Happy drinking, friends!

Here is a very simple tutorial on giving your holiday party an extra burst of glitz and glam!  Not having a holiday party?  No worries, it makes stirring hot chocolate packets into warm milk into a festive occasion!

This one is pretty basic and the only thing I had to buy were the glitter pom poms.  I don’t tend to keep pom poms on hand due to horrible Girl Scout memories that involve glue all over the place and 8 year old me staring intently at the godforsaken poms and asking what unearthly materials they are made of that make them impossible to glue.  FORTUNATELY, this is one fuzzy pom pom project that does not include glue.  You’re welcome.

The first step is pretty straight forward.  You will need bamboo kebab skewers.  It is preferable to use skewers that have one pointy end and one flat end.  I imagine this is how they sell all skewers, but I don’t make generalizations like that so please do yourself and this project a favor and use the skewers described.  You will also need glitter poms! I got mine from the dollar store.  The Dollar Zone is where I went for pretty much all supplies for these party planning projects because I am le cheap.  You also need scissors–preferably ones that you aren’t too attached to since the bamboo gets a bit temperamental.  These are James’s “work scissors” so they worked.  HAHA.  Ok … I’ll stop.

You are then going to shove the little pom onto the skewer.  I recommend using the pointy end.  Moving on.

Push the pom down a bit further down than you would like the drink stirrer to end so that you can cut off the bamboo.  Carefully hold the portion of the skewer you would like to be the drink stirrer, as I found the piece of bamboo NOT being held onto fancied flying across the room.  Hopefully you are more graceful than I am, so you won’t have to worry about projectiles but please prepare yourself for the bits of wood that might abandon you for the air.  Just in case.

Push the pom to the top of the stick so that the bamboo is predominantly still inside of the pom, but not sticking out of the top.  You should be able to hold the glitter pom as you stir the drink and expect for it to not fall off because you have that much of the skewer inside the pom.

And there you have it! It’s an easy peasy way to kick your parties up a notch with little to no effort.  Don’t forget to check out Sara’s 12 Projects of Christmas over at Little Red Lily!

How adorable is this model with her spiky pixie cut and sparkly flapper-inspired headpiece?  Very–in case you are the sort of person that likes concrete answers to rhetorical questions.  I probably would have never seen this since I don’t go to their accessories page very often.

You can browse each of the different time periods here:

The Roaring Twenties

Mid-Century Fashion

Super Seventies

Awesome Eighties

Fine Nineties

And for those of you that already knew this or have not had your mind completely blown and restructured as a result of this development, don’t fret! Tonight is my “free night” (aka the only night of the week I get home before 10 PM) so I am going to work on a lot of the 12 Projects of Christmas to post in the coming days!

I have some big changes going on in my life!  I wouldn’t be leaving you high and dry if I didn’t, I swear!  Sara of Little Red Lily moved out at the end of the summer and my boyfriend James moved in.  I’m sad for such a dear friend to go, but I’m really excited about the new possibilities that come from living with my partner.

Interestingly enough, I haven’t gotten to experience this too much since we decided it would be fun to have a relay race of vacations–not really, but that’s how it seems!  While he was moving in, I spent a week at my cousin Lisa’s lake house getting my ideas in order for a new accessory line.  After I was home for only a handful of days, James went abroad with our friend Karen to embrace the Mediterranean by exploring Athens, Greece and Istanbul, Turkey.  Fast forward a few weeks  and you’ll find me in a hotel room in Atlantic City being completely underwhelmed by the lack of anything to do, but severely enjoying my time catching up with an old friend I haven’t seen since she moved away to North Dakota.  All in all, I thought I’d see more of James so I can devote more of my free time to blogging.  Sadly, that is not so.  Is it weird to constantly miss someone that lives in the same bedroom as you?  Because I feel like I see James so little that I miss him all the time!

This is the result of a six-hour millinery course devoted to making fascinators.  I came to the course a bit disadvantaged because my hand-sewing is quite rubbish.  I’m glad for the experience, though, because it will open more possibilities for my new accessory line!  I didn’t realize just how sloppy my stitches are, though, so time I had previously allocated to blogging is now dedicated to practicing basic stitches.  I also have a felt hat making course coming up in a few weekends that I’m excited for, even though it means more homework.   I can’t wait to take the images that have been kicking around my brain for a few months now and turn them into corporeal reality so you can see for yourself!

While I’m rather fond of how beautiful the Atlantic looks when the drizzly sky and the sea are nearly the same wonderful shade of gray, I’m not spending my entire vacation in AC!  I’m hitting up NY Comic Con this weekend and plan to completely nerd out all over the place.  Before the fun starts, I’m going into the city to troll the garment district and get some millinery supplies so I can practice and finally put my ideas in motion! And you were wondering what all this chat about vacations and millinery had to do with one another…

(via The Pathé Fashion Archive)

Here it is from the back:

And the side:

Lastly, the front:

It’s a bit faded now, but it blends into my helmet nicely.

You can’t really tell that it matches my helmet since it is covered in a jammer panty, but there you have it.  Green hair.

Librarians love tea.  Love it.

Seriously.  This is porn for a librarian.

Take care to create invitations befitting a Library Ladies tea party so that your guests will know to get dressed up in their librarian best.

Hello Sara.  Pretty dress!

Why Danielle, you look as stunning as ever while you run from a “rood graffi” trying to take over your librarianship duties.  James is unfazed.

I’m telling you, librarians love tea.  I can’t even be bothered to stop drinking tea in order to have my photograph taken.

Invitations are nothing if you do not then create the right ambiance.  For the vintage-library-that-popped-up-in-a-meadow-with-ample-packets-of-tea effect I stacked some trunks to prop the food and placed books, tea of all kinds, a miniature armchair, an ampersand, a red phone box tin and a tea cup on a dilapidated bookshelf.  It’s not necessary to turn a completely useful bookcase into a dilapidated slob of a bookcase, mind you.  I just had one on hand because that’s the sort of house Fort Awesome is.  That the ground was completely uneven did nothing to help the stability of the bookcase.

Dinosaur finger BLTs add a touch of history, really making this a historical occasion. Samosas and spanakopita incorporate the letter S into your meal.

For sweets, you can always pull out the old school desk you have in your murder room basement* with kittens painted along the top. Or a normal table with a tablecloth over it.  Whatevs.  Pictured here are English Royalty chocolate chip scones cut in the shape of stars and Oreo truffles.

And there you have it! A Library Ladies tea party that even a non-librarian can reproduce if they love tea and  temporarily become a hoarder of vintage library/educational items.

*More on that later.

Hit a bitch. Hit a
bitch again. Roller derby
is akin to zen.

Speaking of rest, I am spending the better part of this week at my cousin Lisa’s house on the lake.  She is having a far more adventurous vacation than I right now, as she is RVing it up to Maine and New Hampshire for two weeks with her adorable baby boy and significant other.  While that sounds fun, I am perfectly content to spend my time on her deck reading and sketching up some business plans for Ye Olde Fortress.  Here is the view that is serving as my only companion…it’s okay to be a bit jealous: 

This is the view from Lisa’s front porch.  

This is the view from the dock in front of Lisa’s porch.

This is the view of Lisa’s dock that we previously experienced a lake view from only one picture prior.

New Pinterest board, hot off the presses.