Kardashian obsession

This picture will have to do. I was hoping to get a personal pic with my own camera! Stupid Borders screwed me over.

Let me start from the beginning. I secretly love "Keeping up with the Kardashians" ever since I caught Season 3 on Netflix. Khloe is my favorite. She's hilarious. The show won me over when in the car heading to county jail for Khloe's sentence, Kris asked, "Hey Khloe, if for some reason we have a bunch of time, do you want to go get breakfast?" Khloe just gave her this look like, "No, Mom. I have to go to jail!" I cracked up, because I can totally see my mom doing something like that.

I digress. Kim, Kourtney and Khloe were to appear at my local Borders today at 7. I got there at 4, figured I would study for awhile until they came. The place was nuts. There was a huge book signing line. People milled about. I found the table where they were to do the signing and plopped down near a bookcase. There were a row of seats near the table, which were of course already all taken.

I sat for maybe 10 minutes when the Borders people came and shooed us all away to make room for the paparazzi. Uhh, can't they find her outside of a Starbucks or any time? They have tipsters! We don't. What the hell. THEN they made everyone get off the chairs and said they were just moving them away from the table. Everyone reluctantly got up. They moved them about 4 or 5 ft away from the table, then put bookcases between the chair and signing table. RUDE.

They made it so we can't even get a glimpse of the table if we were not in the dang book signing line. People were still milling around and I heard someone say we were all eventually going to have to get in some kind of line. Dumb.

At this point, I decided to peace the heck out. I have been within a foot of Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore just walking around LA! No way I was going to put up with all this Borders BS. I'll probably have better luck running into them shopping.

Yes, that is my actual birthday cake. It says, "This is not turkey-shaped, Anh," in order to express Yves' disappointment that the man at Baskin-Robbins could not make a turkey shaped cake. She told him, "Make something a small girl, age 5-7 would like." Bonus, the HK heads are rings and the center is a bubble blower.

So what did I learn in the past year?

Learn people's names. I read it in "How to Win Friends..." It makes such a difference. The courthouse library where I worked could be alienating at times. I greeted my fellow externs by name and noticed little things about them. It changed everyone's attitude.

Don't get discouraged when you make mistakes. I was used to feedback on a piece of paper. A marked up essay, some plus and minuses to evaluate my work. It's much more difficult to receive face to face feedback or to feel like you've done something wrong. I always just carried that weird churning feeling inside, but you know, it's best to move forward. You mitigate the mistake, minimize its effects, and get on with your day.

Always read parking signs. Sometimes I feel like you have to be a lawyer to figure out all the parking restrictions, esp. when there are two signs stacked on top one another. Read them. Or if in doubt, when a street is particularly empty, you probably aren't allowed to park there. There is no such thing as abundant parking in L.A.

unicorn costume how-to

This is way overdue since it's no longer Halloween. Nancy is right. Posting things after Halloween means that no one cares since it's 11 months until the next Halloween and no one is scrambling to find a costume. I'm just going to do it anyway, so I can link to it next Halloween.

These are the pieces you'll need. Two ears, a horn and a headband with two prongs. Yves used wire we bought at Michael's to attach her horn to her forehead.

For the ears:

I used a piece of glitter foam, because it's sturdy enough to stand up on its own. I thought about using pipe cleaners and felt, but this was more convenient.

I freehanded ear shapes and cut out four ear pieces.

I glued the pieces back to back and wedged them into my headband.

For the horn:

I drew a triangle on a piece of cardstock. 6 inches tall and 4.5 inches at the base.

I rolled the triangle into a cone and stuffed it with newspaper to reinforce it.

Then I cut a strip of gold fabric to wrap around the the cone. The fabric is a little messy, because it used to be the belt to my Wonder Woman costume.

I used a combo of these two adhesives to get the fabric to stick.

This is the completed cone.

Remember to leave a strip of fabric at the end to attach it to your headband. I wrapped the fabric around the headband and tucked it back into the bottom of the cone and stapled the fabric to get it to stay.

completed headband:

For the hooves:

I just folded a piece of fabric into a small rectangle, about 5 inches long and secured it with liquid stitch. Then I wore it kind of like an arm warmer.

unicorn costume

I know I said I was going to turn this into a regular blog, but I really have nothing to post. I love Halloween but couldn't come up with anything creative this year. My friend suggested we go as unicorns. Too bad all the costumes we researched online involved 1) unitards or 2) babies. After an unsuccessful trip to a discount dance store, we decided just to wear regular clothes and make accessories. We made horns, ears, hooves and tails. Here's the result:

My friend's fauxhawk looked great. I was thinking more of a curly mane with ribbons. I bought some hair glitter and rhinestones to bling out my face and hair. I couldn't find the rhinestones I was supposed to go out! AND my glitter hairspray didn't work. Ugh.

I didn't do much makeup-wise. I had some pretty white ribbon that had a pinkish purple sheen to them, so I went off that. Here's a pic for now and I'll do a how-to soon.

environmental beauty tip: say no to microbeads

I'm not a big fan of exfoliants, but from time to time, I like the way the scrubs feel. I've buying cheap body soap with "microbeads," not paying attention to what this substance is. Microbeads are finely ground of pieces of petroleum-based polyethylene. They are actual plastic beads that I've been sending down the drain.

(pictures are from Awakened Aesthetic)

The plastic beads go out into the ocean, where cute little critters may mistake them for food, or end up in this big pile of floating plastic in the Pacific. Like all plastics, they take a long time to degrade and we should be careful to keep them out of the ocean. So next time, read the label on your exfoliants carefully and steer clear of soaps that contain microbeads. Salt, oats, and other natural particles do just a good and possibly better job exfoliating and are worth the price premium.

stealing from Macy's

Okay, it only FEELS like a steal. I got this dress for around $10 at Macy's. It was $8.30 before taxes, marked down from $59!

I am loving the mesh overlay and keyhole back. I hate that the 90s are coming back, but this is much better than wearing pants to clubs like that awful 3-4 year span in the early 00's where the club uniform was slinky top and black Express pants.

I also got these tangerine heels for under $10! They were $8.50 at Crossroads.

I've been wearing them with skinny jeans. Can't wait to pair them with this black dress this weekend.

DKNY fave