Awesome!

PBR Rub-a-dub

Some of us here at Awesome have been known to have a particular affinity for PBR. So much, we'd dream of bathing in it.

Now those frothy dreams can be a reality with this Poor Boy Beer Soap Bar from Etsy artist dennisanderson. There are all sorts of good non-beer ingredients in this soap, including olive oil, coconut oil and palm oil, so it's good for your skin. Also, this soap is vegan, in case you were wondering if there were any animals harmed in the making of this beer soap.

The best scenario I can imagine would be taking a bath with this soap, and have a can (or two or three) of PBR while soaking in its suds. Where are my pretzels?

FB IRL

Yes, this is the best video on the internet.

Everything I do, I do it for you

Artist David Horvitz wants to send YOU something. Or maybe he just wants your money, but he has quite an inventive way of asking for it.

Check out his page titled "Things for sale that I will mail you." For donations as little as a dollar or as generous as thousands of dollars, he will send you anything from a blank envelope to one filled with star sand from Okinawa.

You can also send him money to mail you items from Buddhist temples, distribute copies of The Little Prince outside the New York Stock Exchange, kiss a moon tree, buy a homeless person a meal or think about you for one minute.

And who doesn't want to know someone's thinking about them?

I carried a watermelon

So, this is awkward, and I don't know if I can even form the words to explain this with my mouth, but let me give it a try...

I had dinner with someone on Friday who had NEVER seen Dirty Dancing.

Like, NEVER. He had no idea that Jerry Orbach was in it, didn't know the Kellerman's Anthem, he stared blankly when I said, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner!" Nobody!!!

Thankfully, I got him up to speed with my handy Dirty Dancing Pocket Edition, and YouTube on my iPhone. Our waitress, however, will never forgive him.

Cruel to be kind

It's cruel to kill animals and mount their heads on your wall, yada yada yada. But what if they are MADE OF CARDBOARD!?

And only cost $48!

And you get to put it together yourself!!

Nothing cruel about that!

The poop pack

Some people have bouts with immaturity or occasional outburst where their minds end up thinking like a 12 year old prepubescent boy, well with me that normally happens about ten times daily.  Mr. Hanky can send me into laughing fits for hours. So when I found out that a friend was potty training the obvious gifts for this adventure in life were poop wall paper for her bathroom, poop stuffed animals and of course the everyone poops book.

The perfect poop pack would also be a great gift for that fraternity brother who you love oh so much but can manage to keep a bathroom empty for a good two hours after using it. Someone has to love a stinker, right?

If you can sit, you can be fit!

Take the Work out of your Workout! GET IT?

Fishy mouse

This clear aquarium mouse reminds me of two things:

• Oh my gosh, the ocean! I bet it's warm at the ocean and the sand is hot, and man, what does warmth feel like again??
• I bet that creepy lady in accounting has one of these that she feels the need to point out every single time you walk down to ask her to email you a new version of the expense spreadsheet because JESUS can she not get one formula right, ever?

Infin8 Agony

Look, people: I know what happens in a week, ok? I know what day it is. But frankly, I don't care anymore, especially because my recent romantic past has mirrored the storyline of Juno, and no not the swoony part at the track field or at the end with the song singing - I'm talking about the 35 year old man in the perfectly comfortable and mature relationship who suddenly decides he'd rather shack up with a 16 year old girl than be stifled with responsibility and committment, but less pedophiliac in that sense.

ANYWAY.

If you still want to celebrate "love" and "sweetness" and all that bullshit, you can get these Bittersweets instead and we'll have a fun time talking about my options to join the nunnery.

Hey look, it's a video of my masters thesis!

Adhesive Expression

This Message Tape can help you label boxes in a fun, easy-to-read way.

That, or you could spell out "55378008" upside-down on your sister's door.

Don't forge the spiked dog collar

When I was flying home for Christmas I stopped in the airport, ahem, restaurant to get a quick nip before takeoff. As I was sitting there waiting for my cocktail, a woman near me who'd clearly had a few too many Calm Me Down's leaned over to my table and said, "You knows whats? You knows whats is that I have scsissorsss and clippersers and a lighters. And I says, you knows whats I says, I says I'm going to the guy with the belt with the x-ray machine who isn'ts lookings. And you knows whats he let me all throughs."

Obviously the security guard didn't notice the mini keg under her jacket, or the hip flask on both her sides, or the hat she was wearing that carefully nestled two full cans of Coors Light. Next time she should pack her terrorists accessories in this case and maybe *then* someone will take notice!

Right vs. Left

Here's something that'll help you kill several hours at the office instead of, you know, working. Click here and see which way the dancer is spinning. If it's clockwise, then congrats! You're right-brained and thus are an impetuous, emotional risk-taker who appreciates a good sunset. If the dancer moves counter-clockwise for you, then congrats! You're left-brained and more than likely are financially supporting one of us artsy fartsy right-brainers.

And if you can make the dancer go both ways, it must be all that sex appeal you exude.

If you really liked Juno *that* much...

...just stop talking about it and buy the damn hamburger phone already!

When you care the most to MadLib

Tiny guns

In the depths of my soul lives a miniature Monica Geller, and the things in life that wake it from sleep are label makers, Sharpie pens, file organizers, plastic bins and dear god, tape dispensers.

And now! Now I can offer it this gloriously tiny tape gun! All I need to complete my tiny Monica's life are tiny matching handtowels separated into 11 sections.

Whenever I have a bad day...

...this video always makes it better...

Better than Flipping the Bird

I used to have the worst anxiety and road rage when driving through Chicago traffic. As far as banes of my existence go, rush hour car commutes were wedged between pimples and parking tickets. Selling my car and moving to NYC where there's actually adequate public transportation erased two of those things from my life (Philosophy products are helping with the third!), but for the rest of you still stuck behind the wheel, maybe these driving LED emoticons will ease the anxiety of your commutes. At the very least, they'll free your hands from making universal symbols, so you can focus on more important things...uh, like driving!

via Productdose

100% Calorie Free

So if you're like 89% of us, you probably made New Year's resolutions to get organized, save money, quit drinking so much, get more sleep, be nicer to children and old people, and lose 10 pounds. So how's all that working for you?...Yeah, me too.

Hey! I know something that will cheer us up! We can now enjoy Ben & Jerry's calorie free! That's right--Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, and Peanut Butter Cup are all free of calories now!! Well, if you get them in lip balm form, anyway. And this time of year, who couldn't use a little help with moisturizing his or her lips? We all could!

As for the saving money resolution...well, you probably shouldn't be reading shopping blogs.

Missing 2007

Happy New Year, everyone! After throwing a totally fun New Year's Eve party for which I found the perfect faux snakeskin silver BCBGirl pumps on sale (they were half a size too big, but that's what cotton balls and bandaids were invented for!), I promptly got super sick. So far, 2008 has been nothing but endless nose-blowing, fitful coughs and throbbing headaches--hooray! So, feeling a bit nostalgic for good ol' 2007 when my health was much more stellar, I decided to make this my first post of the new year:

Bad Gift Emporium

Were you the victim of a really bad gift this holiday season? Well, you weren't the only one.

No, trust me--you really weren't the only one.

Jelly farm

If your friends came over recently and saw your 70's style lava lamp and were all, "Wow. Nice. Uh, lamp," it's time you upgrade.

This lamp is the evolution of lava! Three teensy jellyfishies swim around swirling colors in a modern box that will look great sitting atop your bookshelf.

Now your friends will come over and say, "Woah! Are those real!?" Wait...are they?????

Holiday Boardom

If you're like me and wondering what you're going to do at home for a whole week--you know, between stuffing your face on Mom's home cooking and catching up on TiVo'd shows--you'll be happy to know it's not too late to order a game or two on Amazon. What's better than family fun around some great snacks and a board game? (Don't answer that...let's just pretend for once that we are wholesome, mature adults who spend our weekends at church and volunteering at the local homeless shelter).

Have you ever played Apples to Apples? Yeah, I haven't either, but it's been recommended to me and it sounds awesome and lord knows it's gotta be better than losing miserably to my father at Trivial Pursuit all week long. Any other suggestions for fun family board  games?

Empty Santa's Sack

It's the Thursday before Christmas...do your employers really expect you to be working?? No! They expect you to be finishing up your online shopping, making last-minute travel plans, and playing mindless holiday games on the internet, like this one:

Test Tube Trees

Is that a tree you're stuffing in my stocking or are you just happy to see me?

Pint-sized evergreen trees in recyclable tubes (that can be converted into birdfeeders) for the eco-lovers in your life.

via Cool Hunting

Vladmaster Viewmaster

For $20, I'm not sure you could find a more interesting gift for that hard-to-shop for person on your list "who has everything." For 20 bucks, you'd be hard-pressed to buy a better product to spice things up at your next dinner party. Even a good bottle of gin costs more, and you know it won't last as long as this awesome handmade viewmaster movie.

This Vladmaster set, called Fear and Trembling, includes four handmade reels, the box to keep them in, and a mini-soundtrack to accompany the story of a dinner party gone wrong. Don't forget to buy the Vladmaster Viewmaster!

All together now: OOohhHHHH!!!!!!

Tag, You're It

Before you wrap your Christmas boxes with tinsel tape, don't forget to affix some pretty gift cards to all the gifts. These run only $3.50 for a set of 18! I don't even have 18 people on my shopping list, but I have plenty of ideas for the leftover tags, like coasters! Earrings! Ornaments! Doll doilies! Not that I have dolls. I'm a grown woman, so that be weird. So I'll just use my leftovers for cool eye patches!

Tinsel Tape It!

If I use this festive tinsel tape to wrap up my holiday boxes for mailing, do you think it will make up for the fact that I'm gifting some old copies of US Weekly, a pen I accidently  stole from the last office where I temped, and some coasters I made from some old credit card statements?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Hey! What if I tinsel tape the coasters?? Now that might be plan.

via Productdose

Endo Magnet

I'm not exactly sure why one would need to hang a mircophone on a refrigerator, but now there's a magnet that's strong enough to hold it! And! It has a special release tab that, when pushed, releases whatever it's holding. So go ahead: hang your microphones, your iPods, your knives, and spatulas. Hell, you can even hang your Chuck Taylors. An ideal stocking-stuffer for that person with a fridge fetish.

Another Tool for MySpace

It's hard to take vanity pictures. Either you have to figure out how to use your self-timer on your camera (defeating the whole purpose of "point and shoot") or you have to hold your camera as far as your arms will allow, sometimes making your arms show up in the shot. Who would want to see my chubby arms anyway, they should just be looking at my pretty face, right?

This telescoping The Self-Portrait Camera Extension Arm helps you put your camera at an angle to flatter your face, plus it has a positioning mirror so you can make sure it's just right. It even collapses down to 7.5 inches so you can fit it in your purse!

All so you can naturally look your best without Photoshop.

Better than a Brown Paper Bag

If you have someone on your holiday list who loves coffee and good design as much as I do, you can't go wrong with this vacuum flask.

Oh, who am I kidding, this pretty thermos is an ideal way to transport booze to the park, so if you have anyone on your list who likes to get drunk outdoors, you know what to get them.

via Design*Sponge

Dreaming of a black Christmas

I don't know what Christmas is like on the Death Star, but I'm guessing it's pretty awesome and the tree is covered in handstitched ornaments.

There's probably also matching sugar cookies for galaxy carolers, and a matching stocking hanging from the mantle, and black Santa hats atop the head of every Storm Trooper.

And reigndroids.

iPod in the Hood(ie)

So, it's Thanksgiving and I'm sitting here watching the National Dog Show on NBC and thinking how much stranger dog people are than cat people. Cat people don't style their pets' hair into bizarre-o shapes and parade them around or pick them up by their tails and dress them in sweaters and hoodies and such. No, cat people just save all that dressing-up nonsense for their iPods. Like civilized people.

via Product Dose

A collector's collection

To top off your awesome in-between coats, you need some awesome and understated button.

Try out these limited edition pins by Laura Park from our friends at El Boton and it'll kick your whole outfit up a notch. It may even kick it up 4 or 5 notches, but it's dependent on if you wear just one pin or all five.

I recommend spreading the set out over a couple of outfits, since you never want to have one coat with a bunch of buttons, because then you just start calling it your "button coat". And once your mom sees it, she'll think you're a collector, and the next thing you know buttons of the world will start showing up in your mail box and she'll expect to see them cluttering your coat the next time she comes over.

So just wear 3 at a time. You know, to spare your mom's feelings.

Mt. Bottle Opener

I found this wall mounted bottle opener and I about jumped out of my seat. WTF! You can buy these?!?! You mean I never have to rummage through the junk drawer for my bottle opener again??

This changes everything about the way I've arranged my kitchen. I need WALL SPACE, people! In fact, I may even get really obnoxious and buy all of them and the matching bottle cap catcher.

Dear everyone I know: Guess what you're getting in your stocking this year!

Someone's thinking of youuuuu!!!

OMG, I am beside myself! This bunny contraption has wi-fi in it's ears, and will actually sit on my desk and tell me when I get an email.

Do you know what this means!?!?!?

It means I can get A BUNNY that SITS ON MY DESK and READS MY EMAIL OUTLOUD!!!!!!!!!

I have no idea how I've lived so long without it.

On my Radar

Radar Magazine is to the magazine world what Lindt truffles are to the chocolate world: once you try them, you wonder why you ever ingested all that other low-quality crap on the market.

Radar Magazine and Radar Online are much like their readers: sharp, witty, curious, and interested in "pop culture, politics, scandal, and style." It's like the now-defunct Jane Magazine if Jane were a little classier, better educated, and didn't always have PMS.

Give it Your Vote on Funny or Die!

This certain guy I know made a short film and posted it on Funny or Die. Go vote for it!

Looney Moons

Did you know that the best time to get a haircut is during a new moon? Or that the worst time to make any major decision is during a full moon? Or that you should mow your lawn during a waning moon and it won't grow back so fast? Or if you conceive a baby during an eclipse it will be born with horns and a tail? It's all true! And so is the Easter Bunny! Well, maybe not the Easter Bunny--but the moon phase stuff is real and with this moon phase calendar, you can basically plan your life and have something cool to hang on your wall that's a bit more unique than your typical cat and dog calendar. (Oh, and new moon haircuts go for your pets, as well!).

For your most rebellious owies

Because some new ink is always better than explaining how your cat scratched you last night while you were trying to get it to play with you during a commercial break for Law and Order and you were already in your pajamas even though it was only 7:15.

Your cat was totally all, "Get a life and leave me alone you loser!"

Sponge Bob died.

When I have kids I'm going to shield them from idiotic things that annoy me, like Teletubbies and Bratz, and I'm going to surround them with cool, modern kids things like these robot plates by Jackie Shapiro.

My kid will scream, "But I want Sponge Bob!" And I'll say, "Sponge Bob died, and he turned into these robots which you should like because robots are the future, and you're a child and children are the future, and if you don't want robots taking over the world you need to get familiar with how they work because the weight of the entire universe is on your shoulders."

There will be an awkward silence, but kids are smart. He'll figure it out.

I mean, what else are they good for?

If you're going to dress up your animal for Halloween, keep one thing in mind: The animals. Don't. Like it!

But who cares! They're so cute!!!!!!

So if you're going to do it - and I know you're going to do it - do it with some class and don't totally humiliate them. Wait, what am I saying?

HUMILIATE THEM!!! Because it will be awesome.

 

And Now, Here's a Sneezing Panda!

Owly Shadow Puppets

Sometimes all the baby onesies, handmade totes and fused glass jewelry at the craft fairs can get a little tired. Enter the Owly Shadow Puppets. Definitely one of the more unique finds at Renegade Craft Fair, these puppets remind me a little of Where the Wild Things Are. Great for kids, great for halloween, great for when you're sick of admiring all your screenprinted bird shirts and pillowcases and just want something different to play with.

Match Point

When I was a kid, one of my favorite games to play was "loosen the screws in the baby's crib." My second favorite game to play was the Matching Game. Remember that one? With the snails and giraffes and basket balls?

Well, one day when I have kids, I'm going to go one step better and get a Matching Game with really cool designs to encourage art appreciation in my little ones so they'll grow up to be textile experts or wallpaper designers or famous painters and pillow makers!

Also, I'm going to keep the screwdrivers hidden.

No models of Happyland?

"Buildings of Disaster are miniature replicas of famous structures where tragic or terrible events happened to take place."

Well jeez, way to be a downer over there. (But the OJ car chase model is pretty awesome.)

Such As!

A Bankabank

I love, love, love when designers take ordinary things and make them look sleek and cool, and the Bankabank does just that.

It's a super simple coin bank designed to look great while providing a basic function. Not only does it blend in with all your other modern gadgetry, it also holds up to SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS in quarters!

It's perfect for someone like me who is constantly fishing for quarters since her landlord is totally ripping her off by charging A BUCK to wash a load of laundry in a janky machine she has to share with three other people that doesn't even have a delicate setting!!!!!!!!

Sigh.

Future Menageries

I have a feeling I'm going to get pregnant a bunch of times after I'm married, and I'm going to spend my entire married life with child and waddling after a bunch of other children all born one year apart.

(Shudder.)

In that case, I'm going to be very tired and immobile, so these awesome wallpaper menageries will be a wonderful addition to what will otherwise be a blank nursery. I will be too tired and rotund to hand paint a mural of the jungle, my Future Babies, so please take what you can get.

Roast Your Weenie

I mean, really. Need I say more?

 

Because knitting is so 2004

I am absolutely beside myself with how awesome these petite stitch kits from Sublime Stitching are. There I was, just a-mindin' my own business on a boring old Saturday, when all of the sudden one of these kits was plunked in my letter box and then...wait, what day it today?

Because I've been over here stitching ever since!

These kits include everything - no, EV ER Y THING - you need to embroider anything you like with gnomes, sushi, sexay pinup girls and even unicorns. Patterns are $3, kits are $23, and the rest of your life is waiting to be embroidered.

Sublime Stitching, we LOVE you.

 

Flying Time

There's nothing more annoying than going on vacation with a person who gets up way earlier than you, or being the person who actually gets out of bed at a decent hour while your friend lounges in slumber until noon like they just worked the nigh shift at the Waffle House.

The flying alarm clock makes everyone's morning fun. The late sleeper probably won't mind the playful rouse from sleep, and the early riser will enjoy setting the alarm clock five times before 7am just to watch as you stumble out of bed bleary eyed and try to catch your alarm clock like a rabid bat.

Annoyatron: Engage

ThinkGeek is readying to be the bane of everyone's existence by selling this tiny, tiny gadget, which may very well be the most annoying thing on the planet.

This quarter-sized contraption emits a loud beep every few minutes. You can hide it anywhere you like and annoy the entire universe as they search around frantically looking for WTF IS MAKING THAT BEEP!

For $10, I think it's the most fun you can have.

The sucker parts suck

Hey, who has like 900 spare hours to figure out how to make this octopus cake for me?

It seems easy enough, you just bake a cake in this awesome bundt pan then you make some weird, octo-colored icing, like a weird gray or purple or brownish teal, then you get special ice blue sprinkles to be the waves and go out of your way to find sea-star shaped candies to place around the bottom.

Then you walk away from it, have a beer or two or four, and then you go back and figure out how the hell you make the sucker parts out of little round candies because OMG why are my fingers so fat! Is there some tool I have to get? How do I make the sucker parts?!!

How about if we just eat it half baked out of the pan?

Civil liberties

Today in America we celebrate the birth of our great nation by doing exactly what our fore fathers did when they first declared independence from the mother country: We are sitting around half drunk wondering why hot dogs and hot dog buns are not sold in the same quantities.

Since you're bound to have too many of one or both, use this time wisely to improve upon the great tradition of BBQ leftovers: Store the buns in the freezer and the hot dogs in this special hot dog stay fresh container. It will preserve your dogs in all their mystery meat goodness, for as long as we celebrate liberty and justice.

(Or, like a week.)

Goddamn FBI don't respect nothin'!

Today I finally sat down and watched ALL THREE of the Godfather movies, and all I could think of at the end was, "I wonder if they still make that horse head pillow?"

They do!

It's $70 and takes 4 weeks to get there, but holy cow, what an awesome gift. You know, for someone who's totally screwed you over after professing their undying loyalty, when you want to remind them who's really in control of the situation without cutting their throat because, well, they still owe you.