sara, darling.

confession: i hate pranks.

no, wait, my feelings towards pranks are far stronger than that; i loathe pranks.  surprises? yes.  pranks, designed to make people look/feel stupid while you or everyone points and laughs?  i’ll pass.

i used to hate saying that i hate pranks, though, because two things occur: one, you seem like the girl with absolutely no sense of humor, the type of girl who wouldn’t enjoy ridiculous feel good movies or, say, jokes of any kind; and two, people who enjoy pranks or grew up on them feel judged and defensive.

i’ve seen it happen.

but then i realized that disliking pranks has nothing to do with my sense of humor (i love the aforementioned movies, btw) and that people i was spending time with either didn’t like pranks or had a mutual understanding with those who they pranked.  and everyone else we’re just not friends with anymore.

just kidding.

this has absolutely nothing to do with what i’m talking about today, except to say that nothing of the below is a joke, except for google’s prank of the day which is more of a fun surprise so i’ll allow it, benevolent blogmaster am i.  happy friday!

*      *      *      *      *

things charming me today:

this gorgeous renter’s wallpaper (wallpaper you can peel up easily).  we very nearly redid our home office in this before remembering that hey – we don’t make much money, and we could essentially decorate the office by stapling $1 bills to the wall and have it come out even by choosing this.  bummer for now, yes, but it is on sale at modcloth, so in the future i can definitely see making the investment.

google’s april fools prank.  if it’s not immediately obvious [read: if you are not complete design/typography nerds like the boy and i are], when you type in the font “helvetica” in google’s search engine, all results are displayed in the reviled “comic sans” font.

clever.

as maggie says, sometimes i want to kiss the internet on the mouth.

my antique owl cookie jar that i picked up last week at the antique mall for about fifteen clams.   he needs a little love (particularly in the eyeball arena) as right now my poor owl looks like he has cataracts — not exactly the motif i’m going for in my office.

if you’re asking yourself why a cookie jar is kept in an office, then we obviously haven’t met.  this guy makes me want to bake some cookies, stat.

and then eat ALL OF THEM.

my lovely friend sara commented* the other day that nothing makes her happier quite like a full fridge and pantry.  i wholeheartedly agree; case in point, the fruit bowls above.  although it looks like we are branching our graphic design business to also include a fruit stand for the entire neighborhood, this fruit will only last the two of us about a week and a half.

what can i say, life is delicious.

*okay, so sara made this comment on twitter, but i seriously cannot figure out what the proper lexicon for twitter verbiage should contain, and for the grammar-obsessed-girl that i am, this is like having a perpetual itch in that middle part of your back that keeps recurring and can’t be soothed.

sara twittered?  sara chirped?  sara twat (yikes!)?

if anyone can remedy this issue, i’ll be very grateful.  also, if you could scratch a little to the left while you’re there…

recently i divulged that with my recent 30th birthday, some Very Grownup Behaviour has occurred, chief of which is the zealous addition of live plants to our house.

one particular type of plant has long had my attention, and now it has my full-blown obsessive addiction as well.

say it with me now:

succulents.

succulents.

you know in west side story when the song “Maria”  talks about whispering maria’s name and it sounds almost like singing?this is totally how it is with the word succulents, people.  it’s an illness.  but these plants were MADE for our
mid-century modern/antique/lived-in style.  now i just need to figure out how to not kill the darn things.  so far, so good.

i strangely got two mugs for my 30th birthday, both of which i love for different reasons.  for my 30th birthday we had a progressive party that involved playing bingo, and it was entirely too much fun.  more on that later, but this was a sweet gift given to me by our friends jenny & chris.  what’s more awesome than a gift that matches the theme of the party?

you should note, however, that this mug has been drafted into service by the boy for morning coffee duty.
that’s going to change soon.  i feel a revolt coming on.

one of the other things charming me today is this little scene which also conveniently resides on the boy’s desk.

the boy has a long-standing love of superheroes stemming from the days when he used to follow his dad around on plumbing/heating calls and trucked around a fanny-pack full of these little figurines.  for the record, we still have most of them, except now they are stored in his very old “going to grandma’s” mini-suitcase in the closet.

there’s a funny story about that little suitcase, but that’s for another time.  actually, that’s for a time off the internet where parents and former students can’t read.  preferably with cocktails.  anyway.

the little guy on the right actually came from the lego advent calendar i got the boy a few years ago when i was trying (successfully) to foster some christmas cheer in him.  when he punched out day 18, this lego-man was there, and he cobbled together a few other lego-accessories from the other days and created what he calls his lego avatar.

in essence, my husband has a lego mini-me that lives underneath his apple computer screen.

now, the story goes (at least the story i’m making up right now) that lego-troy was lonely and needed a friend.  what luck, as when we i were was cleaning and organizing the hall closet what did i spy in the corner but shazam, apparently the boy’s favorite pretend-friend when he was young.  how do i know this?  because when the little red figure was spotted, troy screamed “SHAZAM!” and cradled (yes, CRADLED) the action figure in his hand for several minutes while telling me stories of their adventures.

for a few minutes i seriously thought our hall closet was a time machine, because all of the sudden it was circa 1987 and i was finding myself tightrolling my jeans and seeing if it was time to go to the school ice cream social at skate city.

i forgot all about this little time-bending excursion until i went to dust off the boy’s desk and i saw the little scene above.

oh, i really like him.

this was another birthday present, and he is certainly charming the socks right off of me right now.

as an homage to the boy’s hometown (the self-proclaimed elk hunting capital of the world) while winking at the fact that we would NEVER EVER kill or hunt anything and dead animal heads on the walls kind of gross me out, these cardboard animals totally hit the target.  pun intended, as always.  fred is right at home above our piano, and breaks up that ugly awesome wallpaper that we loathed has totally grown on us.

*     *     *     *     *

those are things that are charming me today.  what’s charming you?