anthrotechnologist's posterous

When you build a gaming system, it should be all about frame rates. The reality, though, is that most people don’t have the unconstrained budgets to wring out the maximum performance a game can deliver.

I’ve built budget gaming systems in the past. Building a gaming system for under a grand is an exercise in compromise. Just a year or two ago, if you wanted a reasonable gaming experience for under $1000, you'd have to give something up--graphics power, or storage.

These days, however, you can get yourself an impressive system capable of running current-generation, DirectX 11 games at acceptable frame rates on a 1080p monitor while having to make minimal sacrifices in visual quality. It’s amazing what kind of system you can build today at modest expense.

Graphics Vs. Performance

When building a budget gaming system, the biggest trade-off is often the choice between graphics and CPU choices. The right choice depends on what type of games you play. A fan of graphically heavy first-person shooters may pick a pricier graphics card and move down a speed grade or two on the CPU side. On the other hand, a strategy game aficionado might want to notch up processor performance.

It’s not as simple as it used to be, however. Modern strategy games like Civilization V and Total War: Shogun 2 can still hammer a CPU, but also offer cutting-edge, DX11 graphics. Action games are multithreaded and offer advanced physics and AI, benefiting from a quad-core CPU.

The system we'll build here is well-balanced. I’ve chosen a solid CPU and GPU combo that should deliver good frame rates on today’s 1080p flat-panel displays. Note that processor prices are pretty compressed these days, so even moving down a notch in CPU pricing may not free up enough cash to move up a significant chunk in graphics performance without breaking past the magic $1K barrier set here.

The Whole Picture

Organizing your cables can make it easier to make changes to your system later, and improve airflow.

The GPU and CPU represent the most important components in a gaming PC, but the rest of the gear contributes in important ways. Here’s the complete build list. Then I’ll dive into the rationale for the choices and offer possible tradeoffs.

The build list:

CPU	Core i5 2500K	$220
Graphics	XFX Radeon HD 6870	$200
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H	$125
Memory	Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 8GB kit	$95
HDD	Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB	$60
Optical drive	Samsung SH-B123L BD-ROM combo	$65
Case	Coolermaster HAF 912	$60
PSU*	Corsair Builder Series CX600 600W	$70
OS	Windows 7 Home Premium OEM	$99
Total cost		$994

*Power supply unit

Note that this system is just a few dollars short of the $1000 mark. However, prices fluctuate, and the prices presented here represent a kind of average from various online sources. With a little careful shopping, you can do better--but these prices don’t include shipping or sales tax, so be sure to factor those costs into your buying decision.

Key Components: CPU and GPU

Now that you understand the tradeoffs and goals of this system, it’s time to dive into the component choices. Since the GPU and CPU are the key parts of a gaming system, let’s look at those choices first.

CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K

This second-generation Core i5 CPU is one of the best deals in processors today. It’s unlocked, which means you can overclock it if you’re so inclined, though if you do, you’ll probably want something a little better than the stock Intel cooler. However, the Intel heat sink is low profile, so it works well even in a cramped case.

While the 2500K lacks the hyperthreading support of its pricier siblings, it’s no slouch when it comes to performance. It cranks along at a default clock frequency of 3.3GHz, with a maximum Turbo Boost clock of 3.7GHz. Who needs overclocking?

You can save a few bucks by dropping down to the frequency-locked Core i5 2500K, but you won’t save much. If you really want to squeeze out a few more dollars, Intel offers the 2.8GHz Core i5 2300K. But the 2500K is pretty high on the value curve.

GPU: XFX Radeon HD 6870

The Radeon HD 6870 is a nice compromise between power and price.

XFX builds solid cards with standout warranty support. Even so, you can find this card online for as low as $180. Competing cards with less robust warranties can be found for a little less, so if you tend to turn over GPUs every year or so, those may be equally suitable.

The Radeon HD 6870 offers excellent performance for that $180-$200, so it’s at the current sweet spot in price/performance ratios. However, if you’re an Nvidia fan and want to stick with under-$200 cards, a variety of GTX 560 cards are available, but the HD 6870 edges it out in most games.

Core Supporting Components

No processor or graphics card exists in isolation. You’ll want a good motherboard, ample memory, and a robust power supply unit, all of which are essential ingredients for building a stable, fast platform for your gaming pleasure.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H

The Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H supports all the hardware features we'll need for our low-cost gaming rig.

Gigabyte offers a nifty microATX motherboard built around Intel’s new Z68 chipset. It has support for on-the-fly graphics switching if you add Lucid Logix Virtu software. This would allow you to use lower power (and lower performance) Intel HD Graphics when doing normal desktop work, with the discrete GPU kicking in when you launch a game.

This particular microATX board also offers two PCI Express x16 slots, so you can theoretically run two AMD GPUs in CrossFireX or paired Nvidia GPUs in SLI/dual-GPU configurations. In those cases, the two graphics cards would be running in dual x8 mode, but that’s still a lot of bandwidth.

The GA-Z68MA-D2H has all the other goodies you’ll want, too: 6-gbps SATA support, USB 3.0, and even limited overclocking capabilities. The one downside with this board that I’ve found is the relative lack of onboard fan connectors--it has only a single case fan connector, plus the CPU cooling fan pinouts. Ideally, I would have liked to have two case fan connectors plus CPU fan.

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3-1600 Kit

No reason not to splurge on RAM.

DDR3 memory prices have crashed in the past year, and that’s great for PC buyers. This Corsair 8GB kit costs just $95. That’s impressive for a pair of 4GB modules that can loaf along at the default 1333MHz clock frequency built into the Core i5 2500K memory controller and Gigabyte BIOS.

Eight gigabytes may seem excessive to some users; in that case, you can save about $40 by dropping down to 4GB. That’s still ample for most games today. There’s something oddly reassuring about having 8GB, though. Or maybe I’m just enthralled by how much good DRAM you can buy for under a hundred bucks.

Power Supply: Corsair Builder Series CX600 PSU

Corsair’s Builder Series power supplies offer basic feature sets, but also deliver robust current. The CX600 version 2 is 80 Plus certified. I’ve listed the general price of $70, but recent Corsair rebates bring the price down to a net $50, if you’re willing to deal with rebates.

This PSU is efficient and quiet. Note that it offers only two PCI Express graphics card power connectors, so if you really want to drop in a second GPU, you’ll likely need a PSU upgrade, or use adapter plugs. The latter is a viable option with this PSU, since the overall power draw for this $1000 system is pretty low, as I’ll show shortly.

Storage

Optical drive is optional if you're okay with sticking to downloadable games.

Today’s games are getting bigger with every new release. Mass Effect 2 eats up 17.7GB on my hard drive, while Shogun 2 consumes nearly 19GB. So having a big, fast hard drive is pretty important. A $1000 budget is somewhat limiting, however. You can’t configure for an SSD, for example, even a small SSD that can take advantage of the Intel Z68 Smart Response system, which uses a small SSD to cache hard-drive reads and writes. Since this is a Z68-based system, however, it’s possible to add SSD caching later.

As with many components, the price of the Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB drive can fluctuate. I’ve seen this for as little as $45, but the average price seems to hover around $60 currently. The Caviar Blue runs at 7200 rpm and offers 32MB of DRAM cache.

The Samsung SH-B123L Blu-ray combo drive shows just how much Blu-ray drive prices have come down. The SH-B123L can burn to a variety of DVD media at speeds up to 16X. It’s capable of reading BD-ROM and BD-RE discs as well as playing Blu-ray movies if you’ve got current playback software, like Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 11 Ultra. At $65, it’s priced about $30 higher than a stock DVD drive, so if you’re looking to shave off dollars, this is one place to do it.

Of course, if you’re only gaming on this system, and never plan on watching movies or burning discs, you can dump the optical drive entirely--as long as you’re willing to live with digital downloads of all your games.

Picking the Right Case

The Coolermaster HAF 912 can fit your components without taking up too much space.

I like using fairly large midtower cases for my PCs. I’ve given up on huge, full-size towers, partly because of cost, but also because I just don’t like moving them around anymore. On the other hand, compact cases are interesting, and can fit under low desktops or live on top of a desk. However, the tight internal constraints mean that the system-building process can be tedious and sometimes downright frustrating. Nothing is more annoying than finding out that your average-size graphics card won’t fit in the case because of the location of the PCI Express power plugs.

Coolermaster’s HAF 912 is a modestly priced, midrange steel tower. Although its amenities are limited, it does offer a cutout under the motherboard, which allows you to easily install aftermarket CPU coolers without removing the motherboard. This case has pretty good airflow, and best of all, you can find this for as little as $50, though the most common price seems to be about $60.

This case supports multiple hard drives and is big enough for even long graphics cards, though those monster 12-inch Radeon HD 6990 cards might be a tight fit.

Of course, a PC needs an operating system, and Windows 7 Home Premium is a good fit for most users. Be aware that the maximum memory supported by Home Premium is 16GB, but that shouldn’t be a factor for most users.

Building Tips

Looks pretty, doesn't it?

Since this system uses a fairly spacious midtower case, building it is pretty straightforward. (For a walk-through of the general process, see PCWorld's article and videos on assembling a PC.) The main thing you need to remember to do differently is to install the motherboard mounting posts in the microATX mount points instead of the full-size holes.

I did run into one problem when installing Windows that’s worth mentioning as a general troubleshooting tip. The first Caviar Blue drive I used was defective, but it wasn’t actually DOA. So the Windows setup process would stall at about 70 percent. The symptoms were a little vague, and I first suspected a bad Windows setup DVD or a memory problem. These types of weird issues, where the solution isn’t immediately obvious, can happen during a new system build, but most PCs I’ve put together recently work fine after assembly.

The replacement hard drive has been performing perfectly. It’s better to have a hard drive fail during initial installation than later on, taking all your data with it.

Performance

So how does our little $1K marvel perform? Well, marvelously, of course!

Benchmark	PC World’s $1000 Gaming Rig
3DMark 2011 performance score	4261
3DMark Vantage performance score	16,785
PCMark 7 score	3324
DiRT3, 1920 by 1200 Ultra preset, 4x AA (fps*)	48
Shogun 2 1080p High Benchmark	40
Far Cry 2, Ranch Long, 1920 by 1200 DX10 Ultra, 4xAA (fps)	80
Just Cause 2 (fps)	48
F1 2010, 1920x1200, Ultra preset, no AA (fps)	62
Metro 2033, 1920x1200, High, No AA	46
System power @ idle	64W
System power @ full throttle	215W

*fps = frames per second

This system hits solid frame rates, even with a lot of the eye candy cranked up. Most of the game tests (except Shogun 2) were actually run at 1920 by 1200 resolution, so 1920 by 1080 performance should be a touch better.

What’s really interesting is the power usage. We saw maximum power draw when running the PCMark 7 benchmark, and the system barely hit 215W. So there’s enough power to spare to add a second Radeon HD 6870 if you want even more graphics horsepower.

Never a Better Time to Build

Our $1000 gaming PC offers incredible bang for the buck at a net price (not including shipping or taxes) of $994. If you’re willing to drop the optical drive and use 4GB of RAM, you can even get below $900 ($879) without sacrificing performance. Overall, there’s never been a better time to build a high-performance, affordable gaming system.

So what are you waiting for?

The market for Web sites, night classes, online lectures and games that offer crash courses in programming and Web site construction is booming. Those jumping on board say they are preparing for a future in which the Internet is the foundation for entertainment, education and nearly everything else. Knowing how the digital pieces fit together, they say, will be crucial to ensuring that they are not left in the dark ages.

Some in this crowd foster secret hopes of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg. But most have no plans to quit their day jobs — it’s just that those jobs now require being able to customize a blog’s design, or handle the care and feeding of an online database.

“Inasmuch as you need to know how to read English, you need to have some understanding of the code that builds the Web,” said Sarah Henry, 39, an investment manager who lives in Wayne, Pa. “It is fundamental to the way the world is organized and the way people think about things these days."

Ms. Henry took several classes, including some in HTML, the basic language of the Web, and WordPress, a blogging service, through Girl Develop It, a New York-based organization she heard about online that offers lessons aimed at women in a number of cities. She paid around $200 and saw it as an investment in her future.

“I’m not going to sit here and say that I can crank out a site today, but I can look at basic code and understand it,” Ms. Henry said. “I understand how these languages function within the Internet.”

Some see money to be made in the programming trend. After two free computer science classes that Stanford University offered online attracted more than 100,000 students, one of the instructors started a company called Udacity to offer similar free lessons. Treehouse, a site that promises to teach Web design, picked up financing from Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, and other notable early-stage investors.

General Assembly, which offers a working space for entrepreneurs in New York, is adding seven classrooms in an effort to keep up with demand for programming classes, on top of the two classrooms and two seminar rooms it had already. The company recently raised money from the personal investment fund of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and DST Global, which has backed Facebook.

The sites and services catering to the learn-to-program market number in the dozens and have names like Code Racer, Women Who Code, Rails for Zombies and CoderDojo. But at the center of the recent frenzy in this field is Codecademy, a start-up based in New York that walks site visitors through interactive lessons in various computing and Web languages, like JavaScript, and shows them how to write simple commands. Since it was introduced last summer, the service has attracted more than a million sign-ups and raised nearly $3 million in venture financing.

Codecademy got a big break in January when Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, made a public New Year’s resolution to use the site to learn how to code. The site is free, and its creators hope to make money in part by connecting newly hatched programmers with recruiters and start-ups.

“People have a genuine desire to understand the world we now live in,” said Zach Sims, one of the founders of Codecademy. “They don’t just want to use the Web; they want to understand how it works.”

The blooming interest in programming is part of a national trend of more people gravitating toward technical fields. According to the Computing Research Association, the number of students that enrolled in computer science degree programs rose 10 percent in 2010. Peter Harsha, director of government affairs at the association, said that the figure had been steadily climbing for the last three years — after a six-year decline in the aftermath of the dot-com bust.

Mr. Harsha said that interest in computer science was cyclical, but that the current excitement around the field seemed like more than a blip, and was not limited to people who want to be engineers. “To be successful in the modern world, regardless of your occupation, requires a fluency in computers,” he said. “It is more than knowing how to use Word or Excel, but how to use a computer to solve problems.”

That is what pushed Rebecca Goldman, 26, who is a librarian at Drexel University in Philadelphia, to sign up for some courses. She said she found herself needing basic Web development skills so she could build and maintain a Web site for the special collections department she oversees.

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A large video screen shows a scene from Super Mario Bros. at the exhibition "The Art of Video Games."

In 2009, when the Smithsonian began planning an exhibition devoted to video game art, I became kind of ecstatic. I was in the midst of writing a book whose narrative thread included an arc that showed how video games could be artful. Literally raising my fist in the air at the news, there was a sense of triumph, a sigh of relief. The word "finally" escaped from my lips.

I could hardly believe it. An institution as lauded as the Smithsonian would devote gallery space to a look at video game art through the decades. That, indeed, would be amazing. And because of the historic nature of the event, I began to plan to write various magazine stories.

And then, the Smithsonian and its freelance curator screwed it all up.

I'm certainly not the only one to think that video games can be artful. Video game critics, game developers and fans have long wondered why the medium is rarely considered to be art. Certainly someone at a prestigious national gallery could find a few frames of a game that moved them to the point of considering a show. As proof of artfulness, critics pointed to the better works by teams of artists at Irrational Games or by small, independent game makers, some of whom were still in college. "Why not consider the best of these games to be popular art and present them as such?" they asked in their blogs or in their fan-based magazines.

Last week, the Smithsonian unveiled a curious exhibition called The Art of Video Games. This show has taken years to put together, and because of the time it has taken, I just have to wonder if the museum needed a great amount of persuading to do it in the first place. What was the Smithsonian's idea of popular art and what is the freelance curator's idea of art, and how did they mesh? For whatever reason, someone apparently said, "Let's get the in-crowd in on this." Because what happened next was that a committee of game developers, journalists and experts was created to do what committees do: They made a list.

Chris Mellisinos, a game collector and programmer who is the curator, has assembled exhibits at video game conventions in the past. Despite these credentials and a marketer's passion for the medium (he gestures with his hands to convince you, like a politician on the stump), he didn't choose the games on his own, or even have the committee choose them. Instead, to narrow it down to the 80 games shown, the committee chose 240 games and posted the list online for the public to examine. Then, in American Idol fashion, there was a vote.

When I reviewed the Smithsonian's web pages made for the show, I saw that the process had given short shrift to many games that moved the medium forward as far as artful content is concerned. There is nothing from Ralph Baer, the National Medal of Technology winner who made the original Magnavox Odyssey. Baer is often considered to be the father of videogames.

And there is nothing from Rockstar Games here, the Grand Theft Auto company that made the touching, brilliant western Red Dead Redemption two years ago, or any of the Sierra adventures so popular in the 1990s. Fans voted for Tim Schafer's middling Brutal Legend to be shown in the nation's capital instead of the far better Grim Fandango and Psychonauts.

Some might say the beauty of this exhibition is that fans online voted for what ultimately would be presented. But sadly, that is the very root of the problem.

Imagine the hubbub, the outrage, if MOMA asked its members and the general public to vote on what should be shown. Can you imagine the resounding discontent you'd hear had the public voted for the current Cindy Sherman or Diego Rivera exhibitions? Writers like Peter Schjeldahl and Jerry Saltz would have had field days blasting the very idea. And we'd have to endure tweets like "We all gotta get together and vote for Agrarian Leader Zapata, y'all."

To me, this videogame-oriented People's Choice Awards is all about the madness of too many cooks, and it's why the exhibition, while groundbreaking because it's there at all, feels kind of horribly generic. With the exception of the inclusion of Irrational Games' BioShock, Bethesda Softworks' Fallout 3, Valve's Half-Life 2 and Clover Studio's Okami, The Art of Video Games is never boldly disruptive. It is therefore tragically disappointing – and often suspect - at its very core.

Harold Goldberg is the author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us, How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture.

Photo by Alan Spearman

Ten-year-old Davis Fortenberry's m3pi robot won first place in the IEEE competition in Orlando.

Davis Fortenberry, 10, rolled out his robot in a college-level competition in Orlando earlier this month and mopped up, save for the jaws on the floor.

With bangs, barely a care about girls and two feet shorter than the competition, this one-kid team outmaneuvered most college teams at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Southeastern competition.

"Actually it was kind of exciting; I wasn't nervous at all," said Davis, a fifth-grader from Piperton.

"When I explained to them how old I was, what grade I was in and that I did have a robot, I think they were afraid of me," he said.

Out of 54 teams, only Florida A&M-Florida State University College of Engineering, University of Alabama and Mississippi State scored higher.

"This is a very, very intelligent boy," said Regina Hannemann, researcher at the University of Kentucky and chairwoman of IEEE District 3 student activities committee.

"A 10-year-old doing this level of programming is astonishing," she said.

Dan Kohn, assistant professor at the University of Memphis, was struck by Davis' calm.

"He fit right in, which was just absolutely incredible. I heard him strike up a conversation with a university student. It wasn't a conversation of a 10-year-old talking to a university student. It was a conversation of equals."

Earlier, competitors had complained about Davis' appearance in the contest, sure the boy was showing off someone else's work.

But when Hannemann announced Davis' first-place win in the open competition, the room erupted in a standing ovation, the only one all weekend.

"It was as much relief as anything," Kohn said. "The problem all engineers see is there is such a lag in the United States for science, technology, engineering and math.

"When you see a young man achieving so much at 10 years old, OK, there is hope for us," he said.

Davis, who has tinkered with robots since he was 5, built his "davibot" in a week, starting with an m3pi ("a robot in itself, really") as the base.

He added an Arduino (Italian microcomputer that tells the base unit whether to go left, right, straight ahead), then designed components for measuring contest specifics: voltage, capacitance, temperature and waveform.

Contest rules also say robots must be completely autonomous, which means no remote controls or human interaction after competition starts.

"I'm just learning what my dad and brother taught me, and I'm applying it to my work," Davis said. "So far, it's been working out."

He attends Tennessee Virtual Academy, an online school approved by the Tennessee legislature last year.

It allows parents to tailor the home-based curriculum, which turned out to be the critical loophole allowing him to qualify to compete.

"I read over rules thoroughly," said Davis' father, Robert Fortenberry, senior vice president of technical services at Cook Systems.

"I could not find anywhere that there was any age limit at all. The requirement was that they have to be an IEEE member."

Student IEEE membership requires a focus on engineering and computer programming. "They assume that is going to be at the university level," Fortenberry said.

Their older son, Madison -- 19 and a senior at the University of West Florida -- also competed as a high school student because he was enrolled in college courses.

Madison was also to compete last weekend. When he got sick the day of the competition, Davis ran his brother's robot team, plus his own.

"They're just kids," Fortenberry said. "We've tried to teach them to use their time wisely and exchange it for something valuable. There is nothing more intrinsically valuable than knowledge."

-- Jane Roberts: (901) 529-2512

© 2012 Memphis Commercial Appeal. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Comments » 7

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• March 26, 2012
• 2:56 a.m.
• Suggest removal
• Reply to this post

MemphisTigersFootball writes:

Great job!

• March 26, 2012
• 11:46 a.m.
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• Reply to this post

GrizTitansCubsFan writes:

Outstanding! Congrats Davis!

• March 26, 2012
• 12:21 p.m.
• Suggest removal
• Reply to this post

Larry_D writes:

Good work Davis! I know your Dad is very proud of you!

• March 26, 2012
• 2:40 p.m.
• Suggest removal
• Reply to this post

grammargirl writes:

I predict that in about seven years, MIT and Cal-Tech will be calling young Mr. Fortenberry. Congratulations and best of luck to you, Davis, and to your family.

• March 26, 2012
• 3:13 p.m.
• Suggest removal
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synapse writes:

Good going, kid.

Can you build a protocol droid to help your mom next?

• March 26, 2012
• 5:35 p.m.
• Suggest removal
• Reply to this post

LarsJ writes:

Great story!

• March 26, 2012
• 7:54 p.m.
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OldHippieChick writes:

The United States has no boundries if we will enable our children through care, education and respect.

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I LOVE THIS!

If you are a web designer looking to learn new skills, or even just to listen in on conversations about your passion, then podcasts might just be the ticket for you. You can listen in the car, at work, or even at the gym, to gain new insights into your career. Talk about multi-tasking! Here are 5 of my favorite web design podcasts:

1. The Big Web Show

The Big Web Show focuses on a special guest each episode. This is great, because this allows each episode to take a new direction, usually going in depth into what the guest’s specialty is, or is really passionate about. It is produced by the 5by5 Network and features topics like web publishing, art direction, content strategy, typography and more. Big Web has a very loose format, but still manages to pack in a lot of great  information, and the guest format brings in new perspective each and every episode.

2. The Web Ahead

Also produced by the 5by5 Network, The Web Ahead is the more technical cousin of The Big Web Show. More dedicated to the web developer, the show hosted by Jen Simmons focuses on the changing technologies and future of the web. They discuss such topics as HTML5, mobile, responsive web design, iOS, and Android. There are all topics that web designers should be well aware of, even if they are on the front-end.

3. The Deeply Graphic DesignCast

With only 8 episodes under its belt, Deeply Graphic has already found its stride. While not exclusively devoted to web design, many of their episodes do focus on it. Already, there is a 2 part episode all about the web design trends of 2012, as well as an episode dedicated to online portfolio websites. Most of the other episodes focus on general business-side topics that print as well as web designers can apply to their business. Produced by The Deep End design studio in Los Angeles, the three hosts have varied experience, and weigh in on issues from different viewpoints, which makes for a very interesting and entertaining show.

4. Shop Talk

Shop Talk is a podcast with a twist… its also a live call-in show! The two hosts, Chris and Dave share a genuine enthusiasm about web design and development that is infectious. They have guests on a regular basis and they have a lot of fun talking about some really geeky things. But I just happen to be a geek too, so it fits into my day perfectly.

5. The Boagworld Show

Boagworld combines entertaining banter and great information into an extremely listenable package. They follow the format which I like, one topic per episode. But these guys take it a step further, and organize their podcasts into “seasons” of 6 episodes each. Each season is its own umbrella topic, and each episode fits nicely under that umbrella.

 

Megan Kirby

Megan Kirby is a graphic designer specializing in typography, web, branding, stationery, fine paper products & wedding suites. She has had work featured in blogs, magazines, books & even had some work exhibited. Always on Twitter & Pinterest, a self proclaimed thrift store addict & a lover of orange cats.

More Posts - Website - Twitter

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