Editions of Me

So I've just finished my first Thanksgiving on Paleo, and well... it wasn't really ON Paleo. But I didn't go completely off the rails either. I pretty much stuck to eating turkey and sweet potatoes (though, they were probably not prepared with Paleo ingredients), and while I did indulge in some pie and ice cream, I did not eat any stuffing or bread. Which I am fully capable of eating in HEAPS, so I forced myself to stay away. (We will not speak of an ill-advised break a couple weeks ago when I ate about 8 Roti Buns in a period of 24 hours. I spent the next 24 hours COMPLETELY miserable.) So now I'm back. I gave myself yesterday and the day before to stretch out my goodbye to dairy, and today I'm back to the straight and narrow. Well, kind of. At the moment, I'm out of some Paleo staples (clarified butter, coconut flour, coconut aminos), but I'm substituting the best I can (organic grass-fed butter, tamari) until I get a chance to hit up Whole Foods again.

I finally finished both socks! (You can see the photos of the first one here - obviously, I'm not going to bother taking special photos of the second sock alone.) I decided that I wanted to give these socks as a birthday gift to one of my good friends from work, Kaila. She has been my friend and mentor since I started teaching, and she is one of the most hard-working and inspirational teachers I know. (In fact, I have future-dated this blog post in case she reads my blog, so even though I'm typing it on 11/18/12, it won't be published for another week.) I decided to make the gift look a little extra special by printing out a "label" to package the socks, and I made a card to go along with them: Here's a close-up of the label, below. I purchased a pdf collection of knitting-themed printables from Laylock.org , and it includes a bunch of cool things like care tags, note cards, book marks, bookplates, etc. For the notecard, I pulled out a quote from

There are UBER spoilers for this movie, so if you want to be surprised, do NOT read on.

Before I start, let me just say this: I am NOT built for San Francisco. I have about five heart attacks just trying to drive through the city. Driving up steep hills makes me fear for my life. While we still made it to the race on time and in one piece, it was still a little panic-inducing when we missed some turns and ended up having to drive all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge and then back. (Oh well, I've really only been across it a couple of times, and it was a beautiful morning to be there.) I was joined by Becca and my friend/leaguemate Amanda for a fun, easy 5k. I've done a Mermaid Series race before - they are totally chill, all-female, and very empowering. They have AWESOME, unique participant shirts and cute finisher necklaces. It would be like if the Nike Women's Marathon offered shorter distances and didn't charge you a week and a half's worth of grocery money. I figured this would be a great way to get myself re-motivated after taking it ea

I've never tried Illamasqua before, but I've always wanted to - their products seem to lean more "artistic" than "beauty" (and that always gets my attention), and they consistently get good reviews from Temptalia. But I've never known where to start. The Illamasqua Alter Ego Mystery Selection seemed like either a good place to start or a bad one, depending on how much you like to gamble. It's a box of 10 full-sized  products - two of which you know about ahead of time and the rest of which are a grab bag of mystery shades. Now... I'm a bit of a gambler. I used to love buying mystery grab bags from toy stores (especially the Sanrio store, when I was a little kid), so this box seemed like fun, and since I had no idea where to start with this new-to-me brand anyway, I like the idea of them making "suggestions" for me. (It's a great way for me to sample their line, and it's a great way for them to get rid of random stock,