Love Notes & The Romantics

So a couple days late, here are the valentines.

I got the idea from this post for thank you notes on Design*Sponge. This was a great way to make use of the surplus of cardboard boxes I have from too much online shopping. After I painted them I drew the design with a pencil and then punched holes with a push pin. The backs were a mess after I did the stitching so I used double-stick tape to attach card stock and wrote a little note on the back. I think these turned out really cute, but they were a little time consuming.

Also just in time for the big V-Day, I received The Romantics from Netflix. The only time I ever heard of this movie was when Elijah Wood was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon promoting it. From that I sensed it was probably not good, and it was meh. However, I had to go for it because Adam Brody is in it, and I make an attempt to love everything he does. Yes, I even watched In the Land of Women. Love knows no bounds.

 The premise was good. A group of college friends attend their friends' wedding. The groom (Josh Duhamel) dated the maid of honor (Katie Holmes) for five years before he proposes to her roommate (Anna Paquin). The group supposedly got the nickname the romantics because of their "incestuous dating history", but let's be honest it's not quite vulgar enough to be believable as college nickname. And the rest of the movie was just that, not quite believable.


In the behind the scenes extra, Katie Holmes said the movie was supposed to modern version of Saint Elmo's Fire. Well, no wonder. This is what I thought of Saint Elmo's Fire.

And I was disappointed there was no fire.

Lunch In Paris & the F Word

It was the summer after my first year in college. I had just moved back home to go to college in the town I grew up in. The only thing worse than staying in town was leaving and coming back. I was spending my first few weeks back babysitting. We were sitting at the table, and he was playing with those wooden blocks that have letters on the side. He picks up the F and says, "F. F is for failure. You're a failure." I kid you not.
I knew that coming home didn't mean I had failed, and now I'm certainly glad I did. However, it felt like failure. Twenty-five seems as good a time as ever to define success. To prepare myself for Paris (where I will be in exactly 4 weeks), I read Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard. It's pretty great. She's an American who married a Frenchman. It's the story of how they fell in love, and inevitably the clashing of dramatically different cultures.

The French view of life is completely opposite ours. Elizabeth says of her husband, Gwendal:

He's a happy person and I am fundamentally suspicious of happy people. In the America I grew up in, little kids don't say, "When I grow up, I want to be happy." That's not the appropriate end to that sentence. We say, "When I grow up, I want to be a doctor, an astronaut, a fighter pilot." Happiness to me was something very abstract, the end of a long equation: initial self-worth multiplied by x accomplishments, divided by y dollars, z loans, minus f hours worked, plus g respect earned. Happiness, I assumed, would be the end result of a whole list of things I hadn't gotten around to yet.

Like that pig foraging in the woods, Gwendal seemed to have only one consideration when making a decision: does this make me happy, does this give me pleasure? Frankly it struck me as a little odd.

Odd indeed.

Nowhere Boy

I remember wanting to see this several months ago. I finally watched it this week, and I was definitely impressed. I know a lot about the Beatles history, probably too much. I read the Beatles’ Anthology a couple years ago. It’s 368 pages and one of the only books my father has read (he prefers to listen to Harry Potter on tape). So I knew the story of John and his mother, Julia, maybe a story that most people aren’t familiar with.
 It’s a lovely story that really stands alone apart from the Beatles’. In fact they never mention the Beatles in the movie (they do talk about their earlier band, The Quarrymen).
Half of the movie I’m plagued by the actor who plays Paul. I know I’ve seen him somewhere before. Lo and behold, he is the adorable Sam in Love Actually played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster.

And of course the fashion is pretty incredible, especially Julia’s. Here’s a modern take on Julia’s style.

 1. Memory of Feathers Dress- Anthropologie $158  2. Ralph Lauren Fantara Sandal- Piperlime $109 3. Serpentine & Metal Necklace- thevamoose on Etsy $50 4. Command Attention Jacket- ModCloth $89.99
 

I'm in love...

     ...with stationery. Christmas cards, personalized letterhead, thank you notes, I love them all.  Now I've never been very good about sending handwritten notes, some of that natural laziness showing through. However, I have a few friends that will send a card for a rainy day, a root canal, a traffic ticket, you name it. And it's wonderful. There's just something about a handwritten note. Being able to see their writing is almost like seeing a piece of them. It's a special sentiment that simply can't be replicated in a text or e-mail.
     So I've been attempting to send more cards, starting with Christmas. I used leftover blank cards from Hobby Lobby, mostly because one of the things I dread about printing is cutting paper. They feature lyrics from the Christmas classic "Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!" by Sufjan Stevens. I stenciled it by hand which was tedious but was able to screenprint them in one night.

 Currently I am working on some Valentines. I’m very excited about these. Pictures on Monday!