Judging A Book By Its Cover...

I do it; it's true.  I find myself drawn to the books with the appealing photos, graphics, colors, and fonts.  I love the way a book feels in my hands.  The cover design, the dimensions and size of the book, the thickness of the number of pages, the texture of the cover...  I find these are the things that make or break it for me when purchasing a book.  In some ways, it's possible that I miss out on a lot of books this way.  However, I'm sure it's also saved me from reading a few duds.  How do you choose the books you read?  Do you choose by description alone, or is there another deciding factor?

 

I love the  colors, textures, and design

of this book.  Simple and elegant.

Most of my books are well loved

like this one here.

13 Pounds of Deep Fried Goodness...

Happy Thanksgiving!  This year I spent Thanksgiving with my boyfriend at his best friend's house.  They go all out for the holiday.   We feasted on two turkeys (one deep fried, one roasted), mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, homemade french fries, steamed vegetables, peas, corn, spiced pumpkin custard pie, coconut cream pie, and various other cookies and desserts.  The Boy and I baked the Spiced Pumpkin Custard Pie.  It came out alright.  There was a slight oopsie in putting the pie together, but it still tasted good!  The Boy fried the turkey, and it was soooo good.  His bestfriend's mom made a turkey as well, and it was sooo moist!  I was pretty good about not eating to much.  I'm not a fan of the food coma (or packing on the pounds).  Turkey gumbo with the leftovers!

Me, The Boy, and his best friend's mom.

The boys checking on the bird.

The Boy's best friend's family.  So nice of them to have me!

It's Been One Week Since You Looked At Me...

Don't worry, I won't go on to sing the rest of the Barenaked Ladies' hit from the 90's.  However, it has been a full week since my last blog post.  I apologize.  My blog has only just begun, and I'm already slacking.  I don't want to be one of those bloggers who ends up disappearing for a week or two with no blog entry and no explanation.  Here is where I make a promise; I promise to do my absolute best to update frequently with quality posts.  To show you I mean business, I will be blogging more often, and I'll also be changing my layout this weekend.  So hang in there and enjoy! Hope you haven't quite given up on me just yet!  :)

Sucker; Not a Blood Sucker...

I'm a reader.  I read for fun, and I read for leisure...  When I have the time.  In general, I try not to get involved in any books with a semi-long series (4 books or more).  I prefer to read individual books simply because I'm a fairly slow reader, and reading isn't exactly that high on my list of priorities.  (Aimlessly surfing the web seems much more appealing most of the time.)  However, I've gotten involved in the Vampire Academy book series; I'm on book 4 right now.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but halfway through the first book I couldn't stop.  Vampires, high school drama, magic, and of course...  A forbidden love interest.  Bring in forbidden love and I'm instantly hooked.  That goes for anything.

 

 

I admit it.  I'm a sucker (not a blood sucker) for vampires.  Vampire movies, vampire TV shows, vampire books.  You name it, I like it.  I'm not quite sure what it is about vampires that appeals to me, but I've been fascinated with the myth from a young age.  The Count on Sesame Street?  Yup, I loved him.  Okay, maybe not that far back but the interest definitely grew once I became a teenager.  I know what you're dying to ask; was I into the Twilight series?  Yes I was.  I almost passed it up since it was the "in" thing of the time.  But like I said, I can't say no to things involving vampirism, and I definitely  can't say no to stories of forbidden love.

Veteran's Day Shopping and Fun...

Oh, how I enjoy 3 day weekends.  Sleeping in, shopping, game night, and ice cream...  Yes please!  I'm at my boyfriend's place in San Diego this weekend.  He had the day off from work today.  Waking up a little past noon was quite nice.  The boy and I met up with his good friend to run errands and then shop at the outlets!  No one told me about the outlets here, and no one told me that they're amazing!!!  The store selection was insane!  I was shopping with boys, so obviously I didn't get to do as much shopping as I would have liked.  Regardless of the fact that my boyfriend's friend is gay, he's definitely not willing to spend all day at the outlets with me.  I like to take my time shopping and make sure I've seen everything that might interest me.  I drive most of my girlfriends crazy with how long I take to shop.  Oops.  I ended up buying things at Bath & Body Works (lotion, more lotion, face mask, and a Christmas gift), Vans (bright lime green lace-up Vans as a Christmas gift for my little sis), and Charlotte Russe (a red layering tank).  All for $42.  Heck yes!  I love me some good deals.

After shopping the 3 of us had game night with a couple who the boys are friends with.  Apples to Apples, Skip-Bo, Wii.  Oh so much fun.  We ended up going out to grab ice cream at this cute little ice cream shop called The Daily Scoop.  The decor was simply darling, and the place even makes "DogScream"--ice cream for your dogs.  How cute is that?  (The couple's doxens love the ice cream.)  The shop's decor and overall vibe is so cute that I just had to take pictures.  Take a look...

Adorable paintings on the walls, and I couldn't get over

how cute the creative placing of the mirrors is.

Various individually wrapped candies available 

for sale.  A tiny little sweet shop!

Homemade cupcakes and mini pies all

displayed in domed cake stands.

Construction Paper Turkey...

If you look for me on Wednesday nights, you'll find me teaching the kids at my church.  Our Wednesday night program takes a break over the holidays though, so this week I decided to get a head start on our Thanksgiving craft projects.  I could have found something in a lesson book or looked for a craft template on the internet, but instead I decided to draw up my own little construction paper turkey for the kids to cut out and put together.  Of course, all my lesson planning is completely last minute due to the fact that I am one of the world's greatest procrastinators, so I was hustling and bustling to get all my pieces traced and ready for my kids.  Luckily, my mama was nice enough to help me out with the tracing. Oh, what would I do without my mom?  In the end, everything worked out and I had my craft ready for the kidlings on time.  Whoo-hoo!  I had the kids write one thing they are thankful for on each of the turkey's feathers.  Here is the finished product of the example I made...

Ignore the creases in the feathers.  That happened during the
transport home in my bag.  :p

Layouts, Geocities, and HTML...

Yay!  I have a new layout!  It's nothing fancy obviously, but for my first crack at putting together a layout that isn't 100% Blogger-made is pretty exciting.  I'm sure I'll be playing around with layouts a bit more, so don't be surprised if you see it change again.  I've made digital art and websites for a while now, but learning the Blogger tricks will be what takes the most effort.  Want to hear how my geekdom began and progressed?  Let me tell you a little tale...

It was freshman year of high school and, naturally, I was obsessed with a boyband.  (While most of the girls I knew growing up went through this phase in junior high, I was a bit of a social late bloomer.)  The logical (please note sarcasm) thing to do to support my obsession with said boyband was to make a website dedicated to them.  (Yes, I was that kind of teenybopper.  I formally apologize here and now for my past indiscretions.  I am very much embarrassed of my early high school years.)  So I started my own Geocities site.  If you've been around the internet for a while you remember Geocities.  It was Yahoo's drag and drop website building client back in the day.

Eventually, my boyband obsession petered out only to be replaced by an admiration for an up-and-coming singer/songwriter.  I'm sure you've heard of her: Avril Lavigne.  A friend of mine (shout out to Kristy!) heard about Avril from one of her friends, and she began spreading the word and promoting Avril.  I too wanted to spread the word and help promote, so I went to start an Avril website myself.  For some odd reason this time however, Geocities wasn't working on my computer properly.  So out of my many options, I narrowed it down to two: 1) Don't make a website, or 2) Learn HTML.  I chose the latter.  It was an interesting learning experience trying to get the hang of HTML (with major thanks to Hailey), but eventually I did.  In learning HTML, I also had to learn some form of graphic design to produce a somewhat decent layout.  I chose to learn JASC Paint Shop Pro.  Who knows what version it was...  So eventually that Avril site did make it up onto the web.  And thanks to Geocities refusing to work with my old family PC, I now have the ability to code HTML.  It may not be textbook HTML, but browsers can read it just fine.  The HTML also helped in making some pretty cool MySpace and LiveJournal layouts back in high school.  If I can manage those two sites, surely I can manage Blogger...  Right?

It's Raining...

It's raining out today, and I absolutely love it!  Sadly I don't get to see rain too often living in Southern California, so when it does rain I can't get enough of it.  When most people love the sun and heat here, I live for the days that it's overcast and drizzly.  Does anyone else love rainy weather more than sunny weather?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone!  Just wanted to share a picture of the Halloween decorations my little sister and I put together this year.  Enjoy!

Yes, those are milk and orange juice jugs.  :)