Well, I certainly haven’t used the “Reviews and Recommendations” part of this website as much as I thought I would when I started it. I’m going to take this opportunity to promote a few stores on Etsy that I think should get more love. (If you have any you think I should know about please share them in the comments!)
Roweville Retro is my friend Lisa and her husband Scott who make the most beautiful pens, fountain pens, pencils, key chains, and more. Seriously, go look at their creations, they are gorgeous! I am the proud new owner of one of their pens in teal dyed wood and I love it.
Public Quirks is my Aunt who isn’t really related to me by blood but is certainly related to me by love. Her store is all Christmas cards right now, not something I have a real pressing need for, but maybe you do… I’ve received many of Katy’s cards over the years and they are the kind you never get rid of, so beautiful and unique. Katy has the best sense of humor so my favorites of hers are the funny ones, maybe we can get her to put up some of those for sale. My all time favorite card of hers was a funny, geeky, Star Trek themed card. So great!
Cards I’ve saved over the years…
(Sorry about the crappy scans, they don’t do the cards justice!)
A random Etsy surfing find was LeCubicule, handmade, simple yet stunning jewelry. I bought this ring from her, with a custom stamped word. I love so many of her pieces, I doubt this will be my only purchase.
Stitch and Swash was another random Etsy find, and wow am I glad I found it! If you know me well you know I can mostly take or leave fancy jewelry or nice cars or designer clothes or whatnot. I like what I like and if I can have it I am content with it for a very long time. The one big exception to that is purses. If I became a bazillionaire overnight I would run out first thing and buy the purses, all of the purses. Everywhere. They might be my kryptonite, but Superman is in pain when exposed to kryptonite I think, and I’m just happy as a you-know-who rolling in you-know-what when in the midst of the pretty, pretty purses of the world.
Angie hand makes all of the bags and wallets she sells. It’s always kind of hard to tell just what the quality of something is from pictures, and when it is a pricy item it’s a bigger risk. I spent almost an hour reading her reviews before making my purchase. There were an unusually high number of reviews and they were all way over the top glowing reviews. It kind of convinced me that most of them were friends or family, but then I noticed there were no bad reviews, at least none I could find. It seemed like a fairly safe risk because why would you plant fake reviews if you weren’t trying to minimize the genuine not-so-good reviews? So they were probably real. I bought this purse and Angie worked with me to make all the tweaks and customizations I wanted.
When the purse arrived I realized my high expectations had been too low, and all of those “too good to be true” reviews were actually honest. This is the nicest purse I have ever seen, much less owned. The leather is great quality, and so soft to the touch. The zipper and hardware (always the first things to break on my bags) are solidly built and well connected. It feels like a bag that is going to be in still great shape 10+ years from now. The inside comes with a sewn in key hook and cloth pocket on one side. I had Angie sew in a zipper pocket with a cell phone holder on the other side. No more digging around in the bottom of your bag because everything you need inevitably falls down there. I picked out the leather color I wanted, the lining color I wanted, and even the thread color I wanted (basic black is my style but you can really make it colorful if you want.) You also get your choice of art designs on the front but I decided not to do any of those. They are all cute, but I want something that will be in style for a very long time and basic seemed to me to be the way to do that. (But go to her shop and look at all the colors and combinations and art she can do, it’s really great!) I’ve bought really expensive purses before, way more expensive than this one one, but this is the best purse I’ve ever owned. If I ever get the cash to splurge on a purse again I have my eye on a few other of her styles! 🙂
Well, that’s all I have for right now. I do far less shopping at this point in my life than I did when I was working, but I’ve come across these items that I truly love and want to share with you. I hope you check them out. If you buy anything let me know, I’m sure you’ll love it as much as I do!
Remember when I went to see Pompeii: The Exhibition at the California Science Center? (If not, that post is here.) Well, after the #GoForPayload event the other day I went back to the Pompeii exhibit. I don’t think my pictures are particularly different than the ones I took before, but I was able to go back and look at items I’d wanted to get a better look at which was nice. (And I did manage to get pictures of things that I didn’t post the first time around!)
Thanks to a very sweet friend I was able to see Pompeii: The Exhibition at the California Science Center. Now I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much about Pompeii and most of what I know came from TV and movies, so most of it is probably wrong. There is a brief summary of what happened in Pompeii here if, like me, you need to refresh your memory. (Or just verify what is fact and what is “Hollywood.”) In the grand tradition of museum exhibits, the room was not well-lit and almost everything was behind a reflective surface so please don’t judge the photos too harshly.
At first some of the artifacts seemed almost… underwhelming until I realized why. Without knowing I was doing it, I was expecting things that looked really old. Like, really, really old. But the items on display have been so well-preserved that it’s almost hard to believe they are as old as they are. Once I figured out that my expectations were flawed each and every piece overwhelmed me for how perfect it looked.
Just a small warning, there was some erotic art on display and a few pictures of it below. I’m pretty sure there are five of you who read this website and I know you all by name and how old you are so it’s nothing inappropriate for you, but if I’m wrong and human bodies or expressions of sexuality offend you, well… consider this your warning.
The casts of the victims were more emotional than I was expecting. (I’m not sure what I was expecting to be honest.) If you don’t know anything about them there is a good explanation here of what they are and how they are made.
I was describing them to a friend later over the phone and her reaction was “how creepy!” It was creepy on one level, yes. But it was also really personal in a way I wasn’t prepared for, and almost heart-warming in a strange way. 25,000 people dead heartwarming, you say?! Yeah, I know it sounds really bad/weird. When I was standing in the room with the casts I just kept thinking that everyone who died there probably died along with everyone they’d ever known. We were told earlier in the exhibit was that within a few years of the loss of Pompeii no one remembered where it had been. These people were basically erased, completely erased. It may have taken 2,000 years but now I was standing in front someone, looking at his face in surprisingly good detail. I may not know what his name was or if he were kind, if the kid liked sports or music better, if the pregnant woman was hoping for a boy or girl, but in that moment I was seeing them and grieving them and by extension all 25,000 victims. I think every human being deserves to be mourned no matter who they are at least for a moment. It took a really long time but these people are not erased anymore. So yes, it was creepy and sad and felt good all at once.
And of course we had to visit the shuttle while we were there. (Because, ya know, I don’t have enough photos of Endeavour here and here, to say nothing of the hundreds I have that aren’t on this site!)
A friend and I took a trip to see the “Life & Times of Abraham Lincoln” exhibit at the Reagan Library. It was amazing, I really could have spent all day there… If you live in the area I highly recommend you visit before it’s gone. (These are really bad photos, I know this. The exhibit was poorly lit and everything was behind a reflective surface. Despite all of that, the items on display were so fascinating that I want to share the photos. Try not to judge too harshly please.)
We also visited some other parts of the Reagan Library
Jennifer Kaplan 