“I am not worried, Harry, I am with you.”

HAPPY HARRY POTTER DAY!!!

“Don’t worry, you’re just as sane as I am”

Dear readers, we are a scant few days away from the world-wide premiere of Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince! Sadly, life has been a bit out of sorts for this nerdy girl as of late, so I’m afraid the rest of my grand tutorial ideas will have to wait until part one of Deathly Hallows is released. But thankfully, I am not the only one who likes to share my craftiness with the internets; so for our final installment of Harry Potter crafts, here is a quick round-up of fun tutorials.

• Luna’s Spectrespecs
• Luna’s radish earrings
• Trust Snape wristband
• HP stenciled shirts
• Make your own wand!—I used this tutorial in ‘07 and spent an entire day making wands with a friend. So much fun.

On a somewhat random note, if you are looking to kill sometime waiting for July 15th to finally arrive, you should watch this amazing Harry Potter musical parody: A Very Potter Musical. It’s absurd and hilarious and the songs are really catchy. I’ll been singing “Goin’ Back to Hogwarts” & “Danger, Granger” for the rest of my life. If you love HP, musicals and always pictured Dumbledore as a great wizard who could also appreciate the talent of Zac Efron, you will love this.

Enjoy and happy crafting!

“I trust Severus Snape completely.”

From the moment he is first introduced in the series until the final line in Deathly Hallows, there were debates among readers on the loyalties of one character in particular: Severus Snape. Was Snape good? Was he evil? Was he a double agent? A triple agent? Why did Dumbledore trust him? Could we trust him? Who’s side was he really on? Now that THE END has come, all has been revealed (if you haven’t read the books, don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you) and to be honest, I miss that debate. However, I know there are those of you out there who only watch the films and although that may frustrate me at times, in a way this makes me happy because the Great Snape Debate can still go on (well, until 2011, at least).

Harry Potter Crafts Week Two:

Shrinky Dinks

If you have never played around with shrinky dinks before, get ready to have a lot of fun because they are quite addictive once you start making them. You can buy shrinky dink sheets at craft stores and they even sell printable sheets now, but for those of us who love to recycle trash into crafts, you can actually use #6 plastic, which is usually found in restaurants & delis as to-go or takeaway containers.

I decided to make pins/badges to sport at the Half-Blood Prince midnight release. I made a few different designs available in a PDF file to get you started, including several Snape designs so you can proclaim which side of the debate you are on, but you can make any shape or design you like (just make your design at least 2 1/2 times bigger than the desired finished size). I found several HP inspired fonts here if choose to make your own.

Supplies: Aside from #6 plastic, you will need scissors, permanent markers, color pencils/crayons and super fine sandpaper, foil and a oven pre-heated to 350ºF. Depending on what you want to make with these, you might also need a hole punch, glue and pin backs.

Step 1: Print out your design & trace it onto the plastic with a permanent marker.

Step 2: To color your shrinky dink, flip it over to the wrong side rough it up using super fine sand paper—or if you are me and don’t have sandpaper lying around the house, use the fine side of a foot scrubber. It’s basically the same thing. What we are doing is roughing up the plastic so that the color pencils & crayons have something to adhere to. Don’t color it too dark because it will darken once we shrink it. You can also just use permanent markers, but I have more color pencils than markers. So there.

Step 3: Cut out your desired shape. If you wanted to turn these into jewelery, now is the time to punch the holes.

Step 4: I got the best results by placing the sanded side down on a small tray I made out of foil and placing that directly on the oven rack. It shrank faster and turned out more uniform. The oven should be pre-heated to 350º and will take about 1-2 minutes to shrink. You can read a few different tutorials on shrinking #6 plastic here and here.

Step 5: Ta-da! String it on a necklace or glue a pin back on it and you are finished!

If you have any questions about this tutorial, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or email me. And if you make the “My Sweetheart” necklace Lavender Brown gave Ron, please, please send me a picture (all my plastic containers were too small to try it out)!

Happy crafting!

All art is by Heather Campbell of Accio Brain. She is awesome and hilarious (This needs to be a Christmas card). Please go check out her work.

Infinite Summer

via GabrielleKai on Etsy

Yesterday was the first day in about two weeks the temperature didn’t reach 100º or higher. “But Christine,” you may say, “you live in Texas! Aren’t you use to this? Isn’t this normal?” No, it is not normal to have record breaking temperatures of 107º in June. That sort of nonsense is usually reserved for the end of July and the month of August. Summer arrived in Austin long before June 21st and it is here to stay for what will feel like an infinite amount of time.

Which brings me to Infinite Summer.

Remember way back on June 13th when I said (and I quote):

…it hardly seems the time of year to be reading heavy tomes…

I am eating those words right now. Shortly after writing that post, I read (via John Green’s twitter account—hurray for Nerdfighters!) about Infinite Summer, an online read-a-long and discussion site for “Infinite Jest” and was intrigued. I’ve read a few of David Foster Wallaces’ essays and I knew of “Infinite Jest”, but I didn’t know if I could obtain a copy in time to join or if I really wanted to commit to reading such a book this summer. The idea stuck with me, however, and mentions of Infinite Summer continued to pop up in my daily internet reading, but it wasn’t until I read the guide introductions and saw someone refer to House of Leaves (one of the most amazing books I’ve read) as Infinite Jest junior that I resolved to join the group. So yesterday I picked up my own copy (the last one available in Austin, I do believe) at the fabulous Bookpeople:

Let me tell you, I knew it was massive but I wasn’t quite expecting this. If nothing else, it would make an excellent paperweight or doorstop!

So here is to making blanket statements, carrying around a four pound book until October and the indescribable feeling this book nerd gets knowing that there are thousands of people all over the world reading the same book at the same moment in time. Care to join?

Infinitely yours,

That’s why Gryffindors all sing, Weasley is our King!

Dear readers, I am sorry if you are not a fan of the awesomeness that is Harry Potter, because for the next three weeks there is going to be a lot of Harry Potter related ramblings posted on this blog. If you’ve never read the books or watched the movies, I suggest you run to your local library and catch up with the rest of the world, because really, truly, honestly—-you are missing out.

The summer of 2007 was the Greatest Summer Ever if you were a Harry Potter fan. The fifth movie premiered in July and a week later the seventh and final book in the series (which I dramatically referred to as DH: THE END) was released. Fans around the world celebrated with midnight release parties, dressing up in costumes and listening to Wizard Rock. I celebrated the Great Summer of HP by making nerdy crafts and sharing them with my friends—-and now I want to share them with you. After all, just because we know THE END doesn’t mean the excitement & celebration has to end (we do have THREE more movies to look forward to)! So for the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing tutorials & ideas to show off your love of the great HP through simple crafts that anyone can make.

Back in 2007, I was a bit sad and disappointed when I heard the story line of Ron Weasley joining the Gryffindor quidditch team had been cut from the from Order of the Phoenix film. To show my support for Ron, I made a handful of “Weasley is our King” badges that I forced my group of friends to wear to the midnight release. Happily, Ron & quidditch seem to have made it into the soon to be released Half-Blood Prince movie, so to kick off my series of HP crafts we are first going to make “Weasley is our King” badges/pins, because Ron can use all the support he can get.

First, download the PDF with my very low-tech badge pattern & instructions. All of the supplies can easily be found at your local craft store.

I think the pictures are pretty self-explanatory, but I’m going to quickly explain anyway! Cut out the crown pattern and trace it directly on the foam. I think I got 10-12 crowns out of one sheet of foam. Cut out all your crowns and use a small dab of glue to attach the rhinestones/sequins, I like to use one color to represent each house from Hogwarts. You could also just use glitter or any other sparkly doo-dads you have lying around the house. You could even make one using all pink & gold in the spirit of Lavender Brown, hahaha!

Use a fine Sharpie pen to write out “WEASLEY IS OUR KING”. I say a Sharpie because when I tried using a regular felt tip marker or gel pen the ink bled all over the foam and it looked terrible. So stick with a Sharpie or a similar permanent marker (when in doubt, test it out on a scrap of foam). You could make the font as fancy as you like—but I was sick when I made this and felt that my messy scrawl would do for the purpose of this tutorial.

To make the “KING” pop, go over it with a red glitter pen. White glue and red glitter works—but I find I can get a cleaner look with the fine tip of a glitter glue/paint pen. Once the front has dried, flip the badge over and glue your pin back on. Make sure you let it dry completely before handling.

Ta-da! Now wear your badge with pride to the midnight show Half-Blood Prince! Bring along extras to pass out to other fans who wish they were cool enough to make a badge like yours. Spread the nerdy love—it’s the HP way.

Wishing I was at Hogwarts,

Recommended Summer Reading

I have a confession to make. I’m a bit of a snob. “No!” you may gasp in disbelief, but it is true. I think it is this trait above all else that would make The Sorting Hat put me into Ravenclaw. I am especially snobby when it comes to the books I read. With so many books in the world and so little time left to read them (60-70 years, the way I figure it) I just can’t justify spending my precious reading time on a light, fluffy, badly written “summer beach read”. However, it hardly seems the time of year to be reading heavy tomes (unless it’s a gripping biography), so I usually head to the Young Adult section of the library or bookstore for my summer reading. I think some of the most compelling, thought-provoking, well-written novels are coming out of the YA section nowadays (Harry Potter is just the tip of the iceberg), and most can be read in a day or two, which can make one feel very accomplished.

While there are many, many YA books and authors to recommend, the following are five books that I personally own and am always pushing onto anyone who asks me for a good book to read.

The Arthur Trilogy by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Okay, this is technically the second book in the Arthur trilogy, but I guess I never bought the first book, “Arthur and the Seeing Stone“. A beautifully written story of a boy, Arthur, during the crusades with stories of Arthur of Camelot cleverly woven into the narrative.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

I hesitate to say anything about this book as it is so cleverly written and I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll just say it reads like historical fiction. There are three books thus far in the series…and I love them all.

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

A re-telling of the Grimm fairy tale. Shannon Hale’s lyrical writing is best read outside, under the shade with a summer breeze. The story is at times heart wrenching, funny, touching, romantic and exciting, which Hale deftly juggles which makes this a beautiful book. If you like this, please read the follow up, “Enna Burning“.

The Story Girl & The Golden Road by L.M. Montgomery

My favorite book by L.M. Montgomery. “The Golden Road” is more like a second volume than a sequel. There really isn’t any plot—two young boys go to live with their cousins on PE Island for a year and they have grand times and a girl tells them stories. I have read this book so many times I hardly feel the need to open it anymore, as I have passages and pages memorized. Love. Love. Love.

Christy by Catherine Marshall

This is not really a YA adult book, but the first time I read it I was 10 (and about 2/3rds of the book went over my head) and it has stuck with me ever since. It’s one of my comfort books—something familiar I turn to during rough times—a book that has grown with me and every time I read it I seem to learn something new about myself. I have a bright & shiny hardback edition, but this tattered copy with it’s torn spine and marked up pages is so very dear to my heart.

What books are you reading this summer? If you decide to read any of these books based on my recommendation, let me know what you thought!

Your nerdy bookworm,

Femininity and Imaginary Ramblings

Right, so this is probably the 20th time you’ve seen this dress pop up in your blog roll, but it is so pretty, I hope you don’t mind starring at it again! I can’t believe I almost let the chance to enter Grosgain’s contest to win this lovely, lovely summer dress custom made by the super fun & talented Loose Teeth slip by. Apparently, I wrote the entry in my head and only dreamed I had actually posted it here. *sigh* Sometimes, I am a blogger of very little brain.

But back to the dress. Seriously, what is not to love? Between the retro vibe, eyelet underskirt, the spaghetti straps complete with bows and the fact that it is made from a blue, yellow, white & red plaid seersucker, this is a summer dress for every girl. It brings to mind fireflies, popsicles, watermelon and sitting on the porch while singing songs like a Disney movie from the 60’s:

*sigh* I think my ideal grandfather would be a combination of Ed Asner, Burl Ives, John Wayne & my dad. That grandpa would’ve called me “kid”, sang his own version of “Lavender Blue”, would rant and rave over how many clothes we youngsters have and wondered why I needed a new dress—and a few days later the above seersucker loveliness would have shown up in a box on my front porch. I never knew my grandfathers as they died long before I was born, but think that save for the folk singing aspect, they would’ve been exactly like my imaginary ideal.

UP!

Originally uploaded by cattycamehome and artam

A few days ago I went to the midnight show for UP. I will be the first to admit that I am huge Pixar fangirl, but I think the fact that there were several midnight shows playing in Austin and they were all sold out is a testament to the reputation Pixar has built as great story tellers & makers of films that appeal to the young and young at heart (the screening I went to was comprised entirely of 20 & 30-somethings—which I also think says something about Austin movie-goers & the Alamo Drafthouse: we are made of awesome!). There are few films nowadays that can make cry within the first fifteen minutes and have me laughing so hard my side hurts twenty minutes later—but that was my reaction to UP. Sweet, whimsical, sad, touching, hilarious, inspiring and beautiful are just a few adjectives that come to mind to describe Pixar’s 10th (10th? Really? Wow, I feel old) film. I highly recommend seeing it in the theatre and in 3D, if you can. Until then, here a few items to get you in the balloon mood.

Originally uploaded by merebearlandon

Aqua+Vintage Pyrex=Love. I picked up the small balloon bowl at a garage sale for fifty cents last month. According to Pyrexlove.com, this is actually a promotional chip & dip from 1958, but they are most often found sold separately nowadays. Sadness. There are a few of these available on ebay, but at a kindof ridiculous price point. I am quite happy with the faded, well loved bowl I found, so I’ll just have to keep my eyes peeled for the matching large bowl in local thrift stores or let me know if you see one on etsy, okay?

This lovely piece of whimsy can be bought as either a print or as a jewelry piece! I’m quite fond of the locket, but the seller also has it available as a bracelet.

Timber! Preservation Society has some of the most fantastic folk & woodcut inspired illustrations I’ve come across and this t-shirt is a favorite. But I need another t-shirt like I need another copy of Lord of the Rings, so could someone please buy this & wear it in my name? Thank you.

I love this simple, understated necklace. It could easily be a bouquet of balloons or a bunch of wildflowers.

I now feel like a Pixar movie marathon is needed so I can properly rank my favorites. This will mean another viewing of UP in the coming week or so, but I think I’ll start with my very most favorite, Wall*E. Goodness, it’s a hard life I lead.

“I’ve missed the hell out of you, my darlings.”

Oh my goodness, I’ve been gone for so long—which is not what my intentions were at all!—and the longer I was away, the harder it was to come back, but it is time to bite the bullet and jump back into the swing of things. So without further eloquence, I present to you my list of things I am looking forward to the most this summer!

Laura at the Paramount

Every year the historic Paramount Theatre in downtown Austin hosts its Summer Film Series, which always consists of a showing of Casablanca & Gone With the Wind and includes tributes to screen legends of the past (Paul Newman *sniff*), but this year I am most excited to see one of my all time favorite films on the big screen: the 1944 film noir “Laura”. This movie is perfection, in my opinion, full of delightful forties fashion and amazing quotes I never get tired of hearing:

“When a dame gets killed, she doesn’t worry how she looks.”

Oh Dana Andrews, I do love you so.

Summer Movies!

I don’t know if you’ve guessed this yet or not, but I LOVE movies. I love going to the movies. I love renting movies (Netflix, you are my best friend). I love re-watching my favorite movies over and over again until I know them by heart. So needless to say I am excited about the summer movie season and if Star Trek was any indication, this is going to be a great one!

P.S. If you haven’t seen Star Trek yet, you really, really should.

The Fourth of July

via motleypixel

Last year I spent the Fourth of July in Auckland, New Zealand and if I recall correctly, it was very cold and rainy and in all likelihood I spent the day drinking coffee, reading and relaxing with my dear friend and her darling son. Now, that is not a bad way to spend a day, but I admit that later I felt a bit ashamed of myself that I had let my favorite holiday come and go without so much as a “Up the rebels! Down the British!” (after all, if WWII POW’s can remember to celebrate the 4th, what is my excuse?)  And while barbeques with friends and family feasting on watermelon, corn on the cob, hamburgers and drinking cool, refreshing iced coffees, beer, lemonade and perhaps a gin & tonic (or two) should not be limited to July 4th—something about adding sparklers to the mix makes it the perfect day to me.

Harry Potter

Oh my dear sweet Merlin, it is FINALLY here. There are posters popping up. Commercials are being aired. The countdown is now in double digits. The trailer was shown before Star Trek and I was beside myself with excitement. Thus far, everything I’ve seen is practically exactly how I imagined in my head, so I think this movie will be worth the long wait.

I am also excited as one of my favorite podcasts, Pottercast, is going on tour and making a stop in Austin, hurray! Those people make me laugh and kept me sane during the year that was 2006, so I am very excited to see them live and in person. Lastly, it just wouldn’t be a summer of HP without my fellow nerds, so I booked a super cheap flight to California so I could watch the film with my dear friends. I expect coffee drinking, wedding planning, consuming In-N-Out and late night brownie baking will be a part of my trip as well, but #1 on our list of “Things To-Do” is watch Half-Blood Prince in Imax. Because that is how nerds roll.

Well, dear readers (which is probably only my mom now, considering my extended leave of absence), I have rambled on far too long and quite frankly, I’m tired of listening to myself type! So leave me a comment telling me about your summer plans, berate me for neglecting this poor blog, tell me what films you are looking forward to seeing or just squee with me over the Harry Potter movie! I promise I won’t disappear again, Mad Men Monday will return (sometime, haha) and I have some nerdy craft tutorials I’m working on. Thanks for sticking around—I have missed you all so.

Your nerdy rambler,

I’m not dead yet…

…but you wouldn’t know that from my posting habits as of late, would you? Well, I have a good excuse. It just so happens that in early March, I happened upon a wardrobe, and when I climbed into it and ducked behind the fur coats, I found myself in a country inhabited by people short in stature with rather large, hairy feet. They enjoyed eating and drinking and *I* enjoy eating and drinking, so we got on very well. They introduced me to their neighbors, a large family of red heads who were very lovely people, especially the father, who wanted to know what exactly was the purpose of a rubber duck? They had friends staying with them as well: a boy with glasses and a strange scar on his forehead; a girl with brown, bushy hair; a blonde girl with a dreamy voice that was probably as sane as I am and a boy who kept on mentioning his grandmother (who I wanted to put in my pocket and take home with me). I then wandered through the forest and somehow wound up in a jungle of some sort and I thought I saw a black cloud of smoke following me, but it must’ve been the heat.

Ok, clearly, I did not fall into a Narnia-esque world where Middle Earth meets Harry Potter and LOST (although that would be the most awesome world ever created). April Fools! (?) No, I’ve been busy becoming more grown up and thinking more about math & numbers than is good for my brain. Dear readers, I bought a house!

That is NOT an April Fools joke. My brother and I decided to take advantage of the housing market and ridiculously low interest rates and are moving in at the end of April. It’s an adorably small house that was built in 1952 but has recently been updated, so thankfully the only thing I really have to worry about is what color I am going to paint my sewing room (more on that later). So that is the reason for all the silence and lack of shop updates/blog commenting/emails (I owe you a novella now, Kate, haha). I was stressing out buying a house during the middle of South by Southwest, ’cause I’m crazy like that. But now I’ll probably inundate you with posts on thrifting mid-century modern furniture (HA!) and meandering thoughts on what paint color would Betty Draper choose? I hope you’ll still stick around…it could be fun.

Your ever nerdy rambler,