muppet babies and care bears...

Apparently yesterday's post made me reminisce about my childhood, and then I started remembering all the awesome toys I had, then I found all these commercials for them, so I just had to gather them all in one place.

sally secret - I liked her because she was a "crafts" doll, her earrings were little rubber stamps, and stickers came out of her gut!



puppy surprise - I had a puppy surprise AND a kitty surprise, both had 4 babies inside:)



secret places, I had the one with the pool, I thought it was the coolest thing ever



my sister and I would fight over this all the time, we still have it and it still works



Baby talk, or Michelle as my sister knows her (still)


apparently girls AND boys will like this doll. I had one, I never really cared about it because I hated dolls and all she would say was "turn me over"

alphie, a "computer" for children



The doll who's hair grew when you put her arm up, my sister and I both had one, that matched our own hair color, my mom would always do that



commercials are so creepy in the 80's, I didn't have this doll, I had a magic nursery PET, where you dissolve something and find out what kind of animal you had...it was super creepy looking.



I completely forgot about this one! but I remember how the paper smelled!



this was such a cool toy in theory:

A Dear Diary

only, it wasn't really a diary, you could password protect it, which was cool, but you couldn't write a diary in it, you could store phone numbers, and notes like one sentence long, and every time it froze it would erase everything....but it was still pretty awesome

I had one of these, even though I wasn't allowed to play with playdoh, at least not in the house



I wish I could find the commercial for play-doh's "Flower making basket" it had a song that went "a tisket a tasket a flower making basket", and you'd push the handle from one side to the other and flower petals would come up, and they were scented, sometimes people walk by me and I think "their perfume smells like play-doh"

The Greatest Adventure

I just found this video of a show they used to show us on rainy days at school!



I completely forgot about it. It's right up there with Superbook and McGee and Me, ok maybe not McGee and Me, nothing is as good as those.

just for good measure:


and of course:

a few of my favorite things

I discovered at 11pm last night, that I can hear everything my downstairs neighbors say through the vent above my stove, and I wonder if they can hear me, "helooooooooooo" no response, but apparently they can't decide whether the leftovers in the fridge are ok to eat. They probably wouldn't like my answer, since I'm a leftover hypochondriac.

Everyday at work a Regis van pulls up outside, nothing special about that, until I noticed what was written on the side of it, "Father Woody's Wheels", reminds me of the Beebesmobile, but obviously not as cool.

I found a church here finally. I like it a lot. It kind of makes me feel old though, there are a lot of young people, and all the girls look like stereotype westmont girls, so it also makes me feel ugly, but I'll get over it.

Zach and I had lunch with my neighbors, they were nice and not scary. Kate and Brian, married a year ago, he's studying to be a youth pastor and she's in beauty school.

I saw Mamma Mia this weekend, with three other girls....it was not good, I'm glad I wasn't expecting it to be. I love musicals, but this was just bad, and why put pierce brosnan in a musical when he can't carry a tune? It gave me dumb chills. Although Emilee, I can see why Pam liked it, it seems to be all about old women being dancing queens.

But after we saw the movie we went to bar Louie's and I had the best grilled cheese sandwich ever. And saw this:
it's a lobster claw game, insert a coin try to grab a lobster, if you win then they cook it for you, it was the weirdest saddest best thing I've ever seen.

bicycles and digitals?

A few weeks ago I had an art show opening. It was about as classy as I expected it to be. In looking for shows to participate in I noticed that they all have a theme, like "miniature art" or "art by the river" or "watercolor landscape", this one was "compositional challenge" meaning that everything had to be on a square, circle, or oval surface.....I don't really know why that's a "challenge", but I was painting things on squares anyway, so whatever. This particular show let everything that fit the criteria in, so there were some that were...well, not so great. Some were really good, like the one with metal fish. There were far too many paintings of flowers, I'm guessing that's because the average age of show participants was 65. But I would much rather look at pictures of flowers than Charley's "digitals". Charley was an older man, but not old enough to excuse his work. He came to the opening dressed in a nice collared shirt....with mickey mouse embroidered on the back...and wanted to tell everyone about his "digitals" and how he used a "transparent layer!" in photoshop....just because you can play with photoshop doesn't mean you should...it was seriously painful, and I only wish that Darcy was there so I would have someone with me to understand how awful they were.

So that was my first Denver art show...at least I participated in something...and I'm taking a small victory in that my work didn't look like anyone else's, so at least I was unique.

Zach and I went to Vail a few weekends ago, his grandma has a time share so his family was up there. We went for the day and rented bicycles and rode around the town. It was SO much fun, and a great break from the heat, like a mini vacation. It also makes me wish I had a bicycle, with a bell, and a basket. It was so weird to see Vail without snow, it's such a cute little town. We had the best pizza ever at the Blue Moose, and saw the cutest puppy with the biggest ears I've ever seen.






oh ya! I almost forgot to mention my second art show! a solo exhibition, as it will appear on my artists resume. I had to undecorate my apartment in order to have something to display though.

best kid poem ever...

this made me laugh so hard today, I think it was just the way the kid read it though:

clop clop clop the horse won't stop,
oh no here comes a truck!
oh poor duck!
the duck is now flat, I hate that.

Life in Denver

Living in Denver doesn't really feel that much different than living in Santa Barbara. It's hotter, but it rains almost everyday. I do miss the beach, it just doesn't feel like summer without it.
I love my apartment. I love that I have space to do art. It makes such a difference, I work on something almost every day. I love that everything in the refrigerator is mine. I love that my vacuum has a million little attachments to play with. I love having a bigger bed, and a room to myself, a closet. I can turn the light on when I get up in the morning.

I'm trying to list everything that I love, so I won't think about all the things I miss. The biggest thing I miss is having girlfriends around. Someone to watch ridiculous TV or movies with. Play random games, like "how much can we fit in Darcy's top" or "how pregnant can sharon look?" or "crazy hair", group readings of Mortified, brownies in a pan, guacamole for dinner....and good girlfriends are hard to find, WAY harder than a boyfriend.

I don't feel lonely though, I guess it's good that I enjoy alone time, if I didn't I would probably freak out.

Now this post is making me sad.

I'm going to Vail this weekend. I think we're mountain biking, which I've never done. We'll see how much I injure myself.


My job is decent, I don't hate it nearly as much as the old one. My co-workers are pretty cool, not crazy, although one smells (A LOT) but that gives everyone else a game to play, it's called "stay away from Bob". I would feel sorry for him, but everyone has talked to him about it (seriously, everyone) and taking a shower and changing your clothes isn't that difficult.


I think I finally found a church I like. My neighbors invited me. And now I've finally met them, and they're not crazy and drunk all the time!

I'm taking art classes at the Art League of Denver, it's in this great old building, I love it in there, it has that wonderful smell of oil paints (the fumes are probably toxic, but whatever) and the wooden floors creak, and I swear there are secret passageways in the basement, and I saw a bat upstairs one night.



And I guess I'll say something about Charlie, so I can put a picture in. He's definitley been more difficult than I expected. I feel bad for him being alone all day. He finally sleeps at night, and only wakes me up sometimes when he wants to play fetch. He's a terrible jumper and falls on his face a lot, not graceful at all.
And he just learned that he has claws, so now he bites and scratches...oh joy.

I think it's funny

that I made a blog just because I wanted to pick a template