Emma’s Fantabulous Blog

D and I went to a Halloween costume party on Saturday. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a real costume party, let alone one with a date, so I knew that I had to take advantage of that and do a duet type costume… And something where the guy would have to wear something pretty non-costumey, because Devon isn’t really a costume kind of guy.

I had an certain image in my mind and the results ended up being frighteningly on point. The looks:

Mine (”It’s britney, b@tch):

Devon’s:

Check out all my pics from that night, as well as our friend James’ costume. He was working security for the party and came dressed as a Blackwater Operative. It was awesome. And you can read Devon’s blog post on the party here.

Fifi’s Halloween Costume 2007

I just finished putting the final touches on Fifi’s Halloween costume and thought y’all might want to see an action view of it… Is it bad that I keep laughing hysterically when I see her wearing it?

Alrighty. So this saturday afternoon is Fifi’s halloween costume contest at our local Petco. Since she’s always getting beat by dogs, we decided to go with that. Our iguana will be dressing as a floppy ear-ed puppy. Its going to be so fabulous.
I found the perfect stuffed dog at a local toy store. D and I decided to gut it and then sew on elastic bands to fit Fifi into it… Now taking a knife to a stuffed animal is kinda a bizarre situation. We’ve been huge fans of the Showtime show Dexter, about a serial killer. So Devon grabbed some plastic gloves and I decided to document the occasion in a creepy kind of way. It IS Halloween after all.

Check out the album of stuffed animal carnage by clicking on the photo… (btw, the next to last photo shows fifi modeling her costume. She looks so fricking adorable!!!)

I finally uploaded my photos from our “zombie ship” excursion. Unfortunately I forgot to turn off my camera half-way through our hike, so I don’t have any shots of the actual beached ship… However, I did manage to capture a few shots of my rock/seawall scaling chic outfit. Good times.

Check out the album & captions by clicking on the photo.

Last week we had house guests. A friend of Devon’s, Jillian Ann & her dreadlocked husband Grant. They were in town for a couple of days touring with their band Heavyweight Dub Champion. They’re nice people. Passionate and definitely artists.

I really enjoy welcoming people & showing my love through cooking. They were mostly vegan & organic focused. So it was interesting trying to cook for them…. I’ve cooked for vegetarian friends before. I’ve also tried eating a macrobiotic diet before. But vegan is hard. I didn’t realize how often I cook and bake with butter. Anyways. I tried my hand at making a vegan veggie & bean soup which turned out pretty good… Although, gawd. I really love my carbs, cheese and pork products. But I always enjoy learning how to cook within new constraints. Even if I’m not interested in permanently adapting my diet.

Anyways. Last thursday we went to see their band play at the Nectar Lounge in Fremont (North Seattle area) I think they said their “genre” was sort of Industrial Rastafarian. I was intrigued. I enjoy reggae and industrial music, but had never heard of the two totally different types of music being combined. And I was skeptical.

The venue was pretty cool. It looked like an old converted firehouse. I got a club soda and it only cost 75 cents. There was lots of room around the stage, as well as a balcony overlooking the performance area that had lots of tables and chairs. D & I had brought along our friend Russell, and we all felt a bit out of place as we didn’t have dreadlocks or droopy hemp hats. (In addition to wearing button up shirts, not smelling like pot and having bathed that day…) Hehe. But really, It was a pretty cool crowd; we just felt like stiffs. There was a girl waving a Jamaican flag, and there was a collaborative painting taking place. (We couldn’t tell if it was supposed to look like a sofa, a lotus flower with a pig or a mandala.)

Anyways. The band, Heavyweight Dub Champion, was pretty cool. They had great thumping industrial techno-ish beats with a reggae twist. It hard to describe… There was a reggae vocalist, as well as Jillian who is a more melodic singer….. Then there was a guy who would play saxophone occasionally.. and a whole lot of other stuff going on. It was pretty interesting.

You can check out Heavyweight Dub Champion’s myspace page here. Unfortunately I think the industrial beats is something that they’ve started doing more recently, so they don’t have many examples of that on their page, but hopefully they’ll record some of that soon. I’ll totally buy one of their cd’s that features that.

So yeah. That’s what I was up to last week.

Sorry that I’ve been totally slacking on posting weekly questionnaires! It’s been kinda quiet around here & I’ve been keeping busy. Which is good… But the people have been demanding questions, so questions you all shall have!

1. Do you like to explore?

2. What are your thoughts on trespassing?

3. Have you ever made a bonfire on a beach?

4. What would you pack to eat on a picnic?

5. What is your greatest fear?

6. Are you planning on dressing up this halloween?

7. Do you have any seasonal traditions during fall?

8. What’s your favorite kind of bread?

9. Name thing that you never leave the house without.

10. L stands for _______.

Yesterday I took a Henna Workshop. The class was pretty cool, other than the somewhat obnoxious women that I took the class with. (Yes, we all want the teacher to demonstrate her mad-henna-skillz on our hands. Stop whining and acting like a tool!)

::deep breath::

Anyways. I got a cool history lesson, learned how to mix up the goop & how to make a little pastry bag-type applicator. We also got a bag of pre-made henna to take home & experiment with.

I was the kid who was always doodling on her hands & pants in high school. I think it gave me a leg-up on the whole henna artist thing. I decorated my left hand and some of my left foot. If only I was ambidextrous! I’m pretty happy with my result, although I still have a long way to go before I’m really awesome at it….

Here’s my hand:

Then I decided I wanted to put some stuff up my fingers, so I added these:

I put some lemon juice & sugar over the design & slept with my hand in a sock & then washed everything off this morning, my hand looked like this:

And the design on top of my foot looks like this (btw, its hard to henna your own foot.):

Pretty nifty! Now I totally want to henna Fifi. hehe.

Yesterday Devon and I investigated the old abandoned ship that i mentioned here.

When we arrived to the nearest mapped point to the ship, Possession Lane, the area was engulfed in fog, although the rest of the area was having a bright and sunny day. We passed lots of signs reminding us to get back to our cars before dusk. We found an crazy man made structure built out of seaweed and drift wood. There was no road, path, or beach for that matter, so for a mile we climbed over massive sharp rocks covered in barnacles and slime, bordered on one side by the icy water and on the other by a frequently used pair of train tracks. (btw, my sneakers proved useless, so I leapt boulders in my socks.)

When we finally arrived at the shipwreck we were greeted by “no tresspassing” signs and an unfriendly couple…(although they were friendly enough to let Devon snap a few photos of the ship from a distance, instead of shooting us).

On the long way back we saw a seal splashing around in the water, and a blue heron (which is a beautifully-majestic looking bird that makes the most ridiculous honking noise… whatever made them must have had a good sense of humor).

But yeah. It was an awesome date/day spent running for our lives. Devon made an awesome photo-journalistic entry about it here. Also, I took a couple of goofy looking photos that I’ll post when my camera re-charges and i can transfer & upload my pics.

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I first saw this old deserted ship on a beach when D and I took the train up to Vancouver. Its huge, and all alone and just rotting away. I want to go back and explore. Maybe snap some photos. It’s located in Edmonds, Wa, (about 20 minutes away from our house) but like right on the line of Mukilteo.

The strange thing is that its so huge and unusual and I can’t find any mention of it anywhere…. Not online, other than “hey its there, and you can see it on google”. I wanna know stuff like how old it is, or how it got there… Was it washed ashore in a huge storm? Did they run aground by accident? Did some hippy artist put it there as a statement? I dunno. But i want to find out… There will be hiking involved.. Maybe trespassing through someone’s back yard. Maybe scaling a few fences. Maybe making our way through a zombie encampment. Maybe this weekend.

Check out the dancing lady graphic at this article.

Do you see her turning clockwise or counter clockwise?

I saw her turing clockwise and couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to see her turning other wise. Then I stared at her feet & their shadows for a minute or two and I was able to see it… Now I see both and she keeps changing direction every few seconds and it’s driving me insane.

I figure that since I saw her turning clockwise first and so easily that I’m a right brain thinker… Although I’ve always assumed as much.  I’m more creative and imagination based than logic based. Your logic has no place here. hehe.