{90} interpretive trees

i may be grasping at this one a little bit. do the tree branches really look like the letters of my name? well, i guess. it's sort of like when i did my post using google earth. i ran into similar problems then too. but, i saw the "u" in one of my trees and i thought "yes! this is a great idea!" and i proceeded to struggle with the remaining five letters. oh, well! better luck next time. i'll find a better set of trees to do this with again at a later date.

{89} crossword

i am addicted to crosswords. especially now that it's summer-ish weather outside. my favourite thing to do is take my big crossword book outside and just sit and do that for hours. much like i did yesterday! (and will again tomorrow) i also had a little other work to do with today's name...incorporating a message for a friend who is celebrating a birthday today. because i knew that would make it a little harder to do, i went with the crossword idea for today. i finally found a page with a puzzle that had the right types of spots to write my message and incorporate my name. i like this hidden message thing. i'll have to do it again. (side note: the word "ass" appears in my puzzle but that is not the secret message. the clue really did ask for a "cart puller"!)

{88} probe

does anyone else remember the popular 70s game "probe"? it was one of our family's favourites and i guess it still is! every once in awhile my mom and i haul out the game and play a few rounds. she kicks my ass each and every time. she always somehow wins with simple words like "cupboard" or "fridge" or "cabinet" whereas i'm playing difficult words like "pneumonic" or "psychiatry" or "unfortunate". ugh. but, we always have a great time no matter what!

{87} rook

yikes. almost every night this week i have found myself at my parents' house playing rook! lol we're just slightly addicted. or maybe it's because i haven't won a game since AUGUST! that's 27 games without a single win for moi!

we love to play rook. see, my dad was a major competitive rook player back in the 60s and before he and my mom were a couple, they even played games together then. but, my dad was a different person. he was so competitive that he couldn't handle losing or he couldn't handle it if his partner didn't play their cards correctly. he's such a different person now. he's so mellow about it. i mean, does he want to win? of course! but, it's NEVER a big deal if he doesn't.

i ended up taking the kitty with this hand and winning a round! yay!

george had so much fun playing outside in the nice fresh air that he totally zonked out. my parents always have this chair in their eating area just for george. that way he feels like he is part of the game too and he is always within stroking distance. :)

my mom helped me lay out the cards to spell my name.

i am always the dealer. fastest dealer in town! my parents always joke that i should work in vegas. :)

{86} graphic cards

i had bought a really large pack of these sassafras cards from peachy cheap about a year (or more) ago. i had never used any of them in any sort of way, so i was packing them up for the upcoming garage sale. but then i spotted one card that said "u is for umbrella" and i was inspired to cut the cards into the letters of my name quickly! a super simple project for today but at least these cards got some use before their sister-cards get sold. :)

(the original cards are below. they are actually pretty cute. i may need to keep the rest after all...)

whilst i was packing stuff up and pricing scrapbook items for the garage sale--i'm selling a TON of stuff--young g laid in his bed beneath the table in my craft room and snoozed. well, except for this one moment right when i took a picture because he heard the rustle of a leaf three blocks away and it frightened him. ;)

{85} playhouse

the playhouse in my backyard once stood pristine. now, it is covered in graphic design (or scribbles. your call.) created by the Es and various friends' kids over the years. i noticed that one name, in particular, was missing from the wall of art...my own! so, i have added it in permanent chalk.

meanwhile, george was outside with me and completely freaking out because of the brick-work being done on the building behind me. he was trying to hide under the lounge chair, under the garden hose, anything--just so he'd be protected! poor boo! but, while i was drawing on the playhouse, he found the perfect spot to hide--inside! he climbed over all my pots (their storage spot o'er winter) and just sat there. love.

{84} sandbox

quick, who can spot my name first? i thought you could easily see my name in the sand until i uploaded the picture. now, it is too late to go back and fix it because george has since buried a bone where the name once was. oh, well. maybe this will count as my camoflauged name inspired by the "make something 365" book!

(geeps. is he the cutest or what? craz-y cute.)

confession

confession: i love "giuliana and bill"! i mean, i love the show and i think they are the awesomest of couples. i totally had a crush on bill when he was on the apprentice nine years ago and i think giuliana is "amaze-balls" on fashion police! so, their show is just super fun and wonderful. of course, i've been following them for a few years and completely shedding tears watching them go through their infertility struggles and, more recently, giuliana's breast cancer. it's been an incredible thing to watch and see how strong they are and an inspiration as a couple. so, i was over the moon when i saw an article on people's website this morning saying they were expecting a baby! yippee! i was totally a few minutes late for work today because i had to watch the video of it on the today show's website. i'm so happy for them. i'm sure that if i lived in chicago (or LA) we'd totally be besties. :)
(watch the video here)

{83} mandala-inspired

lately i have been loving mandala (such as this pin) and i wanted to do a name that was inspired by a piece. so, i found these mandala colouring sheets (i couldn't find my pin but there's a picture below) and was inspired by its design to create my name inside of it. i had no idea just how painstaking creating something like this is! i mean, it took a long time and i suffered a lot of hand cramps drawing all the little lines and cirlces (especially the circles!). but, i totally love it. i wish i'd rotated the "l" a little more so it was less "c" like but, other than that, i really love it.

{82} skeleton

current fave name! i know i should've waited with this one until october but i saw this pin and it seemed so super easy and completely awesome, that i had to do it right this second! and, it was totally super easy and completely awesome. just look at it! look at how my name totally looks like a skeleton and now i know why i have such wide hips--it's because of the "l" in my name. ;) ack, love. you must try this with your own names.

{81} worldly streets

i was so hoping to find a city or town with the name "lauren" but i couldn't find any! maybe i didn't look hard enough...hmmmm. but, after a VERY extensive search on google maps, i discovered "lauren" street names in SIX different countries. score! to you it may seem non-labour-intensive because i'd simply just type in "lauren lane", right? not so, my friends! google only shows the first four or five similar places with the words you typed in but there could be many many more. so, i had to actually search for a "lauren drive in scotland" and then see what happened. of course, i knew my countries were limited to english-speaking locations so that made the search a little narrower but, dude, i still totally searched for a street in tokyo that began with "lauren". :)

{80} postage

seriously. one of the most bestest things about being a grown-up is having your very own mailbox where mail comes labelled for you...and only you! it's the best. remember as a kid how totally stoked you'd be when you'd get your new teen beat in the mail? it's like that, only so much better because ALL the mail is addressed to you! loves.

so, i took the postage stamps off of six envelopes (blech, some were bills) and simply wrote my name on them. an ode to postage and the awesomeness of getting mail.

{79} pipe cleaners

one time at work i found a pipe cleaner. i gave it to karen and asked her to make me something. she totally made the best thing ever...my name! this was long before my name project so it totally means more now. i have tried numerous times to replicate this name she made but to no avail. so, for today's name, i used TWO pipe cleaners to get my name in script.

the name in the dark green pipe cleaner was the one karen originally made and the others are my feeble attempts at replicating her great work.

{78} pig latin

at first i was just going to simply write "auren-lay" but it totally need a pig to accompany it so that it'd make sense. so, after two attempts, i managed to get this pig and then i adjusted the tail so that in its squiggles, it would read "auren-lay". i super love this one. when i post it to facebook (which i do with some of the cooler names), i'm going to ask and see if people know what its meaning is; let's see how many people know their pig latin!

{77} apple carving

thanks to the suggestion made by cathy f. randomly in the lunchroom, i decided to go with that idea for today's name! i found an apple that was on its way to the garbage (because i didn't want to actually eat an apple that had been carved lol), and grabbed a paring knife and got to work. i butchered (pardon the pun) the "e" but the rest turned out okay. keep those suggestions coming! :)

{76} cityscape

i was in the mood to draw (yet again! a lot of that this week...). i picked up my "make something 365" book and i saw that i had sketched the idea of hiding my name in the shapes of buildings. my idea had originally been to hide the letters like in the windows or doors (oo, now i thought of a new idea!) but i instead came up with this. figuring out the letters was more difficult than anticipated. the "l" and "u" are pretty standard but creating an eiffel-tower-esque building for the "a" was complicated and the feasibility of the architecture on the "e" is definitely questionable! lol i'm proud of my drawing today, though. :)

{75} zippers

while i was at crop and create a few weeks ago (see this post), i did a make-and-take to learn how to make a zipper brooch (pictured below). it was a little complicated and i totally burned my fingers numerous times with the hot glue gun but the end result was amaze (new word thanks to @giulianarancic!). so, i ended up buying a whole bunch of zippers to make into brooches and give away to my dear friends. so, i took my black zippers and laid them out on the floor. let me just tell you that trying to coerce zippers into any sort of shape is near impossible so this name is quite abstract!

(the zipper brooch i made)

(of course, g was part of the action...sort of. he laid on his bed and pouted. a second after this picture was taken, though, he jumped up and ran through the zippers so i'm glad i'd already snapped a pic of them!)

{74} heart

i got the inspiration off of pinterest for this one...except i never 'liked' or 'repinned' the pin so i can't give credit! well, they had drawn a heart with the word love inside of the border. i knew i could totally do that. so, after multiple attempts at drawing a decent heart, i finally got one i was happy with! then i left enough space to write my name and then join the sides together. it's simple and pretty. it would make a totally wicked necklace, eh?

{73} invert

i guess this turned out to not look exactly like i thought it would but it's still pretty neat. i only drew and coloured the black areas and so even though it looks like i just dres the letters, i didn't. hmmm. this one was more complex and time-consuming than it actually appears.i was trying to make it into one of those images when you have to squint or invert your eyes so that you can see the word. oh, well. shall try try again another day! :)

{72} fridge magnets

i had searched for these alpha magnets awhile ago but when i couldn't find them, i just figured i'd lost them or sold them. the last time they'd been in use was when i lived in winnipeg so it had been at least five years. but, then this past weekend i'd been cleaning up stuff and going through old boxes and trying to de-clutter my life when i came across these magnets strewn across the bottom of a box. score!

who can spy pyrex, a previous 365-project and george? :)