Feral Cats in the Land of Mouse - Ingredients for an Awesome Vacation!

Vacation was awesome.  Mainly because it was VACATION.  My future goal is to have a whole week or two off at once.  Doesn't that sound heavenly?  But even though my vacation was only four days - it was still pretty great.

We crammed 5 people into my Prius to make the trip to California from Phoenix.  From her all the way to the beach in Newport it's about 7 hours.  I always want it to be less, but realistically you have to plan on 7.  Man do I love that Prius.  I figure the gas to drive there cost us about $28.

We went straight to the beach and then had the luck of getting parking spot right next to a fantastic spot.  It couldn't have worked out better.  I fed the meter to allow us to stay until after 5 pm that evening.  It was absolutely beautiful.  The weather was perfect.  I even bought a fresh cut mango to enjoy on the beach and that was pretty awesome as well.  Here's an instagram photo I took while lazing on the sand with my book.

Later we checked in to our secret hotel by Disneyland.  I'm not going to tell you about our hotel.  Know why?  Because I honestly don't want everyone to find out about it.  It's the least expensive half-way decent hotel I've found close to Disneyland and they don't really advertise very much online so it's actually a little hard to find.  I found it back in the mid 90s through a travel agency (do those even exist anymore?).  They seem busy enough to stay in business but not so busy that they will remodel or rip the place down and build something expensive in it's place.  If you really want to know ask me and I'll tell you personally.  :)

We spent the next 2 days in Disneyland and California adventure and that is always fun.  But it was super great having all my grown kids there with me.  Yes, Disneyland was fun when they were little.  But I would say it's just as fun now.  And I don't have to find a bathroom to change any little kids diapers anymore.  We even ate at the Blue Bayou which was awesome (pricey yes, but totally worth it).

(we rode this Disney train and around and around one night - it was kind of crazy - I now have the weird song memorized that they play when you're in the "grand canyon and the primitive world").  

I can never decide what my favorite ride is.  I still really love splash mountain - but we got so wet this time I was wet for most of the day!  I do really like California Screamer and Tower of Terror too.  But honestly, this time I think maybe I most enjoyed Soaring over California - which I've always liked but seemed especially lovely this year.  There were a couple of new rides I had not seen or ridden before - the new Ariel ride in California Adventures is pretty cute.  And I will always love Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion - Pirates possibly being the ride we went on the most times.  I lost track. 

The kids were old enough to get into looking at all the interesting details and trying to figure stuff out like when you're on the Pirates ride - where the heck does that ride go?  (into the parking lot it would seem - or something!) and Jordan read up on all kids of weird disney facts before we left.  We were looking for hidden Mickeys everywhere and strange little things you've probably never noticed before.  

Jordan told us there are over 200 feral cats inside Disneyland and that they feed them.  I wasn't sure I believed that until the last night near main street and the Sleeping Beauty Castle one darted across our path!  She looked like this: 

When I got back to the hotel that night I had to look it up and sure enough!  They DO keep and feed feral cats.  They keep the rodent population down.  They showed up spontaneously in the early years of the park and they have been feeding them and spaying and neutering them ever since.  Random cats still keep showing up.  You have to admit it is a pretty good find of a place to live if you're a feral cat.  There are about 6 cat feeding stations around the park in areas where you wouldn't notice them.  One is up on the old platform for the old tram that used to stretch across the park and go through the matterhorn.  One of the stations is still there in Fantasyland kind of look up when you're in the food area kitty corner from Dumbo.  It's kind of hidden, but it's there in the corner.  Apparently the cats also really like the area around Tom Sawyer Island and the food area in Adventureland near Splash Mountain.  They like the area near the train tracks back behind Tom Sawyer island too and there is a feeding station near there as well.  

When Holden was little he used to say that if he was homeless he would go live inside Disneyland.  At the time I don't think he realized that place really never sleeps.  There are people working inside that park 24/7 so you really would not be able to hide inside that park.  But he loved that idea.  

Sadly, all Disneyland vacations must come to an end.  

We made one last stop on our way home in Pasadena.  We stopped at a place for lunch called Lemonade.  It was super tasty healthy food as well as macarons and multiple kinds of lemonade.  It was really good.  I would definitely go again.  In fact, I was wishing we had them here in Phoenix.  

I mean if you only have 4 days to spend on vacation - these are a pretty good way to spend 4 days.  

Favorite Local Restaurants - Phoenix

The other day my son said "Today was an especially fantastic food day".  And indeed it was.  I'd love to make you all think it was because I'm such a fabulous cook and he adored something I made, but actually I didn't cook or make anything at all that particular day.  That day we ate at two local places that were lovely.

Here is a list of some of my current local favorites.  They earned their way onto this page by being: 1.  Delicious, & 2.  Locally Owned.

1.  La Grande Orange:

Located at the corner of 40th street & Campbell, this has long been my favorite local restaurant.  Here's why.  It's ALWAYS good.  And here's the other reason why - for me, usually, I will find something I like at a restaurant and I will order that same thing every time I go there.  Because I know I like that particular thing and I know they make it well, so I don't want to mess that up by trying something I might not like.  But at LGO, the problem for me is that there are many things I like, it's actually really hard for me to choose.  And bear in mind there are probably even more things on the menu that I would like but I don't want to try anything else because I already have a hard time as it is.

Things I love here:

Both of their tuna sandwiches, ALL of the salads, the french pancakes, the oatmeal, the lemonaid, the orange juice, the sushi, the cookies, the muffins, the cottage cheese (seriously ridiculously good), and last but certainly not least the Pizza's - and my favorites are the roasted corn and the mushroom.  So good.

Guys the pizza is like sourdough bread perfection, chewy and just the right amount of thin vs. thick with the most delicious goat cheese.  Crazy good piping hot.  Cahruhazy I tell you.

2.  The Parlor:

I love the name of this place because it's an old beauty parlor.  And I love love love that they left that mid century brickwork on the front of the building.  The Parlor is located at roughly Camelback and 19th street.  

Things I love:

Their pizzas are super delicious, especially the mushroom, they have an amazing tuna sandwich on foccacia (are we sensing a theme here with my love of pizza and tuna sammys, yeah kinda), great salads (I've tried 4 or 5 and they've all been yummy) and they also have tasty little desserts.  My favorite dessert so far was a pistachio crepe with orange marscapone and roasted strawberries.  Devine.  And it doesn't hurt to mention they have really nice wait staff.  Our last waiter we had here was awesome.  

3.  Astor House

I'd like to have eaten here more times before reviewing it because I think there is a lot more deliciousness to explore but I'm already sold after my first outing.  Astor House is located at the Roundabout at 12th street & Oak in the Coronado district.  It's next door to it's sister location "The Tuck Shop", which I also plan on trying soon.

what I loved:

We had the cubano sandwiches and they were soooo yummy and delicious.  We also had their house made lemonaid and ginger ale.  That ginger ale was so good, I've wanted to go back just for that all week.  It tastes like ginger guys.  That sounds obvious, but what a concept.  I mean, when you drink ginger ale you probably never really thought about what it was really suppose to taste like before I bet.  But now I totally get it.  Other things on their menu sound scrumptious as well.  Check them out.  They also have an awesome patio so when it cools off a little bit I'm going to get some people to go to lunch their and just bask in the lovely weather.  Their breakfast menu looks great too and in the evenings they have more like "snacks" or you can have dinner at "The Tuck Shop" next door. 

4.  Short Leash Hot Dogs

Located wherever you can find them - they do business out of a trailer/food truck.  You can keep track of their whereabouts on twitter and facebook.  But often found at the Phoenix Downtown Market or Stinkweeds (Camelback & Central) parking lot.  

What I love:

Last time I had a hot dog on flat bread with mango chutney which was to die for.  Ask them what they recommend, they are great at suggesting things based on your tolerance for spicy, etc.  And another thing I love is that they sell a soda called Diet Cheerwine which is like the best cherry soda you've ever had.  

5.  Sweet Republic

If you're really lucky you might be able to catch their 1950s style ice cream truck at the same location as Short Leash.  The truck makes it around Phoenix and Scottsdale periodically.  However, if you can't find the truck, they are also permanently located at 92nd street & Shea.  Yes, I know, that's pretty far if you live in Central Phoenix.  But I think it's worth it.  

What I love:

They make artisan's ice cream with fresh ingredients.  The flavors are both subtle and delicious.   A few I adore are:  strawberry buttermilk, meyer lemon, medjool date, and huckleberry.

Jordan REGULARLY craves the real mint chip.  Tastes like the mint you grow in the garden, not the fake mint flavoring from a bottle.

and last but not least, one more ice cream joint:

6.  Churn

Churn is a colorful little ice cream shop located next to the restaurant Windsor (and I've only eaten at Windsor once so I don't feel I can adequately express an opinion on that yet) - they are just north of Camelback on Central ave.  

What I love:

Their ice cream is like old fashioned flavorful creamy ice cream.  I've yet to try a flavor that didn't impress but the strawberry is pretty hard to beat.  They also have a multitude of cone options, including a pretzel cone.  

(sorry sugarloo.com, I don't know who you are, but I jacked your photo, hope you're cool with it)

So that's it.  There are other places I like too, but these are my favorite "go to" places at the moment!

gratitude - day 15 - food

I planned my Thanksgiving menu last night.  It was kind of fun to figure out what I'm making or how I might do it a little differently than usual.  I really appreciate - truly appreciate, that we are so blessed to have such an abundance of food in this country.  The variety of food available is nothing short of astounding. 

So I was watching Paula Deen yesterday (DANG, that woman knows how to add cream cheese to everything...it's very seductive programming when one is dieting), and I found something I've never before noted while watching her show.

Her son - Jamie Deen:

DANG.  This guy said some really really cute stuff, he's absolutely darling, he knows how to cook and he seems nice as all get out.

And he's married.  So you know, it's a slightly inappropriate crush on my part. 

But I must admit this is a pretty instananeous LIKE that I feel for this man. 

So this was just going to be a post on gratitude for food. 

But I'm also thankful for cute men in the food industry, and especially I am thankful for Jamie Deen's dimples. 

good gravy he's beautiful. 

How to Have a Favorite Things Party

I saw this idea on the internet (pinterest) one day and I loved it.  It's a reason to have a party when you really don't have any reason to have a party.

I started with a list of women who I really like - I thought of people in the 20s up to women in their 60s.  Fun doesn't really have an age.  I sent out an invite explaining the idea - which is that you bring 5 of your favorite thing costing $6 or less to the party, when you leave you'll have 5 favorites from other people.  I invited about 25 women in total.  (I could have invited more but you've got to draw the line somewhere - so if you're reading this and you weren't invited but you might have liked to have come - I probably would have loved to have had you there!  If I invited everyone I loved/liked the list would have been well over 100 women...but I was not quite up for throwing that large of a party!)  In the end there were 17 of us at the party. 

I thought for a while about the menu, I wanted it to be things that I really like since we're talking    about favorites.  Lately I've been making my own little pizzas that I really like.  They are pita pizzas with goat cheese, sweet corn, sun dried tomatoes, mozarella, garlic salt, spinach leaves and a little olive oil infused with garlic.  They are easy, but yummy.  I also bought fresh & easy hummus (my favorite store bought hummus), wheat pita quarters, made fruit kabobs with pineapple, cantaloupe, and strawberries and threw together a ceasar salad.  For dessert I bought some red velvet cakes from the Hermosa bakery (also available at Fresh & Easy).  I also made a punch I really love.  It's raspberry lemonaid with 7-up and frozen berries.  I think the food was pretty yummy and easy to eat and not too heavy.

It was a lovely evening in my backyard (I had planned to take photos of all of this but I was too busy with the party to be taking photos!).

Eventually we gathered around and everyone passed out there favorites.  It was so fun to see what people brought and fun to anticipate having your name drawn to see what you would get.

Here are a few of our favorites (this is not an all inclusive list - some of the ladies read the invitation to say that they should bring 5 different things and not 5 of one thing, in that case I just chose one of their items to list here):

Three ladies brought different types of lip gloss - this photo is the brand retreat but not the actual lip gloss brought to the party.  But apparently ladies care about their lips being nice and soft based on the representation of different options to do so among our favorites. 

we also like our homes to smell good.  two favorites were fragrant wall plug in from bath and body works and gold canyon candles (it seems like there is some fudging going on with pricing - especially with the candles but it's because the woman who brought these sells them)

We also realllly like tasty things, Fresh & Easy short bread, Sprinkles Cupcakes, Urban Cookie cookies & cupcakes, Trader Joe's chocolate, Zoyo Frozen Yogurt and homemade blackberry jam were among the foodie items represented.

we also like to keep things nice and tidy, the magic eraser made an appearance (and these ARE pretty great) as did silver polishing cloth, which I was very happy to get to take home with ME. 

We also like our beverages - one of the ladies brought 5 glass goblets for everyone.  She said she loves to collect them but she chooses one every day to drink her water with ice out of.  I love that because I do the same thing.  The metromint water was brought by me, I love it because it is zero calorie water but has the taste of mint.  It's very refreshing! 

Who doesn't love old navy flip flops?

The woman who brought the sharpies is very artistic and has great hand writing - I love writing with sharpies too! 

So there you have it, a successful "favorite things" party!  I'm definitely doing this again sometime.  (I also gave away a few extra favorites by asking the ladies to put their favorite movie, book, etc. in a bag, then I drew out of the bags for the extra gifts.  For fun I thought I'd list our favorites)

Favorite Movie

Pride & Prejudice (with 3 votes!  who knew?)
Mama Mia (2 votes)
Notting Hill
Raising Arizona (my friends have good and funny taste :) )
When Harry Met Sally
Freaky Friday
Waiting For Guffman (see?  my friends are awesome)
About a Boy
Sound of Music
Ferris Beuller's Day Off
To Kill a Mockingbird
Wizard of Oz
Amelie
Fool's Rush In

Favorite Vacation Destination  (for a bunch of ladies who live in a warm climate, we sure like to vacation in other warm climates!  Probably says something about people who don't mind living where it's Hot)

Rocky Point (4 votes)
The beach (3 votes)
Hawaii/Kauai (2 votes)
San Diego
Road trips to see new things!
Carribean
Cruise to the Bahamas
Universal Studios
Disneyland
Sun Valley Idaho (apparently we have one skier in our midst)
London
New England

Favorite Restaurant

(with only one vote each, we have no consensus here, but Mexican won hands down with 5 restaurants...again, living in Arizona, you gotta love Mexican food!)
Reyes De Las Tortas
Carlos O'briens
Jordan's
Chino Bandido
Juan's
(Japanese came in second with three places)
Moto
Hana
Cherry Blossom
(and all the rest are all over the map)
Houston's
Lone Star
Noca
California Pizza Kitchen
Tarbell's
Texaz Grill
Melting Pot
Herb Box
Prospector's Skillet
La Grande Orange

Favorite Childhood TV Show  (we have a tie)
Bewitched with 2 votes
Little House on the Prarie with 2 votes
I love Lucy
Big Valley
The Monkees
Sigmund and the Seamonster ( a Sid & Marty Kroft fan but they don't pick HR Puffenstuff?!)
cinderella  - the annual one with what's her face (I have NO CLUE what this means)
Gilligan's Island
Charles in Charge (methinks someone has a Scott Baio crush)
Wallace & Ladmo
Sesame Street
Familes Ties/Cosby Show
Quantum Leap
Brady Bunch
Jem

Favorite Book

To Kill a Mockingbird (3 votes)
Pride & Prejudice (2 votes)
Life of Pi
The World to Come
Guernsey Litearay & Potato Peel Pie Society
Grapes of Wrath
The Kite Runner
Harry Potter (series)
Red Tent
Les Miserables
Cry The Beloved Country
The Help
The Hiding Place

(we're a pretty literate crowd...makes me happy)

It was awesome!

(if you're interested in seeing how this went my second year of doing it, check out that blog post HERE)

Weight Just a Minute...

MyFitnessPal - Free Weight Loss Tools

We interrupt our regularly scheduled decor, art, mood lifters and general happiness to chat a moment about weightier matters.   Namely...weight.

I could write a novel on this subject.  That's not an exaggeration.  In fact, I've considered doing that.  But for today, just the highlights.

From the beginning - I was not a skinny baby or a particularly thin child.  In my childhood photos I seem to veer from normal to slightly chubby to fairly chubby to back to normal.  You'd be hard pressed to find a photo of me looking svelte.

I don't remember being particularly concerned or even all that aware of my appearance or whether it was "normal" or "over-normal" until around maybe 3rd grade.  I mean, at age 3 I am sporting a bikini rather proudly (blissfully unaware that I'll never wear one ever again...which is also why I can't see limiting little tiny girls and telling them they can't wear a bikini because it's not proper...it's probably one of the few times in their lives, regardless of their weight, that they will feel happily unself-conscious in one.  live while you can I say).  By 3rd or 4th grade I'm aware that I am definitely not skinny.  And I am aware that some girls are.  And I'm already slightly confused about why I am not skinny, and other girls are skinny, given my eating habits do not seem worse than girls who are skinny.  I'm a at a friends house and their family is eating loads of raw cookie dough their mother has kept in the fridge for them to snack on (this would never happen at my house...my mom would make the cookies, but never allow us to treat the dough as a snack).  Her mom also sometimes makes fresh bread and everyone in their family eats it with copious amounts of sugar and butter.  As much as you want!  (this also would not happen in my house - my mom occasionally made bread, but we were allowed 1 slice, maybe 2).  Not that we don't have snacks at my house.  At my house there are always cookies in the pantry, and you can pretty much grab one whenever you want.  I love them right when they come hot out of the oven - while the chocolate chips are melty - but after that, I rarely eat any.  But when my friends come over - especially my very skinny friend - they eat them by the handfuls.

Truly, my diet is fairly normal.  Very suburban 1970s childhood foods.  Yes, there are a lot of noodley casseroles.  But there are also a lot of vegetables and fruits and it's a pretty balanced meal.  We DO usually have dessert after dinner.  Ice cream, maybe a cookie, maybe pie (if you're lucky...because my mom's apple pie is the best), but more often raspberries in a bowl or strawberries or peaches.

But somehow I do stay on a curve where I am slightly larger than the other girls my age.  Or at least that is my perception.  I don't know how accurate my perceptions are any more.  (I would scan a bunch of photos into the computer so you could judge for yourself, but last time I tried using my new scanner I nearly threw it across the room in a fit of frustration so you'll have to take my word on my size as a child).

By 6th grade I feel officially worried about my weight and/or size.  One day I am at recess with these three girls I know  - one of them says she weighs 65 lbs, the other one says "oh my gosh you're so skinny!  I'm sooooo fat!  I weight 80 lbs!"  the third girl says "that's not fat - I weigh 81 lbs and my mom says that is totally normal".  I do not tell them how much I weigh because I am horrified at age 12 (I'm almost 12, actually still 11)  to weigh 100 lbs.

In retrospect I am sad that I weighed 100 lbs and felt fat.  Here is my 6th grade class photo: 

I am on the back row, light blue shirt , (between the red head and the girl in the red dress) - do I look fat?

By 7th grade I am pretty convinced I am grossly larger than every other 7th grade girl. I could go into a lot of long explanation about how my thinking got so distorted. (if I ever do write that novel, this will be a long chapter) There are a plethora of reasons. Suffice to say that I started a "diet". I also started a lot of unhealthy eating habits around the same time I started the diet. I swung between the two extremes of a VERY restricted diet of lemon chicken and an apple and some melba toast (gross) some days/weeks to other days when I walked with my friends to a convenience store for lunch where we would buy deep fat fried burritos and mint chocolate chip ice cream cones for lunch. Other days we ate at a restaurant called Arctic Circle where they sold massive artery clogging burgers (but who cares when you're 12) or we walked to a grocery store and got mashed potatoes and gravy in to-go containers from the deli. Other days we walked to a drug store and had grilled cheese and french fries, and if we had extra money, a ice cream sundae with marshmallow topping. Then I'd be back to a can of tuna and some melba toast for a few days. This kind of eating went on ad naseum. For pretty much...ever.



Here are I am in 8th or 9th grade...thinking I'm pretty large:

Okay...so I don't look like an anorexic model...but I hardly look like the fat lady in the circus I thought I was bordering on...

So this nonsense continued. And continued. When I was graduating from high school, I had perfected this system - so that one day might be a day where I had 3 hostess chocolate cupcakes and a diet coke, while the next day I had some healthy shrimp salads. Here I am at the end of my senior year:

I'm on the left end in the gray and black.  Gee I'm huge.  (seriously, I would like to go back and slap some sense into that girl...so frustrating)

So then this set in motion pretty much a life time of not understanding my limitations where food was concerned. And a lot of twisted thinking happened along the way. For a long time. For a reallllly long time. Here I am in college:





So to try to bring this up to speed as quickly as I can for you. I got married, had 3 kids, had roughly the same psychoses regarding food I always had except now I had to bring food into the house for other people. The problem with that is that it makes it really hard to stay on the kinda sorta bulimic diet I had been using to stabilize my weight. It can be done. But it's really hard to be constantly on that up and down one day you don't eat the next day you do, but you never quite get a grip on it roller-coaster when you're also trying to be a mom. I know moms who do it. But I could just never quite make it work for me as well as it had when I was younger.

So over the years of my 20s and 30s I have been up and down with my weight. Mostly up. And up. and up. With a couple of brief periods where it was noticeably down. And there have been soooooo many different diets.

Diets I tried (and was everything from completely not successful to very successful for a while):

Weight Watchers
Jenny Craig
Diet Center
LA Weight Loss
My Doctor's plan
Modified Sparing Fast
Oprah's cookbook/Bob Greene
Curves
Lemon Cleanse
Atkins
Southbeach
and any wacky weight loss technique you've ever read in a magazine (grapefruit diet? yep, tried it. soup only diet? yes. Juice only? yes)

And you know at some point it just gets so exhausting.

So I have spent more than a year in therapy. And although I have had many things to work on, one of the big things was unwrapping a lot of issues and baggage I have about food. I read a book I really liked about weight loss and that helped, but still it has just been a lot of THINKING and THINKING about how I FEEL. And FEELING for how I THINK. And it has not been easy. In the meantime, I've actually gained weight. So that's a little frustrating because it doesn't actually look like I'm accomplishing anything in the losing weight department.

But you know what? It is okay. It really is. Because one day this week I woke up and something shifted in my brain. I cannot exactly explain it to you. I cannot exactly tell you what it was - but it felt like I had all these things I've been working on and suddenly, they just fell into place in a way that made sense.

Can this work? Can suddenly seeing food differently work? I'm not sure. But so far, so good. My doctor gave me a estimate of how many calories I should eat each day and the amount of exercise I should get in order to lose 2 lbs per week. Now in the past, I can never be patient enough to only lose 2 lbs a week. I've got to be losing 5 or more lbs a week or forget it, pass me that cupcake. But suddenly I'm okay with this plan. Because it seems that every day with food is a little different than it was before.

We'll see. I'm sure people will feel that this may not really work.

But I don't really care what anyone else thinks. Maybe for the first time ever. It doesn't matter. It only matters what I think. So I'll update you from time to time and I'll keep that little ticker on my side-bar. I probably won't update about food or weight loss all that often because - well, because it's just not the most important thing in my life. It's just a thing I am doing - it's just my life. My life isn't defined by the food, or the lack of the food, or the type of the food or even the weight. It's just food. Nothing more and nothing less.

and that seems totally different.

Why I heart Pinterest...and why I don't think it's a waste of time...or at least I like to tell myself that...

So a little while ago I discovered pinterest. And ever since I've been singing it's praises to friends. Many of whom I think still don't 'get' it. So here are the reasons I think it's awesome and I think you should go check it out.

First of all, you get your own page to act as a curator of things that you really like or love. Or ideas that you just want to remember. How often do you see something somewhere on the internet but later, you have no idea where you saw it? That happens to me fairly often. It's one of the reasons I save all these decor ideas. Just IN CASE, even if I think there's little chance I'll actually get around to using them, I want to be sure I can find them again. But I'll see a recipe or some craft project or just some interesting quote or something and then later I'll be bummed that I can't find it. With pinterest, you can always find everything that you care enough to save without having to save it to your computer or worry about how to file it on your computer so you can find it again.

But let me offer a practical example. Suppose I'm a person who loves to bake. And sometimes I surf the internet looking for baking ideas. I know I'm probably never going to get around to making everything I see, but I hate to lose the ideas. Well if you find ideas you love on baking sites you can save them with your little pin to your baking board. You can also find a bunch of other like minded people on pinterest saving their own baking ideas, and usually, there is a link back to the original page where it was located on the internet. Very handy. Here are a few baking ideas that I saw on pinterest today:

and let's say that you are super obsessed with baking, you could have a separate board for cakes, cookies, pies, etc. That's the thing I love - you can keep track of whatever you want and categorize it however you like with as many boards as you want. Think of each board as a separate bulletin board.

Another example. Suppose you're planning a wedding and you're looking for ideas for a wedding dress which isn't strapless (tough to find, but based on pins I'm seeing on pinterest, the strapless gown is finally falling out of favor and lace gowns seem to be enjoying a comeback). Found on pinterest today:

And maybe all you care about right now is planning a wedding. You could have one board for flowers, one for cakes, one for dresses, one for bridesmaids, one for invitations, etc. Maybe you're looking for floral arrangements to the bride or the bridesmaids to carry which are unique. Found on pinterest today:

See what I mean? It's great resource. Even if you aren't in the mood to search the internet for flowers, you could always just search pinterest and find all the best stuff that other people have already curated to their boards for you.

So what else is on pinterest? Well, it's pretty much full of beautiful things. Home decor ideas, pithy quotes, gorgeous photography, excellent travel destination ideas, lovely portraits, fashion, shoes, accessories, crafts, sewing projects, quilts, colors, design and many other happy things.

To see my pinterest page go here: MY PINTEREST PAGE

Pinterest adds just a little bit of happy into my life.