Holidate (2020)

Holidate (2020)

Director: John Whitesell

Cast: Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey, Kristin Chenoweth, Frances Fisher, Andrew Bachelor, Jessica Capshaw, Manish Dayal, Alex Moffat, Cynthy Wu

Fed up with being single on holidays, two strangers agree to be each other’s platonic plus-ones all year long, only to catch real feelings along the way. – IMDB

Netflix earliest Christmas/holiday themed romantic comedy was Holiday, released at the end of October. Bearing the talented Emma Roberts who has done quite a few quirky movies in her filmography, Holidate holds a decent premise revolving around the concept of being single during the holidays and the judging eyes of family and friends for not having someone in their life or simply life choices in general. Entering into a holiday contract plus these two people together. While the premise itself is fairly unique using the holiday angle, the whole concept of contractual relationships and the flow of the romantic comedy offers nothing too refreshing.

Romantic comedies aren’t exactly fresh nowadays and yet for those who like to watch it, a lot dwells on the chemistry between the main leads that at least give a reason to root for them. Here’s where some of the deepest issues do occur in the execution. The holiday premise causes the film to jump through the different holidays almost in montage speed giving them very little character build. The scenes that give these two characters the most backstory is in little pieces at the beginning for set-up before the contract, once or twice in the middle and then at the end, when they inevitably face up to their feelings. They have little moments like hooking up after a drunk rendez-vous or helping each other out of embarrassing situations or whatnot and yet, the connection between them is slightly lacking.

If we look at the comedy parts, that part might be a little more successful depending on what your comedy style is. For myself, some of the comedy does land. Embarrassing moments or some over the top bits are good. However, some of the over the top stuff mostly with Kristen Chenoweth’s character sometimes rides along the fine line between being funny and being too much. However, comedy is very subjective. In the comedy department though, Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey do land those moments fairly well.

With that said, Emma Roberts is a really good actress and with what she’s given here, her role is pretty fun. Holidate as a whole is a fairly lackluster and predictable sort of romantic comedy set up and yet, the premise here is fun. It makes sense that it didn’t go full Christmas movie selection since its more about the holidays than set solely during Christmas. Thing is, Holidate is somewhat of a middling viewing. If you enjoy romantic comedies, this one is okay and you can give it a shot. Its nothing super memorable but it has some fun and awkward moments.

DIY Crafts: Marbled Ornaments

It seems crafts are definitely in the air as I tackle on something that I’ve seen around the Facebook feeds and Youtube front pages over the past year and while it was for some other things like car aesthetics and such, I decided to try to do it for ornaments as I did some research and some people do it as well.

This was a learning process so most of it was a failure BUT, I think I had one that turned out okay and the other ones, I’m going to redecorate so that they can be used for tree. As for why its a failure, I’ll talk about at the end. The process in general works but its more the execution…

Anyways..let’s check it out!

Craft accessories

• Old nail polish
• Clear baubles (mine are glass, but they do sell it in plastic..not sure how that would end up though)
• Room temperature water
• Old container (not reusable for any edible items)
• Toothpicks
• Cotton swabs

How to do it:

1. Fill the container with room temperature water. Take the nail polish color(s) you want to use and drop it into the water. It should float and expand.
2. Quickly, use the toothpick to make the patterns (if its multiple colors). I believe you can for single color also but I haven’t tried before.
3. Use a glove if you want to cover the entire bauble or dip it half way to wrap it up. Remember to use a cotton swab to pick up any left over colors from the water before re-emerging the bauble from the water.

Voila! That’s the final and most successful one (at the sixth try)!

But I’m not going to cheat all of you out of all my failures as well so here’s all six of them…

Look at it like how you’d do a C shape and that’s the order of how it was done.

• The first was the result of not having a cotton swab to pick up the excess so it dragged all over it creating a huge thick smush. The colors aren’t bad but that blob doesn’t work with it.
• Two and Five has the issues of mostly choosing bad colors so it just blended together into a whole lot of nothing.
• Three and Five suffers a bit from the first issue I had but also had these issues of the toothpick dragging too late and it had already formed the film so the colors moved all into a bunch
• Six is by far the best one both in marbled effects as well as the color combination

There you go! That’s the little DIY Marbled Ornaments that I did! Its really a lot harder than it looks. I wanted to try it to get rid of all the old nail polish that I can’t use anymore because its separated or whatnot. I wonder if using not so separated one would be better even if I did shake it to make it work. There is a big nail polish fumes emitting from the bauble though. So you will want to air them out a lot before using these DIY Ornaments.

Other than that, it is pretty fun to mix and match colors and work on this. Like I mentioned above, I will probably find some way to incorporate other old things and add some stuff to these failed ornaments so that they can be used one way or another to hide the issues on the surface. I’ll see what I can do. Maybe I’ll do an Instagram post on it or something when I’m done.

Have you tired marbled ornaments with nail polish?
If you have, please tell me whether you were successful and where you see my issues are. Any tips and suggestions will be highly appreciated!