mary’s crafty blog

hyper short stories

mary — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:49:37 +0000

While browsing job listings on Craigslist, I found an ad for writers to write stories using 50 words or less. This sounded right up my alley – tiny, short stories? Yes! I’ve written for two of the prompts so far – basically what they do is send you a prompt and you write using that. It’s a good little creative excerise for me and I like seeing stuff I wrote in other places. Check it out if you can, and submit your own hyper short stories!

i should probably be working on something…

mary — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:53:17 +0000

instead of writing this blog post. But I am feeling incredibly lazy today and I don’t know why. I have this “Cookie Calender” on my desk that has a recipe for “Honey Nut Squares” and I really want to make them instead of working on things for the rest of the afternoon. But I really should focus. I have a web site to finish, a new design to mock up, and some other web updates to work on. And yet… here I am. Thinking about Honey Nut Squares.

I’ll update that I am freelancing again. I quit my silly job in January after they announced a 20% pay cut and medicial benefits cut. Apparently they have reinstated medical though because I got a letter last week about COBRA. Anyway, I’m doing mostly wedding stuff now – writing for the San Diego Wedding Insider and doing web work for Ines Del Mar Weddings Magazine. I have a mock-up that I sent to Ines Del Mar’s art director last week that’s waiting for review. I have no idea what they’ll think of it. I thought it looked nice, but of course I did. We’ll see what happens there.

The other day I was killing some time before going to a friend’s house and I picked up Twilight and randomly went to the middle and started reading it again, and now I’ve been re-reading it every night before bed. I don’t know why I get so sucked into that series. It feels wrong somehow.

Okay, I’m going to try and focus now. Not on baking. On things that will make me money. No baking!

sux.

mary — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:50:52 +0000

Last week at work was awful. They laid off about 40 people. I managed to keep my job, but pretty much all of my work friends were laid off. There have been so many changes and adjustments at work that it’s simply not the same place it used to be. It’s unfun and kind of lonely. The only sort-of plus is that I have the option to either work from home once a week, or take the day off and have a four day work week. This would allow me to put in some extra time and effort into my side projects, like Sugar Branch Designs and doing my writing for San Diego Wedding Insider. So I guess that’s good, right?

In any case, it was nice to have the holiday to try and deal with this crap, though I still thought it was shitty to lay everyone off right before the start of the holidays. But whatever.

Sigh. I’ll just drown my sorrows in the joy of my new Xbox 360 and just leave it at that.

twilight + random act of kindness

mary — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:00:23 +0000

Hey guess what? I’m a Twilight fan. Yes. Are you surprised? I bet you’re not, what with my other fasincations being other pop culture friendly things such as Harry Potter and to a lesser degree, Firefly. But anyway.

This weekend I went to see Twilight on Saturday morning. I didn’t go a midnight show nor did I go opening day. But really the only reason I didn’t go opening day is because I went to the movies with my friend and my boyfriend to see the new James Bond instead, something they were both willing to see.

I trekked out to the theater Saturday morning by myself to check out the movie, filled with excitment. As I was standing in line, two women (probably younger 20’s) came up to me while I was standing in line.

“Are you going to go see Twilight at 10:35A?”, one of them asked me.

“Yes, I am.”

“I accidently bought a third ticket, would you like it?”

“Oh, yeah… but I don’t have change.”

“Oh, no. You can just have it.”

*blinking*

“Really? Oh, well thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome.”

*Women walk away. I am left motionless momentarily.*

How nice was that? I was a little chocked up by a random act of kindness. And yes, I enjoyed the movie immensenly, but that’s probably because I love the book to death. I’m kind of sucker like that.

Here are some other things you probably don’t want to know.

* Secret Twilight items I own (that are not secret anymore):
– Cell phone case, which was supposed to be an iPod case, but my iPod didn’t fit in it
– A necklace with a quote from the book
– A Twilight t-shirt

The plus side to not being a teenager who loves Twilight is that A) I do not scream every time I see or hear something related to Twilight, though I do get excited on the inside and B) I can afford to buy whatever Twilight related things I like.

Hell yes.

The end.

new website!

mary — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:19:31 +0000

My new business partner and I have launched our new web site design company! The name of our new company is Sugar Branch Designs. We’re quite excited to be doing this and we’re excited that we actually launched on the day we set a few weeks ago… yay for goals!

So… um, do you need a new website? heh heh.

birthday cake

mary — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:47:12 +0000

My birthday was pretty much on the downlow this year. My friends, parents and I went to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner and then Alyssa, Laura, Jacob and I went to see Body of Lies. Not too shabby.

I decided to also make my own birthday cake because I didn’t want to buy one and I wanted to try something new. I made a yellow cake with whipped cream, strawberry filling, and freshly sliced strawberries. I topped it off with a chocolate ganache, which I had not done before. I wish I had trimmed the cake a little bit, so it wasn’t dripping down the sides of the second layer. As a result, it was not completely smooth all around, but it was still okay, though not totally beautiful. But I’m sure no one but me noticed these little flaws.

All in all, the cake was tasty, the dinner was delicious, and I enjoyed my birthday for the most part. Yay cake!

There are more views of this cake (well, one more view) on my Flickr page if you want to check it out.

hello internets

mary — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 06:01:44 +0000

Update: I finally know the answer: it was from my friend Sarah! yay Sarah!

did you buy me a present?

i got this in the mail today, but i have no idea who it’s from since there’s no note! you should fess up, internets.

in any case, thank you, internets. it’s very pretty!

[rant]

mary — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:16:09 +0000

I’ve been a bit stressed out lately, but I’m doing my best to try and avoid it. I’m unhappy about my job situation. Not paying people on time is so uncool. And yet, there’s nothing I can do about it except to look for a new job elsewhere. I’ve had one interview so far for a part-time position in Rancho Bernando which could be nice. I could work on my partnership web stuff and try to get that off the ground (we’re hoping for a November 4th launch date) among other things. Things are kind of iffy at this point and I feel uncomfortable and unstable. With my birthday looming, I’ve just been thinking about the state of my life even more which has gotten me just a little bit down.

Instead I’ll try and focus on the plusses but sometimes it’s hard to ignore the things that are dragging you down. I’ll just keep on chugging and going about my day and trying to remember the little things that make me happy: my puppy, baked goods, watching the daily show, listening to kpr in the morning on my way to work, nice long showers, snuggling, and cool fall mornings (even though it’s been warm in the afternoon…).

On another note, I went to Omaha recently. It was surprisingly nice.

You can take a gander at my photos of the trip, if you are so interested in such things.

[/rant]