Judging Books By Their Covers.

Found another neat Web site, if you're interested in book cover design. I always thought that would be a fun job. Maybe for my second career ...

Pollock.

I found a neat Web site if you ever need to waste time: jacksonpollock.org. It lets you create your own Pollock-esque work, directly in your Web browser. Pictured is my attempt. Now I might have to go home and dribble some paint somewhere ...

Penelope.

We watched Penelope last night, mainly because it was short, and it ended up being a really good movie. I liked it more than my husband, I think, but that's probably because the sets and the color in the film was so great. Plus, Penelope had fun fashion. She looked like she came from a fantasy version of Anthropologie. One of my favorite things in movies is when they really tweak colors to get certain affects. The more apparent sometimes, the more I like it. None of the photos really show the great sets, but they give an idea. Plus, James McAvoy is a great actor. Its the third movie we've seen him in, and he's been really good in all three.

(All photos are copyright IFC Films.)

Bread.

I found a super-simple recipe for bread online last week, so I decided to attempt to make some today. Flour, water, salt, yeast. And it worked! I'm amazed--last time I tried to bake with yeast, whatever it was never rose. Although it just tastes like very basic bread and I'm probably years away from every creating something as good as the Macrina bakery, at least I had a small success.

Flowers.

We finally made it into the back yard this morning to assess the best place to put a garden. I also managed to take some photos of the flowers that have popped up in our yard. This is going to be an interesting spring and summer--we'll find out what plants are dead, which plants are in good shape and see what we like and what needs to go. So far, around the house daffodils have exploded and one tree/bush thing has red flowers. I have no idea what type of plant it is, but the flowers are pretty. Two different blooms by the middle of March isn't too shabby.

Silhouettes.

I love 'em. We had flower silhouettes I painted in our last place, and I have the new one in the living room. Today, via the blog Laissezfaire, I found the Web site Vinyl Silhouettes. Some of their examples are really neat. I would argue you don't need to pay someone else--if its a simple shape, silhouettes aren't that hard. And if you have an overhead projector, it's even easier. Just turn a printed photo into a transparency and trace it. That is what I use. Best $10 I ever spent on Craigslist.

Reading Chair.

I've wanted a comfortable reading chair since our old apartment. There, we didn't have room. Moving here, we finally had some room (kind of), but I couldn't find anything I liked that was in our price range. Even IKEA didn't have what I was looking for. Enter Craigslist, the wonderful find-everything, including things you don't want, Web site. We are now the proud owners of a brown leather chair. I do need to rearrange the living room to get it to fit and not look silly, but for the moment, its there, and I love it.

101 Ideas.

I love lists. I get sucked into almost any TV show that is a list, and will usually read list stories first on Web sites. I found another one today: 101 Easy Home Makeovers. Perfect! I'd love to have a magazine-ready home, but I always find that I fall in love with really expensive things for my house. Some of these tips are fantastic, but I think my favorite is to wallpaper the inside of the closet. At the moment, my closet is stuffed full of clothes and shoes since it is so tiny, but some day I'll have a closet with visible walls--and they'll be wallpapered.

Here is the original story, which I found reprinted in the Seattle PI online. I do plan on trying out a few of these ideas.