…and Blue Sky

 

1. I don’t know how it took me this long to find the Mortified podcast, but I’m totally hooked. I’ve only listened to about a dozen episodes so far, but they’re freaking hilarious. I literally got choked laughing at a guy’s diary entry that began, “Hey, I’m worried. I owe so much to so many tape clubs.” (RIP, Columbia House.) You can start with any episode, no need to go in any order.

 

2. If you are not yet following Dr. Evan Antin on Instagram… you’re welcome.

#localkitties You know I can’t help myself! I love meeting local cats and dogs when I travel 😻 My Willy-man is a big monster compared to these dainty little Southeast Asian kitties, lol. This cat was the sweetest girl and just wanted to rub her head on everything haha. #cat #kitteh #southeastasia #philippines #tropics #oldworld #inmyelement #mycatsnameiswillybtw

A post shared by Evan Antin 🐊🐣🐒🐱🐶🐢🐖🐍🐅🐿🐇 (@dr.evanantin) on Nov 18, 2016 at 6:33pm PST

A post shared by Evan Antin 🐊🐣🐒🐱🐶🐢🐖🐍🐅🐿🐇 (@dr.evanantin) on Mar 28, 2017 at 10:12pm PDT

3.  As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been trying to visit all of the hiking and nature trails in my local area so I can compile a guide. (Bloggers have weird hobbies.) Over the weekend, I checked out some trails at the Springfield Nature Center while I was in town for my monthly grocery pilgrimage. (Yes, I have to drive 50 miles to find real food. The Ozarks struggle is real.)

 

I stared on the paved Boardwalk Trail, which was filled with families and way too loud and crowded, but when it split and I could escape to the hilly, unpaved Bluff Trail where I only saw a couple of other people, I was much happier. I guess I really don’t like sharing my woods?

4. Speaking of my grocery trip, this month I set off with a giant shopping list of tasty ingredients I’d need to try some recipes from the One Part Plant cookbook that I mentioned last Friday. (Fun fact: it is literally impossible to find tahini in southwest MO. I have to order it from walmart.com and get it shipped to my local store. I miss you, Orlando.)

I’ve never bought (or even tried) nutritional yeast before, but it kept showing up in the ingredients list of recipes I liked, so onto my shopping list it went.  Since then, I’ve been adding it to pretty much every meal in an attempt to get actual nutrients into my body. There’s not much taste to it, a teaspoon has about a bazillion percent of your daily B vitamins and such, and that big shaker was like $6. I’m digging it.

5. I was going to put a real #5 here, but  after just waking up to the five thousandth rainy day this month (totally mathematically possible) I am making my fifth fav this week he simple fact that April is finally almost over, so those May flowers should be along any day now. I can not with this dreariness anymore. Gimmie sun.

 

BTW, Cat Ladies, don’t miss the giveaway I have for eco-friendly cat litter! It ends 4/30!

Let’s be friends on Instagram! ➡️  

d

 

Happy Friday, friends!

Has anyone else just been feeling weird this week? Is there some funky planetary alignment thing throwing everyone off balance, or is it me? I had way less work than usual this week (for example, 7 otel descriptions to write instead of the 40-50 I’ve gotten used to) and yet I’ve still been amazingly unproductive. All that sounds good is reading and logic puzzles on my phone. (Wow, subtract the phone part of that and I’m also describing 7th grade me! Maybe I should give in and get some Saddle Club books and early 90s mom jeans?)

Speaking of books, let’s get into this week’s first favorite thing…

A post shared by And Blue Sky (@straightontillmorningblog) on Apr 20, 2017 at 11:30am PDT

1. One Part Plant by Jessica Murnane showed up in my mailbox yesterday (“showed up” = I begged the publisher for a review copy) and I’m already obsessed. I’ll write about it for real for May’s Show Us Your Books post, but I fully intend to spend a good chunk of today flipping through the recipes and making a grocery list for the shopping trip I have planned this weekend. (Living in Middle of Nowhere, MO means I make a monthly 50-ish mile pilgrimage to Springfield because there’s basically just Walmart and two small overpriced grocery stores where I live. I have to drive an hour just get to a freaking Super Target where I can buy the basics I like. Have I ever mentioned how much I miss Orlando???)

Wow, that was a tangent. ANYWAY – I’ve pretty much always identified a a person who dislikes vegetables, but I also really don’t lie feeling terrible all of the time, so I’m going to try as many of the book’s plant-based recipes as possible over the next couple of weeks and see how it goes.  I’ll share what I try when I do the boo review!

Now, kindly disregard what I just said about healthy eating and let’s move on to #2…

 

2. Discounted Easter candy = yay! Walgreens somehow had both the Cadbury Caramel Eggs and the mini cream eggs for 50% off when I went, so I’ve been a very happy woman.

3. Not a great pic, but I found the perfect denim shorts for this summer at Target. I was playing around with ideas for a post about music festival fashion and just grabbed them to try on with the tops I was checking out, but ended up liking the shorts more than anything else! They’re mid-rise with a 4″ inseam and super comfy. Also, they’re only 20 bucks.  (The tank top is here and kimono is here, if you dig either.)

4. TRIP PLANNING. I have incurable wanderlust, and while I can’t get away for a “real” vacation rght now, I decided that a night or two away somewhere near by would be perfect, so I started planning a trip to the quirky old town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which is about an hour away. There are so many cool B&B’s and historic hotels there that it makes my little hotel nerd head spin. The one I’d most like to stay at is a former bordello with a totally phallic neon sign:

Nothing suggestive here…

A lot of the local hotels claim to be haunted (Especially the Crescent, which was formerly a boarding school, cancer hospital run by a total quack doctor, and mental asylum. I’m not 100% on whether ghosts are real or not, but I do know that my camera broke the last time I visited, and my then 3 year old niece kept asking to go back up to the 3rd floor”where all those people were”. There was nobody else there.) but the Palace’s resident ghost is said to have died “in the throes of passion”, so  think we’d be buds.

I also REALLY want to revisit this gorgeous place:

You can read about my last visit to Blue Spring Heritage Center here!

So there I was, a million browser tabs deep into planning a little getaway when I found out that I get to attend a media event at the Crystal Bridges museum in Bentonville, Arkansas the beginning of June! So now instead of planning one NW Arkansas trip, I’m planning two! It makes my former concierge heart very happy.

5. Tomorrow is Earth Day (be sure to check out the Google Doodle!) so as a totally seasonally appropriate favorite, my #5 is the awesome eco-friendly cat litter made from walnuts that I’ve been using the past couple of weeks. A light nutty scent when you walk past the litter box instead of the usually chemical-y fragrance? Big thumbs up. I have a giveaway going on where you can win a bag to try out, so go enter, fellow cat ladies!

Let’s be friends on Instagram! –> 

 

Friday Link-Up Fun:

 

 

Happy April, everyone!

 

1. All of my U2 nerd friends have been freaking out over a new graphic tee at Target that says Shine Like Stars, because Bono occasionally adds an extra verse onto the end of With Or Without You that begins with those words and it’s amazing. (The rest of the lyrics are rarely the same.)

Found a video of it from a show I was actually at a few years ago. I was holding up a “HI EDGE!” sign at the end of this song and he waved at me, thus making it possible for me to die happy.

ANYWAY. My point here was: SHINE LIKE STARS SHIRT!

It’s a whopping $12.99 at Target, or $12.34 if you use a Red Card. I had a $5 Target gift card from MyPoints, so I basically paid seven bucks for a shirt that makes me very happy. YAY.

 

2. On a whim, I checked out a lakeside park a bit farther from my house than the one I usually go to. It turned out to be an amazing place to watch the sunset from! I somehow managed to take 285 photos of one sunset. I regret nothing.

This one of water attacking my phone while I was trying to get a cool pic makes me laugh and is thus my favorite.

 

A post shared by Crystal Ward (@crystalward11) on Mar 31, 2017 at 8:07pm PDT

3. I mentioned last week that the cats absolutely destroyed the bag of food that Chewy sent them, so I wasn’t able to do much of a real review.  Luckily, they also received a case of this Taste of the Wild canned food, and although Sam has thumbs he hasn’t yet figured out how to use them to open cans!

Fawn got to be the “model” for this week’s food. She was an enthusiastic participant! Look at that little tongue!

I know the chunks of meat look huge next to her head, but keep in mind that despite being about a year old now, she’s still about the size of the average burrito, so… perspective. My cats definitely prefer chunky food to pate, so this was a hit! We got the “Rocky Mountain” flavor which has salmon, chicken liver, and roasted venison.  I don’t think they’ve ever had food with venison in it before, but they were all fans. Thumbs up from me (and Sam, who is the only cat with thumbs. Not sure what the others give to show approval?)

 

4. Wendy Davis fav’d my tweet, and it gave me hope that my glorious vision for the future could really come true.

 

I made my 2020 vision board but it’s just a picture of @SenWarren and @wendydavis toasting to their new jobs as POTUS and VP.

— Crystal Ward (@Crystal11) April 5, 2017

If only Liz had faved it, too!

 

5.  I really miss having a Mustang. (I drove them pretty much from the time I was 17 until when I totaled my beloved convertible named Apple on black ice about two years ago.) I stopped by a local dealership to drool over the 2017s, and although I usually go for the silver or dark blue, this black one was just plain sexy for lack of a better description.

On my freelance writer income, I should be able to afford a 2017 Mustang by approximately 2027! 😂

 

Happy March! Can you believe 2017 is already 1/6th over? I’m thrilled that it has felt way less Wintery lately, but that’s been accompanied by allergies of doom, which I’m NOT so thrilled by! Any suggestions for great allergy medicatons that won’t knock me out and aren’t a billion dollars?

1. I’ve been needing new sunglasses, and finally picked these up from the Target Dollar Spot!

At first I was a little grumpy because Dollar Spot sunglasses used to be $1 and these were $3, but they’re definitely nicer quality than the old ones, so I’m cool with the price increase. (I’m a terrible sunglasses loser/breaker, so Dollar Spot is where it’s at!)

I have to admit, I was SUPER tempted by these over in the regular sunglasses section!

 

2. This Mossimo Supply Co jacket. 

I grabbed it on a whim to try on with some other stuff and fell in love. I’m wearing the Medium here, but I think I might actually buy the Large? What do you guys think?

I love that it works just as well  with a floral spring frilly top a with a casual grey tee. (The tops underneath are here and here.)

It’s so lightweight and soft but still has that sort of military style feel.

And it’s only $28!

 

3. Chewy.com sent the cats this Solid Gold Purrfect Parings cat food.

Tennyson got to be my model for these pics, which I should have thought through better because my phone gets all confused when trying to photograph a black cat against a bright background!

It’s a whipped mousse texture, which is super handy if you need to hide medicine or something in it! I usually give my cats a little bit of coconut oil to help with hairballs, but my mom’s super long furred kitty refuses to eat it. I was able to sneak a pretty good sized blob into a teaspoon of this food and she devoured it! Score!

 

 

They also sent me an awesome mug with cookies and chocolates for Valentine’s Day! As if sending kitty food wasn’t already the way to my heart! I definitely recommend joining their influencer program if you’re a pet parent!

4. Orlando City Soccer’s 2nd season starts in just 2 days, and it’s our first one in the new stadium! I hope I can catch at least one game in person this year!

 

A post shared by Orlando City SC (@orlandocitysc) on Mar 1, 2017 at 10:42am PST

5. As I mentioned in my last Friday Favs, I have a new freelance writing gig writing about hotels. One that I had to research this week was the Taj Boston. Boston has never been high on my “must travel to” list, but oh man, I need to go stay in this hotel. A short list of reasons why:

*Rooms come with a butler.
*And also a fireplace butler to light the fire in your fireplace, after you select wood from a fireplace menu.
*And also a bath butler, to draw your bath. And there’s a bath menu of fancy products. (The rose petal bath that comes with champagne is $85, which is more than a lot of hotel rooms I’ve stayed in, but still!) There’s also a tea bath, because you know, when in Boston….

How do you go back to traveling with fewer than 3 butlers after that? What do you mean I have to fill up my own damn bathtub?

I’m writing about an average of 30 different hotel suites a week right now, so my travel bucket list is growing like crazy! Do you guys want to keep hearing about my favorite from each week? I nerd out over hotels, but I’m not sure if everyone else is a fascinated a I am!