Rated G for Graphic . . .

 Yellow Flower Power Necklace

Blouse: Decree, JCPenney

Tank: Mossimo, Target

Skirt: Boscov's

Shoes: Journeys

Bag: Marshalls

Sunglasses: Cloud Nine, Ocean City 

 I Heart Strawberry Ice Cream Necklace

Blouse: So, Kohl's

Skirt: H&M

Shoes: Worthington, JCPenney

Bag: Nine West, ROSS Dress for Less

Bag charm: Walmart

Belt: Wet Seal

Sunglasses: JCPenney

 Heart of Stars Necklace

Blouse: Merona, Target

Cardigan: So, Kohl's

Skirt: Boscov's

Shoes: Betseyville, Macy's

Bag: Princess Vera, Kohl's

Belt: Marshalls

Sunglasses: JCPenney

 Color Cluster Necklace

Blouse: Candie's, Kohl's

Skirt: Marshalls

Shoes: Qupid, Alloy

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's

Belt: Apt. 9, Kohl's
Sunglasses: Mudd, Kohl's

 Red Flower Power Necklace

Tank: Worthington, JCPenney

Cardigan: Gifted

Skirt: H&M

Shoes: Journeys

Bag: Apt. 9, Kohl's

Belt: Apt. 9, Kohl's

Sunglasses: JCPenney

 Antique Affection Necklace

Tee: Merona, Target

Skirt: Kohl's

Shoes: Ami Clubwear

Bag: Xhilaration, Target

Belt: Izod, Marshalls

Sunglasses: Relic, Kohl's

Quixotic Exotic Necklace

Top: Decree, JCPenney

Skirt: Marshalls

Shoes: Worthington, JCPenney

Bag: Nine West, ROSS Dress for Less

Bag charm: Walmart

Scarf: Mossimo, Target

Sunglasses: JCPenney

. . . is not something the Motion Picture Association usually says about animated features.  But I can't think of a more appropriate descriptor for this week's cartoonish, candy-bright (making good on last week's promise to deliver a dessert buffet), color-blocked clothes.  They're just the right backdrop for the real stars-slash-souffles (might as well mix my metaphors along with my separates), which are, of course, the accessories.

This time around I went on an upcycling adventure (far more fun and dare I say safer than the kind involving a bicycle).  I took nine beloved but boring store-bought pendants and gave them a makeover!  I keep a whole box full of sad old jewelry for just such a purpose.  It's pretty Murky Dismal, just like Rainbow Brite's nemesis.  But it's also the source of much inspiration.  Crafting is, after all, little more than a cobbling together of disparate elements to create a cohesive (if kooky) whole.  I suspect I say this sort of thing a lot, but that's okay because it bears repeating.  Also, "cobbling" sounds a lot like cobbler, which is one of the homiest and most satisfying -- albeit not the most glamorous -- offerings of the buffet table crowd.  Anyway, a little glue and a lot of beads transformed these otherwise ordinary pieces into statements (even if it's unclear, as of yet, what they're saying.)  

I have to admit that it's a little strange seeing all these necklaces I wore long before I started crafting, all tarted up and out on the Interwebs.  It made me think of this article I read in the February Marie Claire about Sofia Boutella, an up-and-comer in the currently playing (and far from G-rated) Kingsmen: The Secret Service.  Being in the @Play column, it was all about her passion for -- what else? -- jewelry making.  "The repetition gets you into a trance," she explained, adding, "It's therapeutic."  Having whiled away more than a few weekends with a full On Demand queue and a fresh bag of beads, I knew just what she meant.  When friends urged Boutella to sell her work, she demurred on the grounds that it was just for her and her family and far too personal to put on the market.  "I'm not making a business out of this.  It's very sentimental," she said.  Although I run an Etsy shop, this too rang true with me.  Any time you create something, you include a little piece of yourself.  And when what you create is something to wear?  A piece of you is out there for everyone to see.  Or, in this case, purchase.

Kind of creepy when put that way, huh?

Still, I've always been of the mind that I make my stuff for me.  And part of that (not to get all hippy dippy) journey is putting it out there.  If someone else likes it, then that's just a bonus.  A tasty, last-piece-of-key-lime-pie-on-the-buffet-table bonus, but a bonus nonetheless.     

Book Report: Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love by Justine van der Leun

I'm fast becoming a fan of the memoir.  The slice-of-life insights, descriptions, and inevitable personal revelations are sometimes more compelling than those found in fiction.  I became especially engrossed in Justine van der Leun's Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love.  Twentysomething Justine relays how she parlayed a lifelong love of words into a magazine career - only to discover that it wasn't what it seemed.  Soured out by the office politics and incessant corporate climbing of her coworkers, Justine remains quietly at the bottom of the ladder, screening the often incoherent and disturbing email submissions from end-of-their-rope readers looking for sympathy:

"The people who wrote me - or rather, who wrote the nameless, faceless entity behind the magazine's general email address - were, at least from their viewpoints, being smashed around in lives that had spun out of control.  They were not equipped to deal with everything thrown at them, the pointless cruelties and little inequities.  Well, me neither, I thought.  The office environment was for someone with a thicker skin, a more healthily diminished ego, and either a more respectful attitude toward fellow human beings or the ambition of a presidential candidate." (29)

In an attempt to avoid becoming similarly lost, Justine quits her job and finds a much lower-paying one writing a memoir (oh irony of ironies) for a businessman.  Then she goes to Italy.  She was there just six weeks before on vacation and returns not only to "find herself," but to continue the romance she started with gardener Emanuele by boldly and uncharacteristically approaching him in a bar.

You know how sometimes you're reading a book, and a character seems so much like yourself that you're surprised and a little put out when he or she does something that you would never do?  Well, that's how I felt when Justine realized that she had packed only one dress for Italy, a misstep that forced her to borrow one from a near-stranger to wear on her date with Emanuele (who proves to be less than dashing, by the way, causing said dress to become mud bespattered).  I couldn't help but think that if I took such a trip, then I'd probably bring every dress I owned.  It made me wonder if supposed kindred spirit Justine would think me shallow should we ever chance to meet.  Probably, as I'm not big on travel either.  Or dogs.  (But I liked this book!)

Mud or no mud, Justine moves in with Emanuele, and by extension, his big, boisterous family.  Far from the glossy urban centers of Milan and Venice, their Umbrian village presents Justine with all kinds of culture shock.  As an educated city girl raised by a single mother, Justine is unprepared for a close-knit family life in which everyone eats bruised produce and organ meat, and women are expected to dance attendance on men:

"Be a good wife.  Be a good, proud wife, who cooks and cleans and can darn a sock . . . who makes the house nice - but not too nice, not show-off nice, just nice enough, and so spotless that you can eat a pork dinner directly off the floor.  Don't want more.  Don't hope to leave one day or to find a wealthy husband, or to make a pile of cash on your own. . . . Like it like the men soldering iron like it.  Like it like the men chopping wood like it.  Like it like the factory workers like it.  It's your job, so like it" (103)

Justine's (or, Guistina's, according to her adopted family) social and culinary calamities are compounded by her and Emanuele's crumbling courtship.  A man's man if ever there was one, Emanuele abandons Justine for days on end to hang with the boys.  Things look bleak indeed until Justine finds Marcus.  Far from being some handsome stranger one village over, Marcus is a dog (and a female one at that, as Justine later discovers.)  Half-starved and filthy, the English pointer has been subsisting on moldy water in a barn on Emanuele's family farm for the past year.  Justine immediately claims the unfortunate creature as her own, taking her to the vet and eventually into her and Emanuele's apartment, much to the horror of Emanuele's family.  A local dog lover tells Justine that Italians don't think of dogs as pets, but as hunters and beasts of burden, an attitude dating back to World War II when Italian families didn't have enough food to feed their families let alone animals.  But to Justine, Marcus is even more than a pet - she's a lifeline.  As a fellow outsider, she represents Justine's gateway to freedom and the culmination of her journey.  Justine says as much herself when she finally decides to unpen Marcus and let her run free:

"The neighbors told me to chain Marcus or to cage her again, but I couldn't.  Marcus was too happy; she seemed healthier and in better spirits than when she had spent twenty-two hours a day cooped up, and I liked to find her snoozing in a sun spot by the rosebushes.  Better free and in danger than jailed and safe." (144)

Eventually, Justine heeds her own words.  She ends things with Emanuele by pleading homesickness (not that he cares, having already hooked up with their roughhewn horse trainer).  At first she tries to find Marcus a good Italian home, reasoning that the high-strung pup would never last a day in Brooklyn.  But in the end she packs her up in a cargo crate (but of course; what other end could be fitting?), crowning her as her copilot for even bigger adventures.

Justine doesn't tell us where life takes her after her return to the States.  But the author bio says that she has written for "various publications, including O, The Oprah Magazine, the New York Observer, Marie Claire, and The Bark."  So I can only imagine that things picked up for her professionally.  Still, I couldn't help but wonder if one of those esteemed institutions was the one that drove her out of her cubicle and on her quest in the first place.

Movie Moment: What's Your Number?

Although my expectations for What's Your Number? were pretty low, I still managed to be disappointed when the bf and I rented it last weekend.  The bf, on the other hand, had even lower expectations but said that it was better than he'd thought it'd be, generously adding that it "had its moments."

Maybe I'm just getting jaded.

Early in the movie Ally Darling (Anna Faris) gets fired from her marketing job, a gig about which, as we later discover, she was lukewarm, only to be confronted by a Marie Claire article on the bus ride home that proclaims she's slept with too many men (19) to land Mr. Right.  (I could digress into a diatribe about my love-hate relationship with women's magazines but will respectfully refrain, as this post already teeters on the precipice of sour).  Things go from the proverbial bad to worse as Ally is catapulted into her sister's bachelorette party, where she learns that she has indeed slept with more men than any of the other bridesmaids.  Thus disheartened, she jumps on the bar and vows that the next guy she sleeps with will be her future husband.  Fast forward to the next morning, which finds her in bed with her former boss, who's played by that ever-so-snarky antithesis of Mr. Right, Joel McHale.   

With nothing but time on her hands, unemployed Ally launches what can only be referred to as a full-fledged stalking mission in which she tries to track down each and every one of her ex-boyfriends to determine if there's one she may possibly have overlooked.  This in and of itself seemed bizarre to me, as I'm sure it did to the legions of women out there who want nothing more than to forever disappear from the purview of past loves.  Nevertheless, I willed myself to suspend disbelief so that I may better enjoy Ally and company's antics.  And by company I mean Colin (Chris Evans), Ally's hunky and often shirtless across-the-hall neighbor.  Even more promiscuous than Ally, Colin strikes the all-important balance between recklessness and safety.  He is, after all, the only person in Ally's life who thinks that she can turn her passion for sculpting quirky characters into a career.  (Yes, folks, this is yet another movie in which the heroine is a frustrated, unappreciated artist whose spirit is cruelly crushed beneath the thumb of corporate America.  Or whatever the much less serious version of that is in the flawed, albeit highly addictive rom com genre.)  Yet even Colin's understanding ways do little to mask the lack of chemistry between him and Ally.  Sure, I wasn't expecting Notebook-caliber fireworks.  But I needed something to convince me that these two crazy kids would make it past the one-month mark.    

All criticism aside, What's Your Number? is nuanced by some highlights (as so wisely credenced by the bf).  Andy Samberg is hilarious as Ally's first lover, professional puppeteer Gerry Perry, and Faris's real-life husband Chris Pratt enjoys what may be the movie's funniest moment as the fat-suit-wearing Disgusting Donald.  Finally, David Annable of "Brothers and Sisters" fame makes an appearance as the one that got away (cue Katy Perry).  His character is one-dimensional and wooden, but I like David Annable, so I was willing to let that slide.  Just as my love for romantic comedies allowed the rest of this stuff to slide so I could enjoy a side of bubblegum with my chicken Caesar salad.