LOOK WHAT I WON! (Alternate title: Zoe is awesome.)

In February I basically put my name in a hat to win a hand-made cross-stiched brooch from Zoe at A Giraffe in a Scarf. And I won! The fun thing about this giveaway was in the comments section of the blog that was hosting it, (My Girl Thursday) all the contestants had to write down some stuff they were interested in and then Zoe would take the winner's list and use those ideas to make their brooch.

I said:

My favorite things are my white cat and my bulldog, hearts, coffee, vintage Halloween stuff, Russian-tattoo-inspired things, and photography. 

I was secretly hoping that if I won, she'd ignore the hearts and coffee and go for either a cat, a bulldog (because how hilarious would that be?) or the Russian Tattoos thing. I'm not like, into criminal tattoos but they are SO INTERESTING and cool looking, I thought I'd mention them there and see what happened.


Well, I won! And I just found out that Zoe spent 8-9 hours stitching this thing! Amazing! The work is so detailed and pretty, and the brooch is AWESOME!

Click here to read what she found out about the Russian cat design. It's pretty bad-ass!

I took some pictures of me being a major dork with it. Uh, so here they are. 

Here's me being surprised that it's pinned to my chest...(?)

Thank you SO MUCH for putting so much hard work into this, Zoe! I love my new (and only) brooch! 

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Also exciting, yesterday I bought myself a floor ticket to see SLAYER! (SOOOOO EXCITED) And I ordered my first ever pair of TOMS shoes from their website. In grey. Although the sparkly ones really wanted me to buy them. Maybe next time.

Yeti tries some plain yogurt...

I think she's a fan.

Things I Love Thursday

I first saw these drawings by Megan Eckman on Katie's blog and fell in love!

You can buy prints of her stuff (and more) in her Etsy shop.

I also love...


"The Bubblesmith" Sterling Johnson.

This Love Birds print.

The paleofuture blog...each entry is hilarious because it shows what people of the past thought the future would look like. (I.e. flying cars, jetpacks, etc.) And speaking of the future, World War 3 propaganda posters.

The A to Z of awesomeness by Neil Cameron.

This world map made of post-its:

via

The Brita Sweden photos that I originally saw on the Yes and Yes blog.

This weird diagram GIF-thingy that contains all the letters of the alphabet.

Out of context comic panels. This one kills me! WTF?

And last but not least, My Best Friend's Birthday...aka Quentin Tarantino's first movie!

She told me not to say anything...

...but big thanks anyway to Erin for the awesome semi-surprise I got in the mail today.

I can't wait to read the crap out of this book and see what all the fuss is about. :)

VLOG. Not even joking. I even talk a little bit.

So my camera (the Canon G11) makes videos. Duh. What camera doesn't? I just never thought about it before and you know what? My blog is missing that certain je ne sais quoi that most of yours have...

that's right. Vlogs.

I am terrified of vlogs. I mean...they're straight up scary. You're basically putting yourself at the mercy of the entire internet. Your voice is all up there...and your face. I don't know. Something about it is so scary. But what the heck, right?

I got all pumped to do one, but then realized I had zits and was ugly so I tried to go all black and white and artsy, except my camera only has this thing where it does black and white...and one color that you select. I chose reddish-orange apparently. Here's me testing it out, and/or being a little confused and disgusted? It's really weird, it made the inside of my nose orange and only part of the My Little Pony on my arm.

 ANNNND here's my video blog! 

.

Just kidding, that was just me trying to talk to my camera for the first time. You know, that first time where you're like "What do I say? I'm alone in this room, talking to my camera. This is weird. I don't think I'm gonna do it." haha

But then I changed my mind and just went for it. Just give'er. That's my motto. Please excuse the nose scratch and the awesome black shorts that are actually just cut-off sweat pants my mom gave me. I really hadn't planned on 'vlogging' until like four seconds before I did all these things.Maybe next time I'll wear an evening gown and be all classy. But here's the real me on my day off.

Anyway. Yeah. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I urge you all to say hello with a little video if you haven't already. It's kind of fun!

Presenting my sister! v.2

 

The prettiest sister ever! 

I introduced you guys to my sister Lyndon earlier this month HERE with some beautiful photos she took of my family. What I didn't show you were these Halloween photos from October 2010. Get ready to be blown away by these photos of my little brothers and sister.

 Lyndon just takes photos as a hobby...what do you guys think? Should she start a blog? Or at least a flickr account? I think so. Let's encourage her to share her talent with the world! :)

Music Monday: Turtles

 Just watch. You will smile and feel awesome after you hear this song. I guarantee it.

It must be spring, and a lesson for bloggers everywhere.

I realize that the majority of my posts lately have been straight-up pictures and not much more. If you're like me, you read 45 trillion blogs and you wouldn't have even really noticed except for that I just told you. But for those few of you who are probably all like "oh man, that might-as-rella chick is so uninspired and I HATE PHOTOGRAPHY" I just wanted to say that I've been feeling really un-talkative lately, and really focused on real life. Sometimes blogging is a treat, and sometimes it starts to feel like a chore. 

Actually, let's turn this into a lesson for bloggers that I've finally learned after years of practice:

Always keep a week or two worth of posts lined up ahead of time. I try and schedule my 'things I love Thursday' and my 'music Monday' stuff like a month in advance, plus some other things as well, just in case I get a case of the negatives or some big personal event happens in my life. That way the blog still goes on as usual, and is fairly consistent. 

I've been in a negative kind of hating everything space for like a month. Finances are not working out the way I'd like, and that can really affect the way a girl feels about herself after a while. That kind of thing would feel good to blog about until the moment I hit the publish button, and then I would completely regret it. You guys really don't want to hear about me eating Mr.Noodles for the third day in a row no matter how empathetic you may be. Complaining is not what my blog is meant for. I love to share joy, humor and pretty things most of the time, with a side of ranting. Not the day to day doldrums.

Anyway, that's what's up. And I actually did take these next pictures just yesterday, so don't feel like you're getting stale ol' crappy pictures from three weeks ago or whatever. Same with the camera pictures, that did just happen a couple days ago...

And now back to my regularly scheduled post:

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You know how I know it's spring? We stood outside at work yesterday for like half an hour, half the city was drunk before 4pm and coming into the tattoo shop asking me if I had any condoms (?), and

the Cherry blossom trees are blooming... 
and covered with little notes hippies tied to them.