uh oh, instagram

All my friends have been giving me crap for not having an Instagram, and honestly the only reason was that it just gives me one more thing to keep up with. But uh oh... I have had one for like five minutes and I am already addicted. Trouble.

Time to play some catch up before I start uploading current photos.

[[ getting started on instagram. ]]

february :: photo challenge

Hello March.

Last month Tiff proposed a February Photo A Day Challenge. Here it is.
I will admit that some of the images were not taken on the corresponding date, but they are all from Feb.

[[ february photo challenge. ]]

leap year

So today is an official Leap Year day which is worth noting since it only happens once every four years. Although I am not quite sure what one does to celebrate/commemorate such a thing. More importantly how in the world do you celebrate your birthday if it only comes around every four years? Do you just remain technically younger than everyone else? I mean really... Four years is a long time. Four years ago my hair was straight all the time and it seems like ages ago that I would be insane enough to bother with that task.

Anyway, Happy Leap Year !? Cheers to one extra day in 2012.

[[ this picture is from around 2/2008 when we would have had the last leap year. ]]

spirit animals party

As promised, here are my pictures from Colleen's Spirit Animal Birthday Party last Saturday. Sorry they are mostly of me... there were other cameras floating around too, but no one has posted anything on Facebook just yet. I might do an update if there are some other good ones. :)

[[ some spirit animal costumes. ]]

Tiff took polaroids of everyone so I hope she throws them up soon because they turned out awesome. I did not get any pictures of Colleen!!! (Sorry lady). I am going to try and do some recapping... 

Jenn: Red Fox / Megan: Raccoon / Tiff: Deer / Colleen: Crab / Sam: Panda / Fran: Skunk / Ricky: Seal / Joe: Bear / Morgan: Elephant / Whitney: Unicorn / Nicole: Bunny... There was a cute pink flamingo too, some tigers, more bears, a kangaroo, Colleen's brother was a bat, and Jason is wearing a Wildcats jersey or something? He thought he could get away with that. I say lame. Also, Colleens crab hands were hinged and she could actually grab things!

weekend adventures 52

This weekend was way too much fun. Like really, too much. I am dead now. Back to back nights up until 5am and only a couple hours of sleep will do that. But I would expect nothing less of a birthday weekend in Portland with GD friends I don't get to see too often, including Fran.

friday night
I drove up to Portland right after work (terrible downpour the entire time) and was so relieved when I finally made it to Megans apartment. We had dinner reservations at a Vietnamese restaurant, so I freshened up and we were out the door. Dinner was delicious! I need to remember the name of it. They specialize in pho, which I personally hate with a passion, but this particular place had a lot of other noodle dishes to choose from, so I went with one of those.

After dinner we headed to a bar called Triple Nickel to chill out for a while and meet up with a few more people. Around midnight we relocated to Good Foot for some dancing. They play all 70s music Friday nights, funk, its awesome. I wish I would have taken pictures at TN when everyone was around, but I did get lots of shots while we were dancing at GF. When the bar closed down we were all hungry again so we went to The Hot Cake House for some breakfast. That place was packed but I am definitely happy we stopped to eat at least before going to bed. Sam took me home and I finally crawled in to bed with Megan around 5. ZzzzZZZzzzzz.

[[ at good foot. ]]

saturday
For some reason I was wide awake at 8:30. We laid around in bed for a couple hours though before getting up/dressed and heading downtown with Megans mom to get some breakfast and then to a bookstore called New Renaissance on 23rd. That place was huge and had so much yoga/healing crystals/incense paraphernalia it was highly entertaining. I bought Colleen the most fabulously designed birthday card there to go with her theme and found her a really pretty Spirit Animals book. By the way, they had an entire section. Me and Megan also both bought mood rings, and "Good Karma" charms for our cars. Why not?

We had to stop at Fred Meyer to get a few more costume items and then went back to Megan's apartment to finish up with our outfits before starting to get ready. Our makeup took a long time, but it was fun. I love dressing up! My eyes were ok, but the eyelashes I bought to wear were perfect! Megan's eyes turned out awesome as well. I was really really happy with how our outfits came together overall. Eventually we made it to Colleen's place and most people were already there, perfect. The rest of the night was all pictures, dancing, talking, hugging, and being super silly with good friends.

[[ breakfast. ]]

[[ spirit animals book. ]]

[[ getting ready. ]]

sunday
We had all crashed at Colleen's place so it took us a while to get going and eventually some of us ended up back at The Hot Cake house for some real breakfast. Then it was time to say goodbye, back to Megan's, nap time, and around 4:30 I finally started my tedious drive home.

((( I am going to throw up pictures from the party in my next post, so here is a teaser. )))

[[ spirit animals preview polaroids. ]]

monster mash (2010)

In 2010 everyone was all over the place after having graduated, but we all came together at Colleens house in Portland for her birthday party. She decided that she wanted to theme this one "Monster Mash" so that everyone would dress up as some sort of monster or villain. Me and Tiff worked on the decorations, along with Colleens help and came over early to help set up and then start getting ready.

I decided to be Medusa and had bought and painted a ton of tiny snakes to put in my hair, which ended up working pretty well. Everything was being held up with literally hundreds of bobbi pins, so since my hair is really really thick/heavy, they started falling out towards the end of the night and we found snakes everywhere the next morning. (I want to try this costume again sometime, but a more scary/traditional version with Greek carb).

Colleen was Max from Where The Wildthings Are, and made her entire costume from scratch! Tiff bought some hoodies from AA and monsterified them with eyes and teeth for her and Jason (which looked awesome). There was also cookie monster, Sam was "the bearded lady", and Megan was Bride of Frankenstein. Pat couldn't make it for some reason, so no costume for him.

Add caption

[[ pictures from colleens monster mash party. 2010. ]]

Of course, last year was Robot Party (2011) (<-- link), which I posted on the blog already! Robots was definitely the most costume creative and tricky party to maneuver! I love getting creative for costume parties! I am excited to see how everyones costumes turn out for Colleen's Spirit Animal birthday party tomorrow night. 

super hero party (2009)

In honor of Colleen's Spirit Animal themed birthday party this Saturday, I thought I would go back a few years and recap some of her previous parties, which are always some of my favorites. 


In 2009 we were all seniors in the design program at OSU and busy busy busy all the time. In class one morning me, Tiff, and Colleen were talking about her upcoming birthday over the weekend, and decided that we should throw her a party! We decided to go with Superheros, and the rest is history, we have had themed parties every year since.

After class we hit up the dollar tree for decorations and started working on our costumes. The requirement was that everyone either dress as their favorite super hero/villain, or make up their own. The party was a huge success and everyone got super in to it! This is one of my favorites of all time. Check it out.

(The quality is a little fuzzy, but then again, these are from a couple years ago and mostly off of Facebook)

[[ pictures from colleens superhero birthday party, 2009. ]]

I dressed up as the villain Poison Ivy (not my best work, but I was going off of the old school comics), and Pat was The Tick (like his muscles?). Other heros of note are Hunter as The Flash, and Francisco as Wolverine. Tiff was Shera from Heman and her (now) husband Jason was Handcock (the movie had just come out). We also had a Snuggieman (Ricky), Sharkman (Sam), Supersexy (Colleen), a Powerpuff Girl, Quailman from Doug, and lots of others. 

Sorry you can't really see any of the decorations... we made an awesome wall filled with "POW", "ZAP", "KABOOM" and other such comic book phrases.