It’s time for March’s First Friday Favourites today…
Inspired by one of my old planners by Pipsticks & Workman, these are things I’m currently loving:
WATCHING:
Show:
A new season of Reacher is out now and if you are not familiar with this series, it is based on a book series by Lee Child. My childhood crush, Tom Cruise, starred as the same character in several movies, but he looks very different than the lead in the tv series. I have not read any of the books so am unsure of who is a closer fit to the character’s description but I love Alan Ritchson’s portrayal, even if it and his body seem a little unbelievable at times. He is the show’s good guy, who sometimes does bad things and you just want to root for him.
And while I thought Ritchson’s build was a bit unreal, a new character portrayed by this hulking actor, known as “the Dutch Giant”, was introduced as one of the bad guys! Another bad guy is a familiar face that we almost didn’t recognize. But because we had just seen Anthony Michael Hall as one in Edward Scissorhands, I was able to place him.
The first three episodes of the season were available to watch right away but now they are only releasing weekly episodes, which is good for them but bad for someone who likes to binge watch. Like me. It forces me to go to bed or switch over to YouTube though.
Movie:
Last Friday, our movie night, the whole family watched The Edge of Seventeen. Normally, it’s hard for our kiddos to agree on a movie pick, but this time, Brighton didn’t really put up a fight and actually watched most of the movie. While I had seen it before, probably when it first came out in 2016 (the year Brighton was born), I had forgotten that there were quite a few tad inappropriate things for an eight year old and even an eleven year old to process. He sort of buried his head during those scenes and still found the movie funny and entertaining enough to watch. The rest of us all laughed throughout the movie. Woody Harrelson plays his role so well and he’s another actor who has a very distinctive voice and way of speaking. For some reason, I seem drawn to guys with kind of nasally, endearing voices. Luke Wilson is another guy who sort of talks like that and Jay Baruchel whom I mentioned last month.
YouTube:
I’ve started going down a rabbit hole of YouTube art channels and discovered a few new favourites this past month.
Green Velvet Creative is a channel started by artist Rachel Dawn Lauver. She puts out some in-depth and interesting videos focused on her art process and how she’s trying to grow her business. Formerly on a path to becoming a lawyer, she chose to pivot and pursue an art career instead. Still in the early phases of her art business, she does these monthly check-ins to see if she is on track with her goals. I love how transparent and thorough she is with her checklist. And her art is beautiful and very impressive too!
One of her videos also gave me an idea for a new product to offer in my own shop. So, hopefully I will bring that to fruition soon!
Another creative that I discovered recently is Cat Coquillette or Cat Coq as she signs her art. Seeing as another of my goals is to get into art licensing, I started watching a number of videos related to surface pattern design. She spoke to two other women – Stacie Bloomfield and Bonnie Christine – who have made a name for themselves in the past several years in this industry. Most nights I will “school” myself after Matt and the kids have gone to bed to try to glean as much information as I can so I can try to apply that to my life.
Of course, what worked for one person won’t necessarily be the same thing that works for you, but in general, at least for art licensing, there are basic things to follow. And when these women first started out, not as much of that information was as readily available. They all learned through their own trial and error, and now want to share their knowledge with others, which is very admirable. It also turns into another income source for them, but in this day and age, having multiple income streams is a great thing!
READING:
We’ve been reading the next several books in the How To Train Your Dragon series that Brighton had asked for last month. They finally arrived last week, I believe and every day Brighton will ask me to read to him. He can of course, read it on his own, but I think he enjoys me reading it aloud to him and I sort of do too. I remember my dad would read books to us when we were younger – we even have some tapes of him reading a few of those – and it changes the way you identify with the story when you hear someone else tell it.
GAMES:
Last month, at one of our family get-togethers, my parents re-introduced the game of Mahjong to me and introduced it to my sister for the first time. They used to play it with their friends when we were growing up and taught it to me when I had moved back home briefly after University. My sister had never learned how to play so going over all the rules was a bit tricky, especially since our parents either couldn’t remember some or they could only say particular words to us in Chinese. Although my sister and I have some capacity of Mandarin, we definitely don’t know the majority of words and our parents sometimes forget that we can’t fully grasp certain concepts in Chinese. And our parents sometimes don’t know how to translate those ideas into English.
In spite of this, I enjoy playing the game, which is similar to rummy, but played with tiles. When I played with my parents previously, it was just the three of us, but normally it is played with four people. Something we discovered after the few times we’ve played this altogether is that one of our families needs to invest in a games table! Playing this game on a rectangular table means you have to sit awkwardly on one side of it and one or two people usually have a hard time reaching the tiles. I’ve seen some pretty hideous tables on Amazon and elsewhere online… perhaps there is a market for nicer wooden games tables and I should mention this to Matt!
Wishing you a playful and fun weekend wherever you are!
