ah, the first video I've been proud of in so long... check it out, let it haunt your nightmares.

"everybody knows its the blue and green one!"

Rebecca Long- the woman who starved her step-daughter nearly to death, as her husband Jon Pomeroy sat silently with his thumb up his ass. You will be amazed to read her blogs:

http://rainydaygreen.livejournal.com/ (she is interested in the "extremes of human behavior")!!
http://rainydaygreen.blogspot.com/

Especially the posts about the son she didn't starve, and the Thanksgiving meal I'm sure her daughter got to smell but not eat. Also helpful how she crops her photos so you don't have to stare into her demonic eyes.

Also, don't forget to see her flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/99316897@N00/

This woman disturbs and upsets me so much, along with the rest of her family who sat by and watched the daughter slowly disappear. The son who is mentioned and photographed often is so tragic as well, with his having to watch this happen and be helpless... After he tried to help his sister from suffering the wrath of the crazy knitter, she locked them both up in her bedroom so they could not get help or water while she slept.

there are no words.

http://www.imaginethatshow.com/

you have no idea. what is about to happen.

Yesterday was pretty great.



Jeff has been experimenting with x-ray photography. Don't ask how- its a secret. We built a fake bomb out of wood, old camera cables and a barbie alarm clock bought at the very last second. The x-ray came out so freakin amazing.

but that's all you get to see for now, until Jeff's photography website is up.




(bonnie loves jeff in Russian)



In other amazing news...




Jeff mentioned to our neighbor Jessi that he really wanted a pair of crochet pants with suspenders. Five days and many long shifts at her job later, PANTS!

Blue, crochet pants... in all their glory.





We decided we needed to drive somewhere and show them off. While in the car, we discovered that this woman:

Is extremely turned on by U2.



We got inside Perkins, played a couple rounds of the nameless drawing game, hilarity ensued and we left all the drawings for the waitress:






Jeff was a shining star, center of attention. It was a night full of wonderment.









The end, for now :)

Jeff opened his first of two upcoming etsy stores!

http://jeffedwards.etsy.com
This one is going to have pinhole photography prints- all photos taken without lenses, without mechanisms... all handmade cameras of Jeff's design :)


But anyway- you really should buy our house. I don't think I can live in it much longer now that it is "staged" and we have to keep it BEYOND clean 24 hours a day. How are we supposed to be creative in a soul-less vaccum? ...our realestate agent came through with a big wand and said, "THIS MUST GO!" And poof, all of our personality was eliminated. Now its empty so people can walk through all day when we're at work ... imagine themselves in our rooms ...

If you buy it and keep it for a few years you could make A LOT on the sale quite easily. But the market is a pooper, and we must go...so buy now. I dare you.



( click here for lots of interior shots )

Jeff and I are researching the possibility of owning an Opossum as a pet- Yes, those giant headed, many-toothed monsters that roam around in the night. SO, I made Jeff a little paper Opossum at my desk out of office supplies :)



I also made Hopscotch a long-sleeve shirt yesterday out of some cotton leggings :) Look how precious

I have something in an etsy store! oh my gosh! Thank you Amber for helping me :)


http://bamboleo.etsy.com



I've also been crankin' out some artwork for fun lately.



I painted this on Presidents Day for Jeff... I had the day off, and he did not :( so I made him a painting of Monterey Bay, where his heart is when its not with me :)



I did this oversized, and therefore impossible for me to get a good picture of with my cellphone portrait of Marilyn Monroe for my coworker's daughter... she was impressed her father had bought her a framed poster from Target until she realized it was hand drawn and painted just for her :) then freaked out.



This still has a lot of unfinished areas, such as his hand and his sleeve and the background..... but I wanted to post it anyway because I'm excited. We've had those canvases sitting around since last fall waiting for me to get inspired to do GIANT OIL PORTRAITs of us looking like Victorian hobnobbers. Hopefully I can start on the one of me tonight, since I won't have the right light to work on this one again until the weekend. hehe.

also one more... my latest "just because" card to Jeff, an inside joke about the lady at the grocery store who would not stop talking about Cheddar cheese.




bye!

Earlier today I receieved a text message from my mother saying nothing but "Call me." I was understandably worried, considering both of my parents are dealing with some serious health issues.

The reason behind her message however was not about an internal family issue, but about a headline I happened to read this morning while checking my email. "Another school shooting??" I thought... how horrible. Not again. I couldn't believe what she was telling me though, that the shooter was Gail's son.

Gail Kazmierczak was one of the nicest people I've ever known. I went to school with her son Stephen, who for reasons only he understood took the lives of several students yesterday- and then his own. He graduated from my high school the year before I did, and I did not know him very well at all. Gail however, through the coincidence of working at the same company as my mother became a close family friend. She and her husband Bob, who now is being hounded by reporters - a thought that is breaking my heart- were the kind of people you just had to love.

Bob was wrapped up in my fight for scholarships, Gail always had encouraging words for me... they were so kind hearted and loving. Bob, as he has tearfully stated while pleading with the news media to leave him alone during this unfathomably horrible time, is diabetic and Gail did so much to take care of him. They moved to Florida in part so he would be comfortable, even tried to convince my mom to move down there with them- or at least visit.

During my conversation with my mother I came to discover that Gail passed away during the fall of 2006. I am doubly in shock now. She and my mother used to talk about health problems they were having, or we would all get together and share stories over lunch. It turns out that she had ALS, and did not know it- or at least did not talk about it.

Complete and total shock and sadness.

My heart is with the families of those who died... and especially with Bob, whose loving wife was torn from him after suffering from a heartbreaking degenerative disease ... then his son, who was intelligent and a sponge for language and learning, but was also very very sick. I wish I could find Bob somehow and hug him, shield him from all of this.

so so sad.

In the past 24 hours. I have voted in my first caucus.





Made a homie naked by carving his clothes off with scissors.




And... hastily drew my brother a Bruce Lee birthday card before lunch so I could send it in the mail. He is serious about his cake.

I have much to say since I haven't posted in a while. There's been a flurry of activity in Jeff and Bonnie land.

Sadly, Jeff's amazing Valentines day gift I've had planned for about 2 months is not working. Tried to connect an SD card slot to a Juicebox media player to make a digital picture frame, as SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE DONE SUCCESSFULLY, but I failed. I regained my confidence by replacing my mother's broken PSP LCD screen last night in a snap baby! wooo! If your screen ever breaks on one of these things you should fix it yourself its unbelievably simple, all you need is a small phillips head screwdriver.








We both have pretty solid ideas for some books we want to make as well- I suppose they could be classified in the childrens genre, but every freakin person on the planet gets the idea, "OH! I'm going to write childrens book." I think it really comes down to the fact that Jeff and I seek out the unpretentious stream of truth that children are in tune with simply because they haven't learned to be fake yet. Simplicity that leads to universalism. And in my case, I LIKE THINGS THAT ARE GULDERN CUTE!!!

His photographic story is pretty amazing, and so I won't try to explain it- my idea is inspired by my experience seeing Harbor Seals in Monterey Bay last October-





I have it 90% written and 0% painted but its forming in my head. I drew the seal pictured above on my calendar at work so I would remember not to lose all hope that my soul is not being sucked out while sitting in this cubicle. haha.

We also have some amazing ideas involving taxidermy supply parts- none of it is biological, its all plastic pieces that people use to put the finishing touches on their death creations. In our case, since we aren't into that kind of thing, these extremely realistic body parts help creations come to life. Right now I'm working on a Crack Fox doll-





crack fox!

All I have so far are his foxy jaws, some scary realistic eyes and his headband. Heck I'm almost done wouldn't you say!






Besides alllll that- Jeff's been exploding confetti all over with photography lately. The wine pour shoot, (I don't have the best of it saved to my phone so you get this shot) the handmade soap extravaganza, and most recently the 2-shoots-in-1-day movie theater and local gym shoot-o-rama.




Jonah pictured here, was a superstar.



our favorite flavors of the moment- Larry Cohen, Michael Moriarty and Nikola Tesla.

My nephew's birthday card!!!!



courtesy of photoshop and my mental illnesses

Hey people! You should do a google search for "Wigglin Jeff" right now. He's burnin' up the blogs today. It got featured on Boingboing.net somehow- and now its bouncing around all kinds of places.


For some reason, people assumed from watching it that Jeff is my husband- I blame it on his beard. Bearded men simply do not live in houses with women, they marry the shit out of them, impregnate them and then slam down a frosty mug of root beer.


Then they wipe the foam from their beards onto their lumberjack shirt sleeves.


I made a cool mini-shadow box with painted venus fly traps inside yesterday and didn't take a picture!!! oops.




Upcoming project- Jeff's valentines day gift. And, hopefully soon the completion of "the steering wheel of doom" featuring my first exploration of the land of the 7-segment LED.




Last but not least, from the wall of my cubicle, Barbara pig of Hey Hey Pig fame wishes you a happy January.

Hello everybody!

Check out this great "behind the scenes" look at the "WIGGLIN' JEFF" doll that we created for Jeff's mom for Christmas:



CLICK HERE!

We had so much fun this Holiday weekend. It did not start out that way- we drove about 6 1/2 hours in insanely dangerous conditions to get to my family's gathering. We saw cars upside down, semi trucks exploded into each other in pieces on the roadside- NUTS.

But after that, it was pretty great. My nephew singing "I'm Every Woman" while playing with his little felt Prince Randian doll (refer to last post if you don't know who he is)... Johnny Eck hiding in the china cabinet. Priceless.


Jeff hand-crafted an AMAZING steam-punk talk box for me. (click on the link if you want to learn more) Everyone that hears it, or I show it to goes- "PETER FRAMPTON!" So, that may be the only explanation I need to type here. Think about the robot voice guitar-powered "Do you feel like we do" vocals. That's what a talk box does.





BUT HE MADE IT WITH HIS OWN HANDS! Its so beautiful.


He also got me a carniverous plant growing kit!!!!! I AM SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS. I want to someday cover my life with venus fly traps and other such oddities of the plant world. Click on the picture if you want one. :)






My Father got 3 8x10 gorgeous portraits of Hopscotch, since he is obsessed with his precious grand-dogger.





Who spent Christmas day napping, watching Dracula with Bela Lugosi and all three of the Back to the Future movies? US! I also spent most of the day trying to get my Barbie steering wheel to work. (the first circuit bending project I took on by myself) and it WOULD NOT WORK. It's been sitting around for a long time, with all of my bad soldering techniques causing switches to come undone and problems galore.

I brought it to work today knowing it would be slow, hoping I could fix it... and one of the solder joints that was causing the problem miraculously popped off! I never would have figured it out, but now it makes perfect sense.



I can't wait to get home and add more buttons now that its working- and then put it in the case I'm working on. It will be lovely.

anyway, should get back to the slowest day ever at work. I leave you with the last magnet that I made for Jeff... Blastermaster from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.


WHO RUN BARTER TOWN??

Gift-giving season is always a motivator for great amounts of creative output.

Here's a sampling.




For the snowflakes for my sisinlaw... I did the traditional, fold paper up into triangle and cut out fancy pieces to make paper snowflake thing. Then I placed this cut-out onto some flattened Sculpie, and cut out all the pieces with an exacto knife. Bake, paint, sprinkle some glitter- bam. (well, BAM after a very long time of intricate cutting. haha.)





For my brother, a sculpture of the amazing Johnny Eck- the human torso. Dean was SO disturbed by Johnny's performance in "Freaks" I thought it would be best to make him a commemorative scuplture. I'm not joking, he's going to need a change of underwear.






And for Jeff- I've been working on these for a while whenever there's a slow moment at work. This is what happens when Bonnie finds a coiled up roll of magnetic strip in the back room!





We've got here- an NES and controller, connected by a rubberband I painted black, a Mighty Boosh logo face, a gramophone, a Speak 'N Math, a potentiometer with rubberband wires, PRINCE RANDIAN! (who can be seen above in the old photo with Johnny Eck), and Kevin McCarthy pulling a rabbit out of a hat... (From the Twilight Zone movie)...

I'll probably make more before the week is up. :)

Not pictured, because I don't have photos on my phone- the custom My Little Pony and 100% Felt portrait of Dr. Lucien Sanchez for our neighbors, the DANCING JEFF doll, the AMAZING keyboard/baby head circuit bent masterpiece Jeff is working on currently- and other things I can't remember. We're like little elves toiling away!

squee!

Hello...



SO, I make this new journal and I don't post anything in it. We haven't had much time for creative endeavors lately. Last weekend we drove back down to Chicago after hearing news that my father was in the hospital again... but he has since been released, so no worries.





The weekend before that we invaded a local college with a van full of photo equipment and photographed some of the campus. The original images are gorgeous, but these are horrible low res captures of the laptop screen that was displaying the actual images, taken with my cellphone. I'M SORRY JEFF!!!! I'm proud.



I'm THIS proud.







One last thing. If you're staying at a Red Roof Inn and don't know what to do with your dog, don't hide it under your coat and hold its snout shut all night fearing that you will be arrested or fined for sneaking in your pet. Dogs stay for free.

Halloween this year was amazing, despite both of us failing to plan much in advance. We rushed home from work, grabbed two bags of candy from the store and rushed home. There were already kids at the door when we got there, and I couldn't find ANY of my costume stuff. Jeff had already picked out his idea beforehand, opting for the beautifully creepy pig mask and business suit. I grabbed one of the lab coats my brother loaned me A YEAR AGO (I can't believe its gone by so fast) ...and I teased my hair. (Then I teased Hopscotch's hair as well.)

I recorded some AMAZING footage, of Jeff playing his circuit bent instruments and theremin simultaniously and freaking children out. Sadly, my SD card failed on me while trying to access these files.

So, it remains to be seen whether those memories on film are lost forever. So far I've only been able to recover some photos. Our video of the pumpkin self portraits made it into Make Magazine the other day! That was very exciting. Check it out if you're curious.