only milo cover inspires card crafting

I’ve mentioned this a time or too, but my sister has a crafting blog. She makes cool cards. When I saw the cover of Only Milo, I immediately considered the paper possibilities, and asked her to craft a card (or two) inspired by the cover artwork. You see the results below.

This is the real cover. Murdered post-it man.

From what I understand, the crazy fellow on the right is a murderous Milo?

This is the inside of the above card.

This one is my favorite. The post-it look is preserved, and it's bright!

For an extra entry in the Only Milo giveaway, tell me which card is your favorite. Happy Saturday!

she made me do it!

Alas, I never got to use that excuse as a youngster. I was the oldest. The responsible one. The one supposedly behind any and all infractions. Other kids used that phrase and meant that I was the she. Okay, so maybe a couple of times I was. Not every time, though. Just wanted to get that straight (and public). This time, my talented sister Ginny was the culprit.

She had an evil plan all laid out. Thursday night she took me along on an evening errands/shopping trip. Except I didn’t know we were going to go to the craft store. You may know what I mean when I say that after entering the store, I stumbled around in a sort of daze. Those places are dangerous! First of all, you could get lost. Easily. Second of all, they’re so…PRETTY! I mean, gosh! Christmas decorations all beautifully arranged in mid-September, and just waiting for shoppers to snap them up and deck the halls. I had to keep pinching myself (or knocking over delicate displays, which is my clumsy-self equivalent) and repeating “it’s only SEPTEMBER!” in my head continuously in order to keep my hands to myself and away from the items.

So my devious sister went around stocking up on card-making things, which take pretty and fascinating to a new level. I mean, glittered/glossy paper! Punches! Ribbons and buttons and stickers, oh my! I am a sucker. This is why I can never get involved in the card-making world…my eyes would get huge, my wallet would get even smaller than it already is, and I would have another time-sucking hobby. That said, I kept picking things up and pining and generally made a nuisance of myself. Ginny was good about it, but then, it was only the first stage of her PLAN.

Said plan involved me actually stamping and card-making. I mean deluxe, Ginny-style card-making, of course. I’m rather good with scissors and over the years have made a couple funny and ridiculous amateur cards by cutting up magazines and pasting little bits and pieces together. I like that sort of thing. It’s about my limit. Or so I thought. But last night Ginny and Paulina (her marvelous, stylish friend who also goes by Pretty Pink Posh) ganged up on me after dinner and MADE me take part in their stamping fun. I mean, really…with glitter and ribbons and all sorts of other delights spread out in front of me, it was pretty hard not to. Fun version of a girls’ night in, I say. I didn’t have to paint my toes a detestable color or eat anything cheesy, but still got to make something pretty, watch a swoon-worthy movie (Meet Joe Black – young Brad Pitt!), and chat about life and guys and the week.

I’d say that I’m beyond pleased and want to do it again soon…but that would encourage them too much. Besides, I don’t need a new hobby…do I? Fun, quiet Friday night, though. Thanks, girls!

pride and prejudice and zombies + giveaway

It’s time for a zombie book that did not disappoint. That would be Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, of course. I picked it up for the Everything Austen Challenge put on by Stephanie’s Written Word, and then I couldn’t put it down.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.

I found myself laughing and smiling through this entire kooky, cunning and amusing adaption of Jane Austen’s most famous work. You could say that a lot of unnecessary gore, sex and scandal invade a perfectly readable book. Or you could take it as one massive joke, and enjoy the little alterations, the subtle plot changes, and the ultraviolent zombie mayhem that make it something new and special.

What I liked: I had to read the text very closely to track the smallest changes to the original P&P. I was able to enjoy some of the minute details that I otherwise would have skimmed in a reread. I also think (shun me if you will) that this unique book will appeal to a broader audience than the original. Including teenage boys (and possibly grown men). Anything that will get a non-reader to pick up a classic gets an A+ in my grade book. Did I mention that it made me laugh aloud? And that the illustrations were ridiculous and hilarious?

What I didn’t like: Nothing comes to mind. Seriously.

If you’re planning on reading and reviewing the book, visit vvb32’s blog for a zombie bag o' goodies giveaway.

…….

If you’d like to win your own copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I’m holding a giveaway for one (1) book, PLUS a hand-made zombie bookmark crafted by my sister Ginny. The bookmark may look something like this:

To Enter:

Leave a comment on this post answering the question, “Zombies are attacking. Why are you afraid?”

Please include your email address. Giveaway is open internationally. Comments will close on July 26 at 11:59pm EST, and I will notify the randomly selected winner via email.

Good luck!

i'm afraid of the dark. and zombie movies.

I’m a wimp. A scaredy-cat. A pansy (although I technically don’t like that term—flowers are always getting a bad rap. Pansy, shrinking violet, bleeding heart, etc. Do you see what I mean?). I’m NOT dying to meet anything that goes bump in the night. No problem with the night itself, especially if there’s a nightlight, a full moon, or some other illumination source nearby. I can even do camping. But your run-of-the-mill night monsters? Not my thing. I won’t be fantasizing about vampires, werewolves or zombies anytime soon.

I’m probably the most easily startled in my circle of acquaintances. Example: I can’t watch horror movies. Can’t do a lot of drama or suspense, either. The weeks leading up to Halloween are the worst of the whole year as far as television programming goes, in my opinion. All those “I know what you did last summer”-type movies and dudes named Freddie and Jason on TV. **shudder** M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village is about as scary as I can stand (I know it’s not that scary. I’m the problem.). In fact, I had to walk out of the theater during Will Smith’s I Am Legend. This was due in part to the fact that I didn’t know it was a zombie flick until ten minutes before show time, but also in part to straight up cowardliness. A valiant Gryffindor I am not.

It therefore makes almost no sense that I can stomach dark, even scary, books. One of my favorite authors is Neil Gaiman. Description: Nice man who writes creepy and/or disturbing things. Another favorite writer: Robin McKinley. She’s penned an award-winning book with vampires in (called, ironically enough, Sunshine). Other recent reads: Pretty Monsters (win a copy here!) and The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Soon-to-be-read selections for the Everything Austen Challenge: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Mr. Darcy, Vampyre (contest to win a signed copy here). You can count on the fact that if either of them are made into movies, though, I will be far, far away.

[Note: I will grudgingly admit to having seen the movie version of Twilight. I was fairly sure it couldn’t be traumatic, as the book was heavy on teenage obsession and light on gore. I was right. Giggled in disbelief and incomprehension through the whole thing.]

Perhaps there’s something in the written word: a distance, or more nuanced and underlying humor in the sinister that renders it endurable to me rather than the film and television adaptations of those dark books. In any case, I think that a good collection and contrast of mediums (written, filmic, aural) is necessary to any full life. Perhaps one of these days I will let someone tie me to a chair to watch Silence of the Lambs. You never know. Pigs may start flying too.

But I digress. These recent reading choices inspired me to a) Petition my excessively talented and creative sister to make a ZOMBIE CARD (see lovely photos), and b) Hold another contest to give away a similar hand-made bookmark (inspired by the card) tucked inside a paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. My next post will share the details. In the meantime, check out this contest for the forthcoming YA book Never Slow Dance with a Zombie and another for a goodie bag (also including the book!). And be sure to look at September Zombie Week. Whatever your feelings about zombies (you’re afraid of them, laugh at them, or don’t care much either way), there’s a surprising amount of zombie-lit out there, and some of it can be truly entertaining. Err…yeah. Go celebrate undead monsters!?!

(Zombies were never so cute, if I do say so myself...)