the mattress factory.

view of pittsburgh from the balcony at the mattress factory.

 last sunday, i went to the mattress factory with my friend leigh. it's "a museum of contemporary art that presents art you can get into. room-sized environments, created by in-residence artists." 

they had free admission, so we decided to take full advantage of what the museum had to offer. one of our most exciting excursions was the gift shop that was full of fred flare items. i'm always a sucker for gift shops and commemorative items.

room-size exhibit with ping pong balls. 

rust-stained newspapers?

polka dot mannequin adventures.

the balloon wish room.

jean ralphio = love.

stephanie's bachelorette cabin weekend!

this post is dedicated to stephanie's long-awaited bachelorette party aka deep creek cabin weekend aka peen theme 2012!

the weekend started out with a big carpool from pittsburgh to deep creek with me, steph, shay and leigh (with a brief, but essential stop in morgantown for black bear). most everyone came friday night, with the exception of jeremy, whose flight was delayed, so he came in saturday morning.

stephanie in her tiny peen hat for going out purposes.

cabin loveliness.

we even learned how to bear proof our lives.

we just drank, ordered pizza, had dance parties, socialized and ate all kinds of phallic-themed snacks like cake pops friday night.

phallic cake pops!

peen weekend 2012!

we also got into the hot tub that apparently had a thick layer of scum surrounding it. we didn't mind and just threw caution to the wind and made ourselves into boiling human soup.

hot tub leg lifts. 

saturday was completely full of shenanigans from the start. we got up in the morning and immediately started with mimosas. because why not drink from sun up til sun down? this day was shaping up nicely.

mimosa in all its shining glory. 

later on, we decided to actually leave the polygamy compound and make a fire/s'mores treat.

ryan, a fire and a random dog.

my charred s'more and jeremy's typical position.

loving leigh by the fire.

i don't remember if lunch was before or after the fire, but we basically all had conveyor belts of food directly into our mouths for 48 hours, so it's hard to put time frames on things. everyone contributed different dishes for lunch, so we had a wide variety of delicious noms at our fingertips.

ryan whipping up sandwiches with chicken, bacon, roasted tomato, arugula and caesar dressing.

after lounging around for awhile just watching tv and eating even more, we decided it was time to play some games.

playing apples to apples -- drinking edition. 

playing "pin the macho on the man" -- part of peen theme 2012

then it was time to leave the compound yet again and face the booming night life that deep creek had to offer and ended up going to honi honi. apparently, i asked the bouncer for "one chicken tender and some napkins" so that happened. "YOU'RE MARRIED!?" is also another favorite quote of the night.

me, jeremy & shay at the honi honi.

me and the beautiful bachelorette!

group shot!

most of us were hurting pretty badly come sunday morning, but it was all worth it to celebrate stephanie's weekend. after mustering up some strength from the inner depths of ourselves, we all packed up our stuff and said goodbye to the robin's nest cabin.

colored jeans.

so i finally broke down and bought two pairs of colored jeans. i quite frankly don't know if they even look good, but i decided to take a leap of faith. my eyes were saying "mehhhh" whereas my heart was squealing with delight. i went shopping by myself, and i feel like that might've been a mistake because i didn't have someone to reel me in.

i bought them in coral and mint because a) those were the best colors b) they weren't the color of cat vomit/muted river stones/have an 80s floral pattern.

also, i feel like if you're going to make a statement, make it a loud one. and own it.

now i just need to figure out what to wear with them...suggestions?

west virginia wine & jazz weekend.

after getting caught in the rain.

west virginia wine & jazz is my second favorite holiday, right behind halloween. i have gone almost every year since college, so we're talking about eight years of consecutive wining and jazzing.

to give you some brief history: it's a big festival held in morgantown, wv where all sorts of wineries set up in a field with jazz music as a soundtrack to your drinking. you pay $20, which gets you a free wine glass and unlimited wine tastings. it's pretty much the best thing ever.

my friend lindsay arrived from columbus friday night, and we left for the festival saturday morning. major snag = it was raining. we hoped that the rain would calm down as we got closer to morgantown, but mother nature wasn't on our side. when we checked into the hotel, we put on our ponchos and marched in the rain to the mountainlair where we would be catching the shuttle to the fest. we got caught in a torrential downpour. I'm talking it was raining in sheets and the wind was blowing our faces off.

we made it on the shuttle and to the fest, and it was surprisingly very well-attended considering the weather. the lines for the wineries were obviously a lot less crowded than when it is sunshine-y and beautiful, but we still had to wait to taste at some of them. we hiked through the wetness and mud and were basically covered in filth by the time we found a place under the tent.

the rain downpouring, our muddy feetsies and my disgusting sandals.

lambert's is usually my go-to, but i wasn't loving their wine this year. we ended up getting wine from forks of cheat winery and west-whitehill.

lindsay showing off our wine purchases.

forks of cheat's "bad cat" and west whitehill's vidal blanc. 

we drank for a few hours and then decided it was time to head back to the hotel morgan. we took a pretty hefty nap and then headed out for dinner at black bear, where we sampled some of the concoctions from the west virginia inspired cocktails. i got the moonshine martini and lindsay got the blue hole margarita.

after dinner, we went to this new bar called rock top, which is a rooftop bar with two pools. it's pretty crazy for being in morgantown. as my friend ben said: "oh my god, that place should have its own free clinic...or penicillin dispenser." 

they had a DJ named DJ marshall (his tagline was "crankin' it up and burnin' it down!") and it was apparently a "silver chalice party school trophy" party since WVU is back as the #1 party school. the DJ played the air horn sound about every 30 seconds which made us laugh/dance simultaneously.

rocktop's rooftop pools.

we got back to the hotel around 2:30am and promptly went to sleep. we got up in the morning and checked out and headed to the chinese buffet for a "goodbye, morgantown" lunch. if you want to feel terrible about yourself and your life choices, i highly recommend it. lindsay played some awesome music on the way home, and we got here around 2pm. she left about an hour and a half later, and i pretty much napped the day away after that.

wine & jazz 2012 was a (rainy) success!

pumpkin spice coffee.

september 6th, 2012 marks the momentous and glorious day that i had my very first iced pumpkin spice coffee from starbucks.

with fall being my favorite season, there's really no excuse to never have had one before, but i guess i just never really appreciated coffee before this year.  so there's my way around the question "have you been living under a rock?"

fall is just around the corner and i want to drink this every day.

oh, deer!

i've been wanting a deer head on my wall for quite some time now. not your traditional taxidermied deer head with glass eyes, but more a deer painted some funky color and covered in glitter. you know...how nature intended.

i have put together some of my favorite deer head items from the interwebs.

one: deer head silhouette 8x10 wall art, $15
two: iron wall deer face, $90
three: chevron pillow with deer head, $30
four: faux deer head in mint green with glitter, $170
five: rope wrapped deer head
six: deer head ring in antique gold, $35

obsessed with poliça.

my friend lindsay, who is a complete music lover and aficionado and who is one of my only friends to share my taste in music, told me about this band called poliça. i quickly became obsessed and now listen to the album on repeat in typical OCD fashion. 

i wanted to share this special ear candy with you. and of course i've found some good remixes on spotify, but i wanted to give you the unadulterated versions. 

the maker (my fave):

lay your cards out:

new york city!

last weekend i went to new york city for my cousin sharon's wedding. it was just me and my mom taking the good ol' megabus, so it was going to be nothing short of an adventure for sure.

let me preface by saying that i have horrible luck with cabs. so, of course i reserved a cab for 5:30am to take us to the convention center. what could go wrong that early? 5:30 came and went, so i called the dispatch center and they said that no one was claiming our trip for some reason. good. everyone was probably still rubbing the sleep from their eyes and falling asleep at the wheel.

i told my mom we'd have to go with plan b and ride the bus, so we walked down to butler street where there were no buses in sight. FINALLY a cab saved the day and called to say they'd be there in 10 minutes. thank the sweet lord.

i brought my laptop on the bus and came equipped with strangers with candy and arrested development dvds. they definitely came in handy, because the wifi was pulling one of those tricks where it shows up but then didn't actually connect. like the worst thing ever. my dream of gchatting/facebooking for 8 hours whilst on the bus was abruptly squelched by the wifi fakeout.

the megabus aka our sweet steel chariot.

i've always been so good at sleeping in moving vehicles with wild abandon, so after a pretty hardcore nap, i was pleasantly awakened to the sights of the city! the megabus basically dropped us off on a rando street corner, and we got out and hailed a cab to our hotel.

so the place we stayed was called the dream downtown hotel and was pretty much the swankiest hotel i've ever been in. turns out that it was a total NYC hotspot and ryan reynolds was staying there!

the bed with a wall like swiss cheese.

the bathroom vanity that made all my beauty dreams come true.

the shower curtain is basically a medieval chain link fence.

the mini bar with grey goose taunting me.

ryan reynolds stayed in our hotel. no big deal.

after we got all checked in, my mom and i decided to go to the pool. little did i know that the pool was a total scene. people we wearing bikinis with heels and practically everyone had on a fedora. i missed the memo on that one.

the pool with holes you could see through to the lobby.

we wanted to go back up to the room and get start to get ready for the rehearsal dinner but decided to get some wine to take back up with us. turns out that each glass was $16.50! apparently they were serving the tears of angels.

the $16.50 glass of vino.

the rehearsal dinner at chelsea ristorante was my favorite part of the entire trip. it was a five-course meal with plate after plate of delicious italian food. you also couldn't even take a sip of your wine without them filling it up again for you. i was mainlining red like it was my job.

after dinner, we all went to the hotel lobby to hang out and get drinks with sharon's friends. i buddied up with some form of cousin of mine (by marriage, a few times removed...something like that) named david. our goal of the evening was to make it to the rooftop bar where ryan reynolds was partying. after some wheeling and dealing...#success

the roof had the most amazing view ever. sadly, the view i'm describing was more of the skyline variety and not so much of ryan reynolds' abs. we didn't end up seeing him but had a fabulous time anyway. david and i finally went back down to the lobby and closed down the bar at 3am.

hotel lobby with some severe ambiance. 

the next day, we meandered around the city a little. we ate lunch at the chelsea market, and i got some MAC makeup on the street from a skeezy guy.

flash forward to the wedding which was positively amazing and beautiful. it was held at prospect park boat house in brooklyn, and the ceremony was directly next to the water. everything was perfect, and sharon looked stunning.

the barnes family! 

dean & sharon <3

the reception was perfect, too. i danced with strangers and had an absolute blast. after it was all over, we took a car back to the "after party" at the hotel.

the next morning, we had to get up way too early to catch our bus that turned out to be an hour late. after 8 more hours, my mom and i were finally back in pittsburgh. it was amazing to see all kinds of family i hadn't seen in years, and it was such a treat to see sharon so happy. til next time, NYC!

pretty things & clever words.

i want this and i want it right meow:

rick sebak.

so, let me tell you about my brush with fame aka my meeting pittsburgh legend RICK SEBAK! 

in case you don't know who rick sebak is, he's a pittsburgh-based documentary filmmaker. he even has a wikipedia page, so you know he's legit.

my friend was having a big blowout porch party, and on the facebook invite, he mentioned that it'd be awesome if rick sebak came. long story short...he showed up. with a camera crew. and was filming a documentary at the party called "25 things i like about pittsburgh" (which will air november 29th). it was like the ultimate snowball of craziness.

i decided to make drunk gummy bears (another pinterest gem) for the party, which involves soaking gummy bears in vodka for a straight week. by the end, they are all puffy and engorged with vodka goodness and will pretty much burn your esophagus out. we did the math and figured out that 5.25 gummy bears = one shot, so that's how i sold them at the party.

 DRUNK GUMMY BEARS SOAKING IN ALL THEIR GLORY

anyway, rick sebak interviewed me about said gummy bears for the documentary. i'm sure it was the most eloquent ramble about gummy candy he's ever experienced. 

he later posted on facebook about them! that makes me somewhat famous by proxy, right?

i just get so excited when it comes to meeting celebrities. i can't help myself. 

SNUGGLING WITH SEBAK!

don't mind my demon eyes.

YINZTAGRAM - sebak on sebak explosion.

the first post! headband stand!

 so, i figured i'd start this blog out with bang/real live pinterest project. i'm not saying i'm crafty, but i pretend to be sometimes. oh, and this is not a craft blog. i really only do a project every 6 months or so.

i'm pretty much obsessed with pinterest, but i'm very particular about what i pin. it goes through an extreme process in my mind before i deem something worthy to pin. yet i accidentally have about 15 monogram necklaces pinned...those must've slipped through the cracks.

one of my favorite stories involves my friend leigh's boyfriend, randy. i had a housewarming potluck party in february, and leigh had made a bunch of recipes from pinterest to bring to the party. randy was so sick and tired of hearing about the website that he was like, "omg pinterest this and pinterest that. anytime anyone says the word 'pinterest' everyone has to TAKE A SHOT!" i think we all abstained from the game, but if we hadn't, our livers would've been on the floor in an hour.

onto my personal pinterest project:

INSPIRATION IMAGE

 

 MY VERY OWN HEADBAND STAND!

 

it's literally just an oatmeal canister wrapped in wrapping paper. that's it. sure, the inspiration image has it adhered onto a stand, but let's not get carried away here. let's keep things g-rated.

i found that in making this project that i have an obscene amount of headbands. before this, i had them stashed in random places -- in the baskets in the bathroom, on my dresser, in a dog food bowl, just wherever.

so, happy first post to me and happy crafting to you!

xo.