Friday Faves

It's friday!  I'm so excited for the long weekend.  I have no idea what I'll do with my time but something tells me that I might be taking a trip to Ikea.  I just have too many home projects I want to get done and need stuff from there.  Anyway!  Here's a list of my faves from the week:

I love this.  It seriously cracks me up a lot.  So hopefully it does the same for you.

THESE Avengers inspired dresses.  I love them. Especially Thor's.  So cute!

Okay.  Are you freaking KIDDING me with THESE?!? Disneyfied versions of the x-men?  Look how stinking cute Kitty Pryde is!  I wish there was a cartoon in this style.  I would just about die.

            

Who else is super excited to watch Moonrise Kingdom (which comes out today)?  It looks seriously great and I'm pretty excited for it.

It's great for a snack, it fits on your back!

Tuesday Bluesday? Watch this video!



The amount that I love this video is astounding.  I laughed so hard I cried a little bit.  All because I was so worried that the slinky would fall of.

Does it fall off?

Watch the video to find out!

PS - Happy Tuesday!

OTW: Man it's hot!

I think I need a better system for recording things over my weekend - visually.  That system would go something like: bring camera with you and use it.

It's crazy, I know.

Anyway, so this weekend was definitely needed after my 3 day work week last week. ;)  It was rough, let me tell ya!  The weekend itself wasn't super eventful but if you know me at all, you know that's how I like them.

Friday night was spent hanging out with Danielle and John getting amazing ice cream at our local shop, Margie's and watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (part 1).  Oh my god guys.  Ice cream for dinner is one of the best perks of being a grown up!  And hand scooped sundaes are just the tits.  However, in the future I'd rather eat my ice cream dinner before 9 oclock at night because that's a little late to be starting a long epic movie and expect me to behave the whole time.  (spoiler: I didn't).

sundae dinner.

Saturday was spent waking up way earlier than normal, which seems to be how Kelly and I do things.  If I have plans with her I should just be prepared to wake up and go go go!  It was really fun to grab breakfast with her at Einstein bagels and then hit up a neighborhood garage sale. The garage sale was huge.  And spread out over too many blocks.  And hot.  But I came out of it with a cheap copy of Bring it On and a Pyrex bowl to add to me infinitely growing collection. 

hot kitty.

The day turned to evening and was rounded out with a trip to a local pub to share a burger with John.  And to escape our crazy hot apartment.  It was really nice if you don't think about the burger being burned or the service being slow.  At least it was good company.  We stopped in at Hazel on the way home and bought some goodies.  I'm extremely pumped about our DC Comics post cards.  They're amazing.  I just need more pen pals!

zombikeys. disco stu. postcards!

If we're being honest, Sunday was spent playing video games on my computer and not wearing pants.  I'm sorry, but it was just too damn hot.  And it was actually a perfect Sunday being lazy and avoiding the outside world.  I know I wouldn't trade it for a thing.

Photo an Hour - Mother's Day

I've seen photo an hour posts all over the blogosphere and thought it sounded like a fun idea.  The problem was picking a good day to document.  So, when I went home for mother's day, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to give it a go.

So here's what my Sunday looked like!

9:00AM - Wake up in a big ol' bed and snap a photo of myself all crazy looking and poorly lit.  Love it.

10:00AM - Enjoying the fact that the TVs at my dad's house have Cable.  Which gives me the opportunity to watch "Because I Said So", which I own on DVD.

11:00AM - Make up time!  Getting ready for my mom and sister to pick me up.

12:00PM - Mother's day trip to Wojo's to buy some flowers for my amazing mom.  So pretty!

1:00PM - Visiting with my mom's kitties.  The black one, Hannah, is EVIL.

2:00PM - VISITING WITH BABY HAZEL OMG.  All caps because it was completely necessary.  This baby is amazing.  I love her.

3:00PM - Still visiting.  I love it. That's her with her dad.

4:00PM - Baby Hazel got so sleepy so she passed out on her momma.  They had to leave us soon after. :(

5:00PM - Time for me to kick my feet up and fall asleep for the next hour or so.  Which is why there's no 6:00 photo.

7:00PM - Dinner time means Jet's Pizza time.  Yum yum!

8:00PM - Home to my dad's to hang out and stalk Harold the cat.

9:00PM - This is where my night got "interesting".  In that Ash wasn't feeling well and had to be taken to the emergency clinic. :(  BTW - I love Animal Emergency Center in Novi.  They're amazing.

10:00PM - Still at the vet.  Waiting for Ash's tests to be run.

11:00PM - Yep.  Still at the vet.  Can you tell how tired we were?  At least this is our last hour there.  We found out ash essentially had a bladder infection.  So that's surprisingly good news.

12:00AM - Driving home! Finally!  So dark! So tired!

1:00AM - oh.my.god.  Longest day ever!  Finally home and ready for bed.  Oi! The end!

Over The Weekend (Wednesday Edition)

Yes, I'm aware that it's Wednesday.  The question is, are you aware that it's more like my Monday because I had a long weekend?  No?  Well, it is.

This weekend, I went home to the east side of Michigan to visit with baby Hazel and the rest of my family.  It was awesome, and she's adorable.  But you won't be seeing any photos of her here yet because I did a photo an hour challenge on Sunday and I'll be posting that tomorrow.

Today though, I can at least tell you about the rest of my weekend.  It. was. awesome.

On Monday, John and I drove out to Sign of the Beefcarver.  His favorite restaurant pretty much ever.  I'd never had it, and it happened to be right near my brother's house, so we made a stop there for a nice hearty lunch.

This restaurant is hilarious.  Really tasty in a comfort food sort of way, but overall hilarious.  We were, hands down, the youngest people there.  And this older couple kept talking to me about how cute my skirt was and how weird it was that I was taking pictures of our food.  After all, it's just Beefcarver.  I don't think they understood what a journey this was.

And my goodness we had so much food.  It was an insanely huge lunch.  Afterwards, we went over to my brother and sister's house to play with baby Hazel.  Which really meant playing with Maeby the dog and watching Hazel sleep.  But it was nice to be able to visit for a while longer.  And we even walked to their local comic book shop to browse for a while.  Berkley is a pretty sweet town.

After hanging out for a while, we headed back to my dad's house.  But we took a trip down memory lane by stopping at the batting cages/go karts/mini golf place we used to frequent when we were kids.  Besides, I'd never been to the batting cages before.  So I couldn't just say no.  It was pretty fun!  Once you get over the whole being really bad at it and being made fun of by 16 year olds thing.  But man am I sore today!

That night, we went with my dad and step mom out to Clarkston to try the "new" bbq place there, the Woodshop.  I almost didn't want to go after eating so much for lunch but I just couldn't turn down some good BBQ.  It's a pretty strong magnet for me.

Anyway, that's my weekend in a nutshell.  Until you add in the whole day that's missing here.  But it was all a great time and I can't wait to go back again someday soon.  There's just something so calming about being     in the place that you grew up.

How was your weekend?

Friday Faves - Random Compilation

Better late than never - but here are this week's favorites.  No real theme.  Unless 'awesome' is a theme.

Which it is.  A theme to my life!  BOOM.

... Moving on.

THIS dress by BB Dakota.  I love it.  But, of course it isn't available in my size anymore anywhere.  So I'm just sad.  And kicking myself for not getting it.

I've been watching this clip non stop for a while now.  I just can't even.  It's so stinking cute.  And perfect.  And completely captures the heart of 2004 version of me.  Sigh. 

THIS planner.  From Poketo.  I have a problem with collecting notebooks and planners.  Like, I have 2 daily planners that I use pretty much daily.  To write barely anything in.  It's ridiculous.  But, I can't help it!  It's too much fun to buy office supplies!  And this one is mint!  MINT!

How cute are THESE baby avengers (okay, high school).  Look at little Hawkeye with that amazing hair cut! And RDJ?  Lookin' fine! 

Anyway.  I think that's enough to share for this week's Friday Faves.  I'm just excited for the weekend!  I'm going home to Michigan for a few days to visit the adorableness that is my niece.  And I'm going to try to take 8 million pictures.  And enjoy being away from the city.  

Parks and Recreation

So, Parks & Rec has it's season finale is tonight.  And in honor of that awesomeness, and finding out who is going to win the election, I'm sharing this gag reel from Season 2.

Yes, it's 15 minutes long.  But it's also really awesome. 

Especially the cameos.  This show is seriously one of the best shows on TV.  Plus, Adam Scott! Nuff Said!

Oh, what the hell.  Here's some more! And way shorter!

DIY: Katniss Braid

This is what you do with your time when you have Saturdays alone in the apartment and you're addicted to a certain book franchise.  You google the iconic hairstyle of the main character and hope that you can figure out a way to achieve it on your own head.

I'm not going to lie, the main reason I'm sharing this is because I was super proud of this.  It was my second attempt at the braid after loosely following instructions on how to get there.  If you want to learn how to do this braid yourself, I recommend checking out the MakeupGeek's Blog.  She does a fantastic job explaining it in multiple photos.

I, on the other hand, am going to briefly explain to you what I did and let you marvel at my mad skills.

1.) Learn how to french braid.
I taught myself this one day at work several years ago.  Until that day, it was a complete mystery to me.  But once you can do a basic french braid, a world of opportunities will open to you.

Such as....
2.) Learn to do a "dutch braid"
Let's be honest.  I didn't know that there was a term for this until recently.  I basically describe it as doing a french braid but pulling the hair from under instead of over.  Yeah, I'm sure that made sense.

3.) For the Katniss braid, you'll need to start your dutch braid over your ear.
Or at least near your ear.  Whatever.  The point is, you want to keep the braid going in sort of a diagonal downward motion towards the opposite shoulder from the ear you chose.

OMG.  I'm so bad at explaining this.

4.) For mine, I kept the braid itself close to the bottom of my head so I'd be more likely to have enough hair to pull over my shoulder.
I am trying to grow my hair.  I've been doing so for 2 years.  But it's never long enough to do things the way I want, like this braid.  Ideally, I wouldn't have to worry about having extra hair to just braid at the end, it'd just be there.  But that's not the case, and may not be the case for you.

5.) If, like me, your hair is slippery and layered, you'll need to go back in and pin the sticking out pieces in place.
Does this need more explanation?

6.) You're done! Take pictures of yourself and send them to every Hunger Games nerd you know!
Post them on Instagram! Send them in text messages! Share them with me!  No one ended up saying anything about mine in person but I just know it was too darn cool for school.  Ugh.  It's no wonder I don't have more friends.

That's it!  I hope you enjoyed my randomly worded tutorial!  But for real, read another one, a better one, and report back with how you did. :)

OTW: Estate Sales

This was the weekend that I became an estate sale non-virgin.  I can't think of a different, more appropriate way to say that.  So deal with it.

I also replaced my camera's battery charger so that I can actually add better photos to my blog.

Saturday morning, my dear friend Kelly picked me up (way earlier than I'd normally be awake) and drove me to my first ever estate sale.  It was fantastic.  I wanted to check out what they had, and surprised myself by not buying the only Pyrex I saw in the whole place.  Kelly, on the other hand, walked away with 2 sweet chairs, a lamp, and a bottle opener that stabbed her.

I was a little dismayed that I didn't buy anything, but it also encouraged us to check out another estate sale that was nearby.  And my goodness am I glad we did.  It was the cutest little house filled with mid century everything and great housewares.  Needless to say, I bought my fair share of neat things.

I went a little overboard on photographing the same things over an over but I just LOVED all the little details in everything I got.  BTW, I only spent $14 on all this.  So that's pretty swell.  I also forgot to take a picture of the 2 super cute mugs that I got.

So, pictured above:

• 3 tea towels (one fall, one blueberry pie, and one awesome cinco de mayo one with a guy on a burro in a sombrero)
• 1 crocheted placemat
• 1 set of nice crochet hooks
• 1 trivet covered in metallic bees
• 2 plastic mint colored placemats
• and a TON of awesome wrapping paper.

The wrapping paper?  I got a box full of it.  It's a bunch of one sheeters with cute patterns all over them.  I picked my favorites to share here.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them, it makes me wish I scrap booked.  But I'll be sure to get crafty with them sooner or later.

Other than estate sales, I spent the weekend lounging at home.  Seeing the Avengers (AMAZING).  And working on a DIY project that I'll be sure to share later this week.  

What about you, how did you spend your weekend?

May the Fourth Be With You!

Well, guys, it's Star Wars day.  And if it weren't for The Avengers being released today, I'd probably be watching the original trilogy.  But since I can't, I figured I'd share some of my favorite Star Wars finds with you for Friday Faves.

THESE behind the scenes photos that were recently released.  I love them.  I want to sunbathe in a leia swimsuit.  Come on!

I LOVE this video.  Comedians. Doing Star Wars lines.  So good!  And Emma Stone (who I absolutely love) is so good at being Leia!

I want these for our toy shelf.  hahaha Charred Remains.  I love it.

Look at the wampug!!  He's so adorable!

I'm pretty sure I've shared THIS print before.  But I love it.  And I want to have it.  Or one of the other Star Wars prints from this shop.  I just can't not share some sort of print.  I hoard them.

I'm sure I could share more, but I figured I'd give you the opportunity to share with me instead. 

So what are your favorite Star Wars things on this glorious day?