happy holidays!

A few of my holiday photos with warmest holiday wishes from our family to yours:

over the weekend

I finally took off the royal blue manicure from my Rainbow Brite Halloween costume and replaced it with Essie Sew Psyched topped with Sephora by OPI Only Gold for Me topcoat:


My dinner at Ma(i)son, a downtown Lancaster restaurant inspired by French Country cuisine and local ingredients:


Meadow loves Lucy:


Stella turned 8 this weekend and we had a Stellabration, complete with burgers and fries from McDonald's:


I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!

First two pics by me on my iPhone. Last two pics taken by D on his iPhone.

Adoptable dogs

Happy Saturday, everyone! This morning I headed over to the Humane League to take some pictures and thought I'd post the pics here in hopes of spreading the word about adoptable pets in the Lancaster, Pa. area.

Memphis (cream) and Diego (black)




Punkie



Miss Muffet


Lexi



Guess which one I wanted to take home with me?

For information on adopting these dogs, visit The Humane League of Lancaster County's website.

halloween snow dogs

Well. It seems that The Nightmare Before Christmas has landed here in Lancaster in the form of a Halloween Nor'easter. There's already about 6 inches on the ground and it's still snowing! Apparently this one is for the record books because the last record-setting early season snowfall was back in 1925. And this one has it beat.

But, I'm still planning on heading out to a Halloween party tonight, and the snow didn't stop me and Mr. DU from visiting the Humane League this morning to take pictures of some adoptable dogs. I think the snow made the pictures extra cute, don't you?

Jeeter



Farrah



Cuddles


And two of the dogs weren't much for the snow, so I took their pictures inside.

Annette


Ruby



And just for fun, here's a picture of my little Lucy Beagle in our backyard:


For information on adopting these dogs (but not Lucy- she's mine!), visit The Humane League of Lancaster County's website. And if you're out and about in Lancaster tonight, drive carefully and stay safe!

35 before 35 No. 7: work for a company i believe in

Just to refresh your memory, I created 35 before 35 back in June as a way to challenge myself to meet some of my goals. And while I have been quite busy lately with work and grad school (and clearly not posting on my blog), I'm happy to cross the first of my goals off the list! That's right, I'm crossing off goal number 7, work for a company I believe in. The caveat? It's volunteer work, but hey, it's my list and I never said it had to be paid work, right? Right.

So anyway, said company is my local Humane League where I volunteer as a photographer (and website writer when/if I have time). And I couldn't be happier! I get to play with adorable dogs and take pictures of them to help them find forever homes! It's perfect. So perfect that I'm considering launching a side gig doing pet photography because taking pictures of them is so fun. Here are a few of the pictures I've taken of these precious puppies:

Nene (adopted!)



Duke


Melvin (adopted!)




Rockstar



To see the rest of the pictures I took, visit my Flickr page. Visit The Humane League of Lancaster County to see adoptable dogs, or like them on Facebook for the most up-to-date news and photos.

goodbye irene

Many of my favorite beach towns were hit this weekend by Hurricane Irene (we also got hit where I live, but not very badly). Thankfully, the damage wasn't nearly as bad as expected in the coastal areas in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.

We got ready for Irene by cleaning out our basement, which normally floods with the slightest drizzle, and waited out the storm with beer, food, and Wii. This morning, our basement is completely dry. I credit this to the fact that we cleaned it out. Had we not bothered with that, we'd have gotten a foot of water. Murphy's Law and all that. 

I hope everyone in the path of the storm stayed/stays safe and dry.


Yes, that is pumpkin ale you see. I was probably a little more excited than I should have been to see that at the beer distributor yesterday.

bloggers do it better:: arm party

My week has been crazy busy, but I'm taking a minute to have an arm party here to celebrate Pretty Shiny Sparkly's Bloggers Do it Better August Challenge. The theme is (duh) arm parties. In case your invitation got lost in the mail (or in translation), let me explained: An arm party is a phrase coined by Man Repeller to describe tons of bracelets of assorted styles stacked on one (or both) arms. Consider this your official invite to rock on with your very own arm party.


This arm party is my standing weekend date. It's perfect for throwing on with most casual weekend clothes, and it has a perfectly beachy vibe. Most of these bracelets are at least from last summer (except the big sparkly purple one, which I picked up at Target this past weekend). 


This one's a mini arm party; a small gathering at home rather than a full-on rager. But I love these two bracelets together and have been known to wear them a lot. Bracelet on the left is my own design from Sun Sugar Studio, bracelet on the right is from J. Crew last year. 

what i did on my summer vacation

I go back to work tomorrow, 12 weeks after getting laid off. I haven't had this much time off from work since I was 14 or 15 years old. And while I did stay busy with my grad school class and a few other projects, I still managed to squeeze in some nostalgic summer fun. If it weren't for that little thing called income (or the lack of it while unemployed), I could have easily imagined I was 14 again (save for the fact that those Saved by the Bell reruns were not nearly as entertaining as I remembered them).

So here are a few things I did on my summer "vacation":

Played with nail polish:




Bought Revlon Moondrops Lipstick in 24K Orange, purely because it was one of the first lipsticks I ever bought as a teenager:




Caught up on some mindless but entertaining reading:




Ate way too many Freezee Pops:




Made some friendship bracelets (similar pieces will show up in my jewelry shop soon, after I finish refining them):
taken with my iphone



Visited my favorite city:




And spent a lot of time with these adorable faces:
taken with my iphone


Just because I managed to have some fun on my unplanned summer vacation doesn't mean I wasn't productive. In addition to my fun, I also:
1. Updated the design of this blog and posted regularly.
2. (Soft) launched my business and marketing website.
3. Launched Sun Sugar Studio, my new jewelry line.
4. Created my 35 Before 35 list.
5. Painted our living room, dining room, stairway, and upstairs hallway (walls, ceiling, and trim).
6. Updated my resume and got a new job.

Overall, it gave me a lot of time to recharge from some pretty awful experiences, start some long overdue projects, and get ready to start a brand new chapter of my life (and close those old ones that aren't even worth re-reading).

I have a few posts pre-scheduled for this week because I don't know how much time I'm going to have between the new job and working on my final project for class over the next two weeks. Then, I leave for a long weekend, come back for two days, and then head back to the beach for short week/extra long weekend trip, so posting could be light for the next month or so until I get back into the swing of things.

Happy Sunday and happy summer!

All photos by me.

52 weeks of downtown lancaster (week 17):: music friday and root 222 crew

Every third Friday is Music Friday in downtown Lancaster, so last week, we headed to Binn's Park for free salsa lessons, Cuban music, and to watch the Root 222 Crew create a work of art (pretty fantastic, isn't it?). And because food is an integral part of most of our activities, we ate some crepes and drank some lemonade from the Rachel's Cafe and Creperie food truck.







Photos in this post taken with my iPhone and edited with Instagram.

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52 Weeks of Downtown Lancaster is my photo project for 2011. It's meant to keep me creative and posting about a consistent topic on a weekly basis. And I'm also pretty hellbent on to getting the word out that there's more to Lancaster, Pa. than Amish buggies, farms and outlet shopping. View the rest of my 52 Weeks of Downtown Lancaster pictures here.

All pictures taken by me, unless otherwise noted.