Introducing... Baby Carrot Designs

Many of you know that, in addition to frequenting the pool and making lunch dates, I've also been busy this past month working on getting my official scrapbooking business in gear. I'm happy to finally announce the launch of Baby Carrot Designs!

I've officially opened my own Etsy store online, which is an exciting step! For those of you who aren't familiar, Etsy is a delightful online community of handmade arts and goods. It's also extremely, intensely addictive. The bounty of beautiful, creative, quirky stuff is overwhelming! You can see my store at http://amybethjames.etsy.com/.

I've also converted one of my old blogs into a site dedicated to my scrapbooking and Baby Carrot crafts. You can see this at http://babycarrotdesigns.blogspot.com/, and I also added it to the sidebar.

I owe a big thanks to the many friends (most of my small loyal readership here) who helped me brainstorm and gave me encouragement and challenges when I needed them most. Please please don't stop helping me! If something sucks, I'm counting on you to tell me about it. I take it from you all so much better than from Ben. (Sample conversation starting with Ben: "I just think maybe you might want to change..." Me: "You don't like what I maaaaaaaade!" Sobs.)

Besides the baby books on sale at Etsy, the other part of Baby Carrot Designs will be custom scrapbooks of any size and shape, so if you or someone you know has a project in mind, I'm game! Just let me know!

Heh heh heh heh.

So if I was this boy's parent would I ground him or give him a high five? Maybe both? Add this to my list of things I'm going to have to stop saying when we have kids.

via OfficeTally

Bread Maker, RIP

Last time I was home I snagged my parents' old school bread machine. I had visions in my mind of my childhood days, when the smell of fresh baked bread wafting through the house was practically a daily treat. Since my parents carbed-down their diets, the machine had been sitting unused and unloved in my parents' basement.

So I brought it back to Nashville with me, and oh! Was I ever excited! I would be the bread queen, whipping up loaves of bread for gifts, kneading fresh pizza dough for dinner, experimenting with recipes and running 'round my kitchen in an adorable apron covered in flour.

Never mind that the machine was probably - and this is a conservative guess - ten years old. Never mind that it last functioned as a life-size stand-in for R2-D2. Together, we would still make beautiful bread.

And we did! I started with a beloved classic, some white Italian bread. Crusty on the outside, tender on the inside. Toasted and slathered with butter, it filled my breakfasts with its simple grained goodness.

I made another loaf of that. It was just as good.

Then I got crazy. I decided it was time for pizza dough. I bought sauce. I bought turkey pepperoni. I bought mozzarella. I was Miss Suzy Breakmaker. I was unstoppable!

The bread machine, alas, was not.

Halfway through the dough cycle, it abandoned its adorable side-to-side shuffle movement with gentle whirring, and began rocking wildly about while making a painful growling grinding sound. No amount of stopping and starting would aid its suffering.

Ben came home and gave a listen. The diagnosis was not good. A couple weeks later, he and my dad took it apart on the garage floor to scavenge for salvageable parts. Time of death, 11:42 am.

So rest-in-peace, my sweet old gal. Someday I might invest in a modern bread machine, but I'll always remember the good times we had. Specifically the cheddar cheese bread times.

Driving: It's Just Not That Hard (Part IV)

Okay. I haven't done these for a while because I got a lot of the stuff that annoys me most off my chest in parts one, two, and three of this series that I wrote in past entries. But today I was reminded of one more thing that people get wrong like 95% of the time and it just KILLS ME.

Here it is. In a nutshell. One sentence.

Flashing yellow traffic lights do NOT MEAN STOP.

In fact, they mean you have the right-of-way and you should NOT STOP. If they wanted you to stop, they would put flashing red lights. But that is what the cross street of the intersection has. If you see flashing yellow, it just means "Hey, heads up, lookout, because this is not functioning like a normal stoplight so you need to be aware and use caution." FOR THE LOVE OF MERCY IT DOESN'T MEAN STOP. This is a big deal because it makes the intersection unsafe when people who aren't supposed to stop do. Everyone gets (even more) confused and we all know that's no good.

Flashing red means stop, just like at a stop sign. It is at your own peril that you maneuver into the intersection and the crossing traffic is NOT required to stop for you and let you out.

I don't know if it is a problem around here because people genuinely don't know what it means, or if people feel like the polite thing to do is stop and let others out?! I mean, look at it this way. If there was no traffic light at all, you wouldn't feel obliged to make way for cross traffic. So don't do it now. This means, sorry flashing red people. Tough luck. You're on your own. Godspeed.

Now if all four sides have flashing red, that means you treat it just like a four way stop. Everyone stops and gives everyone else their proper turn, and right-of-way applies.

I made up a little rhyme to help everyone remember how it works. Just think of this the next time you approach an intersection with flashing traffic lights.

Flashing red, stop or you might be dead.
Flashing yellow, don't stop or I swear I will get out of my car and punch you.

Time & Time-Travel

So far one of my favorite things about being unemployed has been all the time I seem to have! Time to sleep, time to eat, time to exercise, time to craft and scrap and be a friend. Time to clean and organize, that's been a big blessing! But apparently one thing I haven't had time to do is blog! I feel like I haven't been here in forever... my apologies, dear readers. All six or seven of you!

I'm working on something exciting, which is my own scrapping venture. I hope to have some of my stuff ready and in an online store at Etsy.com soon. If you need something to do while you wait, I suggest going to Etsy.com and just browsing, because oh. my. gosh. It's amazing and you could spend weeks there and still find adorable things to see!

Speaking of time, something else I'm excited about is the trailer for The Time Traveler's Wife, which I just found online today. I knew the movie was coming out, and I love Rachel McAdams and knew I'd want to see it, so I got the book and read it a couple months ago. The premise is (and I'm not really giving anything away here, you find out this part on the first page) that Claire and Henry are in love... and Henry inexplicably can time travel. It isn't something he can control; he just slips back and forth without warning. The story is about their relationship and how they survive their extraordinary circumstances. It was a good read, very inventive with lovely prose. I think the movie, at least from this trailer, looks like it will be faithful to the novel, and I can't wait to see it when it comes out in August!

Zack Attack

I love when people are good sports about themselves. Score for Mark Paul Gosselaar... I mean, Zack Morris.

Andy's Version

During last night's MTV Movie Awards, before the actual trailer for New Moon was shown for the first time, Andy Samberg gave us this gem. I figured since I posted the real one I should include his hilarious version too!