Photo Friday

In an effort to post more cool photos to my blog (because I have a lot of old stuff, and even new stuff!) I'm starting my own Friday meme called Photo Friday. Feel free to play along if you are so inclined! :)

This Fridays photos feature some absolutely YUMMY holiday cupcakes Matt bought for us as a Halloween present... don't they look just delish? They're all handmade from a local cupcakery!



They are white cake with rich chocolate frosting. Mmm mmm good! Better than halloween candy! I couldn't resist taking a bite of that ghosty cupcake...




Happy Halloween!!! :)

Why I am SO Not a Twilight Fan.

Okay, so this is sort of taboo. Everyone LURVES Twilight, amiright? Well, I don't. But I'm not going to be a giant ass about it, as not only do I understand that many people enjoy Twilight and are certainly allowed to, but I also enjoy things that other people may not like. (uhm, Warcraft anyone?) There's no reason to hate on people or things just because you don't like 'em! TOLERANCE, go team!! :)

Okay, now that my pep talk is out of the way. No, I don't like Twilight. Honestly though, I've only read the first book, but I was just so disinterested and unimpressed that I just didn't want to read anymore. Let me tell you why...

The LURVE Story

I like love stories as much as the next guy... uhm, gal. But this one seemed to advance WAY too fast. I mean, at the end of the first book, they were talking marriage already. Wait, whaaaat? Back that truck up! Now I know that doesn't happen until later on in the series, but I think marriage would be one of the LAST things on a highschoolers mind. It was very unrealistic for me to read! (Yeah, I know the vampires were also unrealistic, but they were supposed to be; the humans are still humans!)

I'm also of the love-at-first-sight-is-a-lie camp. The fact that Joanie and Chachi fell in lurve within a mere few school months left me a little uneasy.

Now, like I said, I like the lurve story. When it's done well. This seemed to be done far too rushed to seem realistic. I like it when love takes time to grow and blossom and all of that smarmy crapola, it's great to read and really makes the story and characters that more engaging. (Yes, they had a few awkward talks in the car, and at that restaurant, but ... I feel it's lacking!) It needs more than just half a book to break out the L word.

Mary Who?

To me, from what I've read book-wise and cliff notes wise, this book just screams Mary Sue to me. Writers, you should know what that is, but for the rest a Mary Sue is pretty much an author self-insertion. Taken from Wikipedia, "...primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. ...single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly."

Ok, here goes. Unpopular sort of mousy girl moves to dead-end town, immediately finds her the fancy of one of the most mysterious, charming, gorgeous boys in the school, oh wait let's not forget that other guy in her class that has a serious crush on her (Mike), the guy that hits her with her van and then asks her out for like forever (Tyler), OH, and the werewolf that develops a severe crush on her (Jacob), oh and wait, I forgot that other geek that talked to her on her first day of school and got all googoo over her (Eric)... and that's just the first book! Again, wait WHAAAAAT? It's a bit much. The main girl really doesn't need nearly every main guy fawning over her, does she?

But then again, what high school girl (or any girl, maybe?) wouldn't want a werewolf and a vampire fighting over her? And add some silly ol' humans in for fun? Now I know Steph wrote this book from a dream she'd had (chapter 13), but it seems like she may have had a boring old youth and is making up for lost time.

Movie Edward

Now I REALLY may be the only girl in the world to think this, but I think movie Edward is well ........ yucky looking.



The Cure called, they want their bad hair, semi-stoner eyes, and sickly skin tone back.



Okay, those are my main three points of contention. Well, the first two really, I'm just getting tired of seeing three eeeeverywhere! And I understand that it's supposed to be written as a fantasy novel, but IMO there are just so many other fantasy novels that aren't as amateur and mindblowingly overpopular. Anyone else not a Twilight fan? Or are you a fan, and want to holler at me for defaming literary genius? *hack cough* :) In all seriousness, if you like Twilight, you should check out her book The Host. Amazing story, I loved that one!!

And I love y'all, no matter what you read! <3

It's a giveaway!!

There's nothing like warm, tasty treats to get you in the mood for fall. Pumpkin pie, warm cinnamon streusel, hot chocolate... bundle up in your scarf and sweater and prepare to get tasty!



I'm REALLY excited to be able to host this special Fall is HERE! giveaway! :) I was lucky enough to recently come into a decent amount of absolutely decadent drinking chocolate -- yes, it is called "drinking chocolate" because it's THAT GOOD -- so I wanted to share some of it with you!



If you've never heard of or had Schokinag, you're missing out. They are a producer of extremely fine drinking chocolate - think hot chocolate but WAY more decadent. This ain't your mom's Swiss Miss!! Inside every tin is a sealed bag filled with extremely small, high quality chocolate morsels that you microwave with milk to create an absolutely otherworldly hot chocolate experience. :) (The website says you can actually -eat- the chocolate bits out of the tin with a spoon, if you are so inclined!)

I'm sipping on a cup of Moroccan Spice drinking chocolate as I write this, and all I can say is, WOW. This is a thick, luxurious, creamy drink packed full of heady chocolatey flavor. A healthy dollop of whipped cream would do well on this, I think! Okay, I'm in love!

What I have to offer you, fellow chocolate-loving reader, is this: a 12 oz tin of either Dulce de Leche, Extreme Dark, or Chocolate Mint drinking chocolate. (You can read about the flavors here.) Each tin comes with a sealed bag of yummy morsels inside, along with an awesome fold out brochure with recipes that will make you start to drool!

To enter, all you have to do is leave me a comment (one only per person, please!) with the following info:

• Add the line "It's chocolate time!" into your comment somewhere, so I know you want to enter as opposed to just say howdy. :)
• Specify which of the three chocolates you'd like to have; Dulce de Leche, Extreme Dark, or Chocolate Mint.
• If you want an extra entry, you can blog about this giveaway and post a link to it, but it's not required at all!

That's it! I'll choose a winner on November 6th. :) Plenty of time to get in on this. Happy fall y'all, and good luck!

Spooky pictures!

I'm posting some of my pre-Halloweenie pictures I took the other night of neat looking things around the place. :) Hope you like them, and they get you in the mood for full mons, spooky movies, and candy corn!!

Time to: Get Over It!

So yesterday marked my first day as being a part-timer. It was weird leaving at lunchtime! And today, I have the WHOLE day off!! WHOA!

If you can't tell, I've decided to go with the "enjoy it for what its worth" option as opposed to the "laying in a swamp" option. Things could really be a lot worse; I still have half a job, at least! And even though I had to pay $430 in emergency credit (eek) to replace calipers and brakes on my car today, it needed to be done, and such is life.

SO, I am making the most of things by enjoying the time I have to myself now! Today was a beautiful Friday in North Carolina, and I spent the majority of my day doing the following:

• Sitting outside and enjoying the amazing 80 degree weather! It was warm, sunny, with a nice breeze, and beautiful blue skies like that one up there.
• Watching the jillions of little yellow butterflies romp through the trees :)
• I reheated some chili for lunch and ate it out there too... soooo good!! I LOVE chili with cheese and sour cream... mm mm, nothing better.
• Listened to some great music, and just relaxed and enjoyed the day.

Mr. Cats has been the best boyfriend ever and is taking me out to dinner tonight, after taking me out to dinner LAST night too! <3 Fondue last night, and off for some yummy local seafood in a bit.


I am looking to enjoy some of these yummy seafoods tonight. What is your favorite seafood? I have to admit, before I started dating Mr. Cats, I hated seafood. And I'm from New England, yeah, I know! But now I loooove it. My favorites would have to be grilled shrimp, grouper, and sea bass. I love grouper with a citrus glaze and pineapple salsa, or sea bass done in a nice teriyaki ginger. Yummmm!! And shrimp in ANY form is just dandy with me, thanks. My least favorite would probably have to be tuna, it has a very strong taste, and is a very "meaty" fish. Oysters also are not cool with me. So slimy... ugh.

Here's hoping everyone has a relaxing pre-Halloween weekend! :)

Not all once upon a times are charmed...

Once upon a time, I found out that my work hours were getting cut back from 40 to 20.

Oh wait, that happened today.



I'm officially a part-timer now, and I'm none too pleased about it. Pretty freaked out and unhappy, actually, because while I love this town the job market is lower than Britney Spears' standards. It came as quite a shock and I'm left worrying, like most other people that have gotten hours cut or lost jobs, how exactly I'm going to pay for things. I was right on the 3 month mark to start getting benefits too. Oh well. I suppose it could be worse.

So I'm either going to be a) blogging a lot to get my mind off things and keep myself motivated, or b) heading to the nearest swamp to lie face down in it. Probably a, but I'm feeling a lot of b tonight.

Sorry for the depressing post! But life isn't all about farting rainbows, I guess. (But that would be neat to see.)

Danger!!

This is a dangerous time of year, my friends.

Do you know why?

No, not because of ghosts and Freddy... (although that could be pretty rough)

Because of yummy temptations like this...



Pumpkin Cheesecake? All together now; one, two, three, DROOL!! I had a piece of pumpkin tiramisu the other night and let me assure you, it was nothing short of heavenly.

Let the sweets (and my ass growing fatter) begin!

Weekend!

Hey y'all! Happy Weekend! :) Here's hoping it will be super enjoyable and relaxing with great weather! I'm glad you all liked Once Upon a time Wednesday, I thought it would be fun, and I have many similar stories to tell.

I have to say, my mom called me from Massachusetts yesterday to tell me it was snowing...! Say WHAAAAT?!



Okay, so it didn't snow anywhere CLOSE to that amount, but I am so not even close to being ready for snow yet! It snows very little down here in coastal NC, if any, but the weathermen are predicting a really harsh winter with more snow than usual. Get your boots on!!

Mr. Cats and I went out to a yummy local pizza place last night, and we were the ONLY ones in short sleeves... it was about 60 and everyone had coats and scarves!! I was like, really now! It's October! There will be plenty of time for THAT nonsense once winter shows.

So we are pretty busy lately; our house is nearly done and our final walkthrough is November 2nd. Then papers are signed, and boom! House! It is stressful though, but will be all worth it in the end. :) But yeah, busy stuff. We can't get any more photos of the house easily because the doors are always locked now, because all of our lights and counters and expensive stuff is in there, they need to keep it safe. Oh well! :) I like that option better.

Today we are carving PUMPKINS!!!!!!!!! I will post pics of those! ;)

Once Upon a Time Wednesday...

Once Upon a Time Wednesday will hopefully get me to post on more Wednesdays ;) And, as the title sort of states, will feature an interesting/amusing story or vignette from my life. Fun! :)

So enjoy, at my expense... ;)

Once upon a time when I was living in Maryland, I was doing some laundry on a cold, cold weekend in February. My boyfriend at the time was not home, and I was upstairs on the third floor minding my own business. I suddenly became aware of a very low, continuous beep. Ignored it for a little while... nope, still there. Going down to the second floor, hey, there's that beep, a little louder! I head down to the first floor and the garage where the washer & dryer are, and the beep becomes a minor roar. Upon opening the door to the garage I find .... the entire thing flooded with about an inch of water.

WHOA! The beep is pretty deafening now so I run into the washroom, as it's most definitely coming from there. Somewhere, there is something alerting me that MY WASHROOM AND GARAGE ARE FLOODED. But I don't think of that. I'm thinking that I'm standing in an inch of water while something electric is beeping, and about to blow.

So, I freak out and climb up onto the washer. .. The metal washer. Good one, Thomas Jefferson. (He flew the key on the kite into the electric storm, right?)

I can't find what the hell is causing this shrill kill-me-now consta-beep, so I climb off the washer, run upstairs, and as any young dumb and freaked out 20-something would do ... call 911. I think the call went something like this:

Operator: "911, your emergency please."
Me: "Uuuuhhhh hi my garage and washing room are flooded and there's this thing that's beeping and I don't know what it is but there's water everywhere and I'm like really worried about electric shock and stuff."
Operator: (probably banging head on desk) "We'll send someone over."

So yeah, not the best 911 emergency. But I didn't know what else to do!

Anyways, not two minutes later, I hear not one but TWO fire trucks in the distance... sirens... and they come screaming down our tiny little hill road into our tiny little cul-de-sac that is SO not even big for a Power Wheels fire truck. (Do they have those?) Not only am I already embarassed, but I'm shaping up to be the talk of the neighborhood.

I open my garage door and a minor tidal wave of water floods out over the boots of some pretty strapping firemen, I remind you that it's February in Maryland and it's pretty chilly out. I lead them into the washing room and one of the firemen instantly goes to a little wire on the wall, bends it up, and the beep stops. .... Oh. Teehee. Can I get you a cookie, or perhaps some animal crackers? Okay, so that's out of the way, and we determine that one of our water exit pipes has frozen and all the water blasted back out of the machine.

However, to make sure of this, I needed to empty the machine for them to look at. Oh, you know what I was washing? Yeah, I emptied all of my cold and soaking underwear, bras, and other assorted lacy underthings while three completely suited up firemen watch me. That was about ten seconds of absolutely awkward silence and embarassing hot flashes that I will never be able to scratch from my mind.

The machine was okay, they say good day, and leave. And I immediately bury myself under 10 pounds of blankets and feel like an absolute imbecile!!



The end. :)

Award time!!

My sickness has faded down to a dull roar, thankfully. I'm still feeling pretty icky, and my sinuses are all clogged now! Thanks everyone for your well wishes and sickie-medicine advice, I appreciate it!! :)

I've gotten a few awards recently and I wanted to post them! The first is the Dragon's Loyalty award from Moonjava. She just got a new betta fish, and I want to see pictures!! :)



And the lovely Ladytruth over at Happily AFTER Ever has bestowed upon me the Ultimate MeMe Award! If you don't go and visit this awesome lady now you will be SORELY missing out on lots of laughs and great posting goodness!!



The rules for this award are as follows: create 5 categories each containing 5 favorite items of said category but without necessarily being listed in any particular order. Then tag 5 people to do the same.

Five categories, eh? Let's see if my illness-addled brain can get this going...

Five Foods I COULD NOT Live Without!
1. CHEESE. Except blue cheese. But aside from that black (blue) sheep, I adore cheeses of all shape, size, and stink! :D
2. Shrimp. Preferably grilled over a hot flame with a little bit of lemon and garlic. Popcorn shrimp happily accepted too!
3. Pizza. Nuff said.
4. Caramello bars. Yeah, they get their own category, they're THAT good!!
5. Spinach salads. There is nothing better than fresh spinach, hard boiled eggs, and onions with a little bit of dressing and croutons... :)

5 Names of Cats I've Had
1. Scooter
2. Molly
3. Zelda (Hey.. I was 11 and very heavily into video games.. so sue me!)
4. Lain
5. Caesar (Big white cat!)

5 of the HOTTEST Actors Out There!
1. Keanu Reeves
2. Edward Norton
3. Tim Roth
4. Gary Oldman
5. Johnny Knoxville
(that was extremely easy......)

5 Movies I Could Watch Over, and Over, and Over....
1. Bio-Zombie (if you're even remotely into zombie flicks and/or cheesy chinese film, you NEED to see this, right now)
2. The Lion King
3. The Boondock Saints
4. A Christmas Story!!!! (I know I'm not the only one that chain-watches that at Christmas... right??)
5. Happy Gilmore (it's just a classic~!)

5 Awful 80's Clothing Items I Have Owned in the Past
1. Those plastic oversized shirt ties that looked like a no smoking sign
2. The sweater + leggings combo (bonus points, my leggings had those straps that go under your feet)
3. Gold lame (imagine an accent over that e) pants..... ayiyiyiyi....
4. Those awful evil slap-bracelets
5. A FELT FEDORA HAT!!!! Remember those?? Mine was PURPLE!!!! Ohhhhh the humanity....



Now that I've duly embarassed myself, I'm going to give out these awards! You don't necessarily have to post them, but I wanted to highlight some blogs of note, ones that I am reading a lot lately and am always happy to see pop up on my Google reader sidebar with new posts. :)

For the Dragon's Loyalty award, I choose The Caped Tirader!; he does, of course, wear a cape and tirade around, and is quite witty doing it, but lately he's been doing a set of Halloween-themed posts about great horror movies!! Love it. Paul at Graduwait.com is another great read with lots of insightful, funny, and well-written posts.

For the ULTIMATE MEMEEEE (imagine that fading off slowly), I choose KS at While We're Waiting... She is hosting an awesome fall giveaway that I neeeed to enter, and her posts are always so fun and full of lovely pictures!! Lauren From Texas gets this one too; she is wonderful lady with a great blog, an adorable dog, and she has fantastic hair!! What more could a gal ask for, I wonder?? :)

And okay, before I forget: KS is having a fall giveaway full of tasty smells and you should really check it out here!! Yankee Candles are the mega-yum!

And now, I do believe it is time for some more sinus medicine... stay healthy, y'all!!

Sickies!

Good morning, blogworld! Why, do you ask, am I blogging at 8:30 on a Friday morning and not on my way to work? Because I'm home sick.

And no, it's not swine flu. That was the first thing my mom asked me when I told her I came home early from work yesterday.



To give a short rundown of how I got this evil crud, coworker comes in Monday feeling (and sounding) like junk... sneezing coughing blowing nose, etc. I sit across the divider from her, so I'm already trying to bolster my defenses by only breathing every 10 seconds and washing about 3 layers of skin off my hands. I think I kindly mentioned in there somewhere about how rest would be a good thing, but she said she had no sick days left. (Well hey, I have none either, but here I am.) Tuesday she relents and goes home early. Tuesday and Wednesday I feel ok, but Thursday morning... ughhh... I also go home early Thursday, and here I am today, home and sick with no sick days. But, life could be worse! I could have a curly tail sprouting from my behind!

I figured I would take the chance then, while I'm home and maybe only a little infectious, to post some of my favorite songs that, no matter what, get me happy!! No matter if I'm having a miserable day, a listen to one of these just gets a little smile out of me. You know the ones; you're in the worst mood ever, you got to work late, your boss yells at you in front of everyone, you break the heel on one of your expensive amazing new shoes, your lunch gives you food poisoning, and you hit a puppy in the road while you're trying to rush home to make it to the bathroom because said food poisoning is rearing it's ugly head.. yeah, THOSE days. These songs NEGATE those days!! :) (Well, for me at least.)

Bob Marley and the Wailers - Three Little Birds

This song always brings the happies!! Don't worry ... 'bout a thing ... 'cause every little thing ... gonna be all right now ... :)

Frank Sinatra - The Girl from Ipanema

If you don't know the words to this song - shame on you! (Okay, maybe that's a little harsh.) ;) Frank Sinatra is one of my absolute favorite artists of all time - trivia, my grandfather saw him for $1.25 on his honeymoon!! - and if you're not into the beachy sound of this one, you're more than welcome to substitute "I Get a Kick Out of You". :)

America - Sister Golden Hair

Another one that's SO much more fun as a sing-along. ;) Sing, dance, even if creepy people outside are watching! It will make you feel so much better!!

Counting Crows - Mr. Jones

August and Everything After was the very first CD I ever bought! I never used to like this song, but now that I'm older (and maybe wiser) there is just something infectiously uplifting about it when you're belting it out in your car. :) (Rain King is another fun one!)

The Cardigans - Carnival

You know these guys, they sang the "Love me, love me, say that you love me!" song. NOT their best track. The Cardigans are one of my favoritest bands EVER and this song is so happy and poppy that even Oscar the Grouch couldn't deny it!



Okay, that's all for now. What songs pick you up from a dumpster-dragged day? Hopefully today is not one of those days! :) Happy Friday everyone, and steer clear of sickies like me, who SHOULD be home and not infesting their coworkers! (Bitter? Me! Never! ;) )

Festivals!

Happy Weekend, bloggers!! :) This week was a LONG one for me ... busy busy at work! But it's the weekend now and we've been celebrating already! Mr. Cats and I got up early to head downtown to Riverfest; we're on the Cape Fear river, so the river block of downtown is closed off and filled with tons of AMAZING local vendors (I love supporting local stuff, there's so much variety here!), food, music, an amazing classic car show that I droooooled over, and PIRATES! Yes, pirates! There's a pirate ship docked, people wearing amazing re-enactment costumes, and every hour there are pirate fights! They shoot real replica pirate guns over the river :) TONS of fun!!



This is the actual pirate ship, the Meka. (Not the battleship, the one with sails in front of it! LOL)

There was an amazingly restored, cherry red, 1955 Chevy BelAir convertible at the car show that I would drive EVERYWHERE! Unfortunately I didn't get a good photo of it! It was out of hand, though :) Good stuff!

I bought some lovely handmade soaps, an amazing candle from a local candlemaker that is shaped like a star, smells like the ocean, and has a bunch of little shells from our beach in the bottom, some deliciously fresh and TASTY local salsa, and Mr. Cats bought himself a little chili kit that we just add beef to and voila, instant YUM. He can make it for me when it gets cold around here! ;) I wish I could have bought more, but I smartly set myself a budget. I could have gone wild!

So I love my city, it is awesome, and visitnc.com is actually having a contest for a week-long vacation here in the Port City! I'd enter if I didn't already live here; but it would be cool to spend all that money! You can find it here -

The Wilmington "Southern Style" Sweepstakes

Let me know if you win! We'll totally do drinks somewhere! ;)



Another exciting announcement - we are hosting Thanksgiving HERE, in our new house!!!! I am BEYOND thrilled; a little nervous, but moreso absolutely excited! We spend Thanksgiving with Mr. Cats' family so his parents will be driving up here to help us move our big stuff, then hang out for a week and eat a (hopefully) out of this world dinner created by yours truly! I can't contain myself, I will wear an apron, and not overcook the turkey, I promise! Did I mention I've never cooked a turkey before?? Hmm... I'll do some research. ;)

Hope you all have a fun-filled, relaxing weekend! Anyone doing anything fun? Mr. Cats is getting a haircut but other than that, I think we've earned our right to relax for the rest of the day!

Costumes du jour...

I'm too busy to make a real post, but I am going to post these adorable and/or hilarious Halloween costumes I saw in a Party City catalog this week!!



If this is not the CUTEST thing in the entire world, I don't know what is!!!

Oh, okay, maybe this ......






I didn't know the UPS man was such a strong costuming interest! Lug around boxes all day ... get sweaty ... hmm ...




This was actually pretty amusing! We didn't have these kind of innovative costume choices when I was a kid.




There weren't very many girl's costumes with skirts longer than this! Don't you know Halloween is all about being able to dress kind of sleazy?! AWESOME! This costume also makes me want to cut myself. Eeeeaahgghhh.....




You tell me, would any self respecting male WEAR this?? Maybe on a dare ... or a lost bet, for sure ...




Well maybe if he has this to come home to... :)



Those are some of the more 'interesting' ones I saw in the paper. It's that time of year! ;)