Bands that are rockin' (Part 1)

The local NC State radio station WKNC is awesome. I've been introduced to oodles of bands that I'd never heard of before. I can often be found driving down I-40 with a pen and scrap of paper on the steering wheel as I try to write down a new band or song name that I've just heard on the radio. They have playlists on their site, so even if I just write down some lyrics and the time it played I can usually find the song. At any rate, here are some of the rockin' finds I've had thus far:

Bright Eyes
Of Montreal
Mates of State
Stars
Sufjan Stevens
The Mountain Goats
Death Cab For Cutie

Teddy's Pick #2

Teddy came home all excited about this find. It's an old school phone handset that plugs into your cell phone. He is intent on buying one. Don't think he won't use it, because he will. He wants to walk the streets of Durham with it and see how many heads turn. I love the site that we link to on this one...I totally want the tater tot pencil toppers--free if you buy two handsets! What a deal! (Seriously, if anyone gets those, send me one please. "Are you gonna eat your tots?")

Tom Foolery!

Mindy gave me a heads up about this site. A collection of book covers that cause the nosey parkers in your life to do a double take. I think it would be hillarious to get some of these and leave my books "lying around" in different places--at work, in my car, or on my kitchen table when my parents come to visit in a couple of weeks!

Tangible Music

Still into buying cds? Even though it's so easy these days to download your new favorite songs from itunes, I still enjoy getting a cd to have and hold. You get to check out the artwork and enjoy the inserts. I don't, however, enjoy paying 20 bucks for a new cd at the store. There's a great club called My Music that allows you to buy cds for 5.99 each. Shipping included. Costs nothing to join--the catch is that you will be sent one cd from your queue each month and your credit card will be charged the 5.99. You need to make sure you have something in your queue or they'll charge you the 5.99 anyway and send you nothing. They have an okay selection...but sometimes they didn't have what I was searching for. You can also buy unlimited numbers of cds. So if you see a bunch you want right away you can just order them--no need to wait for each month to go by. I was a member for a little while and really enjoyed it until I rearranged my budget and decided it was on the "don't REALLY need right now" list.

Teddy's Pick #1

Make your own book! This is Teddy's neat-o pick of the week. This site has software that allows you to make your own book--a novel, a baby book, a photo archive...there's even a new one coming out that will let you turn your blog into a book! The prices don't seem too bad, either. I'm definitely going to be checking this one out.

Searching for a gift?

Can you tell it's slow at work today? This is my millionth post. Anyway, if you're looking for cool gifts for the hundreds of weddings you have to go to this summer, check out Mighty Goods. A "shopping bag" of sorts that is updated every 5 days with new gift ideas and links to the websites that are selling them. Very easy to navigate and the creators have very good taste. By the way, I stay as far away from "registries" as I can...what's fun about getting people exactly what they want?

Me Likey.

This rocks.

Attention magnet lovers!

Magnetic paint is where it's at. This would be awesome in an office--you could even section off a piece of the wall to be "magnetized" and get or make some rockin' magnets to decorate and hang stuff with. Very cool.

Doesnt' it look like they are having fun??

Zazzle it

Making fun shirts for friends is a favorite past time of mine. Over the summer I found the easiest site to do it on. With Zazzle you can create your own shirts using images you create or just using text. You can save them and let the public view them or you can keep them private. If you let the public view them you get a cut of each shirt that they sell with your design on it...then they either cut you a check at the end of the year or you can use it as store credit. I've done both. I made a little over twenty bucks with this one design and didn't even advertise it or anything. There's another similar site called Cafe Press which allows you to set up actual stores and such, but I've found that Zazzle is much more user friendly and has better products. My brother has a business and I was able to make him some shirts with his logo on it for about the same price it would cost to get them printed...and there is no set up fee or minimum order. Plus, if you start making money with them, it's even cheaper. Good stuff.
If you want to see the shirts I've made use this link. There's also a link to the left on the main menu bar of the site.

Gift of Music

I'm crazy about burning cds for friends. I'm not good at making playlists for said cds because it was always such a pain. Teddy directed me to an awesome program called Uncover It, and the pain has gone away. Again, this is for Mac users. PC peeps, you probably have 100 billion awesome pieces of software for this purpose. Uncover it rocks--you can pull your playlists and cover art right from itunes. It costs a little bit...I think $7 bucks or something, but is totally worth it. Teddy is so happy that he finally can see what songs are on the cds I make.

Go 'Canes!

This isn't so much a "neat-o" post as it is a "Wooo Hooo!" post. Here's some pics of us celebrating the 'Canes' 4-3 victory over the Buffalo Sabres tonight. We tried calling our friends Becky and Arik (hardcore Sabres fans) at the end of the "I think I have an ulcer" shootout when 'Canes' Eric Staal scored the winning goal, but their line was conveniently busy. So I thought I'd post our excitement instead.



Anyone interested in all things hockey should check out Teddy's blog: Ted's Hockey Emporium

Happy Feet!

Teddy had been boasting for a couple of weeks that he found "the perfect gift" for me. He wouldn't give any hints and I had no idea what said present could be. The surprise was revealed recently and I must say he has me pegged. Rooster slippers that crow when you squeeze the head of the right foot slipper. Now I can be heard cock-a-doodle-doing throughout the apartment. I've taken to letting out a rooster call whenever I get out of bed and put the slippers on so that Teddy (who usually gets up before me) knows I have risen. I tried to find a link so that others may purchase them, but the site of the manufacturer Bestever doesn't have them! Not sure if they are discontinued or what, but we got mine at Hecht's a couple of weeks ago. The site has some other cute stuff too if you're into that sort of thing. In my search I also found these...wish they had them in adult sizes!

I caught Teddy wearing my prized possession yesterday and snapped a quick photo.

Rockin' Walls

I tried my hardest to save this post until I got to try this product out (the birds are currently being shipped to me), but it's just so cool that I can't stand it. Teddy and I live in an apartment complex and aren't able to paint our walls. I love painting rooms loud colors, so this stinks. I recently found a link to this website from that Ready Made magazine I talked about earlier. I'm in love. Sure, it's not the same as a coat of an awesome color of paint, but a pretty funky alternative for decoration, and removable! Teddy wants to get the arcs for his "70's" room. I'll post pics of my bird walls as soon as they are done. For now, here's a pic of an awesome room from their website.

Sam Brown rocks.

Exploding Dog has some of the coolest artwork ever. Sam Brown, the creator, makes computer drawings based on email suggestions he gets from fans. Each picture has some sort of caption...and goes along with that caption in some fashion. I print these out and stick them in Teddy's lunch on an almost daily basis. I've been checking his site regularly for a few years now after an introduction from Mindy. He's got t-shirts and artwork for sale too. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

A window into other people's lives.

When I was young...well, who am I kidding? I still do it. I love looking in people's windows. I do. It's not a creepy "let's see if anyone is naked" type of peeping. I just like to see what's going on. What they're up to. At any rate, I love to know about other people's lives. I stumbled across Found Magazine a few months ago and fell in love. Actually, I think my friend Mindy told me about it because we found an awesome piece of work to send to them someday (I've still gotta scan that in, Mind). The site posts scanned photos and pieces of letters, notes, etc that people have found...on the ground, in the break room, tucked inside a book. At any rate, it's utterly addicting, so be cautious. Might not want to go there right now if you have some big deadline looming, because you will miss it.

Need a vacation?

Destination ideas and discount packages can be found at Geri's Travel Club.

Be the hit at the party! Seriously, everyone will love you.

Make this for your next party. Everyone will oooh and ahhh. Your casserole dish will be literally LICKED clean. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.

Buffalo Chicken Wing Dip

16 ounces cream cheese (2 packages)
8 ounces Frank's Red Hot Sauce
8 ounces ranch or bleu cheese dressing
2 cups cooked shredded chicken (I used 2 cans of chicken breast)
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Combine cream cheese, hot sauce and dressing. Heat in microwave or on stove until cream cheese is melted (stir it up good). Add chicken and Cheddar cheese. Mix together. Put into a baking dish. Top with more shredded Cheddar cheese. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30 + minutes (until it is bubbling and the cheese on top is sufficiently melted).

Serve hot with Fritos scoops or tortillas. If it's your first batch, bring both types to try them out. I like the scoops. You will need at least two bags because they will go like wildfire.

Enough posts for one night.

I got so excited about my idea to post cool things that I've been posting and working on the computer all night. Teddy is picking on me now because he's afraid I'll exhaust my repertoire of awesome things I've found. I just wanted to get some of them written down before they are forever lost in my brain. With that said, I will retire for the night.

For the techno geeks:

Teddy and I love playing Socom 3 on PS2. Don't ask, we just do. At any rate, when we moved in together we faced the problem of setting up our network so that we could both log online with our PS2s at the same time. It took hours and hours of pouring over comments and suggestions on the internet as well as writing emails to complete strangers to see if they had ever tried anything like it. The roadrunner people were thoroughly confused by our request--as we got different "suggestions" from every representative we talked to. We finally got it all set with a wireless network powered by a netgear wireless router. We then purchased two Linksys WGA54G Wireless-G Gaming Adapters. We plugged them into our PS2s, set them on the "in" channel since we have an encrypted network, and we were both up and running without much trouble. It took forever to figure it out and no one seemed to know if you could do it, so there you have it. It works. I now know way more about wireless networking than I ever cared to, but at least I get to play video games and waste my life away like the good ol' days.

Crafty Broads (and Dudes)

Some cool crafty and "fixy" sites I check out are:

Fixer Upper
Purlescent
Ready Made Magazine
Wagner Construction

The Dooce

I'm obsessed with The Dooce.
This chick seems pretty rad. As I've told some of my other friends that I love to read her blog, they've confessed that they check it daily as well. She cracks me up.

Takes the cake as the coolest idea ever...

Teddy directed me to The Mike Matas Blog and his post about making a Life Poster for your wall. This is written by a mac user for mac users, but there are some comments with directions for you PC peeps on there too. I made one of these for my friend Brandie when she moved to Canada recently (see picture). She wrote a gushing email telling me how much she loved it. I plan on making a billion of these for everyone I know. I love photos but don't have enough wall space to post all my favs...this is a great way to do it.
**Below is an "after" pic of a life poster I made for Teddy**

The World According to Weazie

My sig-o Teddy thinks that's what I should name this blog. I've decided to start posting cool stuff that I've come across in my travels...so many times you get a link from someone who got it from someone else, etc...and I have to sift through endless emails and blog postings to find "that cool site I saw" when I want to reference it. So I'll post it all here for Teddy and I to reference and for anyone else out there that has similar tastes to us. Feel free to email some cool shit for me to check out as you discover it. Be sure to let me know if you check something out and you thought it was as rad as I did. Enjoy!