Omelette from Madeline Sharafian on Vimeo.

I am not a baby person but I have no opposition to babies draped in puppies.  MORE HERE.

… but I ask politely, demurely, anxiously, sexually (less so… but still), that you take 2 minutes out of your day and vote for my “spacious” bedroom in Apartment Therapy / Legget & Platt’s My Bedroom Retreat contest.

CLICK  HERE: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/natalies-spacious-bedroom-my-bedroom-retreat-contest-186628#contest-widget-7758

WHY???  See below:

1. My write up is ditzy and I sound stupid and now I’m embarrassed that I said my bedroom is for “play[ing] with my dog Molly for long periods of time… she loves rolling around on the bed.”  I sound like such a sexless loser.  So feel sorry for me and vote.
2. I am the only person I know who doesn’t have an iPad.  I know – first world fo’ sho, but still, come on.  You will significantly increase my ability to waste time AND I will be more likely to post to my blog about things that have no consequence in your life.
3. I did the whole thing myself with my brain-hole and I didn’t have any help (…not even from my boyfriend.  Like, NONE.  He sat on the couch in his underwear.).
4. The room is 90% thrifted and DIY.  I’m so Parkdale-Hipster-Lady-esque that YOUR BRAIN MIGHT EXPLODE.
5. I will send one karma unit  of incandescent happiness to everyone who votes, so your day will probably become awesome.
6. Some of those people submitted their DAMN bedrooms like four weeks ago and have FOUR WEEKS of additional voting time under their belt.  UNFAIR?  Maybe, but what would I be if  I complained about the equity regulations of a contest that could potentially give me an iPad?  A stupid person, that’s who.  SO VOTE HARD.

Thank you friends and lovers (mostly friends).

…makes me realize that EVERY GIRL IN TORONTO IS COOL AND STYLISH AND GORGEOUS except for me.

Here is how I felt when walking down the street on Sunday:

Being a baller, I had the opportunity to travel to Dublin for work last week and tack on an extra couple of vacation days for some sightseeing (read: beer-drinking).  I have always wanted to go to Ireland because, in my mind, the country is full of emerald-green fields with red-haired tall men with accents wearing oatmeal-coloured Aran sweaters who know how to play the fiddle… and who wouldn’t want to be surrounded by that?  No one wouldn’t, that’s who.

For some reason the New Releases options on the airplane didn’t really interest me so I decided to watch Wayne’s World two times in a row (as you’ll recall, I am physically/mentally/emotionally unable to sleep in airplanes).

Just so you know, Wayne’s World is a fucking awesome movie and you should watch it again.  Soon.

I took the overnight flight and arrived in Dublin at 7:00 am.  Having not slept for 24 hours meant that I was very delirious and hungry and couldn’t really string two words together, and all I wanted to do was get a coffee and eat something delicious for breakfast.

Fortunately for me, my hotel is awesome-slash-I’m a baller, so I arrived to my suite and found a full fresh breakfast waiting for me with fresh cold juice and hot hot coffee.  I almost cried from joy.  Then I ate that whole basket of pastries like a fat lardy whale.

I had one day to recover from my flight before I had to go to work, so I decided to walk around aimlessly in a sleepless haze with no direction or end goal like a stupid idiot.  I didn’t have my bearings and was barely coherent and could have probably fallen asleep on the side of the road like a hobo and could have been kidnapped and turned into a slave in an underground Irish Aran-sweater knitting slave operation or something equally as dramatic.  So yeah, I probably should have taken a nap first.

All I remember from my walk is thinking “IS IT SPRING OVER HERE?  HOLY FUCK THAT’S AWESOME.”  Apparently I took many pictures of flowers and other spring-related things:

There was some art selling thing going on.  The art was actually really good I think.  I don’t remember too much.

In the background of the picture below it looks like some kid is kicking the lamp post for no reason.  Amazing.

IS IT FUCKING SPRING OVER HERE?  AWESOME.

I imagine all of rural Ireland is covered in this heather-y flower, forming a perfect backdrop for all the tall red-haired, fiddle-playing men just waiting to serenade me.  Note: I did not see any hot Irish fiddlers during my stay.

I guess I was aimlessly wandering towards Grafton Street, which is a big pedestrian touristy type street.  I walked around for a bit. Pointless, though, considering my lack of brain-power.

Finally headed back to the hotel and got an amazing dinner.

I know this wasn’t very interesting.  I promise it gets better tomorrow.

When I wear no make up and don’t tame my lion’s mane… I look like Dave Pirner from Soul Asylum circa 1996.

Observe:

GROSS.

I recently fell in love with this serious-lady vintage St. John sweater dress online.  It arrived last week and I’ve been really excited to wear it.  ONLY PROBLEM IS… that the best part of the dress was the SUPER COOL WICKED navy leather anchor belt:

WHAAAAAT!???!  Coolest ever.   Then, when it arrived, the seller had packed it all shittily in an envelope and the anchor belt had SNAPPED IN HALF.  It was devastating.  Anyways.  I still look like a sex-machine sans belt, as you can plainly see below:

Many items have been occurring that I have not been telling you about.  Mostly because I’ve been working like 70 hour weeks and want to shoot myself in the face most nights.  However, I think work might start to pull back a  little bit, so I wanted to keep you abreast of happenings and items and things.

1. My best friend in the whole world got engaged to the best guy ever.  Most amazing.  They are also working on something really exciting for the spring, which I will definitely be telling you about;
2. The weather has been up and down like a crazy person lately.  Bad news is that you’ll go to bed one night to a balmy 8 degrees, and wake up the next morning to a foot of snow.  GOOD news is that you’ll go to bed with a foot of snow and wake up to an 18 degree Saturday.  Fence-cat enjoys these days.
3. The quick freezes also led to some cool frozen skeleton-flowers.  Here is a skeleton flower.
4. Here is another skeleton flower hydrangea.  I kind of like it A LOT.
5. I had to go out to a “club” this Saturday (like a CLUB-club), and at first I wanted to wear this weird curtain-y hippie mini-dress with Shakespeare sleeves to be all weird and different and hippie-ish.
6. This is what that dress is supposed to look like on someone who isn’t awful-looking.
7. Here is what I actually looked like.  I did not wear the dress due to self-hatred.
8. Part of the trip to the “club” was a ride on a Party Bus.  I sat back and watched other people bust a crazy move.
9. Trav decided to be amazing and wore a shirt that lights up when music plays.
10. The Party Bus was a huge ridiculous escapade that included having to jump another Party Bus whose battery had died, and sitting at Queen and Dovercourt for 45 minutes while everyone went to the bus washroom.  Here is the sign in the bus washroom.  In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I put tissues in the toilet.
11. I got *really* drunk.  The next morning I spent 100% of my time snoozing with my love.
12. IMPORTANT DISCOVERY:  FRENCH ONION SOUP IS THE MOST AMAZING THING THAT WAS EVER CREATED.  I made this f-ing amazing soup with garlic toasts and Provolone and Gruyere and caramelized onions… I pity you for not having tasted it.
13. My vintage shopping has been on the back burner lately, but I managed to procure a CHANEL SUIT like a fucking BALLER.  It’s about fifteen pounds too small for me, so I have to lose fifteen pounds basically.
14. I have been drinking too much.
15. On that note, if you haven’t tried this wine from California you are missing out.  It’s like 15 bucks and it’s AMAZING.
16. On that note again, Bellwoods‘ retail hours has expanded so now I have a constant stream of big Bellwoods bottles in my fridge.

Seriously.  How did I even live before this album came out?