Article
October 7, 2010
2 comments
by alysha

Halloween Links (Blogtoberfest Day 7)

As I type this, I am listening to “Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett, “The zombies were having fun, the party had just begun…” Listen and watch here.

Anyhoo, since we are getting close to Halloween, how about some craft and food links for Halloween fun?

  1. A collection of recipes from TLC. Make Bat Wings with Drip sauce! Mmm…

  2. Papier-Mache Black Cats from Martha

  3. Spiderweb Plates, again from Martha

  4. Vintage Halloween postcards from Craft Jr

  5. Halloween Crafts and Cards from Vintage Image Craft

I have always wanted to have a Halloween fancy-dress party. But I don’t know enough people who would be interested. Boo! But I think I will make some decorations and themed foods regardless. The Kitty Litter Cake has been on my must make (and must gross people out) list for a long time. Is this the year I make it? I think so! Muhahaha! I’ll just have to make sure my Max Kitty doesn’t think it really is a tray!

The ghosty cupcake at the top is one of the Halloween foods I have made in the past. That year I made dark chocolate cupcakes and used food gels to draw spiders on some, and placed white marshmallows on the rest. I shaped each marshmallow by pulling a little of the top part up, and then twisting it to look ghost-like. I then made a mouth with a toothpick, then decorated with gels and icing. Ghost Mallow; not all that scary but very cute and tasty!

Article
October 5, 2010
2 comments
by alysha

eBay Treasure (Blogtoberfest Day 5)

Another fabulous find from eBay. You may remember from when I last bought a retro sideboard from eBay, that I have a penchant for naming furniture. Well, not all furniture, just my two retro sideboards. My newest of these I have named Bettie after Bettie Page.

Solid white oak, glass top and a glass shelf on the inside. There is also a cutlery drawer and another two shelves behind the door. Bettie was a gift from my Husbitect for our Wedding Anniversary. I have plans to line the cutlery draw with felt or perhaps velvet if that is more in keeping with the period? I haven’t completely decided what to keep in Bettie as yet, but I have put some of my kitschy and cute retro collectibles on the two main shelves.

Eclectic, yes?!

A new to me vintage blog that I think is totally faboo is ‘Into Vintage’. If you also love retro, vintage and kitsch, you’ll love this blog!

Do you also collect retro things? Something else maybe – what do you collect? I’d love to know!

Article
October 2, 2010
2 comments
by alysha

I am a gamer (Blogtoberfest Day 2)

I love games. Computer games. I’ve been a gamer since way back in the 1990s when Apogee software was producing some of the best games to ever grace the PC. I remember the excitement of receiving the latest shareware games catalog. In the mail, printed on paper. Back then, the ‘web’ was in the form of a local bulletin board or bbs. Sidenote: First PC game I bought was Legend.

After a while, there was the beginning of the current web, accessed using Netscape. Wow! It was exciting! I wish I still had my very first web page. I possibly do, somewhere. If I find it, I shall share it. It has lots of animated .gif files and very basic html.

Anyhoo, back to games. The first PC game I remember being excited about was Doom (id Software). I remember seeing the full page artwork for it in PC User magazine. It looked so amazing and so different from the basic graphic games we currently had. Things like Paganitzu and Duke Nukem. And when it came out, I kicked death-match butt! I was good, even if I do say so myself (and it was usually death-match via null-modem cable). hehe For those non-gamers, death-match is playing head-to-head with another, real player.

I am still a gamer today, although I will admit, at times I am more of a casual gamer. I go between full on gamer when I have Fallout 3 or Oblivion type games to play, to casual gamer with my love of the simple, Farmville via FaceBook. Or even light-hearted games on the Wii like Animal Crossing: City Folk/Let’s Go To The City. In a couple of weeks when Fallout: New Vegas is released, I will turn back into serious gamer girl!

Do you play any PC/Mac games? How about web-based games? If you play Farmville, let me know – maybe we can be friends?! I also play games on the iPhone (AngryBirds, Peggle, Battleship etc), and within GameCenter I am SquirrelKitty.

Here are some pics of my characters in a few games, I’m missing one from Oblivion, shall find one tomorrow!


My character in Dragon Age.


My character in Fallout 3.


My character in Farmville, on FaceBook.

Article
October 1, 2010
2 comments
by alysha

Old Blogs and Old Designs

I’ve been adding some much older archives to my blog today. Somewhere, amongst all my backups I have the archives from my very first weblog which was way back around 2001/2002. Eventually I will add those here, just need to get over my laziness in not wanting to recode and add images back to all those posts.

I first started blogging, or journaling, by updating all the archives manually which soon became a pain and something I didn’t want to deal with anymore. Along came Blogger which was so much easier! After a while I switched to GreyMatter, then Movable Type and now WordPress. One of my much older ‘about me’ images is below, including one of my first forays into illustration. Hmm, that was nine years ago, where does the time go?! I made the illustration in Flash. Yes, Flash. Not Illustrator which would have been logical, but flash. I used it more for drawing than I did for animation, crazy woman that I am.

I updated the design of my weblog much more than I do now, back then I had a new design at least once a month. I like smaller design tweaks now, maybe a new header every month. It’s been fun (and embarassing) to come across my old blog designs. Some I still like, some make me wonder what I was thinking! One of my favorites is below, the one with the bus. My blog was called ‘Oubliette’ then, a reference to the movie Labyrinth.

Do you still have copies of your first web pages or weblogs?

* An important reminder: While I have been looking for old blog posts, I’ve been going through CDs that are up to six years or more old. One or two have failed. The data is now unreadable. If you have much older data and files backed up on CDs and DVDs – please go check they are still okay. Maybe save your most precious files to a brand new disc. Really – check them. Don’t risk losing files like I have.