Metal Monday: concert edition

This Metal Monday is brought to you by Lazerfest, where I spent over twelve hours yesterday watching twelve bands play on two stages with my friend, Audra. The lineup included Dead Horse Trauma, Mindrite, New Medicine, Violent Soho, Red, Halestorm, Drowning Pool, Skillet, Papa Roach, Seether, Hellyeah, Three Days Grace and Godsmack. But also my very favorites: Five Finger Death Punch, Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie. And since Metal Monday is usually a tribute to my t-shirts, I guess I will mention that I wore my Brutally Frank/Midwest Psycho shirt. But more importantly...
I got to see Alice Cooper.
The one and only. And he was totally perfect, with stage theatrics, costume changes, props and all of his biggest hits. Out of all the shows I've seen, I feel so lucky that I got to see Alice. Legendary. So good.
And there were the girls.
Lzzy Hale and the girls from Skillet rocked our faces off. You can't not love metal girls.
And I can't really talk about the whole experience without mentioning that there were 25,000 people there. Twenty-five thousand. A sea of people, no matter where you tried to walk. It was the biggest Lazerfest ever and people were in line for hours after we had been let in. They actually put out a Lazerfest warning on Facebook to tell people that there were no more tickets, and no more parking. Vendors were running out of food. And the porta-johns? I won't even go there.
When we got there, we were queued through these massive lines which were more like packs, and then people would break out of their 'line' and just start running towards the next funnel through security or whatever was next. I don't have a pic that adequately shows what I'm talking about here. It took a couple of hours to get in and a couple of hours to get home that night.
It was cloudy kind of cold all day, but thankfully we dodged the rain until the very last couple of hours, and even then it only sprinkled. Whew.
But anyway, back to the show. Rob Zombie!
I have seen Rob Zombie back when it was White Zombie. I have seen him six times. Maybe more. But he is always my favorite. (I have a lot of pics because their stage show is KILLER.)
I jumped and pushed my way right up front, and even though it might seem like the crowd was stationary in these pics, I can assure you it was rough. That pit was moving. So I ended up moving back a bit halfway through. On board with Rob for this tour is the legendary John 5 (from Marilyn Manson) and Des Moines' Joey Jordison of Slipknot, who I was super stoked to see.
I saw his hand go up when they first came out and was like, 'DUDE, there's Joey.' Sorry ... I'm friends with his sister. So it's extra exciting. And how much fun must it be to play with Rob Zombie?!?
So yes, it was a great time. An incredibly long day but super rad, for sure. And a crazy good end to my metal weekend. (Hope yours was just as fantastic!)

are ... you ... ready!?!?!

Last night, Bo and I went to see Korn.
If you've read here for awhile, you know that these are our date nights. ;)
This show kicks off a super metal-tastic weekend for me, since tomorrow I'm going to Lazerfest to see Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper and a bunch of other bands. Woohoo, I feel like I'm in high school!
Korn put on a great show, and everyone sounded as gnarly as ever. They're so animated and crazy and exciting to see live.
The last time I saw them was twelve – twelve – years ago during the Family Values Tour in '98, which was such a memorable show. (With Rammstein, Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube and the rest!!!)
Favorite part of the night: the bagpipes for the encore. It just makes your heart beat fast. Back in my glory days, I would have absolutely busted into that pit. Now I'm just grossed out by the sweaty shirtless dudes and I can't bring myself to do it. Plus it was 90 degrees inside Val Air.But in retrospect, I might as well have gotten all crazy at the show because today I flipped my bike on an innocent ride to get some coffee and scraped up my chin. Nice, huh? It was quite the spectacle, since chins tend to bleed a lot and there was blood all over my bike, coat, shoes and the pavement. A nice lady gave me a gardening glove to stop the bleeding for the walk home and the governor's security guys (he lives on our street) started running over to help. Just a little bit embarrassing. But whatever. Happy metal weekend!

goodbye, SIStv

So sad, but tomorrow we say goodbye to SIStv. I'll miss it ... lots. I'll miss the F-girls, the 20-page threads that had me in tears laughing, and most of all, the inspiration from everyone there. The end is here and it's bittersweet.
(And this is what I'll miss the most.)

Market Day!

Hello hello! So happy that it's time for the downtown Famers Market again, which also means the return of Market Day. Mark your calendar now – May 29 is the first date this season. (New location this year, even closer to the Farmers Market. Go here or here for more info.) Bring the whole fam downtown and come out to say hi!

Sidenote ... super stoked to see that my Week in the Life book made an appearance on Ali Edwards' blog today. Yay! Thanks for all the kind words – it was such a fun project.

Metal Monday: White Zombie

(Sorry, I was eating a sandwich while I took these.)
Today's Metal Monday: White Zombie. This t-shirt came into my possession at a White Zombie show that I went to in 1996, when they were touring with Pantera and Deftones. Back when they were White Zombie – not Rob Zombie – in the days of yellow/green-haired bass player Sean Yseult. Who I loved. (Did you know that both Rob and Sean went to Parsons? Anyway.)
It was possibly one of the most memorable shows I ever went to, because it was one of the roughest. I rode along to the 5 Seasons Center in Cedar Rapids with some boys from high school, got separated from them when we got into the Pantera pit, and then got kicked in the head and mouth by a pair of huge stage diving Doc Martens. After that, a big guy in the pit half-carried/drug me out to the perimeter of safety and said "Dude, be careful." And then I found my friends.
I am excited to see Rob Zombie (again ... this might be the fourth or fifth time) next weekend. Maybe I'll wear this shirt. :)

happy mother's day. :)

Can't wait to see this...

A Week in the Life: check.

It's done! Except for a few pages that I still want to write on.I used a ton of Amy Butler paper (because the colors and bold floral patterns are ridiculously awesome.) And as I've mentioned before, I used a 7 x 9" gray fabric binder (and mini page protectors) from Russel + Hazel.
My opener page was cut from Keri Smith's Non-Planner Datebook and I used lots of pages torn from her book throughout.
So I basically ended up with three types of pages: a journaling page (some of which will be slipped into mini page protectors,) a 5x7" photo, and a multiple photo page.
The multi-photo pages all have a theme, instead of being divided up by the day of the week. There's a food page, a page with photos from around the house, a page devoted to what we wear, etc.
The page protectors will also serve as holders for memorabilia and tags and notes and drawings that I collected during the week. Sorry that I didn't show those here.This was such a fun project to work on and Ali really is the master of great ideas. Reading her blog always gives me a nudge to document the story and the daily a little bit more often. I'm so happy I stuck it out with this project, even though at first glance it seemed a bit daunting. Everything came together so quickly once I had my photos developed, and now I'm just going to transfer the notes I took onto my journaling pages ... and there you have it.

A week in our life.

* If you want to see all of my Week in the Life photos/process on this project, you can find them here.

introducing ... METAL MONDAY! (with Megadeth.)

Welcome to Metal Monday: a weekly series (starting today) where I'll be unearthing concert t-shirts from the past out of my closet to share with the universe. Some t-shirts have fascinating stories behind them ... and some do not. (Are ... you ... ready?)
Megadeth. This t-shirt is like an old friend, circa 1993. I wore it during high school, when I listened to Symphony of Destruction, Sweating Bullets and Foreclosure of a Dream every day. When I was a sophomore, I wore this shirt to church camp while cleaning up a park in Des Moines after the floods of '93 ... and was told that it was inappropriate for church camp.

(Happy Metal Monday! More next week!)

putting it together

I used a little bit of free time over the weekend to get started on putting my Week in the Life book together. I pulled out some spring papers to use for my page backgrounds ... Amy Butler florals, American Crafts (I love the blue and white raindrop, cloud and flower prints) and then I cut up a few file folders.
After Jamaica gave me a heads up about Avery page protectors that would fit into my smallish Russel + Hazel binder I accidentally stumbled upon a pack of sleeves at Target! They're the exact size I needed and of course I look at the packaging, and weirdly enough, they're made by Russel + Hazel but I haven't been able to find a link to them online for some reason. I would think they'd be on the Target site or the R+H site, but they're not. Anyway.
Got my 4-up prints back from Shutterfly/Walgreen's one hour pick-up. I know I'm not going to use all of these, but I'll use as many as I can (and I'm printing a few more 5x7 faves.) I cut them all up anyway and so I can throw them in a folder for future use; they'll be easy page starters.
My photo pages will start off looking like this, and then I can write notes or add stuff later.
Some of the facing pages with more writing/less pictures will be ripped out of Keri Smith's Non-Planner Datebook. I love writing on her hand-drawn pages with a black pen ... I just think it looks cool. I'm using Ali's journaling cards as photo backgrounds and also to write on. They ended up being just the right size to frame my little pics (plus they give each page a mini-title.) This project is not even close to being done yet, but it should still be quick to put together and easy to fill in the details. That's the plan, anyway...

a week in the life: my plan

A Week in the Life! So now that it's already Tuesday and I'm looking back at last week (and going through all of those pics I took ... ) I'm starting to figure out my plan of attack.
Because it would be a shame after all that diligent daily photo taking to just let all of those files stay hidden in folders on my computer. (How sad!)
It would also be a shame to let my little gray binder and journaling cards sit empty. And I know myself. If I don't tackle – and finish – this project this week, I may never get back to it. Ali's post today inspired me to keep going.
So today, I'm going to pick out the best of the best photos from each day and upload them to Snapfish. When I want photos in a hurry, I personally choose Snapfish mainly because I can choose one-hour pick-up at Walgreens, which is just easy for me. I might still print a few at home on my printer, too.
My binder is 7.5 x 9" so I'm going to get 5 x 7's of my most favorite photos. And of course some 4 x 6's and then I almost always choose several photos to shrink down and lay out four or six up on a sheet; and I see that Ali is doing this, too. (I always leave lots of white space around the edges so I can cut things up or write on the bottom white edge of a photo.)
So that's the plan for today! I'll probably pick out some papers to use but I'm pretty spontaneous when it comes to projects like this, so I see myself just jumping in and grabbing things as I go.
Are you brainstorming this week about how you're going to put everything together? What's your plan?
* Want to see my Week in the Life set on Flickr? The whole thing? Here it is. :)