The History of Rap w/Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake, The Roots 9/29

Inspiration: Oil Pastels

I used to own a couple boxes of oil pastels, but when I got to thinking about where they are now.. I'm pretty sure I sold them on eBay a few years ago. Figures.

I love the look you can get when drawing with oil pastels, I love pretty much everything about them. All the colors they are available in, how they blend, the finished work. Sigh. Let's take a look at some oil pastels pictures from Google! Sources located below the photos.

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(source) step-by-step on the site

(source) LOVE THIS ONE

(source) If I had a studio, this would be in it

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I guess I'll look around and make absolutely certain I no longer own my oil pastels =) if not, then I'm gonna be doing a lot of wishful thinking on buying more!!

Inspiration: 1000 Artist Journal Pages

I made another trip to the local library today, I had to return my last batch of books and then I found a few new ones to check out. I'm really into art journals lately, there is so much information on the internet about them and soooooooo many images of the journal pages! It's super inspiring! At first I didn't think my library had any books on the subject, but then when I searched under "sketchbook journal" that was the magic topic that bought up all the results!

 source: craftside.typepad.com *awesome crafty blog!*

I've decided that art journaling is something that I really want to do, and last night I started altering a sketchbook by gluing together pages and gluing scrap pages of magazines over that and then covering that with white gesso. It's a time consuming process! I found this book right on time, if you are interested in art journaling I highly suggest you find this book and take a look through it. It's VERY inspiring and includes journal pages from artist all over the world!

The book is: 1,000 Artist Journal Pages: Personal Pages & Inspiration by Dawn DeVries Sokol ... clicking the link will take you to the Amazon page, where the book is available for purchase :) Or, you just can hope your local library has a copy of it!!

P.S. Brand new episode of Glee tomorrow night!! Tues 8pm Eastern.. it's the BRITNEY SPEARS episode!!

Changes Coming Soon!

I just bought a brand spankin' new domain name for this blog, in 3ish days when it's all set up, it will forward you automatically to the new address. (EDIT: it's been MINUTES since I posted this and it's already set up and forwarding just wonderfully!)  I will most likely be changing out the layout and things of the blog very soon, it just seems like the thing to do when you get a new web address!!! I think I will keep the name of the blog as "frugal cupcake" for probably a long time, only the domain aka web address will be changing. And the old blog address will just forward you to the domain so there's really nothing even worth writing about here, is there??

But I just spent many, many hours trying to come up with a domain name that I liked and that was available as a .com address. And then, my crappy satellite internet connection prevented me from purchasing it for almost another 2 days!! And then, today, I did a little research regarding the problem (that is what is so great about the internet, when you have a problem there are many people who have experienced the same problem before you, all you do is just search for the answers!!) and figured out that I needed to clear the cookies from my browser and then try purchasing the domain again. And TA DA!! It worked, just think of all that time I wasted that Google could have prevented me from wasting if I had just searched for the answer to my problem.

The point is... be excited for the future!! I'm excited about buying a domain name for this blog, so you should be excited too!!

Pumpkin Pie... Anyone?

I'm baking a pumpkin pie as I type this, although it's still about 3 hours until I can eat it ( i had no idea it took so long to bake and then so long to cool afterwards!), but I thought I'd tempt your stomach with some pictures of pumpkin pies =) I heart Google image search. Although, I suppose I could search for pumpkin pie pictures on some other photo site, but that besides the point! On to the delicious desserts!

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food network's ultimate pumpkin pie (source)

pumpkin pie cake??? Genius!! (source)

deep fried pumpkin pie... oh yes. (source)

pumpkin donuts!! someone make these and let me have some!

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If you click on the source links... they all have the recipe posted online. It's officially fall now, so let's have a pumpkin feast!! Hah... this post was supposed to be just about pumpkin pie, but look at all the yummy things you can find online, and they all have recipes! 

I hope you enjoyed this post, and are not too angry at me for making you crave pumpkin everything! :)

Need a Good Domain Name!

I've decided that it's time to get a domain name for this blog! I have a couple ideas for one, but I won't be actually purchasing a domain until some time this weekend, so I have a little time to really think about it. I'm not sure if I want something with my name in it, or what. I have a lot to think about!! And then 99% of all .com domains are taken already so that narrows it down a lot too!!  I don't want something completely about being creative or artistic either, that would be too much pressure on me to be creative and post pictures and things of artsy stuff. This blog is still about everything, and that may be part of the problem. It's so random and it's just about anything and everything I feel like blogging about, but I'm not planning on starting a new blog from scratch either at this point in time. So I need a domain name generic enough to cover all the random things I manage to blog about and yet, somehow, still be personalized to my needs. You see why this is such a problem?! I have one particular domain name in mind that I'll most likely end up with, but I'm still going to be spending quite a bit of time over the next few days trying to see if I can come up with something else that I like more, and that's still available.

Crochet Project #1: Touchdown Wristers

It's sooooo exciting to finish a project!! These are the "touchdown wristers" a free pattern from lionbrand.com. Lion Brand has a ton of free patterns, but does require you to sign-up (for free) to access them. and Yes, there is a matching wrister for my left hand as well.. I just don't have a picture that includes both hands. haha

I did make the space for the thumb quite a bit larger than the pattern suggested (on purpose) and I have yet to "gauge" anything (horrible of me, all instructions say you MUST do this, don't be bad like me). These are easy enough you could finish in one day if you spent enough time on them, for me.. working an hour or two every once in a while.. it took about a week to finish. I like using the multicolor yarn because it's a little easier to see the stitches, and I also like the effect it gives. Even if it makes me feel like I'm too old to be wearing these wristers because of it! lol

Do you use RSS Feed Readers?

I was using Bloglines for a few weeks before they announced they were shutting down at the end of this month, which figures, because I really liked the website. I started using Bloglines when I realized that popuri.us (a blog popularity website) shows the number of people subscribed via Bloglines to a particular website. I thought that was pretty cool! But of course, Bloglines is shutting down so I had to find a different feed reader to keep track of all those blogs! I ended up using Google Reader and it gets the job done.

I like using a feed reader to subscribe to blogs, because by doing that I can read a lot more blogs than if I had to individually go to each blog (and keep track of all those web addresses!), and it allows me to only read the new blog posts since my last visit. It's a more efficient use of my time, and I like that. You do, however, have to check in pretty regularly otherwise you end up with hundreds of new blog posts to read and that's really overwhelming!!

Do you use a feed reader?? Which one is your favorite?

Comfort Food

We had thunderstorms last night followed by rain most of today... it's a good day for comfort food! I like to dip grilled cheese sandwiches in tomato soup and eat them that way. Have you ever tried it?? It's something I discovered in elementary school, they used to always serve grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup and as I watched everyone else dip their sandwiches in the soup... I thought.. hmm... why not?? It was good!! I don't usually eat/drink all the leftover soup though... but that's okay.

Glee Sneak Peeks!

Fellow Glee lovers... the new season starts this Tuesday, September 21st!! Head over to the NY Times for some more sneak peak photos =D I can't wait, most excited about the Brittany VS Britney episode!

Learning for Free

I finally visited the library today for the first time in probably almost a year..  I checked out the above two artist's bibles and "The Choice" by Nicholas Sparks. Would you believe they only had TWO books by Nicholas Sparks there???????? Geez, I own more of his books than that!! They are having a huge book sale coming up in the first part of October so I'm gonna try to remember to go to it and see what books I can get for super cheap!! They are selling for something like $1 per hardcover book and less than that for paperbacks.. it's just.. how recent are the books!! This library has a ton of super old books!

I've taken an acrylic painting course before, but it's been a long time and I don't exactly remember what materials and things I need in order to be able to do it. haha I know, I make myself sound so old. It's been probably 6 years since I had that painting course, so I need a little refresher.

And I've been highly interested in learning about watercolor painting, the college I attended didn't offer a course on it.. otherwise I would have taken it in a heartbeat! I really like the look of watercolor paintings and they don't have any toxic chemicals involved so that's always a good thing =P I work with a lady who is an AWESOME watercolor artist, so she inspires me a lot!

While I was there, I also looked at their books on crocheting... mostly they were just pattern books and a lot of them were outdated, so I didn't check out any books on that subject. I'm not really far enough along in my crocheting to be able to follow a pattern yet anyway. <3

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure #370

See I told you that I would buy another one of those Sally Hansen Complete Manicure nail polishes!! This is #370 "Commander in Chic", I'm really digging these dark fall colors this year :) Pretty sure I've seen this color featured in a magazine before.. but I couldn't tell you which magazine it was!

Collection: Pressed Pennies

I've been collecting pressed pennies for a really long time.. I got my first one when I was around 10 years old and now I'm almost 27. So yeah, that's a long time!! I always try to make sure if I go somewhere that has a pressed penny machine that I get one to add to my collection, it's actually pretty amazing that I have managed to keep them all together over the years, lol. I need to get an album to put my collection in one of these days.

Other things I have collections of? keychains, and shot glasses.

What about you? Is there anything special that you collect? Let me know!

Cute Kitty...

How friggin' cute is this?? I want a pet that can disguise itself as something else! lol Found the pic at Yes and Yes... not sure of the original source.

Will update later about my crocheting =D

Water... My Mortal Enemy

How many times do you hear that you should be drinking 8 glasses of water a day?? A Lot? I couldn't tell you when the last time was that I actually drank that much water in one day. I've been trying to work on it lately, it used to be a phenomenon if I drank one 16 ounce (2 glasses worth) bottle of water in one day, yesterday I drank 4-5 glasses worth and today.. so far I've drank almost 6 glasses worth. So I'm getting much closer!! I've found that I'll drink a lot of water while eating a meal, and it also helps to get as much water as I can drink early in the day, so it's not sooo terrible if I slack off a little during the day. My other mortal enemy? Soda. Caffeinated Goodness. You wanna know how much soda I've drank so far today? 12 ounce can of Pepsi.. 44 oz fountain soda of Mountain Dew *well.. in my defense, it did have 1/3 ice* . Yeah. Enemy!! Bad!! Soda has soooo much control over my life. lol

Look What Came in the Mail!

My box of crochet goodies came in the mail yesterday! I played around with it for a few hours, I've pretty much mastered the slip knot and chain stitch but I'm having difficulty getting a hang of single and double crochet. When I try those stitches it basically just looks like a huge mess. LOL. Also, since I'm left-handed I've been going back and forth with do I want to be a left or right-handed crocheter? I'm not sure yet which way is more comfortable!

I would have liked to have some time today to play around with it some more, but oh well! At least I'm getting my blogging done! =D

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure #340

This is my first time ever buying Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure nail polish, and I decided to be daring and try a dark color.. #340 Black Platinum. I was surprised to find that it had one of the newer wide brushes, I've never really used that wide of a brush for nail polish before so it wasn't the best application ever =P  I never wear dark shades on my hands but I Really Like this color! I put on two coats and it dries pretty quickly, I have had some chipping but nothing too terrible. I'll probably buy more polish from this line in the future.

Wishlist: New Ipod Nano

I own the classic ipod (the biggest ipod there is! in size at least) and it's an 80gb... but I have never used more than 10gb of the storage space. I want something smaller that I can take with me anywhere and everywhere.. like the new ipod nano! It's small and has a built in clip so you can attach it anywhere and it's all touchscreen. It has a lot of cool features that my current ipod doesn't have.. like the genius playlist and fm radio tuner. And the touchscreen. The battery also goes for 24 hours before it needs a charge, it'd be perfect for a super long road trip! It's smaller in size and smaller in storage space, but I'm okay with the compromise =D I think I'd probably get it in the pink color, what color would you choose??