My Christmas Spirit is rocking full tilt

I don't know if it's because I've got a lot more time on my hands this year, but my Christmas Spirit is mighty and plentiful. Here's the spirit of the day in IG's.

I am thrilled to have the White House Christmas card featuring Bo! Bonnie is not so impressed.


Here's the Clinton Library Santa. I'm pretty obsessed with him. When I first laid eyes on him back in the summer, I just knew he was a santa. (He's also a volunteer.)


I'm also pretty fascinated with the Santa career, because you don't know you'll grow up to grow old and be a beautiful, spot-on Santa Claus. His wife manages his gigs, he has four suits and he can barely go out in public right now even in plain clothes, because he is so Santa. He has a rosy button nose all year long.

Me and one of my best-friend volunteers getting in on the Santa action!

Biggest Monday

Monday was HUGE for two reasons.

1. I was filmed for a reality show. Not some bug-eating-fear-factor crap either, but a pilot for a show about Girls who ride Bikes in NYC.

2. I saw My President, Barack Obama in the flesh, up-close for the first time.

This is what I looked like for both events:


Filming was fun, but it rained on us and my 20 minute commute was 2 hours because we would do stuff over and over and they would shoot me from different angles. There was also a still-photo photo shoot in the middle. Some neighborhoodies have stopped me to ask what this film crew was all about. That's fun.
I hope the show gets picked-up by a network.

Here's Dom, who accompanied me on my ride to work until we got totally rained out, the cameras were in danger, and we parted ways.


This is what the marquee looked like on the New Amsterdam Theatre for the blessed event of the evening:


I can't even explain how good my seat was. It was on the aisle, about 15 rows back and the dudes in front of me got up during the good stuff so my view was so clear, I could tell you what Barack's tie pattern was like. It was dreamy.

Sure, I rode an overnight bus to his Inauguration but I was soooo farrrr awaaaayyy then. It was more about the solidarity and magic of the day. For all my life I can say "I was there!" Millions of people on the National Mall and you could hear a pin drop. But that's an old story not totally related to this big Monday I had.

I'm so glad I went to all of these events.

Halloween Costumes

Jem and Rio - Probably my favorite because we both look cute.
Matt's tan is Sally Hansen spray-on tan for legs.  I sewed my dress and belt. My earrings are foam-core. I dyed Matt's pants and made him that iron-on shirt and spray painted both our hair. I worked at my job at ad production-type place in this. It was fun driving (I had a jetta and worked in Raleigh) to work in this get-up. Talk about Rock Out!

Bride of Frankenstein + Frankenstein. I think Matt wore one of my jackets to be extra-tight. He definitely had some of my pants on.


I loved being scary Carrie. I didn't break character. I broke for a second from delight from this Kim Jong Il

This was easy - I had a thrift store slip and bloodied it in the bath-tub a few days before so it would be dry blood and I wouldn't be wet and freezing, but my hair is wet with goopy fake blood. I'm glad I committed to the messiness. I remember my phone being slimed with blood.

That sweat band has fake flowers on the other side - Carrie's prom corsage!

Prep-work!


First halloween in NYC! I made this purple flapper from scratch. Really proud of it. I think I still have it. Fringe is the funnest thing to wear.




Remember during the Obama/McCain campaign and that one girl beat herself up and lied and said Obama supporters beat her up? I was her and this was love at first sight.

This 2nd Halloween in NYC was one of the hardest cabs I've ever hailed and almost immediately gotten kicked-out of. I also dropped my first iPhone on hard tile in the bathroom and got the white screen of death, played dumb, and the wonderful people at Apple gave me a brand new one.



2003 - Film camera days!

Raccoon make-up

That's eyeliner, babe. Pencil. Yes- it took some time.

Raccoon suit. Funny story- I worked at the Pat Field store and weeks and weeks later someone called to ask whatever happened to their job application and I was like "We never got that" and the person on the phone said "I gave it to the raccoon." Busted! 


I had a lot of hair for a while and used my hot rollers and squeezed out this Midge:


Last year I went to the Rally 4 Sanity Halloween Weekend and had this get-up going on.

But that was for the Rally, totally not Halloween. Halloween fell on a Sunday and I had a house party to go to and I pulled together this Rachel Maddow.

-But I was at a mostly-lesbian house party and most people thought this was my look.
They were very nice and liked my look but didn't realize that I was being Maddow.

These are my nieces/nephews and a friend's baby but these are more get-ups that I crafted.

Queen of Hearts and her cards or court? There was a Joker and a 3 and an Ace. I made these out of felt and pleather cut-outs glued on. Her tutu has cards and beads and all kinds of stuff attached.

 I'm very proud of this mermaid skirt

I made her brother the nemo fish out of felt and lame.

The Flintstones! This is super cute looking back on it. Stretch vinyl.

This Hello Kitty was hi-tech. It has piping inside and a bag of air to try to keep it up high. Someone had to hold it during the parade. I'd like to try one of these again someday.

I was really proud to knock-off the Pottery Barn Kids witch.

This outfit also had components so she could just wear all black and be a cat at school.

I don't live anywhere near these guys - I've been lucky guess-timating measurements. I'm also too cave-girl to use real patterns. I just put stuff together. I've been on Martha Stewart, but overall I would say I have the sewing skills of a 6th grade girl.

I should have taken sewing/home-economics in school! Imagine if I had been practicing all these years. 

2 Cute Commutes

The weather is so nice right now I'm sure it's going to stab us in the back this weekend. Major rain forecast.

Morning ride started with this light jacket. My jacket of love.

I took it off in Central Park because I was about to break a sweat! 50º and I'm sweatin' it up.

OMG This silver basket looks sooo much better! $18! 


I felt amazing about man-kind in NYC today because my bike was outside all day and no one put trash in the basket! Thank you fellow men & women!



Tonight I went to an Organizing for America meeting which is an Obama volunteer meeting pretty much. I met some lovely people and I even met our state senator Liz Kruger and the NYC Regional Field director for OFA. I loved that girl! I want to be best friends with Her/Kate.




This was my first time, I think, going into a Park Avenue residence. It was very close to Trudy and Peter's address on Mad Men and I kept thinking about their apartment.

But the event was overall awesome! I took notes, and might scan them in. I look forward to being very active with volunteerism and street-teaming. I might have drawn a picture of the adorable cat who was there in my notes, and maybe that cat was licking his butthole while the senator was speaking to us... in the chair next to her. -And I got a lady's mailing address to mail her a copy of my notes (and I will omit the cat- maybe.) She doesn't do email. Yep- it was a mostly older crowd but I love times like that.

The NYC Regional Director girl got excited about my heart-shaped Obama shades and asked to take my pic for the website.


I was asked to give a quote and I said something like "Because women's issues matter to me." and that's true. I'm starting Planned Parenthood Activist training next week.

Obama Fabric Crafts

Huge bow attached to backpack of life:

It's the backpack of life, because I'll be living out of it for about 2 days.



And I'm going to see if my partner in crime wants to wear one of these too. If she doesn't want to wear hers, I'll give it away or sell it when we get there. I've sold crazy ribbons right off my head before.


I hope she'll wear it and we can be "Team Rally Cats" and maybe even paint our faces! Eeek! I'm so excited!
I think the guy at the fabric store gave me the hook-up and I can't WAIT to show him what I made! He has an Obama tattoo from his wonderful experience at Obama's Inauguration.

*Do you ever wonder where my husband is? Some of you know he's a medical resident and you might suspect that I'm always home alone because he must work all the time, and that couldn't be further from the truth. He almost always beats me home, and he's on the couch playing PS3 or watching Southpark and telling me I'm dumb for making Obama bows, but secretly he's totally impressed.

New Love in Pink & Green

I feel like I have a lot of photos to share. Here we go!



I was riding home from work and there were news vans and satellites everywhere and road blocks and I immediately thought - "Must be more bomb threats" But oh, no! It was Obama! He visited the NYPD to congratulate them on their quick work on the recent dumb bomber wannabe.

It was awesome because as you heard people say "It's Obama" to one another, they ran TOWARD the barricades to catch a peek. If it had been George Bush, I would have scrambled to find some rocks to throw. All these delivery boys were standing still on their bikes. I loved the excitement. I immediately took a turn on my bike past a barricade and a policeman whistled me back. So I was about a block away. This is the view across Park Ave.


This was my outfit that day. This is the best skirt ever and it has pockets.


This is a rainy-day outfit where I did not ride my bike. I was short a freaking NICKEL on the bus and I called out "Anyone got a nickel" guess who tried to help? Yeah, no one. The bus driver let me stay. A nickel!



This is from Obama madness afternoon. These buildings look so tall it makes me a little queasy to look at this image:



Friday at work, I used some technical drawing skills from this really hard, unforgettable class that I had in college. I helped make the cardboard insert pattern for this sweater-set that my company is manufacturing.


I like my new job. I love it in that I don't stress. But I really need to start watching what I eat and work out. My technical seamstress eyeballed me and asked if I've gained weight. Of course, I have no real idea and did not have statistical data to participate in an educated discussion. So she broke out the measuring tape and yes, my waist was 1.5" bigger than when I was officially measured. I've eaten a lot of white bread and I've been drinking a decent amount of beer. I told her this and it was as if I told her I murdered someone. Or punched her in the belly.

So here is my lunch from Friday - It's a crazy, skinny girl lunch in my opinion, but I guess I need to move in a new, less-fat, direction.
It's HALF of a vegetarian sandwich and some watermelon.
Two of my favorite blogs are PriorFatGirl and TheSkinnyWebsite, so I'm going to start showing what I eat more often and talking about this new thing called "exercise." I'm going to immediately cut my dairy intake by about 75% - 90% and I bet it's going to be huge/helpful.

I switched to Almond Milk a few days ago for my coffee. No sugar. Just almond milk.

2 days after my waist measured 1.5" bigger, it was only 1" bigger. I have a measurement that I need to keep it under. Do you want to know? I will whisper in your ear if you really want to know. My bicep-girth also has a specific measurement that needs to be maintained.

This is my Friday outfit:

I don't wear a lot of scarves, but I think I should.

I'm co-hosting a baby shower in June for a sorority sister and we are doing the Lilly Pulitzer "Desert Tort" motif as our theme and I'm loving it!
I went to the Lilly boutique on Madison Ave. and got the party supplies.

The shopping bag has nice grosgrain ribbon that I tied onto my back rack and easily rode home. I only lived a few blocks away. I was nervous about the wrapping paper falling out.

I really enjoyed myself at the Lilly boutique. Even though I'm sure I was the poorest, dirtiest looking person they've ever seen. It was very un-New York in there.


My favorite thing was the cursive and other freestyle wall-painting.


I'm trying to decide what item I could wear. This mirror was really huge and beautiful.


This is the invitation. So freaking cute!

I'm in love with Lilly P.!