Ponyo

The other night I watched this sweet little movie called Ponyo.


It's by the same director who did My Neighbor Totoro, and I think you get the same delight watching these two movies. Plus Ponyo has a little of The Little Mermaid mixed in.


I've told you before how much I love My Neighbor Totoro...  wait I totally thought I did, but searching my archives I don't see one. Wha?!?

If you haven't seen this movie.... then I'm sad for you.  It's such an ode to the imagination of children. And it's totally funny!

Here's a trailer. That theme song is amazing.






and I'm so glad I found another movie that's like it!

Ponyo trailer!



Personally though I think the voice clips they take for the trailer is a bit misleading for the story...

Go watch it!

Tis the Season

I already caught myself almost listening to Christmas music.  I think the gray clouds and being cozy in the house while it rained brought it on. Cause it's not even Halloween yet.

One of my favorite things I like to watch on TV right now is Renovation Realities. Makes me want to get up and take a sledge hammer to a wall, rip up some carpet, and put tile in. And build a wall. And stairs.

Buuut the other week when I bought an empty frame to make a blackboard and put it in, I got totally overwhelmed.  Ok, not overwhelmed, but I am TERRIBLE at measuring. It was the hardest part for me in my graphics class when I was an engineering major. I am just terrible at it, and over think it.

{I'd show you guys a picture of my new framed blackboard, but we don't have a staple gun so it's not secured in there. But I think it looks pretty cool.}


Ok, so this whole post has basically been off topic (I'm watching Renovation Reality right now, hence the getting off subject-ness)... I bought my parents their Christmas present, but I'm pretty terrible at getting good gifts and I'm pretty sure they won't be psyched. But I felt it was pretty original and could potentially cool. And we have a lot of blank walls.

For my mom, cause she is Japanese... the seller didn't have a Japan only map, so I settled for Central Asia.

And one for my Dad who is from England.

I got the idea from Stacy's guest room tour, and I really liked these because they are older (1842 and 1850) and hand colored in.

I tried to get matching ones because there was one map of Britain that was from the 1700s that I actually liked more, but I wanted them to look similar. Going to get matching frames. I'm still iffy though on whether it was a good idea. I'm not totally sold, but when I get an idea I run with it.




I do think this map is way awesome. It's from March 1917, from a German collection of military maps. Buuut I don't have a spare 200 buckaroos to spend on it.

Gettin' mo and mo white trash evry dai

So I haven't washed my car in probably nine months. And thats with driving to and from Utah and all the summer dust.

Today while I was filling up my car, I decided it was too dirty for my taste and therefore began to squee-gee  my car. No, not the windows, but my car.

And I was only slightly embarrassed. 

And now my car has squee-gee marks all over it. 

I blame my mother. She always has my dad put her car through the car wash because it intimidates her, so of course, I followed suite. 

PS. I just started watching Modern Family and Parks and Recreation. I'm obsessed. I tried parks and rec when it first started and didn't like it, but man oh man, was I wrong. And if you have netflix both seasons are on instant. Cha-ching!

Warning: Do Not Feed After Midnight

haha remember Gremlins? This post doesn't really have anything to do with them besides the similarity of: Gremlins +Food + After midnight= monsters; Me + cooking + After midnight= Monster.

Okay not really a monster, but I get kind of cranky. But then again people always tell met that I get cranky when I cook. Which is weird, because I love cooking.

Okay, is it just me, or is there something really satisfying about making a huge mess cooking, and then cleaning everything up and having a sparkly kitchen plus yummy food?

The only downside is that I have a bad habit of cooking when everyone else has gone to sleep (basically often after 10, mostly past midnight) and so I have to be really careful about lids hitting the counter too hard, accidentally banging dishes together when I'm washing them etc. Please don't worry about the safety of my dishes, I don't hit them that hard.

My mom tells me I spend too much time cooking, and I'm kind of starting to believe that I have a problem with cooking/baking too much. Last night I firmly told myself that I wasn't going to cook again because I somehow always spend multiple plus hours in the kitchen but then decided at half past midnight that I couldn't resist and whipped up chicken pot pie (but with a bisquick topping instead of pie... so really a chicken pot bisquick) and bacon jalapeno cheddar biscuits.

Aaaand then I waited around for the pot pie to cool enough to put in the fridge. At 3:30 am. When I had woken at 5:30am that same day.

Goooood thing I don't technically have to do anything tomorrow until 6 pm.

PS. Is anyone doing NaNoWriMo this year? Even if you aren't a writer (because I am sooo not) it's really fun to try out, and it has made me appreciate other's writing even more. 

It doesn't start till November so you have time to decide/ think about what you would want to write about!!

Like Nobody's Watching.

I've always wanted to be graceful, to have the grace, balance, and confidence of a dancer.

I was even in a tap class when I was really little. I could've been a star I tell ya'!

buuut I thought the class was too long so I made my mom let me quit?

So the other night I told my sister that sometimes I may or may not leap around the kitchen when everyone else is asleep pretending that I'm a ballerina.

And then I demonstrated.

And she began laughing uncontrollably. 

And then she got in trouble for making so much noise. (She hiccups when she laughs. Loudly.)

And my butt ached.

And so did my pride.

.

.

.

But I still spin around and leap across the room sometimes. Cause in my head I'm still a ballerina.

And a princess.

Remember that one time I went to France?

Look how appropriate my footwear is! Actually I brought those target sandals and my sandal crocs I know, so fashionable and not at all American, right? because my feet hurt a lot from walking and those are my most comfortable pairs of shoes. Sad, I know. What I discovered when it started raining is that my crocs are completely worn on the bottom, which = no grip. 

Side note: We were totally looking for something else when I decided it looked like something was a couple of blocks over. To our surprise it was the Louvre! So we went with the flow and switched our game plan around.

(In the Tuileries)

I nicknamed this statue Despair. It really spoke to me. And I love it. Haven't we all felt that way sometime? I just love the emotion captured there. 

I really, really love ducks. They were pretty much my favorite part when we visited Paris when I was nine. So I was pretty much obligated to stop and feed them for a few minutes. 

Can you see the hunchback??

Side note: We were attempted to find the aforementioned site- that turned into a Louvre tour- again when we stumbled upon Notre Dame. I don't think we ever made it to the place we were looking for. Mainly because I can't remember what we were looking for.

I really loved seeing how intricate and ornate the floor originally was. 

Aaaand Sacre Coeur.

Unfortunately we took the metro here and unexpectedly walked up a never ending spiral staircase to the street level- seriously, people were stopping to rest- and then took a I-want-to-die ride up the hill cause I sure as heck wasn't going to walk up more stairs, up to a very crowded and touristy area. I'm not a fan of huge sweaty touristy crowds. Not that I was touristy. Or sweaty. 

But I do like that picture. 

PS. Just because I know you are chomping at the bit to see more of my trip, I took a video of under the Eiffel tower, which isn't exciting in itself, but I love the dirty look my mom is giving me at the end.

Under the Eiffel Tower from Michelle Mann on Vimeo.

And of our boat ride on the Seine. Especially because all of our pictures were super blurry. 

Seine boat ride from Michelle Mann on Vimeo.

Aaand the light show on the Eiffel Tower. Because my camera wasn't capturing it well as a picture. And please ignore my ridiculous video skills. And voice. {Does anyone else haaate their voice how other's hear it? It's fine in my head. "

Eiffel Tower light show from Michelle Mann on Vimeo.

I kinda wish I got a video of the nasty nasty HUGE rats scampering to the trash on the side of the park after we watched the light show. Reminded me of Ratatouille?