I love(d) April.

I want to start off by thanking everyone who donated and helped me raise a (grand) total of $440 for the Maryland SPCA through the March for the Animals. I started out with a goal of $300 for this year which was around what I was able to raise last year. Of course I hoped to raise more than that but I never thought it would happen. It really means a lot to me (as I probably told you when you donated) so thanks times a million.

The walk itself was pretty great (after a fun morning of realizing Sasha had TOO much exercise the day before and was limping all morning because she was sore, haha). It was a chilly + windy morning which was kind of a bummer but I ended up getting pretty sweaty after having to pick Sasha up towards the end of the walk. Nope, I wasn't picking her up because she was sore still - she was actually fine the entire time. It was because at the end of the walk, there's a ton of vendors and a million dogs wandering around that are about 3x her size, haha. She can't handle it. She gets really timid and weird and won't walk - she'll just stand there. So I had to pick her up in order to get through the end of the walk without it taking 2 hours. Or rather, Paul and I had to take turns carrying her. Teamwork, haha.
One of the best parts of the walk was Art Jones hanging out at the "finish" line. He's huge. I should've chatted but I was too scared - typical life. Anyone even remotely famous intimidates me too much for me to go up and talk. What am I going to say to him? "You're awesome you're a Super Bowl champion let's go hang out at Hightopps come on let's hang out tell me what Flacco talks about in the lockeroom tell me all of the secrets." I'd say that all in one breath. That'll go over well, hahaha. Yeah...so didn't talk to him but got close to him and that's enough for creepy me.

More highlights from April:

• My dad's birthday - he's the best! Got him a card from Minted - I mentioned it a previous post but look at it (above). It's awesome. He liked it, of course. How could you not? 
• Two O's games in one month? Best. 
• Got my first Birchbox. I'd give it an 8 out of 10. The box it came in was probably the best part about the entire thing. I'm going to give it another try this month and see if it gets any better!
• Started running a lot more and worked up to being able to run an actual 5k (or 3.2 miles) without a problem. Here's to hoping I can do that next weekend at the Color Run! 

I love things lately.

Okaaaay. The title of this post isn't entirely true. The past week and a half have been a little bit on the rough side. If I'm being real, last week may have been the worst week I've had in years - so that was fun. Really great times. Luckily, this week is better and the good news is only two days until the weekend!

Instead of whining (and trust me, I could do it) about how incredibly annoying things/events/people/life was/were last week, I'm going to update you guys on some of the positive things that have been going on! 

I enjoyed Paul's birthday. I think he probably did too. We went out to his favorite restaurant - the fancy, magical Olive Garden - but went to the new one in Owings Mills which was surprisingly amazing. It's so new and nice and our waiter was kind of an a-hole but I didn't mind because he just did his job and didn't try to be too obnoxious - and I respect that, haha. Other than dinner, we didn't do a whole lot on his actual birthday - Sunday. Mostly just hung out with Sasha - which is enough fun on it's own, haha. We could have just done that the entire day. I love birthdays. Mine's next! Can't wait.

The weather has been amazing. I wish I had a better word to describe it but I don't want to go to thesaurus.com to look for another word and end up using something cheesy. I'll just stick to amazing. Traffic has been a hot mess (infuriating) disaster the past week and a half which is confusing but the best part about it is: I get to (kind of) be outside during my weekday. I like to think it's the traffic gods giving me a chance to enjoy the nice weather before heading inside to sit at my desk for 8 hours. Thanks, traffic gods. Love ya.

I do love me some new apps. Thanks to Kayleigh from Elliot in the Morning and her Instagram, I found the Nike Running app. This thing is the best. Not only does it track how much I've run/ran but it yells nice things at me while I do it. Well, not really. It just tells me how fair I've gone and my pace, etc. I like to think she's trying to motivate me and I like that. I run on a treadmill and didn't think that running apps could track how much I've run but I was wrong - this one can! I'm sure it'll come in handy once I start running outside too! I'd highly recommend it!

I've got a lot of work to do coming up. Doing a lot of thinking about my future - which is something I tend to try to not think about. Gotta do it sometime, I guess. 90% of me thinking about my future has been questioning "how soon in my life can I make cake pops because I'v never made them before and that needs to happen?" Things are getting serious, obviously. 

I love these things.

1. Minted -- sure there are plenty of sites where you can make customized cards with pictures, etc. but this place has free shipping. And it's easy peasy. And everything is so quirky like Zooey Deshannel. And I made the best birthday card for my dad on it.
2. Charm City Puppies' Easter-themed new puppy pictures. Seriously?
3. Finding out a new, less expensive and BETTER way to clean my make-up brushes. I had been using this weird concoction for months and it smelled SO BAD and it didn't work that well but I'm new to make-up brushes so I thought it was the only way to do it. Shout out to Pinterest.
4. Puppy Weather. Best app ever or best app ever? 

Also, HI. Woodbine Hotine's EP release show (and Benn's last show with WBHL) was announced and it's super soon. Come. Their new stuff is so good. It's only $5 and it's going to be great times. Here's some more info.

I love Etsy forever.

My typical Saturday morning: browsing around Etsy + favorite-ing items + putting them in my cart to buy when I'm feeling wild one weekday evening after work.

I've discovered a few things (and by a few, I mean 1,000+) that are super adorable and worth sharing! I'm not sure if you're aware, but Etsy has a TON of amazing things that I feel like not a lot of people know about! 

Here are some of my most recent finds that I'm having a hard time not buying: 

1. Chevron earrings in seafoam, $7.95

2. Merci postcards, $18.00

3. Wild and free tank, $28.00

4. Macaron sampler , $22.50

5. Grey chevron mini-lanyard, $7.50

6. Confetti birthday card, $2.90

7. Foldover clutch, $32.00

8. Watercolor funfetti iPhone case, $33.00

I love that food is the highlight of my life.

This week has definitely been a week. It hasn't been completely horrible but it hasn't been fantastic. Lots of stress (hi, work life), lots of ouch (hi, sore muscles from running more), and lots of sad life (bye, REEEEEEEEEED).

However, it is worth noting that I took a chance at the grocery store on Sunday night and tried yogurt that I wouldn't normally buy and it was one of the best ideas I've ever had. If you're at all interested in the type of yogurt I eat, I'll tell you. I normally only buy the honey Chobani and I eat it for breakfast every day when I get to work. And because I eat it for breakfast every day, I have a hard time seeing yogurt as something that can be eaten for dessert.
I guess I was feeling pretty yolo and wanted to live it up so I tried one of the dessert-y Chobani Flips...the almond, chocolate chip, coconut kind and it was incredible. 
After a rough day (oh, sigh) and the sad news about Ed Reed, I decided to try it and it seriously brightened my life and made me feel a little bit better. That's how I live, though. Typically food makes my life a lot better, hahaha. No shame.

It's also worth noting that at least March Madness has started. And at least Jacoby on Dancing with the Stars. Am I right?

I love St. Patrick's Day.

The days leading up to St. Patty's Day, I knew I wanted to make Lucky Charms cupcakes. But...all of the recipes I found were either gross (they used the yucky cereal part for a 'crust' for the cupcakes - barf) or too simple and didn't seem festive enough. So I came up with my own way of making them that made them more festive without being disgusting.

I bought:

• white cake mix
• a box of Lucky Charms - the smallest box available
• white icing
• green food coloring for the icing 
• green crystal-y sprinkles

I made the cake mix as it was supposed to be made according to the box, dumped a bunch of the marshmallows in and folded them into the cake batter, then put them in the oven! 

The icing was obviously just green food coloring and the white icing which I just mixed in a little mixing bowl. 

Then I decorated them with the green icing and more marshmallows.

That's it! The worst part was having to dig into the bag of Lucky Charms to get all of the marshmallows out. That took the longest.  But I think they turned out awesome! They're basically Funfetti cupcakes but with the marshmallows as the sprinkles.

I went with friends to Chili's - surprise! - to get food and drinks. Nothing flashy but it was really fun and they got to eat my cupcakes post Chili's.

I love weekends.

This weekend I:

• felt like I was VIP at Chili's with Shannon. Hilarious. If there's a wait, they don't even ask for my last name - they know it, we get seated before other couples that got there before us, we get the best booth in the restaurant, and we get to sneak back into the kitchen to say hi to Dan. (There's your blog shout out, Dan!) Also, shout out to Sean - you're the best. Chili's is probably my favorite restaurant and I don't care if that makes me uncool, hahaha. I love it.
• laid around like a big lazy lazy lazy and watched a lot of winning by the Caps and the Terps. It felt great, though. After last week's hot messiness, I needed to do nothing and just feel like my life was organized and good again. I also spent probably about 30% of the weekend trying to plan fun things to do in the spring because I am 110% over winter right now. 
• went wild in the picture frame section of Target. I'm really into buying photo prints on Snapfish lately. Reeeeeeally into it. So...I bought a lot of picture frames to put up in my room. I'm also about to go wild on Etsy and buy some quote prints. Excited!

Side note: look at what the Maryland SPCA put up on their Facebook Saturday afternoon. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  

Here's a link for you to click on so that you can hopefully donate at least $5.00. Even if only 7 people donate $5.00 each, I'll be at $100. That would be really awesome! 

I love J. Timb.

This past work week was one of the worst weeks I've had in quite some time. Why? Did something horrible happen? No...nope. Nothing horrible happened. I can't think of one bad thing that happened all week - other than traffic, maybe. And at this point, I don't consider that bad, really. Just normal, haha. 

Why was it so bad then? I had a serious case of Negative Nancy-itis and I could not shake it. Nothing was bad - but I was able to make anything bad in my head just by putting a negative spin on it. FUN. One of the most frustrating things for me is being in a negative mood/grumpy mood and not being able to get out of it - no matter how hard I try. It actually ends up making my mood even WORSE because I'm mad I can't change it. That's my life.

I was starting to get really wild and out of control by Wednesday evening -- not even some online shopping and a run while watching Ellen could help me at that point (WHATTTT?).

And then...Thursday morning at 10:00am happened. 

After a lot of anxiety (hey, Jackie) and stress and finding out (the hard way) that apparently our work computers hate it a lot if you try to buy tickets from Ticketmaster so they won't let you order them, I was able to get Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z tickets at M&T for me and Paul! Ahhhhh yessssss. We're way at the very top, in the back - usually where we sit for Ravens games, haha. But that doesn't matter! Tickets weren't that expensive and I get to see my crush that I've had since elementary school in real life again and be in the presence (it kind of counts...even if I am really far away) of Jay-Z. 

After this, my brain and my week got good and life is normal again. So, just want to shout out to the Ticketmaster gods for hooking me up with being able to buy tickets under $100.00 so I could afford tickets. Thanks a lot. 

Oh, and P.S. - feel free to click here and help me raise $$$ for the little puppies and kittens.