Etsy shop. 

Excited to: Go through and hang up the new clothes I picked up. I just got back from a clothing exchange party and need to go through my finds and see what needs to be mended or altered, also come up with some  possible outfits. 

Looking Forward to: My favorite person coming to visit in approximately three weeks! It will have been three months since I've seen him, and last time we only had an hour to spend together. This time I have a whole week of him to myself. If Nat King Cole has taught me anything it is that the greatest thing is just to love, and be loved in return. 

~Le Mer.

Carp.

So, other than being a random person who flits about doing random things, I'm also a carpenter. One could say that my primary future career of choice is being a carpenter. That is if you base my primary future career on my apparent major and what I spend the majority of my college time learning about. That basically means I really have no idea if I'll be a carpenter when I leave college, but it sure is an awesome skill set to have.

My summer has been broken down into four major chunks so far.
-Time spent at home with the puggies (and parents)
-Time spent at the country fair. Being a carpenter and a painter and all that joy.
-Time spent sitting on babies, getting money and all that joy.
-The newly started time spent working in the theater as more or less, a carpenter.

This last bit started on Tuesday. I have been doing some maintenance, organizing and all that good stuff. Today I spent four hours in the sun, plasma arc cutting a 20" chunk of steel framing into pick up bed sized chunks. Plasma arc cutting is fun. Pick up beds are fun. The rest wasn't. Did I mention it was leaking wasps? They made homes inside the framing and then got angry when I sprayed wasp killing foam at them, followed by burning their nests with plasma... arcs.

Anywho! This is what I wore to burn wasps. I tried to combine the kick ass carpenting clothes with the "Look, I'm a pretty girl with fluffy pink hair!" look. Plus, if you hadn't noticed, I've got pink laces with little stars on my Doc Martians (they're just out of this world.)

Cheers,

Le Mer

A package from home.

             My mother is quite lovely. Since leaving for college two and a smidge years ago (Egads has it really been that long?!) she has always sent me the most wonderful care packages. The reason I love her packages so much is they are filled with random trinkets and the most excellent bits and bobs. When I was visiting home last, I forgot my watch there, so today I received a package with the watch, a few other things I'd forgotten and lots of fun treasures. 

Handmade card, Allison Kraus and Union Station CD, O Brother Where Art Thou? DVD, Kinetic hand book, Kinetic trading cards, Pink ribbon, Trinkets, A postcard from a friend and my Watch.

A close up of the trinkets. Three different earring hooks, two pearls and a pendant. 

Also in the trinkets, a small barbie tea cup, that I affixed to a necklace.

I've tried when I send packages to present them similarly, with fun additions and pretty packaging. I think I've done a pretty good job thus far.

Le Mer. 

Oh hello there. 

Today I'd like to talk about inspiration.

Last night I was needing to write a 6 page paper about my passions in life, and I was lacking inspiration. I knew what my passions were and what inspired me in life, but I was having a hard time streamlining it into one paper. I had begun, typed one page that was all over the place talking about beautiful sunlight, inventing things and all kinds of other giberish when my computer froze. I restarted, lost everything. But in the long term it was okay, because a much better paper cam out of it. I ended up recounting the discoveries of some of my passions in the last ten years of my life. The latter part of the paper was primarily about what I find that inspires my life today. So let me share a bit of it with you.

"It is small beauties like these that make me happiest. Seeing a beautiful flower as I walk home from a long day at work brings a smile to my face that cannot be replaced by any television show or complex painting. There is a power in the simplest things of the world.  The things ignored in daily life. Few stop to look at the glimmering rock that has been trapped in the sidewalk. Not everyone sees the benefit of collecting bottle caps in a jar on your counter. I will pick up, or stop to inspect all kinds of things when I go for a walk. I find it wonderfully inspiring to find little forgotten treasures in the dirt. Little beauties nobody else bothers to notice. "

I would include more, but the paper still needs editing and I am too impatient to post this first. 

is a little addition though.

I am currently sitting in my favorite coffee shop. It is located not one block from my house, in my favorite neighborhood. The coffee is the best I have tasted in the world, and priced accordingly so I unfortunately do not come here as often as I would like. Here I love the tiny spoons they serve with the coffee. I love slowly scooping the beautifully swirling foam from my latte and savoring the burnt marshmellow flavor of the espresso mixing with milk. I love the small vases of  flowers they have on every table. Every time I come here they are slightly different, sometimes nothing more than a few beautiful blades of grass. Today they are small clippings from Raspberry bushes. These people, I tell you, understand the small beauties. 
The last few days I have been wishing I had fresh flowers in my house. Yesterday as I walked home I spied some weeds along the side of the road with beautiful golden flowers growing off of it. A plant so often disregarded as a nuisance and I had found a beautiful flower. I picked a handful and carried them home. Of course upon arriving home I became distracted, dumped the flowers on the table and came back hours later to find them completely wilted. But the point is still there, they were beautiful. I had chosen them when few others would have. 


And to end this post, here is what I wore today. I am a fall faerie. That leaf crown will be on etsy soon, by the way. 

EDIT: The crown I am wearing in this outfit can now be purchased on Etsy! 

La Mer.

Also...

Something I forgot to mention, I started an Etsy shop! I've been posting some little pins/brooches I've made along with some other miscellaneous things.

Le Mer.