After lots of work in the past month and then many late nights in the past week to get the site ready, today (July 1, 2009) saw the official site launch of Geek Girls Rock, a blogzine “by geek girls for geek girls” that some friends and I are developing. The site is live, but it is still in its infancy. We have *many* plans and schemes in the works, lol. If you have an interest in things geek, check it out!

I am also developing an Etsy store called Geek Bliss, which will carry a line of geek-inspired all-natural lip balms, candles, and body butters. I am having a *ball* making the products, and I can’t wait to start selling them.

And in other Etsy news, I received my Jacob-scented body spray & lip balm from Essence of Twilight a few days ago! I LOVE them and recommend the store. Another friend has ordered from them and loves her stuff, too. I’ll post pics soon.

…and in even more Twilight fandom ridiculousness, one of our group bought an Edward Cullen action figure to be silly, and then decided to take pictures of it in various locations…and then decided to send it to each of us to take more silly pictures! And the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Vamps” was born. We’re on Facebook and are trying a group blog, lol. I can’t wait to have my turn with him…oh, the beyond-nutty pics I’ll come up with, hehehe!

Ok, back to more GGR work before crashing for the night.

Redesigning the blog from the ground up. Once it’s done, I’ll post an update with layouts, GGR stuff, info about my new Etsy store, and…The Sisterhood of the Traveling Vamps. :-D

Some friends and I have a TWILIGHT discussion thread going on Facebook, where we all happily cougar-roar to our heart’s content over the hunks of the movies and discuss our favorite (and not-so-favorite) parts of the books. It’s tons of fun. Thanks to that thread, it’s common knowledge that I’m a *huge* Jacob fan. Not just of Taylor Lautner, who is obviously delish (young age be damned!), but of the character of Jacob. Love ‘im.

Anyway, I have friends who like to pull silly jokes, and a couple of days ago I received this in the mail:

Now, I was expecting a package I’d ordered off of eBay—those squishy-rubber iPod covers (in five different colors), and I thought that’s what this was. A nice, plain package in the right size, and squishy enough to be the covers. The “Jacob” return address made me laugh, thinking, wow, I’ve got Jacob on the brain so much that these iPod covers off eBay even come from some bloke named Jacob! Haha, how funny!

Then I opened it:

Now, WTF?? I looked at the package again. Postmark says nothing. Back was blank. No identifying anything on it.

Inside that white note was a plastic-wrapped black something-or-other. So I opened it to find…

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started laughing so hard I was in tears! I scoured the entire package again, and it simply had no identifying marks at all. But I suspect a certain person whose name begins with C and ends with oh-no-you-didn!

Right now the lovely bag is hanging in my room very poster-like. *grin*

Fantasic gag, girl. Seriously. I’m still giggling!

And today on Facebook, a friend who is visiting Forks and other Washington points of interest posted that she’d seen “Essence of Edward” body spray in a gift shop. I just had to Google it. Sure enough, I found an Etsy seller selling not only essence of Edward, but…you guessed it, essence of Jacob!

What good is a Jacob carry-bag without some Jacob-themed goodies to go in it?

So I immediately purchased Jacob “chocolate heat” lip balm…

…and Jacob “woods earth” body spray:

Life is Jacob-y good.

UPDATE: It was Laura!! Thank you for the yummygoodness, sweetie!! Or as Anne said, thanks for Jacob’s sack…*snicker!*

I’ve not been posting on my own blog much—tsk, tsk—because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in developing Geek Girls Rock AND working on my novel. Wheee! Two things I *love* to do. So I don’t have much in the way of an update at the moment besides that, and to show off a few layouts I did the other night.

First, this layout I did for GGR, as a small recap of a convention back in February that some of the Girls and I were at:

Then a layout from a shot I took at the beach recently:

A layout of me sitting in a Battlestar Galactica viper, from when I worked the prop auction in May:

A layout using images from a day some friends and I spent in L.A. after the prop auction:

And, of course, a New Moon-themed layout of my absolute favorite Twilight character, Jacob:

I’ll do more layouts soon, as they are my favorite way to relax at night with a movie, lol! But now, back to work on GGR for the day.

(Layouts made with the following kits: “Evilicious” and “Into the Twilight” by Flergs and “All You Need is Love” by Natali Design, at scrabbookgraphics.com; “North Shore” by Paislee Press at oscraps.com; “Crush “by Pink Ellie at afterfivedesigns.com; “Hodge Podge” 7 & 10 at weedsandwildflowers.com.)

Just noticed that for some reason IE is displaying my photos all stretched out. On one had, I’d say that if you’re using IE you deserve to have websites display all frakked up…but the webmistress in me knows she has to figure out the problem.

*grumbles about the idiocy that is IE*

I’m off to meet with friends and do GGR planning in another city today, so I’ll probably not fix this until tomorrow. Firefox, everyone. FIREFOX!

I like this new theme but it needs LOTS of tweaks. I’m workin’ on it.

I’m also hard at work on a new project with some friends, called Geek Girls Rock. We’re going live in July! Until then, friend us on Facebook, follow on Twitter, you know the drill.

More soon. :)

I just uploaded a bunch of pics to the gallery from the BSG prop auction a couple of weeks ago: check them out here.  They aren’t all captioned or credited yet, but I’ll get to that next go-round. For now, all that uploading wore me out, so I simply must go recuperate by curling up and devouring more of New Moon…

And speaking of Twilight, hehehe…

While in Hollywood a week-ish ago, I spotted these Edward & Bella cardboard cutouts in a store window and HAD to get a pic with them. Brittney is a fan too, so she gladly jumped in the pic with me.

I’ve not posted in awhile, I know, sorry!  I’m still working on redesigning the blog (WordPress has become so damn difficult to style that it takes me so much longer to tweak all the little things I want to tweak) as well as catching up on creative projects since my return from L.A. I’ve also started a new online venture with some girlfriends (more on that later) and my moving plans have now shifted (new place and timeline). So lots swirling in my head, but not much is coming out here, yet.

Here I go again. Playing around with the design here…it’ll be back to rights soon.

Well, not quite. Or even close, actually, heh. But my pic is in a slideshow on L.A. Weekly (as well as a bunch of pics of my compatriots) of images from last weekend’s Battlestar Galactica prop auction, which I was working out in L.A.

The slideshow is here.

Here’s a screenshot of the pic: it’s me (left); Michael Hogan, who played Col. Tigh on Battlestar; and Erin, a friend from my BSG group:

Pics & a short recap of the week coming soon.

Tomorrow I fly out to LA to help out at the second BSG prop auction…probably won’t blog while I’m out there, but I’ll have my computer, so you never know.  I’m sure I’ll have pics & stories when I get back.

Happy Mother’s Day a bit early to all the moms out there, and to moms, like mine, who watch over us from the next life.

As I was rooting through box after box of old stuff, readying for my upcoming move, I came across an old camera I last used in Ireland back in 1997. I learned back then how to use it properly, but have since forgotten. The camera has seen better days, and I’m not certain it works correctly (or at all) anymore:

The old gal…

She’s got heft, I gotta say…

The tiny battery door is held closed with tape, lol…

Here is the zoom lens…

Zooming on the zoom! With a bit of Bast butt in the background (ooh, alliteration! Go me!)…

Another shot…

I’m going to get some film, a tiny battery, and start snapping away. If it works? I’m going to re-learn how to use it and explore taking pictures with actual film. The Old Camera Project will then be to explore how not being able to see my images instantly affects how I go about taking them in the first place. I’ve gotten so used to point, shoot, look, keep/delete, point, shoot, look, and so on. But with an “old” camera, there isn’t that luxury of finding out immediately that you had stray hair or your thumb in the way.

I have this idea in my head of Mike and I prowling around with our cameras, experimenting. I think he even knows how to set up a darkroom, not that we’ll have room for that right now. Anything good that I shoot will have to be scanned, of course, because I also have ideas of ways to digiscrap what we come up with.

I’m looking forward to this!

And if the camera doesn’t work? I’ll use it as a photographic subject.

Wow. After the craziness of NSD yesterday (and pre-craziness the day before) my eyes are dry, wide-open, and barely blinking.

Ok, it’s not that bad.

I was able to buy a lot of goodies for not much money, I nabbed TONS of  gorgeous freebies, and my collection of digiscrapping kits is now so beautifully large that I just scroll through it, looking and grinning in anticipation. “I just love that one  and that one and that one, and oh THAT one…I can make this layout and that layout and…” The bird-with-shiny-object metaphor comes to mind again.

Speaking of birds, I am a sucker for little whimsical bird graphics; I must have at least 15 different ones in various kits. Funky trees, too, Tim Burton-style. And cats, and coffee-themes, and bright color, and…well. I just have a thing for all of it.

I’m going to try to stop looking for more freebies and go curl up with a book or two. I’m reading Twilight (loving it), have a hankering to reread another novel I loved the first time through, and might work on my own. I think I just need a little break from the graphics.

Oh, who am I kidding? I’m gonna scrap today, too.

I’m off to refill my coffee and settle in with a book. Hope everyone had a great NSD, and for those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about, hope you had a good weekend.

Well. It’s 10:30 on Friday and I am woefully, woefully late to Joy’s blog party about blogging! I got so immersed in NSD stuff today, and a bit of writing, that I completely, utterly forgot to post this!! But better late than never, I suppose…so here’s my take.

I started blogging back in…er…2000? 1999? Can’t quite remember. It was way before anyone really knew what a “blog” was. I’d had my own website since 1997, going through all sorts of designs & design trends. Back then it was fun to make little graphics and try to drum up content to go with all the pretty images…I remember that a long-distance friend and I would go see a movie on the same day and record our impressions (”Brian and Sara go to the movies…2,000 miles apart” was the title, I think, haha). Then this new program/site came along, Blogger, and all of a sudden designers had content! Daily content if wanted!

It took some time to play with this “blogging” thing and decide what it was good for. After the first few months of novelty, it almost seemed pointless. Who cares what I’m doing with my days? I then blogged in fits and starts, not really posting anything of substance. I’d stop for months at a time.

Then “suddenly” blogging was the It thing. Everyone was doing it, people began referring to the “blogosphere” and blogger’s voices were being heard & heeded. I remember thinking, huh? When did blogging become something people did? Heh.

I kept my blog going over the years, switching back and forth from one program to another, which is why right now my archives only go back to 2005 or so. I’ve got most of my posts all the way back, but they’re in a form that Wordpress can’t import, so until I have time to convert them all, they stay hidden away.

When I look at those old entries, I realize that the value of those posts are in their value to me. It doesn’t matter if anyone ever reads them—I have them, and they have become the journal I never kept in real life. A digital scrapbook. I read some of those old posts and remember things I would have forgotten, and I realize how glad I am to have them.

While this year I’m trying to reach out into the blogging world and make new friends, this little website, and all its content and quirks and goofiness, is my little playground and journal and “room of my own.” It’s here for me, to record things and play with new ideas and maybe even make some new friends. It’s a creative outlet, from digging into code and creating new site designs to being a portal to find art inspiration to being a place for me to show off my own creations. But when it’s all said and done, decades from now I will have a great treasure trove of memories to flip through, a path back through the past full of images of the person I was and through all my becomings. And that is priceless.

Oh my my my. It’s only May 1 and I’m so mired in digiscrappygoodness that I can barely come up for air (or coffee refills).

Ok, “mired” isn’t the right word. I’m happily buried.

Firefox is groaning under all the tabs I’ve got opened as I follow blog trains, download freebies, add stuff to wishlists & carts, all while trying to read the new blogs I’m finding (while adding them to Google Reader). Hehehe…wheeeee!

For anyone wondering, here are the stores I’m haunting, along with their blogs, designer’s blogs, forums, etc: Scrapbook Graphics, Digichick, Oscraps, Scrap Orchard, Scrap Artist, After Five Designs, Tracy Ann Digital Art, Shabby Pickle, CatScrap, Peppermint Creative, Natural Designs in Scrapbooking, My Life and Scrap, Scrap Matters, Weeds & Wildflowers Design. And there are more I’m forgetting at the moment.

Time to refill the coffee cup again and keep prowling…I think I’m going to watch TWILIGHT again while I surf. More visual stimulation for my already overloaded eyeballs!

Happy May Day…it’s the time of bonfires, flowers, color, beauty, dancing, and merry-making, a lovely confluence of Gaelic, Germanic, and modern influences.  We are halfway to Samhain, and a quarter turn from the summer Solstice.

It’s a lovely May Day here on the west coast of Florida, although already a bit too hot to really enjoy being outside, lol. I’ll have to venture outside later. That means I’m able to fiddle on the computer, and that means I’m working on putting up some older info and making new pages.

For my Beltane, I plan to light a “fire” (candle) to jump over for luck and bounty, decorate my altar with flowers, and do a bit of dancing later on.

Here are a few goodies for the day:

• Jaiya music! I am listening to Beltane: Songs for the Green Time.
• Circle Sanctuary’s description of Beltane
• The Beltane Fire Society of Edinburgh: “Celebrate the start of the summer of Homecoming at The Beltane Fire Festival: a unique and wild procession of fire, drumming and revelry on Calton Hill. Witness this spectacular revival of the ancient Celtic fertility festival in the heart of the Scottish capital.” Wish I could be there!
• My good friends Emerald Rose have the ultimate Beltane song, about everyone of various faiths joining together in celebration: Merry May Folk (YouTube link but it’s just the song playing)…and here are the lyrics to the song, a lovely homage to the day:

“On a fresh May morning, I took my love to church
To see if Parson Pruneface was properly a-perched
The sermon scarcely started, someone began to snore
When like a sunlit sea wave
A green and crimson wave
A band of merry May folk came a-whooping through the door
singing:
Come up, come in with streamers
Come in with boughs of May
Come green and white and trip the lawn
Till night becomes the day
Jump up and dance the Tom-fool
Jump up and duck and leap
Jump up and wake the people that
The parson puts to sleep

They brandished nut-brown tabors, their garlands fell in showers
Came lads and lasses after them with feet like dancing flowers
Their queen had torn her green gown and bared a shoulder white
White as the May that crowned her
And all the minstrels round her
Tilted back their crimson hats and sang for sheer delight,

Come up, come in with streamers
Come in with boughs of May
Come green and white and trip the lawn
Till night becomes the day
The Earth is dressed in flowers
Bedecked as if to wed
Go on and kiss the lady-o
Before the moment’s fled

The dusky velvet hassocks were cloaked in fragrant dew
The font grew white with hawthorn, it frothed in every pew
The parson’s beard was frosted from the queen’s hawthorny kiss
When like a Morris saber
Tom Fool raised his tabor
Bounded to the pulpit and commenced to preaching this:

Come up, come in with streamers
Come in with boughs of May
Come green and white and trip the lawn
Till night becomes the day
We sing of life arisen
From the Lord who shed and died
Your God’s alive in greenwood
With the Lady by his side

At Easter dawned our Morris, ere Pentecost our May
The words we sing are different, but the tune’s not far away
So stand with us, join hand to hand
And raise a sacred call
We sing of life arisen
We sing of glory risen
We sing that love is risen again
And love is lord of all!

Come up, come in with streamers
come in with boughs of May
Come green and white and trip the lawn
Till night becomes the day
So dance with joy remembered
And sing of love’s reward
Raise up a cup of May wine
To the Lady and the Lord”

Here are two more I did today (click to see larger versions):

I want to say how thankful I am to have found this art form—it’s the cheapest hobby I’ve had in years! And it’s doing wonders for my creativity in other areas. I make a layout or two and suddenly I’m flooded with ideas for my novel or for physical art products (filled up two pages of paper today with sketches of ideas).

And this weekend is National Scrapbooking Day…I kid not…and oh boy, the sales and events gearing up at all the online digiscrap stores! So far there are twenty—yes, TWENTY—such stores that I plan to hit for sales. Sales such as goodies going for $1, or not much more than that, not to mention freebies and contests and whatnot. I’ve got a budget set for it, and I’m actually tickled to see how far it’s going to go. This must be what lures people into flea market scouring, lol…the chance to pick up a lot of stuff for hardly any money. It lets you feel like you’re “splurging” by shopping without actually spending much at all.

But I’m going to end up needing a second external hard drive pretty soon to hold all the goodies, which kills the “cheap hobby” description…heh.

After a so-far productive day of fixing a Paypal issue that had lingered for years (literally) and a few other had-to-get-dones, I’m now in that stuckness-quandry of what to do next. Scrap? Write? Paint? I feel very torn because while I want to do all three, I know that when I choose one and get into it, I’ll get so into it that I’ll not have time for anything else, and will have a hard time stopping later to work out and run to the store (two things that must be done, no matter what). I seem to have the freight-train version of creative impulse. Once that monster starts & gathers steam, look out, because it’s hard to stop. And once it does stop, starting it again is almost impossible, as it needs a night of rest.

Choo chooooooo.

I’m also fending off memory monsters. Next week I fly to L.A. to work at the second Battlestar Galactica prop auction (pics from the first one, back in January, are in the gallery), and while I should be beside myself with excitement—I get to spend time with my sweetie, I love L.A., I get to spend time with friends I don’t see nearly often enough—the entire trip is tainted with memories of the last auction. The last auction took place on the weekend my mom had her second chemo, got sick & went into the hospital, and passed away. She knew I was going and was happy for me, and even told me not call while out there because she’d be feeling too poorly to talk. I think she knew what was going to happen. I think I did too, deep down. I’d been hearing it in her voice for awhile; she didn’t want to fight it any more. I know that she’s now in an amazingly better place, so happy to be there, and free of all the crap that bogged her down in this life. I’m happy for her, but sad for me since I miss her…although I do still feel very connected to her, and I know she’s aware of things. And most likely trying to meddle in them a bit, too, lol.

So while I’m going to try to have fun next week, in the back of my mind I’m going to be thinking about her. But I’m going to try to remember that she was happy for me to work the first auction, and would be (is) happy for me to go again. I firmly believe she helped lead me to my sweetie, so she’ll be tickled pink that I’m with him. I might even hear a few “I told you so”’s whispered in my ear.

More layouts!

And I’ve decided to use my Gallery install again, to test it against Flickr and see which I like best. So far, Gallery’s winning. I just can’t get into Flickr’s layout/interface…so we’ll see.

I’ve also decided to start Project 365! Right now those pics are on Flickr. I haven’t decided if I’ll scrap them yet or not; we’ll see, depending on how much I can pull this project off, lol.

The problem with immersing myself in photographs and scrapping? I’ve got a box of paints and watercolors and clay sitting near me, glowering. Yes, glowering. They’re jealous. They want to be played with, created with, messed with. And I want to play with them too—I do! It’s just that alllll the gorgeous digital scrapping kits I’m amassing are like a mound of bright shiny buttons, and I’m a crow, eyes gleaming while I try to peck at all of them with my beak.

You get the idea.

Ah well, the paint will have to amuse itself with the clay…I’ve got some more layouts to make. Er, after I do some housekeeping/packing/sorting first. Yeah, that’s it, after…

I’ve completely fallen in love with digital scrapping. It’s so addicting! It completely satisfies so many things my inner artist craves: color, layout, whimsy, symbolism…to name a few. And the more I explore it, the more I am intrigued with digital art journaling and the other, deepening forms it takes. I’ll be exploring that as days go by…but for now, here are some recent layouts:

Seriously…this stuff is addicting. I’m amassing kits and my head is so full of ideas that it’s hard to sleep at night. I’ve decided to just follow this creative outlet and see where it leads. It is also most definitely giving me inspiration for physical art, and I’ve got one small canvas halfway done and another ready to be started. I feel like that old spout in the middle of the wall in the movie Under The Tuscan Sun: a few drips…then a few more…and eventually, water gushing out. Digital art is my turning of the spigot handle.

Hmmm…I think I’m going to find a picture of that and scrap it.

The designs are also helping me get more “into” spring. I’m one of those odd types who actually likes fall & winter better than spring & summer (no doubt it has to do with being born and raised in FL). But I started seeing some truly gorgeous spring scrapping kits that finally spoke to me, and I decided to pull out my old Victoria magazines from the 90s. Just the May/June/July ones for now. I remembered how getting them in the mailbox always would inspire me…and flipping through them the other night inspired me again: Lush gardens, beautiful cottages, cozy scenes. I deeply crave a small garden to tend, but I’m not having one this spring since I’m moving in June. I’ll let the digital garden elements soothe that part of me for now.

Post 3 of 3 for the Mermaid Tea Party!

So the Mermaid Tea Party is still going strong…look at this show they put on just for us!

(I grew up going to Weeki Watchee often as a kid, and I had wanted to be a mermaid there for most of my childhood! They do offer a “mermaid training camp,” but sadly I’m a mite too old for it! LOL!)

After all that, we knew it was time for us to swim back to the surface, get our legs back, climb into the Magic Boat and sail back to land. Always so darn hard!

We sail away in the Magic Boat, wishing we didn’t have to. (Pic of me by Mike, pic of Korknisse by me, layout made using Water Spirit kit and Faerily Moonlit kit by Lorie at scrapbookgraphics.com)

We got back just fine, the Korknisse yawning, me also a bit heavy-lidded. I hadn’t forgotten a bit of tuna for Bast, and had that tucked carefully into my bag. We docked the boat, and headed off onto land, pausing to turn around and look one last time at the sea…

A final look at the water before settling back in on land… (Pic by me a few years ago; layout made with the Rough to the Touch kit by Lorie of scrapbookgraphics.com)

It was a wonderful, wonderful day…thanks sooo much to Lisa for the party! What to do next? Why, visit Lisa’s blog to get to the list of other party attendees and enjoy their adventures! I’m gonna start my rounds tonight.

Under the seeeea, under theee seeeeea…….everything’s better, down where it’s wetter, taaake it from meee…

Post 2 of 3 for the Mermaid Tea Party!

Well, we are having such fun at the Mermaid Tea Party!

Just before we hit the open sea, we saw some other water denizens…

Ah, manatees! The gentle giants. We offered them tea, but they weren’t interested, so we kept heading out to sea… (Images by me a few years back; layout made using the Rough to the Touch kit by Lorie at scrapbookgraphics.com)

We said goodbye and floated out, hearing strains of merfolk merrily partying…and then voila! We found the mermaids!

Me and the Korknisse find the mermaids! (Pic of me by Mike, pic of Korknisse by me, layout made using Water Spirit Kit, Rough to the Touch, and Faerily Moonlit kits by Lorie at scrapbookgraphics.com)

We anchored the boat and eagerly jumped overboard to join in the fun! You see, when you go looking for mermaid parties, and you happily join in the fun, as soon as you go under water you grow fins and gills! So we became merfolk for the duration of our stay.

We swam down to the party, and everyone was singing and dancing:

And the singing didn’t stop! The fish got in on it too…

After all that, we settled down to tea and cupcakes…well, some of the mermaids offered something squiggly and slimy, but I wasn’t feeling adventurous, so I declined. But I finished my tea and so asked one of the Korknisse if I could have some of his…and lo and behold, that little sucker had spiked his tea!

Mr. Sneaky with his spiked tea…that’s Bailey’s Irish Creme in there, the rascal! (Pic of Korknisse by me, background from Water Spirit kit by Lorie at scrapbookgraphics.com)

What a little scamp!

I’ll off to enjoy the party…sit here and sing and then swim and then enjoy more spiked “tea” …soak in all the magic.

“Just keep swimming, just keep swiiiimming…”

Post 1 of 3 for the Mermaid Tea Party!

So the Korknisse and I are off to the Mermaid Tea Party; Bast isn’t going…she said, “Heck no, no boats and water for me, but please do bring back any extra tuna.”

We headed out on our Magic Boat through a little inlet (pics to come of us in our Magic Boat, right now we are too busy taking pics of other things)…

But once we got to sea, oh no! Pirates! We stayed back a bit to watch the show…

I must say that the music got my toes tapping and gave me the urge to do an Irish jig…not very mermaid-y of me, of course…can mermaids do jigs? I will ask when I see some.

After the fun of the pirates, we steered our Magic Boat back to the open waters…and dolphins swam with us!

And with the blessing of the dolphins, we head out to sea, listening for the siren call of the mermaids…

I am just in love with the idea of blog parties! Happily there are two more coming up. Tomorrow is the Mermaid Tea Party hosted by Lisa at Faerie Enchantment!

Come join the salty fun!

The various beings who dwell around here are full of ideas as to what we should do for the party tomorrow, so what exactly we’ll conjure up remains to be seen! But it definitely involves tea, things maritime, and perhaps a sea shanty or two. Oh—and most definitely viewings of THE LITTLE MERMAID and FINDING NEMO (I know there aren’t any mermaids in NEMO, but I use every excuse I can to watch it again!). I will also offer a little freebie to take with you if you wish.

Then come May 1st, Joy of Cupid’s Charm is hosting a blog party called Beautiful Blogging!

Share your thoughts on blogging!

A blog party about blogging! I love it! It’s to celebrate her featured blog (and article) that is coming out in ARTFUL BLOGGING on May 1st. I can’t wait to read her article, but I’ll keep my own blogging thoughts to myself until May 1st.

And speaking of Joy at Cupid’s Charm, look what came in the mail today! My Marie Antoinette charm!

I opened the package for my charm and found all these lovely bits! (chain is mine) I love pretty packaging.

Closeup of the charm...see the sparklies? I was so happy to see glitter.

And here it is on my neck (the reddness is from fiddling with the chain, lol...I have sensitive skin!). I have had this chain for ages but nothing seemed just right with it...until now! Voila!

Is it not just divine?? I absolutely love it! It’s prettier in person, and I just love when that happens. Go go go buy one for yourself!

To wrap up…I have not forgotten to mention my reactions to LOST IN AUSTEN! What do you think I thought of it? Hehe. Yep, loved it! It was modern and fun without being overly so, and had enough wit and sparkle to it that I suspect Jane herself would have approved. I wish they’d keep making more movies like that.

Well, I’m off to continue Mermaid Tea Party preparations! See you at the party tomorrow!

A new Jane Austen mini-series/movie!

Amanda Price is sick of the modern world. She yearns for the romance and elegance found in the books by her favorite author, Jane Austen. But she’s about to get a rude awakening as one fateful evening, she is propelled into the scheming 19th century world of Pride and Prejudice while that book’s Elizabeth Bennet is hurled into hers. As the book’s familiar plot unfolds, Amanda triggers new romantic twists and turns within the Bennet family circle as she clumsily tries to help the sisters nab husbands and even captivates the tantalizing Mr. Darcy herself. But what about Elizabeth…and what will become of one of the world’s greatest love stories?

It’s the premise for…

The cover of the newly-released DVD!

Ack! How did I not hear of this until today? (Rhetorical question, as I don’t watch much live TV anymore.) As an Austen fan for a very long time (it was her work that led me to grad school), and a fan of Pride & Prejudice in all its forms (I had at least three copies of the novel, a VHS of the first movie adaptation, and the five-part VHS set of “THE” definitive BBC movie version), you would think that I would have somehow heard about this UK series when it aired last year, or that it had aired on Oxygen in the States, or that it was coming to DVD today. But, no. I just stumbled upon it right now while searching for something else on Amazon, lol!

Then again…I just happened to find it on the day it was released? Hmmm…a quite fortunate coincidence, methinks!

I am in the process of getting a copy ASAP, because I am dying to watch it:

“Bring on the Darcy”…LOL!! And they even have him get wet, haha! An even better preview is at Amazon.

This has given me an idea…after seeing all the fun blog parties, and starting to take part in them, I am going to host a Jane Austen blog party sometime soon! Her birthday isn’t until December, so I’ll do a birthday party then (yeah, I’m such a geek!), but a springtime Austen party in the garden sounds divine, don’t you think?

Before I go off to hunt for a digital copy of Lost in Austen, let me leave you with this pic…when I was in Pasadena in January to work the Battlestar Galactica prop auction, I ran into some Jane Austen cosplayers! And of course, had to get a pic with them! I was there with friends to work the auction in costume, and we are all sci-fi fans…I think I surprised them by not only recognizing the Austen outfits, but being enough of a fan to ask for this pic. ROFL!

Me posing with the Jane Austen cosplayers I ran into in Pasadena.

Time to be amiable to my roommate and order dinner…I will be sure to write up my impressions of the movie after I’ve seen it.