Alien Tea Shoppe

I dropped off my pinhole camera roll today & after I'd finished my errands they were ready.  I won't go into the lack of customer service at our HWY 49 Walgreens or how I will try my damn-dest to not ever do business there again. Instead here are the photographs:  Not bad considering the film roll was in a pinhole camera, that I made, then was transferred to a really old 35 mm camera in a dark bathroom, then wound back into it's casing in a dark bathroom.  I'm surprised there's anything there at all to be honest. The only surviving picture from the pinhole camera: Holly berries in my front yard. Now, all the Yashica shots: Cypress tree in my front yard. My sister at our front door. Sweet Gum tree from our attic window. I didn't take a photo of the ground.  Was this the guy in the backseat of our car snapping off pictures? Spacey water fountain downtown. Medical Records door in a downtown alley. Brickwork in a downt...

These guys had a name? These guys... I LOVED these guys when I was a child.  Well, the smaller one's because they were the only one's that existed in my small world.  They were HUGE in the early - mid 1980's and were all over the place.  Girls would have them stuck to their Trapper Keepers, they ended up in Easter baskets, came with Valentine gifts.  Just everywhere I went someone had at least one. And then they were gone.  For so long that I had completely forgotten about them until I was in Michael's craft store yesterday evening.  My sister (who was really into them as well) had forgotten about them until I showed her the package I was intending to purchase. Is that to avoid copy-rights or am I safe in assuming no one knew they had names? So, we get a little nostalgic and happy.  I purchase them intending to give away one with each of my valentines.  Then we head to Target and we get to the Valentine candy section and their huge promo...

How have I lived without you VIA? Here we have coffee.  Lovely, wonderful coffee.  Personally, I prefer Caribou Coffee, but we don't have that here.  We have Starbucks... so I love Starbucks.  For some reason I had an aversion to even trying their VIA line of coffees.  It wasn't until my sister had some and I really wanted coffee that I gave it a whirl, and honestly I never want to look back. I am one for saying, 'why does this nation have to be so lazy?'  Some modern conveniences are just too convenient and will probably end us up like the people on Wall-E.  But this one I just can not resist.  It is just so wonderfully convenient to plug in the electric kettle while I'm brushing my teeth.  Easily open the packet of coffee and put it in the cup to then simply pour hot water over.... as opposed to the night before, prying coffee filters away from each other, putting one in the basket, measuring out coffee (which is a science since I d...

Notice the 'easy to build' logo on the packaging. I have wanted a pinhole camera since I was seven.  This Christmas my sister gave me one.  I was super excited and could not wait to put it together and start using it.  So, with my paint brush and glue in hand I got busy. I am a fairly smart individual, but the directions were deplorable.  It took me two hours to put this camera together and towards the end I had to scrap some of the directions all together and use my own ingenuity and the little bit I know about camera's to finish this project. Ooh!  I got the fancy zebra print one. So, now all I needed was 35mm film, but in this high-tech new world we inhabit where everything is digital (& considering the small town I live in), it took me a week and a half to find film.  But I did!  (Thank you CVS on HWY 49 for being the only place in town to offer one package of CVS off-brand film & one package of Kodak for my perusal - oh it's just...