A couple of fridays ago, a friend and I went to Paleyfest, an event put on by the Paley Center, a museum/library archive of film and television. They organize a series of panel events in theaters around LA/Hollywood, inviting cast and creators of popular TV shows. Last year I went to see the cast of The Newsroom (HBO) and this year the only show my friend and I were interested in seeing was the cast of Mad Men. So we went to that and they showed the last episode of last season to refresh our memories on where we left off and then they brought out the cast and did the interview and then there was a Q&A.
Meanwhile, back at home, I've brought down more boxes from the garage and pulled out the ones under my bed and have shuffled through everything and re-sorted what goes where, what is for keeping, what I haven't even looked at and can be disposed of, etc. I made two boxes just of craft/projects that I can go to when I'm bored and have some time (like now) so now I don't just have random project ideas in various drawers, boxes, bins all over. Now things are consolidated and I know what I have and have even bundled the items of one project together in large zipper bags so as to have them organized. Whatever project I want to work on, I just pull out that bag and I can do that. They are little things like spray painting a mini-bulletin board/key holder for my bedroom entrance, designing a hanging shelf tier for the tiny corner of my bedroom that is going unused, and creating a bouquet for one of the shelves. That kind of thing.
I pulled two projects out last night and worked on those. One was a Jenga game for my client/friend. She says her family likes the game and I asked her if she's played with "fun instructions" and she didn't know what I was talking about. So I bought a set of Jenga tiles and made two versions of the game. I wrote numbers on the ends of the tiles so that when the tower falls, instead of counting tiles, everyone adds up the numbers on their tiles to see who won. The second version is to write silly instructions on some tiles, not all. If you get a tile with an instruction you have to do what it says, like do a cartwheel, sing a nursery song, etc. I'll give it to her today when she comes over with her payment.
I also made silly spa gifts for two other friends. Years ago... and I do mean years... we did a road trip to the Salton Sea. It was only a day trip but we left at 6am to have a hefty pancake breakfast at a dive before the 400 mile round trip into the desert. I insisted on driving because to me a road trip is mostly fun if I get to drive. By the time we got back home, 20 roadside stops later, it was 1am and our last leg had been through a mountainous state park just north of the border which I'd hoped we wouldn't have to take in the dark... but we did. We had such a blast. Our purpose was to stop along the way to see any kitschy touristy stuff like the dinosaur-shaped museum, the anti-gravity hill, the oldest orange tree in California, etc. There's some pretty hilarious video of me falling, pictures of lots of roadside food, and even some science experiments.
Anyway, the destination was supposed to be the mud flats on the east side of the lake but when we got there, they weren't bubbling. They'd gone dry for the season so we just walked around and saw lots of dirt. But it was this powdery, clay consistency, and since the whole point was that they are rich in minerals, we looked around and pulled a bucket that I conveniently had in my trunk and filled it with the dry clay and brought it home. Well the damned bucket has been in my trunk all this time and I finally got around to buying some really beautiful heavy glass jars and have distributed the clay for each of them. I've added some honey straws and some recipes for home-made facials that they can try. Tied the honey straws and recipes to a lovely ribbon around the jar neck and they are ready to go.
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