At Elizabeth’s housewarming party in Oakland, Bridget and I did that thing where you meet someone and skip all the small talk because you just “click”; we talked about God and the minefield that is dating at our age – the real stuff. In the dusk, I pulled her out to the front lawn because I wanted to take her photo for my Faces project.

Ladies of the Bay area, she is single, rad, and clearly beautiful. You should date her. Look for the gal doing “the Elaine” in her OKCupid profile photos.

Lands’ End gave these to Camp Mighty attendees, and I love mine. It goes everywhere (except fancy dinners.) photo from JetKat

Medium Colored Open Top Tote Bag, $32.50

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Made of recycled rice bags, and the money from the sale of this goes to survivors of sex-trafficking in India and Cambodia. Good if you, like me, have a teeny bathroom, and no where to hide the makeup bag.

Fruit Cosmetic Case, $25

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It’s… stuff. Like clay, that you use to put on stuff to protect it… um… just watch the video, and then you will realize you do actually need this.

Sugru, $18 – $20

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This is simple, functional, good looking, and will last a long time.

Continental zip wallet, $128

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This is the blanket to get if you need one. Snug and cute!

Faribault Woolen Mill Co. SoHo Throw, $130

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Stripety flannel sheet goodness at an insanely low price. Yes.

Flannel Sheet Set, $25

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Drying the dishes is a tiny bit less miserable of a chore with these cheery dishcloths. I can vouch for these; they last for-EVVVVVVER.
Williams-Sonoma Contrast Stripe Dishcloths, Set of 4, $10

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I’m a life long Yankee, but these sweet tea glasses are charming!

Red Sweet Tea Glasses, $6

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Instead of using boring clear tape to stick your lunch bag closed or pin up a love note, you can use this happy tape instead. I love this for a stocking stuffer!

Happy Tape, $3.50 – $4.50 each

So, we’ve landed in Park Slope after a very self-sufficient move. In addition to going DIY with the painting, we packed everything ourselves* and then ran some of the boxes of stuff over to the new place and unpacked them in the weeks before the Big Moving Day with the Movers. These small chunks of moving were not only sanity-preservers, they made everything way cheaper: our by-the-hour rate movers had finished everything in just under three hours, including the drive over to the new place. Even they were stunned. Rob and I celebrated with a high-five.

One of the things we did early was put our bookshelves in the empty apartment and fill them.  By “we” I mean Eric.  The wall they are on is drywall over brick, and I said to Rob, “There is no way we are tackling this ourselves.

If you ask nicely he’ll wear his tool belt while working (you know, for the ladies who are into that sort of thing) and he gives a discount if he can bring his dog.

Thanks, Eric!

It doesn’t feel like home yet, and I wonder if it ever will. It’s very small here, and it’s clear that we will have to move eventually. Not just because of the space issue, either; the landlord actually told our real estate agent, “Three dogs is no problem, but NO KIDS!” It’s quite nice for now, though.

Stu! came over Saturday with champagne and cupcakes to celebrate the new place, and we spent the afternoon with me shirking unpacking responsibilities to show off the new neighborhood and slowly but surely convince her to become my cup-of-sugar neighbor.

Thank you to Effed In Park Slope for the Twitter welcome! This 4-part-series of videos they did of the local Target explains, to a level I don’t have the ability to blog about, why I feel like I’m descending into the seventh ring of Hell when I go.

*Apparently the really rich people leave their homes and go away for a few weeks and people come and pack them up and move them. Then they come back from vacation to a newly set up home somewhere else!

It’s one of those things that I can point to in defense of my friendships when people say, “Internet friends cannot possibly be ‘real friends’”. Of course, I’ve met in person just about everyone who is participating in “Flower Friday” today, but we connected via the internet.

Twitter is difficult to justify to people who don’t get it and think it’s stupid (and, granted, it’s difficult to use if you don’t know anyone else on it), but it’s things like “Flower Friday” that make it fun. Nicole is mastermind of many awesome, creative things, and started this as a quirky tribute to our friend Sarah.

If you’re on Twitter and want to participate, go to FlowerFriday.com for more information, and download the flower to put on your own avatar. It’s fun!

Happy weekend.

Christmas Day 2007. Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Puerto Rico. It’s me and Rob, Rob’s parents and his brother and sister in law. Rob gets up to go to the bathroom, and Russ, Rob’s brother, calls the waiter over. “It’s my brother’s birthday today,” he says, “so do you think I could have the waiters bring dessert with a candle in it and have them sing?”

The largest slice of cake any of us has ever seen arrives with a steak knife stabbed through it and a birthday candle in it. A group of waiters crowds around our table singing “Happy Birthday” at the top of their lungs, and everyone at the table joins in while Rob, whose birthday is in October, shakes his head and laughs.

This year, we were one night into our vacation when Rob got his brother back. We sang Happy Birthday to Russ on the outdoor patio of a seafood restaurant, and a year long score was settled. Russ, who was born in August, glared over his “birthday” candle and smirked, and we all knew it was war.

Night two was Rob’s “birthday”, of course, orchestrated by Russ again, and I assumed that was the end; they’d each gotten each other once this year. On night three, I had NO clue. None. Russ said afterwards that I looked like was “three minutes from peeing myself” because I was laughing so hard I started to cry and could barely pull it together long enough to blow out my candle. Even better, the enthusiastic waiters finished “Happy Birthday” and did a second verse in Spanish: Feliz Cumpleanos. I’m keeping the candle forever.

This is the family I married into.

I take a sweatshirt everywhere. Everywhere. Even in 90 degree heat when I know I’m going to be wandering around New York City all day, off and on the 115 degree subway, I bring a sweatshirt. Most of the time I end up never putting it on and have to carry it all over the city getting stopped by strangers who point out that I’ve been dragging it on the sidewalk for the past five blocks. You’d think I’d learn to take a minute before I leave to gauge the weather and determine if a sweatshirt is necessary, but I don’t. Either way, though, I figure, “Of course it’s necessary because I might spend five minutes in a store that has the air conditioning on, and I might get slightly cold.” And that would be totally unacceptable.

One would figure, then, that when going to Canada in mid-September I’d be sure to have plenty of sweatshirts packed, but no. I don’t know what sort of head-up-my-ass thought process I had going on while I was packing, but I managed to get all the way to the United States border before I realized, hey! I don’t have anything warmer than a long sleeved tee shirt with me.

oops.

An afternoon of shopping didn’t really yield anything more than a men’s brown zip up hoodie from H&M which I bought but don’t really like. There’s nothing in the stores that appeals to me, and I’m pretty bummed out about it. For the ladies, they seem to have an over-abundance of wrap sweaters which make me look like I’m wearing my dad’s bath robe, and cropped sweaters that don’t do anything for people who want to be warm. I doubt I’ll be doing much serious fall shopping this year; the over all trend seems to be “ugly”.

But for now, I’m warm in Canada.

Ok, the bright flag was a bit much to leave up for several days.

I leave you with an excellent coke commercial.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKGw_KYH63k&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

via

Yesterday, Amy Atlas Events showed up on almost all of the design blogs I read, and I am super excited to share her with you. I will be drawing inspiration from her portfolio for my own parties for a long while. She is an event planner in New York City, and her specialty is creating fabulous dessert tables. I love how she gravitates toward monochromatic themes. Grouping together large numbers of things in the same color, even if those things are quite inexpensive, makes a rich visual impact. She illustrates this beautifully. The photography is quite lovely, too!

This video was posted over at A Cup of Tea and a Wheat Penny, and I’ve visited her blog several times this week to hear the song, which almost sounds like something Jen and I would have listened to in high school, driving around in her blue Volvo.  I like the animation of this video, too.  It reminds me of 60′s television Christmas specials, which I like very much.

Happy weekend!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE&hl=en&fs=1]

Currently attempting to go back into PR. I’ve been sitting at my computer kind of drooling into it as opposed to actually working. It’s difficult to get my gears going again. I think once I find a “groove” it will be ok.

Also, I have to talk about something kind of “geeky”. Ever since the now out-of-blogging “Rockstar Mommy” posted her lament about having “such a stupid blogging name”, but being stuck with it, I’ve been thinking about my own. At the time I was blogging under my first and last name, and quickly realized that I do NOT want to do that, for a handful of reasons. So I started calling my blog “The Amber Show”, which is narcissistic of course, but then, so is blogging itself. When I started blogging, and even when I changed my blogging name, the only “online presence” I had was this blog. Then I got a Flickr account for photography and named that “the amber show”, and then Rob got me into Twitter, and so on and so on. In the meantime, I started (and never stuck with) not one, but TWO different makeup companies, both with their own URLs.

In the middle of all this, I thought about how easy it would be to have one consistent name all over the internet, and apparently other people have thought so, too. This concept is called “personal branding”, a name that lots of people hear and instantly clench their sphincters over. It’s kind of accurate, though. I’m not selling something, but I do have a message that I’d like to share. Yes, it’s self-centered and yes there are a lot of retarded people yammering on the internet, and yes, I’m aware that I very well could be counted among them. But the internet is a really, really big place, and I can have whatever piece of it I want, no apology necessary. And I want a piece. I have a message. It’s not a super-important one, but if I’m going to say anything worth my putting in print, I want it to as far-flung as I can get it. I don’t want it to be watered down because I’m blogging as one thing, my name is another, and my twitter account doesn’t match either of those things.

I would stick wtih “The Amber Show” (as stupid as it is) if theambershow dot com wasn’t taken. But it is, and that’s ok; I think it’s time to get a real name anyway.

I’m just trying to think of one.