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YAAAYYY!!! Martyn and I have been dating for five years, but I actually did not see this one coming. In hindsight there were hints that it might happen soon but I really hadn't thought much of it with all the stupid Christmas stress taking precedence. So after we woke up Christmas morning and exchanged our gifts to each other (and the stupid cats) the plan was to head over to Roswell to meet up with my mom at her new house and the rest of my immediate family. My brother was cooking the special breakfast that my Dad used to make for Christmas, and everyone seemed like they were getting frustrated that we were running late. The car was already packed, I was waiting on Martyn and wondering why the hell he was just dragging his feet. Then suddenly he tells me to, "Wait, there's one more thing" and starts digging around in the closet where he keeps his video games. I never play video games or go in that closet and start to wonder what is going on, but before I can think about it for too long he tells he to close my eyes...then he's down on one knee with this ring...and yeah. My initial response was actually just, "WHAT?!" due to my surprise at this very unexpected proposal. Then a few minutes later I remembered to follow up with..."Oh yeah, I mean...YES."
So yeah. The ring is perfect. Martyn knew that diamonds aren't really my thing and chose the best thing he possibly could have for me--moonstone and white gold, antique from the art deco era. Since the moonstone is so old it has a unique smokey quality to its surface that really brings out the layers of blue and reflected light within, kind of like a droplet of water or of course, the moon. There is a slight etched detailing on the sides of the ring and the setting is strong and simple. The Tiffany style prongs that hold the stone even remind me a little of tree branches framing a full moon at night. Even the box the ring came in is cool. It's this really banged up tarnished silver with black puncture marks all throughout. It looks like it's been through an explosion and it even creaks sometimes when I open it. I am of course psyched about the whole thing. We're getting married this coming October the 31rst and there are going to be costumes involved. I'm not the sort that has been planning my wedding since I was four years old. In fact, I have never watched a chick flick in my life or even thought about my wedding until pretty much now. I feel that I probably have quite a bit of catching up to do, but I know I'll figure it out in the end. I can think fast, I'm creative, I have no regard for conventions or traditions and I have a damn good sense of humor, so hopefully at least one of these things is going to work in my favor. I think I want the shortest, most understated ceremony possible and then a really awesome and noisy party with electric guitars, crazy costumes and lots of alcohol. These are after all, some of the finest things in life. Anyway, since my ring is from a time when ladies were dainty (or at least shorter that I am, I'm around 5'10") we had to take the ring to a jeweler to get resized. I of course had no clue about my ring size so I'm glad that we left that part up to a professional in Decatur. The jeweler was closed for the holidays so we have had to wait for quite a while. By some strange "coincidence" the date that my ring is ready for pickup is January 14th--the one year anniversary of my Dad's death. I generally don't believe in a whole lot of anything but this struck me as intensely interesting. What better way to spend what would have been such a sad day otherwise. One key quality about my Dad, especially while he was sick, is that he absolutely hated when people worried or were sad about him. He would put on a front, change the subject or do anything else in his power to stop people from dwelling on the messed up situation that fate had given him. He fought death like no one in the hospital had ever seen, using his last bit of energy to smile at us, make us laugh or even flick us off if he thought we were acting too sad. Maybe this world is made up of a series of random events, maybe not. All I know is that my Dad really did approve of Martyn (despite how much he loved to mess with him) and if he could have set something sneaky up with the date of the engagement ring corresponding with the anniversary of his death, he would have. I miss you Dad, and I can't wait to pick up my ring tomorrow!
After the madness of Halloween came the annual retail hell/Christmas crisis. I won't even go into the failure of humanity that is Christmastime at Trader Joe's right now as it is entirely too depressing and too soon to revisit at this point. Luckily I did not become deathly ill until much later this year (ie now) so I was able to get some work done for myself before the shit truly hit the fan. Behold: THE CLEAN ART ROOM.
The new shoes I bought for myself as a reward. Custom Keds from Zazzle. The pink stitching and interior was my personal modification.
And lastly, the Christmas cacophony. The theme for the flyer was Polar Express. This one was mostly designed by my friend on the art team, Jen. I guess the book has a lot of sentimental value to her. Since it's a classic, pretty alright children's book and the movie was creepy as fuck we decided to stick to the book for our inspiration. I made this sign for the entrance/vestibule using the usual paint markers on foam core plus a little chalk pastel to capture the fuzzy outlines of the book illustrations.
The rest was pretty much all Jen. Check out the mountain train setup she built from scratch for this candy display. 
That little train was so cool, but SUCH a pain in the ass in terms of maintenance! I won't even go into all the times when we thought it had broken down for good--at one time I was hanging snowflakes above it and accidentally played Attack of the 50-Foot Woman when I almost fell on top of the entire mountain and impaled one of my fingers on a miniature pine tree--but somehow that train still made it through to the end (despite the accusations from Jen that I did it on purpose and was trying to destroy Christmas.)
By the way, I don't actually hate Christmas. I just became sick of being disappointed by how increasingly lame it has become to me in recent years. That, and my Grandparents and my Dad now being dead as of this year, and the watching shoppers tear each other apart over material things in a frantic mob of bad will to the tune of sappy Christmas carols that I have already heard that day on the radio at least five times a piece...let's just say, it was rough. Sometimes I found little things to amuse myself. For instance, in protest to all the Santa hats surrounding me in the store I decided to come to work as the Krampus. In case you never heard of him, Krampus is like Santa's evil counterpart in some parts of Germany and Northern Europe. He looks like this, a big demon with horns, hooves and a long, lolling tougue.
Krampus comes down the chimney brandishing a whip and chains to kick all the naughty childrens' asses before dragging them to hell as his slaves. Kids in Germany don't just have to worry about getting lesser quality gifts when they've been bad. This was my Krampus outfit for work. The nametag says "Krampus" and I was wearing these knee-high clunky death metal boots, not pictured here.
I also had a whip I made of cinnamon sticks, which I later donated to my neighbor's cat as a Christmas gift.
After all the Christmas hoopla at work I didn't even feel like decorating our tree. Since Christmas is Martyn's favorite holiday we eventually managed. We were even occasionally able to find some comic relief as we tried to muddle through.
Yes, that is the Dumbledore ornament from my old Harry Potter set introducing himself to the "Pornament" Martyn purchased from The Junkman's daughter last year. We are very mature and classy people, after all.
So with full expectations of Christmas being a total letdown once again, I was somehow proven absolutely wrong on Christmas day...but that is a story for my next post!
Before I post my next blog, I thought I'd share some final Christmas photos from this past year and even longer ago because I have em.
First, a dumb photo of my bf who learned the hard way that putting candy canes into boiling hot chocolate amounts to very sticky nasal adornments:
Then me with major bed head during our first Christmas together:
Ms. Loon's first Christmas in her new apartment:
Fatty's first Christmas at his new apartment:
He loves it!
Martyn always does such a beautiful job wrapping presents, which makes me feel all the worse when I don't wrap stuff at all and unceremoniously hand crap to people.
Fatty sitting amongst the rubble:
Meanwhile Ms. Loon goes back to scowling from her perch as usual:
The aftermath (complete with Beatles Mono Box, which was more or less Martyn's Red Ryder BB Gun this year):
My Red Ryder came in the mail later; an official Jim Henson Muppet Whatnot from F.A.O. Schwartz that I designed after myself. Here she is pictured on the goblin couch complete with one of my Trader Joe's name tags and some pink doll hair which I dyed using my own hair dye and pinned into her hair:
Speaking of Trader Joe's, for part of the Christmas decorating campaign we gathered old Christmas photos of the crew which Heather then printed blown up to look like giant Polaroids and then hung from the ceiling. Here are the pictures my parents dug out of an old album and emailed to me for the project:
That one is probably my favorite, as it is from probably my favorite Christmas I can remember. Santa tracked his sooty boots all over our floor but he left me a stuffed Elliot from Pete's Dragon and a real house of my own. In that photo I was making my parents' good friend Terry Dietz breakfast. I just love how his head looks almost like it was Photoshopped in there for some reason.
Ugh. My grandma(Mimi) made me this getup. As you can guess by the photo, I was not a fan.
Me, Erin, Darby, Alpine. I guess I'm Santa or something...and why am I wearing a fanny pack?
Still with the fanny pack, and a stylish belt.
Hi and Merry (late) Christmas! Here's a general overview of what I've been up to in December.
The family matruska portraits, commissioned by Edwin at work:
Edwin's family, painted in acrylic over matruska dolls he purchased at Target. They were a Christmas gift for his wife. Cool idea, I thought. He always has cool ideas.
Meanwhile I was working on my first pair of human-sized fairy wings for Paige's Christmas present. I am eventually going to make several different variations and sell them in my Etsy store and in The Junkman's Daughter. People always told me that they loved my Glam Fairies' wings, particularly the more punk-rock inspired ones (as seen on Hickey and Puke), so I figured it was about time that I made some large wearable wings. Here are some in-progress pictures of the ones I made for Paige:
The frame is shaped so that someone could slip the wings into a corset or tight-fitting shirt if they didn't feel like wearing straps. The veins are super lightweight wire which I sculpted and then covered in some old red acetate I found in my closet.
I draped fabric and scraps that remind me of Paige over the framework.
Then I sewed it all together, added more scraps and baubles, and set the wings on fire several times to add visual interest. Well and I just like lighting stuff on fire. The wings are complete now and Paige has them. As soon as we hang out again I'll post pictures of the finished product.
The other thing I was working on was Hutch's Christmas present which Paige has been asking me to make for him forever. It's a Glam Fairy of Klaus Nomi, an avant garde German singer, performer, and pastry chef that was a friend of David Bowie's. Hutch loves him for his distinctive look and operatic voice. This is what the real Klaus looked like:
And here are the obligatory in-progress photos of little Klaus:
I don't have many of these because next are some quick snapshots of the finished product before he went to Paige and Hutch's:
More photos soon to come.
