Day 123!

Patent Pending!

Got to see Patent Pending and This Good Robot play at Rec Center! It was the first time I've seen This Good Robot and they were awesome. If you don't have their album, The Human I Am, you better get it, it's amazing. This Good Robot .

Can't wait to see the two again on the 22nd!

"We don't care at all we just came here to party."

Day 122!

A day out with Dan!

Getting Christmassy, Dan and I hit the city to see the Christmas windows, the tree, and Bryant Park. Bryant Park is one of my favorite places in the city. All set up with an ice skating rink, restaurant, a tree, and some awesome shops, the place was a madhouse, but absolutely amazing.

Dan bought me this at one of the shops. Isn't it beautiful?



















We also went to see the awesome Brendan Rivera play at Santos Party House. He played the entire Musician album from his first band, Looking Glass Wars. My favorite song, Hotel, is from that album and it was the first time I ever heard it live, so cool.


















I've never been to Santos Party House before, it's a small club, but pretty cool since it's owned by Andrew W.K. Something I found interesting about the place, painted on the wall in black light responsive paint was a painting of two puppies. It was just so random because there was nothing similar through out the place. The walls were rather bare. The painting was cute and all, just weird lol.



"Oh what a party it will be."

Day 121!

Happy Winter Solstice! 

To celebrate the first day of winter, longer days and the return of the sun, I wanted to get a little festive. There are so many traditions to do, like baking, lighting a fire/candles, gift giving, ringing bells and so on. But I decided to do my own thing. I made a mini winter wreath with some sticks from the yard.

























And then I bundled up some pine with red ribbon. Pine is supposed to ward off evil during the winter months. You're to put it over doors and windows. So let's hope this works.



















"This is my December. This is my time of the year."

Day 120!

"Linus is right, I won't let all this commercialism ruin my Christmas."

With all the meaningless Christmas stuff going on, like shopping 24/7 (it kills me some stores are open 24 hours till Christmas), it's hard to get in the Christmas spirit. I blame retail for really killing my spirit. So in attempt to keep the spirit I came up with my 12 favorite things about the holiday season. These are the things that scream it's Christmas time in my house, not the 100 wrapped gifts under my tree.


1. An advent calendar. My mom has been buying these for us since we were little kids. It's the worst chocolate imaginable. I don't even open them, but it's not Christmas till I have this.




















2. Holiday dishes! I love seasonal dishes! Especially Christmas ones.















3.  Penguins everywhere. My grandma loved penguins and every Christmas we'd buy her a one. Since she passed though, we now have all her penguins.



















4. Cookies. Christmas at my house means a mound of cookies on the table. This is seriously nothing compared to how it was 2 days ago and how it'll look in 2 days when my mom bakes the rest of the dough in the fridge.














5. Santa on a fire truck. Every year he comes around my neighborhood to pelt hand candy canes to the kids.














6. Holiday dish towels! Not as awesome as dishes, but way up there.















7. Santa's answering machine ornament. When you press it is it says "Ho, ho, ho. I'm out packing my sleigh right now. So be sure to leave your Christmas wishes. Wait for the jingle bells." As a child I swore my messages would really get to Santa this way and I would tell the answering machine what I wanted.















8. A fridge full of food, and nothing to eat! My mom stocks up on food through out the month and cooks way early in the week to prepare. The fridge is filled with food just for Christmas, and all I think I can have in there is the milk, possibly some Brita water.




















9. I love Christmas movies. I watched a few already, I haven't gotten to "Olive, the Other Reindeer" yet. It's one of my favorites.

10. Christmas knickknacks.  They cover every nook and cranny of my house. They're every where.















And I mean everywhere.















11. This little thing has to be filled with some kind of chocolate, preferably m&m's, or it's not Christmas.

















12. I always had a star on the mini christmas tree I have in my room. But one year I really wanted an angel. Being it's a small tree, it was kinda hard to find. So I made a monkey doll I had into an angel. That was probably about 7+ years ago and he still sits on my tree under the star.

"These are a few of my favorite things. All of those flavors and this is what you choose. Past the blues, past the blues"

The little bit of random...

The Holiday Zombie...know the signs. Don't let it happen to you!

...or let it and wait for January for it to go away

I've mentioned this term once or twice before, but I don't think I ever explained what it is. Being it's the holidays and holiday zombies are about, I think it would be best to explain what they are. You know to identify one and protect yourself from becoming one.

The Holiday Zombie definition (from Kira's Dictionary), that mindless look holiday shoppers have as they wander the mall with bags and bags of gifts, half of which they probably don't need. The look also includes a sense of incoherency, attitude, and a where-am-I?/ death-is-upon-me-if-I-don't-hit-a-Starbucks-soon expression. It's basically the deterioration of the holiday spirit, mind and you, the closer it gets to Christmas.

What holiday zombies look like:

Hollowed cheeks from more shopping than eating.

Darks circles under their eyes from more shopping than sleeping.

Sporting running sneakers, sweatpants and sometimes sweatbands.

They're ripped, from constantly holding heavy shopping bags.

They drag their feet, and at times moan.

Basically this guy...

Common phrases of a holiday zombie include:

Why isn't this on sale?!

Oh 30% off,  I'll take two. What is it again?

I'll be at the mall by 7am.

What time do you close? 11?! Why so early?

We only have 13 more shopping days!

Who's at risk?

People shopping since midnight on Black Friday.

People who have been clicking "place order" every free minute of the day since Cyber Monday.

People shopping since July (aka my mom).

People shopping the mall during peak hours, after 7pm Monday through Friday or anytime Saturday/Sunday.

People who have a shopping day count down.

People who don't know how to just stop shopping.

People that skip dinner, sleep, or their normal activities to shop.

About a week into the holiday season you'll witness a few holiday zombies. However by now, with only 4 shopping days left! You'll see 2 out of 3 shoppers have become holiday zombies. (true statistics)

So how to prevent this fearful plague? Here are my suggestions:

Stop shopping for a moment to replenish yourself. You know those things food, water and sleep? Yeah their life's essentials. Keeps your mind going too, which makes sense when you have to figure out which coupon you have gives a better deal and you don't have a free hand to pull out your calculator. 

 Now that you know what a holiday zombie is, hopefully you can try to stop the transformation before it starts. Oh and if you happen to be attacked by one, like you grabbed the last batman snuggie on the shelf and it stirs a holiday zombie, weapons are defenseless, just scream there are 75% off door busters at the closest department store, you'll be fine.  

"Either hell has frozen over or you're a zombie of a girl I used to know."

Day 119!

Remember that awesome craft store RagShop? Whatever happened to that place? I know. It happens to be in room. Or maybe a better way to explain the ridiculous amounts of craft supply I have...You know in the city those Staples Express stores, just consisting of the necessities like pens, folders and binder clips, but not those super fancy leather briefcases at a regular Staples store... Hmm yes, I have a RagShop Express under my bed, in my closet, coming out of my desk drawers.

What do you expect with five years of Odyssey of the Mind, once working at a craft store and being a visual major.

Well because of my express store I get nominated to do things like "Hey can you write my coworkers name in glitter on this stocking?" or "I have this stress ball I need you to decorate." Yeah...














Everyone at my mother's work has one of these stress balls, but in white. One of the girls keeps her's looking like a ghost, but for Christmas decided to make a cute snowman. Having to top her, another girl made hers look like a penguin. Very adorable. What isn't adorable though, bragging about how awesome your penguin looks compared to the snowman. No not cool. Not planning to decorate hers, my mom then decided she needed to make her stress ball more awesome than the penguin. And of course I was given the job to do so.

The penguin is really cute, you can't deny it.

Well trying to decide on what it should be, a snowman or maybe a gingerbread man I thought an angel would be cute.























Sorry for the poor photo, I took it fast before my mom took it to work.
It's not perfect, but I think it's pretty cute. Equal to the penguin maybe?

"Don't bother Angel, I know exactly what goes on."

The little bit of random...

I posted about this song a few months back. Well now "Douchebag" by Patent Pending has a video Check it out! These guys are awesome and the video is hysterical.






"Dude! I'm not your bro."

Day 118!

A couple of months ago I wrote about how I went to Colorado to see my aunt and uncle. While there, they gave me a beautiful clover ring and one diamond earring. My aunt said she had no use for it since she lost the other one,and thought I could do something with it. Well I did!


This is so exciting...


















I went to a jeweler to see what I could do with the diamond and he gave me a few books to go through. I decided I wanted a ring and picked out this setting because I loved the intricate design, looking very vintage.


Wanna see the ring again? Of course you do!

 It's so beautiful. This is the first real piece of jewelry I bought for myself so I think that's why I'm so excited. It looks truly perfect with the ring Dan bought me too!


"Shine on diamond eyes"

Day 117!

Shopping Adventures with Kira and Dan!


I love living in Jersey sometimes, you can hit 5 malls in one day and still be home for dinner. I live no more than 20 minutes away from at least 4 different malls, add another ten minutes and I can add another 2 malls to that list.

Only making it to two, Dan and I went to the mall for some Christmas shopping today. While shopping for our family, we did do some shopping for ourselves. Dan's mother thinks he needs a real coat, so we went to Sears to see what they had.

How perfect is this jacket? It's like an instant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man suit.
























He actually kinda reminds me of Lord Legless here. I'm sure it's obvious, but the search for a "real" jacket continues.


After looking at jackets, we did some shopping for my mom. I attempted to find her a wallet. What a task. She has so many specifications like, it has to have pockets, zippers, it must be big, it has to have a place for photos, but not a cheap plastic slip. Basically it needs to hold more than her purse, but still fit in her purse. Well while looking for that, we found this.

















People, if you're going to graffiti in the handbag department of Jcpenney, which is lame to begin with, maybe you should double check your spelling. Just saying. Silly delinquents...

More shopping adventures to come...

"All the lights go green. For me, Lord Legless, and my Sacred Rose tat queen."

Day 116!

Ah, look how amazing this is!

Dan decided to be crafty and make me a Mockingjay pin like the one from The Hunger Games. It's the coolest thing. He's going to make some for etsy and sell them. Anyone want to buy one?


















I think it'd make an awesome Christmas gift.

And if you don't know what The Hunger Games is, go look it up! It's a really great book (there are three of them actually) that they're making into a movie.

"They let you wear one thing from your district in the arena. One thing to remind you of home. Will you wear this?"

Day 115!

Happy Black Friday!


I hate being that person to get up at 3am to get to the mall at 4am to shop the "exclusive" black friday deals and blah, blah, blah. But I was! And it wasn't planned. The plan was to use up my monthly train pass before I didn't have it again until February. I decided that I was going to go to the Met and the MOMA for the day. That was the plan. But then Wednesday night happened. I went to the mall and saw a dress at H&M that I had to have, when I asked an associate where the dress was he said it wouldn't be out for sale until Friday and it's an exclusive, it'll only be $5. Wait, what? Seriously? Such a cute dress, I'd probably spend about $35 for it at H&M.

Well after that all plans changed. I was certain I wasn't going to get the dress, I mean getting to the mall at 4 am for a $5 dress seems hardly worth it. However Dan thought otherwise. I will admit it took very little convincing, but he convinced me to go to the mall at 4am. How stupid. I couldn't believe how crazy H&M was, I mean insane! After scouring the place down, I couldn't find the dress. Feeling stupid for even going to look for it, I was about to leave. But then when back to check one more place and to my surprise I found a woman contemplating if she wanted a dress or not. My dress! I'm pretty sure Dan and I have mind control because after staring her down for 3 minutes, she put the dress down. What's best, it was my size. Amazing! Although happy about the dress, it really wasn't worth that chaos and the hour long line. I swear that will be my last Black Friday venture, ever.

Anyways after the mayhem in the mall, we went home for a 3 hour nap and went to the MOMA. Which was free after 4pm, since it's sponsored by Target. Thanks Target!

-Three Musicians 

I got super excited when I saw this Picasso. I did a replica of this piece by collaging magazine cutouts, a few years ago. I'll have to post a photo of that one day soon.

So my black friday wasn't THAT crazy, I'm sure there were worse. Got any stories?


"This never happened to Pablo Picasso."

Day 114!

Happy Thanksgiving!


When I was in high school I went to an elementary school for my Odyssey of the Mind competition. Through out the school they had the kids' artwork hanging on the walls. And I still remember this one specific Thanksgiving poster a kid made. With each letter of the word "thankful", the child wrote something he was thankful for. My favorite thing he was thankful for was walnuts. Yes, he wrote walnuts... I don't understand why out of all the possibilities he wrote that, but it was extremely amusing. The poster went something like this.
          Tv
          Harry Potter
        bAsketball
       caNdy
      poKemon
           Friends
compUter
      waLnuts

I'm not sure of everything the child was thankful for since it was so long ago, so I made it up of course. And I was going to say again that I don't understand why he said he was thankful for walnuts, however trying to come up with seven things that an 8 year old would be thankful for was kinda hard. So maybe I do understand now lol.

So what are you thankful for?

I'm thankful for my Scoutie. Even when he snores, barks at absolutely nothing and sleeps on my clean blankets.

"Turkey for me, turkey for you. Let's eat the turkey. In my big brown shoe."

Day 113!

Working a Go Green event at the public library in my town, I decided to walk though the children's section to feel nostalgic.  It was crazy not to see the card catalogs, and computers all over instead. It also seemed so much bigger when I was a kid. While I was walking around I saw a shelf with featured books.

It severely bothers me that Bruce Springsteen is considered to be at the same level as Lincoln and Washington. Okay I get it we're in Jersey, the man is known as The Boss. But is he really as important to American history as our 1st and 16th president? lol. Oh Jersey...


"Absolutely, I'm the boss."

Day 112!

For my internship/work I worked a private event at the St. Giles hotel. It was for Moms around the city to get together, relax, and check out some exclusive deals from some awesome retailers. I don't go to many fancy hotels so this was one of the fanciest I had ever been too. I guess it would have to be since it's in New York City.

Here is the front lobby, I tried not to be obvious taking the photo. I really should have taken my camera to get better photos. I wanted to get a shot of the bar they had there, Lex. My goodness was it fancy inside. The guys wore bow ties. How cute.

There were a lot of photographers at the event, so  I scoured the internet for some photos from the night. However I couldn't find anything but someone's flickr account. But hey I found a photo of me! Well part of me lol.

 

"Snapshot image without a sound"
I think I'm so funny sometimes. Figure it out  ;)

Day 111!

The one time I don't go to Visual Presentation, is the one time I should have sucked up the migraine and went. We were given a group project, groups picked by the professor, one class period to come up with a concept and a second class period to put the concept together. Basically we were told to pick a song and make a display for that song. Now being it's me, trying to be sorta neutral, I would have tried to convince the group to do a classic Bowie song (as opposed to Alien Ant Farm or my current obsession, Chiodos). Something related to New York, since we go to school there, or something like "Dancing In The Street, could have been cool. But since I wasn't there, the group decided to do Rihanna's song "Cheers". Oh so not my cup of tea, not my first choice in song, but who am I to say a thing, I wasn't there. The next class we put together the concept display. I did the masks and the silhouettes out of installation board. (Which is probably the source of my extreme headaches. )

Our idea was to have people having fun on the weekend at a rooftop party. The cut up images of Rihanna are supposed to represent city buildings. Even though I still don't like the song, the idea was pretty cool and probably well fitting for the demographics of our school. It's a fashion/business college who we have to appeal to, not my Bowie obsession.



















After we rushed like madmen putting this together, two other visual professors, with ours, came in and critiqued our concept, which was competing against two other group's awesome concepts.

Basically we put together these concepts for one to be chosen and made into a full size version, displayed at LIM. A bit nerve racking. After we talked about all the displays, the professors as well as the students all voted. And our's won! Excitement! So the class as a whole was to work together on the project as our final.

And here is the finished product!

















I helped a little with the background, the bricks, the buildings, the flowers, the dress on the right and the installation. Here and there I contributed. But I have to say the dress on the left was done all by me. Made of tissue paper, this thing took me hours and hours. I had minor help with the pleats on the chest by the awesome Brit, I had some trouble with them, but other than that, this baby was all me.

Too bad you can't steam tissue paper, some of the wrinkles, not meant to be there, were driving me nuts. 

Oh and I have to point out, the bricks under the railing and on the wall were painted by a girl Alex. I can't get over how well she painted them, they look so great.


"Cheers to the freakin' weekend."

Day 110!

Autumn can even make old bikes look awesome.

This is what I do instead of homework. Let out the dogs and go "Ooh! That would be a great photo. Right back!"


"Do you take advantage of your time? Because you only live once."

Day 109!

Hey Snow,

Thanks for ruining my beautiful autumn trees.

Without Love,
*Kira



















Autumn is my favorite season. My allergies hate it, but I love it. The changing leaves are the best. I have a photo from last year with the leaves changing against the blue sky, it was a complete rainbow. So beautiful. However from the snow most of the leaves, before they even were able to change, fell. Not all leaves, but a lot. Which ruins everything.



After I took that photo I found this...


















David the Gnome's autumn home. So cute.



"I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me..."

Day 108!

Happy Day of the Dead!

I love Day of the Dead! Possibly for my slight sugar skull obsession, or how it's in so many cultures and religions, even if it does go by different names. I especially love how it's a celebration for the dead, you don't mourn over your lost loved ones, but instead you celebrate them. For the multiple holidays; Halloween, Day of the Dead, All Soul's Day, All Saint's Day, Samhain and whatever else, I made soul cakes!

I love these things, they're so heavy it's like a meal. It's great. Basically just butter, flour, eggs, sugar, and  some spices like ginger, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, makes a soul cake, which really looks like a cookie, but delicious either way.

The purpose of a soul cake is for every cake eaten a soul will be released from purgatory. I like to think that my souls cakes are so good that all souls are sent to heaven by them lol. I will admit, I make them through out the year sometimes. Not only are they pretty good, it's for a good cause, helping souls and all.



"Happy death day to you baby."

Day 107!

Ahh the first snow! Wait what?

It's not even November and it's snowing! This is Jersey here, not Colorado, not Alaska. What is going on? The weather is nuts, two days prior I was wearing a t-shirt walking to class, now snow boots. Insane. But whatcha gonna do? It was a great conversation starter at work...so how about that snow? lol

It was kinda crazy hosting a Halloween party for the girl scouts who took part in the green teams over the spring and summer. Yup, while they were decorating pumpkins it was snowing outside.




"Winter's curse is just around the bend."

Day 106!

I work every Sunday in the city and because of the trains I'm always an hour early for work. I love Bryant Park, especially in the morning because it's super peaceful (as peaceful as you can get for the city) so that's where I go every Sunday morning. While I read my book, eating the healthiest breakfast ever, a super chocolate chunk cookie, I broke up some pieces and shared it with my new bff here. The birds in the city are fearless, they'll eat from your hand.

Which explains why most of them are quite hefty.




"Turn it up keep it coming. Cause I've got the words, to keep the birds humming"

The little bit of random...

I love this commercial!



I'm thinking Walmart is competing with Target and their awesome commercials. I'm still obsessed with that denim one.

Day 105!

Bowie completed! 

I don't brag about the things I do often, it's not me. So if I happen to like something I do it's sort of a big deal. A couple of weeks ago I was working on an 18x24" drawing of Bowie for class. It was my first attempt at EVER drawing a person before. While this isn't perfect at all, I think for my first drawing of a person, it's pretty decent.
























Sorry for the camera phone photo here, I took this in class. 

 I mean it's not fantastic-fantastic, a little weird looking, but you have to also realize how weird Bowie looked during his Ziggy Stardust days. Anyways, I had to present this to the class and after hearing about the pupils being two different sizes (Bowie's pupils are actually two different sizes in real life) and how feminine he looks (Is Bowie not one of the most feminine dudes ever?) it was slightly ripped apart for having a Frankenstein appearance and an odd finger. You have to expect criticism and you have to learn to accept it, but even weeks after the fact, I'm still annoyed about this. It's not about my poor drawing skills, I totally get that. Really it's about the ignorance of criticizing the parts of the drawing that are supposed to be the way they are. Bowie's pupils are two different sizes, have they never noticed that before? Even if you thought they were two different colors, which most do think is the case, there are supposed to be irregularities in his eyes of course. I guess being in a fashion school, talking about a fashion icon, I wouldn't expect them to question such an obvious trait of his. Or maybe I'm just bitter about the critique and obsessed with Bowie lol.


"Yeah, it's over. You can bet in mid-October, I will still be ranting 'bout early May."

The little bit of random...

This was the best.

So a couple of weeks ago I posted about a project I had to do for class. I had to make a flyer getting people to call a number and leave me a message. Here's the post Call Dave. Even though my professor didn't really like my idea I wanted to prove to him it would work. A week before we had to actually post the flyers I went to see Motion City Soundtrack at Irving Plaza and I decided to write Dave's number outside on the wall and left the number in the girls bathroom, just for the hell of it. Was that stupid of me to publicly announce I graffitied? Oh well lol. Anyways, I got one text from that number the night of and nothing else. Until Wednesday night around midnight I get a call from a bunch of dudes looking for Dave, apparently the number is still on the wall outside Irving Plaza. I find this absolutely hysterical because I wrote the number over a month ago and my professor actually cancelled the project once he found out it was illegal to post flyers without permission. Who knew?

But anyways, thanks random guys for making my day and leaving me a message. You proved my professor wrong, that someone would indeed leave a message.
You're the best!

Here's the message, if anyone cares to listen.





"Teenage graffiti, slam the door when you're defeated. We're all a victim if you give us time, we're all of victim of the times."

Day 104!

New Hope!

Well actually..Lambertville!



For the weekend Dan and I went to New Hope/Lamberville. It's the cutest area. New Hope is a little town in Pennsylvania and over a small bridge, across the Delaware River, is Lambertville, another small town, considered to be Jersey.

 

There's not a ridiculous amount of things to do there, mostly expensive restaurants, antique shops, old book stores and novelties stores, but every year we go. I just love the atmosphere of this place.

Dan got us a really nice hotel to say at for the night, it was right on the water. We had the San Francisco room. Not sure why it was called that, nothing seemed very San Fran like, however the room was beautiful. We had the coolest electric fire place and these fancy fake flowers!

Here is a the view, not from the room, but from the parking lot. So pretty. When the leaves start changing I'm sure it'll be stunning.

And here is Dan on the phone in the parking lot. Trying to figure out who to call when you lock your keys in the car. Can't have a trip without one mishap with us. lol

"Broke the window, who needs car keys anyway?"

The little bit of random...

Viral marketing! One of my favorite things.

If you haven't read The Hunger Games, I suggest you go to the library and pick up at least the first book of the trilogy. When your done I'm sure I won't have to tell you what to do, because on your own you will probably be going for the next two. Promise.

The books are being made into movies which is really awesome and to add to the hype there is viral marketing for the first one which is set to come out in March. Super stoked for that.

After excessive tweeting for it to process, here is my DIP I finally received. I live in District 5 and I'm a Systems Analyst. I'd prefer to be the visual merchandiser of District 5 but I assume they don't have those there being that my district mainly runs the power supply. Oh well lol.
























I'm not sure what exactly is going on with this and what's the point so far, but let's hope these virals are just as cool as The Dark Knight's. That stuff ran my life for nearly a year. But in a good way and it was awesome. If you want to get into the virals while they seem to be just starting, go to TheCapitol.pn and register, might be worth it. I got a lot of swag during the TDK virals and won two free tickets for an advance screening of The Dark Knight in IMAX. It was seriously the coolest thing ever!