Valentine's Day Press Release

Cutting edge shovel art by SGM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Snow Artist Freezes Art World

Denver, Colorado - This winter, the front walk of a Denver home has been transformed into a major outdoor art exhibit. Scraping the Surface, sponsored by Target, is the brainchild of snow artist SGM, a self-taught shoveler and conceptual artist.

Her first work, entitled Shove It Up Your Heart (pictured above), is full of moxie and mojo, and took her almost 3 seconds to complete. The piece turned into performance art when the artist's children stomped on it 2 minutes later.

"It is beyond powerful," marveled leading art critic Del Mitchell, who also happens to be SGM's across the street neighbor. "The children metaphorically crushed the artist's heart by growing older and losing their innocence while simultaneously acting childish. Also, packing the snow like that forced SGM to get out her scraping tool, which she despises. Her annoyance adds even more depth to the piece."

A local art student who happened upon the exhibit said he was "blown away" by the avant-garde nature of SGM's work. William "Shady" Morris, age 21, wiped a tear from his eye as he spoke. "Her shoveling goes against common wisdom; it's all crooked and spotty, but that's what's so moving. It's so human."

SGM's work is not without controversy. Another critic, next door neighbor Jenny Guerrero, is not so impressed: "Oh, she's calling herself SGM now? I suppose she's going to feign a British accent next. I find her work to be uninspiring, especially when she throws snow onto my cleared sidewalk. It's so . . . rude."

SGM has never let unfavorable opinions affect her work, and it is this boldness that makes her art so ground-breaking. "My methods are unorthodox, and some people cannot move beyond that. They see me working for hours with my shovel and think that I'm just screwing around out here in the cold. What they don't realize is that I'm forging a path, both literally and figuratively, for the common man--pizza delivery people in particular."

Expect SGM's work to evolve as more snow falls. The exhibit opened yesterday and will run until the snow melts, which will probably be sometime in June because SGM's house faces north. For more information, please comment and the artist or her agent will respond.

The Mac to My Cheese

Attention, everyone! There is a rock star among us! Our pal and fellow blogger Richele over at Richie Designs has published (as in real, official, and legit) greeting cards. Check out these samples--click to enlarge if you need to:

They're smart, stylish and original, and they're going to be at Jack Cards soon (note: if you still haven't bought your necessary Valentine cards and were planning on finding some among the Snoopy dregs at the grocery store tomorrow, you might want to give this site some attention). If you are like me and want to see Richele's cards there even sooner, please email info@jackcards.com.

Congratulations, Richele!

Good fun at Lucky's expense

Despite my long-standing (4 month) feud with Lucky magazine*, I occasionally visit its website to see if I'm missing anything. Every once in a while, something cute will catch my eye and I'll consider reconciling with Lucky. I had a moment like that when I saw Rachel Bilson on the cover of the most recent issue (love her!).

When will I ever learn? Just when I start to trust Lucky again, it does something stupid. Behold, Lucky's new "contest":

I know that I have consciously felt sorry for the poor fashion writer who has to describe similar-looking shoes in 52 different yet appealing ways. Apparently Lucky feels badly for that person too, so they want us to do the work with only a slim chance of meager compensation, lots of limits on the words you can use, and no health insurance. The nerve! Check out the rules:

I swear that every single issue of Lucky that I've ever seen has included all of those banned words and phrases, am I right? Also, these are the only two rules. There's no info about when it's due or whether the "winner" will get credit for her captions. I love all of this vagueness! Lucky is such a great boss!

Lucky has balls. Big balls, my friends and it deserves to be knocked down a notch. Here's my plan: no one on the earth enters the contest except for me, and then Lucky will be forced to accept my captions or make its own gd employee do her own gd work. It's brilliant, isn't it?

This is a sample of what I will be submitting (click to enlarge):

Peep-toe slingbacks:

Satin platforms:

You know, that was actually very fun (apologies to the innocent shoes). Forget my plan, all of us should make up ridiculous captions and submit them. Then Lucky will pay a real employee to read our entertaining yet useless entries.

Lucky, thank you for this opportunity to make fun of you yet again. No hard feelings, huh? It's all in whimsical blingy adorable really cool fun.

*Lucky's transgressions are as follows:
1. Treats subscribers as if they've had lobotomies
2. Is cruel to its own staff (who incidentally have no clue)
3. Had Nicole Richie on its cover at her skinniest
4. Encourages readers to look like hookers

Shopping Spree

I hate cold weather. And snow. There is lots of both here in Denver and I am OVER IT. Usually when the weather is dreary, I find happiness in spending money and acquiring things that I don't need. However, I am on a spending hiatus (thanks to A Cup of Jo for the dignified term which replaces "stop buying so much crap"), so there will be no shopping. After the week I've had, I really feel the need to use (if you watch Celebrity Rehab, you know what I mean); please join me on a brief virtual shopping trip.

First purchase:

I'm trying to cut back on my magazines so I didn't take Margaret Russell up on her generous subscription offer. It hurts me, deep inside, to not have Elle Decor in my mailbox every month, and I may have to give up my design blogger status without it.

Then, just for fun, I'd get this and send it overnight to Lauren Conrad:

She'd call me and say "oh my God. What the hell is she wearing? Are those multi-sized mirrors on her dress?" and I'd say "I know! What's up with the flesh colored band around her waist? I can't stop looking at her beauty pageant hair and freaky expression! And the background color--how unappealing. Lauren, did you design this cover? Because the person who did hates Kristin Cavallari with the intensity of 1000 suns!" Then we'd have a big laugh (although I'm not sure that Lauren is capable of more than a closed-mouth smile) and talk some shit about Heidi's new video and Spencer's amazing ability to become more and more creepy.

But for now I'm still shopping. I'd buy some lipstick, because that is a guaranteed pick-me-up:

MAC 'Slimshine' Lipstick, don't know what color, but I'd wear it

Ah, I'm feeling better already; nothing makes my heart pitter-patter like a new tube of lipstick. Gloss could never really do that for me.

Next stop, shoes, for my one big splurge:

Marc by Marc Jacobs Hh two tone Mary Janes, $473

God, I think these are gorgeous. I'd even wear them out of the store, just like kids do, and later tell my husband that I got them on the sale rack at DSW.

My final purchase:

A snowblower. What a dream! If there is snow during the week, I am usually the shoveler because my husband leaves for work at 6 a.m. If ever you need a good laugh, come on over to my house after a snowstorm. I'll set you up in front of the bay window with some hot chocolate and you can watch me shovel our short driveway and small stretch of sidewalk for an insane amount of time. When I'm finished, it will look the the work of a blind person with two broken arms.

Well, that actually felt pretty good. I'm a simple woman; magazines, lipstick, shoes and an occasional piece of power equipment are all it really takes to satisfy me. Thankfully, a Kit Kat Blizzard from Dairy Queen and Keeping Up with the Kardashians have that same effect, and I'm going to partake in that kind of cheap fix right now.

Hope you have a fulfilling weekend too!

For your own good, put down any food you might be eating

I was going to do this comprehensive post on Celebrity Rehab and how repulsively awesome it is, but then life intervened.

My children and I went out to eat tonight with some of my friends and their kids. We have some weird food issues here at chez SGM, and my kids don't eat much dairy. So tonight, all of the other kids were getting ice cream sundaes. Everyone orders the small ones, except for me. I order the kid-sized ones because I assume that they'd be extra-small, and my kids won't eat much anyway. Totally wrong on both counts. The "kids" size ice cream sundae comes in a grande cup, filled to the brim. WTF, Applebee's?

So I give my 3 year old her strawberry ice cream sundae, thinking that she will stop after a few bites. She's always a good little self-regulator. But then I look over after about 2 minutes and she has eaten the entire thing. She is a tiny wisp of a girl with a nasty ol' cheeseburger already in her tummy and I become filled with dread. I know what's coming.

A few minutes later, she does the expected. She barfs. Not her entire meal, just fountains of pink ice cream. And then the little girl across from her sees this and starts gagging, a simple chain reaction. Like that scene in Stand By Me. I laugh helplessly at the awfulness of it all, and my friend with the gagging kid starts laughing, and our kids are crying. And I just don't know how I'm going to make it to my car, which is far away, and it's about 2 degrees out, and my coat and hers are covered in pink vomit. Plus I have a 6 year old who is running around like a chicken (literally, "bawk bawk" and all), high as a kite on sugar.

I have good friends. They're all trying to help clean up, which mortifies me. So I am holding my pukey kid, trying to clean so my friends won't do it. They finally convince me to just leave and on my way out the door I yell "Give her a big tip! $100! I'll pay you back! I am so sorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry!"

By the time we run through freaking Antarctica (props to my 6 year old who actually kept up with me) and arrive at our car, my 3 year old has totally recovered and is recounting her night: "I hate barfing! I barfed so much in there! That scared me so much! Can I have a snack when we get home? I am so cold! I hate barfing!"

Lordy be. Now everyone is in bed, and I am headed that way too. My take on Celebrity Rehab will just have to wait, but try to catch it tomorrow night on VH1 because some major shiz is about to go down. I am rubbing my hands in anticipation; it's going to be that good.

See you tomorrow!