I'm leaving for a week long vacation with my parents on Saturday. Our original plan was to go to Newport, RI for a couple of days and then Prince Edward Island for a few days because I am obsessed with Anne of Green Gables.
(ahhh Gilbert. *swoon*)
Unfortunately upon further research, the Avonlea Village doesn't open until late June. So we rerouted that half of our trip to Maine. (What up LOBSTAAAAHHHH.) Hopefully I'll make it to Canada one day... though perhaps not in the winter.
I'm leaving shortly to go on my church retreat. I had my first foray in editing for the promo videos. I have to say, they came out pretty well.
Promo #1:
I told everyone that the time of Harlem Shake had passed, but 8 people showed up to help out and it seemed like the easiest way to get them all in the video.
Promo #2:
Honestly, I have no idea how the clips fit together so well with the music. God was definitely providing some editing miracles for these.
The Princess Peach/Leonardo attacks are pretty left field. But we wanted something ridiculous, and luckily I have a lot of costumes. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!
Remember when I thought about replacing the Wednesday Review with Fabulous GIF Wednesday? Well, this GIF has a prologue in the form of this YouTube video. How awesome is this guy?? I totally want to try this. Treadmill choreography is just the best. Remember OK Go's video?
Aaaaaanyways. Here is the Fabulous GIF to get you through the rest of your Wednesday!
Today my little brother turns 21. It seems like just yesterday Chelsea and I were going to visit our new baby brother in the hospital.
He had the most beautiful curls as a child. His hair was long enough that we could put it in pigtails - which of course we did after putting him into one of Chelsea's old dresses and then we went around calling him Tristina for the rest of the day. Ahhh siblings, we're so nice to each other.
But seriously, Tristan has some great hair. You can do almost anything with it. Make it look like Wolverine even.
My brother has made some mistakes along the way. There was one time he shaved off one eyebrow for a dare.
Thank God for eyebrow pencils. Tristan is one of the funniest people I know. He does fantastic impressions and can quote pretty much all of the Potter Puppet Pals videos word for word doing the voices perfectly. He's always willing to dress up in costume with me.
So Tristan, pretty soon, this will actually be true:
And in place of butterbeer staches, we'll have real beer staches!
So here's to you - on the 21st year of your birth. Enjoy some cake,
The first weekend in May is delightfully nerdy. The scene above was at my local comic book store Saturday morning for Free Comic Book Day. It also happened to be International Star Wars Day! (May 4th). Last year I really lamented not having my act together and doing something for May the 4th. I planned then and there to host a Star Wars marathon in 2013.
Saturday was crazy as I pretty much didn't do anything for the Star Wars party until that morning. I also had to cram in a trip to my local comic book store. I wanted to buy Brian K. Vaughan's new series Saga but the line was nuts when I arrived so I just looked through all the free comics instead. (My brother ended up buying Saga at his comic book store so win!) I had never been to the comic store before but it is pretty awesome. They have a large gaming section with a ton of great board games and a room with lots of tables so you can play them. I am definitely going to have to go back there soon.
I think I mentioned last year that I had some awesome Star Wars cookie cutters from Williams-Sonoma. I have both the Heroes & Villains set and the Vehicle set. I originally had these grand plans of icing them all but since I waited until Saturday morning, that did not happen.
I think they look great un-iced. You can see all the detail much better than if I had iced them. On a slightly related side-note, Friday night I went to see John Hodgman do stand-up and Paul and Storm opened for him. I had heard of them before but never actually heard any of their music. THEY ARE FANTASTIC. Their songs are hilarious and a lot of them are about nerd culture. Here is one they sang Friday night called Thanksgiving that is pretty appropriate for May the Fourth. (Note: contains some curse words so may want to listen with headphones if you're in a public place.)
I definitely bought all of their CDs after the concert!
I knew I was short on time and I wanted to do some sort of cupcake. I decided making cupcake toppers was the easiest/least time consuming way to have fun themed cupcakes. (I also knew I'd be sitting around for a while waiting for the concert to start on Friday so I'd have time to cut out pictures.) I picked out 4 different iconic pictures (Han Solo, Darth Vader, R2D2, and the MillenniumFalcon) and pasted them into a powerpoint slide. It took a little googling to figure out how to rotate the pictures 180 degrees for the backside of the toppers. If you'd like to make your own toppers, here is a pdf version of what I had or you can choose your own images!
Alternatively, Williams-Sonoma does have cupcake kits that provides toppers and adorable cupcake papers. I just didn't have time to make it out to the store.
Of course I also sprinkled them with some star dust! (aka, disco dust). The last thing I attempted to do was carve a watermelon to look like the death star. (they make it look so easy on the internet!)
I was doing this AS guests were arriving and also using whatever I could find in my kitchen to carve so it didn't come out the best, but still cute! (Plus watermelon! YUM) If I ever do this again, I think I'll dig out my pumpkin carving set.
I wore this great woot shirt (which GLOWS IN THE DARK) for the occasion and started off with my hair in the Princess Leia side buns. They started falling out and Leia changes her hairdo each movie anyways, so I ended up with the Heidi braids by the end.
Last weekend I ran the Nike Women's Half Marathon in DC and it was wonderful! I know, I know. I'm as shocked as you are that I had such a good race considering I kinda half-assed my training towards the end. I think I finally found the balance of when to drink water/eat energy beans to keep me going through the whole race. I also wore a water bottle belt so I didn't have to stop at a water station until mile 11.
I didn't actually make it to the expo because I waited until the last day to pick up my packet and the line was hella long. By the time I finally got my packet, I had to race over to Chinatown to meet my parents who were in town. But I did get to walk by the Nike store in Georgetown and found my name! I didn't even know they did this!
I'm famous!!
Here I am with my lovely friends after the race. I finished in 2:36:01 which is practically 15 minutes faster than the 2:50:59 I ran the Rock n' Roll Half 5 weeks prior. I paced at 11:54 for Nike. Now that it's getting hotter outside I'm going to retire from running for the time being and try to tone up. I'll hit the treadmill every now and then to try and get my mile time down to 10 minutes. There were some fun signs at the race too. My favorite was "I know this is long and hard, but since when has that ever been a problem?" #ThatsWhatSheSaid. Now I know what you're DYING to see...
The little blue box! (Which I wont lie, I saw somebody holding up a sign about running towards the "little blue box" and my first thought was "ooh! another Doctor Who fan!" To be fair, my shirt was Doctor Who themed so I kinda had it on the mind.)
Me after the race!
The front of the shirt says "Companion Training Program" and the back reads "I run so when I meet The Doctor, I'm ready!" My brilliant friend Marissa made it. Best running shirt ever? or best running shirt ever?
Okay sorry, side-tracked. So instead of a medal, you got a Tiffany's necklace for finishing the race. I was a little nervous because there's a lot of Tiffany's stuff I don't like. But this necklace is AWESOME.
How cute is that!?
Backside
So yeah. That was pretty much the rundown (heh) of the race. The course was great (super flat) and the weather was great (sunny and cool) and the whole day was GREAT.
Sara, Marissa, and me showered and lookin' good after the race!
