New Books, Crazy Home Decor, Makeup Update

I've been pre-ordering books on Amazon. David Sedaris has When You Are Engulfed in Flames coming out June 3rd.
"Sedaris's sixth essay collection assembles essays on trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, associations in the French countryside, buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina, having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane, armoring windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds, lancing a boil from his backside, and venturing to Tokyo in order to quit smoking."
I LOVE Dave Sedaris (and Amy, too). He is just HILARIOUS. I have a thing about funny writers who come from crazy families.
 
Augusten Burroughs has A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father coming out at the end of this month. 
His work is much darker than Sedaris's, and this looks even darker than his past work.
You can download a free chapter on Augusten's site. It really is a more than a bit disturbing.

In addition to pre-ordering those two books, I ordered Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison, who is Augusten Burrough's older brother. Augusten was born Christopher Robison, I didn't know that until a few months ago. Christopher Robison makes me think of Winnie-the-Pooh.
I'm mildly interested in Asperger syndrome- any disorders involving 'poor social skills', really.
But, what really interests me is reading about the same dysfunctional family from the viewpoints of two different family members. I'm curious to see what Robison has written, how it compares to Augusten's experience.

I've been working on making large silhouette wall art for my bedroom walls. I love wall decor that is big, unexpected, and unique. Right now I have a huge cardboard cut-out of a cat mask hanging above my computer desk, maybe 3' wide by 3.5' high.



I got it from the local Target store several years ago. For their Halloween decorations they had these big mask cut-outs hanging from the ceiling. I saw the cat one and knew I had to get my grubby paws on it one way or another. So, I pestered the Target people until they agreed to give me a call as soon as the Halloween signs came down.

I'm sure quite a few people would find my decorating style to be incredibly tacky, but I like fun things. I'm in love with this monster wall hanging:


 
But, it costs about $390, and I couldn't justify spending that much money on it. Maybe if it were twice as large- 8'x4' instead of 4'x2'. I would save for it if it were HUGE, and make it the focal point of a whole room.
Yoyashop.com, designpublic.com, and velocityartanddesign.com 
all carry the wall hangings and the Fauna pillows made by the same manufacturer.
I think they're great but way over-priced. I love pigeons and they have a pigeon pillow:


I'm not willing to pay $48 for a 13"x10" throw pillow, however. 
But it does inspire me to buy a silkscreen kit and whip up a whole flock of pigeon pillows. I have to say, while I like Fauna's photo images of animals, I really don't appreciate the cut-out shapes, some of their pillows look lumpy and awkward, like a middle-schooler's home economics craft project. They'd be more appealing on regular square or rectangle shapes, I think.

MAKEUP UPDATE:
I was pretty satisfied with the Make Up For Ever shadow. It lasted with no creasing (although I always use a primer with shadow, so who knows how it would be without). The quality was very good, but I don't think I'd buy it again. It isn't better than MAC shadow, and MAC is cheaper and has more colors (although MUFE has quite a few also). The color was pretty different from what Sephora shows on their site, Khaki Brown 148 is described as 'antique gold shimmer' and the swatch shown looks very warm-toned. The actual shadow is very dull brown-olive with some shimmer but not what I'd expected. It is a very flattering tone, but just for once I'd like the site's image and the actual product to look the same.

I ended up buying my Too Faced Lip Injection Extreme on Ulta's online shop. It is the same price as with Sephora, and I needed some other Ulta stuff. At $27.50 it isn't a cheap lip plumper, but it works so well, and I've bought Lip Venom frequently at $16 for a teeny little 0.12 oz vial. So, it isn't an awful price.

The Elusive Happy-Faced Mug

Early last year I found this adorable little mug on FredFlare and bought one for my cat to drink his water out of (my cats prefer cups to bowls, no, they don't pick them up and drink out of them, but only because they lack opposable thumbs. If I had me a polydactyl cat, I tell you I'd have it not only picking up their cups, but also using little forks and knives to eat with. Oh yeah.)


On the other side it says, "Bonjour! Ca Va?" Cute, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it is.
Anyone who knows me very well knows I adore anthropomorphic kitchenware. I grew up in a household where we named the toaster. We named every damned kitchen appliance we had. I can hardly remember anything of one year of HS French beyond, "Bonjour! Ca Va?", but I will never forget that my family's first microwave was Mikey the Microwave.
While such an environment in my formative years may have meant a lifetime of madness for a weaker-minded individual, I am made of stronger stuff. I just put a lot of wiggly-eyes stickers on my belongings and collect stuff like the above mug.

I decided I had to have more happy faced mugs before they stopped selling them. And, Oh! FredFlare now carried them in green and blue in addition to pink. But they always seem to be sold out, and $9 seems a bit high for a little plastic mug. So I started looking for other happy-faced-mug-suppliers, and found these sites.

I've known about ReproDepot for a while, but I have no idea when they started selling housewares. Apparently the mug manufacturer is Cram Cream, and ReproDepot has a whole section of their goodies. They aren't quite the same style as the ones sold at FredFlare- these are stackable and come in a wider range of colors. Also, there is a winking happy face on the reverse side of the mug.



But even though the bottoms are tapered a bit to make them stackable, I don't think they'd be easily knocked over. So they are still suitable cat-cups. And, only $6.50 each. 

The next place I found these mugs was at The Glitter Workshop. If I wasn't on an obsessive quest for cuteness, I wouldn't have come across this little shop, and that would've been too unfortunate.
They carry the stackable mugs (in cream-color) at $6.00, and the pink and blue ones identical to the ones sold at FredFlare- for only $5 each. They had a better image of the stackable mug on their site, lookit that face. D'awwwwwwwww. Who could resist?



Besides their OBVIOUS function as cat-cups, these could possibly be used for small children as well. Not the ones in the sippy-cup phase, but the ones who can drink from a cup without making a slobbery mess who need a small cup for their little hands.