justify my shrub

Dear Madonna,

WTF?
I'm all for going green these days, but recycling the grass clippings is a little much. As much as I try to keep up with fashion, I missed the raw-hemp issue of Elle this year. Natural fibers are fab, but I need a Zyrtec just looking at this dress. Seriously, my eyes are itchy and I'm looking for my inhaler.

The grass dress doesn't look very comfortable either. I mean, how do you sit in that? If the dress sheds, do you get a tiny rake out of your bag? With the belt you kinda look like a topiary. When I was a kid we used to drive by a house that had those fancy elephant wearing a tutu topiaries on the lawn and you're kind of reminding me of that. A Madonna topiary. The dress is a lot of look, but can we talk about the shoes for a minute? I'm sure they were a bazillion dollars and all, but they look like gladiator sandals with Christmas ribbon around your ankles. And forgive me, I'm not wearing my glasses, but are those fishnets? Oh, I get it, the fishnets are to hold the grass clippings at the end of the night.

Now, I know some might say I'm jealous, my being a full-figured girl and you're Madonna, but that's not true. Lord knows if I looked like you I'd be naked all the time (fo realz), but if you showed up naked to this event, people would be all "Madonna's naked, big whup." You showed them! You're wearing sod! Awesome.

On second thought, it may be a green and black shag bathmat. The more I look at it, I'm not so sure. And I'm worried that if you turn around the back of the dress is the matching toilet seat cover. I don't know what sort of event you're going to, but I can only assume it's going to rock and Snoop Dogg, Cheech, and Chong will all be in attendance. Don't worry, I'm sure it's BYOBong. Oh, and stay away from Snoop's brownies. The secret ingredient is neither gin, nor juice.

Rock on,
Kerry

P.S. Xena wants her bracelets back.

Christmas shopping guide: idea #2

These days everyone is all about DIY projects and no doubt you have one of those people on your Christmas list. I know I do. My grandfather does everything himself. When we evacuated from Hurricane Katrina we went to Shreveport and spent two weeks at my grandfather's house. For two weeks I watched my grandfather attempt to fix a wooden ironing board. I know, I didn't know ironing boards were made out of wood at one time. And yes, that does seem like a fire hazard, doesn't it? For two weeks my grandfather worked on the ironing board, went to Home Depot mulitple times for various and sundry items he needed to make the necessary repairs and continued to fuss with the ironing board. At the end of the two weeks he came to the conclusion he needed to buy a new ironing board.

Unfortunately, this gift is also of no use to my grandfather, but maybe someone on your list would love it. From stupid.com, here's the Grow Your Own Furniture Kit.

Just look
at what a single GYOF kit will produce:

1 Chest of Drawers
2 Nightstands
1 dining room table
6 Chairs
1 Rocker
1 Footstool
82 Toothpicks *

All it
takes is a Grow Your Own Furniture Kit, a little patience, and $2.99!

* Actual number of toothpicks may vary

The instructions say to plant the acorn and wait 42 years. 42. My grandfather is 83, so he doesn't have that kind of time, but surely you have someone that does. And what a cheap gift! Heck, you could get a bunch for $2.99 a pop! Grow your own furniture store, why not?

not feeling like blogging today

http://www.someecards.com/usercards/someEcards.swf

and now a song from Mika

a whole lot of woman needs a whole lot more

Frugal Beth and I went to Lakeside mall today, mostly to play with makeup at Sephora. I love makeup, always have — and Sephora is the bomb. A sales associate gave Beth a sample of some wrinkle-fighting stuff to Beth, it was $150 and I thought Beth might pass out. Saleslady, you have no idea who you're dealing with. Bethy Beth has never met a penny she hasn't pinched. I bought a bunch of stuff — big surprise.

The shopping was going well, found everything I was looking for and you know that never happens. Then we hit Lane Bryant, the store for curvy women — as the new phrase on the glass entrance says. I looked at dresses, hoping to find something I could buy and not have to order online for the Christmas party. A superfantastic sales person pulled all the dresses that wouldn't be too long for me and showed me to the cool fitting room, the one that's as big as my master bath.

So, I try on the first dress, looked like a potato sack, second dress the same, third dress — potato sack with a bubble bottom, fourth — potato sack with beading at the neckline. Apparently the look for this holiday season is inspired by Mrs. Potato Head. Here's a look at the wall of reject dresses, notice they're all black except for the ugly one that's red, white, and black. I didn't get the memo from LB that if you're a plus-sized woman you should hide in black. It would be different if the dresses were fabulous, but there's nothing like looking like you're hiding in a dowdy black dress.

Nice. Just for fun, I put on my clothes and
checked myself
out in the mirror. This may be
a first and a last on the blog, but here's me in the fitting room. I look like a ghost. I stand with my hand on my hip and a phone in my hand all the time, so that's a natural pose. And you can't see how cute my new Born maryjanes are, but it's difficult to take a picture in a mirror. Sorry for the poor quality, but it's an iPhone, not a real camera. I'm a terrible judge of what I look like, but I looked 10 times better in my clothes than I did in the dresses. Black empire waist top and flared jeans. I watch What Not to Wear, I know how to dress my apple-shaped figure and it's not in potato sacks. I know you can't tell anything about this outfit from the pic, but ask Beth, I looked kinda cute, I think.

Maybe I'm getting more gutsy in mid-thirties — Lord, that's weird to say — but I've had it. I'm only posting the pic to say there are a lot of bigger girls out there with money to spend on decent clothes and we shouldn't have to go to online stores to buy them because there's nothing in the mall. And I was in a great mall, too. I shop online a lot, but it would be nice not to have to. I know all the cute plus-sized stores, Igigi, Torrid, Swak, etc. My beef is with the brick and mortar stores and their selection. For crying out loud, a chubby girl has to go to oldnavy.com to shop because they only have plus sizes online. I know, I'm wearing Old Navy as I'm writing this. And can I just say that I'm 34 and I don't want to look like I should be on the freaking Golden Girls. I can rock just about any outfit out there, but girl can't rock a moomoo, not even on Halloween. For realz, peeps.

I think I'm going to start my own clothing line. Of course I'll need financial backing and someone who can sew because I have two sewing machines in my house and I can't work either one. I got a C in Home Ec, there is no hope for me. I'll let y'all know how the clothing line goes. For now, I've got some great curtains I'm thinking would make one hell of a wrap dress. I can't sew, but I have a hot glue gun and I'm not afraid to use it.

Ok, so I just stumbled on a song and have to share. It's my new theme song as of 3 minutes ago. It's Mika singing "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)" and I think it's fun. Skinny girls can watch it, too. It will be up as soon as I figure out how to post video.

another fashion crisis avoided

Every year I wonder what to wear for Christmas Eve and New Year's. I fret over fashion, in case you haven't noticed before. And if you haven't noticed, you must be new to the blog.

So, thank you Victoria Secret for inspiring me once again — I'm sure I'll be the hit of Christmas Eve at the in-laws and for whatever we decide to do for New Year's. I'm pretty sure I can make Heidi's sequined bow out of supplies from Lowe's and some sequins from my craft supplies.

And if I learn to knit now ( like I've been talking about for 8 years) I may finish the scarf on the stick model on the right by the time Andrew's out of high school. By the way, are knee socks back in or are those tube socks? The girl looks like she rolled out of her boyfriend's bed and put on a mix of what she found rumpled on the floor. Of course, her boyfriend is the Jolly Green Giant and that's why the scarf is so freakin' long.

Christmas shopping guide: idea #1

Here at the Kerry blog, it's all about making your life easier, so I'll be showcasing ideas for that hard to buy for person on your list this holiday season. There are 37 days 'til Christmas and you don't want to be at Walgreen's on Christmas Eve buying chocolate covered cherries and batteries for your cousin Elizabeth because you didn't know what to get her. Not on my watch, anyway.

Everyone loved the '90s, so get her "Let's PAINT the '90s." It's just what that pop-culture enthusiast would love for Christmas. This item is from Fred Flare and it's fabulous! Who wouldn't love to paint Bill and Monica, Vanilla Ice, OJ Simpson, Pam Anderson, and more? Go ahead and get a few, you know you want one, too.

grammar police

I love and appreciate the English language probably more than most. While I’m by no means the best at remembering certain grammar rules, one of my pet peeves is when I see grammar used poorly. You know what I mean: quotation marks for no reason, apostrophes thrown all over the place, and I hate seeing words misspelled for fun. No, I’m not talking about "wassup" or the like, I mean "Kamper’s Korner" or "Kids Konnection" — people love to do it with the letter K, my favorite letter of the alphabet. That gets me. I also hate it when people don’t seem to know when "your" or "you’re" is appropriate, as in "you’re blog is stupid and your a big beyotch for hatin on peoples all the time, you should ‘get a life’." I threw in extra bad grammar for fun.

Often in conversation and in writing I feel the need to use gangsta verbage for no reason. I like to keep it gangsta, white girl style, since I am in fact the whitest white woman in America in terms of skin color, anyway. How many women do you know are more fair than the lightest color of foundation in almost every make-up line in the drugstore or department store? That’s what I’m talking about. Fo shizzle.

I also use dashes heavily in my writing. Dashes are good, Emily Dickinson used them, and if it was good enough for her — whatev. I don’t know what the verbal equivilent of a dash is. I’ll have to think about that. That may require setting up my Flip camera and recording an actual conversation. I may have to do something that resembles research to get to the bottom of that one. Maybe I’ll just ask my friends — I can’t devote a lot of time to research, I have online Christmas shopping to do and magazines to read.

This morning while checking all my favorite fun websites, I actually laughed out loud at something I thought I’d share. This is something I would have done when I worked in an office. It’s quite brilliant for those of us in the grammar police.

here I am on Typepad

I’m trying out Typepad just for fun. Let me know whatcha think of the design and layout. I think I like it better, but I’m never sure, so I need some help to decide. Look around, and leave a comment. I have a couple of days left on my trial subscription, so we’ll see if move from WordPress.

cute shoes

I’m not a heel person, because I trip on flat surfaces and heels usually make me want to take them off, throw them against a wall and put on slippers. That aside, I found these cute kinda low heels by Sofft or is it Softt?) on Zappos and ordered them along with a pair of boots to wear with the sweater dresses I have in my closet that I’d like to wear. These shoes look like 40’s and 50’s to me — something Katharine Hepburn would have worn in The Philadelphia Story. Now I want to watch that film. Cary Grant is the original George Clooney, people. Pure awesomeness. So are the shoes.

clipped from www.zappos.com