Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I love any excuse to put big red hearts all around my house and bake something for the one I love. Travis and I are just missing each other because of our schedules today (He went to work at 4:30 am, I'm starting at 2:30 pm) so I left him a little display of my love on the dining room table.

I used my tiny collection of vintage Valentine's to decorate.

Here is a silly picture of us in high school, in matching/opposite outfits.

These are vegan Shirley Temple cupcakes. They are pretty great if I do say so myself!

I think the turkey valentine is my favorite.

Travis got me this pretty pink glittery vintage scale a few days ago, but it fits perfectly into my Valentine's post! I need to clean it up a bit, but it works perfectly! And I'm toying with doing a pink bathroom now that I've been hipped to Retro Renovation.

So from our house to yours!

Happy Happy Valentine's Day!

A day in great detail

Back when I was obsessed with Live Journal (1999-2011) one of my favorite things to do was post in the A Day in my Life community. You told the story of your day in 70 photos and it used to be awesome. Then the mod got really weirdly strict and people started posting whole days of phone photos and I lost interest. But I still love the idea, though a 70 photo post doesn't make sense on a public blog. So here is a day in 25 pictures! I have quite an audience this morning. We are baby sitting sweet Chloe again.
I get an early start (well, 9 isn't that early I guess) and use my phone to find a lab test place.

Getting blood drawn for the second time in a week! She had to do both arms and dug around and I still have bruises. Ugggghhhh. I'm fine by the way, just looking into biometrics.

After my test I head out of town for an estate sale.
Look at this great air stream! It was HUGE! If only I was in the market.
The sale had a little bit of the kind of stuff I like. I actually passed on that Santa if you can believe it!
Vintage Star Wars. I would love to have the ewoks, or Chewbacca. But they wanted 100 for the set.

I loved this embroidery! Sadly the rest of the pillow case was really stained. I tried to think of a way I could utilize just the embroidered part, but I came up blank.

I headed to two more sales after this. One was a small sale, and I was the only one there, and three people followed me around the whole time! Chatting and being nice but it made me feel really awkward. Then I went to one that had TONS of cat stuff! Every room had framed cat posters. The man who owned the house was there, and he said at the time of his wife's death they had something like 8 cats, 3 chinchillas, 8 hamsters, 20 birds, a few dogs...The house was full of animal themed stuffed. Thankfully it was mostly not my style, or I would have been in trouble!

After those sales I stopped by a "regular" grocery store for the first time in forever. I work at a big "natural grocer" and the explosion of colors and all the florescent light made me really overwhelmed! It was silly. I also made the mistake of asking someone who worked there if they had vegetarian lunch meat. He looked at me like I was insane. (And they totally had it!)

My cart. I'm trying to get Travis to back his lunch every day so he'll stop eating so much Taco Bell.
Home! Scampi gaurds the door while I bring all my bags in.

I reward myself and cool off by watching one episode of Nip/Tuck. I've been watching it on Netflix and sadly just finished it yesterday. I need a new series to watch! Though I don't know what can compare to the drama of Nip/Tuck.

Chloe loved looking out the window.
Priscilla is more into gazing at me her every waking moment. Haha.

I'm going to be sad when watermelon season is over and they aren't so cheap. I bet I've been eating a whole one every single week!

Chloe before.
Chloe after. She loves to be under blankets.

After one episode I get up and go to the kitchen. Murray has been hanging out on the cabinets the whole time Chloe has been here, even though she doesn't even look his way.

Can you guess what I was making? It was for a tropical themed wedding shower. I didn't get a finished product picture, it wasn't very photogenic.

Little buddies underfoot the whole time.
I watched some more Nip/Tuck on my phone. Obsessed.
While my cake cooks I did dishes. I love having colorful cabinets.
Travis came home, and we went on a little date.
Dinner at McCreary's, an Irish pub that we love.
Then we went to a movie. We saw Campaign. I agreed to see it mostly because of the pugs in the preview. It was pretty funny, the pugs were the best part. After the movie was over, we just came home and went to bed. What a good day off. Starting tomorrow I have three days off in a row and I just don't know what to do with myself!

Little Bitty Halloween Party

I decided that i wanted to host a little Rocky Horror screening party last weekend because we are going to be out of town for the midnight showings at the belcourt this year. i only invited a few people over since it was so last minute, and only a few of those came. so here is the saddest little party spread i've ever made:

 we had pizza too. and brittany brought the famous cheeseball and homemade crackers. and we still had too much food. as usual. the spiced cider was pretty perfect if i do say so myself.  i made this halloween candy corn cookie bark. i wish we could have found the halloween oreos. but it was still good. it is SO sweet you can only eat one little piece at a time.    i also attempted these candy corn cupcakes.  my colors didn't turn out as pretty but they tasted really good. it was just a doctored up boxed mix. delicious.  we gorged ourselves and then gave ourselves over to absolute pleasure. i love that movie so so SO much. i hope they will do it at midnight on new years. i've been singing the songs all week. i can't wait for halloween!

Wizard Feast!

I wasn't in the mood to throw a big party for the last harry potter movie (i hosted so many parties last year i got burnt out) but i wanted to at least cook something fun for dinner.

i looked through my harry potter cookbook for something festive to make.

changed up the display on top of my hutch for something on theme. (unicorns and a cat)

after i took this picture to show you what i watched while i cooked i noticed the harry potter magnetic pad. haha. obsessed. i'm really sad there are only a few sheets left on it. 

wands and crookshanks

h is for harry. table cloth had pots on it. we pretended it was cauldrons.

i got two of these candles for free at work and we decided they looked kinda magic?

so we had a quorn roast (really good!) mashed parsnips (mediocre) glazed carrots (blah). i picked stuff that was inspired by what the house elves would make for the hogwarts dining room. or something. 

i keep fretting about my yorkshire pudding but it turned out so awesome! i will definitely make it again.

crystal's husband had to work until later so we made a fourth dinner guest.

for dessert i made a british style trifle a la aunt petunia. it was yellow cake/jam sandwiches, homemade custard, then strawberries, then whipped cream. it was REALLY good. and thankfully dobby didn't destroy it (/super nerd)