Lonely Avenues

The first single from Ultan's 
upcoming album 'Songs Of Love So Cruel' coming out summer 2013. 
Edited by Jared Foster
Upcoming Dates in May 2013:
Fri. 17th- Cranes, Galway
Thurs. 23rd- Bewley's, Dublin
Fris. 24th- Cleeres, Kilkenny
www.ultanconlon.com 
Lindsay Holmes Publicity info@lhpublicity.ie
©2013 DarkSideOut Records

http://merelylooking.blogspot.com/pinterest-52a73.html

It Must Be Christmas!

My favourite holiday web event is here - the Foster Family Christmas video!!  Yay for new traditions!

Halloween Bites

Chocolate skulls with walnut brains.  The world's a better place because someone thought of this!

Sistine Dreams: Putting the S in Ceiling

Since our bedroom is going to be mostly white and grey, I've been trying to think of something interesting to do with the ceiling.  I really like the words on the ceiling idea, but it is too similar to what I'm planning to do for our headboard.

The herringbone and stripes are nice, though not very novel, and I love Beerd von Stokkum's fresh light ornaments; I'm constantly drawn to white on white.  However, if I were more brave maybe I would plunge into something like this:

And if I were bold and insane I could do this :)

To be honest, though,what I *really* want is this:

But, you know, for real.

A Walk On the Wild Side

Living in a one stoplight town requires one to get inventive about sources of entertainment.  I remember my sister-in-law dating a boy from a tiny town and on Friday nights they went "moth hunting" - they drove their car til a moth flew in their headlights and then they tried to run it over before it could get away.  I'm not reduced to that. Yet. But I have been circling the granary every day, trying to find new angles, new views, new colours.  I'm amazed at how beautiful it's become to me, yet how hard it is to capture what I see.  I think it's healthy for me - literally, in that I walk everywhere; intellectually, because I'm challenged every day to see things in new ways; and emotionally. because I become so appreiative for the simplest of things - like the colour of rust leaching thru metal.  So... I started another website where I'm going to try to post a picture every day or so.  I only have an iPhone camera, and I can barely see out of one eye, so I don't have high expectations of producing masterpieces, but if you want to see what life looks like (to me) in this corner of the world, you're welcome to visit The Grangeville Project.

Gift Idea #1: Robot Kit

It's 91 days until Christmas! :)  This robot kit is appealing to kids 4-8 years old. It is simply made of scavenged metal parts such as: Nuts, bolts, springs, latches, mint tins, fuses, casters, camera parts, speaker parts, light switches, faucet parts - basically anything cool and magnetic.  You then add some varied sized cans and MANY of those large fat magnets and let their imagination take it from there.  If you do make these this year, email me some pictures and I'll post them!

Some caveats and advice:  

1) Keep the magnets away from little ones, and because (no matter what the kids think) you don't have eyes in the back of your head, don't risk using the so-called "super magnets".  If children swallow those it can cause serious injury and even death. Use the big fat normal ones that look like liquorice lozenges. 

2) Make sure cans and parts have no sharp edges.

3) Not everything that glitters is magnetic!  You can glue magnets onto the non-magnetic items to make them work, or you can just let the kids discover for themselves what's magnetic and whats not (it'd be good for them!)

Believe it or not - Not Magnetic!

4) If you can, sit down and make a few robots yourself before you give this as a gift - it gives you a good idea what works, what doesn't, and how you can tweak your kit to make it function better.  One of the fun things about this gift, though, is soon everyone will be discovering parts to add to the kit wherever they go - bits and bobs from the gravel alley, treasures from recycling, and broken household items all of a sudden become really special - especially meat thermometer gauges!

5) Use Droid Robot font to make a cute label for your kit.

Grangeville Idaho Granary Study #1

Why I Love Fab.com...

Instagram pillows by Stitchagram

What a cool idea, right?!  Not really a new one, just one with a twist.  Wish I'd thought of it!

Fab.com is one of the only emails I've subscribed to that I have never once regretted - mainly because every week it brings little goodies like this right to my door.  I'll try to post more of my "finds" as time permits - this is just an appetizer.

Life is What Happens To You While You're Busy Making Other Plans

It seems to me that the majority of things in life move into our field of vision slowly and carefully.  A small dot on the horizon, plodding forward.  Eventually the image grows and takes shape, large and clear by the time it arrives on our doorstep.  But every now and then that's not how it works.  Instead, something drops out of the sky like an anvil, flattening us completely, taking our breath clean away while our mind tries to grasp What. Just. Happened? That's how a lot of the many people who love P feel right now.  Our prayers are with you as you and your family navigate this new road.  May the next big surprise in your life be a party :)

Watch out, Singin' Heart, here comes another birthday!!

Hope your tropical vacation is full of all the right kind of trouble ,)

Catch A Falling Star

My last post got me thinking of star gazing and how much I love looking at the night sky.That's one of my biggest memories of  being younger - laying on the grass and looking at all the stars.  Migosh you have a lot more time when you're a kid!

I remember Alice Knight's big brother asked me out for a night of meteor shower watching in their back yard on inner tubes and after accepting I chickened out at the last minute.  He probably thought I didn't like him, but he was very nice, just older and I was afraid he would put moves on me I wouldn't know how to handle.

That has nothing to do with this post.... I just still feel bad about it.  I was always ditching dates because I was a big scaredy cat of boys.  I guess I should say afraid of non-mormon boys.  Not that mormon boys were guaranteed to behave, but they at least knew better and you could give them a disapproving look and threaten to tell their mother. I have no idea why I keep talking about this...

So.... I was wondering if there was any jewellry out there that caught how I felt about stars and space and living in the space age, and after probing the final frontiers of the internet,  here's what I found.  (There was a cute Sputnik charm bracelet, too, but they sold it. It's ok, though, just knowing there were Sputnik charm bracelets is as good as owning one)

 1.   Crystal Cuff by Space Mermaid

 2.   Space Necklace by Blackberry Winter, earth friendly jewellry

 3.   Moon and Star Pendant by Markdefrates

 4.   Nantan Star Meteorite Pendant by Meteorites For Sale 

 5.   Glass Necklace by Erica Rosefeld via Haute Nature

 6.   Simply Steamy lapel pin by Nouveaumotely via Etsy

 7.   Dream Necklace by Space Mermaid

 8    Crown Tifari Starburst Pin and Earrings by The Two Sisters, via Rubylane

 9.   Asymmetrical Star Disk Earrings by chaosandlament on Etsy

10.  Blue Moon Pendant by Jacob Albee Goldsmith

11.  Rocket Cufflinks by Space Age Jewelry via Alphaville

12.  Miss Wax Space Necklace via The Giant Peach13.  Green Stars Resistor Earrings by digiBling via Etsy

I Had No Idea

image via this article

I'm not sure why or what it is I'm feeling, but when I look at this recent image of a new star cluster from NASA, my heart beats faster in my chest and my eyes begin to sting from tears. Hubble has got to be one of my favourite inventions ever.

Image via this article

The next picture, of the far side of the moon,  catches my breath, too. I don't know why, there's just such an undeniability about it.  You look at it and you realise, wow, we really are surrounded by cold. vast. space.  The bright star at the top is Venus.

Thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), NASA is now getting more clear, detailed images of the moon than ever before. According to this article in Space.com they can now see individual boulders; rilles (sinuous channels that look like river beds or lava tubes.  Umm...Tremors anyone?);

Rilles

they've discovered the lost Russian robotic rover Lunokhod 1, missing since 1970 (! Can you believe it?! The whole idea just captures the imagination! I hope it's been collecting data all this time!); and they can even see where the astronauts walked (sorry conspiracy theorists.... oh wait, maybe they faked these photos.... but they would've known we would think that, so therefore we cannot....wait a min....they only think we guessed wrong, that's what's so funny!.....never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!)

What's even more cool, is now that they've amassed all this fresh information, they could use the public's help in analyzing the photos and counting boulders, etc.  How fun is that?!  I'm so going to do that.

Coolness

I've been sick for four or five days now, with an off-again, on-again sore throat.  This ad by Tylenol pretty much sums up my lifelong remedy of choice for sore throats - but I don't need any medicine doped in my Popsicle, thank you.  Popsicles are medicine. They work far better than any cough drop, they feel like a treat so they pull you out of sickie depressions, they come in sugarless varieties so you don't have to worry about sugar killing all your white blood cells, they come in  fun shapes, they're cheerful, they're colourful, they last a fairly long time so they're a guaranteed five to ten minutes of pain-free distraction, and they're cheap!

My Aunt Eleanor made the best grape popsicles.   All the grownups in my world made their posicles out of kool-aid, but for some reason her's tasted extra vibrant. It took me years to develop a recipe that approximated hers.  I think her secret was that she must have doubled the kool-aid packages without doubling the sugar, and maybe one of her packages was grape and the other was lemonade?  Not quite hers but very close.  And sometimes when I want an extra kick I do two grapes to one lemonade. That last slurp is a doozy.

I've been looking online for fun ice pop molds, (not that there's anything wrong with the traditional paper cup ones!)  These Hog Wild Zoo Pops are pretty cool in a Jumanji sort of way.  I bet they don't look this intricate and etched when regular people make them though...  (What!? No truth in advertising you say?)

These Swirly Popsicle molds by Orka are all that and a bag of chips.  They're lickable unfilled!

These Yellow Groovy Ice Molds by Tovolo are understated, but I think they'd look really good made into:

Easy, Creamy, Lemon Dream Popsicles (via Whipped)
2/3 cup sugar
5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons grated lemon peel
1 pinch salt
1 2/3 cup buttermilk

Whisk sugar, lemon juice, lemon peel, and salt in 4-cup measuring cup until sugar dissolves. Whisk in buttermilk.
Divide mixture among ice pop molds. Cover and freeze until firm, at least 4 hours and up to 5 days.




If you find these Sailsicles by Cuisipro anywhere let me know!  They were all the rage two years ago but now I can't find them anywhere :(