Blogger meetup

A couple weeks ago I had a fun opportunity to meet up with blogger Kim of EF eDesigns.  Kim has just recently decided to discontinue the blog updates on the site for her design company, but still is continuing to blog on her own personal site.  This little get-together came about because she did a post about possibly re-staining or painting a vintage desk chair she had found on CL for $25!

I asked her to let me bring over some Howard's Restor-A-Finish and Feed-N-Wax to see how it looks before doing all that work to refinish it.  We had a great night with wine, Howard products, and her adorable pup!

And here is the chair after a couple coats of the good stuff.  Doesn't it look shiny?

And here is Kim, who looks like Nicole Kidman.  She doesn't see it, but I'm convinced! 

I hear she's going to give an update on the chair on her blog soon, I really hope the Howard products were tough enough to save her some work.  So...does anyone else want to get together for furniture restoration and booze?  I'm game! 

Finally, my Halloween post

We carved some pumpkins this year. 

Aren't they cute?

We had lots of stops on Saturday, a wedding ceremony, then a Halloween-themed engagement party 15 minutes away....

...then back to the reception for the wedding, then out to meet up with our friends for bar time!  Because we had the wedding and reception, we had to have very easy 'costumes.'  Shaun got a fro wig and I found a nice hot pink number that perfectly matched his tie.  Nice, huh?

We had a great time but collapsed into bed quite eagerly that night. 

I secretly love the fro wig and think he looks sexy with it on, like Lenny Kravitz or something.  Too bad he couldn't grow this in real life! 

Aaaannnddddd.....

Just because they all deserve a shout-out, here are some pics of my mom, brother and his bandmates, and other friends that all dressed up as Toy Story characters.  My mom made this slinky dog costume with felt and stuffing!  For REALS!  The 'butt' was on wheels and she used metal rings for the 'slinky' part.  I'm not worthy.

Her friend was the creepy baby doll.  Check out those contacts!

Yikes!

The band was full of characters:

My younger bro was a cute Woody.   

And then there was the potato family:

And everyone all together!  

Seriously, I wish I could've dressed up like they did.  Hopefully next year I can stop being lame at Halloween and do something great like this group did. 

Beer

Yep, a post about beer.  Because I need a mental (and physical) break from the damn bookcases that are sucking the life out of me.  We do have all the shelf cleats up and are still making progress, but I'm tired of talking about it.  Let's talk about the Great Lakes Brewfest that we went to a couple weeks ago instead!  Beer helps you through any project, right?

It took place at Racine's Festival Park, on the beautiful Lake Michigan shore.  They had over 90 craft breweries for our drinking pleasure, and Lakefront Brewery even had a dude walking around with a keg on his back so you didn't have to wait in line!  That is service.

We made some pretzel necklaces to make sure we didn't get drunkity after an hour, you can see my really long necklace in this picture of me with a dude wearing a ladies shirt.

It says "I bet you wish these were filled with beer" across the chest.  I couldn't resist a picture with this stud!  We made some new friends...

And checked out the boats, even though it was rather chilly that day. 

Then I asked Shaun to take a picture of me with my beer, and this unflattering little photoshoot happened:  

But I finally managed to look normal for the last one. 

And then we got a nice one together, even though ALL THE PRETZELS WERE GONE and we were still drinking.  Watch out!

One of our new friends looked a bit like Shaun when he's sporting longer hair and a mustache, so we took a very serious picture at a bar post-festival to document their twin-dom. 

Watch out, they will cut you!

Ta ta for now

Despite my hatred for airports, crowds, hotel staff, overpriced drinks and packing 20 outfits for a 5 day trip (I'm a terrible overpacker), we will be flying to Vegas tomorrow for a Labor Day getaway.  That being said, things will be very quiet around here.  I could set some posts to publish automatically, but that would involve creating posts ahead of time which doesn't happen around here.  Instead, we will be sitting at the Flamingo GO pool with drinks in our hands and not a care in the world. 

And I will look like this while lounging there:

BWAHAHA!  OK, moving on....we have been working on a project in the future den/tv room for a little while.  It involves this back wall that I never fully showed in pics before: 

There is a reason we didn't paint it back in March.  I'll be back next weekend with some deets!  Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!

Halloween fun

Here is what we looked like for the trick-or-treaters on Saturday:

I had so many little girls tell me "I like your costume!"  It was too cute.  It's too bad it was so cold, because we didn't really get that many kids and now I have to eat 3 bags of candy bring 3 bags of candy to work so I don't eat it.  We also went out to see my brother's band play and enjoyed seeing some ridiculous costumes Saturday night.  Ours were borrowed from my mom and dad, they were pirates two years ago when 'Pirates of the Caribbean' was huge. 

Part of the band dressed up as superheros.  My bro was The Punisher.  Aren't they all very muscle-y??

And please check out my mother...yes, my mother.  If I look like this in 25 years I will thank my lucky stars!

                             

Most of our group did 'Batman' themed costumes.  They had Batman, Robin, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Joker, and Harlequin.  Not bad, eh? 

We had a good time.  I'm already trying to come up with next year's costume - I will not wait until the last minute again!!  Famous last words.....