i’m podcast famous! also, i’m an asshole.

i’m a lucky lady. in the whole almost 3 years of this blog (my blogiversary is on the 23 if anyone wants to get wasted on cheap champagne with me), i’ve gotten nominated for stuff, got to speak at stuff, guest posted on a whole mess of wonderful bogs, and met a shitload of wonderful people.  but because i’m also an asshole ( a lucky asshole), i don’t say thank you enough.  or in this particular case, soon enough.

weekend pickthrough- swapmaine hangover edition.

we came. we saw. we SWAPPED. installment number two of the swapmaine citywide clothing swap went off on saturday afternoon like goddamn gangbusters (thanks especially to all of our donors, and our legion of impeccably dressed volunteers). we managed to scare up over 300 people, 3,000 lbs of clothing, and a whole fistful of money to donate to goodwill of northern new england! (we glow with pride)

of course, what we really want to talk about is what did we score?

sadly, i didn’t have too much time to shop in the chaos, but i did grab a few choice bits and pieces here and there

some of my favs are pictured to the left:

1. dkny silk maxi sailor dress (circa 1990ish)

2. YSL slik twill scarf (does anyone know how to get stains out of a silk scarf?)

3. amazing vintage slip

4. acid green heels

5. incredible glass brooch made by some company called “accessocraft NYC”

i also got a fistful of super soft racerback tanks, an olive green boatneck top from banana republic, a gold embellished t-shirt from j. crew, an unbelievable 90s print scarf, a printed cowlneck blouse, and a berry colored wrap sweater that makes me feel like a ballerina.  a totally respectable haul.

now before i move on to this week’s random ass links, i want to take a minute [imagine quiet voice here] to thank everyone who came out and joined in the madness. i hope you all enjoyed the bigger space and addition of snacks and raffle (FYI: whoever got the vintage jewelry lot is now my  mortal enemy).  and i just wanted to let you all know that as participants,  it is now your civic duty to take pictures of your amazing new things and send them to us (swapmaine@gmail.com) so that we can add them to our flickr and show them off to the world when we’re bragging about the superiority of our swap. adorable swap volunteer julia has already put hers up on her equally adorable blog, so GET TO IT YOU GODDAMN LAZY SLACKERS!

we also had our own roaming photog (thanks audrey!) snapping away during the event, so you should probably check back at the blog in a day or two to see if you’re swapmaine famous yet.

oh, but those links i was talking about… (because it’s almost 1 am, and i’m still a bit beat up and exhausted from all the swapping action).

i want to steal all your clothes.

i’ve been busy.

you know it. but this time i’m not writing to apologize for not posting enough (remember that time i was trying to post every day- what happened to that shit?). this time, i’m writing to let y’all know one of the super secret plots i’ve been hatching all these long months. (ok, and maybe to apologize a little bit for not posting)

anyway, me and a stunning assortment of lady fashion blogger friends have been meeting almost weekly (did you know that the armory has a free cheez plate? you really need to go there) to put together our own CITY WIDE CLOTHING SWAP.

if you’ve never been to a swap before (you should be sad for your loss), it’s basically just a big party where you bring all your awesome clothes that don’t fit you or that you’ve become tired of, and swap them with other people who have better fitting clothes that fill you with excitement.  except that this time, instead of haggling over sensible rayon skirts over 7-layer dip at your lame coworker’s house, you get to paw through the cast offs of all the most fashiony people in portland.

well, at least that’s what we hope.

basically, a swap is only as good as the people who show up with their shit. so please, if your dance card is empty for saturday, the 21st of may, please consider penciling us in. if the people who organized the event are any indication of the quality of the swappables that will be there, this shit is gonna be amazing (do people still say “off the chain”?).

ok, i can’t exactly speak for the quality of my own stuff (i am easily always the worst dressed one at our meetings) but the rest of the ladies all have incredible style, and i know you want what they’re swappin. i know do.

and if the promise of recycling your best hipster finery isn’t enough to get you in the door, let me throw down 2 last points:

weekend pickthrough- mail call showdown edition.

this has been a good couple of weeks for free stuff in the mail. between the soy milk and the cleaning stuff, i also applied for some samples online, which showed up this week. i realized after i wrote that post last week about product testing sites, i had completely left out free sample sites! you may not get full sized products, but i am a sucker for tiny scale models of real products, and they almost always come with a pretty decent value coupon.

this week, i got two sample deliveries- one from target, and one from proctor & gamble (evil i know, but FREE STUFF!). when i originally saw the post for the target beauty bag on my favorite freebie website, i thought it might be a phishing scam. so much awesome stuff for free! my bag arrived a mere one week later.

though not packed with the same goods pictured (where’s my full sized sally hansen nail enamel?), still had some pretty hot shit inside (full sized neutrogena lip balm!). also, it came packaged in the most adorable tiny makeup bag known to man, and had $25 worth of target beauty coupons. and you know what that means… STACKING!! i was blown away.

then, i got my p&g brandsaver… and there was blowing alright, just not the good kind. one tiny sample and two tiny coupons? i hear these stories about people getting all sorts of crazy awesome shit from p&g, but i have never gotten anything good. this was better than the time they sent me a single metamucil packet in a huge box, but not much.

sadly, the target beauty bag is already sold out, but i would recommend finding yourself a freebie listing service so that you have a chance of getting in on the action next time around. i also follow deal seeking pros like hip2save on twitter, who usually have first knowledge of the good shit.

but since you’re probably still really jealous about not getting the beauty bag, here are some links to ease your pain:

unflattering garments for science.

i have a new post up at the goodwill of northern new england blog today! in this issue, i try out an exceptionally questionable (and puffy) skirt that only looks cute from one angle (and not really even that cute- more like passable). what i learned from my experience is that the mirror LIES. i really thought it wasn’t that bad… but the photos were crushing. no wonder cher horowitz always relied on polaroids. i posted the only semi-cute (save for the bad angle potato-head factor) photo on the goodwill blog, but you can see the grisly mess that is the rest of the shots over at my flickr. i especially like the ones where i look both pregnant, and like my legs are on backwards.

weekend pickthrough- promises promises.

so last week when i was having my writer’s block meltdown, the always marvelous infamousqbert made simple but brilliant suggestion- no matter what you do, take time to write every day.

in my constantly fluctuating sphere of interests, writing is my constant. the thing i want to do all the time,  even if it will never pay my bills… the thing i stay up until 3 am doing even though i have to work the next day… but lately, i’ve let myself get distracted and haven’t made adequate time for myself to write, and i need to change that.

on new year’s day, wordpress put out a challenge for bloggers to write a post ever day. initially, i was like “fuck that shit”. but i’ve given it some thought, and i’ve decided to go BALLS TO THE WALL. as of this post, i will officially be posting something every day for the rest of 2011 (or wordpress will send someone to break my kneecaps or something). most of them probably won’t be epic, and there will most definitely be some reposting of things that i write for other websites … but every day, even if it’s only a sentence or two, i’m doing it.

oh, and the weekend pickthrough is officially back in action. stupid links abound after the jump.

i’m fashion blogger famous!

i promised a long long time ago, that i was going to add a budget fashion feature to the ole broke207. well, i lied! totally! i’ve been trying all year to figure out how to get it going, and i just couldn’t figure it out. i would start and stop and reconfigure, but the post just never… posted. well, a few weeks ago, i had an actual revelation! perusing a guest post on the goodwill of northern new england blog, i realized that maybe the fashion post didn’t belong on broke207, and that’s why i was having such a hard time writing it.

well, i decided to nut up and contact goodwill, and see if they were interested in a potential weekly fashion feature. you never know unless you ask, right? well, they received my idea very very kindly (thanks for being awesome michelle!), and my very first post is up today! if they like it, it will be a continuing thing. if they don’t, at least i got a totally sweet outfit for $10.49. it’s a win win!

so anyway, go and check me out, and maybe even leave a little comment love so they let me do it again. and if you’re really lucky, i can talk some of my favorite local fashion bloggers into doing it with me.

weekend pickthrough- secret hot pockets edition.

i just wanted to thank you all for your kind words and encouragement  (as well as general hoots and “take it all offs”) regarding my big burlesque debut on thursday. the cliff’s notes update is that no, i didn’t win. but, i did rock my piece as hard as i could, and there were no broken legs or embarrassing urinary mishaps. you will however have to wait at least another day or two until my full write up is finished for the maine observer (assuming i write something that they actually want to publish). however, in my travels, i did come across an extremely interesting bit of noteworthy information. it all went down like this:

FRIEND: (re: me needing a post titty-shakin snack) man, geno’s should serve food.

ALLIE: um, why would you want to eat there? it’s a dive bar that used to be a porno theater? (*for those of you who weren’t around portland 15 years ago, it used to be the “fine art cinema”- classy!).

of course i thought it was hilarious, and immediately posted it to twitter. along with a lot of discussions about other places in portland too dirty for food consumption, this little tidbit popped up:

from @sukisusan: Rumor is that by law they must serve food. So they have a freezer full of Hot Pockets.

i brushed it off a brilliant joke, and then the next morning, this comment surfaced:

from @seanwilk: they have Hot Pockets. #true

could it be? on my lunch break friday, i decided to call geno’s and get the lowdown. in the most awkward phone conversation that i’ve probably ever had in my life- IT WAS CONFIRMED. some sort of weird licensing regulation requires them to be able to serve hot food. the answer- A FREEZER FULL OF HOT POCKETS. and they’re not just for show, you can order and consume those bitches (although i did forget to ask how much the cost- damn!). get to it!

i’m proud of my state for a lot of reasons, but this isn’t one of them.

two events worth putting on your calendar RIGHT NOW: WMPG electronica booze cruise, and goodwill of northern new england halloween ball bitches!

all my sexiest cheese fantasies are finally coming true (and for only $4).

once i get the ikea bus going, this is my next portland improvement venture.

so i entered this writing contest… could somebody else please enter so that mine isn’t the only crazy silly one. for some reason, people seem to think that good writing has to be SAD writing. i don’t get it…

there’s nothing you can say that will ever make me think that ebooks are better than paper books.  NEVER!

thanks to a tip from the amazing tina at scrawled in a corner, i now know that there are FULL EPISODES OF DARIA on mtv.com. solid.

just what i always suspected, iphone users are kind of sluts.

first lebron, and now grimace? this free agency thing is getting out of hand.

why can’t i own a canadian?! (via younger cougar)