Friday Favorites!

Here are some of my favorite things this week! Hope you enjoy them =)

this photo of Yorkshire, England *gorgeous!*

a tiny baby platypus!

this dog! pomeranian + husky mix

how to make a super cute garland

brilliant idea for wedding thank you cards

Taking a Break.

Just taking a much deserved couple of days off from posting, I'll be back tomorrow with Friday Favorites! Hope you enjoy the rest of your day =)

30 Days of Lists: Conclusion


Here's what I've learned about myself by completing the 30 Days of Lists project and another list of things that I would like to try. It feels kinda weird not having a list to complete tomorrow, I might search the internet and come up with a list of my own, haha.  Or I'll probably post a complete index of all my 30 Days of Lists posts.. that is pretty likely.  I need to focus my efforts on other things though, like moving this blog to my own hosting and switch to wordpress. Or getting that other website of mine going and finish the design. There are many things I could be doing instead of making more lists =P We'll see what happens!!

Day 30: Today's To Do List


My 30 Days of Lists project is now complete!!! Yay!!! Tomorrow I might do an extra list of "what i've learned" by doing the project. I'm not sure yet. I did enjoy making the lists every day, although posting them daily on the blog quickly became quite a chore. I think if I do another project like this I'll just post the lists on the blog weekly!!

Day 29: Favorite Foods

Just one more list to go and this 30 Days of Lists project will be FINISHED!! Hope you are having a Hoppy Easter =)

Zoya # ZP470 Malia



Malia is a pastel purple color that I think is perfect for Spring. And for Easter =) Hope you all have a Hoppy Easter!!

Day 28: Vacations to Take

I would absolutely love to be able to travel around the world and take a trip to anywhere my heart desires. I would do like Julia Roberts' character in the movie Eat, Pray, Love and go to one place.. stay for 3 or 4 months, then move on to the next.. and repeat the cycle. You would grow so much as a person by being able to experience other cultures of the world =)

Day 27: Lessons Learned

Yet another list from 30 Days of Lists.. I hear they are working on a new session of 30 Days of Lists that should be out pretty soon! I'm excited that I only have 3 more days until I'm finished with this one =)

Friday Favorites: New Music

One of my Christmas gifts this past year was a $50 iTunes giftcard, and I finally got around to using it last night! Here's what I bought (note: these are all full albums):

 I have been listening to this album on grooveshark.com for a long time now, it's about time I bought it for myself =) I own all of Avril's albums. Deluxe version has 6 extra tracks, including "Alice" and "Bad Reputation" both of which I really like and are very good!

I'm usually not a fan of country music, but I just had to get the soundtrack after I saw the movie! This is the "main" soundtrack with songs from Gwyneth Paltrow, Faith Hill, Trace Adkins, Hank Williams Jr and more..  there are 2 different Country Strong soundtracks on iTunes!!

Somehow is album managed to come out 2 years ago without me ever knowing about it, it's New Found Glory's most recent album and the 5th album by New Found Glory that I own. I have just about all of their albums, only missing one or two from the beginning days.

Another soundtrack that I just HAD TO buy after seeing the movie! I absolutely loved this movie and I am planning on purchasing it to add to my own personal collection. The soundtrack is 90% songs by Christina Aguilera, another artist that I love and I own all of her albums. Highly recommend you watch the movie.

So I kinda sorta have a little bit of the Bieber Fever, his songs are catchy and make you feel happy. Plus, he's got a pretty good voice. I haven't seen the movie and this is the only album of Justin Bieber's that I have bought. I swear!

All in all, I think I did pretty well at getting my money's worth. I have 5 cents leftover from that gift card!! Have you bought any new music lately??

Day 26: Books to Read in 2011

I ended up putting a lot of books on creativity, crafts, and business on my list, and that was no accident. Those topics have been running circles in my mind lately =) I just ordered Craft, Inc and Big-A## Book of Crafts off of amazon, literally just a couple of minutes ago! I am looking forward to having those books in my hands to read and learn from, plus I got a few great handmade product ideas in my head yesterday so I'm currently working up prototypes of them. Hah.. It's something I am excited about, the idea of earning extra income by doing something you love. One day I'd love to run my own business, a retail business with a physical store even! It's something worth dreaming about in my opinion!! It's definitely something that makes me happy, I went to bed with a smile on my face after dreaming up all those product ideas.

Zoya Nail Polish Exchange

Zoya is hosting an awesome nail polish exchange program in honor of Earth Day, here's how it works.. you pick out Zoya nail polishes (at least 6 of them) and pay $4 each, which includes shipping & processing (and is half the regular price of each polish!!) they ship them to you. And then you choose an equal number of your old nail polishes and ship them back to Zoya for them to dispose of. It's a pretty sweet deal and I've participated in the program in the past. I love Zoya polishes and I would totally take advantage of this deal if "do not buy nail polish" wasn't on the list of things for me to accomplish before my birthday! Hah.. See, I'm being good and following my own goals. It's a GREAT deal and it's good for the environment too, so I encourage everyone to participate!!

Day 25: Things I'd Rather Do

I wrote this list at around 8am this morning, so yeah. I did have a nap since then, and I did play with the puppy, get on the internet, tweet, and read blogs. And I watched Country Strong. The only thing I didn't do was go for a walk, but other than that one thing I finished the whole list. Hah. I don't think that was the goal of making this list!

Weigh In #9

I told you last week that those numbers were nothing worth worrying about, yeah :) guess who was right! ME! I joke, I joke.  (kinda?) I'm impressed with myself, although I didn't do any exercising this past week either. Hmm.

LAST WEEK: 179
THIS WEEK: 175

Day 23 & 24


So I totally forgot to post my list yesterday, so I'm posting 2 lists today to make up for it! Day 23: Guilty Pleasures and Day 24: I Make Lists For... done. Only 6 more days left to go :)

Day 22: Today I Saw..


I had a hard time writing this list, and then the internet wasn't cooperating. If it's not one thing, it's the other.. right?? The point is that it's posted, and with MINUTES to spare =P Goodnight.

Day 21: Things to Do This Spring

Notice how I wrote "go on a picnik" ????????? i've definitely been using picnik.com too much for my image editing.. hahaha

I have been doing my best to be outside enjoying the days when it's super nice outside and I'm not working, I think it's the best to be out there just before sunset and really look forward to that time of day. 

Right now I'm watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on tv, it's actually the only POTC movie I own and here I am watching it on tv.. how sad. I am looking forward to the 4th movie of the series that should be coming out one of these days, in the summer maybe? I just know that it's coming! Anyone else excited about it??

Day 20: Celebrity Crushes

I am so tired and really was just gonna wait to post this until tomorrow, I've only had about 3-4 hours of sleep in the past 24 hours. I have to work in the morning. I want to sleep. See you tomorrow.

Day 19: Recipes to Try


This was another excellent list for me to make, now I can cook some of these recipes and use it as part of my "27 before 28" list!! Pretty exciting! I'm also trying to decide when to start my "don't watch tv for a week" so I can cross that off too.. I really want to watch the new episode of Glee on Tuesday though, so I guess I'll being starting sometime after that =)

Day 18: Road Trip Must Haves

I wish I went on road trips. spontaneously, for no reason.. with friends who would jump at the chance to have a road trip. Here's what I'd take along on a road trip!

Inspiration: Rainbow Colors

Wow, it's been a long time since I've done one of these inspiration posts! I really love to be inspired by things so this is something I enjoy posting :) This post is all about multicolor things, aka rainbow colored things, whether that is photography, handmade, or whatever else! I hope you like it and find some inspiration.






more images after the jump!

Day 17: Words that are Hard to Spell


I am definitely one of those people that if I am writing something down and I don't know how to spell the word I want to use, I'll instead use other words that I can spell to get the desired point across! Hah, I'm not in school anymore so I seldom have to write things down for others to read, I don't worry about typing things out on the computer because Hello! Spell Check!, so I don't really come across words too often to add to this list. In fact, I had a hard time coming up with words so I actually cheated and googled it and put some of those words on there!

I apologize that this post went up so late tonight, I've spend the majority of my day working on getting my wordpress layout just right for the new site/domain that I'm working on. P.S. Blogging every day is hard! Even if it's just a silly one of these lists! =)

Day 16: Stuff to Do in My Town

I live in a small town with a population of about 8.000 people, so there are only a few things to do. Otherwise you drive to the next town over (about twice the size) or take an hour drive into the big city if you wanna go to a mall, or a concert, or whatever else... it's not too terrible, really!

Weigh In #8


Well.. I guess I'll start off with saying that I wasn't expecting much out of this weigh in.. it's that time of the month, and although I have gone for walks and went to workout, well.. you know. And I ate 4 slices of cinnamon toast last night so that couldn't have helped matters either! Hah. It's just numbers.

LAST WEEK: 176.5
THIS WEEK: 179

It's only numbers.. it's only numbers... wish I had some extra money so I could afford to join a gym, it's only $30-35 a month but that's money I don't have right now. We'll see how things go.

Cinnamon Toast

I was craving something sweet, something simple, something that wouldn't still be left in the house for another 2 days for me to snack on.. My solution? Cinnamon Toast! I found Pioneer Women's "Cinnamon Toast the Right Way" recipe and it sounded good, so I made it! It was simple, it only took about 15 minutes before it was ready to eat and there were no leftovers!

(photo from thepioneerwoman.com)

I used plain ol' white sandwich bread and made 4 slices of toast, because I had mixed up that much of the butter/cinnamon/sugar mixture! Hah.. I was only planning on eating 2-3 slices but what's a person to do? You can't just throw away that perfectly good stuff. I ate it all. My verdict? SOOO GOOD. I'm debating on making it again for breakfast!

Day 15: What's On My Shopping List

Like most girls probably do, I always have a list of things in my head of things that I need to buy or keep an eye out for.. here's my current list.


I have to get my car inspected and renewed this month, so I have car tires on the brain... plus a little of everything else! My Weekly Weigh In will be posted tomorrow so keep an eye out for it!

Day 14: Things I Love About..

Here's Day 14 of the 30 Days of Lists project.. I chose to list things I love about Blogs, Blogging, Life and Work.. Which mostly includes every area of my existence.. ha...


P.S. I am writing this post outside and noticing that my laptop could use a REALLY good cleaning! Oh My.. smudges all over the screen! I obviously don't notice it as much when I'm on the laptop in my room!!

P.P.S. If you know of any ways to get wasps and/or huge bumble bees away from your home, please tell me! I am outside on the back deck with my laptop and there are wasps and huge bees everywhere!!

Day 13: D.I.Y.'s I Want to Try

The sites listed: craftedlove.com , homemade by jill, little birdie secrets

I found 19 Do It Yourself tutorials that I wanted to try! Yay :) but a lot of them involve sewing which I don't exactly remember how to do from taking home ec class in high school... so I guess I need to relearn how to sew again... =( Take a look at those sites, I'm sure you can easily find some awesome tutorials that you'd like to try!!

Friday Favorites

My weekly list of some of my favorite things, a lot of them are found from pinterest.com  but I do occasionally throw in links from other places. As I write this post I am sitting out on the deck enjoying the super lovely spring weather.. it's just warm enough and the sun is shining! I really love this kind of weather and wouldn't mind at all if it was this way the whole year =)

I think if I could decorate a room/home with anything I wanted.. I'd do colorful things like these:






What do you think? I'd really love to live in a colorful, inspiring home! I really love the kitchen and the wine rack turned yarn storage organizer the most of all!

Day 12: My Rituals

It's supposed to be "weekly rituals" but I'm breaking the mold and spliting it up into weekly and daily rituals. So There! I don't have very many rituals, this wasn't an easy list to make.


P.S. This post almost wasn't going to get done today, but I'm cramming it in before I leave for work. Be Thankful =D Hope everyone is having a good day!

Day 11: Date Night Ideas


Really, for a date night, just doing anything together is great! P.S. I wish I lived near a beach.

Day 10: My Wishlist

nook color, ipod nano, new car, peace in the universe.. the usual stuff.

Day 9: Favorite Sites & Blogs

If you have been reading my blog at all, you already know ALL of my favorite blogs (they are listed on the sidebar!!) so this list won't really contain anything new for you.  But maybe you like looking at my handwriting so it's all worth it? Ha. I don't know.. here's my list!!


In other news, I think I've hit a stalling point on my new website/blog and as a result I'll have to push back the opening date. I need to rethink the true focus of the site and then start from there.  So basically, all the time I've spent working on it so far has pretty much gone to waste. Hit a bump in the road.. maybe you could help.. It's going to be a beauty and fashion type of blog, but not focusing on makeup product reviews. Maybe tips and application type of things, but on the products themselves. Maybe I'll post outfits. I'm not sure. It's all up the air at the moment. Focused more on actual blogging, and not writing articles and reviews. What to you enjoy about beauty & fashion related blogs?

Day 8: What's In My Bag

It's about time I did one of these "What's In My Bag" posts!! Hah,, another thing that I had planned on doing anyway that just happened to be part of the 30 Days of Lists =D The photos on the page are taken with my Fuji Instax Mini 7s, and are not attached to the page just yet! Hah.. not sure how to go about gluing them on the page without messing up the photos or the paper. Was thinking maybe a couple dots with a glue gun in the corners would do the trick!


my bag for the past 4 months...

mess around with picnik... click for larger image
p.s. that lotto ticket was a loser

Well I guess that's it, I hope you enjoyed this post!! It's unbelievably warm and windy outside.. it's 84 degrees in this house with the windows open.  We wanted warmth and sunshine but this is a little much!

EDIT:: Sorry I forgot to post this before... No, the lottery ticket wasn't a winner. Not even a free ticket. Blah!