Oscar Cake

Whew! What a day. The Oscar party at work was absolutely crazy and awesome. The mother of one of our staff is an amazing cake maker and she made us this awesome Oscar cake.

Isn't it neat? Now I am going to bed. I am exhausted. Good night.

Oscar madness!

That really is what it's been at work lately- madness. Every year the theater I work at throws a big Oscar party. We sell every seat with seating arrangements. With your twenty-five dollar ticket (or thirty for a table) you get aballot to guess the winners win a theater gift card, a mock presenter bag with coupons from local businesses, a special champagne glass- filled with champagne, of course!- and dessert. We also have a photographer out to take photos.

Everyone, including us on staff, dress up. It's a lot of fun but it is SO. CRAZY. Years past we've only done one theater, so about 250 people, but this year we sold out both theaters, so altogether there will be around 400 people in our small theater. Yikes!!

Happy Kids has a whole mess of awesome Oscary stuff going on this weekend, including an Oscar hop! Meg's also got twitter and instagram parties planned, plus a martini recipe using cuties- yum!

I've never really paid much attention to the Oscars in years past, but working at the Vine really put it on my radar, and I see the appeal of having a party at home, too. There's a lot of Oscar party ideas out there that I'd love to try some day!

cute movie-themed wine charms | etsy

Jessica Jones at How About Orange always shares her Oscar bingo cards every year.
Bakerella made some AMAZING Oscar statuette cookies a couple years ago.
Amy Butler's blog has a super cute bunch of DIY Oscar-themed favors.
And of course, a quick Pinterest search yields a ton of prinables!
Ty at Know and Tell Crafts had a clever idea to use 35mm film as a ring around an LED tealight- cute and movie-tastic!

I could keep going, keep searching... because there are so many ideas out there. Alas, I have to go shopping... terrible, I know! Gotta get a dress for work tomorrow. I'll be watching the ceremony tivo'd at my mom's on Monday. Are you watching/celebrating the Oscars at all this year? Who's your pick for best picture?

Hoppin blogs again

Linking up again with the Happy Kids Bloglovin blog hop again!

I have not been a good crafter and have nothing new to share because we have been watching way too much tv... specifically Once Upon a Time! We finished season one last night on Netflix and started season two on Hulu Plus. If you haven't seen it, and you like fairy tales, check it out! Or maybe don't, if you enjoy your free time.

Off to work! Tonight is classics night, but it won't be busy. My boss thought Annie Hall would be a good pick, but apparently our patrons don't agree. Happy Thursday, everyone!

Bloglovin' Blog hop!

Just jumped onto the fifth iteration of Happy Kids' Bloglovin' Blog hop! First blog hop for me, hooray!

I have to rush off to work in a few minutes. I found the hop just in time! I'm looking forward to exploring fellow hopers' blogs after closing tonight!

Valentines: delicious on paper

Hope you had a good one! I decided not to give chocolate this year, which is a weird first for me. This holiday has always been about chocolate for my family, and every year we gave each other little tasty gifts. I had a sudden inspiration for chocolate cards a few days ago, though, and they turned out pretty cute!

I just used a circle punch and a slightly larger scalloped circle punch and glued them together! I already had some blank red cards and envelopes from another project. Easy as chocolate pie.

The details on the chocolates were a bit tricky. I used my Xyron 1.5" sticker maker and it felt like cheating, but glueing those tiny bits of paper would have been a sticky nightmare. I think the cards would have been perfectly fine plain, too. Brown or clear glitter might also look nice, but I kind of hate glitter (sorry) so I don't have any.

For my little brother's card I cut out a "chocolate" heart and let the scalloped circle punch take a bite. Simple but effective.

Hope you had a delicious holiday! All this chocolate talk is making me hungry, and while I did not give chocolate, I did receive some. Bon appetit!

Happy Caturday!

This is Jango (or Django, if you ask my brother- named after the original spaghetti western, not the Tarantino flick).

My mom adopted him last August to keep Groucho company. He is one of the sweetest cats I have ever met. He starts purring literally when you pick him up. Look at those huge eyes and tell me you don't feel the love!

Hope you have a chance to pet a cat today!

Back to blogging + the possiblity of ADHD

So it turns out that NaBloWriMo maybe wasn't the best idea for me. It burned me out... again. It wasn't the only reason I abandoned poppyrocket, but it was definitely a factor. I'm ready to give it another go!

I don't have any projects to share right now, and it'll take me a bit of time to get into the swing of things, but I'm itching to get going! I've been in kind of a post-Christmas creative slump lately. My craft space is an appalling mess. While I am not a neat person and it will never be ever be even halfway to Martha, it has become bad enough to deter me from even thinking about starting to try to organize it.

Another thing going on in my life right now is the discovery that I might have inattentive ADHD a lot worse than I previously thought. I have not been officially diagnosed by a licensed professional, and I know there is generally a lot of danger in self-diagnoses, but bear with me! I found an article via Pinterest about women who "don't let ADHD get in the way." It linked to the website for ADDitude, a magazine for and about ADHD folks. I found several articles specifically about ADHD and women, and so much of it rang true: easily distracted, forgetfulness, difficulty focusing on a specific task, anxiety, et cetera- with increased symptoms around menstruation. The past year or so I've REALLY been absent minded, and it's affected my performance at work. And often I find myself unable to start a single task when I have many to do because I can't settle on one- I just bounce around between them until I'm out of time and nothing is accomplished.

 I had been chalking all of this up to a few factors- losing my dad a few years ago, belonging to the multi-tasking generation, and thinking I had some mild ADD symptoms. But reading the ADDitude articles really clicked. I felt such a sense of relief- that there was a reason behind my behavior, and I wasn't just crazy and detrimentally forgetful- I started crying (and heck, I'm teary now thinking about it again!). I think it's really gotten worse in the past year or two because my schedule is all over the place, all the time. When I was in school and in AmeriCorps my schedule was the same every week, and that structure helped me manage my symptoms unknowingly.

Again, I am diagnosing myself. I really want to go see a doctor, my health insurance right now is essentially catastrophic, and I can't really afford just a trip to the doctor at the moment. But when Wes and I get married I'll jump on his much better insurance and make an appointment post haste.

Whew! I forgot how cathartic writing can be. I feel refreshed and ready to tackle something! I think I'll start with some laundry.

EEK