Etsy Every(other)day: Well, Owl Bee!

It's baby shower season!! And for me, that means crafting all things cute! I have had a few ideas for things to make but I'm pretty sure Fresh Stitches takes cake..

Sadly, I know all too well from endless Etsy trolling, that custom stuffed animals can be really pricey (not for me of course. New babies and little sisters and such... yeah.)... But these little darlings are actually crochet patterns all for $5 or less! So, for the cost of yarn and a very reasonably priced pattern you can have endless little kid (and little kid at heart) gifts!

Top 10 Tuesday

1.This simple but poignant anti-bullfighting poster.

2. Once upon a time in a crappy night club in downtown Orlando Florida, a boy and a girl met. Two years later one of the other girls in the photo, e-mailed me this picture that I didn't even know existed!

3. Outdoor tile Scrabble board? Yes, please!
4. The Littlest Polly's tips for new bloggers

5. After I got back from Italy, I e-mailed my mom a few of my photos and she created these fantastic watercolors out of them! Go check out her Etsy page!

6. Nutella Crack Cake. A dessert named for the immediate need to continue eating it.
7. fun. - We Are Young ft. Janelle Monáe has been on repeat on my iTunes since last week.

8. Making my very first diabetic friendly Peach Cobbler and then having it completely eaten in less than 10 minutes. I take it I did a good job?

9. And pretty much every other Google Chrome commercial. Seriously! Go watch!

10. Breaking Bad. Is it possible to be physically addicted to a television show? Because Nick and I started watching Saturday and as of last night are well into season 2. I think I need help, guys.

Our weekend in pictures (and screen shots)

This weekend was one great big mess of visiting friends, work, out of town adventures, gardening, happy surprises and one very pissed off cat. One of my best friends lives one town over but recently has started interning in Orlando, so every now and then she graces us with her presence. This gracing usually ends in too much wine and her staying the night in the city and leaving me adorable notes to wake up to on the fridge! After the work week was finally over I got to experience boredom and gave myself a pretty nifty manicure with the new multi colored glitter nail polish I got from Ulta! My roommate got home and we took off for a night on the town and a margarita glass full of ceviche mmmmm... 

Today, however, was hands down my favorite of the weekend! My life long bestie came into town for the weekend with her boyfriend so Nick and I met up with them for an amazing lunch and peach mimosas! We then came home and tried our hand at gardening. Well, he tried his hand at gardening. I held open the trash bag and got him water. Our Home Owners Association seems to hate any and all renters in the neighborhood and likes to hassle us about really stupid things anytime they get the chance. But after the work we did this weekend, there's no way they could complain! At least for this week that is..

The pissed off cat happened when that cute little black cat found out the hard way that Sunday is animal bath day. But after that fiasco (that I refrained from taking pictures of. You're welcome.) I got a very happy surprise!!

Yup! I'm off on adventure in Portland, OR for a week next month and oh so excited! I get to have a nice vacation from school and work, get to see a great old friend and get to experience the hipster mecca of the United States! 

Anyone been out that way recently? Suggestions on fun filled places to check out?

(PS) Please check out the first of my lovely new sponsors and e-mail me if you'd be interested in being one!!!

Open Casting Call

One of the few things in life that actually is, as simple as it sounds! I am now offering completely free sponsorship in the form of a button swap!

• Just grab anyone of the buttons below
• Place it in an easily seen spot on your own blog 
• E-mail me your button and I will gladly do the same!
• When you send me your button I would love for it to be 200 px width or in a photoshop friendly format so I can edit it to fit my layout :)

I have only made the button in a few different sizes for now so if none of these sizes work for you, please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail and I'll throw one together just for you!

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This is an open casting call so feel free to contact me through comments on this post or click the Trade a Button, Sponsor a Blog button anytime in its new permanent home on the left side of the blog! Can't wait to hear from you all!!!

Etsy Every(other)day: Special Edition

This week has just been an off one for me. Not bad, just off. I procrastinated a paper (which is something I never do), deleted an entire folder of edited photos (luckily I had a back-up on my thumb drive) and of course, forgot to post any Etsy finds this week! So to make up for it, get ready for Mint Madness!!! Which may or may not be entirely influenced by my unhealthy obsession with my Essie Mint Candy Apple nail polish.

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Earrings Nation

Live In Style

Jessica Durrant

Darrielles Clay Art

Joom

River Of Romansk

And to top it all off, here's a picture of a baby bunny. 

I always imagine heaven to be some sort of library...

Holy, wow! Can you believe September is almost over already? I'll admit, I'm still not back in the school swing of things and up until now I just kept saying "It's just the beginning, I'll get the hang of it soon enough."

Well guess what Annika? It's almost October. That's officially no longer "just the beginning" of the school year.

So, to get myself back into a proper rhythm, I think it's time to set some goals for the upcoming month! Goal number one: a proper reading list. Often times I get so caught up in reading textbooks that I have a tendency to forget that I also love reading just for the sake of reading. So, to get the ball rolling in the right direction, I just made a massive Amazon.com order! I love nothing more than used books on Amazon and also, did you know Goodwill has started opening up Amazon shops? The times, they are a changin'.

1. The Idols of Perversity by Bram Dijkstra - My modern art history professor described this book in class as "heavy heavy feminist art theory" and I instantly started searching for a copy online. Maybe not a read I would recommend to anyone not as infatuated with art history as I am, but definitely has potential as a Masters thesis citation!
2. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner - I've been recommended this book by SO many people! Recently (ish), it was made into a movie and the other night the boyfriend and I watched it on Netflix and I was hooked. The film only covers the first few chapters of the book so I really can't wait to read more!
3. Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls by Guerrilla Girls and Whitney Chadwick - From what I've read, this book is a bit dated. But, I love the Guerrilla Girls and Whitney Chadwick so I figured why not? I have all their other books so if anything this just completes my collection!
4. Bright Lights, Big Ass by Jen Lancaster - After looking over the list of future reads I had set myself up for, I decided maybe I needed to throw something a bit more just-for-fun into the mix. I chose this book specifically mostly because GoodReads suggested it to me. If you haven't tried out this site, you really should! They have an all hit and no miss track record with the books that they have suggested me and actually have given me some of my now all time favorites such as The Help, The Book Thief and Art of Modern Rock! So fingers crossed that this is another good one!

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What are some of your favorite reads!? Any suggestions as to what should be on Decembers list?

A lesson on men and internet lingo

For the past year I was the fourth member of a house of three boys and myself. Recently, boy 3 moved out and was replaced with girl 2. However, the affect of 2 boys under the same roof is still about the same as having 3 boys only with a bit of a tighter knit bromance going on.

I don't know if you know this but, boys are weird. My boy, Nick is diabetic and requires daily insulin shots. Yesterday I walked in on a conversation of Nick explaining the shot process to our other male roommate that ended in-

"So you're going to stick that in your stomach?"
"Unless you want to stick it in my arm, yea."
"I do want to stick it in your arm!!!"
"I thought you might!"

So much weird love in here, I can hardly stand it.

Then Nick and I hit the road for St. Petersburg to visit The Dali Museum!

On the way back we saw a rainbow, listened to the new song by my favorite band and of course, had extremely mentally stimulating conversation. The most poignant of these subjects was what exactly this new internet lingo 'smh' is. I suggested 'sell-my-home', Nick said 'share-more-hugs' and, as it turns out (incase you are just as confused as we were), it actually means 'shaking-my-head.' I like our suggestions better. And wow did not knowing what it ment make me feel old. Is this what my Grandmother feels like when trying to upload pictures onto Facebook?

Cleaning And Crafting And Becoming A Red Head

My one and only day off this week and how did I spend it?

Doing. EVERYTHING.

I have never been the type that can just sit around and 'relax.' What other people call relaxing, I call boring. My ADHD doesn't like boring. So, I slept in a bit then woke up and hit the ground running. Well, kind of running. Coffee and then running. I don't know about you but I'm useless before some morning chill time and a good cup of coffee. First, the house got a much needed deep cleaning and I attempted to hang up some prints I received recently. I say attempted because the ADHD kicked in again when Nick woke up and expressed interest in a couple of the craft projects I had mentioned to him.

A few days ago I spotted an amazing tutorial over at Deer In A Bottle and just had to try it. Especially when I already had all the materials needed! How often does a craft project not require a single trip to Hobby Lobby? My book however was a little too small to do follow the tutorial exactly so we had to improvise.

Here's what you'll need:

Any sort of all glass lamp (I used this one)
Mod Podge
An old book (Preferably one you dont mind destroying)
Lighter
Scissors
Sponge brush

1. Burn the edges of some of the pages little by little (length wise) and quickly put the fire out. This is just for effect, dont want anyone burning their house down!
2. Cut the strips to size so that they cover the edges left exposed.

3. Cover the entire lamp in a thing layer on Mod Podge and slowly wrap the paper around.

4. Once you have covered the whole thing in paper, cover the lamp with another thin layer of Mod Podge and let the whole thing dry.

Your final product should look something like this - 

Pssst!! Look! Day 10! Something I made!! (Yea... I know I went out of order...)

I can't wait for these little darlings to dry so I can stick them back and better than ever on my bed side table!! We also did a little fancy foot work and did a project to convert the book we cut pages out into a clock.

But that's for another day! Just like pictures of the red hair. Though that's mostly because it's still wet so I can't decide if it looks alright enough to share with the world yet or not.

After that we went and saw The Help with some friends. Wow. What a great movie! I really can't remember the last time I cried that many times in the theater. It got me thinking a lot about our current culture and the movement for LGBT equality. Oh how history always seems to repeat itself. Did any of you see it? What were your thoughts?

Don't-tell-people-what's-in-these Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are amazing and amazingly simple. But, whatever you do, don't tell people what's in them. I'll tell you why- yesterday I made a little over 2 dozen of these and today, they are gone. Completely, 100%, gone. Yes, they are THAT amazing. But, after the first few people that refused to eat them after I mentioned the secret ingredient, I just started refusing to tell anyone what they were until after they ate at least one.

I bet you're getting pretty curious about what this mystery ingredient is? What's wrong with this picture:

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Chocolate chip cookie dough? Check. Cocoa powder? Check. Brown sugar? Check. Zucchini? ...Check?

Just trust me. I used a value size tube of cookie dough so I'll list the measurements for that and for the normal size, in case you're like me and stink at conversions.

Ingredients

1 tube of pillsbury chocolate chip cookies (30 oz or 16.5 oz)

2 cups shaved zucchini (1 cup for normal size tube)

1/2 cup cocoa powder (or 1/4)

1/2 cup brown sugar (or 1/4)

1. Combine all the ingredients and stick the bowl in the refrigerator while you pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees. The dough is almost imposible to deal with if it's warm so make sure not to skip this step!
2. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes, let cool and enjoy!

Yup! That's it! Simple right? But, make sure you remember the most important rule about these cookies. No one knows whats in them, until they've eaten one.

Enjoy your weekend, my lovelies!!