Road Trip Recap

I finished sorting through my road trip pictures that do not include the ones on my friends' cameras. It was so much fun and i'm glad I went. I made a play list specifically for the trip and here are a few of my top songs. The first and second songs I cannot get enough of right now. I love it when songs can change your mood completely and these songs make me happy.

I hope you like these songs as well.
Ok, so here we go....

Our drive went straight from Los Angeles to Eugene, Oregon where we stayed at a friend's house. The next morning we began driving along the coast and it was amazing. I took the picture above because I saw this repeated a few times. Does anyone know why they leave a single giant tree where all the others were chopped down? I just thought it was strange.

Our first stop was the Sea Lion Caves. It was interesting and smelly.


This was setup on a self timer. Yay that's me on the left. When you're the main "picture taker" you realize that you hardly show up on anything. I just wanted proof that I was actually there :)

Our next stop was the Tillamook Cheese factory where we tasted some cheese and got ice cream.

Looking at this picture I realize how dumb it is to have a human face on a cow :|
After that, we headed to Astoria where of course had to find the Goonies House. It was a mission to find it I tell ya. There was construction going on that was blocking streets but we made it.


We were also told that if we were up here, we had to see the Astoria Column. It was a gift from the French. That is all I know about it. I also know it was really amazing to look at.

Yeah, it's REALLY tall even though you can't tell from here. And this is the view from there.

From Astoria we drove straight to Portland where we stayed at a lovely Comfort Inn. I've never been to one so I was amazed that we got to make our own waffles! I was excited beyond words. The first place I wanted to go to in Portland was Voodoo Doughnut. I have heard great things about it and they didn't disappoint.



Isn't the voodoo doughnut cute? And this was my doughnut, it's called "old dirty bastard" and had crushed Oreo cookies and peanut butter. It was sooo good!

We didn't do much else in Portland so we then headed to Seattle. I had made plans that night for us to go see a burlesque show because my friends had never seen one before. I was glad to know that they enjoyed the show. The next morning was spent walking around downtown and then went to see the Space Needle.


And this is where my proof of my being there is gone. I swear I went.

Oh wait, there I am in the center with the camera in my face.

Pretty view from the top.
After seeing the sights, we went to Pier 57 where my friend Rosa wanted to eat crab. I'm not a big fan so I got fish and chips.

But she was pretty happy with what she got.
That night we headed to Vancouver, B.C. and stayed at a lovely hotel there. Although we had no trouble with the currency situation, I have one question for Canadians or anyone else who might know; we passed by gas stations and could not tell how much gas was. The sign would show 118.1 and was clueless as to what it meant. We googled and that was no help. We did everything but actually go into the gas station and ask. We ended up having enough gas to take us back into Washington and fill up there.

Our day in Vancouver was spent visiting the Capilano Suspension Bridge.

It was amazing! Not scary at all and it was very beautiful. After the bridge we went to Gastown and got some souvenirs.

The Canadian/U.S border is so pretty. I'm used to seeing more of the Southern border which looks like the opposite of this.

After much discussion and debate, we decided to save the money we would have spent sleeping in a hotel for a few hours in Medford, OR and drive straight from Vancouver to Gilroy, CA. Yes, we drove 16 hours straight- taking shifts of course so about 6 hours each at the wheel.
Our last destination was at Rosa's cousin's house. I didn't know anything about Gilroy but that day I learned a lot about wine. Yes, they have lots of wineries there so why not go wine tasting?

That day was 4th of July so we spent it watching fireworks. It was the perfect ending to our trip as the next day we headed home.

I hope this post didn't bore you but I just wanted to share.

Back to the Grind

I just came back from my road trip last night and even though there was a lot of driving, I hate that it's over. We saw lots of beautiful sights and stayed in some nice and not so nice hotels but most importantly, my best friends and I got to do some girl bonding. We really needed it since we have all been busy with work and school and really don't get to see them all that much. I will post pictures of the trip as soon as I'm finished editing them.

I'm still editing my best friend's engagement photos- I love so many of them that it's tough to narrow them down. Here are a few from the shoot.

It's so exciting to be a part of the wedding (I'm also a bridesmaid), and it's going to take some adjustment to realize that we are growing up -yikes- and ready to move on to the next stage in our lives. I'm so happy for them and can't wait for the "Big Day" next year.

I'm off to go to sleep early, I'm so so tired from the drive.

I've been MIA lately and that's because I've started working full time for the Summer. I have to make some money if I want to go on a road trip. I'm really excited though because my best friend got engaged and I got to shoot their photos this past Sunday. I thought I was going to be nervous like I always am but I just kind of told myself that I can do this, it's something that I love to do and I will do a great job at it. I'll be editing the photos all this week. I'll post as soon as they're done.

(source)

I wish this was the office I have been working in. I definitely would not be falling asleep.

This session at school is pretty much over. I still have a class on Friday but my documentary is finished and showed it in class. I will have three weeks off for the Summer and then I go back for my last class ever. Yup, I graduate at the end of August with a Bachelor's degree in Visual Journalism. It's really awesome to know that I finally finished something in my life even though I really wanted to give up. And speaking of finishing things, here are a couple of projects that I have been working on. Since Father's Day is coming up, I made my dad a few beer cozies.

I got a free tutorial here and you can register for free. The yellow blanket in the background is for my soon to be new baby cousin. I'm taking it on my road trip to work on it. I'm actually taking a lot of projects with me on the road because I know there will be lots of driving.

Here's something that I finally finished and I'm so proud of. It's my first time making one of these and I think it came out pretty cool.

I recently finished making all of my granny squares for my first afghan...all 108 of them.

I really give credit to all of the grannies out there because putting the squares together has been back breaking work and it's also very tedious.

Because it's so repetitive, I also began to do a scallop edge to distract me when the job got too difficult. I'm hoping I'll finish this before I start school again.

Sew Friday

After having purchased a few old dresses from yard sales and thrift stores, I decided to show what I have reconstructed do far.
I got this dress at a yard sale for $3, it was not that complicated to reconstruct, I just wish I took a better before picture of it. It was way too long and you can't quite see here but it also had puffy sleeves that I wanted to get rid of.

So I shortened the dress and made the sleeves into straps. I pretty much loved the way the dress looked but now I customized it for me.

This next dress I bought brand new a couple of years ago and I've had it collecting dust in my closet as it didn't fit my style anymore, however I still love the pattern on it.

It also had this beautiful crocheted detail. I carefully removed this detail and I'll probably make a headband out of it. This was the only thing that was keeping this dress together so then I just sewed black elastic to the waistband. And voila, a skirt.

I like it way more as a skirt now and I'm glad I didn't get rid of it. I will work on some more dresses later but this is what I accomplished this week.

Happy Friday!

A Current Favorite

I've been trying to be thrifty lately since I'm saving up for my road trip this summer. The way I do this is by shopping at thrift stores. Although I really don't have that much patience looking through the racks, I'll find a piece here and there that just stand out. After buying them, I kind of get an idea of how I want to reconstruct it but not really. I forgot how I found this blog but it's amazing. Marisa from A New Dress A Day decided to stop buying new clothes for a year and spend only $1 a day to reconstruct something from flea markets, thrift stores, estate sales...etc. She has given me all kinds of awesome ideas so I posted some of my favorite outfits.

Her blog is definitely an inspiration for me. I've already reconstructed a few pieces of clothing myself.
Happy Thursday!

So ever since I finished watching Arrested Development I felt like I needed to start watching another show that can make me laugh as hard as that show. Since no other show can compare to it, my netflix suggested I watch Party Down. I'm on season 2 now and it's really funny. The 1st season had Jane Lynch in it which was a plus and now I can't stop watching it. The humor is different but in a good way, hey and it's directed by Fred Savage. You know, The Wonder Years? You can watch it instantly on netflix so for those who have it, I recommend you add it.

I have 2 more weeks lefts before my summer vacation. Luckily, I have had a little bit of down time and decided to go thrift store shopping. I hadn't gone in a while and I felt really good when I got back into it. I guess I can say I "scored". There were some things that I was looking for and found and others were a nice surprise. Here are some of my finds on Sunday:

(From left) bed sheets, a green owl family, a sweet plaque, another owl, vintage flower looms, a retro photo album (it has black pages inside) and a couple of vintage pillow cases. They had the matching bed sheets but I couldn't bring myself to pay $7 for each set. Maybe next time.


I also got this awesome crocheted blanket, an old book, Jane Austin Book Club book (I got it mostly because of the design on the cover), a glass and a pitcher. I used to have the matching creamer and sugar set but probably not exactly the same shade of orangey-peach.

I love this glass, I just wish I had a set of at least four. Oh well, I might list it on my Etsy. Someone else might need it to complete their set.

I went on a walk today because I wanted to visit some interesting shops that are near my apartment but I just never bothered to stop by and look. A consignment shop also opened and I just wanted to pop in and see what they had. Well I didn't get to make it to any of them. A thrift store that I never knew about stopped me in my tracks and I just had to see what was inside. Everything was VERY reasonably priced and the first thing that caught my eye was this Polaroid camera. Only $4! I don't know if it works but I'm a camera collector so I'll find out sooner or later. I also found a few more owls.

I ended up taking with me a camera, 2 owls, a vintage plastic thermos, 2 round frames, a few records and I was really excited that I found a Catherine Holm casserole dish and an empty ledger. Since finishing Elsie and Rachel's journal class, I left very inspired. I'm going to paint the cover of my ledger and make it a journal.

Oh I love thrifting! I also got a dress, a blouse and some shoes which I will post later. This has been an exciting couple of days for me. Maybe I'll even take that long walk tomorrow and hope that I can make it to those shops.