#30daysofawesome – DAY 15 – My new friend, Thom.

I got a fish.

A Cherry Barb fish, to be exact. His name is Thom. (Don’t forget the H. He’s Thai. Or so I’ve deemed him to be.)

He’s the pinkest fresh water fish they had in the store. He’s super cute. I love him.

I love him so much, that the first night I brought him home, I took about a million photos. I wanted to get a close up, so I got right up on top of his bowl to get a good shot. My phone slipped out of my hand, into the water and cracked the fish bowl. Whoops.

Now Thom and I have a love/hate relationship, because prior to Thom, my iPhone was the most precious thing in my life. Now they are in conflict in my heart. *Sigh.

Luckily, after putting my phone in a giant size bag of quinoa overnight, it, mostly, works. It flashes the “This device is not optimized for this accessory” message every ten to fifteen minutes and won’t play music, but other than that, it’s pretty much in working order.

I’m taking a wee trip starting Monday. So Harvey is watching Thom. I have a 50/50 expectation to his survival rate.

Think the other girls of 30daysofawesome got pets? Hmmm…..

xoxo.

#30daysofawesome – DAY 14 – My Awesome co-pilots.

I got to thinking today… I’m not sure everyone involved in 30 Days of Awesome has actually met one another. Kait has never met Heather and Amanda and Angeli have never been formally introduced. I think the only people that has met everyone else is Jess, Lesley and I.

So I was wondering how to put into one place a bit of each of the girls personalities without the standard “what’s you favorite color” and “how old were you when you lost your virginity” questions.

As seen on my blog, I am a fan of the site Polyvore. It’s an amazing internet time waster site, and who doesn’t love those? Essentially, it allows you to create little online collages of fashion, art and text. I decided to create a set for each of the girls of Awesome based on what I know of their personal styles.

I started with the shoes. The shoes make the outfit, the style and the girl. From there, it all just came together.

I’ve included the link so you can go explore polyvore for your self and see what is included in each of the girls sets.

Enjoy!

xoxo.

Lesley Betts. Wolf lover and creatively put together.

Jess Werner. Sporty casual with a penchant for color.

Angeli VanLaanen. Hippy chic with a refined softness.

Amanda Wormann. Bohemian free with undertones of East Coast prep.

Heather Hendrix. Rock and Roll. All night long.

Tawnya Schultz. Edgy and beachy. Action sports inspired.

Kait McNally. The traveling artist with a hipster vibe.

And me. Belted Victorian lace and pink. Love.

#30daysofawesome – DAY 13 – Mad Lib Postcards.

Gregg’s son leaves for camp tomorrow. Three weeks in the great state of Michigan. The homeland if yours truly.

I know how much fun camp is. I’m a proud alma mater if Camp Henry. An finding time to write home is not always easy. So I wondered how to help little buddy to actually write to his dad, mom and grandparents while he’s away.

ding! ding! ding!

Address, stamp and PRE-WRITE postcards for him. But we had to make it a little bit tougher than that. I mean, people actually want to find out a LITTLE bit about what he will be up to the three weeks he’s away from home.

Enter my favorite pastime when I was a kid. Mad Libs. You remember, the little pads of paper where they had a pre-written story on each page but the catch was that key words were missing from each story. You had to ask your friends to provide you with a “verb”, “adjective”, “noun”, etc…. to fill in the blanks of the story. The end result was a hilarious mini-story for all to get a laugh out of and lighten any long car ride.

So we figured, why not write out some postcards, create sentences that make sense for camp like “Today we played _____________. It was really________. My new friend _________ is very_________.” You get the point.

So we created eight different postcards, all colorful, and eight different paragraphs of things for him to tell us. Complete with a little astrick* asking him to draw something about camp on the front. *draw a picture of your cabin on the front. *draw your favorite camp activity on the front. *draw your arts and crafts project on the front. Etc…

I think it’s Awesome. And hopefully it gets little buddy to write to his loved ones!

You know who else writes a lot? The other babes of 30daysofawesome.com.

xoxo.

#30daysofawesome – DAY 12 – My first REAL golf outing!.

Gregg is a golfer. I am not.

Oh, the things we do for love.

I now own a golf bag, a set of clubs, a pair of golf shoes, two golf gloves, three golf-appropriate outfits and a smattering of other accessories. You would think for a country club born and raised girl such as myself, these would have been things I already owned. Nope. Golf and I never really got to know each other. The closest thing I got to being on the golf course growing up was carting around my high school boyfriend while he lapped the front nine and cold beers every weekend.

I have been hitting the driving range with Gregg up at Hiwan, the course by his house and practicing a bit of putting and chipping here and there but I had yet to actually play a hole. Until today.

This is a very frustrating sport. For one who is not necessarily full of finesse, I find it extremely challenging. But through the course of the three holes we played, there were one or two shots that were right on the money and will “keep me coming back,” as Gregg says.

This one, however, was not one of them…

But, we were rolling after that. It was a beautiful night and my boy was with me showing me the ropes. It was pretty damn Awesome.

xoxo.

#30daysofawesome – DAY 11 – It started with a game...

A Detroit Tigers game, to be exact. As I’ve stated I had tickets to the Tigers/Rockies game last Saturday. Since Gregg couldn’t come with me, my friend Ian did. So, things turned out okay, I was going to get to spend time with my friend and I was going to be able to wear my sweet Tigers jersey… um… shoot…wait, crap. Where is it? No seriously, where is my jersey?!?

I never found it. Ian wore his sweet Tigers shirt and I, well, I wore a boring grey tank top because I couldn’t find my jersey. It’s gone. Into the depths of the mysterious land of missing clothes never to be seen again. It happens to our favorite old tee-shirt, that great pair of weekend shorts and of course, the single socks.

I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was. Me, the uber Detroit fan, at a Detroit game in Denver with NO DETROIT APPAREL. I hung my head in shame. To rectify this, I hunkered down and did some ordering online on Monday and vowed to find the most Awesome Detroit fan apparel out.

Here’s what I came up with.

Classic Tiger gear:

Then, this beauty for hot days. I love the D:

Obviously, the new white on white. Damn Winter Park still has mine:

Then to make sure I was fully covered in the NBA arena:

Then my personal favorite of the day. The Red Wings henley. I’ll be wearing this ALL season next year. Right on up through Stanley.

Now I can hold my head high and call myself a true Detroit fan once again. Thank you internets.

See who the other ladies are fans of at 30daysofawesome.com.

xoxo.

#30daysofawesome – DAY 10 – Puppy makeover.

With both myself and Gregg out of town last week, Parker had to go to the doggie daycare for NINE DAYS! While the Bergen Bark Inn is a wonderful place, it simply isn’t their job to brush, bathe and pamper our pet. It’s ours.

So when we picked up a filthy Parker with hair grown out over his eyes so he could barely see, I decided to get Awesome, I was going to give him a full on makeover.

It started with a trip to Walmart and the doggie shampoo isle. It’s quite extensive.

After much deliberation, we decided upon the Hartz Groomer’s Best Whitener Shampoo as Parker is a white dog and could use a little brightening up after a week at doggie summer camp and the Oatmeal Naturals Conditioner to soften him right up.

Now to document this transformation, we needed some before shots. See, he’s a little camera shy, embarrassed by his grittiness.

PARKER BEFORE:

Next up: The part every dog hates… The dreaded toss in the tub and hose down.

He was pretty cooperative, but he’s also very dramatic. The water was plenty warm, but he shivered with all his might to make us feel sorry for him. After a full shampoo scrub, rinse, repeat, rinse, condition, rinse, he was ready to be done.

I secretly thinks he likes the bath. Gives him great attention and he gets to be held like a baby in warm towels and get a dry massage.

And just to make sure the puppy is super dry and he doesn’t catch a cold, he gets the blow dryer. This he loves. Can’t get enough. Cuddles right up in your lap and takes it like a… man?

Then the brush…

And then the part he hates the most… The trim of the hair around his eyes that’s full of dog-eye boogies. And a trim of the eyebrows so he can see…

But after that’s all said and done, he gets to don his new argyle sweater I bought him and live life large on the plush bathroom chair. Now he’s all smiles for the camera.

After a somewhat rocky start to our relationship, me taking up Gregg’s cuddle space and all, Parker and I are now best friends. Even this traumatic experience has brought us closer together. So close in fact, he follows me to the bathroom. Too much, Parker. Too much.

xoxo.

#30daysofawesome – DAY 9 – Hoodie Surprise… sort of.

I had a GREAT plan for today.

But due to the MASSIVE United Airline screw up, Gregg and his son did not come home on Friday night like planned. Therefore, my Saturday / early Father’s Day plan was somewhat foiled.

Here’s how the plan went…

1. Take the boys to the Tigers / Rockies game. I bought tickets from a local little league team and they were GREAT seats!

2. Prepare a massive father’s day feast for the boys to take home and eat the next day. I went shopping at 7:00 AM and go all the ingredients for lasagna, homemade sourdough bread, pear/Gorgonzola salad, roasted corn and “Happy Daddy’s Day” cupcakes.

3. Then the finale… their presents.

I was (am) SO excited about said presents. Gregg doesn’t have any encoding.com or vid.ly (this are his companies) shirts small enough for an 8-year-old.

So, I figured I would take matters into my own hands and get matching Dad/Son zip-up hoodies and get the encoding.com logo embroidered on the back and front. I found this Awesome little shop in Evergreen that is a skate shop, snowboard shop, indoor skate park and embroidery shop. M.O.B. Designs.

Cat dialed me in and whipped out some real nice work. The shop has every color thread imaginable and can computer generate any logo or design you can muster. It’s a pretty cool operation.

Anyway, I was pretty stoked on my little find and the resulting product.

What did the rest of the girls of 30daysofawesome get up to?

xoxo.

#30daysofawesome – DAY 8 – The Book of Awesome..

It was like an omen coming from above.

I was at Boston Logan Airport, about to go through security, when I thought to myself, ” I might need a new book for the plane. I’m really close to finishing my current one.” So I stepped out of line, even though I was close to making it through, backtracked through people, explained myself to the lady at the beginning of the line with the highest pitched voice I’ve ever experienced and stepped into the Hudson Booksellers.

It was like everything around me went dark. The only thing I could see was the display wall in front of me. It was shouting AWESOME. Row after row of AWESOME. More specifically, The Book of Awesome. Written by Neil Pasricha, author of the blog, 1000awesomethings.com.

I knew what I had to do. I purchased a copy of that book in less than an instant and set out to read the entire thing in one day. I am happy to say, I accomplished this goal with flying colors. Thanks to a four hour flight from Boston to Denver, I was well over the half-way hump by wheels down and then had a mere couple of hours to go once I was back in the comfort of my own apartment.

Now, Mr. Pasricha’s view of Awesome is pretty Awesome, but it’s a little bit different than what we’re going for over here at #30days.

Our goal is to get out and do something awesome each day. Something that might get you out of your comfort zone, challenges your intellect, gets you creative or teaches you something.

Mr. Pasricha chooses to take a look at the ordinary things in your life that become a little extra-ordinary now and then and helps you appreciate the Awesome already surrounding you.

For example, popping bubble wrap, moving up a shoe size when you’re a kid, potato chips on a sandwich, having a whole row to yourself on an airplane, using rock-paper-scissors to settle anything, etc…

What makes this book super Awesome in my book, is his description of these little Awesomes in life.

For example:

When you know your own remote control so well you don’t need to look at the buttons.

Almost sunset over the harbor in Boston.

So lovely and peaceful watching the boats and the sunset with a good book and a nice cheese plate.

xoxo.

#30daysofawesome – DAY 7 – Stand-up PaddleBoarding!!.

Oh man. This was a super Awesome day. It was sunny again, and after meeting with my buddy Matt Berkowitz at Fischer, he told me I had to go see his buddies Ryan and Tyler who own the surf shop on the coast at Jenness Beach. While there, if I wanted to get Awesome, I should go paddle boarding, Ryan and Tyler would hook me up.

I was super nervous and first. Almost chickened out. But thanks to Awesome, I mustered up the courage, had the boys send me out with a paddle board and tackled the waves.

To be honest. Anything involving water, especially salt water, is Awesome. But again, I figured I should step it up. Well, I’ve never really been surfing before. And a paddle board is SUPER large and hard to handle. Getting out past the break was stupid hard. My board got kicked out of my control more than once. I lost my bathing suit bottoms more than once. I got dunked more than once. I’m sure I got laughed at more than once.

But I persevered and figured out how to make it past the break, stood up on my board and paddled around. It was AWESOME. Paddling out on the ocean, just me and my board.

Inspired by a few other, no doubt more experienced, paddle boarders, I decided to make my way back closer to shore and try to “catch a wave.” Yeah, that didn’t exactly work out. Sure, I could kind of get moving a little bit before they broke, but once that water turned white on top, I was toast. “Flung from my board” is an accurate description. But it was really fun. And super Awesome.

Alas, I had no loved one to sit on the beach, laugh at me, and take photos. So you’ll have to make due with my little snapshot of the board, the break and two super cute little kids who were playing baseball on the beach.

What did the rest of the girls do today? 30daysofawesome.com.

xoxo.