Party Planning by One Who Doesn’t Party

Dropping the ball hard on this challenge (which I should have finished by now >.<), and I don’t exactly have an excuse, but I have been working on some other stuff in the meantime.

The biggest thing I’ve been doing has been planning my best friend’s bachelorette party. I’m poor, so I had to create a lot of the stuff for it myself, which was actually a blessing in disguise because it gave me a lot of practice with Microsoft Publisher. I also got to make a bunch of silly clip art because I’d rather draw my own than do the probably easy grunt work to find public domain clip art, and I thought I could use the excuse to play a little bit more in Photoshop Elements.

I drew all those little chalk-looking pictures! None of it is anything particularly ground-breaking, but it did the job, and any experience with this stuff is better than no experience. This party also gave me the new–and awful–experience of papier-mâché; more specifically, I now have the experience of making a penis-shaped piñata, or “peeñata,” if you will.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I’m glad I made the peeñata, but I don’t recommend unless you have eleven hours to devote to something you’re creating to destroy. Fortunately for me, the glue was too thick and the door to the peeñata was too weak, so the one I made wasn’t actually smashed to bits and I’m not stuck mourning it. Still, though, holy crap, people do this with children? Oi.

Planning and preparing for this party reminded me once again that it’s a lot easier to create a product if it’s done with a specific goal or event in mind (such as a once-in-a-lifetime party for someone). That reminder gave me some helpfully relevant thoughts for this blog in exchange for the work I should have been doing for my challenge, and has me wishing I had more specific tasks for which to practice these kinds of skills.

The weather is finally nice enough that I can start working in my storage unit without hating life too much, so I’m going to get back on the challenge wagon now. I’m not even sure precisely how far behind I am, so I’m just going to get rid of at least 40 things, for good measure, and then start on a new challenge.

Speaking of challenges: I am still accepting them, and would love some new ones to add to my catalog. Since it has been a while since I’ve posted the challenge idea list, here it is:

  • walking my dog
  • learning to play guitar
  • improving my abilities with media and multimedia projects
  • yoga, sort of
  • significantly reducing my possessions
  • letter-writing
  • watching iconic or important movies
  • reading more books

Please give me challenges in the comments!

I apologize for the lack of updates. Hopefully there won’t be such dramatic lulls anymore. Thank you for reading!

P.S. I apologize that the formatting of the pictures on this post are so ugly and stupid; I fought with what WordPress will let me do with them for at least half an hour… Ugh.

Long Overdue Update

I’ve finished a few things during the time that I haven’t finished the rest of the things I started for this project:

Back in July or August, I drew wombats, sheep, and a goat as a thank you for everyone who commented on this blog when I needed them to, and sent them out. I also wrote accompanying letters explaining why they were getting a gratitude animal three or four months after they’d earned them. I did them all with the quill and ink I got for my birthday, and ink splattered on a lot of them. I kind of got the hang of writing with it by the end of them.

One of the gratitude wombats
One of the gratitude wombats

I also graduated from university with a B.A. in English. Only took one extra semester, which isn’t too terrible considering I transferred twice and therefore kept having to retake courses for which I lost credit.

CAM09924
My second-to-last selfie of my college career

I finished drawing my Christmas card this year from the sketch I drew up last year, printed them, stuffed and addressed envelopes, then lost the box that had most of them in it. I found the box and sent them out last week with a note explaining briefly what had happened.

Edit Again Again Again
Aforementioned Christmas card

On the night of the Beatles Tribute I successfully made chocolate chip cookies that passed my test of being soft after cooling off. I am still chuffed about them, even though I ate the last one a week ago and did end up burning the last eight I put in the oven.

Apparently the only visual evidence of those cookies
Apparently the only visual evidence of those cookies

I made a present for my boyfriend for Valentine’s Day, which consists of a short composition titled “On the Establishment of Relations with Dragons” written on a big piece of sketch paper, with a dragon and other aesthetic elements drawn around it.

Preliminary sketch of aforementioned present, because the real one is for Boyfriend, not for you
Preliminary sketch of aforementioned present, because the real one is for the Boy, not for you; many apologies

Related, I drew, for the first time, a relatively complex Celtic knot that actually consists of one line all the way through and weaves together perfectly. Most of it ends up being covered by the dragon, but I spent forever drawing it up proper anyway. The width of the lines are only slightly not uniform.

I made it myself
I made it myself

Hopefully I’ll have more obviously impressive accomplishments to offer in the near future.