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Friday Favorites – How Is It September Already?

Friday Favorites – How Is It September Already?

jellybean-comics-1

So… September showed up already, and once again I totally missed getting to Platform 9 3/4 in time to catch the Hogwarts Express. Hopefully the rest of this month goes better than that!

hogwarts-express

Me every September 1st

 

Let’s get into this week’s Friday Favs!

1. The image at the top of this post is from one of my new favorite Instagram accounts to follow, lorynbrantz, who does Jellybean Comics. I’m in love.

jelybean-comics-2
2. This might not be  very exciting favorite, but it makes me happy!

bird-cup

I always have about a million different pens handy, so I picked up this cute cup from a thrift shop for 50 cents to keep them a little more organized. Loving it!

3. Now that it’s not eleventy billion degrees, I’ve been spending more time at the lake since it’s only like a mile from my house. I like to go out on Sunday evenings with my notebook to plan out my week, or just stop in around sunset for a short walk and some fresh air.

 

 

4. I’ve posted about my love of the Nite Nite Munki Munki sleepwear at Target several times (especially my beloved ocean creature print socks that I lovingly refer to as my Socktopus). They have new designs out, and I kinda need everything! A few favorites:

nite-nite-munki-munki

Bears with Coffee and Donuts, Cats in Space , Giraffes on Scooters and Amazing Hedgehogs. I missed getting a pic, but Parachuting Kittens are also on my must-have list!

AND in case you missed it, Target clothes, shoes and accessories are 25% off until 9/5 with promo code LABOR25! WOOT!

5. It’s officially Pumpkin Spice Latte season, and I’m not mad about it at all. #blessed #basic

psl

Hoping the gorgeous weather holds out and I can make it to a hiking trail this weekend! Fingers crossed!

Friday blog linkup fri-favs

Mid-August Friday Favs

Mid-August Friday Favs

friday-hello

Happy Friday, everyone!

1. I kiiiiiinda binge watched all 10 hours of Making a Murderer in one night. And weirdly enough, I did so on the exact day that there was a big development in the case (don’t want to spoil anything) without knowing that was happening!

2. Just bought two new buttons. Love em.

I Was Normal Three Cats Ago button and The Holy Land Is Everywhere Black Elk Quote button

 

3. Okay, this is totally more of a question than a favorite, but oh well!

Notebooks

The notebook on the left is the one I’ve been using as my bullet journal most recently. I’ve ONLY been able to find this brand/type at K-Mart of all places. I only have a few pages left, so I ordered the one on the right on Amazon (it’s this one – I mostly picked it because it was the right general size and $4 w/ free prime shipping), but it just doesn’t *feel* right.  For those of you who do bullet journaling, do you have any suggestions that’s similar in size to the left one? (8.8″ by 6.5″) Or should I just head to K-Mart and stock up since I know I like them?? Not pictured, but it has handy folders int he front, and a little divider that I can use to divide my daily pages from my section of lists.

4. So… I tried out a float tank this week. It was super cool and super weird. I’ve got a post about the experience almost finished, but if you have any questions, leave ’em in the comments and I’ll be sure to answer them in my post!

Float tank

5. My mom has been pretty depressed about being in a nursing home for the past 6 weeks while she recovers from illness (she still needs 24 hr care for now), so we started taking goofy selfies on SnapChat to cheer her up. They were too good not to share with the world, so she now has an Instagram!

mom-instagram

Go follow her – it will make her day! (She asks me how many followers she has on a daily basis.)

And don’t miss the new giveaway I have going on!

 

Friday linkup time!

fri-favs Friday blog linkup

Awesome New Coloring & Dot-to-Dot books for Adults! {Groovy Giveaways Giveaway Hop – Ends 9/7 US}

Awesome New Coloring & Dot-to-Dot books for Adults! {Groovy Giveaways Giveaway Hop – Ends 9/7 US}

coloring-books-giveaway

Coloring books for adults have been a HUGE trend this year, and I have some awesome new ones to share with you guys, plus what I think will be the next big trend alongside them: dot-to-dot books for adults! Check them out below, and then enter to win your favorite down at the bottom of the post! (WOOHOO!)

coloring-bird-mandalas

Coloring Bird Mandalas* by Wendy Piersall is filled with 30 beautiful bird themed circular designs to color! There’s a nice variety of detail level, so some will take a lot longer to color than others, and the designs range from super cute to regal and elegant. The designs are only printed on one side of the (nice quality, semi-thick) paper, so you don’t have to worry about colors bleeding through. I love the book size – 7.3 x 9 inches – which makes it big enough to have room to work, but small and enough to take with you on travels or daily adventures.

bird-coloring-book

I think I’ll be coloring this one next – just gotta pick out some great greens for the leaves!

bird-coloring-mandalas

coloring-flamingos

colored-bird-mandala

Love this little guy’s face!

coloring-bird-mandala-blue

I wanted to experiment with how much I could do using just one colored pencil – spent about an hour on this guy so far! You could definitely take this book and just a couple of pencils in your carry-on and be entertained for a multi-hour fight!

(If you enjoy this post, be sure to check out my previous post featuring Wendy Piercell’s other coloring books for adults!)

coloring flower mandala postcards

Coloring Flower Mandala Postcards takes some of the beautiful floral designs from Wendy Piersall’s Coloring Flower Mandalas book and offers them up in postcard form! You can either create a work of art to send to a friend, or mail these out blank so that the recipient can have all the fun!

flower postcards to color

coloring-postcard-flower

coloring-Postcard-back

There’s plenty of room on the back to write your message, or maybe do some fun little doodles!

dot-to-dot-book

I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with Calming Dot-to-Dot  by Emily Wallis, but after doing one puzzle I was HOOKED. These things are so addicting, y’all! There’s something zen about just following the numbers nd watching a picture emerge! (Part of the fun is the mystery of what the image will become, so I didn’t want to post too many pics of the finished results!)

dot-to-dot

The book contains 30 different dot-to-dot puzzles, each with 400 dots to connect. I had so much fun with this book that I ended up ordering another dot-to-dot book for adults on Amazon. Since there weren’t any others from the same author or publisher, I went with another one that looked good, but ended up liking it a lot less, which made me appreciate this one even more! The other one I ordered had 1000+ dots per page, which led to a lot of crowded areas where it was hard to see numbers through lines you’d already drawn. It made me appreciate how the puzzles in Calming Dot-to-Dot are intricate enough to take quite a while to complete (the book says they take around 15 min each, but I found that most took me around 30-60 min to finish.), but they’re not so crazy complicated that you get lost trying to find the next number. I saw some reviews on Amazon that complained that the numbers were too tiny, but I didn’t personally have any trouble seeing them, and I think that if they were any larger it woud interfere with the appearance of the picture. I’ll DEFINITEY be watching for future books like this one!

coloring-books-for-adults-giveaway

It would be mean of me to show you these awesome books and not share the fun! The publisher has been kind enough to offer one of you the book of your choice from the three featured in this post! Which one will you pick if you win? I know – tough choice!

The books featured in this post were provided by the publisher. No other compensation was received for this post.

*This post contains Amazon affiliate links, which means I will be showered with riches beyond measure (aka like twelve cents) if you click those links and make a purchase.

Friday Favs

Friday Favs

YayFriday

Happy Friday, everyone! Let’s talk Favorite Things this week!

1. I didn’t have time to do a Friday Favs post last week, so we’re opening today’s post with this GIF from the opening of the DNC:

dnc-gavel

 

2. I spotted these at WalMart earlier this week, and got super excited:

 

A photo posted by Crystal Ward (@crystalward11) on

I loooooove this style of pen, especially for my bullet journal, but they’re usually pretty expensive. (A 12-pack of the regular colors is $12!) I’ve already nerded out writing my daily to-do lists in all kinds of summery colors!

3. I tried this dress on at Target way back in February, but just didn’t have the spare $ at the time…

goodwill-dress

I am terrible at dressing room pics.

But I found it new with tags at Goodwill this week! Pro tip: Did you know that Goodwill gets Target’s clearance stuff after a while? They must have just gotten a shipment the day I was there – TONS of Merona and Mossimo stuff with tags still on, but way cheaper than clearance ever was. (My dress was originally $23, I paid $6!)

4. Stopped n Bath & Body Works this week to use some coupons, and ended up finding my absolute favorite new hand sanitizers!

merlot-hand-sanitizers
 
5. A publisher that I’ve worked with for reviews/giveaways before sent me some of their newest books, including this awesome dot-to-dot book for adults:

 
I didn’t expect to be that into it, but uh, I’ve already done 14 of them in like 3 days. SO ADDICTING! And yes, I get to do a giveaway soon where this book is one of the prize options – yay! I seriously might have to buy a bunch more ASAP, though, because I’m in love.

I slept for SIXTEEN HOURS yesterday (I think I was on the verge of getting sick, so my body just took a day off instead?), so I’ll be working like crazy today to try to make up for it! My current goal is to move back to FL by the end of September, so I need to stay focused if I want to have the $ needed to do it! (Or, you know, win the lottery. I’m totally open to that option, too!)

Linking up for Friday awesomeness with these rad ladies:

5-friday Friday blog linkup fri-favs

Friday Favorites – July is Hot!

Friday Favorites – July is Hot!

july

 

1. My air conditioner is fixed! I was AC-less for 3 entire weeks after getting back from Florida! I’m usually alwys cold, so I don’t use it much even in summer, but a wave of 90+ degree days with no air was AWFUL!

2. Current Meal Obsession:

Do you ever go through one of those phases where you eat the same thing pretty much every single day? My current thing is Morning Star Farms Black Bean Burger + cheese + fancy bun + pickles + Silver Dollar City Sweet Hickory BBQ sauce. It’s a magical combination of goodness that gives me life. Typing this out made me realize I should probably upgrade the cheese I’m using (store brand cheese food product slices – heh) since everything else is all fancy.

3. Okay, yes, I’m posting two favs about food – This is why you shouldn’t blog while hungry! – But I’ve developed a pretty serious addiction to Triple Double Oreos. triple-double-oreo

Do I want chocolate cream? Or regular? BOTH! And they hold up especially well for dunking. I don’t even want to think about how many packages of these I’ve gone through lately.

Speaking of… has anyone tried the cookie dough kind yet? Contemplating these as my next purchase!

cookie-dough-oreos

4. TWO of my amigos have just announced that they have books coming out! I’m super excited to read both, even though they make me feel like a failure for not writing a book yet.

 

Time Spent Falling is a book of poetry by my velvety voiced, amazing haired friend Nick Holmes. He’s an amazing photographer and has a beautiful way with words, so I can’t wait to dive into this book of his poetry. Oh, he was also on Gilmore Girls.

They Can’t Kill Us All – The Story of #blacklivesmatter is by Wesley Lowery, one of my favorite people to ever be arrested in a McDonalds. I got to know him via Twitter when he was covering Ferguson two years ago, and would probably totally hate him for already having a Pulitzer and a book and countless incredible Washington Post articles while still in his mid-20s, but alas, Wes is pretty rad and a crazy hard worker.

5. I just stumbled across this video from over a year ago. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I watch All In with Chrs Hayes (aka bae) every freaking night. I totally remembered when this originally aired – it was the first time I heard about a brand new off-Broadway show called Hamilton. I dunno guys, I think it might be big.

 

BTW, if you noticed this in the video?

If you add to this derpy photo of me…

I’m tooooootally 1 degree of separation from being in Hamilton.

 

Linkup time!

Friday blog linkup fri-favs 5-friday