Day Twenty-Three: fancy foods. catered dinners. pretty purses. new names.

So I am sitting watching "The Fashion Show" online on Bravo and eating a goat cheese + tomato + avocado + black bean omelette... thinking about how much I wish I had time to design/sew more clothes. Fashion has always intrigued me. I love Project Runway. I love spending time at fabric stores dreaming up outfits and costumes and dresses I could make. I love the "trial and error" factor of making clothing... or really, art in general. If you don't like the way something looks, you can recreate it, add to it, erase it, change it, or paint over it. I wish some things in life were that easy to change.

Friday I went to Greenwell and out downtown with some friends from high school and college for my birthday. The food was amazing. I got a breads and spreads combination: crackers, two kinds of bread, a goat cheese spread, a poblano spread, and one more that I don't remember. AND, my lovely friend Kayley got me this purse from Banana Republic:






















I love itttt. (: PS check out her blog here: http://sidewalkready.com/

Saturday we had our catered dinner with co-workers. My friend Lindsey did my makeup beforehand and I love the way it turned out. Check out her website here: http://www.lindseysmithmakeup.com/

We had so much fun at our dinner; I don't remember laughing that hard in a long time. The food was delicious. My favorite "courses" were:
-Black Truffle “Grilled Cheese” w/ Roasted Tomatoes & Rosemary
-Vegetable Wontons w/ Roasted Tomatillo Sauce
-Honey-Vanilla “Ice Cream Sandwiches” w/ Espresso Gelee

 

It was all delicious, though. I even got this birthday cake from Cathy:

It was a much needed / relaxing weekend with some great friends. // Sidenote: I wasn't planning on staying in GR on Friday night, so I didn't bring any clothes home for our dinner on Saturday. The roads were pretty bad... so I had to resort to outfit plan B. I took a dress I wore for New Year's Eve a few years ago that I left at my parents' house and added a gold braided ribbon as a belt. The ribbon was $1 from Michael's and it has been sitting in a bag at my parents' house for a while now. I was planning to use it for fabric necklaces. The dress was way too baggy without a belt, but looked okay with it (plus leggings). Phew. I was considering going to the mall to buy something new, but it worked out!


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Writing Challenge Day 23
I'm doing a 31 day writing challenge, found on the Reverb website, designed to reflect on the past year and look forward to what's to come in 2011.

New Name. Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?
 
This is a strange prompt. It's not very conducive to a lot of thinking and expanding and explaining. I like my name, but I have always thought about spelling it Alleigh. I know that's weird. But do you know any other Allies with it spelled like that? I think I would want a name that was really weird/unique. When I was younger, I wanted to be named Jordan. Now, I think I would want some kind of foreign-sounding name or unique, like Giselle or Mercedes or Teagan. Or something Spanish.

Names are interesting, because we don't get to choose them ourselves. I think some people's names don't fit their personalities. I also think quite a few people struggle with this. This prompt reminds me of the beginning of the book The House on Mango Street. The main character, Esperanza, discusses her feelings about her name: 


"In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing...At school they say my name funny as if the syllables were made out of tin and hurt the roof of your mouth. But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver, not quite as thick as sister's name Magdalena--which is uglier than mine. Magdalena who at least- -can come home and become Nenny. But I am always Esperanza. would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza or Zeze the X. Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do."