Me and Wendy Williams are both celebrating in a grand way! My birthday is in a few hours and she is celebrating her 500th show! I watched it today and it was very entertaining with her special guest Paula Abdul! I’m happy for Wendy because lots of folks didn’t think she would make it! She thanked everyone and wore a custom Diane Von Furstenberg wrap sparkle dress and a million dollars worth of jewels from Fred Leighton! “How you doin!” I LOVED those sparkly, spikey Christian Louboutin pumps Paula Abdul gifted her with, haute! That cake..Wendy you can hand that over to me! I can use that tomorrow to celebrate! xoxo

Wendy celebrated her 500th show today with special guest Paula Abdul and a performance by The Trammps, featuring Earl Young.Wendy takes a look back at some of the most memorable moments from the past 3 seasons.

Plus, Paula Abdul reveals the real reason she left “American Idol” and what she thinks about Britney Spears and Demi Lovato joining “The X Factor.”Then, find out why Paula says she’d never want to have sex with Simon Cowell.

Thanks to the Wendy Show staff for sending over the images and video! xoxo

Photo Credit: Jason DeCrow for “The Wendy Williams Show”

Are you a wine connoisseur? I’m not really a wine drinker but I love going to a great party! Last night I headed down to STG Trattoria in Buckhead for a lil wine tasting with Cultivate Wines. STG Trattoria is a great lil spot that serves an array of wines and tapas food. My hubby was excited to go because he drinks a lil bit more than me but not much.

Other bloggers and media heads in Atlanta came out as well as we sampled away. I enjoyed the white wine the most called, Dream Walker. We also were served small plates of Bruschetta,Anchovy & Tomato Basil Pizzas to go along with our wines.The food was yummy. My husband and I enjoyed trying the many different wines from Cultivate. They range from $12 to $25 a bottle at the restaurant. That’s not too bad of a price to go along with a meal! It was a tantalizing affair and I would like to thank The Reynolds Group for the personal invite! xoxo

www.cultivatewines.com

I do not like any kind of war movies what so ever. Thats just me but I went to the advance screening of Battleship anyway and I must say, I really enjoyed the film. It’s Transformers meets Alien on steroids! It was full of action and I fell deeply in love for so many of the characters. To my surprise, Rihanna(Raikes) stayed in the film longer than I expected. RiRi played her part well. I liked actor Taylor Kitsch(Hopper) who was a misfit but later turned his life around. I will admit that Battleship started off extremely slow and me and friend Derek J was ready to make our exit, when finally it picked up and the action began! I’m so glad I’ve learned to have more patience lol. It’s a family film, so you can bring the whole gang to see it! I think they will leave very inspired.This movie made me have more respect now for people that serve in the military. I hardly have anyone in my family that has been in any of the armed forces but this film made me more aware and how they protect our country.

My favorite breakout star and character in the movie was active-duty soldier Gregory D. Gadson(Mick). It was his film debut and I liked his warm spirit so much! I loved the realness he brought to the film. In real life,Gadson was severely wounded by an improvised explosive and lost both of his legs. Today, he still remains on active-duty. Another scene that I really enjoyed was when they mixed ol school with new school. You will have to go see the movie to know what I mean by this.The graphics,action scenes,computer technology used and storyline was very good. If you like explosives,action,aliens and more, you will like this! I give the movie Battleship an A! xoxo

Nicole Richie was spotted out at the FiFi Awards the other day looking sparkly in her Emilio Pucci frolic from the Spring 2012 Collection. I’m straddling the fence on this particular dress and her total look. I have fat knees and I hate my legs so I am not a fan of this style of dress where the front is short and the back is long.They are in every store I’ve visited now, argh!  It’s so adorable on younger girls but when you become a woman of age like me, it ain’t all that cute lol.I think Nicole did ok in the dress but the makeup could have been a bit more vibrant looking lol. I do love her hair though. She paired the dress with Brian Atwood “Marcella” black pump. Sidenote:Can you imagine having to go somewhere every freakin day,find an outfit then later someone snapping photos of you to be then criticized online? Lawd! I’m giving these celebs a break from now on! xoxo

I thought it was quite interesting when my fellow blogger buddy Kia(Cinco Mom) had the chance to visit Pixar and interview one of the cartoon designers from the upcoming film Brave. She got to ask designer Claudia Chung about making characters costumes. It was a fascinating read and I thought I would share this with you guys, since we all love fashion so much…

“So we first start with art, ” Claudia said. “  So it’s kind of their (the art department) idea, a conceptual idea, of what Merida’s dress should look like.  And basically those are the- the fullness of the skirt, the length as well, the tightness of the bodice, and how those two layers, there’s a shift underneath and then there’s a blue wool dress on top.  But there’s other key features that we want to make sure we hit, and that’s- that’s what’s happening on her elbows and shoulders,” she explains.

According to Claudia: ……the length of her dress, I have to hit that. The fullness of the skirt and the tightness of the bodice and other key features that we want to make sure we address.

So in this case, for this reference, what we notice is what’s happening on her elbows and shoulders, right? There’s these breaks there. And what you realize is that doesn’t look like the typical, fine dresses of that era where they’re like these poufy material. It’s actually something Merida cut into the dress herself. Merida cut it up in order to do the archery she’s so fond of. The reason why we know this is because the back of the elbows are a lot looser than the front. As a tailor we want to make sure we get that look right. For those of you who know sewing, you know that to do gathers or to get frills you take a really long piece of fabric and you sew it onto a much tighter, smaller piece and that’s why you see this strange halo up here. It’s sewn onto her collar. And then the last step is actually to put it on the character, right? So it’s not like in real life where I can go, “Merida, let’s go into the dressing room. Let’s put your dress on, your costume, you’re all set to go.” No. There’s no way. She’s animated. So instead we actually built the dress on the character. So you don’t see her there, but she is.

Then they pull and push on the computer and get it just right. Making sure that it moves with the characters. Now what about the boys? The men wear kilts and it’s a similar process.

……the other process that we use is draping. With the kilts, because of the complexity of the fold and stuff, we do actually more draping techniques of putting the pieces of fabric around the character and then relaxing it on. So here we have Fergus. He’s actually the most complicated costume we had to build on Brave because he has eight layers of fabric. On top of that, on his drape, that’s folded six, six to eight times. So it’s actually sixteen layers of cloth. The skirt really is a long piece of tartan, it really is just a flat piece of cloth like this. There’s no magic going on there. So we gather that all up and then we get to see how everything comes together. ….. we can say, “Action,” and he starts being animated and we make the cloth follow him.

What’s training like for tailoring clothes in a computer?

“My training is in computer science. I went to Berkeley and computer science.  I was very technical when I came to Pixar,” said Claudia. When I started on Ratatouille that’s when I went over to the tailoring side of things and it was actually a really hard process, a leap for me. It looked terrible when I started. And I got to the point, …..I was like, “Claudia, it’s time for you to take a sewing class.”.

Then we were off to hear tales of epic battles and mystical legends with Louis Gonzales, a Story Artist with Pixar. We explored the rugged and mysterious highlands of Scotland with Steve Pilcher, Production Designer and Tia Kratter Shading Art Designer. These two and their team worked extremely hard at making sure Brave had the true  look and feel of Scotland. They even took a research trip there and took more than 10,000 photos of the landscape.

BRAVE arrives in theaters everywhere on June 22nd!

“Like” BRAVE on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PixarBrave