fun w/ friends @ Martini Madness!

I've been so remiss in keeping up my blog this past month - sorry y'all!!  I've promised recipes, posts on life happenings, etc., and it just hasn't happened. No excuses. So I'm just gonna jump back in...

In March I had the opportunity to attend a super "fun-raiser" event with several current (and new!) friends in support of our local Yakima Valley Museum. (Amazing how one can go from strangers to awesome buds after a couple dirty martinis...LOL!) The event, called Martini Madness, was themed all things "Mad Men" and early 60s, from the attire to the hair, to the cigar girls and live music!  Being a country gal from a couple decades later, it was a bit of a challenge to figure out what to wear, but half the fun (for me anyway) ended up being the research of the decade in prep for the night...

After I realized the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was from 1961, I latched onto Audrey Hepburn's iconic uptown sophisticate look (it helped that I had a black dress and realized I wouldn't need to go shopping for something to wear just for the night!):

Then I brushed up on my makeup techniques by watching my favorite You Tube artists - Pixiwoo - do their take on Audrey's look:

And I also went through so many You Tube tutorials on Breakfast at Tiffany's hair I can't even begin to tell you which ones!  I can say there are enough out there that you can easily get a good sense of how to do the look. Instead of a tiara like many of them show, though, I actually just pinned an old gaudy, bobbly, pearly necklace around the top bun. And for the pearls around my neck? That was my one splurge for the event: a $10 strand from my favorite store for random costume jewelry - The Avenue, of all places!

I must say, for the effort it took to pull myself together, it was worth it - we had such a great night.  Ended up at Carmen's Comedy Club in Selah afterwards and laughed so hard the remainder of the evening.  So our final look?  Here ya go (courtesy of my friend's camera/FB page)! (I'm the gal on the right...)

(Those are peppermint stick "cigarettes" from the cigar girl - hehe!)

Hope to see you at the next local event!

And I promise - more new posts and the recipes I'm experimenting with in the kitchen very soon!

new favorite: I wanna be this couple someday!

Be sure to watch all three videos of this sweet and talented couple of 63 years: Marlo and Fran Cowan - they are something else!

would you still have a job, if this was you?

Image (c) The Associated Press  (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

"House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, far right, speaks while colleagues play solitaire on their computers as the House convenes to vote on a new budget for the fiscal year in the Capitol, in Hartford, Conn."

Rep. Barbara Lambert, D-Milford, and Rep. Jack F. Hennessy, D-Bridgeport, play solitaire.  The guy sitting in the row in front of them is on Facebook, and the guy behind Hennessy is checking baseball scores.

Confirmed true by www.snopes.com, November 2009.

new favorite: RhettandLink do yoga

this is great...

RhettandLink's Difficult Original Yoga for YouTube Physical Challenge

what is RED all over and $57,362 per house?

Why, it's Obama's $5 billion for greening-of-America-to-create-jobs stimulus money, of course!

According to this article, the Green Energy program is 98.5% behind on its goal to weatherize 593,000 homes and create 87,000 energy jobs.  At it's current pace, the program costs $57,362 and 10 employees PER HOUSE...to re-caulk windows and replace weatherstripping.

(Reminds me of the joke "how many people does it take to screw in a light bulb?"...except, I'm not laughing.)

If I was 98.5% behind at my job, my sorry rear-end would be on the street! 

If I wasn't able to make 98.5% of my personal budget projections, anybody reviewing my notes would think I needed a refresher course in remedial math!

If I can't get away with it, what's their excuse?

RED TAPE.  Apparently the government is full of it...  really?!  who knew?!  I guess not Pelosi-Reid's budgeting committee, nor the two Nobel Prize winners: head of the country, Obama, and head of Dept of Energy, Steven Chu.

Yeah, right.

And as I lay in my bed sick at home, I think to myself:  "and you want to manage our healthcare????"

Quick, help me think about something else - that last thought just made me feel sicker...

cvo