submitting this photo for Macro Monday. I don't know if it's a true macro, but I still like the shot a lot. it's a little dark, but still beautiful, in my opinion.
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and this one for Happy Monday. the challenge for today is sunrise/sunsets. this was taken from our balcony during our anniversary vacation last summer.
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I wish I had one of the yellow beads that I wore, but I like this one for Mellow Yellow Monday. those beads were such a fun touch for the Mardi Gras party!
Happy Monday, folks!
I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!
PS - who are YOU rooting for to win the Superbowl?
seeing as I'm married to a Ravens fan, I'm rooting for the Packers.
1. If my house was on fire and I could only grab 3 things I would grab assuming all people and animals are out safely, I would grab my laptop, my mom's diamond earrings (or, my whole jewelry box if I can), and my wedding dress.
2. A smell I really like is lavender. I bought Mrs. Meyer's lavender hand soap and I am in LOVE.
3. Something you might not know about me is that I am my own worst critic... but isn't that the case with everyone?
4. Some of my favorite websites to putter about on are Etsy, Lamebook, I Can Has Cheezeburger, Good Reads, Regretsy, etc. funny stuffs.
5. This weekend I will be starting my English class, have lunch with Kaley, get some chores done around the house, and relax.
6. Nothing makes me happier than the weekend. fo real. also, spending time with loved ones is pretty awesome too. and kitty cuddles.
7. A bad habit I have is staying up late when I know I need to get to sleep.
sheesh. I have been horrible about blogging this week. I feel like all my posts lately have been fluff, so I apologize. I need to get back into the swings of things. my spring semester class starts tonight, but it's a 13 week class, so I won't be as stressed out as I was over the winter semester with that damn sociology class.
I'm going to make an effort to take better photos, and in doing so, I'm going to try my hand at participating in as many photo challenges as I can. I hope they encourage me to work harder at taking nice photos and being satisfied with them enough to publish them here on the blog.
there's a lot going on at the FoFinn household lately. we've recently reaaaaally started to budget ourselves and cut back on frivolous spending. I'm proud to say that I have not bought lunch at work one time this week, and it feels great. we're allowing ourselves a certain amount of cash to spend every week, and we can do what we please with it. I decided that instead of buying lunch everyday, I'm going to save my money and buy myself a Vera Bradley agenda calendar, haha.
this is a lot of text, so I'm going to break it up with some photos. I took my camera out the other evening and got some good shots of the meows, so I thought I'd share them for my fellow crazy cat ladies, along with a few shots from a Mardi Gras themed party I attended over the weekend.
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the prompt for today's Foto Friday challenge is Reflections. I took this at a friend's house over the weekend. a good friend of mine turned 30 on Saturday, and visited us from Louisiana, so we threw her a Mardi Gras themed bonfire party. it was the coldest day we had in a long time, so I made sure to bundle up!
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this week's challenge at Living Every Moment is "anything." any time there isn't a specific task or item to photograph, the kitties get the spotlight. this is Bear's ALERT!!! face.
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the awesome ladies who hosted the Mardi Gras party on Saturday night did an amazing job with the favors and little trinkets. there were beads, masks, and the birthday girl even got a boa to wear all evening. I took this shot using my 50mm lens, and I was really impressed with how it turned out, so I decided to use it for this week's Give Me Your Best Shot challenge.
(for some reason, the button for GMYBS is not working, but the link is!)
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and since GMYBS and Photo Story Friday are linked together, I'll go ahead and post that one as well. this is Lily's spot on the couch. she will fight for this cushion, and the other meowers know not to even think about parking their asses here.
last weekend, I decided to implement a weekly meal plan for dinners in our house and I really think it's helped us to stay on track. we were spending SO much money at the grocery store on a weekly basis on a bunch of crap that we didn't need. having a specific plan for meals has forced us to only get what we'll need for that week and is therefore saving us money each week. now... this only started last week, so I'm not an expert at this or anything, but it's working well damnit.
as you can probably tell from my sidebar, I've been doing a lot of reading as of late. I made myself a rather ambitious goal to read at least 50 books this year, and I've already finished 3 books this year, and we're not even out of the first month yet. I completed The Help yesterday afternoon (three cheers for a snow day!), and it was such a good read. I'll be writing a lengthy review over the weekend, so stay tuned! I picked up 19 Minutes by Jodi Picoult last night and I'm hooked already.
I'll be back later today with a Fill in the Blank Friday post!
what's that corny quote that people were throwing around years ago? everyone and their mother had it plastered all over their MySpace profiles. something to do with how if a guy can't make you laugh, he sucks? or maybe something more uplifting than that? oh, here it is.
"if you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything."
- Marilyn Monroe
I'd say I got pretty lucky with this gem. this is a conversation between Sean and I on gchat (which, pardon my language, fucking sucks big donkey balls lately) this afternoon. typical day in my life, I'm telling you. this guy knows the way to my heart.
this was the most exciting part of my evening last night... besides my heinous workout with my trainer and the delicious steak dinner hub cooked. the amazing quality of these pictures is what you'll get when you continue to use your 875 billion year old cell phone, folks. god I can't wait for my upgrade.
I love when she's in a cuddling mood. she gets so excited to lay with me and she loves to be rubbed all over. she is the sweetest cat ever... if you call for any of the other kitties, she comes bolting into the room reading for lovins, like "what? did you call me? what's that? you want to snuggle? I love to snuggle. let's snuggle right now... don't worry about getting up to pet me, I'll just make myself comfortable right here on your pillow."
if you've been around here a while, you might remember me starting this countdown last year as well, albeit a little later than this year. I'm not real excited about turning 25, but I'm always happy about a holiday in which I get presents.
with a birthday approaching, I naturally start to take notice of pretty things I want to have in my possession, and will not hesitate to send Sean a little note on gchat saying something like "if you need any birthday ideas for me... just sayin." the abundance of things I send to him is never-ending, but I thought I'd go ahead and make a little wish list here on the blog... ya know... just in case anyone needs any ideas.
I'm also accepting monetary donations for the "I Need To Finish My Damn Sleeve" fund, and can be reached at my email if there are any willing contributors out there.
so here's what my wish list looks like for my 25th birthday:
I'd also like to be able to continue seeing my personal trainer for free, one million dollars, and a lifetime supply of Italian ice. and for my hair to grow faster before I hastily decide to chop all this shit off.
also, I just want to give a quick HELLO! to my new followers!
thanks for joining me here at The Bear Naked Truth, I'm so happy to have you!
I hope to not offend anyone during their visit, but I ain't makin' any promises.
1. My favorite quote is "courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." - Nelson Mandela
2. A bad habit I have is hmm... well I quit smoking, quit biting my nails, cut out junk food. I guess I'd have to say my worst habit is lack of filter for my mouth. I have a (bad) habit of letting it take over.
3. The first time I felt like a "grown up" was when I moved out on my own and paid my first bill, which was the security deposit for the new place I was renting with complete strangers. I was 19 years old.
4. Weekends are enjoyed immensely, but way too short. I think whoever created the 5:2 workweek to weekend ratio should go to hell.
5. When I was a child I wished my name was uhh, I'm drawing a blank here. I've always liked my name. also, I'm thankful my dad didn't win the name game or I would have been named Candace, so that he could have called me Candy. noooo thanks.
6. I wish I didn't have to work for a living. I wish I was rich. I wish my cats would live forever. I wish bad things wouldn't happen to good people. I wish I could eat whatever I want and not have to worry about my thighs getting bigger. I wish it was easier to get pregnant. I wish I had time to read more often. I wish I was a rockstar. I wish I knew Kelle Hampton in real life. I wish I could hug my Internet friends.
7. A secret I have is I own a weekly organized pill box like an old person. I take a handful of medications and vitamins at night and it was getting to be a real pain in the ass to keep track of all of them. I love it.
I am a lucky, lucky girl, let me tell you. this month, I've had the pleasure of having TWO encounters with Internet strangers, and it has been awesome. I mentioned in this post of yore that I was planning on having a little get together with good friend and fellow Nestie, Tara, when she came to visit from Florida. fortunately, fellow DC'er Rebecca was able to join in on the fun as well!
we decided on a girls night... one, because Sean was too busy drinking his life away during the Ravens loss to the Steelers, and two, because girls nights are more fun anyway. we met up at Jaleo on 7th Street in the city (Rebecca's recommendation... SO good) and started the evening off with a pitcher of sangria.
and let me just inform you that this beverage was, hands down, the best sangria I've ever tasted in my life.
pardon the quality, it was taken on my cell phone.
before we knew it, that pitcher turned into 4 (yes, four) and we were talking over each other in conversation... about books, husbands (and how stupid they are sometimes), pets, our jobs, city living, etc. we tried hard to convince Tara that a move up north would be exceedingly beneficial for her, but something about the 40 degree weather was giving her enough reason to decline.
ring shot, courtesy of Tara (clockwise from left: Rebecca, myself, and Tara)
we ate a multitude of different foods... from miniature sweet shrimp, to salmon, to roasted potatoes, to asparagus, to scallops with a butternut squash puree, to hazelnut cake for dessert. it was the first time I'd ever eaten at a Tapas style restaurant.
I was a little nervous at first, being a picky and somewhat non-adventurous eater, but the food was absolutely wonderful and our waitress was amazing as well. she made sure to keep me updated on the Ravens/Steelers score so that I could somehow gauge my husbands' drunk factor in my head.
photo courtesy of Tara (clockwise from left: Rebecca, myself, and Tara)
all in all, I'd say my second ever Nestie GTG was a huge success, and I can't wait for more. in fact, I'm even interested in bringing Sean to this restaurant to try out more items on the menu. I'm not sure if he'd agree to it after seeing our bill.
