my brief efforts engraved

I made a birthday card earlier this week. Looking at the finished product I just had to shake my head. It's like all my crafts: I made the effort, but it's so obviously Leslie that no one could mistake it for someone else's, especially not someone's with talent.

I didn't want to take the time to find a real card or real cardstock (or real paper, even), so I pulled open the scratch paper drawer and found two yellow cardstock cards inviting everyone to New Beginnings on February 24. I thought they were perfect for my purposes, so I taped the two written sides together. After I had them secured, I noticed that the cards weren't even the same size. Oops. I wrote Happy Birthday on one side, then worried that nothing on the other side would make it even more obvious that I'd taped two pieces together, so I hurriedly drew some balloons on the other side. Oh, and streamers. That's about the extent of my artistic ability. It was at about this point that I shook my head (and I hadn't even stained my fingers with the markers yet).

This is just so very typical. I'm not a very ... decorative person (my spartan office makes that clear), so whenever I try to make things cute the results are...really nice.

There was this one time I made my friend a social activities chart for his birthday...by hand...I haven't asked but I bet he's thrown it away (it was to encourage him to date, and he probably didn't want the reminder hanging around). I might throw it away too, mostly because it's ugly.

Ooh, and all my "cute" little amino acid notes to people! And this one time that I illustrated my letter to my missionary friend with pictures of me and other people doing various things (I took a picture of that one, but it actually contains sensitive information, so feast your eyes on my lovely valentine, which is the only one I have electronic record of).

Crafts and other such artistic endeavors are on my mind tonight because I'm trying to think of what I can do for a friend's birthday tomorrow. I'm a little bit tempted to just make a gift certificate for something she'll probably not appreciate. Thing is, while everything I touch is hopelessly tacky I have this hope that people can tell that I'm actually trying. That they think "Oh, sweet," instead of "Oh, ew."

Of course I'm sure it's all my latent sloppiness in other areas in my life coming to light in this very visual way. If I cared more, maybe I'd do better. (But that sounds depressing, and I'm sure it's not true.)


Let's leave on a happy note. Here's a Cyberman, Slitheen, and Dalek!

Title Text: "Passage" ~ Vienna Teng

I can trace all my books [July 2011]

Hello! Here's what I read last month. I'll give you an interesting tidbit, too: The last book on the list is a book I actually read in June, but I skipped a hundred pages and read the last chapter because I had to leave it in the car and not take it on the airplane. So we checked it out from the library and I read those last 100 pages to count it as a read.

July
111. Chronicles of the Red King: The Secret Kingdom by Jenny Nimmo
112. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
113. Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor

114. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
115. Blackberry Crumble by Josi S. Kilpack

116. The Forgotten Locket by Lisa Mangum

117. Come Fall by A.C.E. Bauer

118. Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
119. A Glory of Unicorns edited by Bruce Coville

120. Heartless by Gail Carriger

121. The Absolute Value of Mike by Kathryn Erskine

122. Changeless by Gail Carriger

123. Aliens on Vacation by Clete Barrett Smith

124. Sidekicks by Jack D. Ferraiolo

125. Gilda Joyce Psychic Investigator: The Bones of the Holy by Jennifer Allison
126. The Evolution of Thomas Hall by Kieth Merrill