Grab a Cup-o-Jo

We've got some cathcing up to do!

Since the 22nd I have been in Minnesota with family and friends. Thus far I went to my friend Cate's baby shower, visited with Eleise, Amy, Alyssa, and Andrea. I have spent quality family time with Mom, Dad, Grandma, and my favorite aunts. Christmas was enjoyed at my Aunt Lisa's home, which was full of Christmas treats and mushroomy-Minnesota hot dishes!

Later in the week, I made Mom and Dad Verne's garlicky-pasta dish; I went thrifting with Grandma where I picked up some cute earrings, jeans, and sassy tops; I obtained additional bargains at Mom's store, including a pair of kickin' black boots! I sunk my teeth into the best Pumkin bread ever made by my cute 90-year-old Grandma.


Time has also been spent making two pairs of earrings, reading a juicy novel, and enjoying breakfast at the Bad Waitress on Nicollet, Nina's on Selby, and my fav... Mom's kitchen for the most delicious biscuits and gravy! Other eating hot spots I have frequented here in Minnie include the Uptown Bar & Grill for a Rueben with Alyssa; Tortellini soup with Amy at Damico & Sons; and some yum Chinese at Relax on Eat Street with Foxy E. I also got a chance to see the Frida Khalo exhibit at the Walker and boogied to Dave Pirner and The Volunteers at The Cabooze on the West Bank.

Can you tell I am enjoying my vacation time away from giftware?

Oh, and of course, I have snapped many photos and look forward to sharing them on this blog in the months to come....

Until then...

Can I take your blog order?

Frozen

I'm too cold to blog! I'm freezing in Minnesota! It's been snowing here on and off for days...
Yeah, sure it's pretty...but I'm a girl that prefers lush greenery to deceiving sparkly snowflakes.

Poetry addiction and my new BF

And yes, another poem...(sorry the winter makes me emotional)....

Do we give to get in return? Or do we give to feel good and don’t worry about getting burned?
Do we love to get love? Or love, love, love, and don’t worry about love in return?
I give and give and give. It feels good and love myself for the return.
Sometimes though it would be good to not always rely on one that is I for the return.

And onto the boyfriend portion of this post,
Val Emmich is incredibly talented and seriously, so nauseating cute! He makes me weak in the knees. Check his music out and his adorable stint as coffee boy on 30 Rock.

Style Icon

So I have been reading the lists of worst and best of 2007 and I have come upon someone saying that Cameron Diaz' 2007 Golden Globes dress is a worst. I remember at the time of the event others just bashing the dress as well and I kept thinking are you people blind?


This dress is amazing and completely represents the personality of which I think Cameron D. is: a quirky, confident, beautiful woman. She looks amazing and she takes risks; those two qualities alone equal a style icon!

This dress is so couture and glam and different. I love love love! In my book, I think Cameron D. has some of the best fashion sense in Hollywood..

Thanks for the inspiration Cam...and um, sorry that I'm the next to date the Timberlake.

Hope for Spring

Thanks to Darling E, I have discovered this lovely little poem. Enjoy!

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

“We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,”
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.

- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

So Darling!

This is my grandma. She is 90.
She lives by herself and keeps a beautiful home. She has so many visitors. She cooks for herself! She's nearly blind and has some aches and pains, but does she complain? Nope not at all. She's headstrong, smart, and quite funny. Oh, and she's SO SO CUTE! I love her. She is my thrift store diva partner. My cute Grandma.

December 7, 8 & 9

Highlights for the weekend of Dec 7, 8, & 9...

Visited Mingo in her cube one last time on her last day at the office.
Ate a cheeseburger, and enjoyed many cocktails as I said goodbye to Mingo at Redfish
Got to see Ms. Camri, and of course Miss. manicured Jen!
Laughed my arse off at Elm St. Liquors for dancing.
Woke the next morning a little groggy, but rested.
Picked up a bagel and coffee and heard kind words from my SUPER cute coffee crush.
Enjoyed my coffee while blogging about my new grinch name: Frownyfrown Wickedham.

Made delish truffles, sprinkled with hot pink cookie glitter—all for the cookie exchange!

Attended the party at Leigh and Ryan's beautiful home!
Laughed even more with Mandy, Leigh, Ryan, Kris, cute boys, and new friends.

Snapped shots of cute Mandy and Kris.

Learned how to play a Hanukkah holiday game and enjoyed eating the game pieces.
Awoke the next morning to a very annoying cat that loves to hollow and destroy any paper, fabric, and shoes in her line of fire.

After being awoken a third time, instead of feeding the annoying creature, I locked her in the kitchen with my cool kitchen door!
Got googly again while smiling at coffee crush.

Just now noticed a funky pink restaurant I must have walked past 100 times before.
Surprised Amy and Marshall with truffles. Wished her luck in her new adventure.
Stopped by Jen and Andy's to see their pretty Christmas tree.
Picked up MORE cat food for what seems to be starving animal.
Made salad, crab-stuffed flounder, and mac and cheese for dinner.
Watched a silly movie while snuggling with the cat between her food breaks.

And, of course, continued to keep my grinch chin up.

FrownyFrown Wickedham

So I am a holiday grinch. Frownyfrown Wickedham, I found out through a very important website, is my official grinch name. In the past week I have thought about changing my attitude toward Christmas and embracing the season. I thought I need to turn my holiday frown upside down! Be happy, dress Honey up like an elf, bake some holiday cookies, sing some holiday songs! But now that I have one of the COOLEST grinch names ever I am afraid, for the sake of being able to call myself Frownyfrown Wickedham, I'm just going to have go on about being a bitchy old bitter Christmas grinch!

But darn it all I do have to make some holiday cookies for my cookie exchange party tonight.... hmmmm sugar treats, that is kind of a fun thing about the holidays! I'll be making my special truffles, a holiday recipe from Mingo of course!

GREAT RECIPES!

While I have no real holiday photos on hand to make everyone smile, I do have this great pic of one of my fav dinners from last week...this special ancient recipe was found centuries ago written in the sand on the beach in a small Indonesian town....it is called catpowconraw. A dash of sea salt and a squeeze of lemon and viola, a feast for a Queen. Delish!

Yes I am a freak and it's so good to be here.

Already Missing Mingo

Today is Mingo's last day. I'm VERY happy for her; sad for me. I will miss her TONS. Mingo is my girl! We're very different but have become good friends and can always connect through two major things: cats and the color pink! And not only is Mingo a great friend, but an amazing designer; I have come to rely on her here at work! Her designs always and completely correspond to the visions in my head!

When I do the Gazette in the magazine Mingo is always the BEST designer. For the April 07 Gazette she made it soooo girly sweet... here's a look at the cover, first page, and a favorite photo page!


What will I do without Mingo here in the world of Giftware? Who knows...? But I do know we will remain to be good friends! She's a good girl, and way beyond making an article of mine look good, she has given me so much more... help in designing my new apartment (and pushing me to make the change!), great food recipes, advice on life, love, and clothing... the constant lending of her digital camera, great picnic lunches, silly pictures with large poster heads and, most important, lots of laughs!!! Congrats Miss. Mingo on your new adventure! I know you're only going to be two blocks away, but I am going to miss you so much!! xoxo

Love Love!

I will admit this out loud: I am a Jennifer Love Hewitt fan. If I have no plans on a Friday, I will get home by 7:00 for the Ghost Whisperer. I will tell co-workers I love Love. I have made peace with Love portraying the un-portrayable Audrey Hepburn in the made for television movie, The Audrey Hepburn Story.

Her entrance as Amanda Beckett in the movie Can't Hardly Wait—cue slow-mo special-affect with the Sneaker Pimps' 6 Underground bellowing in the back—was classic.

Her movie, Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber was cheesy-bad! I own it and have seen it more than once. I forgive her for making me cringe in the past (and, I'm sure will in the future) when she is making a giddy fool of herself on late night talk shows. She's nervous, immature, giggly, vomity perky, and, a little embarrassing—I think it's adorable because it's absolutely real! She's not playing a part, she is not censoring herself, or making it seem she is something she is not, she's just being herself. And once again Love has proved again how real she is...

If you're an Internet junky as I, you no doubt have seen the latest Hewitt headlines... they go something like this "Hewitt Fights back after Bikini Insults." Or my favorite headline, from a London online journal, 'I love my body': Jennifer Love Hewitt attacks Hollywood's Size Zero obsession.

The thing is Love is, by Hollywood's standards, considered fleshier than she should be....But, in my book, I think she's still super skinny! And looks amazing! Women should have curves for goodness sakes.

So, as a Jennifer Love Hewitt fan and a big believer in the curvier woman, it seemed quite appropriate to sit down with a box of chocolate macaroons and write a little blog dedicated to Love and her curves. As she's noted in her backlash at the photogs that snapped the intrusive pics, if anything comes of this, hopefully it's that young women that may not be too happy with their bodies can see it's normal to be a bit curvy, normal and beautiful.

Without sounding too "you go girl"... well, um, you go girl.

Negative Nelly

So I don't like Christmas—at all. It's a boring, cold, and miserable holiday. Do I sound like Scrooge? Yes I do and Jimmy-Crack-Corn I don't care. I am just being honest. Christmas is phony to me... you pretend you're happy...you pretend you're best friends with your family, even though you barely speak the rest of the year (my cute parents excluded), you pretend you don't notice the commercialism, you pretend you don't notice the war, poverty, abuse of everything....you pretend you don't notice how absolutely freezing cold it is outside and you pretend you don't notice all the winter weight you're gaining...

I am a Negative Nelly and I feel quite positive about that.. I guess just because that term is so cute to me! Okay so I will turn this Christmas frown upside down... what do I like about this time of year? Because there has to be something, right!!?? Well I do LOVE getting presents and I love giving presents just the same...I wish I had more people in my life to give to...and children. Kids are fun this time of year and I know not a one.

I like the Christmas songs "You're a Mean One Mister Grinch" and "Christmas-Christmas" by the renowned Alvin and the Chipmunks.... I like the movie the Christmas Story and I really love Han's Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl....and the girl even dies at the end of the story! Now that is a Christmas play for this Negative Nelly—forget It's a Wonderful Life, Han's Christian knows how to rock it! I mean just look at the original Little Mermaid story...it's beautifully tragic.

Illustration by Odessa11
So I remember, during one holiday season when I was about 10-years-old, going to the Children's Theater on a class trip for the play The Little Match Girl. I was mesmerized. Here's this little girl, so poor and poorly dressed—she has bare feet in December! She is forced to sell matches on the street and scared to go home because her father beats her and to stay warm she must strike her matches. This is when the magic begins... Upon the first match she has a small vision—a light flickering. Soon, with each strike, she begins to see a life she longs for, complete with a cooked goose, a decorated Christmas tree, candles, and, finally a vision of her smiling grandmother—the only person who has ever loved the Little Match Girl. And with that last match, the Little Match Girl huddles in an alley, in the city, all the while Christmas shoppers past her by, and she dies! It's SO sad, but so telling.

I guess with my own Negative Nelly attitude and recollection of a favorite Christmas story, I suppose what I am saying is Christmas to me would be a lot nicer if we all would remember things like dying Little Match Girls.