Weekend Adventures

For my Gratitude Journaling, I'm trying something new. I got insanely inspired by Michelle's Get Messy posts so I decided to try and illustrate items that represent some the things I was grateful for that day - starting with Friday.  I didn't want to make them too text-heavy but I did fill out Saturday and Sunday with some text after I took the photos to explain, you know, things like why I illustrated a 1.75 liter bottle of Grand Marnier* and why there's a random Ron del Barrilito bottle** just kinda hanging out on Saturday's page...
I'm having fun with the illustrations but I don't think I'll be able to keep it up much longer.  Things are about to get pretty hectic around here!

How was your weekend?

*The Grand Marnier was a Thank You present from Lauren's parents.  As one of my Maid of Honor duties, I did the envelope calligraphy for the invitations.  It was so much fun! :)

**My aunt is in town from Puerto Rico and we sipped on some Barrilito Saturday night.  Yay bonding! :)

Instant Adventures #4

I felt like I was slacking on the Instax Adventures game, so I stepped it way up!

1. The roses by my mailbox that will end up in someone else's mailbox soon!  Here's a Hipsta of them
2. The pretty azaleas by my front door!  They, too, ended up in someone's mailbox!
3. The pretty bouquet from Lauren and Chandler's engagement brunch!  I took them for a walk the other day :)  Yes, they ended up in someone's mailbox!
4.The evidence of #3 going on a trip in my #outgoingmail post on Instagram

Since it's filming time, I tried out my Instax on my most favorite subjects: J and B from the camera crew!

5. Here's the first EVER shot of a person with my Instax Mini!  (kinda dark...)
6. J pulling his best Zoolander / Abercombie model face (still dark)
7. Playing with the brightness feature in the beautiful sun!
8. B being naturally charismatic and always awesome

Bonus Instax: Since J has a STRONG dislike of selfies, he wanted to capitalize on our fun photo op by taking a selfie of a selfie of a selfie.



Hope you're having an awesome weekend!
Happy Saturday!

Instant Adventures #3: A Surprise Party Adventure!

I'm a little light on the Instant Adventures for this past week because, well, there was a surprise party for my Mom being planned and preparations for Lauren and Chandler's Engagement Brunch...on the same day!  Needless to say, this weekend was wild and lots of fun!

1. The gorgeous bouquet I got for my Mom's birthday on Tuesday
2. A photo of our memo board at home with the very special addition of Lauren and Chandler's save the date + the heart garland I DIY'd



I did find time to make a cute heart garland for a certain someone's birthday that coming up in May!  I need to make 2, actually.  I've got two wonderful May birthday folks that need some hearts!  :)
I stumbled upon Alana Jones-Mann's wonderful blog and saw this pretty garland that I just had to make!  And this pretty heart backdrop and this marquee light heart and so many other awesome projects to try!

So...about my Mom's surprise party...My aunt had been planning it for a little while but because my Mom's birthday fell on a Tuesday this year, my aunt held off the party for the weekend after her birthday - which led to hilarious sitcom-style anguish from my Mom because this was the big 6-0 for her and she wanted a big blowout!  But she was expecting it the weekend before her actual birthday, not the weekend after!
She complained to everyone that my aunt wasn't doing anything for her and I had to hear all about it last Saturday, which led to the impromptu visit to Lips on Sunday, the bouquet on Tuesday and a whole lot of secret-keeping.  Thankfully, she was definitely surprised!  I didn't take any photos (bad blogger!) but others took care of that for me!  The only thing I got was the cake - which I glad to order because that meant I could choose what the message was!  Heeeeyyoooo!



I hope everyone had a great weekend!
Happy Monday!

Three Day Weekend Antics

Not gonna lie - I feel like I've kinda been allergic to taking photos lately. I don't know why exactly, but picking up my camera / phone to document things just isn't the first thing I do anymore.  It feels weird and in order to combat that, I picked up my camera a few times this weekend to try and get back in the swing of things.


Green screen lighting tests at work / Sulking around Corner Bakery on Friday morning / Channeling my inner Blaine Anderson with this sweet bow tie I got for the old man (and myself) from H&M.

Also - I got a haircut!  This is the shortest it has EVER been!  On a whim (as always) I made an appointment with my girl Sheila (at Toni & Guy - North Point) and let her go to town.  At first, I was afraid that I had made a crazy decision in the sleep-deprived state I was in but I LOVE IT!!!  Of course I love it!  Sheila always does the best cuts on me!  I highly recommend her!!




My Stay Home Club items came in forever ago and my Mom was nice enough to drop them off for me.  I LOVE them!  The "I Miss You" card is going to someone very special on the West Coast but the No New Friends shirt has to be my new favorite shirt (which I'm planning a new outfit around)...right next to my most recent purchase...




That's right - my Jax Teller mugshot shirt is pretty awesome and right up there with my No New Friends shirt!




And because I'm all excited about The Hunger Games: Catching Fire coming out soon, I bought Peeta's necklace!
I made the gif using the Gif Shop app.

I mostly tried to lay low since I worked for 3 weeks straight, so I ended up staying at home most of my weekend.  I guess it was a good thing since the weather was nasty.  Did I get any NaNo writing done?  That's a big fat NO.  Ugh...I suck.  I also ended up missing my friends' pop-up shop in Gainesville but I hope she'll understand that I was trying to catch up on sleep.  I think this gif sums it up quite nicely



How was your weekend?

Fun with Fonts

Lauren was kind of enough to tell me about a little app that lets you design your own font!  WHAT?!?!?!?  We were talking about the photo app from the ladies at A Beautiful Mess when Lauren told me that she had seen an entry where one of the girls wrote about designing your own font.  WHAT WHAT!??!?!?!?!!  I immediately had to download it, right?!  Of course!  That means my exciting Friday night was spent designing my own fonts (while watching Pitch Perfect AND Fast 5 on HBO).

Here's what I did with the photo app on the first photo of a person I could find in my camera roll...



Yes, the first photo I could find was of Jeremy Renner. Why not?!
ANYWAYS - I had fun with other photos but this was the one I was most confident with to post on Tumblr.

So - with that fun going on, I took a cue from the ABM font post and made my own kinda-sorta versions of their fonts.  Kinda sorta



It's obvious that fonts 3 and 4 (Hollow and Stacked, respectively) need to be force-bolded in Photoshop but Photoshop kept reading the numbers and the apostrophe as Myriad Pro - even though I drew those (as you can see).
Font 1 was my experiment with my own handwriting in the app's default brush settings.  I might try another version of my own handwriting a little later because this one is clearly a "beginner" font
Font 2 was my take on ABM's font Tall 'n Skinny (but in my handwriting style, of course)
Font 3 was my take on ABM's font LoveLove
Font 4 was my version of hollowed out, slightly altered, "stacked" Helvetica.

I'm currently on the "hate" side of my Love/Hate relationship with Helvetica at the moment.  The producer (I guess you could call him...) I work with recently watched Helvetica and now he thinks he's some sort of Typographer.  That's okay.  What's not okay is having to redo all my keyframe properties so that I can change all my fonts from whatever they were before to Helvetica - even though Helvetica is my "base" font for my text-heavy graphics since it's the most generic but I've been told to not do that (by the "producer") because "that font is SO boring!" (those were HIS WORDS!!)
Then we had this exchange last week:
Him: "Why are we using such a formal font?  We need more fun fonts."
Me: "I'm using Helvetica, like you asked me to."
Him: "That's Helvetica?  OMG, it's so serious!  Okay, we can use it for this round but we need to find something more fun for next time."
MOOD SWINGS MUCH?!  Hence the "hate" side of my Love/Hate relationship with the font.  Even I haven't seen the documentary!  Oh well...

I hope you enjoy my fonts.  If I ever update my handwriting one and I like it enough to share, I can set it - or any of the others - up for download, that is, if you really want my weird handwriting...
I'm trying to get my old man to design one as well and I was getting some ideas looking at the Staff Favorites on the 2TTF homepage.  I'm definitely going to spend some of my downtime on Behance and on the 2TTF gallery for some more ideas (and downloads!)

How was your weekend?  I hope you've seen Man of Steel.  It was great!  I definitely recommend it in 3D.  The special effects are AMAZING!!

Cheat Day!

Okay, so this weight loss thing is going pretty well.  I haven't fallen off the wagon or anything - I've been staying the course!  We've been eating healthy at home and pretty much everywhere we go.  I've been exercising like a crazy person and I've let go of the whole weight gain thing that had bummed me out last weekend.  My old man declared we needed some proper food and, man oh man, what a choice!
We used to visit Bone Garden Cantina every Saturday but lately, there started being a wait.  And the atmosphere had gotten really crappy.  Why?  Parents and their kids.  Damn.  We were to the point where we were like, "Bone Garden is OVER".



But we can't! We love BG so much! So today we made it a point to get there right when they opened and it was bliss.  There were no kids in sight and there was no terrible wait!  Hooray!  What a way to kick off Cheat Day!  And, oh, what a cheat day it was!



I skimped on the margarita (because I'm def getting one tonight) and indulged in some pork goodness!  And when we got home, I decided why not try making a mocha.  *Shrug*  Why not?



Yum! Not as good as the one I had at Rev Coffee yesterday morning (which was PHENOMENAL) but it was pretty darn good.  I hope the rest of the weekend continues to be this fun!

Have a lovely weekend!

Weekend Snaps

Here's a progress shot of my bruise today.  It's feeling a lot better but it's still very sore.



After seeing this cute lil photo on my fave Tumblr-er's Instagram feed:


I decided I'd download the app and see if I liked having a Tamagotchi now as much as I did when I was a kid.

SPOILER ALERT:

I LOVE IT





After raising them for 7 days, you can release them into the Hatchi Forest Sanctuary and I did just that with my little boy Cherry Pop just last night. Aww. I was so devastated that he had grown up so fast that I started a new little brother - Cherry Fizz. You can tell by the names that I really want a female Hatchi but oh well. I have enough coins saved up to change genders but I think I'll keep them just the way they are. Aww!

I have finally seen Screeching Weasel live. It might be time to grow up for real now

Remember that one time I was mad at Ben Weasel for hitting those two girls at SXSW last year?  Well...I kinda let that go in March when I bought my ticket for last night's Screeching Weasel show.
Don't get me wrong - I struggled with my desicion but I ultimately decided to go for three pretty good reasons:
1 - My friend Rory's band, Karbomb, was opening the damn show (kind of a big deal, wouldn't you say?)
2 - The Queers were playing. Obvs deal-maker
3 - When SW played their "farewell" back-to-back shows in Chicago in '99 or 2000, I couldn't go with my friends because of school and I was afraid that I'd never EVER get the chance to see them ever again...
Pretty valid reasons, I think.  And I knew that I'd be running into some old friends that I haven't seen in forever.  After I mulled it over, I decided I'd just go.  I mean, when would I get the chance to see SW again?  AND my friend's band was freaking OPENING for them. 


After running into my awesome friends - including the handsome fella in the background of this photo:


I was ready for the night to really begin. Enter The Queers. I've never been to a bad Queers show. EVER. I think the last time I saw them was at the Echo Lounge when Philip Hill was playing with them. Seems like forever ago...


Then something posessed me to rush up to the front of the stage for Screeching Weasel. Maybe it was nostalgia, maybe it was me trying not to feel so old, maybe I thought it might be the last time I'd be able to see them. Either way, I was front and center like a crazy person and the bruises on my knees and ribs can prove it. The giant bruise on my left hand can also prove it...



So - back to the bruise on my hand. A very outgoing crowd surfer decided to step down on my left hand with full force on the barricade when he was being reeled in by security and I thought my thumb was fractured but after wrapping it with an ace bandage and diverting my attention at The Avengers in IMAX 3D, the swelling has definitely gone down and the pain isn't as terrible as before.


Check out the rest of my photos here. I wish I had more but I was having too much fun singing along and dodging random body parts pushing at me. I also wish I had taken more photos of my friends but hopefully we will se more of each other soon! It was great seeing everyone and I'm feeling really nostalgic now since I'm in a small bidding war (apparently) over some long lost tracks by The Number Ones...

Happy weekend!