I've made a little huge mistake

Greetings! Since we last spoke I've been to a wedding across the state, a shower/bachelorette combo at home, Reno for work, and even accidentally a stall in a Men's restroom at Las Vegas International Airport. I scared the BEJESUS out of like ten guys in my airport fatigue/haze of heading into the bathroom.... ignoring like ten signs telling me to turn around. I saw things. Things I didn't want to see. Shudder.
Anyway, I was *mostly* good while traveling for work. Traveling kind of makes you feel gross and out of it anyway sometimes. So nothing seems homier than fruit and yogurt from room service. Am I right or am I right? One place I even ordered my typical eggs benedict (sauce on the side, 86 the ham and add tomato slices and spinach leaves, fruit on the side) and the waitress told me the Chef was proud of me for being healthy...... at a Casino. Points for me!!!

On the other hand....... there was that one night.... that I had the lobster pot pie (i.e. an entire lobster and a gallon of cream sauce...... get .... in .... my ... belly)

Remember that Monty Python where the guy LITERALLY exploded. I feared that would happen. That would be more like a huge huge mistake.

However before we headed to Reno.................... drumroll....................... the Pink dress won! I will say that I LOVE the black dress more (i mean come on, how could you not), but I wanted to save it. I wore to a bach party (of which i didn't take any pictures....... blad blogger) and it was too dressy but it was too fabulous to matter.

The wedding was WAY fun.
And I got to see lots of friends from school I hadn't seen in YEARS. We were reunited on the dance floor, obviously. Cuban shuffle anyone? (yes I know it's cupid... but it feels so sassy and south american, no?)

Holler back DZ! And Shenanigans, naturally.

While home I made this beauty. A turkey burger inspired by a kids cookbook I have. That's right. Kids. Ground turkey combined with cut up sweet pickles (or relish for those of you with a more stocked fridge than myself) ground mustard, light mayo, bread crumbs and ketchup. Mix it up, shape into patties, bake, and serve... YUM.

I had it with roasted Okra. I'm on the fence about Okrah. It was all fuzzy and slimy but I loved the new veggie unique goodness about it. It's one of those things that I might eat again, but I wouldn't dream of making someone else do it (i.e. John).

Some other SUPER exciting stuff happened recently. In reverse order of importance:

• I wore my DVF dress to the shower last weekend. I also had to sew myself into it to keep from gapping and showing the ladies in Johns family the farm.
  
• John's mom is GIVING me her vintage dress form that was John's grandmas. They are moving and going through old things and she hated throwing it away. I CANNOT wait to get a sewing machine from Santa!!
  
• The bachelorette party was great and fun and made for good bonding time with John's sister (did i mention that the dress I picked out for HER looked amazing?!) I'm going to be the best personal attendent ever at her wedding in 2.5 weeks :)
  
• I realized my Southwest free flight from my work travels was about to expire. After I felt foolish for a long time for paying for flights this year and not cashing it in early.... I decided to GIVE it to one of John's friend's so he could come back to their college Alumni game. He's a teacher and is poor (hey, we can all relate) and lives far far away and often must miss epic reunions. He was SO SO SO excited when I told him he could have the ticket. It made me happy. I felt like Oprah. You get a free flight and you get a free flight and you get a free flight!
  
• and FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINALLY....... my beautiful, fabulous, college roomie and BFF who is often featured here (and makes comments, yay) just got engaged and asked me to be her MAID OF HONOR! :) I'm sooooooooooooooooooooo excited! It's going to be the most fabulous wedding ever and I just can't wait. Thanks Bowler XOXOXO!

Bring on the puffy sleeves

Taking it to the street

I can't decide what to wear to this wedding on Saturday, so I'm showing you some options and respectfully requesting your opinion. Okay, maybe I'll disrespect your opinion later, but that's neither here nor there.

So knowing full well that I have Vegas, and John's sister's bachelorette Party and Wedding on the horizon, I am in no short supply of cocktail dresses (hi my name is lauren, Hi lauren, and I'm a recovering cocktail dress shopaholic). This coming weekend (as in the day after tomorrow) is between the following two not-yet-worn-before lovelies.

This bad boy I got as a closeout on Ebay for $50 (brand new BCBG and I heart it... originally $375.. what has two thumbs and loves a good deal? this guy) I MIGHT also wear it ten other places so it gets 10 for versatility, 10 for awesomeness and a 10 for making my legs look a foot longer than they actually are. The picture is sort of smallish but it's Silk with beading around the collar and down the front.

This I got from Macy's for $5 (yes $5.... it was a CRAAAZY 97% discount and that day i felt i hit the dig-through-clearance-rack jackpot). However I've had it for two years and though I like it, it's always played second fiddle to whatever I ended up choosing to wear. Part of me wants to save the black one for another occasion (of which there are many, although there are also other options).... But part of me wants to just wear this one. This dress is INC and is also 100% silk. It also reminds me of this shirt I had when I was 8.... and it gets MAJOR points for that because I was quite the accessorized 1st grade fashion plate. But we're getting off track.

I thought Nickie and I had come to a conclusion last week... but here I am, indecisive.... reaching out to the internet at large. Thoughts?

Tell your boyfriend he can suck it

I heart headbands, big time. My head is way too egg shaped for me to be able to wear them often (plus i have a widow's peak, further making it difficult).... But by God thanks to this little lady, I feel like I can wear them post third grade.

John, on the other hand CLEARLY doesn't watch gossip girl nor does he appreciate all things head flair. When we went out this weekend I wore a headband with a large and in charge flower on it and he kept telling me i looked like a third grader on picture day. A girl in line for the bathroom at a bar we went to complimented the headband (because... duh) and I told her THANK you because my date didn't think it was so hot. She said 'You tell your boyfriend he can suck it' it was kind of the highlight of my life. That and this show.

I also tried to sleep in it when we got home. That got vetoed. Fun hater.

Probably John's highlight of the evening was this bad boy. The best freaking enchiladas ever. Seriously, I'll be making this again, I'm guessing it happily will feed a crowd. It's a Tyler Florence food network recipe that utilizes a roasted tomatillo salsa.

NOM NOM NOM. Highlights include:

• cold, deli-purchased rotisserie chicken (this was new for me)
• poblano peppers (because jalepenos and i don't mix)
• tomatillos (i.e. the green tomatoes, also a first time purchase for me)
• cheeses/tortillas/seasoning/cilantro/chicken stock/etc.

I was excited for all of the leftover it has made. Including lunch today!

In other exciting news, something super awesome came in the mail recently.

A DIPLOMA! Now my graduate and undergraduate ones can be best friends next to each other on my wall. Hooray!

Putting the 'issues' in tissues

I hope everyone had a great send-off weekend for their white pants/shoes/shorts/bags/etc. I know that Stacy and Clinton say you can wear them off season (and there IS such a thing as winter whites) but I judge those who sport them after this weekend... and you do too.. don't lie. So where was I, oh yes. Well my reward for laboring all year long was apparently to have to cancel or cough/sneeze/phlegm my way through things all weekend looking like this:

(bow to the queen of filth... BOOO BOOO BOOO)

And feeling like this.....

And having enough of these..... To make one of these....

So I'm just trying to lay on the couch and watch daytime TV (can we talk about what B.S. it is that everything's a rerun on labor day? psssssssssssssh)

and try to find my happy place...

Just kidding, it's probably more like this...

Okay.. my eats have mostly consisted of triscuits, oranges and gatorade so you guys probably aren't' so interested in that. Here's hoping I get a sense of smell/taste back soon so I can stand to be in the kitchen. eh?

Hope everyone had a BOSSY labor day weekend!

Surely there's a country song for that...

You know, for getting kicked out of a Michael Jackson concert? Greetings peeps, this past weekend's adventures were courtesy of the mile high city, Denver CO.

Which is where one of my college besties (several favorite former Missourians live there, actually) resides. Emily and I flew out for the weekend to see her spanking new condo, celebrate her new found homeownership and party like it was 1999 (or more specifically 2005)

After a long day of pooltime, BBQs and other shenanigans, we went to a wine bar and had TAPAS (yesssssss!)

And then went got some PRETTY SWEET TICKETS.

At the end of the concert and we had been boozing ALL. DAY. LONG. We had smuggled our cameras in via the crotch of Kelly’s gay BFF (love him!!) p.s. they were searching purses for cameras, but we took a cab there, what were we supposed to do with them?. So I decided to take a picture of the venue for, you know, the blog….

And after one not-so-worth-it picture of the speaker in front of me and this dude's head, some large-and-in-charge butch looking lady grabs me by the elbow. And well...

Before I could pepper her with comments like ‘isn’t Portia derossi cute?’ and ‘those bugle boy shorts really make your calves look great’ …. I was outside. It was over before it started. I was making friends outside, but my friends came out to get me anyway (aren't they wonderful?). So I didn't get a picture, and I certainly wasn't wearing my specs (which means that anything over 10 feet away might have 15 noses or none at all, but not like I can see)... but I have it on good authority that the lead singer resembled this...

LUCKILY for … well… everyone involved, there was a fun bar/pizza place next door. I am proud to say I converted a table of people to pineapple pizza. It was my everything.

The morning after all of this ridiculousness, I got a craving for Ceasar salad like you wouldn't believe. I decided I would try to remake me own version this week. I discovered that regular Ceasar dressing has anchovies, but what am I..... Heathcliff? Yuck.

I found an eating well recipe with pureed cottage cheese, garlic, yogurt, parm, white wine vinegar, and worcheseterslekjrelk sauce.

The results? I got to use my cuisinart mini prep.. YAY how i've missed it!

I even took some WW bread and removed almost all of it's healthiness by dousing it with butter/oil/garlic. AND WHOAH WAS IT STRONG. I think I warded off plenty of vampires. It was probably strong enough to repel anyone who has even read twilight.

I had it with shrimpies and ...... meh. I was proud of it. And I ate it happily and cheerfully, but i still would've prefered to get a gooey, crusty (effortless on my part) restaurant salad. Applebee's anyone?

John was coming over later, and I was out of shrimp anyway so I threw together an egg salad salad. I actually learned out to make hard-boiled eggs via the better homes and gardens cookbook method (as opposed to haphazardly boiling them and inadvertently leaving a thousand tiny egg shell pieces all over the kitchen/world) I was proud of myself. Plus I subbed half mayo for yogurt, making myself EXTRA proud.

Then I took a photo montage of a Diane VonFurstenburg dress I got on ebay (slightly damaged) that I LOVED but when I got it in it was an old lady fabric in a WAY brighter color than I thought it would be (in real life it's brightest halloween orange). So I was taking photos to send to the former roomie fashion consultant who lives with her closet far far away in California. So, thoughts?

Happy Thursday friends!