There is nothing better than sticking your hand in a bowl full of pretty jewels or stones and letting them cascade through your fingers. I love shiny pretty rocks! Maybe that’s where Belle gets it from…

We all know about the monstrous gem show that overruns Tucson in February. But I didn’t know there was one in the fall! My friend Natasha over at Fashionalities informed me of this upcoming J.O.G.S show. What interests me is that there are jewelry making classes. Hmmm… I do plan to add jewelry to my store someday. Some classes would sure help me with that!

So, if you’re up for going, lemme know and you’ll have a partner in crime!

Photo: “Jewels” by Cayusa. Some rights reserved.

Why, hello there, Grandma Dowling. Oh wait, that’s me. My grandma did wear a pair of glasses like those, though.

So this dress screamed ’90′s to me. It has shoulder pads, buttons all the way down, elastic waist, and a longer length. However, Phil saw it more like a 1950′s dress, so he made me dress up for this pic and did a little photoshoppage. I really do own those glasses. It’s hard to tell the design from above, so here’s a close up. This is what grabbed me:

Love the colors and the flowers!

I first removed the shoulder pads. Then I turned the neckline in a V. Next I removed the sleeves and gathered the shoulders into a cinch. Then I hemmed up the length. All in all, a very simply remake.

Phil wasn’t around to take a pic for me. My huge mirror tiles from Ikea came in handy.

I wore it to Rosa’s baby shower on Saturday and received tons of compliments. It was a lovely dress for a lovely shower.

<will insert pic with my girls from the shower here>

A few people have asked me what I use for web development on the Mac. I dabble in PHP, (x)HTML, CSS, and Javascript all day long, as well as poking my head around MySQL databases and checking in and out code from SVN repositories. I do all of this from a 15″ MacBook Pro (late 2007, pre-unibody). Since Mac OS X is UNIX-based, I could do all of this from the command line with vi, nano, svn, mysql, etc.

But being a Mac user, I like to take advantage of the gorgeous graphical user interface. Here are the applications (all free!) that I use for developing on Mac:

• FTP/SFTP/WebDAV – Cyberduck
  Cyberduck is an open source FTP client that feels right at home on Snow Leopard. There are a ton of features, and seamless integration with many text editors. I’ve heard that Transmit is the best FTP client for Mac, but it’s not free, and Cyberduck has everything I need, including a duck for a Dock icon. Because I need that, you see.
• Text Editor – Fraise
  Fraise is an open source text editor with syntax highlighting for nearly every language, a snippet library, advanced find and replace (in all open documents, even!),  split window and function bookmarking. If that sounds like a lot, it certainly is, but Fraise still feels like a lightweight, simple text editor. It’s based on the now-defunct Smultron. That’s the wonder of open source – stop developing your project, someone forks it and continues for you!
• MySQL Editor – Sequel Pro
  HOLY AMAZING COW, Sequel Pro (which is open source and free, despite the name) is a game-changing SQL browser that maintains a list of all your MySQL servers/databases, and allows for extremely fast editing and maintenance. If you hate phpMyAdmin with a passion (as I do), you’ll love Sequel Pro. The only downside is that your webhost must support remote connections to their MySQL servers (GoDaddy doesn’t, for example, but DreamHost does).
• SVN – svnX
  svnX is probably the best free GUI-based SVN client for Mac right now. It’s interface isn’t extremely intuitive, but it’s definitely better than the alternatives, and a little more fun than remembering all the svn command line options. Make sure to download the latest stable release from Google Code (that’s what I linked), not the developer’s website that shows up top in Google searches.
• File Comparison – FileMerge
  Apple’s FileMerge is included with Xcode as a part of the Apple Developer Tools. It provides a graphical interface to the traditional diff command, letting you compare two different versions of the same file for changes, as well as file ancestry comparison. Before I discovered FileMerge lying around on my hard drive, I used the open source DiffMerge.
• Command Line Tools - Terminal
  The built-in terminal emulator in Mac OS X is comparable to similar offerings from Ubuntu and other Linux distros. Nothing special, but you’ll feel right at home if you’re familiar with *nix systems. I use Terminal for SSH, SCP, and scripting tedious tasks, like backups or disabling comments across an entire WordPress network.

Photo by Peter Fuchs, via a CC License

You must go make this. Now. It took me 5 minutes from start to finish, and I had a warm, gooey, chocolatey chocolate cake on my plate. In fact, the entire process from start to consumption was only 7 minutes. (disclaimer: this pic is not of mine, but mine did come out just like it!)

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug (Microwave Safe)

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well.  Add the egg and mix thoroughly before pouring in the milk and oil in.  Keep mixing.  Add the optional chocolate chips next (who makes that an option!) and vanilla extract, and mix again…

Put your mug in the micro wave and cook for three minutes at 1000 watts.  The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed!  Allow it to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

Uh-may-zing.

via New Dress a Day

Whilst at Hot Wok last Monday, I received this fortune. Hmmmm… looking positive for jennycain.com (currently in test phase, but go take a looky!).

Aloha! This one is for my dad, who lives in Hawaii. This mu’umu’u (actual spelling) was an exciting find at goodwill. Why?

Because of this fun edging!

Plus it had snap buttons and pockets! I put it on for the picture and…it was really quite comfy. I said, “I can see why people wear these.” Phil looked at me like I was crazy. Geez, I was just sayin’.

So I cut it to blouse length and gave a new hem with a decorative stitch. I also had to take this sucker in a TON. So I added a vertical seam in the back that took out inches upon inches of fabric. Then I cinched the sleeves. The sleeves were the hardest to figure out what to do with because I loved the lace on the edges. But I think it worked.

Tada!

So now I could rock this someplace other than just Hawaii. I wore it out to Zachary’s on Tuesday night. A gimonstrous pizza and 2 raspberry framboises (from tap!) later… the blouse was still accomplishing it’s purpose as a roomy muumuu. Even homer agrees!

This post doesn’t have anything to do with hedgehogs, I just think this photo is freaking awesome.

We’re experimenting with a new theme on philipandjenny.com, one that hopefully will work side-by-side with jennycain.com. The theme base is Mystique by digitalnature. It has a ton of options! If you are a WordPress admin, definitely give the Mystique theme a peek.

Speaking of WordPress, I just recently published a plugin called Dev Corner Badge. It’s not much (and really doesn’t do much!) but it scratched an itch so I figured I might as well share it with the world. Plus, publishing it to the WordPress Plugin directory makes it dead easy to install from any site.

Photo: “african pygmy hedgehog” by Adam Foster. Some rights reserved.

circa 1991?

My mom denies ever having owned this, let alone made it, but I know the truth. I retrieved this bad boy years ago from her bin of scrap fabrics, to use as, well, scrap fabric. I mean, what else could it be used for? Phil actually shuddered when I walked out in it. And when  I asked for a picture, he vehemently protested the documentation of me in such a garment. Of course he had no idea the master plan buzzing around in my (scary) brain!

But with a few stitches (ok, and some snippity snips)….

circa 2010!

Now I know you boys out there (do any boys read this, other than Phil?) are scratching your head and trying to figure out how this is any better. Phil did. But, women, we know the truth. I mean, how cute are these little rompers that are out there floating around? And I didn’t have to spend a penny on mine.

close up

Also, just a reminder that name suggestions are still needed!