From My Blog to Theirs...

For this week's blog challenge over at the Sweet Shoppe, I'm supposed to share my childhood crushes. There were several, of course, but I think I'm a little different because the biggest one ever since junior high has always been none other than Harrison Ford. He just always seemed so real, so unaffected by fame. And funny! That always does it for me. No matter that he's older than my father, right? ;)

If that isn't extreme hotness right there, I don't know what is! And if you're still not convinced, how about this:

The love affair definitely started with the Indiana Jones (I had them on tape and now on DVD, of course), and I think I've seen all of his movies to date, except for Firewall (and for good reason, I've heard). My favorite of the triology was always the Last Crusade, because it was so much more comedic, what about you guys?

And, of course, I've been watching and waiting for the new movie to come out for years! Did you know at one point they even had an "open" call for scripts? A friend of mine in college actually submitted one, but it wasn't accepted. I'm honestly glad they waited until now, so that one of my current fave actors could play his son (I don't think anyone else could have done it, either!):

Plus Cate Blanchett is in it too - awesomeness! During the previews at Iron Man the other night, I saw the newest one for this movie, and it was seriously one of the best previews I've ever seen - they set the pace of the preview to the music! Maybe I'm a huge dork, but it was totally cool. :) So yeah, we'll be there at midnight on opening day, for sure.

Things I'm Lovin' Right Now

With all the May grey we've had this week around here, I thought it was appropriate that I share some things that are brightening my days right now!

• Violinist Philippe Quint - you may have heard the heartwarming story about how his $4 million Stradivarius was returned to him by a cabbie. They did a follow-up story on NPR yesterday, and although I don't have too much classical music in my rotation anymore, it made me want to run right out and buy it! I mean, he was just playing for cabbies outside Newark Airport as a thank you, and it was by far the most brilliant violin music I've ever heard. So go listen and get inspired!
• National Scrapbooking Day - I didn't really get a chance to participate in all the events going on this past Saturday, but I definitely took advantage of some sales! :) Picked up some super cute stuff I've had my eye on at the Sweet Shoppe and Designer Digitals. And that's led to several new pages already this week! Check out my gallery (link is to the right) to see. Credits for all of them can always be found here
• The dog beach - We hadn't been there since last fall, so I really wanted to go and take advantage of the warm weather we had last week, and see how Dante would do off-leash. He was great, up until he discovered that people sitting on blankets might share/drop their food, and then as we were taking a walk up the beach he proceeded to try and sit with everybody that was camped out. :) Too funny! Eventually dad helped me carry him so I wouldn't have to run off chasing him every time (and apologizing profusely to the people; luckily everybody is so nice!). Took a ton of photos that day, with some help from my dad, and this is one of my favorites. I didn't think the water would be warm enough to take them in so I only brought one towel for the both of them, but it turned it that it was pretty warm so in they went! This made toweling them off a bit difficult, as you might expect. ;) Plus they were both shivering like engines at that point, poor things. Yup - I am an evil mama! But I needed to be sure they could swim okay! What's that? You don't believe me? Well, then, how about they needed some toughening up? I think Lars would agree on that one. :)
• Online ordering - Since Sephora has great products but can be terrible at keeping them in stock, I did an order over the weekend for a few necessities and some goodies (especially since shipping is free for orders over $50, you might as well!). I can't give any reviews yet, but I'm excited about this mascara from Urban Decay that's a lash plumper and waterproof mascara in one. And this Ready, Set, Glow kit is sooo pretty! Plus it's a gift set that actually has full-size items in it, rather than the usual method of cheating and doing smaller sized versions.
• Good Japanese food - I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed to admit that I've been to Honda Ya once a week for the past three weeks, but I have! We're convinced they put something in the food that makes you addicted, because we just can't stop going. Judging by the reviews on the site I've linked to, we're not the only ones either. ;) Last night Chris and I had a hot dinner date there, followed by a trip to the movies to see Iron Man (which was awesome - Robert Downey Jr has never looked hotter!).
• Almost vacation time - It's only six weeks and two days until we leave for Norway! Woo! I haven't had a real vacation (as in, taking more than two days off in a row) in two years, since the last time we went there, so I'm really ready to go. Even my daily dose of Vimrod is telling me so! And once I get back, watch out for the photo explosion, because it'll be big.
  
• Ali Edwards - She's a constant source of inspiration for thousands of women, and I really had to link her up because she's doing a special "Words + Photos" week. She's really getting back to the basic reason for scrapbooking - putting together photos and words, to preserve our memories. So go and check her out, even if you don't scrapbook, it's just plain ol' good sense.

That's about it for right now, folks! From here on out it's going to be even crazier, but I'll try to keep up. :) Coming up we've got Nikki's graduation, my brother's graduation, my auntie Elissa coming into town for his graduation, our family photo shoot with Tara Whitney, and getting ready for my trip. Plus Chris has confirmed that he's going out on the Warped Tour again this year, so there's that to deal with too! Um, yeah...I'll definitely be ready for vacay.

Sale Time!

In honor of National Scrapbooking Day tomorrow, pretty much everybody in the paper and digital community is having a sale! One of my fave designers, Penny Springmann, is having an especially awesome offer:

 

Pretty darn cool, hey?
In other news, have some new pages to share - apparently I've been in a purple mood lately:

Credits for "Bonding Laugh" can be found here.

Also, there's My Boys, which is one of my favorite ones of late:

Credits for this page can be found over here.

Last but not least, just finished Laugh Out Loud the other day:

Credits are right here.

It's been a looong week, and I'm ready for the weekend!! Anybody have any fun plans? I'm determined to get to the dog beach at some point, hopefully that works out! :)

~T

Ain't No Sunshine...

...when he's gone...
Okay, so technically there's sunshine, but you get my drift. :) Chris left for Coachella yesterday (and he's doing Stagecoach immediately after that), so I'm on my own for the next two weeks. ::sniff:: Anybody who wants to come and hang out is more than welcome - it's weird being all alone!

Had a pretty darn good weekend. Went out Friday night to our ever-favorite Japanese restaurant, Honda Ya, for Nikki and Mindy's birthday (which was on Monday). We were seated pretty quickly, considering it was almost 8 on a Friday night, but there was this large group of mostly men that must've all been co-workers, and they had been there drinking for quite some time. Needless to say we could hardly hear ourselves think, thanks to their constant yelling in a small room. Otherwise it would've been a really great dinner! But what can you do, eh? Saturday was spent running errands, taking the pups to the park, and then going out that night to the Schwabels' house in Fullerton for Derek's birthday. So much fun! Didn't get home until 5am...I can't remember the last time that's happened! But when you're hanging out with good friends you haven't seen in a long time, and you don't have to get up in the morning, such things can happen. :) On Sunday we slept too late, and then ran around getting Chris ready to leave.

In other news, last week I applied and was accepted to Sara Amarie's Creative Team! She also sells at Sweet Shoppe Designs, like my other two CTs, so I'm keeping it in the "family." :) Very excited, she's an awesome designer and I can hardly wait to dig in and use her products! This makes it a round three CTs, and I think I'll be keeping it at that for a while!

Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

My New Space!

Thank you for joining me in my move! :) And why the move, you might ask? Well, with all the blogging I've been doing this year (and I hope to continue the trend), it was time for a host that could offer more bells and whistles to make my life easier. I'm sure I'll be gradually formatting and such, so bear with me.

Some things to point out: note the scrapbook gallery link to the right at the top of the page, and also the Linkages link! I'll be adding to both of these regularly. I'll still post new pages so as to link to credits (to be fair to the designers), but I thought it was cool to have all of them in one place. :)

The Fullerton Garden Tour

Last Sunday my mom, Roseann and I met up with Lisa, my mom's boss, to do the annual Fullerton Garden Tour. It was so much fun, and the only thing that marred the day was the insane HEAT! Holy mother of an orphan, it was about 100 all day, no joke! And then Tuesday it was back down to 70. Today is supposed to be 80. I really hate global warming, y'know?

At any rate,  of course I brought along my trust camera, and here are some of the highlights:
First, we went for breakfast at the Brownstone Cafe in downtown Fullerton. I've had lunch there before, but never breakfast. It was sooooo good! Mom and I split French toast with strawberries and whipped cream.

If you eat nothing else in your life, go and eat that. Seriously. And I love how this photo of Ro turned out, even if it is somewhat blurry:

Cracking up together:

I still don't know why I found this sign so funny...guess it's that sick Ellingsen sense of humor:
 

Here's one of the few decent photos I actually took of a garden on the whole tour...everything else was detail shots! Oops! That's Lisa just behind mom, looking so cute (and smart, I wish I had one!) in her hat:

The last garden we went to had all these awesome tiled/mosaic balls and other projects (benches, stools, stepping stones, bird baths) everywhere - turns out the woman who lives there is the local instructor on this type of craft!

The amount of time they must have taken is incredible, I don't know how she had the patience!
For the rest of the photos from that day, click here.

In Other News...

• Dad in in China right now...I'm keeping my fingers crossed he doesn't come back with the plague or something!
• We have officially confirmed our (long-overdue) family photo session date with the amazingly awesome Tara Whitney - I cannot WAIT for this! I'm totally going to geek out on her! I'm pretty sure all the photos of me will be of my wide-eyed, jaw open, watching her work.
  
• Working on editing some awesome old photos I scanned in this past weekend - will share once they're done, because they're too hilarious not to.
• My brother Lars has now heard back from all of the colleges he applied to - he got into every single one except Stanford. Yes, folks, that means he got into CSUF, UCI, UCLA and UC Berkeley. My brother is a frikin' genius, and I couldn't be prouder of him! Plus he's been nominated for Tiger of the Year (their equivalent of a valedictorian, except they have one guy and one girl each year, and they're not chosen based soley on grades. I think it's pretty cool.), just like his big sis was! Hopefully he'll break rank and actually win it. :)
  

And that's about it! Phew!