Guess who has a new last name

Well it's official! I want to thank you all for sticking with me while I handcrafted my special event. Lots and lots to share with you now that everything is said and done and we are back from the Honeymoon in Japan!

-BG

So let me tell you about my week.

So if you follow the facebook or twitter feeds you'll probably have some idea of what's been going out at Haus of Bomber Girl this week, but I promised to give a little more detail in a post so here it is.

Rewind, Saturday. We help future inlaws clean out attic of the house they are putting up for sale. Doesn't sound too bad except for the fact that we are in Georgia in the middle of a heat wave and the attic has no air conditioning. So we spent all day working in a 115 degree (no joke) attic. All we were really doing was getting out Mr. Fiance's things from when he was a child so that they could be sorted or tossed. Mr. Fiance worked on attic removal and I was on bring-things-downstairs duty.

It worked out pretty well for us except for the fact that we were both a little ill at the end of the day. He from mild dehydration--we kept a supply of water up there for him, but he just couldn't drink it faster than he was sweating in that heat --and I from constant temperature changes as I went up and down the stairs all day.

Mr. Fiance's father, or as I will now call him Mr. Fiance Sr. was a riot and kept our spirits up. I've gotten so lucky as far as inlaws go. I get along so well with my soon to be dad-in-law and my soon to be mum-in-law is my shopping buddy already. In any case Mr. Fiance Sr. was more than happy to explain every strange object we came across from Mr. Fiance's childhood included a strange game involving winding a plastic dog's tail and plastic ticks. I didn't get it either.

At some point during the day we discovered some old book cases that Mr. Fiance senior said we could have if we wanted them. We wanted them. Only problem? The movers could only transport them on Tuesday and the only room they would fit in happened to be the unpainted guest room. These things are heavy has heck and they screw into the wall so once they were in they would be in forever. That gave me Monday to paint since Sunday was already dedicated to more sorting.

Let me tell you how much I like to paint rooms in one word - meh. I don't dislike it, but it's a lot of work and I am not a fan of paint fumes. We tried using low VOC paint in a few of the rooms in our house, but the coverage was pretty poor and it tended to dry too quickly. On top of that there is a very limited color selection. So we decided to go back to regular old house paint for the time being. If we decide to have kids sometime soon of course we'll use the VOC free stuff again, but seeing as we're not planning on that for years I should have the whole house painted in time.

Anywho I'm not a huge fan of painting. Paint fumes aside I think mostly because I did it so often when I was working in exhibitions at a photography museum. When you have to repaint a giant gallery space every two months or so the charm really wears off. That leads to a lot of procrastination on my part. I have meant to paint the guest room ever since I moved into the house, but never really had a reason to. Well now I certainly had one. So let me tell you how Monday went.

8:30am: Drive to hardware store. Buy Paint.

Luckily I had the color picked out already so I didn't have to worry about that. I went with a lovely color called "Nutmeg" which was not the color of nutmeg, but it was still a lovely shade of chocolate brown.

9:30am: Drive home to this room which is currently full of wedding decor and junk.

I was a little embarrassed to show these pictures, but I wanted you to know what I was up against. Our house has been in a constant state of construction lately and things seem to get moved from room to room if they don't have homes yet. As evidence I moved pretty much everything that was here sans towels and put them in the dining room.

10:30am: Finish cleaning room and vacuum floors.

This blanket is my pride and joy. Seriously, I would go back into a burning building for this thing. I knit it my senior year of college while completing my thesis. I literally finished sewing in the ends of this blanket the day of my graduation. It took me six months to make this thing and it is my favorite knit blanket by far.

10:45am: Move my nemesis.

I hate this TV. It serves no purpose other than taking up space. It can't play DVDs without routing it through a VCR because it only has a cable jack connector on the back. It's not super heavy, but it's big and bulky and a pain in the butt to lift. The terrible thing is that this is the nicest TV we have in the house, but I still hate you 1990s TV.

11:45am: Try to move bed, find it too heavy. Remove mattress. Move furniture.

This is the infamous "Tornado Hiding Under" mattress. It is really bendy and not fun to move by oneself when one is a 100lb 5' tall girl. To me it weighs a ton, but at least it's only a full so it was manageable.

If you don't have these things you need to get them. Fantastic invention. I didn't have to disassemble the bed frame or anything. Sweet.

Moved IKEA dresser and weird side table that totally doesn't match the decor, but whatever. We're a young couple. We're excused.

12:00pm: Move all tarps from upstairs office that we just finished painting last week to downstairs. Jury rig them to fit over the bed so I don't have to remove it from the room. Selectively add painters tape.

3:00pm: Take small drink break for a diet coke. Let paint dry 10 minutes.

4:30pm: Finish the cutting in.

The room has a window and three door frames to paint around.. It took me a long freaking time to finish.

5:30pm: Finish applying first coat of paint.

Looks pretty good, but definitely showed the problems with the builder's painting job. There were three different types of paint on one wall. One type took way longer for the brown to dry over. Then there were the dried paint drips and blobs, the poor execution of said paint job, and the fact that the ceiling is higher in some parts of the room than others. Thanks for a quality job builder guys.

Afterwards I finally took a lunch break and ate for the first time that day. I don't remember what I had, but I'm sure it was good. I think it might have been an entire tub of coconut milk yogurt mixed with frozen cherries and flaxmeal.

7:30pm: FINALLY finish the stupid painting. Take shower. Not totally sure how I managed to get paint all up the back of one of my arms, but at least the latex paint comes off pretty easily in the shower.

Next day: Get book cases at 8am in the morning. They look sweet.

Pat self on back, vow to do no work for the next three days.

I Vlogged.

Thief in the night!

Happy Monday, everyone! I can't begin to tell you how busy we've been. October can't seem to come fast enough. I really don't know what I was doing with my time before I started having to plan a wedding. I'm busy all week long and then there's no rest for the weary on the weekends. Overall this weekend wasn't too bad in terms of business. We had some ups and downs, but overall we were very productive.

Down: I received my writing scores for my GRE in the mail. Not what I thought it would be especially considering the fact that I paid a good amount of money to take a prep coarse and followed their strategies which were "guaranteed" to get you higher scores. But from what I hear with what I want to do for my Masters the school shouldn't care too much about my writing scores. My math and verbal scores were high enough so I guess there's nothing more to worry about other than my own disappointment in myself. Booooo...

Up: We found a fantastic bistro in our town while looking for a place to have our rehearsal dinner. This is extra awesome because until now we thought there were only chain restaurants and sports bars in town. Mr. Fiance had a fillet and I had delicious braised asparagus with creme fraiche. Yum yum yum. 

Down: We have a THIEF in our backyard. Here is the crime scene. 

Those were powder blue asters. Now they are stems. The weird thing is that our thief didn't go after any of the other plants including the zinnias (shown in the lower left) or the shasta daisies. Luckily I know the theif's Achilles heel.

So far we've had no more flower thievery since I sprinkled this stuff around the bed on Friday. Guess the thieves don't like it hot. Can't say I blame them. I'm not a huge fan of spicy foods myself. 

Here is the flower garden as of this morning. It's looking a little shaggy because of a couple of nasty storms we had over the weekend. It's also looking a little thin because the marigolds are reaching the end of their lifespan and I've started pulling them out to give the cockscomb room to grow. 

Up: We were invited to Mr. Fiance's cousin's daughter's birthday party this weekend and it was just about the cutest thing I've ever seen. She was turning two and they decided to throw here a Sesame Street themed birthday party. My favorite part was this full sized sign post so lovingly created by her daddy. 

I won't even get into the matching Sesame character family tee-shirts, big bird feathers leading up to the door, Oscar can including Wormy, a real Dorothy the goldfish, handmade character cupcakes, and delicious food. These people know how to throw a party and I was taking notes the entire time. 

Downs: We were supposed to go to Athens, GA for a debate society meeting after the party but unfortunately one of us came down with a stomach bug so we scrapped the trip. We went home and watched Beau Pere instead. 

Up: I'm almost done painting my sewing room now that the nasty test is over. The hardest part was choosing the color, but I finally went with a pretty sunny yellow. It's got a good sixties-ish vibe without being too dated looking. I'm trying to decided on the wisdom of adding some green damask curtains. Perhaps something along these lines. 

What do you guys think? Too much?

And that's it for me so how about all of you? Anyone have some good ups or sucky downs this weekend? 

Story time: Test test test test t-t-test.

It's done it's done it's done!!

My graduate records examination that is. If you follow my facebook or twitter feeds you'll know that I have been cramming like no woman has ever crammed before for that @!&# test.

Cute Vintage Math Flash Cards from Brooklyn Retro

Mostly my issue with this test came from the math/quantitative section. I don't have anything against math. In fact I've always liked math, but I have a BFA and my BFA comes from a school where no maths or sciences were required to graduate. So other than one chemistry class that I took when I was briefly considering becoming an animation historian I had not touched math since 2003. If you're counting that's eight years.

So began two months of relearning your basic algebra, geometry and statistics for me. I started by forcing myself into a strict study schedule. Every day after work I would pop over to a coffee shop or the library and do math problems for anywhere from 2-4 hours a day depending on how much time I had available, but those of you who have taken the GRE know that that is only the beginning of preparing for the test.

I find the above comic strip hilarious as it isn't far from the truth. You think you understand the math, you think you've studied enough, and then they throw in questions that don't even use any math and are really just there to make you squirm. What the GRE tests is your ability to take a examination. It's kind of like the SAT, except much more sadistic.

I took practice test after practice test after practice test and eventually I started to plateau score-wise. I kicked up the study time again, but finally decided that it was time to just suck it up and take this thing. I was fairly sure of what score I would get and even though it was still below my ideal score I just didn't have any more time to devote to this thing.

Of course over the weekend (two days before the test I had been cramming for for two months) I caught a cold. A nasty knock you down sore throat couldn't talk kind of a cold. I swear I have never gotten sick as much as I do at the radio station. I don't know if it's the enclosed space and the recirculated air, but when someone at the radio station catches something we all catch it.

So Monday I go in for this test dripping from every part of my face. Somewhat nervous, not super excited about it, with a sore throat and my ears so clogged I could barely hear. I would have rescheduled the exam, but you have to do that three days prior or you have to eat your entire test fee. That fee happens to be $160 so I decided to just suck it up and go.

The first 45 minutes of the test are an essay which is followed up by another 30 minute essay. Then they give you a 10 minute break which I took full advantage of. I went out to the front office and crammed a granola bar into my mouth as fast as possible, took a few sips of water, went pee, and went back into the testing room with one minute and thirty seconds to spare.

Then I broke the test.

For the record, if you are taking the GRE and a little window pops up that says something like "do you accept this break" and gives you a yes and a cancel button, click cancel. It is not okay to accept a break. Basically it freaks the testing software out and it won't progress to the next section of the exam no matter how many buttons you slam. CTRL-ALT-DEL also will not help you.

Did I note that this is a timed test? So here I am slamming every single button on the keyboard, clicking my mouse on every section of the screen, and having a general panic attack. I waved my hand to try and summon the test proctor, but she was off having a sandwich or something and definitely not paying attention. So finally I ran out to the main office in a tizzy and finally found someone who could fix the testing computer for me. Phew.

After that there was another 30 minutes of verbal and 45 minutes of math multiple choices, followed by a "experimental section" that lasts 28 minutes. Yes, the questions were full of things like the comic above, but for some reason I kept finding them easy. Maybe it was my heightened state of awareness from my almost melt down, but of course the first thing that popped into my mind was that I was getting them all wrong. The test is supposed to be adaptive so if you get questions right it should give you harder questions and vice versa.

But after several other Murphy's Law moments including snapping the lead off both my pencils and running out of scrap paper I completed the test!

It was time for the moment of truth.

The next question on the screen: Do you want to cancel your scores or view your scores?

I clicked view.

AND HOLY BOLOGNA, BATMAN.

Not only had I beaten my ideal test score by 60 points, I had beaten my highest practice test score by over 100 points. I was so shocked by the outcome that I let out a rather loud "OH!" If you were one of the other students in the center, I apologize for interrupting you momentarily. I would have liked to get out of my chair and done a victory dance.

But I didn't.

I did call my fiancé, Mother and best friend immediately after leaving the test center and retrieving my cellular telephone.

The End.


So what have you been up to, Dear Readers? I feel like we've lost touch. Leave some comments to update me on your goings ons. If you've got a blog I promise to head over there and catch up this week. If I haven't been a regular commenter at your blog leave me a link and I'll make sure to add you to my blog roll.

Peace out, home slices and please enjoy this photo of Mr. Fiancé testing out towels for the wedding registry.

My first tornado.

A few quick changes today. As you'll note I took down the old $25 Vintage logo and wrote in the words Bomber Girl. This is mostly because my Bomber Girl logo design looks like this thus far:

I'm thinking the new name will also make this blog a great place to show off some of my pin-up drawings among other things... because seriously who doesn't have 12 sketchbooks full of pinups hidden away in their closet from my first year post-animation school? I mean right? Right? And what better place to put them then in my blog posts, right? (Read: I am so loving the freedom my new blog title is giving me.)

But back to the topic of today's post. As I believe I've stated before I am from New York. More specifically I am from the Hudson River Valley, New York. In the entire 22 years of life I spent in the Hudson River Valley we never even really mentioned tornadoes. It just wasn't in the local vocab. Tornadoes in that valley mostly don't exist. Every once in a while one jumps over a mountain and does a little damage, but the last time that happened I was in the third grade and didn't even notice what was going on.

This week however.... well, lets just say I had a serious scare. We knew there were going to be bad storms that night with a possibility of tornadoes. We were under a tornado warning from about 8pm onward, but it really didn't even start to rain until close to 10:45pm that night. It was a pretty nasty night. Very windy, lots of lightning, and our backyard started to flood about 25 minutes into the storm.

At about 11:15pm and I was upstairs brushing my teeth when our tornado sirens went off. Would you all laugh at me if I told you I didn't even know what a tornado siren sounded like before last Wednesday? Mr. Fiancé  who was downstairs at the time yelled at me to get downstairs immediately. I spit out what I could of my toothpaste (but didn't have time to rinse, bleh) and zipped downstairs as fast as I was capable of.

I landed at the bottom of the stairs and Mr. Fiancé essentially threw me into the downstairs bathtub, laid down on top of me, and pulled the guest room mattress over us. I think all this occurred in under three minutes, but as we hid in the tub Mr. Fiancé could hear the sounds of a tornado outside. I couldn't really hear anything from under the mattress, but I'm told tornadoes sound a bit like freight trains.

We stayed in the tub until about midnight and I still had a mouth full of toothpaste that I ended up having to swallow. I placed a call to my parents at some point to get storm information and we occasionally got updates from Mr. Fiancé's mother about where there had been tornado touchdowns. All in all we had two miner touchdowns within five miles of our house. One was just up the road.

We eventually crawled out of the bathtub (a might bit stiff I should add) and stayed up for another two hours in case of more tornadoes, but it was just rain, thunder and hail for the rest of the evening. We finally ended up sleeping in the downstairs bedroom since our master bedroom is on the second floor. In the morning we were finally able to get a good idea of what had happened the night before. Our neighborhood, thankfully, was not damaged by the storms. We had some downed limbs and lots of debris laying about, but I consider us to be very lucky. Even my newly planted flower garden survived unharmed. Some of our neighbors were not so fortunate. 

One of my co-worker's parents lost two cars and had some damage to their home home in Griffin, GA. He shared some pictures of the aftermath with me. Thankfully no one in his family was hurt.

His Grandfather's truck.

His Mother's car.

Image from the Times Harold of cleanup in my county. 

I'm sure you've all heard the stories about the death toll throughout the southeast. There are many tragic stories coming out of the region. Georgia applied for and was granted a federal state of emergency and there are several FEMA offices opening in the region tomorrow. I'm so grateful and thankful for everyone that remained safe from the storms and my heart goes out to those who lost their loved ones.

Stay safe, everyone.

Big News! Changes in the Wind!

1930s Daisy Picking from the Vassar College Photo Archives. 

Lots of changes going on here at $25V and I've got some BIG news! The biggest news? We're getting a domain of our very own! That's right $25V is hitting the big time my friends!  

We've also got a new name, a new logo, a new design, and a new server. I'll keep you posted as the change over happens. I'll be taking the month of march to make the change over during which time I'll be posting to both servers simultaneously.  So you'll have plenty of time to adjust your bookmarks and feeds. 

The other big news? I've purchased my wedding dress for the big day! I can't post a photo because one of my subscribers happens to be Mr. Fiancé, but I'm more than happy to share a link with anyone that sends me a quick email. 

Hope you're day is going just ducky!

January Dress - Weekend work

This weekend wasn't the most productive weekend of all time sewing wise. I took a trip down to Mississippi to visit my grandmother and for my Uncle Robert's birthday dinner. It was nice, but sad.

My grandmother is in the early stages of dementia. She's still mostly herself, but she has a lot of trouble remember dates and names. She recently had to be placed in an assisted living center and this weekend was the first time I got to see her new home.

My two grandmas and my Mother at my college graduation in 2008. My Mississippi grandmother is on the left.

Overall the place was very nice. There were a lot of people her own age and she has a very nice roommate. Still it's hard to think that the woman that played countless games of Uno with me, took us to vacation bible school, and who made these huge lunch spreads every time we came to visit can't remember what day of the week it is.

I suppose that's life, but I can see that she's becoming less and less of the Mom-mom I've always known. She's forgotten everyone's last names and it's only a matter of time before she forgets the first names completely as well. There's not much I can do but be supportive and understanding of what she's going through, but the day is coming when my Mom-Mom isn't going to be Mom-Mom anymore.

Mom-Mom at my cousin's wedding in 2009. 

I'm going to make sure to visit Mom-Mom as much as possible. It's difficult when a drive over to Mississippi costs me over $100 in gas and I'm currently only working part-time, but some things are more important than money.

As far as the January Dress goes I've gone ahead and cut out all the fabric pieces for the bodice and underlined them with the ivory colored cotton. This evening I have class to attend until 10pm, but I'll try to assemble the bodice after I get home.

I used Tasia's tutorial (I just love her name. Tasia, it sounds so pretty) on underlining a bodice. If you haven't read any of Tasia's tutorials you are in for a treat. Her instructions are crystal clear and she creates the most beautiful dresses.

And I'm really stoaked to tell you that $25V now has over 1000 twitter followers! Thanks everyone for following me! I'll try to keep bringing you interesting sewing related tweets daily!

Updates: January Dress and around the house

Hello Readers! I just got my new fridge this morning!

This is the old ugly broken fridge.

And this is the new side-by-side fridge! It's shiny and new and I love it! My OCD will kick in in a few minutes and I'll have to scrub the whole thing down with soapy water and windex, but for now I'm admiring it. We've been keeping our food in the little wine fridge. You can't imagine how great it's going to be to put the food in a real fridge in the kitchen.

But enough about my appliances. I realized I hadn't posted the fabric for the January Dress yet. So here it is.

I went with olive green 100% linen for the shirt and bow. The eyelet is a white cotton paisley. I'll be lining the bodice with an ivory cotton (center). I wanted to use ivory eyelet fabric, but that's almost impossible to find in the shops around here. I compromised by choosing an ivory lining. It will add a little bit of the ivory color and it will help to really show off the eyelets.

When I overlay the eyelet onto the cotton it will create an effect like this. You'll get just a touch of the darker color. Just trust me on this one, it's going to look fabulous.

So what did I pay for all these fabrics? Well my plan had been to find an eyelet dress or top from one of the local thrift or consignment stores because eyelet fabric is so expensive. Unfortunately, eyelet hasn't been super popular in couple of years or so. I did see quite a bit of it last spring, but I guess it hasn't hit the thrift stores around here yet. So I had to go with this white eyelet that I found at Joann's. It was originally $11.99 a yard, but I had my 50% off coupon. Heck yeah. I ended up going home with one yard of the eyelet for $5.99.

The linen was a bit more expensive. I think I paid $6.99 a yard for it, but I'll check the receipt before I do a grand total post.

For the skirt of the dress I decided to use the skirt from this pattern.

It's just a simple 1950s circle skirt, but it's easy and won't cause me too much trouble. This particular skirt is pretty poofy so I'll be taking a few inches off the width of the skirt panels. I'll add a few inches to the length of the skirt panels to be safe, but I shouldn't need it. This particular skirt already ends near my ankles since it is not a petite pattern. (I'm 5'1/2".)

The plan is to make this an ankle length dress, but what do you guys think? Should I make it floor length or bring it up to the mid-calf and make it into more of a day dress? You're all my stylists so let me know what you think! Just remember that the bodice will end just slightly below my natural waist.

Delicious Frozen Yogurt Time for a cure!

So in case you're local and you didn't know, the south side of town now has it's own TCBY. Little known fact about me: I love TCBY. Not just like, love. We had a TBCY at the local mall while I was growing up and almost every time we went I would beg for TCBY yogurt. At the time my favorite flavor was their White Chocolate Mousse, which believe me I would still be enjoying on a regular basis if my stomach could handle the dairy. 

In any case the new TCBY is in Peachtree City, Georgia and is just a stones throw away from Haus of Nancy. When I scheduled a meeting with one of my favorite local ladies and fellow health food enthusiast, Mrs Carol, on Thursday we both knew where we were going.

The new Yogurt store is way too cute. I just love the funky updated retro-design.

The colors are really fun and right up my ally. Best part of the trip? The store was donating one dollar to the American Cancer Society for every 16 ounces of yogurt purchased that day. You don't have to tell me twice! I can easily rack up 16 ounces of fro-yo. Well, actually fro-so since I can't really eat fro-yo.

The Peachtree City TCBY is more like other popular frozen yogurt bars such as Yoforia, Cloud 9 (another personal favorite of mine), and Frozen Yogurt Bar. You start with a giant cup and the rest is self serve. 

I really wanted this....

But I was good and went with this raspberry fro-so[rbet]. 

And then I topped with some Strawberry-Kiwi sorbet for color. Who am I kidding? I just wanted more sorbet.

They had your usual display of toppings. I always go for the fresh fruit myself, but you can get anything from sprinkles to captain crunch to peanut butter cups. Michael, the store manager, tells me that they are working with local farms in the area to get all their fruit fresh and in season. I'm a big time local foodophile so I was very excited to hear that.

I was very close to grabbing some of these maraschino cherries, but I went with blueberries instead. 

I'd much rather have fresh blueberries then sugary food-colored semi-fruit, even if they are super delicious.

Of course I added a ton of my favorite thing on earth. That would be coconut. 

Delicious, delicious coconut. I also tossed on some toasted almonds and strawberries. Yum!

My finished creation was just under 16 ounces, but at least I gave it a good shot.

I guess TCBY donated about 90 cents in my name and I got to eat delicious sorbet and enjoy the company of a great lady who also happens to be cancer free for 29 years! Congratulations Mrs. Carol! 

So you're probably all thinking this is becoming a food blog with two posts in a row being food centered. Well I promise you it is not. I've got lots of sewing going on this weekend. 

Goals for this weekend are: 

1. Finish last baby surprise for Mrs. Eleanor

2. Cut out the fabric for the January Dress

3. Put some paint on the walls. 

Expect a sewing post on Monday all! Have a great weekend!