Dinner out with friends...we were waiting for them and decided to have a photo shoot
We tried the Bone Marrow at dinner
Who says Fruit By The Foot is for kids? (or that Adam isn't a kid?)
One of my favorite Manic Trout Necklaces...The Little Secrets Necklace
I started creating Adams "Man Space" as he has moved in with me
To deal with insane population growth, Austin keeps building the roads up higher and higher
It's so easy to get cupcakes in this town that I had time to walk up to the Hey Cupcake trailor and score this beauty while Adam was at the bank
I realized this week that I am walking distance from both Hey Cupcake and Big Top Candy Shop. Kinda scary as I ordered my wedding gown already and have to fit into that size. No yummies unless I walk there!
(want to follow me on instagram? I'm: @manictrout)
*This post is republished from July 2009. I have been telling a few people about it recenlty and thought I'd share it again.
Before I even launch into why, please note that I said *most* gals. So last night I achieved studio perfection when I got to break in the new set up…the girls were all sprawled out on the couch and we all watched chick flicks while I worked (I am where the arrow is pointing in my jewelry area).
After the girls left I continued to work all hopped up on girl talk and cookie dough and proceeded to somehow break all of my hole making apparatuses at once…I have NO IDEA how this could happen, but I did not have time today to bring my power drill back to sears and the hand drill I broke is out of stock indefinitely…this brought on a mild panic attack at 2 am last night…but I survived.
This morning I dashed into my awesome local hardware store down the street and discussed the options. We decided that the best idea was to buy a new smaller power drill then my broken cordless one…and this is when I realized that I shop for tools like a girl…and I say this as a girl who grew up with a father who is an art carpenter and made sure I knew how to operate every single tool in his workshop by the time I was three and a mother who once brought home a table saw because she thought “of all the cool things she could do with it”. I know my way around a hardware store…and I still suck at shopping in one. I kept trying to grab at all of the pretty colored, multi functioning, fancy packaged drills…the patient man who often assists me and is therefore used to this told me those were overpriced useless toys and steered me over to this plain looking PLUG IN…wait, I want to be on the go!!!…he pointed out that I make jewelry in one spot and would get a much more powerful drill this way…but its so inexpensive…but, he pointed out, a really great drill….but it’s really ugly…he just looked at me with a look I get A LOT from men…but the packaging is really ugly too, and the direction changing button doesn’t have arrows printed on it…I got that look again…oh fine, I huffed.
So I carried my ugly drill home and put it aside…a bit later I decided it was time to test drive it…my intern J was watching me out of the corner of her eye with a look of mild amusement as I pointed out how unattractive the box was and that the drill was only inside a plastic bag…what kind of packaging is that???…I then plugged it in and locked in one of my favorite bits and almost drilled through the table while I shot the metal I was drilling across the room…her amused look turned quickly to fear…I quietly put down the drill and looked at J…"this may take a few minutes to get used to, but I promise to aim away from you"…I took a deep breath and picked the speed machine back up…I’ll admit it freaked me out, who knew such an ugly drill could have so much power??? It took a few tries, but within 15 minutes I was drilling through anything I could get my hands on…with an amazing amount of ease I have to point out…and then I realized that this is the most bad ass tool I have ever owned…and seriously the best $23 I have ever spent.
ps...if you enjoyed this post, consider checking out the blog , in which Adam and I discuss the differences between men and women every Monday!
I am deep in the design process right now. If you've ever watched House and you know how he stops what he's doing because he has suddenly figured it all out...that's what I do when I"m in this process. The designs build up and swirl about in my head as I start to problem solve about the look, logistics and materials and then BAM! I figure it out and have to write it down immediately. I constantly sit straight up in bed at night, turn on the light and sketch or take notes in the notebook on my bedside table. I do the same with the moleskin in my bag. I have been a fiend for images both in magazine and online and I have materials spread out ALL OVER my studio right now. It's all happening, a new collection is coming together.
The first necklace of The Bridal Line has officially been born which means I am now starting to process what direction to go in and what has been my greatest inspiration. So far, light bulbs seem at the top of that list. Yes, light bulbs. From twinkle lights to huge globes and all that falls in between, I have become obsessed with light bulbs. I pulled together a Pinterest board today to gather all of the light bulbs images I keep grabbing online and thought it would be fun to share my favorites...
If you're digging this source of inspiration, you will find these and amazingly enough, many more light bulbs on my .
p.s. if you see any great light bulbs anywhere, send a link my way!
...there are no ducks in a row right now, they are all up the air. I received the letter from my apartment complex this week that I have 60 days left on my lease. The problem with a 6 month lease is that the minute you get settle in, it's time to think about packing it all up again. Fortunately, Adam and I have already been on a house hunting mission to find a home together. This has already become quite the production! Not something that is a quick process or something that will be finalized for some time. Oh to be able to just click my heels together 3 times and be in my new home!
In between wondering where I will live when March rolls around, the last few weeks I have full steam ahead entered the world of event planning in the south...and well, its been trying. Let's just say that yesterday I decided to give up and get a wedding planner. I'll admit its pretty hard when you try to plan an event in a city where you are still kind of a stranger. I have no idea half of the areas of the city that people tell me about, forget about knowing who's the best caterer and what venues are the right size for our wedding.
In case you were wondering, I am managing time to still get some work done around here. In fact, Manic Trout has been getting busier every day...so much is going to be happening this year! The only part that worries me is that it will coincide with moving and the wedding. Oy. I have a headache already just thinking about it all. I don't really want to talk about it yet though out of plain all superstition. To tease you a bit...there is some local press in the works, new stores to carry Manic Trout and a very special line inspired by certain upcoming events coming this Spring!
The only reason I'm not headed for a nervous breakdown is that everything which is keeping me busy is all very happy and positive. Not to say it does not have its huge stress induced meltdowns and of course clashes as two very independent people start to mesh their very busy lives together. However we are trying incredibly hard to alternate arguments about wedding size with date nights. I swear we had such a fantastic date night last night that we fell head over heels in love all over again.
I'm hoping for lots of little bits of wonderful to get me through the next 9 months...its going to be one hell of a year, that's for certain!
I really need to remember to post my instagram posts on a more regular basis as its been over a month since the last post and there were just so many to choose from! I had issues editing, so this post is a tad long, but its been such a busy month!!
A glimpse at the weekly market which I am a proud part of...all local artisans, all hand made. On the corner of Gibson St and S Congress. I'm there almost every Saturday (I occasionally have to switch to Sunday when I have scheduling conflicts).
They're baaaaack! Adam and I were equally excited to find these at Big Top Candy Shop.
Flowers "just because" are my favorite reason for flowers.
As you already may know, I said yes!
My "tree"...I love it!
I found the coolest wrapping paper, it was super thick, pretty and REVERSIBLE! That part was an awesome surprise, I picked it out for the white side with the fonts, but loved the red as well!
Merry Christmas wishes!
Thea snapped this of Gillian, Holly and I in the post Christmas clean up. I love that we're in teh crowns from our crackers still...its perfect and the only photo I have from 5 days at my moms with all of us. That's sad!
Wedding dress shopping before heading home to Texas. ps...this is the dress I will be wearing in September!
A very quite New Years Eve with us both being sick. We made it to Madam Mam's for dinner though and it was as awesome as always!
What I looked like in the last hours of 2011.
One of my moms delicious Apple Pies in progress...Yum!
Are you on Instagram? I am @manictrout, look me up if you so desire!
I've been immersed in a project all week which started out innocent enough. I simply began inputting data into a program to manage sales across multiple online stores, shows, my studio and the website. I already have everything in a similar program that I run my shopping cart through, but I have reached a point where I need a better way to handle the multiple revenue streams I have set up. Once this started however, a whole sub level of projects opened up which had to be dealt with before I could really continue. They are all useful to productivity and need to be done, some of it was for ending the year and taxes, some of it may be a more neurotic that I really need, but I have wanted it done...and all of it is tedious, time consuming and requiring hour upon hour on the computer.
Tonight while looking through recent photos, deciding what to use for this post, I was reminded of something that my sisters said when we were all together at my moms for Christmas. There was a party our last night and my mom had gone to bed early being exhausted from the very full week we were all home. I as usual, began the mammoth task of cleaning up. Without saying a word, my sisters gathered around, waiting for me to assign them tasks and and minutes later we all were happily tending to the areas we did best. Adam brought up that they let me boss them around and one of my sisters immediately replied, not at all. Sierra just knows what has to be done and what we do well, she's simply directing us where we should be.
The project I'm working on reminds me of that in a way. All of this other stuff keeps coming up and needing to be dealt with, but I just keep plugging away at each sub project, ticking it away where it should be and then continuing on with the course when its done. It feels even better to accomplish then cleaning the kitchen did!
photo taken by Thea (the fourth sister missing from the photo)
I kind of thought/hoped/wished that without a day job this year that the chaos of the holidays would be much less but alas I seem to be unable to avoid being super busy. Mostly because after a few First Thursdays as my trial period, I have been accepted as a regular vendor at the Gibson Street Artisan Market (the corner of S Congress & Gibson St), yay! I been spending the weekends set up in my tent on Gibson St and have done a few shows mid week as well this month. Which means that a great deal of my time has been spent packing up the car, unpacking in the lot, setting up, breaking down, packing up the car...going home and making jewelry to restock...getting up...unpacking in the lot, setting up, breaking down...you get where that is headed. Even with the time spent packing up, it has however been wonderful to see familiar faces every weekend and being able to talk shop with my fellow artisans at the shows.
The rest of my time has been spent doing my own holiday shopping, baking and planning. Oh yeah and did I mention that I am getting married? Adam and I are engaged, woo hoo!!! We started planning the wedding in early October but he was traveling a great deal the last couple of months and we were away for Thanksgiving so we kept putting everything off. However, as we want to get married next September, we were getting behind on the plans and unfortunately have had to cram in a bunch of wedding related meetings in the midst of the chaos these past couple of weeks...it's been hectic to say the least. The only reason I am keeping my sanity is that these are all really wonderful reasons to be busy so although I may have a melt down here and there due to stress, I am otherwise doing it all with a smile! How has your holiday season been going?
What a week. I think my hard drive crashing was number three on my list of most stressful moments in the life of Manic Trout, coming in behind two floods...both causing my studio to be evacuated and one forcing me to move and the being a move of 2000 miles and having to keep my studio n a pod for a month. Thankfully I now have a new hard drive and as I back up weekly, I only lost a small amount of work.
While transferring photos from my phone this morning, I realized it been quite some time since I posted instagram photos. Speaking of instagram, have you seen yet? You can access your instagram account from your mac, its awesome!
Anyway, here is what I have been up to the past week or so...
On the boat in South Padre on the Thanksgiving Moring
Faye who is exhausted after her first walk on a beach. There was a plethora of washed up jellyfish and fish carcasses that day to cause utter joy and excitement. All in all, a successful adventure.
A kite boarder setting up on the flats.
We had to stop at the tourist trap on the way off the island to photo the dinosaurs and other creatures...I personally liked the shark the best.
A pit stop for a big bag of pineapple oranges on the road home...so happy we did, yummy!!
When it gets down into the low 40's in Austin, the outdoor bars are still open as usual, so everyone is out on 6th street in parkas and scarves...still hanging around outside...freezing cold but reluctant to go inside...me included!
Faye and I had a lot of cuddle time this week while my computer was gone.
Part of the Manic Trout tent at Austin's First Thursday this month, I love doing outdoor night shows in December...we're sure not in NY anymore!
Adam and I had date night last night...burgers at Docs on Congress, an unexpected stop at the Big Top Candy Shop and then we were off to see Jack and Jill (the new Adam Sandler flick)...it was the perfect date and so much fun!
Ah Cyber Monday. The kickoff for the holiday shopping season and the mark of when the real works starts for online stores. It is also the day that technology decided to try and test my ability to keep calm under extreme stress. This morning only about 5 minutes after the excitement of finding out that I am the featured Artist of the week at caused me to bop around in my chair, my hard drive crashed.
It was a rather surreal moment when I stared at the grey screen with a blinking folder containing a question mark where the 8 or so applications that I was working in at once were only moments ago. I very calmly took a deep breath, grabbed my iphone and started trouble shooting. Step 1, fail. Step 2, fail. Step 3...this is when I realized that my snow lepoard disk was at my friends house in NY. I (becoming less calm now) texted him to verify this unfortunate piece of info. He replied that I needed to call him asap as he knew what happened. Within 2 minutes my worst computer fear was confirmed. My hard drive crashed and I had to get a new one...and as this was day one of holiday, madness. My calm wavered, but I was soothed by his reassurance that it should all be ok by night fall.
I somehow held it together, made a Genius Bar appointment on my phone and headed over to the mall. As the issue was assessed, I cursed having a custom built macbook pro as the hard drive had to be ordered, and patted myself on the back for having bought the extended warranty (fyi it has paid for itself by now) as the new hard drive was covered. I left my computer in safe hands and tried to wrap my head around not having my computer for a minimum of 36 hours and up to 4 days...at the busiest time of year. I also breathed a HUGE sigh of relief that I back up weekly and therefore will lose nothing.
I came home and just stood there staring at my empty desk. Adam took me out to lnch to basically distract me. But lunch ended and I had to go home to an inability to work. I wrnt to target to pick up a few things, came home and worked out, showered and crumpled.
I thought to myslef, that even though this is 2011...there had to be some way of doing something productive without my computer. Ha! Yeah right. After I obsessively accessed as much as I could on my iphone, I decided to just take over Adams laptop and can kind of function with it. However, the new line which is launching tomorrow won't happen, as I had not uploaded the photographs yet and cannot get to them. *sigh* I did feel immensely better though when I realized what I could access between my iphone and Adams computer. I also found this lovely image in his iphoto that he must have taken via instagram when he came to visit me in NY. I think I'm driving on the Taconic, and its a Road to Nowhere! Oh those silver linings...
