My Friday Fancies (Outfit Crush) & Letters

Happy happy happy Friday!  Woo hoo!  

Can you tell I am glad it's Friday?  Yeah, it's been a loooong week. 

Cute, huh?!?  AV made this for me!  :-)

AV posts this topic (Outfit Crush) once a season and it has been easy for me to find something, but hard to actually choose one outfit.  I see so many cute Polyvore outfits on Pinterest and I sift through them each time looking for what strikes me as my "favorite".  (for that day at least! haha) 

Since it's fall, I tried to look for something weather appropriate.  But...since it doesn't really get very cold in San Diego I could really go for anything, so I chose this one. :-)
Nothing too heavy, and layers are always good.  We don't have much (practical) need for boots either, but I think these are too cute to pass up. Plus, since visiting my Mom in Yellowstone this summer I have been digging the "chic cowgirl" style. I LOVE the boots and the shirt is pretty damn cute, too.

Untitled #31 by heismygod featuring proenza schouler

Giddy up, dude...?  :-)  haha
(That's Cowboy/Surfer speak.)

Yep, my secret outfit crush, revealed!

Cute, stylish, SOME GREEN INCLUDED (mandatory in my book) and comfy (OK, maybe not the boots? but I can pretend) and perfect for fall in a not too cold part of the world.  

* ** *** **** *** ** * ** *** **** *** ** *

Also...I'd like to write a few letters on this lovely Friday... 

(Linking up with Ashley)

Dear Friday... I love you. It's as simple as that. 

Dear Baseball... I am sad that the season is almost over. I only have one game left to attend.  :-(  But I do love October baseball!  Make it a great post season, would ya? 

Dear Smoke Detector (that ran out of juice and BEEEEEEEPED in the middle of the night) ... You suck.

Dear Co-Workers... BBQ/Potluck/End of summer food eating celebration at work today.  Yay!  That should help the work day go by quickly. 

Dear Carmageddon 2.... Please be as "not a big deal" as last time.

Dear Boyfriend... We have no plans yet, but I hope we do something fun together this weekend. A movie? Bowling? Dinner? Somethin!

Dear "Bigger" Blogs I am Sponsoring this Month.... I'm trying to motivate myself and (hopefully!) gain some followers in the next month or so, and so far the "sponsoring experience" has been relatively painless. Thanks ladies! (Kristen, Raven, Michelle) You rock! 

Dear Readers... You guys also (obviously!) rock. And are awesome. To the max.  :-)

Happy Friday everyone!!!

Get Out Of My Dreams...

The other day a co-worker of mine brought his restored VW Bug to work and it brought back memories of my very first car. I loved that little thing.
Then I started thinking about all the cars I have driven over the years, and it turns out...there have been quite a few!  

Thanks to Ashley I just combed through a few boxes of old pictures for her First/Last link up.  So I pulled a few out of the cars I (we) have owned/driven over the years.  

Cars I drove before I had my own car...

(Dad's car) Hugs black Cadillac with one window that wouldn't roll up.  Five of my friends could sit side by side in the back seat.  It was great for large groups of people. 

(Mom's car) White Ford Escort.  I crashed it, actually totaled it like a month before she had it paid off.  I was 17.  She got another one that I was never allowed to drive. I actually never drove another car of hers until I was over 30.  hehe...oops

(Stepdad's car) Convertible Powder Blue Mustang... I drove it for my driver's license test.  And I got my first speeding ticket in it.  hehe...oops 

 Cars I have owned myself... 

(With a dash of my BF's cars mixed in)

My First Baby...

The Bug

School Bus Yellow Convertible VW Bug... (1976...? forget what yr it was)

My Dad (who was a car dealer) got it in on a trade and decided to give it to me.  I learned how to drive a stick shift when he brought it home that day.  I drove my brother and myself to school, used it to do deliveries at my frozen yogurt/deli job for a summer.  It died and (I don't know why! but) we sold it, I wish we hadn't now! I loved that thing.

When I met my BF he was driving his parents' Dodge 600.  

It was a 4 door sedan, very standard/basic.  It was the only car we had (for both of us, going to different schools) when we moved to San Diego and we drove it for a few years.  It looked like this but... whiter. 

Source - Dodge 600

Sometime during college, maybe 1997-1998, my Dad got another trade in, an Audi 5000.  It was from the 80s and was pretty cool, from what I remember.  I had it for 1 day... 

Actually it didn't even make it home to San Diego from the desert. It blew a rod on me on the 3 hour drive back from picking it up.  (No pic of that one.)

Datsun S810 (??) Station Wagon

After the Audi fiasco, I bought a maroonish 1978 (?) Datsun 810 (or S810...? I forget!)station wagon from my college suite mates brother-in-law. It was a pretty sweet ride.  It had a cool roof rack.  We dig it in a kind of retro/hipster way. Unfortunately, I only had it for a few months.  Someone ran into it and bent the front axle.  Not worth fixing.  RIP Datsun.  

After the Datsun I bought a 1989 Dodge Colt. It was a silver hatchback. I got it for $900 from a young couple moving to the East Coast.  That baby ran like a champ, was cheap to own and maintain, and I sold it for $900 like 2 years later.  (Sadly, no pic of the Colt, either.)

Mazda B2000

After the Dodge 600 died, my BF drove a couple of cheap pic up trucks.  

He had the one above (Mazda B2000) for a year or so before we were in a rollover accident on the freeway in it.  :-(  

After the Mazda he had a grey Nissan Pickup.  I think it was a 1996.  Like my Colt, it ran great, forever, and he sold it to a friend for about the same price he paid for it. 

2000 Accent

My first NEW car (with car payments) purchase was a 2000 Hyundai Accent. It was great for a first car, had an awesome warranty and good mileage.  I ran it into the ground! I think it had about 200K miles on it when I sold it in 2006.  We drove it everywhere, including the entire West Coast of the USA, from San Diego to Vancouver, BC!  The pic above is at my BF's Dad's place in Seattle.   

Source Edmonds.com // 2007 Dodge Caliber (but mine was silver)

My second new car (with even bigger payments) was a 2007 Dodge Caliber.  It was 4 doors, roomier than my Accent, and had a lot of (silly but I liked them) features. I thought it would last a while, and I was about 6 months away from paying it off, when it burned down on the freeway.  :-( 
 

Yes, this is actually my car.  :-(

Don't even ask me how it (technically/scientifically) happened.  I was driving to work, it made some weird jerky shuddering noises/motion, I pulled over, pulled out my phone, saw a flame flick out from under the hood, and jumped out.  The rest is a blur of standing on the side of the freeway, fire trucks, and being so happy I still had full coverage insurance!!

Our Current Cars...

My BF bought his first BRAND NEW car in 2008! Well, a truck actually, a big, beautiful 2008 Toyota Tundra.  It looks almost brand new still because he is super anal about it, and because he  has less than 40K miles on it even after 4+ years.  His commute is less than 2 miles, and he often rides his bicycle.  So yeah...he doesn't put a lot of wear and tear on it.  I love his truck for long drives, it's like riding in a couch.  :-)
(Full disclosure, he has also had 3 street bikes since we have lived in San Diego, Suzuki GSXRs.)

Source Edmonds.com

And MY current car?  It's a 2011 Toyota Camry.  Brand new (with lower payments than my Dodge because I have improved my credit dramatically since 2006!  haha), roomy, comfortable, reliable, good mileage, kinds boring... Everything you expect from a Camry.  haha 
I'm hoping this one is going to last for many, many years.  

So there you have it.  Our life in cars.  I think that is all of them...Sure seems like a lot of cars when you list it out like this! 
I am happy to have my Camry. 

I sure wish I still had that Bug, though...  

What is/was your favorite car??

Oh, How Pinteresting & Wordless Wednesday

Today being Wednesday,
I'm going to shock you all... and link up with Michelle  (hehe)
(who I happen to be sponsoring this month!!) for:

You can...

Here are some of the Pins that caught my eye this week! 

Source: d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net via Cynthia on Pinterest

True, true.

Source: easytobeglutenfree.com via Cynthia on Pinterest

I've made this, it's yummy!  Very refreshing.  

Source: weheartit.com via Cynthia on Pinterest

Baby animals!  Kill me every time.

Source: outlandishobservations.blogspot.com via Cynthia on Pinterest

OK, not AGAIN (yet) but I've read them 3 times...

Source: whatsnotbeingsaid.tumblr.com via Cynthia on Pinterest

Ahh, childhood memories... (My parents actually owned a skating rink when I was a kid!)

Source: cntraveler.com via Cynthia on Pinterest

I'd love to see this view soon.... (St. Croix)

Source: craftster.org via Cynthia on Pinterest

hehehehe

Linking up with some of these bloggers for more Wednesday good stuff...

http://liveandloveoutloud.com/

http://thepapermama.com/

and.....

First & Last Link Up (Photo with the BF!!)

Our first and last photos together....  

Lemme just say, wow Ashley!!  This was a trip down memory lane.  We've been dating longer than digital cameras have been popular, so I pulled out the old boxes of photos to see what I could find.  

 First....

We started dating in October 1994, and I know I spent that first Thanksgiving at his house.  But I can not find any pictures from 1994.  This one is from the bus to grad night at Disneyland, so June of 1995.  We look like babies!  

And a few more from that time frame...

because, really, I couldn't pull out 18 years of photos and only scan one!  :-)  

And.... Last

This is the last one I could find of us together! Mother's Day Brunch at JRDN in Pacific Beach. I do not love this picture, but I gotta work with what I've got!  :-) 

A few other recent ones...

Thanks, Ashley, for hosting this link up!  I've had a lot of fun with it.   Looking forward to next week! 

Visit w/ An Old Friend!! & Weekend Recap

 Sorry, this is a long one, and I tried to edit myself...this is what I ended up with.  I just couldn't tell the story without the details.    :-)

 Last week I had the chance to visit with one of my dearest friends from high school...not once, but twice!  This might not be unusual in many cases, but this visit was special.  This friend of mine lives in Africa!  She was a military kid and moved to our town in high school.  We became great friends and (particularly during our senior year and the summer before college) spent lots and lots of time together.  I remember so many high school dances, weekend hang outs, Christmas caroling adventures, trips to the beach, late nights working on projects... All fond memories. 

When it was time for everyone to go their own way for college, she returned to her childhood roots and went back east to Mississippi. We lost touch for a while besides the occasional email with big news. Once FB became all the rage, we reconnected quickly and have been chatting and commenting to each other since.  At the time she had 3 adorable kids and was still living in Mississippi. Although I kept my eyes open for cheap flights, I never made it to visit them there.  A few years ago, she and her husband made the life changing decision to become missionaries.   In (what seemed like!!) no time at all they had sold their home, quit their jobs, and moved their family of 5 to Malawi, on the eastern coast of Africa.  They had been there less than a year, when she became pregnant with their fourth child! 

My friends' family on the shore of Lake Malawi (it was on the Amazing Race last year! hehe)

To make what is becoming a LONG story, short... Everything went fine with the birth, despite power and water being unpredictable there!  Sadly, their baby boy was born with a cleft pallet and there are no doctors in Malawi who can fix it for him.  There is a team from California who are going to Malawi in February to perform these kinds of surgeries and my friend had been Skyping with the doctors to prepare as best they can. In the meantime, my friends Mom AND her husbands parents have experienced some serious health setbacks in the last month, and they (my friend and her husband) felt they needed to come back to the states for a few weeks to visit and help out.  On their first day back in Mississippi they got a call from the surgeon asking if they could make it to San Diego 2 days later because there was an opening for their son to have his surgery!  He had it last Saturday and I met them at the Ronald McDonald house (which is very cool!) where they were staying, for dinner.  I brought them Mexican and they were stoked!  :-)

 THEN on Wednesday- even though the surgery went well, there were some minor complications so they had to stay a few extra days - we met at the Cheesecake Factory (none of those in Malawi either) for dinner again!   Both dinners were over far too quickly.  We talked and laughed and cried.  Her baby charmed me and her husband was a really god sport when we started talking about old high school friends he had never met. 

Smiley baby makes us smile! 

So, basically, I just wanted to write about this visit, to remember it.  I kind of thought I might never see her again, to be honest.  And I am so (so, so, so, so, SO!!) glad I did.  :-)

As for this weekend...

It was pretty lazy, to be honest.  Which we need sometimes.  No mother in law, no Padres game, no guests or dinners or plans at all.  :-)

Friday evening after work (and traffic) I caught up on some blog reading, worked on a few posts, and picked my BF up from his brother's house.  We picked up dinner on the way home and went to bed pretty early.    

On Saturday we did some stuff around the house. I did a ton of laundry, we changed our water filter on fridge, watered the inside and outside plants...exciting stuff like that.  I also rented a couple of movies. We never go to the movies, and usually just wait for movies to come on HBO.  I wanted to see The Hunger Games, though.  So I tried Red Box (for the first time, very quick and easy!)

We watched it Saturday night.  I liked the movie, having read the books.  I think they did a great job with the casting, and as good of a job with the story as can be expected.  I tried not to pause it to explain things to my BF too often.  hehe

Sunday we did more "fun" stuff around the house.  (Home ownership is thrilling.)  We picked up my BF's motorcycle tire from the shop and I dropped him to watch football with his friends.  Then... I don't even know.  I know I watched some TV, put some laundry away, napped probably, played with the dogs for a little bit, and picked my BF up.  We had Thai food for dinner and watched Simpsons, Bob's Burger, and (currently) Family Guy.  Didn't even watch the 2nd rental!   We'll have to do that Monday night...

So, yep, that was our exciting weekend. (#sarcasmfont)
This is how we know we are getting old! 

Linking up with Sami and the ladies for Weekend (and my last week) Update. :-)

My Friday's Fancies (Baseball Frenzy)

Hola amigos!  Happy Friday!!  

Welcome to ...

Cute, huh?!?!  Love it, thanks AV! 

OK, so not only am I not a college football fan, I am not really a fan of football in any form.  I watch the Super Bowl (usually) and that's about it.  It's just not my thing... 

Luckily it is not my boyfriend's thing either.  

He is more of a motorcross, MMA, sometimes soccer fan.  :-) 

BUT...I am a HUGE baseball fan!   I grew up going to Dodgers games as a kid and now I attend plenty of Padres games each year. I listen to the MLB satellite radio station all the time and I am pretty knowledgeable about the game, the players, and the standings. 

So.... I chose this lovely game day outfit (for when the Dodgers make the playoffs!!) and the night time games are chilly and crisp in the fall.  I already have that hat and a very similar shirt…  I’d just need to add the FABULOUS bag (which reminds me of a baseball glove) and the jacket, scarf, and shoes (which I also LOVE) and I would be all set for a playoff game!  

Untitled by ceve featuring a cashmere shawl

Pop over to AV's blog to see what other people are wearing for game day!!