hello, beautiful

I got a new toy the other night, and I loves it (so far).

It's a Brother CS-770 computerized sewing machine. And it's super fancy shmancy. In fact, it's fancier than I need, but the price was great and it works (something my rinky-dinky Shark stopped doing, hence the new one.) I've been working on my costume for Decemberween (a themed Halloween party in December). This year's theme is Tim Burton and I'm dressing up as the Oogie-Boogie man from The Nightmare Before Christmas. (The hubs is going as Danny Devito's character Amos Calloway from Big Fish.) Between Decemberween and all the Christmas gifts/decorations I will be making, this little machine definitely has its work cut out for it. And me. Hopefully we make it through the next two months in one piece. Now all I need is to finally set up my desk in the office/craft room/guest room so we can use our entire kitchen table.

Also, if you look in the background, you can get a peek at the painting I'm wrapping up today.

And ten points to whoever can guess which movie we were watching. Hint: "oh my giant blue head!"

The duck is actually my measuring tape. The monster likes to make it "swim" around the mat.

Favorite Hidden Tracks

The hard part about this challenge? If there are hidden tracks that I like, I can't remember them. This week required a lot of googling to jog my memory, because I know that I have albums with hidden tracks that I really like, but I can never remember the titles of songs (even the ones not hidden). I think I have a pretty good list, but I'm sure I'll come across some I'll wish I had used in place of some of these. Oh well.

These are in no particular order.

"Next to You" by The Offspring (off their Greatest Hits album)

"Silence is a Scary Sound" by McFly (a UK band that Hope and I fell in love with when we were in Ireland. This is off Motion in the Ocean)

"Dirty Little Secret" by Bon Jovi and Jennifer Nettles from Sugarland (can I just say that Jon Bon Jovi is one of those men who could make me forget my marriage vows. He's yummy. I love him. This is off Have a Nice Day)

"Thank You For the Music" from the Mamma Mia! soundtrack (from the movie. This isn't my favorite Abba song, but I love Abba and my goal is to include them as much as possible in this challenge.)

"Mameshiba" by Yoko Kanno ( from Into Another World. This one I cheated on. I couldn't think of a fifth song so I found a list of hidden tracks and listened to a bunch of them. I really like Yoko Kanno and this song, so it made the list. Hopefully I won't have to do much cheating in the future.)

Anyway, the hubs and I just finished an M. Night Shyamalan marathon (minus The Last Airbender since that movie was just plain terrible) and I am pleased to announce that I have been able to sleep peacefully every night since. Maybe this means I'm ready to see movies like Insidious or Paranormal Activity? Yeah, I don't think so either.