Day 32: Already Wrapping Gifts

I didn't feel like putting off wrapping gifts until later. I didn't have anything else to do either so I wrapped the stuff I bought yesterday, including the birthday gift for my friend who has a "close to Christmas" birthday. Luckily for her I'm not a dick who will lump the gift in as her Birthday AND a Christmas gift. I bought her a gift for each respectively. It's the right thing to do and I'm sure she's used to getting the shaft on Christmas because of it.

Day 31: Leftovers & Black Friday Shopping

POW. Like I said, leftovers. Went Black Friday shopping with my sister and didn't eat anything ALL DAY. We had coffee and left the house. 8.5 hours later around 9:30pm we finally settled in and had dinner. Black Friday shopping isn't all it's cracked up to be BTW. No Sale was worth it or even decent in general and there were no lines anywhere but Big Box stores which we avoided like the Plague, Electronics stores which we also avoided, and places that had sales where the whole store was 50% off like Old Navy.

Old Navy is already pretty cheap so add 50% off on EVERYTHING and you have a recipe for a 3 hour line. When we walked in there the line went to the back of the store and wrapped around aisles and didn't move the 15 min we were in there so I imagine the back of the line was over an hour wait. We left and came back later and though the line was still to the back of the store, I was up at the register in about 30 min. Other than that, nothing was worth it.

Day 30: Thanksgiving 2013

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

We had turkey day at my sister's boyfriend's house as we have for the last couple years and his brother who is in the Marines is celebrating with us for the 2nd time. My sister decorated the table nicely as you can see above.

I brought my old gal Mini with me since I can't possibly fathom leaving her alone on such a great Holiday. She got to play with Daisy the pug though I couldn't get a pic of Daisy because she never stands still for even a second >:[

My sister made this AWESOME looking pie.

POW. BLADOW. WATCH OUT NOW. This pie was SO DAMN GOOD. It was a chocolate pumpkin pie. It was absolutely to die for. I am SO SAD there is currently no more :(

I was starving so as soon as the food came out I scarfed it down and didn't get any pics of it. Oh well, there are always leftovers :p

Day 29: Not having to work tomorrow

I worked both jobs today as I do every Wednesday. I didn't mind because we were busy and Teresa and Damaris were working :) (my 2 fav people there) The bad part about working at a restaurant that has amazing food is I always want to eat something whether I'm hungry or not BUT I have been very good about only eating something if I am absolutely starving and today I was so  got one of my personal favs, A piece of grilled chicken with pita and tzatziki sauce.

SO GOOD.

I also went home and played some Fat Princess and Sims Freeplay. Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving I had a couple of the guys get together to have Thanksgiving dinner together. I know, I'm a loser. 

You have to admit, it's pretty cute.

Day 28: Saints Row: The Third

Started playing "Saints Row: The Third" and made a character to play. She's pretty awesome. She has a Russian accent, silver body, and green/blue hair. She's a bad ass. This game is pretty fun, it's just like Vice City, my only issue with it is flying helicopters. I REALLY hate flying them in the game, it's hard to manage.

  

 

Day 27: Pam's Lipstick

One of the vendors who comes by at my job every week has in the last couple months worn this very pretty orangey colored lipstick. I always compliment her on it as if it's the first time I have ever seen it so she said if I wanted she could order it for me and I can pay her for it since she gets free shipping for it. She brought it in yesterday for me and told me not to worry about paying her because it's a gift. I love that woman. I love the color because with brown hair and ANY color skin, it's a beautiful color. It's a shade I have never really seen before and that's why I am so fascinated by it. It's M.A.C's "Ravishing"

          

Day 26: Long Hair Don't Care

Actually I DO care because It's crazy how long it's getting. I've only had long hair once before in my life and I've been taking supplements to grow my hair longer (pretty sure I just recently posted about this same thing but my roots just keep growing out faster and faster which is awesome but annoying too since I dye my hair.

Day 25: John from NJ

Funny group. John from NJ came down to compete in a body building contest (You wouldn't guess it but he's ripped and he's the one posing obviously lol) This dinner was hilarious. John was telling us of this creation he made with waffles a long time ago, "Waffles with layers of ice cream, chocolate chips..." and I interrupted "and pretzels and shrimp" which mace everyone lose it because it's pretty disgusting lol. So happy to see him, sad for such a short time.

Day 24: Scov's Birthday @ Sidebar

It was John's birthday. Drove out to Silver Spring to celebrate. This was just a pic of him with all his lady friends who turned up. So much fun.

Day 23: Wedding Invitations

 Working on my wedding invitations. I completed the design for our Save-the-dates months ago which are so cute and just started working on the invitation design at work since I have nothing else going on. So far so good. I have a bunch of different Tree styles for the bottom though and it's hard picking between them all but here is one picture with a close up, I think it turned out pretty nice.

Day 22: Tom Mison, One Sexy Beast

Are you watching Sleepy Hallow? I am. Does it remind you of Supernatural? It should because it's pretty much the exact same story but with Ichabod Crane as one of the 2 leads and a lot more Civil War and American History in it alongside the same type of demonic, and biblical history like the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, and Devil's traps, etc. *eye roll* That's besides the point though, look at this man...

Are you looking? WELL LOOK AGAIN. Look at that beautifully flawless face. LOOK. He's the man who plays THIS man...

Ichabod Crane

*Swoon*

Okay yes, this is another cheat day, ONCE AGAIN, I forgot to take a picture for the day but I was catching up on Sleep Hallow and thought I'd discuss this beautiful man.

Day 21: Caviar Nails

So my lovely coworker knows how much I adore doing my nails with fun designs and she bought me a set of these fun glue-on nails that have micro beads on them (or caviar beads).

Day 20: A Pic from Friday

Okay so I'm cheating because I totally forgot to take a picture today :/ This is a picture from Friday night when a small group of us went out to D.C. for a very strange night of club hopping.

Day 19: Craft Cart

Finally got to put this thing together. It was pretty easy. It's a craft cart but I am using it mostly for Gift Wrap stuff AND craft objects like Mod Podge, Foam brushes, etc. I am adding some more Ribbon holders on the side at some point and I already added gift bag hooks on the left to hold 3 different size bags. The back I will be adding a gift wrap basket and bracket to hold gift wrap in on the cart. They used to have an actual gift wrap cart back in the day in this ABC Distributing Catalog I got that looked similar to this but already had the additions I put on and will put on and it was $40 so I told myself to get it and the day I went to buy it, it was no longer being sold which made me sad because the same exact cart is now being sold all sorts of places for $250!!! That's ridiculous! I was eyeballing this cart at Michael's for ages but it's expensive so I went one day for some craft stuff and found it was on sale for 60% off and I HAD to get it. I think it ended up being $20 something which is AWESOME.

Day 18: Farmer's Market

There is this building they've been building next t the Sheraton for a while now. Took a photo of the progress and it came out kinda eerie. It's gonna be An Apartment Building.

Went to Mount Vernon Ave outside of Del Ray to walk around and went to the Farmer's Market and picked up some delish pickles. They had all sorts, I should have got the Siracha ones too.

Day 17: Sheraton Suites

 

Fav Hotel to stay at in Old Town, VA

Day 16: Love with Food, "Flavors of Fall"

I have subscribed to "Love with Food" for 3 months now and I contemplated cancelling my subscription (and still might) until this month's subscription came in. Each month a new chef hosts the package and it's contents, this one was "Flavors of Fall" and I feel bad that I can't remember the name of this month's chef but I was SO happy with this one. The last 2 I got left much to be desired. I didn't like one thing in any box. Both had interesting items like vegan cookies and sipping broth which is steeped like tea, apple chips, etc but they weren't any good flavor-wise. I meant to cancel last month but I forgot to so when this month's box came in I was very VERY happy. I took a picture of the contents and can't wait to try everything. The point behind "Love with Food" is that for every box you buy, you are also buying a meal for a hungry child AND it's really cheap. If you do the yearly subscription, it's $10 ($10 + free shipping) a month and if you go month-by-month it's $12 ($10 + $2 shipping). Either way it's a really good price considering each item alone is at least $1-$4 on market shelves and you get about 8 items so it's well worth it plus....YOU ARE FEEDING A HUNGRY CHILD.

In this weeks's box I got an Apricot & Almond fruit and nut bar covered in yogurt, Maple fudge, 2 pieces of gourmet dark chocolate, sweet corn (something like corn nuts), 2 shortbread cookies, pop chips, gourmet caramel popcorn with other flavors mixed, Indian spices for veggies, and a packet of loose herbal tea! This is the best box ever.

Day 15: Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes

Let's talk about this HILARIOUS book that was being re-blogged all over tumblr. I actually saw it from a friend on Facebook and died laughing at the titles and knew I HAD to have it so I bought it about 2 minutes later. It wasn't in stock ANYWHERE but Barnes and Noble (online only because it was sold out in stores, the power of tumblr!) but for anyone who hasn't seen it, I have taken pictures of the Table of Contents, and the back of the book. It's fantastic.

HOW FUNNY IS THAT? The Zeus thing on the back with the fetus in his thigh. WTF is wrong with people? LMFAO. How do you even think of that? LOL.

Day 14: A Sunset, A Captain, & A Game that will be the death of me

I have been playing this game called "Kingdom Rush Frontiers" on my iphone (I finished Kingdom Rush the original game on the PC and found this one in the app store) I have been on this one level for days, it's friggin impossible no matter what I try. I lose almost instantly, it's a pain in my friggin ass, however it's incredibly fun. The challenge makes it worth going back to.

(I DID finally beat it btw, the trick was to use as many archers as possible with some soldiers sprinkled in here or there, I managed to only have 2 people penetrate the "no pass" zone instead of 20)


The day started out dreadful and freezing. It's fall but it's in the low 40's. It was dark and supposed to be raining all day but at work I have no windows so I can never tell (depressing, I know) so I leave work and am greeted by a gorgeous sunset behind the trees in the parking lot.

 

I capped my night off at home by catching up on the latest episode of "Once Upon a Time" (Great show btw) and i love it for it's idea of making these fairy tales we grew up on into human real human beings who have real human problems (with a side of magic) and they humanize them in a way that people can relate too. Anyway, all that aside, I won't lie and say that 99% of the reason I love watching this show is because of a character I NEVER thought I'd ever like from my childhood ideas of him....

But holy shit, can we talk about Captain Hook for a second? He's gorgeous AND he makes me want to cuddle him. I LOVE him and how they made him in the series.

Day 13: Gevalia Mocha Latte K-Cup

We got a fancy new Keurig at work and I went to get some Tea K-Cups which I reviewed on my other blog (not a photo journal) here: WTF Tea K-Cups. While I grabbed some of those I noticed a Mocha Latte K-Cup from Gevalia and got that too. Just tried it today and it's really good! Just like you'd get from a coffee shop.

It comes with a K-cup and a mocha froth packet that you put in your cup before brewing the K-cup. This is what it should look like when done although before I took this picture it was MUCH more frothy upon the initial stirring. It's really good.

Day 12: Noodles Galore

I love spicy noodles. Everyone that knows me knows this. It's pretty much my fav BS food to eat when I'm lazy or just want something really spicy. The more spice the better. Here is what I recently picked up from the store, it's roughly 32 packages of noodles

Day 11: T.G.I Fridays

It was a perfect fall day outside. I wanted to be outdoors and so did Duane so we agreed to go to Top Golf however he wasn't going to get there until 4:30. I knew the sun would be setting soon after we got there but holy shit, the sun setting that day was about a 20 degree difference, it was brutally cold and incredibly crowded so we decided to go to T.G.I. Fridays because in the area around Springfield, VA your choices are very limited unless you want to be around a cesspool of garbage or cigarette smoke. We figured, why not Fridays? They have decent drinks. Later some old friends showed up that had the same idea we did. It was a good time. We were there for a long time though, 5:30pm - almost 1am. But nothing will ever beat the 12 hour happy hour my cousin Carole and I had years ago which also (DUN DUN DUUUN) started at T.G.I Fridays! lol

Day 10: Squidward

My favorite place to shop for food is and always will be at International food markets. First of all the freshness of all the meats, fruits, and veggies is unparallelled when comparing it to large grocery chains plus the quality is 1,000 times better too. Yes, there are some International food market chains on the grid and they fall into my "better than" category as well. If it's INTERNATIONAL, it's just better but that's just my opinion. I went to the market today for some noodles for when I'm in a pinch at home and took my time walking through the whole store to look at what they had. My mouth was watering over their buckets of Seaweed Salad, their Kimchi mixes, Sesame seed snacks, just everything. I walked past the Butcher area which takes up 2 whole sides of the market and includes an extensive fish market and was in awe at not only the amount of meat selections they had (I'm talking about 25 different types of beef cuts not packaged so you can buy it by the pound, the same with the chicken and pork) plus the wall of different sea-foods and about 30 different types of fresh fish maybe even more, but the freshness of everything too.... I haven't full on shopped at an international market in years but I miss it and need to start going again. I used to drive 45 minutes out just to go to the only Han Ah Reum (now known as H-mart) in the area at the time many years ago with my sister. It was a slice of heaven for us. Take a look at that pristine cut and package of squid. I'd never eat it but tell me a Giant you know of that sells that. Shoppers? Safeway? Didn't think so.

Day 9: Long Hair Don't Care

Right, so posting back to back selfies is not good etiquette however it dawned on me after letting my hair down (I usually have it up and pay no mind to it) that my hair is pretty long now and I wanted to post it here to remember as I have only had long hair once before in my entire life. I am taking Biotin, and Nourish-hair for my skin, hair, and nails so I can get long healthy hair come my wedding in November of 2014. I started early knowing my hair takes a millennium to grown an inch and thinking that it wouldn't actually grow that long at all and it has and so fast too! I'm pretty happy with the results so far so if anyone was looking for a way to get longer hair for whatever reason I highly recommend Biotin supplements and GNC's Ultra Nourish-hair.

 

I realize I look like a mess and my hair is super dry and gross but that's because I used a ton of product in it earlier in the day and it turned into a hive. That's beside the point though.

Day 8: A Clean Face before bed

My hair is growing. Second time in my life I've ever had long hair. It's pretty annoying but I'll ride it out a little longer before chopping it off again. Anywho, washed my face off, eyebrows included. Don't care.

Day 7: Nail Forms and Acrylic

It was my second time ever doing a full set of nails in acrylic and first using ASP Form-a-Nail which I bought to make applying acrylic easier on me since I can't seem to get a smooth and steady line and the forms for these things give your a shiny smooth surface after applying. Welp, it was terrible for me because I started it all at 7:30 and didn't get done with everything until 11:15pm. It should NEVER take that long to do acrylic nails but I was being stupidly ambitious and wanted to do sparkles as an inlay and it just took SO MUCH time. It also doesn't help that my nail tool for shaping and filing have very little power to it so instead of it taking 30 seconds per nail to sort out it takes about 10 min or so per nail. It was a disaster to me only because of how friggin long it took and because it took so long I started to get impatient and hurried to get everything done with and so my nails are not as nice looking as I wanted but it's a start. For a first time it doesn't look so bad but at least now I know what to do next time for inlays.....kind of. Anywho if you are new to acrylics I DO recommend ASP Form-A-Nail because on initial application if you put the right amount of acrylic in the form, it comes out unbelievably nice. I wish I just left them as they were but I HAD to have sparkle -_-.

Day 6: Feed the Birds

Nothing special I know, but at lunch I usually leave work and find a nice quiet place to eat and usually when I see squirrels or birds looking for food, if I have junk like crackers or chips with me I share the wealth. I shared my plain chips with them today and they seemed to enjoy it. You're welcome birdies.

Day 5: So Long New Hampshire

Never thought I'd say, "So glad to be home" because I love being away but I really was glad to be back. I was tired, a little hungover from the wedding, and starving. I was also happy because I knew I'd be greeted by my little one, Mini and she passed out next to my bed like so:

            AND, that I'd get to have my favorite dessert, chocolate ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.