Cosmo Couture at the Artisphere

Project Runway might be getting a little long in the tooth in its 9th season (!) but the concept is still so much fun. I was reminded of that on Wednesday at Cosmo Couture, a charity fashion show that challenged interior design firms and architects to create garments out of fabric samples and furnishings. My company had an extra ticket for the runway show at the Artisphere, and I was lucky enough to attend and help support our team.

In 2011, when no one has to make anything by hand and most things we see around us are mass-produced, it's fun to see what talented, creative people can create with the most unlikely materials. Creating something from nothing.

OK, maybe I'm waxing philosophical. The whole event was just plain fun. As the evening's emcee noted, Lady Gaga has nothing on these designs.

It is really hard to take photos at fashion shows. I just got a fancy new camera that I love, but I obviously still have a lot to learn about it, because my photos didn't come out very well. I put it on "Sports" scene mode. There ought to be a "Runway" mode.

Here's the judging panel, taking copious notes.

People using their iPads as cameras at events cracks me up. Maybe this is the new normal, but for now I say it looks silly.

There goes Audrey, wearing our firm's design. It was the prettiest one, in my estimation. The others were aiming for edgy, not pretty.

I didn't know that my former coworker Jenny was going to be in the fashion show. Not only was she in the show, she won the award for best model! She was so fierce! Mohawk, crazy eyeliner, badass attitude. She had a better walk than a lot of America's Next Top Model contestants I've seen, and I've watched at least six cycles, ha.

Luther and I sat near the stage, and Jenny told us after the show that she heard us saying "Jenny? Is that Jenny?" right as she turned the corner. It almost made her break character.

I loved the venue too. The Artisphere is enormous! It's new-ish, modern, with a sweeping staircase and an auditorium. If you get the chance to go to a party here, take it.

Grown-up coloring, cocktail in hand.

Could this turkey sculpture actually be a ride, like outside grocery stores in the '90s? There was a coin box, and I had to try it out. I put in my 50 cents, waited, and nothing! I've been scammed. But then, just as I was about to walk away, the turkey started bucking like a bronco. Everyone in the vicinity turned around to stare at the galloping turkey. It would be worth a trip to the Artisphere, just to see that, right?

Tunes Tuesday: "Benny and the Jets, " TV Girl

Is it humanly possible to not sing along with "Benny and the Jets"? Or at least refrain from saying "B-B-Benny" quietly under your breath? I say it can't be done.

If you like Elton's song, you gotta check out TV Girl's similarly-named track. It's a sunny, little slice of pop. With a chugging beat, doo-wop chorus and So-Cal lyrics, the band captures the fun of the original, without being too derivative. OK, towards the end, there's an echo of "Benny, Benny," but that just feels right.

Click here to listen to more retro-pop from TV Girl. Thanks for sending me this song, Carolyn!

Touristy Stuff in Iceland: The Blue Lagoon

The people in our hostel dismissed the Blue Lagoon as expensive and touristy, which it is, but they left out the part about it being really fun!  And beautiful, of course.  I say, if you are a tourist in Iceland, you ought to go.  This is the Disneyland of pools.

The entrance looked foreboding.

And the water was an otherworldly blue.

Everyone scurried out of the changing rooms and jumped into the warm water. The air was freezing. But there was a secret door from a hot tub inside to the outside pool, which was a nice touch. We wished that the temperature of the blue lagoon could be cranked up just a tad, but perhaps that is too much to ask.

Here's Julie relaxing in the indoor hot tub. She has silica on her face, as a beauty treatment. There's boxes of silica around the lagoon, don't grab mud from the bottom of the pool, which we contemplated doing at first. We also got 20 minute massages in the Lagoon, which was really nice, even for someone as uptight about massages as me. When in Rome, right?

And if you go to the Blue Lagoon and value your hair, PLEASE wear a swimming cap. The water in the pool absolutely destroyed my hair. I put leave-in conditioner on it before I got in, but the next day it felt like straw. It was so dry and disgusting. I told my mom that when I got home, and she said "Yes, I was going to say that your hair looked weird," a statement which was definitely true, but still put me in a terrible mood. I wish I had sprung for the 100 kroners or whatever it was to get a swimming cap, and then I wouldn't have had to buy $26 hair mask from Sephora when I got home (this one is awesome though) and gotten 1.5 inches of damaged hair cut off. Learn from my mistake!

The inside of the spa was uber modern and sleek. Very lovely. They had fancy lockers that opened via a wristband. Of course it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to use it, grumbling the whole time. They are very serious about showering in public pools in Iceland, which I can understand. We went swimming almost every day at the geothermal pools around Reykjavik and I became a lot less prudish about public nudity, ha. Oh, the ravages of age that I have to look forward to. Just kidding. Sort of.

The first time I went to the pool, at the gigantic Laugardalslaug complex, I made the critical error of wearing my glasses instead of my contacts. I have terrible vision, so when I took off my glasses, all the naked people turned into pink blurs. Ha. If I couldn't see them, they couldn't see me, right? Maybe that was a good way to ease into the spa scene.

But I really loved the Icelandic swimming pool culture. Pools are open most of the day and night, and swimming was a fun thing to do when we had a spare few hours. We were often the only tourists at the public pools, which was great. It is the exact opposite of American pools in the summertime - instead of jumping into a cold pool to escape the heat, we ducked into a hot tub to avoid shivering in a bikini. I thought it was interesting that Icelandic children and pregnant ladies hung out in the hot tubs. Your fellow swimmers would probably have you arrested if you tried that in the U.S.

The night before we went dogsledding, we checked into a hostel near Laugarvatn Fontana, a brand new spa. It was gorgeous, Scandanavian-chic, overlooking a lake with a bunch of different saunas, hot tubs and pools. We were the only ones there, and I walked briskly from the locker room to a long, rectangular pool, trying to avoid hypothermia. I hopped in the main pool, and quickly realized that the water came up only to my knees. Ahhh!! So freezing out. I thought the water would get deeper so I could swim, but no, it was still knee-deep. I ended up sort of frantically half-crawling, half swimming the length of the pool toward the hot tub. I'm glad there was no one around to see that. What is the point of a 3-foot deep pool? No clue. Please weigh in, Icelanders.

Where Is My Mind?

I have always hated getting up in the morning, but high school was especially difficult for me.  Our school started at 7:20 a.m., and that start time combined with me being a lazy teenager and the fact that I hated school already made for a difficult four years.   I didn't use an alarm clock.  Instead, I was awakened every morning by the sound of my mom screeching at the top of her lungs, "Adele!  Get up! Time to get up!  You have to get up!"  Every single morning.  Flash forward to the present - I have to get up at around the same time for work and I still don't like waking up.  I've gotten into the terrible habit of sleeping in and only leaving myself 20 minutes to get up and get out the door.  Some things have to fall by the wayside with just 20 minutes.  Like makeup.  Using a hairdryer.  Packing a lunch.  Maybe toothbrushing? So it's accurate to say that my mornings are rushed.  Yesterday after dinner, I was putting away a bag of chips in the cupboard where I keep my cereal.  I opened the door, and sitting on the bottom shelf was a gallon of milk. That is so not the refrigerator.  It was a brand new gallon of fancy organic milk too.  The humanity!

Dogsledding in Iceland

We checked off goal after goal for this trip - pet horses on the side of the road?  Done.  Dogsledding?  Done.

I had visions of gliding through the snow on some glacier, but it turns out that by September, all the snow has melted and it's already too icy and dangerous for the dogs to go up on the glacier.  So instead we drove to the Southwest coast and went dog "sledding" on gravel in a cart.  Close enough for me.

When we arrived, the dogs were barking like crazy. They were ready to run. We got to help put on their harnesses and get them ready to pull the cart.

What I learned from this experience - it is very difficult to get 10 dogs to all do the same thing. There were a lot of stops and starts in the beginning. One of the dogs was a seven-month-old puppy and it was his first run with the cart. He would run for a little bit, then get tripped up and fall on the ground, the other dogs dragging his prostrate body. His first day on the job, poor little thing. This happened multiple times and was upsetting, but the dog trainer gave him a longer lead and he got the hang of it.

Some pictures from the "Photo and Petting" segment of the tour. Ten dogs pulled a cart and four people, which is pretty amazing.

Here's a video of Julie getting a lesson on how to drive a dogsled. As you can see, it's a bumpy ride. I was scared to drive because I always assume I will crash whatever I drive, but I was able to clear the mailbox to the barn and coast in smoothly. Yah! Mush!

Stretch it out!

After the ride, we got to coo over two-week puppies. The trainer popped the top off the dog house, to the pups' mother's chagrin.

Mini Horses in Snaefellnes

Our Icelandic roadtrip took us to to the Snaefellnes Peninsula countryside, where the landscape was as dramatic as it was deserted.

Sometimes our little VW Golf seemed like the only vehicle for miles...

But we found some friends along the way.

Julie's friend had told her that the Icelandic horses in paddocks along the road were so friendly that you could go up and pet them. The whole trip, Julie had wanted to pull over and test out this theory, but we were concerned that the Golf would get stuck in a ditch. Finally, we found gravel patch near the highway, parked the car and made a beeline for a horse hanging out near the fence. Sure enough, he let us pet him, even though we didn't have any food to share. Some other horses even came over to meet us too and see what was up.

The sheep wanted no part of it, however. They walked off into the sunset.

We took the hiking trail from Arnarstapi to Hellnar along the gorgeous coastline, with jagged rocks and natural arches. These pictures don't capture how pretty it was there.

At the end of the 1.5 mile trail, I rewarded myself with a Swiss mocha at the adorable little cafe, with an Ikea-chic interior.

We thought this was the church on the cover of our guidebook, but no, it's just another picturesque Icelandic church.

The next day was set aside for horseback riding on the beach, but the weather did not cooperate. How moody are these clouds?

Bummer! But if it hadn't rained, we wouldn't have seen so many beautiful rainbows. Silver lining, as they say.

PS - Julie bought some Icelandic donuts to fortify us for our hike. How did they taste? Eh, I must say I like American donuts better. USA! USA!