Sunday, September 30, 2012

O del mio dolce ardor

Guess what. I'm a music major! Which means I sing a lot, basically. I'm singing 4 songs this semester (and possibly one with jazz band?) and this is the one I've been working on most recently. Give it a listen!
I'm not sure if Teresa Berganza sings this song with as much emotion as it should be; the song is from an opera and it's Paris professing his love to Helen of Troy. What I love so much about her rendition of this song though, is that she manages to keep her voice so light and smooth while she's singing it... something I'm working on, and haven't quite been able to manage yet.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

I don't know how to decorate my dorm room (but Sonia and Kendra do)!

Okay, the title isn't completely true. I have some nice pictures hanging on my wall and some lanterns hung on the ceiling. I have crazy bright turquoise sheets... but that's about as creative as I get. My friends Sonia and Kendra, on the other hand, have all the cool ideas. Having tea parties or awkward 3-6 person dance parties in their room is always the best... because they are so sweet, but also because their room is just so darn spiffy looking. Check it out!
















I love their color scheme. What I especially admire, though, is their creative use of fabric. The organza(?) hanging from the ceiling is so magical looking (don't worry- they never turn that light on... so no fire hazards!), and the fabric they taped to the front of their drawers is certainly more exciting than the boring wood that would show up otherwise.
Keep being cool, guys!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Impressionism?

So in French class, we watched this super bizarre movie called 8 Femmes (8 Women)... Which I guess some critics have described as being impressionistic... I'm not sure if I agree, but I'm no expert, so maybe it's a possibility. For me it has all the weirdness of impressionism, but without any of the finesse and subtlety that makes me usually love it so much.
Anyway, in French class we did this activity that Mme Sauret claims was used by the impressionists to help them write poetry... I'm not sure how true that is, but it was fun anyway. We each got a piece of paper out and wrote a noun down (this was all in French, of course). We then folded the top of the paper over and passed it to the person next to us. Then we wrote an adjective down, folded it, passed it, and then wrote a verb and an adverb using the same process. My favorite one that was generated was:

La couleur rouge a chanté doucement. (The color red sang sweetly).

Friday night I went to this year's first poetry slam... I love going to slams and I keep trying to write my own poems... but I've just been writing analytically for so long that it's almost like I've forgotten how to be creative and symbolic in my writing. It's not like I can make the audience members sit through 3 minutes and 10 seconds of every single problem I've had in my life, systematically written down in chronological order.
So, I try to come up with metaphors. But my brain can't figure them out...

So, I was thinking maybe what I'll do someday is put a few jars on my desk with different parts of speech in each one... I'll then pick words out of the jars to make sentences like the one above... most of them will be dumb. (Like, the depressed lamp rolled languidly... which is funny I guess, but not that applicable to my life, usually)... but maybe something beautiful will happen...

Or maybe I'll just write a poem with as many stupid sentences as I can.

How do you get over creative writing blocks?

Monday, September 24, 2012

Lake Street Dive

Saturday was one of those days where I had things lined up back to back, but they were all wonderful things, so I didn't mind!
I had a read through for For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, a really funny parody of The Glass Menagerie that I'm doing with MacPlayers this semester... It's super super hilarious.
Then I went to a talk given by a local music therapist, which was super inspiring and made me consider this career path again (4 years ago I was convinced I wanted to be a music therapist. Convinced).
Then I went to see PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. I got super lucky that some of my friends had an extra ticket and invited me along... It was super fun to hang out with them, and I've been listening to that show on the radio since forever, so seeing it live for the first time was hilarious. And it was the 3rd time seeing Garrison Keillor live in a year (one of the many perks of going to school in St. Paul). The show was hilarious as always... they had this awesome blues singer from Rome... I don't remember her name, so maybe I'll have to post about her later. But, they had a super super super good band called Lake Street Dive play... give them a listen!
I keep talking about how I want to be a bass so I can sing Erlkonig by Schubert, or a coloratura, or Kristin Chenoweth, or Aretha Franklin. But now I just want to be Lake Street Dive lead singer, Rachael Price. Can't I have it all?
And let's just talk about how crazy awesome bassist Bridget Kearney is.
And super cool Mike Olson and Mike Calabrese.
Thanks for the great show, guys!

(After Prairie Home Companion I went to a gala concert given by the music department faculty in honor of our shiny new building... So good!)

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Siamese Dreams (An Etsy Feature)

So, here in beautiful St. Paul, MN... it's cooling off. Fast. For some this means snuggles by the fireside, cups of hot chocolate, and lots of cheesy facebook statuses about how they love fall... but for me it means that winter is coming, so my days of happiness will soon be over. (Cue dramatic piano music while I drape myself dramatically over the settee and gaze wistfully out the window. The lights are off and it's raining, of course.)

But, all melodrama aside, there are some advantages to the fall... namely that you can wear super cute boots that don't even have to be waterproof because there isn't snow reaching to the roof of your house yet!

Which takes me to today's feature, Siamese Dream Design.

I love everything about this shop ever... so instead of incomprehensibly squealing adjectives with too many exclamation points, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:





Buy me all of these and we can be best friends for at least a week.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Exciting Etsy Week!

So, this week has been super cool!








This photo got featured in a Scandinavian weather treasury.








I got featured in 2 wonderful blogs: here, and here.


And I sold 2 items! They're no longer with me... but in new homes:



I feel incredibly blessed. I also am adding some new items to my shop this week, but more on that later.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Sushi Manga

So, this semester I'm taking French 305: Advanced Expression... it's a pretty fun class, and I like the professor... it's a good time.
For our homework, we were supposed to find a French article to bring to class for discussion/new vocabulary/conversation practice... I headed over to le monde, and sure, I could have chosen an article about something important and political, but I ended up finding this one about Chihiro Masui's new book, Sushi Manga. It's a cute little book done in a Manga/comic book style all about making sushi. And it's in French. Isn't it the cutest? These are the few images of it I could find online:

                                 

 
Sorry some of them are so baby tiny, but doesn't this look like the best thing? You can buy it for me whenever you want, really.


Sunday, September 9, 2012

My babiest kitty.

Okay, so I've gotten featured in a couple of Etsy treasuries recently: herehereherehere, and here. Which is all super awesome... I would have talked about all of them if school didn't have the audacity to get in the way... but I just got featured in this one, with this photo:
The reason this one is so special is because it's a photo of my cat, Paka, who is the sweetest baby fat cat ever and I miss him so much. Why can't they have pet dorms at my college?! I won't get to see him until November, which is pretty sad. So I'll just gaze at this picture forever, I guess...

(P.S. Paka means cat in Swahili... and he's an orange tabby... named cat... which makes me feel like I'm Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's... which is cool, I guess).

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Numbah Three.

Hello, Interwebz!

So, I haven't posted much this week because, guess what?! I'm all moved in to my dorm room at college! Sophomore year, here we come. It's been a crazy, busy week... catching up with friends, sorting out classes, enjoying my last few days of relatively low stress...

So, I'll try my best to post as much as I can, but I make no guarantees. You can write my professors about giving me homework, I guess. But, anyway, here's today's shop feature: SmartSquid!

I stumbled across this shop a couple of weeks ago when the owner, Sarina, favorited one of my items in my shop. I can't remember which one it was now, but I'm glad that it happened, because I really like this shop. Look at this stuff!

                                  
                


So cute! I love animals, and creative things, and doodles. And isn't this pocket mirror just awesome?