Monaghan Hall

I'm headed out to SpodeVegas this weekend to run BLOOMSDAY and I'm totally excited. Bloomsday is a 12 K race / festival in Spokane that draws over 50,000 people, so hopefully I won't be stampeded!



Anyway, since I have Spokane on the brain thought that I would dedicate this blog to one of the Seven Wonders of the City of Spokane, Monaghan Hall. Currently it is the Music Conservatory at Gonzaga University, and legend has it that this three-story mansion is HAUNTED!!! In fact, many strange and supernatural incidents have occurred there.

Once, the cleaning lady heard organ music playing, and then she went to see the organ and the keys were moving but no one was sitting at the bench! Another time Father Leedale heard flute music playing out in the hallway, but NO ONE WAS THERE when he went out to see who it was! James Monaghan owned the mansion before it belonged to GU, and he was brutally murdered in his own home!!! The music that was heard playing was in fact the same music played at his funeral!!!

Also a growling noise was heard in the basement, but its source couldn't be determined. One night two guards felt that they were being strangled by an unseen presence, and in 1975 Father decided to hold and excorcism. During the exorcism, the heavy wooden cross around his neck began to bang against his chest.

Some people say that the exorcism was successful, and others say that it is STILL HAUNTED!!!

So if you are ever wandering around the Gonzaga campus late some night, check this place out......if you dare!!

wahahha!!!!!!

Eye Shadow Lady

"Welcome, my oddities....to a place for all things 'odd'." writes Natasha, a 21-year-old Canadian who provides eye-make-up tutorials on u-tube for overdramatic looks as well as more wearable everyday looks.

These are REALLY GOOD eyeshadow videos! In the video she has one completed eye, and then she does the second in the video, so she takes you thorugh the process. This woman has eye make-up down to an art, and though I personally and suspect that many women (like myself) would not feel comfortable sporting the done-up look that she has on the video, almost any woman WOULD benefit from her expertise! (or men....geez, I am coming across like a sexist here!!!)

Plus she is a little bit quirky so the videos don't come across as at all pretentious.


She's fun and slightly bizairre; once in a video she takes us on a tour of her tiny apartment.

my eyeshadow is odd. You can watch her tutorials here, or follow her on twitter!

Silly joke

A woman went to see a lawyer requesting a divorce.

The lawyer asked the woman, "what are your grounds?"
The woman said, "About 1/2 an acre."

The lawyer then said, "Do you have a grudge?" And the woman answered, "Oh, no, we have a carport where we keep out car parked."

Then the lawyer said, "Is your husband running around on you?"
The woman said, "Oh no! He can't run at all. He has artharitis."

The lawyer said, "Does your husband beat you up in the morning?"
The woman said, "No, I always get up before he does and make the coffee."

Finally the lawyer asked, "Why are you requesting a divorce?"
"Oh," the lady said, "It's not me who's asking for the divorce, it's my husband. He says that we have a failure to communicate."

;)

Love and Obstacles by Aleksandar Hemon

Pretty nice cover, huh? Read this SS collection about a year ago. Not bad.

Read that Hemon starts his stories with autobiographical circumstances, but then fictionalizes the details. For example, the story "Good Living" tells about a man who sells magazine subscriptions door-to-door in Chicago, which Hemon has done. He writes poetically, with lots of good short dialogue, all of the stories are in first person, often very funny; for example the father in "Everywhere" says "there arrives the time in the life of every family...when it becomes ready to acquire a large freezer chest." He is playful with language; one character he describes has "a dimple in his chin deep enough to put a screw in", and the stories are touching.

In the story 'Everything' a teenager living in Sarajevo is sent on a trip by his parents to obtain a freezer for the family. He has some rather worldly intention on the way, mainly to get laid, and after he has had a lot to drink, actually knocks on a husband and wife's hotel room door, with the intent to seduce the wife with a birth control pill. He is unsuccessful and he writes, "The door was closed as closed can be. I heard the murmuring...husband and wife, and I recognized that love was on the other side and I had no access to it." Later he gets beaten up by hotel manager, buys the freezer and returns home. The story ends with the line "everything in the freezer chest thawed, rotted in less than a week, and finally perished." So this was a touching story, kind of melancholy, where someone who is very inexperienced encounters the world, he somehow fails at intimacy, etc.

Good, except that there is too much "guy" in this writing; consider these excerpts: "I held a belief, common among adolescent males, that beyond the circle of family, friends and prudish high school girlfriends lay a vast, wild territory of the purest sex...where the merest physical or eye contact led to copulation unbound.", and "my fellow travellers pressed their butts against the door, the Y-crack peeping out of the pants of one of them." Makes you wonder, is Alexander Hemon STILL an adolescent male????? Now I guess that I know how men feel when they read "Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing", lol.

Hemon has an interesting bio where he ended up in living Chicago in 1992 after he came as a tourist but couldn't return to Sarajevo due to the war. He spoke/read little English when he came, but certainly taught himself a lot over the next several years!

You can listen to him read from the story "Noble Truths of Suffering" here. I watched a little bit of this had a visceral dislike for Hemon. Can't really explain that. Went out to see this dude about a year ago when he came to Portland and my reaction to him then was positive.

Oh, well, anyhow. These stories are good enough. I recommend them.

New Mary Ellen Diaper Bag!

Hello There! Well at long last I have finally designed it! The Diaper Bag! If I had to name one item that has been most-requested and hardest for me to make, it would certainly be the diaper bag.

Came up with the design rather suddenly one evening, then put in about four hours to get it completed!

So it is basically a duffel bag, with two outside pockets that close with buttons, and the interior compartment also closes with two buttons.




The inside is lined with pockets that can be used for carrying things like diapers and binkeys and bottles!!

I have decided to name the purse Mary Ellen, after my mother. Since she has had 8 children, I can think of no better person to name this diaper bag after!



Here's a shot of my mother with my sister last August.



And here's a pic of all her children, take at the same time. We are all grown up now. (I'm the one in the pink dress~and I might point out as well that, thanks to these new granola-eating habits that I have been acquiring, that I have lost 13 pounds since this photo was taken! Thank God!)

Next month I intend to make several more of these Mary Ellen Diaper Bags, so STAY TUNED! They will be available at my etsy store as well as my website.

No Bake-Granola Bars

I'm on a fetish with these no-bake granola bars--got the recipe from my sister but have modified it quite a bit. They are pretty hearty with nuts, flax, oats and fruit. Also sweet and flavorful, making them a good healthy snack.

ingredients:

(It's easy to adjust the recipe according to your tastes, ie substituting other nuts, or different kinds of fruit)

1/4 c. coconut
1/3 cup dried cherries
2 slices of dried pineapple, cut into small pieces
1/3 cup toasted almonds
1/4 cup flaxseed or ground flaxseed
10-11 graham cracker squares crushed (to equal about 1 cup)
1-1/2 cups of rolled oats

3 tablespoons of butter
4-1/2 cups of miniature marshmellows

Heat oven to 350 to toast the almonds, it takes about 10-11 minutes (they are done when they are golden brown).

Mix all dry ingredients including almonds, and then melt the butter in a saucepan over med heat and add the marshmellows and stir until completely melted. Pour over the dry ingredients and stir until completely mixed.

Pour into a buttered 8' square pan and press down with wax paper or buttered fingers. Cut into twelve pieces.

The Lidiya

The Lidiya is another of the pouches that I made when I began working with pleats. It is sort of like a make-up bag, or else a clutch I guess except that it doesn't have the handle that necessitates a 'clutch'!!!!!

The Lidiya is named after I roommate I once had who was Korean, but grew up in Tajikistan and who spoke Russian as her first language! Pretty complicated! She identified most with Russian culture, she says. We first met on a trip that I took to Tajikistan, and then when she moved to Seattle I said that she could be my roommate.



The Lidiya is 7-1/2" wide (9" at base) and 6" high. It closes with a 7" zipper. All Lidiyas have been handmade using recycled materials (except for zipper) and are machine washable. You can purchase a Lidiya here.

New Backpack Style

I have changed the style of my backpack just a little bit; put a loop in the front of the purse and inserted the backpack straps through this loop so that when you wear the backpack, the straps pull the purse closed.

After experimenting with the new straps, I wanted to try it out and so I took a walk on the Esplanade! Walking with a backpack is really the best way to walk, because your hands are free.

I enjoy taking these long walks and listening to podcasts. Here are some photos of the awesome views that I encountered on my walk.




I was pretty happy with the new purse design too after the walk, and so I think that I will stick with it and make some more. Possibly I will adjust the lengths of the straps to make them a little bit longer.

The Priviliges by Jonathan Dee

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee begins with a large festive wedding in Philadelphia, where Cynthia and Adam, both in their early 20s, marry. After the marriage, the couple moves to NYC where Adam pursues a job in finance and they have two children, Jonas and April. Cynthia quits work to raise the children, and when the kids are old enough for her to return to work, she realizes that she has burned her professional bridges.
The family becomes wealthier and wealthier, due in no small part to Adam's participation in insider trading, and Cynthia begins to serve on the board of charities (this becomes a type of career for her, almost). The family is very insular; they have few friends, and maintain tepid family ties~the children know their grandparents vaguely. When the wife tells her husband that she is seeing a psychologist, he is surprised and thinks to himself, "One of the things that made the two of them so great together....was their shared talent for leaving all of their baggage behind."
With The Privileges, Jonathan Dee seems to be suggesting that without family structure that people can easily descend into amoral behavior; ie it wasn't difficult for Adam to justify his participation in insider trading. His wife only found out about it years later.
The book floated along very placidly, and Dee dips into the perspectives of the four main characters (Adam, Cynthia, Jonas and April) which made for a quick read. But what I really wanted to see was something go really askew in the family; ie Adam has an affair, Cynthia reveals she had had a child in her teenage years but had given it up for adoption, much to the trauma of her current children, or for Adam to be caught for the inside trading. It was as though in the entire book the characters were skating on really thin ice but no one actually fell through.
Had they fallen through, it may have served as a catalyst for the characters to change, but instead they all remained extremely unlikeable throughout the entire book; the semi-catastrophes that befell the family only revealed how much of a total bitch Cynthia really was; her step sister lived in the same city but Cynthia never knew until she has a mental breakdown (the step sister) and then Cynthia only allows her to stay one night at their apartment before she drives her to the airport the next day, and when Cynthia's father dies, she is a total ice-queen to his girlfriend.
It really is remarkable, now that i think about it, how this family stayed in tack at all. Do you really think that Adam would have stayed married to someone who was such a bitch? Hm, I don't know. Which is probably one the biggest criticisms that I would make of the book, is that the story doesn't seem conceivable. Adam and Cynthia don't seem strong enough to have built their filthy rich empires on only themselves; people really need the support of a relatively in-tact family to establish wealth and successful careers, I have seen anyway in my own experience.

Gussy

Today I am going to write about Gussy, the purse business started by Maggie Whitley.

Maggie tells her story of her business on her blog, which is essentially that she lost her job and so in lieu of looking for new work she started her own purse business, and it sounds like she now works at another job and also works on her business.

Maggie also claims to be a talker and so sees her blog as a perfect outlet for talking and talking and talking. (Although in fact she is writing and writing and writing).

She's got a distinctive style to her purses; ruffles, and I think that they are very cute. She makes bags in several styles; I've pictured on this post a laptop bag and a coin purse.


Also on her blog she has noted that she's coming out with greeting cards that have her signature pleat sewn into the front of the card, which I think is very cute!

She's taken excellent photographs of her products.

Here's a picture of Mrs. Gussy, aka Maggie. Looks like she might have taken this one herself, I don't know.

Probably the biggest criticism that I would make about Gussy Purses is that it is very difficult to find her store from her blog, and also that the url addresses for her blog and her store are actually her name, "Maggie Whitley", when I think that the url ought to be for the name of her purses, Gussy.

New Bag

I have heard it said before that necessity is the mother of invention and this new bag that I have just developed is no exception! I was leaving on a 4-5 day trip to Seattle last week and I realized that I didn't have a good 'in-between' bag; all of the bags that I own are best for a day outing or else for a REALLY long (ie 2-3 week) trip.

So, at 8:00 pm the evening before I was to leave I set out to design a new bag, and by 12:17 that night this is what I had come up with!

Even though it meant that I had to go to sleep that night way way WAY past my bedtime, I found that the effort was worth it! I am happy with this duffle-bag-like design--it has several interior pockets plus two outside pockets, and it closes with a button. And most importantly, it carries quite a bit of stuff!!!



My mother (a veternan mother) thought that this bag has some potential as a diaper bag.

Ukrainian Easter Eggs

My sister and I made Ukrainian Easter Eggs last Saturday.

The first step to making these is to prick either end of the egg with a tack and then to blow out the inside of the egg.

















Next, using these special tools and melted wax, we drew a design onto the eggs.


































After that, we let the eggs sit in colored dye.









The next step involved melting the wax from the shell of the egg.



This is a photograph of my finished egg! (my sister totally put me to shame with her awesome egg, photographed at the beg. of this post)





Here's some photographs of all the eggs we have made over the years!

Easter Dress

I have this brown dress that I made when I was in college once over spring break, and even though I LOVE it it has become quite worn over the years. I found it difficult to part with the dress, however, and so I set out to make a new one!


First, I got a seam ripper and took the brown dress apart piece by piece. It was kind of a slow process, but much of this I did while watching movies, etc. so it wasn't so bad.



Next I used the pieces that I had cut as templates to cut new pieces out of this piece beautiful piece of fabric that my mother picked up for me from a garage sale



Then I stitched the new pieces together...the process went quite smoothly. I didn't try anything very adventurous with the new dress, except to make the sleeves a little bit different. It fits pretty well, too, although I think that I will need to make some adjustments in the neck.