Out of Yourself

Out of Yourself by Truls

I watched this fantastic subtitled Norwegian horror movie called “Villmark 2” or “Dark Woods 2”. I’m in love with foreign horror movies right now and any from Norway have been spectacular!!! Dead Snow 1&2, Troll Hunter, The Wave and Cold Prey 1,2&3 are all highly recommended by me.

The song playing at the beginning of the movie while they are in the helicopter was the first one to catch my attention. “Fighter” by Fender Heist. The video is AMAZING for it so check it out here.

The next song is blogalicious. “Out of Yourself” by Truls. The video is pretty fucking great, as well. I would have bet money that it was a woman singing but when I “Shazamed” it, I realized it was a guy. Instantly, that made it a million times better!!

It may not be your type of song to start with but just imagine this: On a gorgeous hot summer’s day just driving along, singing away, not a care in the world with:

Scenario #1 (for singers):  the sunroof open and the windows down, warm breeze blowing through your hair and caressing your skin, a sense of peace and happiness surrounding you.

Scenario #2 (for non-singers): the sunroof closed and the windows up so nobody can hear your horrendous singing, air conditioning blowing in your face causing your asthma to act up, but still a sense of peace and happiness surrounding you.

If you can sing, everything around you is safe. If, like me, your singing sounds like a dying hyena crossed with an opera singer, then you need to take a few precautions because, let’s face it, things die when I sing. Sing in your car, your house (if you don’t have any living things that you’d like to keep alive like children, pets, plants, etc.) or while you’re in the shower (that’s another great place for non-singers like me. The steam muffles the singing and the tub surround absorbs the off-key notes.)

I will sing in the house when my family is away and it’s just my little old dog Daisy and I because she’s deaf to anything other than cheese wrappers so that renders her safe. I have 2 plants that struggle to survive on the best of days so if they can survive my sporadic watering schedule they can damn well survive my singing.

*I did sing this song while Sarah, my youngest daughter, was in the car on a quick trip to pick up sushi. I told her about this song, how happy it made me and I admitted that anyone hearing me sing it would probably be following me with a pretty white jacket with reeeealllly long arms. I made sure her phone was out of reach so there would be no blackmailable evidence (That’s also a worry for non-singers.) After the look of horror subsided she laughed the whole way home. When we got home she asked what song it was and downloaded it to her iphone so I know she totally went to the dark side.

I sing to this song in my car, high notes and all, and it makes me feel so fucking happy. I just have to hear the first few notes and my day is instantly better. Once i start singing to it, the world is great. If I also have a Starbucks Latte in the cup holder then the world is perfection. Until some fucker cuts me off, is too stupid to signal, or drives like they’ve got a dick in their mouth. Then I just start the song over, take a sip of heaven, let it all go and sing! – C.U.Next Tuesday! – C.Dolly

“She’s Just a Girl and She’s on Fire…” Literally.

Everyone has that moment that tests their flight or fight response. Apparently I am a flight kind of girl. Not what I expected, but without a doubt, when my hair caught on fire, I was 100% in flight mode.

Last weekend, I was having a nice relaxing sit down/stand around a fire. We are not from the city, so this was clearly not a regular fire. It was a raging, clean your yard in the spring kind of fire. There was no firepit to nicely contain the size. The only parameter  was the size of the fence surrounding the pasture we were standing in. We be from the country, bitches! Anyhow, back to my story. I was enjoying the heat from a nice respectable distance, while sipping wine out of my adult sippy cup du jour, when I happened to notice a tiny little spark from the corner of my eye. At first, I just thought that my hoodie was on fire and reacted quite calmly, but once my over processed hair decided to get in the mix, I seemed to lose the ability to think like a sane person.

All I can say is, thankfully I was standing next to some quick thinking friends who weren’t afraid to risk burning their hands by extinguishing the tiki torch on my head – quite unlike myself.

And, in case you were wondering, yelling, “stop, drop and roll!” while your hair goes up in flames is not effective. – C.U.Next Tuesday! – R.Dolly

Bookworms, Unite!

I’ve loved books For-Eh-Vah!!!!! After bedtime, I would make a tent underneath the blankets and use a flashlight to read. My ears were constantly twitching, listening for any signs that my parents were approaching the hallway. If I heard movement, I would flick the light off and wait until it was safe to resume devouring my book. Imagine my astonishment when I found Bookbub! It’s a daily email containing free or discounted ebooks. There’s also an app, which lets you choose an email notification, but it also only gives me the ‘iBook’ option for my iPhone and I have a Kobo app so I can download a book to that app if it’s only offered through Kobo. By registering through their website I’ve found that it’s faster and easier to just scroll through the daily email. It’s totally LEGAL so you don’t have to worry about becoming someone’s bitch in a 6X8 cell (if that’s on your bucket list then I suggest looking at alternate strategies to accomplish your dreams.)

From their website: “BookBub doesn’t actually sell books. We simply alert you by email to fantastic limited-time offers that become available on retailers like Amazon’s Kindle store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, Apple’s iBooks, and others. Book publishers offer deals at these sites for promotional purposes, and our staff works with them to determine the best ones to feature to our members.”

You enter your email address, choose what types of books you like, what apps or devices you have and voila!!!! Every day there’s the holy grail of emails in my inbox. I normally only chose free ebooks by authors I haven’t read before which has allowed me to discover some fantabulous new authors (a necessity if you read as much as I do.) The happiest moment is when I find a book by one of my favorite authors for free or discounted to as little as $0.99.

C-Dolly

Painting Dolly Style

Although I love crafts, I am not a painter. I can’t draw and my stickmen are definitely not in proportion. When I saw this project in A Hot Glue Gun Mess, I knew this gem had a future home in my livingroom.

As you can see, I not only found material for this project, but the picture frame for our twig art project as well.

 1. Prime your wood panel before painting if you don’t want to do as many coats of colour. Not necessary, but saves you some ‘watching paint dry’ time. Literally.  Choose your base colour (I used Acrylic paint) and do one coat in each direction with drying time inbetween.

2. In your very best scrawl, paint your truth.

3. Display on easel or hang with pride. Puff your chest out and strut. – R. Dolly

Cost per picture: $9.50 CAD (less if you already have paint)

• Wooden Artist’s Panel: $3 (Dollar Store)
• Wooden Easel: $2.50 (Dollar Store)
• Acrylic Paint: $2/each-2 colours per picture (DollarStore)

Twig Art

Although this project was not in A Hot Glue Gun Mess, the book did inspire us to try to make other, equally fantastic, projects using our newly embellished glue guns. Once we put the crystals on, we couldn’t put those babies away! I had seen similar projects on Pinterest and thought, how hard could it be? Turns out that they were super easy to make and super cheap as well.

Step 1: Purchase some cheap frames, take the glass and matting out. Prime and paint your favourite colour. We chose bright green so it would stand out against our dark walls

Step 2: Holding your branches over the frame, cut your twigs down to size so they will fit within it. I harvested the twigs from around my property and the road allowance since they usually come every year and cut the branches back anyway. I cut 2 different varieties (Red Dogwood and Birch) for the bark colours and we each chose a different type for our pictures.

Step 3: Place your twigs and use your glue gun to attach your twig to the frame edges.

As a tip, you can see that I realized that I had my frame upside down after it was completed – check to see what end is right side up before you glue! The other Dolly didn’t check her frame either, but she lucked out.

Step 4: Stand back and admire your work.

Cost per frame: $8.50 CAD each

• Frames: $3 each at the Dollar Store (They were originally a bright gold with a super ugly picture inside)
• Aerosol Paint: $7 for primer, $7 for green
• Twigs $0. Thanks, Mother Nature. You rock!

Tacky Tourist Birthday Party

Who doesn’t love a good theme party? We dollies are a sucker for a reason to dress up and mix/imbibe some drinks. Some people dread dressing up for parties, and of course you don’t have to, but why wouldn’t you? ONE of us, I’m not naming names, doesn’t even care if she is the only one in costume. Sometimes it’s okay to just rock a tutu while getting the groceries because you fucking feel like it. No other explanation needed. Own that shit!

Since one of us just got back from Mexico a few weeks ago we thought that we had sufficient inspiration to host a ‘Tacky Tourist’ themed birthday party to celebrate R-Dolly’s husband’s birthday.

Every good theme party needs a theme drink and sometimes a party is thrown just because you found a fantabulous cocktail that you can build a theme around. We are going super predictable and making margaritas. I know. Lame! But, they’re cheap and easy, just like us! HaHa! Just kidding –  we are definitely not cheap, just ask our husbands. It was a toss-up between the Margarita or the Paloma. The Paloma is a tequila, grapefruit, lime, club soda cocktail that is quite popular with the people of Mexico. With so much party prep to be done, we went with margaritas as they can be made a few days ahead, poured into small jars and kept in the freezer.

We’re about to tell you all a true story. One of us, in the past, has been known to mix up a blender full of margaritas and proceed to drink the whole thing because they didn’t want to waste one precious drop. Lo and behold! One day, on Pinterest, the heavens opened, angels sang and a Dolly was bathed in soft, golden light. It was a pin from theyummylife.com and was a recipe for ‘Make Ahead Frozen Margaritas.’ Make ahead? Well why in the fuck not? They’re FROZEN!!! Anyway, from that point on, a Dolly was a lot less intoxicated during the day.

We were originally going to do a buffet style dinner with enchiladas, refried beans, rice, etc… You know, keeping it simple. We adjusted our plan as the invite list began to grow and we ended up going with homemade sweets, finger food and frozen appetizers like Jalapeño Poppers and taquitos. We happen to think microwaved taquitos are akin to dog food, but baked in the oven they are passable and, most importantly, drunks don’t care! That shit was gone faster than a chicken running away from Ronald McDonald. Everything on our simple menu was made the night before except the poppers and taquitos, which were saved for a midnight snack to absorb some of the alcohol and to lessen the chances of anyone being put off by the smell of them cooking. Instead, at midnight, they all thought they smelled heavenly and devoured the store bought, prepackaged appetizers amid moans of “These are sooooo good!” Had we spent hours making the midnight snack appetizers for guests who had been drinking for 4 to 5 hours, we’re pretty sure they would have disappeared just as fast and gotten the same moans of appreciation and that would’ve fucking sucked. Party Planning 101: Know Your Crowd!

Tacky Food List

• Tortilla chips
• Dip (salsa, guacamole, sour cream, nacho cheese in a jar – because we’re classy bitches)
• Chocolate dipped marshmallows and strawberries
• Chocolate mustaches which were made using a mold
• Mexican Chocolate Chili Cookies
• Cream Cheese Sugar Skull Cookies
• Jalapeño Poppers
• Chicken Taquitos
• Frozen Margaritas

We hit up the dollar store for tissue paper to make some fabulous (such a great word – fabulous… FABULOUS) crepe paper flowers (tutorial by Tori at Thoughtfully Simple), some amazing palm tree lights and tin containers to hold our food. The dollar store is the mothership for all crafters on a budget. We kept the decorations simple so as not to detract from all the colorful, tacky costumes that were about to fill the house.

Tip* If you find yourself going to a lot of theme parties, there is no better time to stock up on random costume pieces than right before Halloween

Animals were put away, music playlist was created and pre-drinks were had.  Let the party begin!

Crow Life

Crow Life…not as exciting as Thug Life but it’s the only life I know. I’m like a crow and in my head I totally sang that to the tune of “I’m Like a Bird” by Nelly Furtado. Ooooohhh, Shiny!!!!!!

After the “Cocaine on the Carpet” caught my attention I noticed the glue gun on the cover of “A Hot Glue Gun Mess” and was mesmerized. It was so beautiful and crystally and I wanted one! Robin had a plethora (who doesn’t LOVE that word?) of crystals leftover from costumes and crafts so we decided to bling out our guns Mr.Kate style. Not real guns but our handy-dandy glue guns.

I’m pretty sure if we had real guns we would accidentally shoot each other while re-enacting “Charlie’s Angels.” Plus, who would take us seriously while we wielded our crystallized hand cannons? “Please Mr. Robber, give me a minute. A crystal fell off and it was the shiniest one!” or actual crows would swoop down to peck at the glittering work of art and the robber would have time to flee while I fought for my life like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

All it took to recreate these beauties were the crystals and a hot glue gun to decorate. Robin used an extra glue gun to attach her crystals onto her new mini glue gun, which was the safest and easiest method. I plugged in my small go-to glue gun and used it to decorate itself. Even though it was warm, especially near the tip, it still worked fine and the crystals stayed in place. However, I had 99% of the shrieking “holy fucking shit” moments trying to peel off the crystal sticking to my skin with molten glue. The crystals were from a dollar store and we used about two packages per gun. One package of our main crystal colors and the second package had smaller crystals to fill in the spaces with contrasting colors to add little pops of color. When we finished our crafting, we were cradling our shiny glue guns like Golem, stroking them gently and whispering “My Precious.” – C. Dolly

Cost per gun: $5.50 CAD

• Mini glue gun – $3 (Dollar Store)
• Crystals – $1.25 x 2

Cost: $0 per gun  (If you use a gun you already own and are a crystal-hoarding crow.)