A quick note on blogging...

Blogging about blogging is the absolute WORST thing a person can do other than flicking babies in the ear or making fun of a dog to its face but here we go.  It'll be relatively painless, I promise.  But I had a come-to-Jeebus moment during my blog break about how much time I was willing to spend blogging and some things had to change.  

My life in perpetuity. Here.

Proper sourcing of images is really important to me but thanks to shitty pinners and bad blogging manners finding the true original source of ONE image can take up to fifteen minutes... twenty minutes... if ever at all.  I'm a master reverse image googler by now, I assure you.  I sometimes get distracted by cool internet adventures during these hunts *cough* tumblr *cough* but I didn't include that time in the number above.  Swearsies.

Now multiply twenty by the number of images in yesterday's post... I'll give you a minute...  yeah...  I have often spent HOURS just sourcing pictures (not including the time for gathering the images) for a post it takes less than two minutes to read.  This is not a humblebrag of blogging life (too late?) or a criticism of readers - my posts are meant to be absorbed quickly without a lot of effort and easily forgotten so you can go back to eating your bagel.  

But frankly, I just don't have that kind of time anymore and I'd like to eat a bagel too.  And have a life.  So my new rules for sourcing are:

-In the case of image dumps, "mood boards"/ inspiration posts or lengthy illustrated stories of some kind (hey, it could happen) I will credit in the caption where I got the image regardless of supreme ultimate source.  If the pin where I got the image has information I can't verify but think you might like then I'll link to pin (or We Heart It page or Tumblr post or whatever).  It might alert you to a cool pinner person anyway.  The Design for Mankind graphic is smart and I can't argue with it but not necessarily practical for these kinds of blog posts.  I also sincerely doubt a single person actually uses it. 

- But if there isn't any more info and the "source" isn't almost immediately known, then it's captioned as 'unknown.'  Done.  Sorry.

- If you know of a source and I don't please let me know and I'll be happy to fix it.  Random images are the hanging chads of the internet and it drives me fucking crazy.

- If I'm featuring the specific work/thing/artist/designer/etc then I will absolutely source it to the best of my abilities.  

I don't think anyone will actually care about this since very few people actually click through to the source in image dumps but blogging is a community that I enjoy being a part of and I believe in manners. Thanks.  *curtsy*

And although I know that everyone reading this blog is supremely intelligent and amazing, please tell your less fortunate friends to PIN FROM THE SOURCE, YOU GAWDDAMN FILTHY ANIMALS!!  If the URL to an image says 'media-cache-i3ur2ij3lkjerojweirj' or 'tumblr.3rujefkwejrouoru' that is not a fucking source.  Do NOT pin from that.

Or note this other example of pinning fuckery.  I found this image on Pinterest and loved it for my bedroom and wanted to exchange money for this bit of merchandise.  

Source? Unfuckingknown.

It is actually for sale, I was surprised to find out, because I was indeed taken to Etsy only to discover it was pinned from the general search results and not the photographer's shop.  So now this artist who I, and possibly thousands of other appreciative internet people, would like to give my money to will not receive my money.  Way to go, original pinner.  You make this world a terrible place.  I hope the dressing for your kale salad is actually made of piss and vinegar, shit-for-brains.

So the TL;DR version of this post is that I'm spending less time on sourcing and this will impact you in no way whatsoever.  Except that it might help me post more often...!  Consider this my confession just to clean my soul.

Now, back to our regular scheduled and partially-sourced programming!

I'm back and ready to party. Or blog. Or both. I'm open...

Greetings and salutations, y'all!  I'm back from my blog vacation. My blacation?  Irregardless, I took an extra week because I didn't really feel like blogging over Labor Day weekend.  I figured you'd understand.

here

I'd like to tell you that I took a lot of long baths and read poetry and listened to a lot of Vanessa Carlton songs but I didn't do any of that stuff.  There's a time and place for candlelit baths and cocooning to non-abrasive music but this was not it.  I mean, I listened to a lot of The Black Angels and burned a lot of incense but that's a totally different thing, right?

Anyway, I had to DO something.  Be proactive.  Create something.  Or maybe destroy something.

That sounds ominous.  I meant I just threw away some socks with holes in them that I'd been saving for a long time.  It still felt good.

here

Mostly I got dirty, filthy, gross - went outside, played in the dirt, got sweaty, got sweatier.  I chopped down bushes, sanded things and didn't shave my armpits.  [MS sidebar: I get laser treatments done in my armpits so this isn't quite as defiant an act as one might think unless you look reeeaallly close.]

Somehow when you've been on the internet too damn long it's like you forget you're a human animal and that you actual possess a corporeal state.  I tried to remind myself of that. 

We're all made of stardust, right?  That's what a nice mustachioed man on the internet told me one time. But also dirt and toe jam and muscles and too much pasta.

here

I took several weekend trips because traveling is my happy place.  I made a lot of new friends (and got rid of some old ones), went to new restaurants and generally tried new things like people do that don't watch Twitter streams all day. 

Like, you know those things that you read about and think "Hey, that would be so cool to do!" and then you never do them?  Well I actually did some!  So weird, I know.

here

I went to museums and did my hair different and drove all the way to the middle of nowhere to see something that might have been cool.  Turns out it wasn't but at least I did it.  Same thing with my hair.

I signed up for yoga classes and an adult tap class.  Not a pornographic tap class (although how fucking weird would that be but also I kinda want to watch it on Skinemax...) but a class for middle-aged women with a song in their heart and toes full of twinkle.

Here

I did a lot of productive nesting.  I hung art and styled vignettes and made a big mess in the process that I still haven't cleaned up and I'm okay with.

You know in horror movies when the heroes go to an abandoned warehouse basement in search of an alien mom thing and find it filled with bones and twigs and ripped up newspaper all glued together with alien bile and love slime and they're like "OH SHIT IS THIS ITS NEST?" and then somebody immediately dies to feed her babies?  Well that's what I did.  Not the murder part... the making an alien nest part.  But with candles and vintage trays.

here

And I was directed towards a great new astrologist (don't start with me...) who explained why August was terrible particularly as it relates to recent events so I was like "Thank you, Jeebus, I'm not entirely insane!" 

She explained why I was DO-ing all these things as a form of ritual.  And Virgos love some ritual.  

Not ritual sacrifice, if you were worried...

Although maybe it's time to sacrifice some armpit hair...?

here

Nah.  I'm good.

And now it just happens to be my birthday month so I'm pretty much a riding the Beyonce birthday wave of flawlessness for the next three weeks.

To sum up: I'm back, full of renewed energy and lots of new age-y goodness (debatable) and ready to blog again in an enjoyable way.  

Well, enjoyable to me.  How much joy it brings others is also debatable but the internet hasn't kicked me off yet so I'll take that as a good sign.

Hope you're all enjoying the slow slide into Fall and the universe it treating you right.  

Or if that asshole isn't, treat yo self right.

Image pairings courtesy of Adapto (where you can find the source of individual images) but I photosphopped them together as one unit just for ease of blogging/formatting.

Let's put the sauce on a low simmer for a bit...

I don't know about the rest of y'all but I've been somewhat of an emotional basketcase this past week and a half.  

I was already on shaky ground last Monday because I'd been watching the entirety of Deep Space Nine this year and saved the final episode for that night.  I came home and made a strong cocktail (ahem) and cried it out while saying goodbye to 173 episodes.  Who would have suspected such a turnaround from a show I despised to me crying over never seeing a Ferengi again?  I always like the weird/terrible ones.

And still with a Claire Danes-style trembling chin I learned of Robin Williams death.  I was too shocked at first to register emotion but then as I watched the reactions roll in I kinda lost it.  There I was drinking blood orange faery pee and making chicken gravy that was heavily seasoned by the salty rivers of my despair.  I could NOT stop crying for hours.

I didn't think I even liked Mrs. Doubtfire that much but apparently I did.  I'm STILL not over it completely and I refuse to watch the video of Koko the gorilla crying.  Every time I attempt to read an article about him I get upset.  I do not even have the capacity for Lauren Bacall right now.  My apologies.  

Then Wednesday I got SUCKED IN to the events in Ferguson.  Obsessed may be the more appropriate word now .  I was aware of the story but watching it happen in real time that night was pivotal.  And still is.

I was constantly checking for updates on the computer but couldn't seem to respond to an email or other basic internet protocol.  I had that last blog post ready to go for a week but couldn't seem to hit 'publish.'  I'm still up pretty much every night til midnight watching the protests unfold on Twitter. If you're interested in the events at all I strongly urge you to get yer ass over there pronto and follow the protesters and journalists on the street.  

Warning: "once you've committed to following the ghastliness of Ferguson, it's hard to think about anything else, watch about anything else, read about anything else."

I'm not normally so emotional but it may have something to do with hormones and spending several days working til midnight at home and being utterly sleep-deprived and Deep Space Nine residual grief.  Maybe I was also going through hot dog withdrawal?  Maybe everything hit at once.

I don't know but I cried when I learned that the Civil Wars broke up and then I cried over the sound of some of their harmonies.  I cried because I liked riding in my car at night so much (...the fuck?) and because my new bed pillows were the perfect blend of soft yet supportive.  I cried when I saw this picture of Janelle Monae and I cried when I read about Mo'ne Davis pitching in the little league world series.  I cried typing that sentence just remembering her smiling face.  There's no crying in little league, Lacy!

So basically I'm a giant gaping soul wound of flayed emotions, half-assed activism and Good Will Hunting references.  

I spent the weekend doing some emergency self care and it was most beneficial.  I need more.

I let out my frustration on a bunch of overgrown bushes in my garden, sweated a lot, helped a friend rearrange her furniture, tried to avoid electronic screens as much as possible, had some quality naked time, went to our local march (fully clothed) in solidarity with the protesters in Ferguson instead of just retweeting news, I made new friends, I drank a lot of water, I was in happy baby pose a lot, I worked out as much as possible - sometimes in the rain - and then I hung out in the rain some more.  

Not only did I check that off my summer bucket list (BOOM) but there's something about NOT avoiding the rain, being purposefully drenched in it, that is quite liberating despite its romantic comedy cliche vibe.  Just what I needed to momentarily forget about tweets.

Good thing I have a privacy fence.

The only things that make me actually laugh right now are videos of Robin Williams and Craig Ferguson together and that terrible Walking Dead 'Coral' meme.  It's so bad.  I can't stop cackling.

Birgit Jurgenssen via Alison Jacques Gallery

In light of these recent events and the fact that if I even look at a computer/phone/tv screen I get a headache, I'm taking a blogging break for the next two weeks.  I expect much more naked time and happy baby pose in my future.  Maybe even at the same time!

I'll be travelling for the next two weekends anyway so I figured this would be a perfect time.  I'll obviously be on Twitter (I CAN'T STOP!) although I'll try to respect my bedtime and  emotional well-being as much as possible.   

Hope everyone is taking care of themselves and I'll holler at you in a few weeks!

Like Jesus I've been resurrected from blog death!

It has come to my attention this week that the ultimate tragedy has befallen our nation: YOU WERE NOT ABLE TO READ MY BLOG.  Apparently there was some kind of Blogger/Feedburner fuckery because new posts did not show up in RSS readers or email subscriptions since about January.  I only discovered this when my post earlier this week prompted Feedburner to wake the fuck up and send the entire backlog all in one dump and it confused people.

Thanks a fucking lot, internet things that I do not understand how they work.

Also, thanks to y'all for not even telling me!  I could have been dead, my rotting corpse hunched over on top of my laptop, Charlemagne long since eaten my eyeballs then moved away, and y'all would be like "I think she's just on hiatus..."

I would never leave for two months without telling y'all.  That's just rude.  Two weeks, maybe.  Ok maybe three like in that one summer a few years ago when it was just too damn hot to blog but never months.  

So I hope you're still here and thanks to the people that check on my site old school style or came through from Twitter.  I really should be better about tweeting myself but that seems really hard when I'd rather tweet about US Airways blunders and the weather.

So I'm not posting anything of real value today, just letting you know am I NOW aware of the problem and trying to investigate the why.  So a quick recap of what I've been up to lately?  Um...

First off, I read these while spending some time in airplanes the past few days:

All excellent.

In bloglandia, I've been planting a lot, ants make really good architects, I saw American Hustle, I WANT to see this cabin, I thrifted - A LOT - and I gave some of my latest travel and moisturization secrets to you.

Most importantly, I've kinda been redecorating my bedroom.  It needed some love after many sad years of bland and I got kinda inspired by this whole jungle theme which I totally appropriately named Heart of Darkness.  But don't worry, the jungle theme is only for blog lyfe and inspiration.  But I made a real mood board and have slowly been changing up my beauty rest space and have painted all the walls and made some other progress.  Mostly a mess but some progress too.

I think that's the main stuff.  The sad part is that I've made a pointed effort to blog more this year only to find out that almost no one is reading it.  Sigh... such is blog life.

Anyway, welcome back, missed you, love you, let's drink some chai spiked with booze and talk about my plants and paint colors and eggs.

In light of this weekend, y'all know I'd rather cut off my infamous beauty mole than celebrate the resurrection of Christ but I did run across these Easter eggs - let's call them Spring Equinox Eggs of Blessed Fertility aka Mother Nature's Ovary Glitter - and was kinda amazed.

They're decorated with flowers and then wrapped in onion skins and boiled.  Our ancestors really knew their shit.

See the full tutorial and pictures at Ulicam

But mostly about eggs and pretty colors.

Hopefully we won't have any more blog issues but please holler at me if you're having problems with something - commenting, feedly messing things up, you think I might be dead.

You're on your own with eggs though.

Already Saucy

Wow I think I must have passed out from all those pills (vitamins) I've been binging on and spirits (sweet tea) I've been funneling because I swear I just blogged a week ago.  I must be overdosing on summer.

I'll be back again in a few days I swear but in the meantime head over to one of my favorite body positive/style blogs Already Pretty.  I'm guest posting about the fun and (maybe a tad) philosophical way in which fashion and interiors are friends.

Mario Testino for Vogue via Fashionising

Just like how Karlie Kloss is probably friends with that room.  Or maybe I want to be friends with that room.  Probably rather be friends with the room than Karlie...

I'm sure she's a lovely person.

But I bet I could cuddle better with the couch.  Just sayin.

So I'll see y'all soon but go check me out hanging with Sally at Already Pretty and make sure to follow Sally on Twitter too.

We're Already Saucy over here so it's a guest blogging relationship that's meant to be.

Let's talk Tilda.

Some people follow Kim Kardashian and her perfect face contouring like a cult and then there's the rest of us.

The rest of us with our normal boneless cheeks and sagging jowls need an androgynous weirdo to worship.  *enter Tilda Swinton stage left riding a baby dragon and reading a newspaper*

Tilda's such a badass who gives less than zero fucks.  Negative fuckitude.  

Sometimes she sleeps in a glass box for ART.  I think she's an alien fairy that rides cyclones for fun.  

AND I heard that even though she's married she has a hot young boyfriend that travels with them on family vacations and shit.  *raises eyebrows*  I just KNOW there are strap-ons and crying involved.  (Maybe her boyfriend's name is Cyclone...?!)  I have a good sense about these things.  I'm really good at deciphering kinks.  

Well other than gay stuff and people with foot fetishes...  

And people into clown sex, infantilism, Furries.... ok pretty much I can only tell kinks that might possibly involve me and even then I'm like, "what am I supposed to do with lederhosen and a dozen jelly donuts but okay you bring the baby wipes."

I'm totally kidding.  

I of course already have baby wipes.

ANYhosen, when someone in my Tilda network of devotees sent me this link to her spread in May's W magazine I had a moment.

Gawd, I want to go to there so bad...

This is how I imagine I look like walking around my house.  DON'T YOU?  Imagine yourself, that is.  Don't imagine me cuz that's weird and creepy.

But then I had another moment because this place looked familiar to me and not just because of the hallucinations.  Turns out, the location for this shoot is something I blogged about several years ago!  I'm a trendsetter!

Long time readers may (probably not) remember Los Pazos in Mexico built by eccentric, surrealist weirdo Edward James.  Relive the magic (and nudity) here.  He already sounds just like Tilda.

Vintage picture of "Stairway to the Sky"

Some dude named Jacob K styled the shoot and probably read my blog and didn't credit me with giving him the great ideas but whatever.  It's cool.

Gowns work great in the jungle of weirdo love.  Good job, Jacob K.  

Here's Tilda contemplating weirdness (and what she's going to do to her young manfriend later tonight) in a different gown while in quantum flux.

This space is known as the "Cinema structure with the double staircase."  Looks so empty and lifeless without Tilda who I'm not even really sure is actually alive...

The top picture is from W and the bottom is a vintage photo of the entrance to Edward's living quarters.  I bet Tilda did something really artistic and/or perverted up in there.

But in a gown.

This could be Tilda's O face but she's most likely sending out a mating call to other aliens on our planet in a frequency us humans just can't hear.  

You may only approach Tilda if you've dipped your entire arm in a sterile vat of fairy piss before being coated in powdered Smurf clay.

It is physically impossible to complete a fashion editorial shoot without including an all white, albino alien look.  It cannot be done.  You can Snopes it.

I'm actually terrified of her now but really in love with her finger jewelry so I'm willing to overlook this.  Also, I'm trying to be nice so we can work out a timeshare for Los Pazos and maybe even her hot young boyfriend.

I'll bring the donuts and baby wipes if he can swipe a few gowns for me.

Spreading some internet love today.

It's been a pretty rough week around the Ranch because MY FACE FUCKING MELTED OFF on Tuesday and my front yard looks like the surface of Mars.  I can't even get my house boy to rub my feet with chilled lotion because while trying to install an outdoor drinking fountain for Charlemagne he had a mild heat stroke like a punk-ass sissy bitch.  


Christ, it's hard to find good help on Craigslist these days.


So now I have no face, hot dry feet and Charlemagne is having to drink water from a bowl like a gawddamned ANIMAL!  Worst summer ever.


But it's not all bad!  This week my cabinet guru/kitchen therapist-turned-real life friend of amazing awesomeness, Nick of Cupboards, was interviewed on KBB Online - the magazine for the kitchen and bath industry.  Not only is that exciting for a deserving person, but your favorite online fake Madame also got a special sweet spot:

Aww...  we're famous.  Now I'm going to go hyperventilate into a paper bag now just like they do in movies even though I've never seen anyone do in real life.  Where does one even find paper bags??

My kitchen really has nothing to do with the interview except to show that Nick and I actually met through Twitter and remodeled my kitchen before ever even meeting in person.  So yes, social media IS good for business and the interview is a fun read to see what real business owners are doing and (not doing) with social media. 

I usually use social media for sharing status updates about my vagina and pictures of margaritas I'm drinking but it turns out some people use it for "important" things related to their earning money and financial security whatever that means.  

But I'm kinda hijacking this feature to use as foreshadowing for some upcoming posts I'm planning about last year's kitchen remodel: the one year anniversary follow-up extravaganza!!  I'm thinking about it for two reasons:

1.  I love a follow-up episode on tv.  So if you're like me and maybe you want to know if someone is glad they got to meet Candy Finnigan or whether or not they liked the wood countertops they bought, these posts might interest you.  For everyone else they're probably going to be pretty boring.  They'll probably be boring even if you are interested...

2.  For purely selfish reasons, I'm really trying to unleash the beast of my camera and get some better photos of my space (more and better than what's pictured above).  Last year I had to take pictures when I wasn't emotionally prepared and then I had technical difficulties that I tried to "fix" in Photoshop so the big reveal day and my most viewed post ever(!) looked really shitty.  Way to crack under pressure, Madame!  I'm all for mediocrity but that was ridiculous.  

2B.  Totally unrelated to my ineptitude, Blogger is fucking with some of my pictures making them grainy and blurry - you can see it especially in the photos from my patio - and I think that has something to do with things always looking shitty around this here blog.  If anyone else has had this problem please holler because I will not humiliate myself TWICE.  My feet are still hot and dry and can't stand any more nightmares this summer!

Did you like how I turned a post that was supposed to highlight the accomplishments of someone else into a whiny Madamefest?  I'm such a giver.

So don't be a selfish, faceless bitch like me.  Make sure you are friendly with Nick at Cupboards (@Cupboards) and KBB Online (@kbbconnect).

Seriously though, someone needs to help me with my photog skillz and foot rubbing...

Secrets to my blogging non-success: Pinterest, gays and animal genitalia!

This weekend proved to be a very informative one: while cleaning out my closet I learned I really don't look as good in empire waist tops as I think I do.

I learned it's possible to give yourself temporary lactose intolerance (that's soooo worth it) after making a mac and cheese with sausage, goat cheese and eleventeen other types of cheese.  

After a few cocktails with some homosensual hippie types, I learned that Tennessee is home to Short Mountain Sanctuary which is a commune/home base for the Radical Faeries - a collective of pagan-esque gay men from around the world.  Ahh Appalachia, the secrets you keep...

And most importantly I learned that not only do I have a Bachelor's of Scienze in Home Ekonomics, I am also an investigative journalist!  For instance, just this week I had to get out my secret design blogger decoder ring to find the source of this bedroom that I saw all over Pinterest:

And by 'all over Pinterest' I mean 'all over my bedroom' because I found one pin and then printed a thousand copies out, taped them to my bed pillow and then dry-humped the shit out of them.  It's so dreamy like a really sterile hotel in fog.  But something about the decorgasm felt familiar and upon closer inspection of the now-destroyed paper I realized it was THIS room: 

SCHWING!  It's Francisco Costa's bedroom and an old favorite of mine.  Ahhh... memories.  I included it my round-up about horse art a few years ago because I used to have the time to do round-ups like that.  It's a post I'm proud of because I think I only had ONE horse cock joke in it.  Wait... I should reread to be sure...

I'm not sure why I like this room so much since without even knowing whose room it is you can tell that the queen living here gets vegan colonics, has a platinum (horse?) cock ring and isn't satisfied until the hospital corners on his bed linens are sharper than Angelina Jolie's Malificent cheekbones.

That's pretty much the opposite of everything I believe in: I get bacon colonics, [redacted for propriety] and I haven't made my bed in 17 years.

Maybe I only like this room because I get to make so many cock jokes about it...

The photography (ok, possibly the real reason I like the room) is by Australian artist and photog Martyn Thompson.  He has a book out about his interior photography called... wait for it... Martyn Thompson - Interiors. 

It looks like lifestyle shots of people who can afford to buy small islands but instead choose to live simple, monastic lives in beautiful places like this: 

 ...and then fuck them up with bullshit like this:

John Derian's house from, like, forever ago.

And this:

pics from Desire to Inspire

Fuck every piece of wayward furniture in this room and the platinum cock ring-ed horse it rode in on.  This is what it looks like when rich people masturbate and ejaculate money all over their house and call it decorating.  One Papa Bear chair is great but two is disgusting.  You just bukkakked all over your gorgeous house and in front of that deliriously awesome window.  (MS confession: I had to google the spelling for bukkake before I verbed it.  Do not attempt.)

How many filthy dick jokes can I squeeze into this post?  I'm going for an even baker's dozen.  

But I forgive Martyn for his photography clients because he still photographed one of my blogger favorite bedrooms.  He also has a nice, albeit sparse, tumblr with a bit more of his photographs and where I found this interview from Australian Vogue Living:

More fun things I learned: he makes his own clothes, appreciates Vivienne Westwood (like me and any person with eyes!) and is a Radical Faerie that twice a year visits Short Mountain Sanctuary in Tennessee to sleep in a tent and tap into his homospirit.  

Well, I'll be damned.  That's a very weird and completely pointless coincidence involving useless facts about Tennessee.

The only point to that story is that maybe now you can see how a blog post actually develops in my brain:  cocktails > gay story time > bed time lullabies bed via Pinterest > squeeing > investigative journalism and internet adventures > dreamy interiors and horse cock > more dreamy interiors > bitter ramblings by a lower middle class hack Madame >  inappropriate dick jokes > the rabbit hole of tumblr > gay hippies in Tennessee.

I just wanted to show you a pretty bedroom and then all hell broke loose!  That's essentially the formula for almost every single blog post I've ever written.  It's the Universal Formula for my internet success that fortunately consists of only 10% animal genitalia.

Problogger might want to take note.

Now, I'll probably want to blog later this week so I'm going to pour some gay hippies a few cocktails and see what happens...

PS. Martyn I have some friends you should meet.

A house fit for a drunk mermaid. Hint: that's ME!

Fuck red shacks.  You are dead to me.  I want to vacation inside a seashell!  Wheeeee!!!!

I realize this might be harder to find families with abandoned seashell-looking four-wheeler storage on their property just begging to be inhabited for a week by a saucy freeloader but I'm desperately trying to get my mermaid on like Donkey Kong here.

I found these on An Ambitious Project Collapsing and learned they come from someplace called Flying Concrete.  Take to the sky, composite of whatever the hell is in concrete!  Flying Concrete is a dude from Mexico who designs, builds and teaches YOU how to build these things.

That's right.  I can build this at the Ranch.  I smell a weekend project coming on....

In 2015.

Maybe we can have a No Expectations party and all do it together!  Do you like how I just invited you to a party where you have to build an entire house?  It'll be so joyous you'll forget you're working as are all my parties!  Except for the time I had a party and lost the wine bottle opener.  I also lost some friends that night...

But THIS party will have enough accessible booze to make my neighbors form a prayer circle to beg mercy for our heathen souls.  It'll be like a drunken barn raising back in pioneer days except probably with more gays.  Just imagine that scene from one of my all time favorite movies Seven Brides for Seven Brothers where they raise the barn and then all dance together in perfectly choreographed harmony and gingham.

For all my recent new followers - welcome!  And don't worry, you are invited to the barn raising/flying concrete party too.  I don't want you to feel left out and the choreography is really easy to learn.  I'll make you an extra big cocktail.

New readers made their way here because I was lucky enough to be mentioned in an Apartment Therapy post about funny bloggers with the likes of the Dowager Countess herself My Favorite and My Best; Design Crisis; Me, You and a Wiener; Ugly House Photos and a few other gems.  Hell, let's invite them all too!

This is going to be the best party EVAR!

Just look at what we'll build!  I love organic architecture like this.  Back in ye old design school I used to draw shit like this all the time.  My teachers hated me.  Probably with good reason because I hadn't the foggiest idea of how to build it or spec it but by gawd I could render the fuck out of it.  They totally stifled my creative energy.  Stop harshing my mellow, assholes!  All I had to do was contact Flying Concrete and he could've hooked me up.  Done.

But now I know where I can get details on mermaid house fabulosity.  With Elven doors.  

Wait, mermaids can't walk through doors...  I may have to rethink this theme.

I will definitely be having some of that clerestory window hotness and vagina-like detailing at my "entrance."  

Wait, mermaids don't have vaginas either...  Fuck!  This metaphor is going horribly awry.

But I think that mermaids, elves, my nosy neighbors, ginger Broadway musical stars and ModSauce party guest/construction workers can all agree that we can party like it's 1899 in this fairyland cavern porch.

I can set up some kind of screen and we'll all watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  It'll be magical.