parents.

oh, how i love my parents. they are the best. they amuse me so. we just had this conversation and it made me laugh so hard (once i hung up with them--i can't let them know that they amuse me) that i had to document it for all eternity on the interweb.

{60} leg tattoo

do i like my name enough by now to get it tattooed onto my body in permanent ink? yes. but, would i? maybe. so, i did a test run using a slick writer. at first i wanted to fill in the letters mandala-style but i drew the letters too small. that's why this will be the first of at least two tattoos that i do. the next one i want to make more henna-inspired and have intricate designs included. too bad it is not shorts weather yet or i could show it off. ;)

{59} google fonts

who knew that google had a web fonts page too?! well, i turns out you can enter your name in there and see how it would look in thousands of different fonts (this idea was spurned after seeing a facebook friend post that she had done something similar). so, i photoshopped my favourite fonts together on this screen print. six ways to spell lauren.

{58} dirty car message

perfect weather outside to write a message in the dirt on my car! where is the nice hot sunny weather like we experienced last week?! oh, well. another simple creation. i shall locate my creativity soon. but, at least i'm still forging ahead and not giving up!

{57} famous laurens

i thought "oh, easily i know six famous laurens." and then, after four i was stumped. fortunately google images helped me out and i found lauren alaina and lauren holly (both of whom i knew of, i just didn't think of them on my own).

oh, and as previously mentioned, my namesake is lauren bacall so it's about time that her picture showed up. hmmm, this may not be my name created out of a different medium but it shall represent today's post. :)

{56} mosaic

before going to the crop and create event last weekend, i had to pack my scrapbook bag. i hadn't used it in a while and i became frustrated when i couldn't fit stuff in. that's when i realized that in the linings of the bag, there used to be hard plastic dividers but i guess in all my aggression over the years, those linings had crumbled apart. so, carefully with a scissor, i snipped a hole in all the linings and dug all those crumbled pieces of plastic out from the bag. of course, as i was doing this i was thinking that i would need to save all these pieces for a name project! so, here it is. :)

{55} push pins

well, i spent most of my 15-minute break at work this morning putting these little pins in the wall. then i totally ran out of some colours and i saw the clock ticking down! it was a quick way for me to get a name done! gosh, i will start to write better descriptions, etc. as soon as i possibly can!

{54} birth certificate

where has the time gone?! life has been a little nutty and i'm falling a little behind here. i shall catch up as soon as humanly possible! i thought i'd do a post of my name on my birth certificate. my mom picked my first name after reading a magazine and seeing the name "lauren bacall" and she asked my dad if he was cool with it and he said "yup!" and so, how totally fitting that i got named after a celebrity.

{53} crop and create

today i was totally pumped because i got to go to the crop and create scrapbook convention in winnipeg. it was amazing and fantastic and i had a blast. though i was creating all day, i did not have a chance to create my name so instead i took a picture of my name on my lanyard.

oh, and totally check out the HUGE haul of free goodies i got! isn't that insanity?? love.

{52} lego script

whilst watching tv with my mom (the previous episode of "the celebrity apprentice" to be exact), i dumped out the pail of lego she has for the Es and completely dismantled a structure that the eldest E had built. i then separated all the lego pieces by colour so i could determine which would yield enough pieces to make my name.
i began with just doing block letters but i soon realized that wasn't giving me enough of a challenge, so i switched it up and decided to do my name in script using lego pieces. i also decided to specifically call today's post "lego script" on the off chance that i use lego again but in a different manner.

i super love this one. i think it turned out just totally fantastic!

{51} the peg game

when our family went to florida three years ago, we went to "cracker barrel" twice. on each of the tables in the restaurant were these peg games. our family enjoyed playing them so much that my mom bought one and brought it home with her! she has completely mastered the game and can finish it in the blink of an eye and end up with just a single peg in the middle. since i was at her house again today, i decided this would be a great platform to make my name.


WRONG! after the "l" and the "a", i realized that this wasn't such a great idea. even my mom declared this name to be a #fail! lol oh, well. it had to count because i needed a post for today!

{50} carrots

i had wanted to do something grand for post #50 but, since i made a whole big batch of soup today, i decided to simply go with...carrots!

i made my most famous zero-additive vegetable soup today. i super love it. it is unbelievably delicious. the first step is to peel and chop up 2 large carrots. since i make two batches of soup at once, i had to cut up 4 carrots. i decided to save the peel and make my name out of it! i haven't really used food yet to create my name so i figured i ought to start.

to see the entire recipe for the amazing soup, check out the blog post "mmmmmmmmm"!

{49} tribute to LOST

well, this one started out like a great idea and then it turned out to be WAY harder than i thought to find characters who have the letters from my name in their characters' names. so, i got to the "u" and was stumped. then i decided i needed to change my approach and just pick six characters that i liked and just highlight the letters from my name instead.

i do not think that this will be my only LOST-related post. :)

ps. all the pictures are credited originally to ABC television. i copied and pasted them from just off google.images.

{48} braille

i knew that buying an old dictionary for 25 cents would come in handy again (see 02.25.12 post)! i've done morse code and sign language, so the next one had to be braille. i decided to highlight the definition of "braille" in the dictionary and then use a glue gun to write my name in braille over top. like i mentioned on the sign language post, i wish i knew how to read braille so that i could work with people who were blind or deaf (or both). what a great challenge and service that would be!

{47} grain of rice

who among us did not buy a bracelet or necklace that included a grain of rice with your name on it? pretty sure we all did that on some vacation in our lives. i had mine done on the beach in Ensenada, Mexico. i was in Mexico on a missions trip and on our way back we stopped in Ensenada to see the whales and do a little souvenir shopping. i picked up a necklace with a single grain of rice with "lauren" written on it. where the necklace ever ended up is what i'd like to know!

so, i grabbed my smash pen (because it has such a fine tip) and wrote my name again and again on many different grains of rice until i finally got one where the letters were pretty clear. i took a picture of it next to a penny just to prove its utter tiny-ness.

{46} river rocks

as i was searching through my craft supplies for something else, i came across this bag of river rocks. they were dying to have my name painted on them so i did. and it wouldn't be complete without a yellow doily. check!

{45} l is for lion

this one required some internet research. a) to figure out what animal each letter should stand for and b) how to make each of them.
so, i grabbed various ideas all over the internet and then recreated them in my own (albiet similar) way. i have no desire to keep this childish creatures for myself so i am gifting them to the youngest E since she loves to be creative!

ps. the "n" is a newt.

{44} google earth

i saw this idea originally online and then pinned it. i loved it so much that i just jumped all over the idea.

so, to make it personal and my own, i only used my birthplace (winnipeg, manitoba) as the location where i could pull letters from. so, the "a" was super easy because of the runways at the airport but the rest were decidedly more difficult. particularly, the "r". i wanted them to all have signifiance to my life but it ended up not working so well because i couldn't find "lauren" in any of the significant spots in winnipeg!

L= the location of our future IKEA (opening Fall 2012!) just off of Sterling Lyon Parkway
A=James Armstrong Richardson Internation Airport (aka Winnipeg Airport)
U=CanadInns Stadium (the former-and again current?-home of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers CFL football team)
R=Bird Construction Company just off of north Main Street (no signifiance--just looked like an "r")
E=the eternally-under-construction Canadian Human Rights Musuem
N=the Red River

{43} clay clay clay

i used the recipe at the back of the "365-days of creativity" book to make clay today. i thought it seemed like it might generate a lot of clay, but i was not prepared for the sheer volume i was left with. i had enough clay to build a life-size hut. insane. so, after i finished making my name, i just kept on creating. i've shared some of my other creations down below too. i still ended up throwing 2-3 cups of it in the garbage! i'll know better for next time. :)

i'm especially fond of the "george" in script and the cookie-cutter inspired clay george that i made!

{42} military alphabet

boo. i'm in the hospital today. i scheduled this post ahead of time because i knew i would not be up for creativity today. boo-urns!

some people call it the miltary alphabet, or the phonetic alphabet, army alphabet, radio code alphabet, etcetra, etcetra. i'm not really sure what it's "official" name is, but it was my inspiration today. sort of stemmed from the morse code post. just another medium to cross of the list!

{41} bronze letters

i can't believe i haven't used my scrapbooking supplies yet. that's a good sign because it means i haven't run out of ideas yet. the day will come yet when all i use are my thickers and other alphabet sheets. but, today i used an old set of bronze metal letters. i had received these from my sister-in-law several years ago as a "thank-you" for looking after their dog for the weekend. so, i just laid out my name and then a few other letters and made a mirror image below it. simple is the word of the day (or week).

{40} popsicle sticks

yay! i hit 40!

oh, gee. so bored. i had just enough of the plain popsicle sticks to spell out my name. i glued each of the sticks together so haphazardly. this is a tosser! i want to use popsicle sticks again but actually BUILD my name in layers, etc. just like one of those log cabins you made in elementary school. that day was not today. much too much to lazy! :)

{39} rummikub

another game, another day! rummikub is the game that i would always play with my grandmother when i'd go to her house. she was very competitive and would ALWAYS win at this game. i would barely have played out my first hand and she'd already have won! i have such fond memories of those times with her--playing rummikub and scrabble!

now it's a game that my mom and i also play. it all comes down to who gets those happy faces because that almost always determines the winner. right now, i am on a three-game winning streak!

the snow is melting!

the weather outside is so delightful! the weather got up to +8 degrees and it was just wonderfully warm and sunshine-y outside! george and i played in the backyard for 1.5 hours and i took him for a nice long walk where he met 6 dogs! i just love the spring when everyone comes back outside!

{38} tealights

well, i had tried this once before. i started using the automatic lighter but my hand was getting tired so i decided to use matches instead. so, i've lit all the candles for the LAU and i started lighting the "R" with the match but i go to blow it out and i blew EVERYTHING out. i got so upset that i just threw all the tealights back in their bag and figured i'd had enough of that.

but, this time i decided to haul all the tealights to my parents' house and try it there. they had a much better lighter and it took me minutes to get everything lit. then i quickly hopped up on the chair, grabbed my picture and blew it all out. THEN, i had to worry about the smoke alarm going off because there was so much smoke in the kitchen. fortunately, it all worked out. ;)

{37} upwords

i come from a "games" family. we love to play games. my mom and i favour the word-type games like scrabble, proble and upwords. when we have a free evening together, i love to go to her house and just play games with her! upwords is always challenging for many reasons. one, it makes you really think about how to maximize points plus it is challenging on my patience! :) i hate any words that are more than 4 letters long because it's harder to build on top of them so i find myself getting frustrated when a 5-letter, or heaven forbid, a 6-letter word is played!

in the end, it's all fun. it comes down to the letters that you pick up and if there is a place you can actually use them.

{36} elsie-inspired

i got the inspiration for this idea after seeing elsie larson use this photo-composition to ask l.a. (of freckled nest design) to be her bridesmaid. i loved that idea super much so i made my own, less fantastic version (the self-deprecation must end tomorrow!!).

{35} paper folds

more inspiration from pinterest! i saw this pin and i thought that i might able to figure it out quickly enough to make my name. yup, no problems. it was so much easier than i thought. i just hate using the x-acto knife because i can't make nice rounded edges but it still turned out pretty neat.

after pencilling in the fold and cut marks on the light blue sheet of paper, i cut them out with the x-acto knife, then bent the paper into place and glued to a navy background.

not sure if it's a keeper or not...

{34} morse code

i saw a picture of morse code on pinterest and, well, anything that has to do with alphabets these days piques my interest (or pinterest, if you will). so, i figured i would have to use morse code for my next medium!

the "dit dit dot dit dot dit" comes from the broadway music, titanic. i LOVED that musical. have i seen it? no. but i got the cd soundtrack forever ago after seeing the cast perform a song on the old rosie o'donnell show. i listened to the soundtrack incessantly and would perform the songs in my parents' kitchen. because of my strange ability to recall the lyrics from nearly any song i hear, i still remember the lyrics to that musical even though it's been many years since i've popped that cd into a player (or, quite frankly, a cd into any sort of "player". old school!).

{33} collection letters

this collection on flickr is so awesome. it is a massive collection of just letters of the alphabet that have been submitted. i used that site and picked the letters from my name to make today's name. i guess i could just make the next 332 entries out of that flickr album but maybe that would be a cheap way out!

{32} play-doh

my mom had asked for a good recipe for play-doh so i had found one online for her. then she called me and asked what colour i wanted so i chose green! then i went to her house and made my name out of play-doh. man, was that stuff squishy. it was so awesome just to play with. i need to make some for myself as a stress reliever! :)

{31} ecuadorian scarves

wednesday was all about scarves. last sunday i had purchased two beautiful scarves from my friend mark who is selling them as a fund-raiser to raise money for a program in a small village in ecuador. the scarves are soooo pretty.

so, i wore one on monday to work and one of my co-workers loved it so she asked me if i could bring some in. so, mark dropped off a bag of them at work on wednesday and the women of my office went mad for the scarves! it was very awesome and for such a good cause. i did end up buying a total of 6 but two were for gifts.

so, i decided to use the four that i kept for myself to spell out my name. i didn't think i'd have enough scarves to do it, but it worked out pretty well. the first scarf is solid black with a gold thread, the second scarf is grey with a silver thread, the third scarf is a gradient purple and teal with a gold thread and the last scarf is gradient beige and teal with a gold thread. i love them all!

{30} name tag

one month in! i'm feeling super lazy today so i decided to haul out a "lazy" picture for today's entry.

it is my name tag for at work. it's where i spend 37.5 hours of my week so it needed to be shown at some point. i love where i work. i love the people where i work. i love the work that i do. i've matured a lot in the 3.5 years i've been there and i have such an appreciation for everything about the place i work.