Loompa chic

So, I'll own it. In my old(er) age, I've become much more vain. I've started to wear more make-up, think about wearing nicer clothes, and figuring out finally how to use hairspray. I guess it's my newfound vanity that brought me to try to make my scary pale legs tan with a little faux tanner.

I of course did my research and found a brand that I thought would be great. I exfoliated my legs, put on rubber gloves and rubbed the stuff in like crazy. I made sure to let my legs dry, and then went to bed.

The next morning, while not terrible, I was definitely rocking slightly orange legs. On top of that, I guess I'm not too careful because I had missed a few spots as well.


So, in short, I would liken my appearance to a stripey Oompa Loompa. But I'm not giving up... I will try another brand this week and hope for the best :)

Tomato Adventure!

So last night I talked for over an hour with my mother in law. She's super cool, and we haven't talked for a long time, so it was fun to catch up. I told her I wanted to have tomatoes, but waited too long. She told me that I should just buy bigger plants that are further along. All of a sudden I was like, "Oh, duh Gina!"

So today I went to the local nursery and bought two plants and containers to plant them in. I got two varieties, both of which I've heard are good. Ace variety, which is described as an old favorite. It looks like it will produce a very large, traditional tomato. I also got Early Girls, which is supposed to be great as well.

So tonight I planted them, watered profusely, and gave them some tomato food. I'm sure I'll obsess about them as much as I have with my lemons and limes :) I also got two kinds of basil and one kind of mint. My new summer goal: home-made mojitos and bruschetta!!!

From Ireland to Ol' Grandad

Last weekend we had a whiskey-tasting party with some of the peeps from Mike's work. Despite it being a ton of work to get our house in order (it had gotten extremely bad, well, because I hate cleaning!), the party was a ton of fun.

We kicked off the afternoon with whiskey tasting. I think in the end we had 11 or 12 whiskeys to taste, so we were taking really small shots. Check out the pre-party picture below:


We started with some really "peet-y" (aka nice) Irish scotch that one of Mike's colleagues brought. As it turns out, almost no one had a sophisticated enough palatte to enjoy that one ;) Too bad for us I guess. We worked down the line in terms of quality, ending up with a $7 bottle of Ol' Grandad.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, I had stepped away from the table by the time we tasted that one. Though after talking to his colleagues about how "interesting" the taste was, Mike has promised me a special tasting so I don't miss out on the magic. Great, I can't wait.....

Why I <3 California

Found this picture on our camera. It's from a couple of months ago, when we were driving down to visit my BFF in San Diego. Driving through Los Angeles, we accidentally prompted the navigation to display Mexican restaurants.


This is why I could never move to Wisconsin :)

Finished: Project Headboard

As I mentioned several posts ago, I was on a mission to make a DIY headboard for our new bed. After a few weekends of failure, Mike and I managed to finally get it done. First, we went to Home Depot to buy a piece of plywood to form the structure of the headboard.

When we got back to the house, he got to use his new Skil Saw (with lasers!!!) to cut the plywood down to size. From there, we just layered on the foam and batting and covered it with the beautiful fabric I had found. Here is an image of our layering progress in the garage:


After we finished with the layering, we had to wrap everything around and staple it with a staple gun. Unfortunately, as is often the case in these kinds of projects, we had to make our 2nd Home Depot trip of the day since Mike couldn't find his staple gun (of course we found it a couple of days later). So after a couple more fails at getting the staple gun to work, we wrapped everything around and stapled it securely.

After a bit of trimming of the excess fabric, we brought it upstairs. Our original intention was to mount it to the wall with flush mounts. However, after positioning it behind the bed to see how high up on the wall we wanted to mount it, I decided it looked fine resting on the ground, and we decided to forego mounting.


All in all, I think it's a good height without being mounted at all. I think it's a great addition to the bedroom, and am proud of myself for being somewhat Bob Vila-esque. Go DIY!!

Faces obscured to protect the innocent

Mike and I had an impromptu BBQ the other night. I don't know if it was the excitement of summer, the fact that we all hadn't seen each other in a while, or perhaps the mass consumption of alcohol, but people seemed to have a really good time.

In addition to lots of giggles, dancing and informal karaoke, I snapped the picture below, which inspired the title of this post.


If this BBQ is any indication of the celebrations to come, I think I'm gonna have a fun summer :) Bring on the 80's dance party!!