Michelle's Place

"So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye..."

Well, if you haven't been able to tell from my three month absence (oops!), this page is headed for Blog Heaven. But it's not really goodbye--I'm moving to my own site!

Thanks so much for reading!

Wii Were Disappointed

So three weeks before Valentine's Day, I ordered the wildly popular Wii chocolates that I discovered via Shiny Shiny. I thought they'd make a perfect gift. Not only is Mr. Boyfriend a tech guy (although he doesn't have a Wii) but this gift could be personalized--I could order the girl avatar in dark chocolate and the boy avatar in white chocolate. How unbelievably super-cute! So I promptly placed an order, right before they sold out.

It took over 2 weeks to arrive, and I happily opened the box. But instead of a "replica wii box" I got this.

On the box I received, the cover was peeling off and the photocopied paper was faded. But surely, all would be redeemed when I saw the little interracial avatars, right? Perfect mirrors of us--how adorable! But I opened the box and saw this...

What?! These are not personalized wii-people, although they are very cute. These are just two little now-irrelevant pieces of chocolate, and one with a broken-off head! ::sigh:: So the box looks cheap and my order was wrong. I checked my order three times--both my receipt and the notation on the bottom of the box state clearly that I ordered Male-white chocolate, Female-dark chocolate. :(

I got my boyfriend a better gift and wrapped that instead. Since it was too late to send these back and I am avoiding sugar at the moment, I decided to explain my dilemma and give the chocolate as a secondary gift. To his credit, I was more disappointed than he was. He just wanted to eat it!

"Your head is delicious!" he exclaimed.

A clever idea and admittedly very cute (and tasty!), with some flaws. Oh well; maybe next time, Mr. Pape!

Inspired By...

After my trip to Mexico, I am ashamed to admit that I was surprised by all the pink everywhere. If you are an American, when you think of Mexico you probably think of primary colors, mostly red. Almost the moment we arrived my misconceptions were totally turned around. I was so excited to find lots and lots of pink everywhere--it's currently stylish, for sure, but also in natural things, fabric dyes and huichol paintings, serapes. It's used liberally as a wall color, also.

While in Mexico I tried taking as many pictures of this shade as I could. Here's an attempted close-up of some super-bright Oaxacan flowers, and here is a better example of it used on a wall. Pink is my favorite color and so in designing my bedroom, I definitely wanted to use this beautiful shade of buganvilia pink. Since my bedroom re-do has been in the making for a year or more, I've had plenty of time to look at examples and be inspired. Here are some of them.

At first, I was really drawn to the modern/contemporary look and for a long time, I hoped the room would look like this example from West Elm:

I loved the pink and the trendy energy in the room. But once I really got serious about things, I realized that I didn't want things to be so harsh--that room is cute but doesn't look inviting to me. Plus, I realized that I loved this post featured on apartment therapy--I like the way she used the bright color pink but it didn't really jump out at you. The cat in the room didn't hurt, either!

And the cool vibe of rooms inspired by cakes(via decor8):

Plenty of ideas swimming around in my head at this point... we'll see how they translate to the reality of (a) my small-ish apartment and (b) my actual budget.

So excited!!!

After over a year of dreaming about it, I finally bought my new camera! It's so very beautiful! Now I can take more exciting pictures. I've had my old hp crappy-cam for three years and it was way past time for an upgrade. My new camera has lots of exciting features, including full manual mode, which I can use to teach myself more things until I upgrade to a DSLR in a few years.

I spent the weekend running around taking pictures (see them here). I took the camera around my neighborhood, and then to the Arboretum. I thoroughly enjoyed it! I overslept, so I didn't get there very early, and the place was full of people. Lots and lots of brides & quinceañeras. Many cute kids, families, people just walking around--and every one of them had a camera.

I was so excited to get pictures of birds, bees, flowers, trees... and people--happy spring things. Thanks to my friends for listening to me jump around with excitement at my "new toy" and to my mom for being proud of me. I took this picture for her--when she comes to visit I think I will bring her to the arboretum. She likes plants, so I think she will enjoy it..

It wasn't until I got home that I realized I was probably the only person there by myself--but I was so happy to be out in the sunlight and have something meaningful to do, so it didn't matter much to me. It was a great weekend.

Camera, camera

My biggest regret about my trip to México is that (a) I didn't take more pictures and (b) the pictures I took weren't better. They are okay, they are great memories and most of them have a resolution suitable for framing, but for every decent shot I took (about 600) there's at least one shot that wasn't captured because my crappy camera couldn't handle it. I mean it's not all bad; my camera takes beautiful night time closeups indoors with a fill flash, and great outdoor landscape shots, but anything else is a toss-up--especially anything that moves, which makes using it to photograph my students impossible.

I've been interested in photography for years, ever since my elementary school GATE teacher, Mr. Raher, provided us with our own darkroom. I love to work with my hands and it was like magic when you put the paper into that acid thing and the picture appears.  I love--LOVE taking pictures, even if I'm not all that great at it, and it's time for a real camera.

I've picked out the Canon Powershot S2 IS. I've been dreaming about it forever and I can't wait to buy it, even if it won't be until next year sometime. I might finally be able to take really good pictures. Click the picture to see some of the images this camera can capture; they are breathtaking! Hopefully I can have it in time for my next overseas trip--no more photographic regrets for me!

Update: I took the link away from the picture, because some flickr idiot is using the macro feature to take scary pictures of insects & spiders! Gross! So, you will just have to imagine how beautiful the canon powershot's pictures are.

(photography)

A Lovely Laptop

Surprise of the week: I bought a new computer! Despite my love for all things electronic, it is the first computer I've purchased in five years! I'm so excited. Unfortunately, my dream machine, at about $3,000, remains just that--a dream--so like millions of Americans, I settled and bought this mid-range HP media laptop on sale. When my computer crashed on Sunday, I wasn't really prepared to buy a new machine even though I've needed one for a while now. I thought I'd have to settle for a basic cheapie machine, but I found the HP on sale and it turned out to be more than what I expected.

My new electronic friend is just a few days old and so far I love all the media features like the DVD writer and the QuickPlay (with remote control) which I have yet to try out. I also picked up some PhotoShop and video-editing software, so maybe I can finally indulge my love for photography and video. I am also in love with the widescreen which is great for all my lesson planning & spreadsheets.

It seems pretty cool except for two problems: the "80GB" hard drive is only 45 GB of usable space. Can you believe it?? How in the world do they get away with selling a computer advertised as having 80GB and then you can only use half of that? It's like buying a car and then finding out that the wheels are sold separately. Shame on you, HP!

The other, more serious annoyance is that the computer is is shipped chock full of "HP Crap--" unusable and damaging software that will take me weeks to uninstall & repair. This bugs me because it is another instance of corporate branding. It reminds me of those fall fashion magazines that look like so much fun--full of fashion and new ideas!--but you open it and it's nothing but ads. This is the case here; every computer software-related brand you could think of is represented here. 

Despite all my griping, this is my third HP in ten years, and all three of them have been purchased from my favorite store, CompUSA. It's probably just a familiar habit (I used to shop there with my dad when I was younger) because everyone knows I do not trust corporations.

Anyway, I love computers and this one is fun so far (and if something goes wrong I will surely publicize it here, but hopefully there will be no "dell hell" type of experiences for me). There's lots of potential here, so I'm hoping this lovely laptop will last me at least two or three years.

The other thing I don't like about this computer? It will probably cause me to delay my re-decorating project. :(

Hidden

Last night, I changed my cell phone number. There were several reasons... the number was in an area code different from the one where I currently live, but mostly I changed it because there were just too many people I didn't want to talk to anymore who had that number... telemarketers, ex-friends, ex-boyfriends, bad dates.

I changed the number last night at around 11, and since then I've sent a few emails out, letting people know of my new number. But people probably haven't read them yet, and so for a little while, I'm hidden: no one can reach me. I thought once that this sort of thing would freak me out, make me feel isolated, but since I know it is temporary, it is relaxing.

It's also very freeing... now I know I won't have any surprise conversations with ghosts from my past... no uncomfortable, "No thanks, I don't want to buy [whatever you are selling]" or, "When did we meet?" or, "Oh, it's you..." or, "Didn't I ask you not to call me again?" It's kind of nice.