Lovely Beauty: Birchbox

{www.birchbox.com}

I've been ordering makeup online at www.Sephora.com a lot lately, and I've been loving the samples I get with every order.  Every beauty product out there makes lofty claims and promises, but how many times have you purchased some well-reviewed name brand product only to find out it seems to work just as good as some generic product you already have at home, and for triple or quadruple the price?  So spending $50 on some moisturizer I've never tried is such a risky investment.  I've definitely discovered some great products through free samples, so Birchbox is sounding pretty appealing right now.  Every month, you pay $10 to receive a box of hand picked deluxe samples, along with instructions and tips on how to use the products.  They also apparently have informative articles and tutorials on their website on various products, which sounds like a great idea.  What good is a great beauty product when you're using it all wrong?

Seeing the products they have on their website currently is tempting me to join Birchbox...

Lovely Tunes: Katy Perry

CANDY LAND was my favorite game ever!  Princess Lolli and Queen Frostine were my favorite characters, I thought they were so pretty.  And I loved Gumdrop Mountains (and who wasn't excited to make it to the shortcut through the mountain pass?!)!  The game is so simple, and just like so many other board games, but the fact that there are different places for different types of candy with fun characters residing in them makes it such a likable game.  I never realized they changed the game every 10 years until I looked up the game just now--

I definitely had the 1980's version:

Katy Perry is awesome, and I just love this video!  The only thing I don't love about it is the fact that they're wearing whipped cream with cherry nipple bikini tops!

Lovely Eats: Portillo's Hotdogs

(I cannot remember what sandwich is on the left, but the Chicago Dog is on the right. There's tomatoes, mustard, pickles, peppers, relish, and onions in it.)

Four of us went to a conference for work in Schaumburg, Illinois. It's about a 45 minute drive to Chicago, but it was a nice area. We went to Portillo's because we wanted to eat a Chicago dog and someone at the conference recommended it, and it was sooo good! For someone who doesn't like hot dogs, I was amazed that I absolutely loved it.

Lovely Adventures: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

{entering hogsmeade}

{roller coaster}

{fake owls perched on beams inside an open pavillion}

{the butterbeer was delicious! the non-frozen version tasted like sweet cream soda topped with melted ice cream. the frozen version tasted like a cream soda flavored icee}

{hogwarts. there was a cool ride inside the castle. }

{in the hogwarts greenhouse}

{dumbledore's office. he's on the balcony.}

{the people in the pictures were animated and actually spoke; this is the room where the staircases always changed}

Lovely Eats: Texas State Fair

J & I made it a point to visit the Texas State Fair while we were in Dallas. We were dying to sample all the unique and yummy deep fried food that we would never be able to find here in the Islands. Our favorites included the chicken fried bacon, deep fried frito pie, and fried green tomatoes. The deep fried beer was a soggy-cracker-miss, and the deep fried butter was surprisingly yummy - but only in a one bite and you're done sort of way. We even stopped in at an aquarium where we saw an albino crocodile and fed stingrays (super cool but sorry, no pictures for that) and also visited a petting zoo where we had fun feeding all the animals.

{Big Tex - he even talks!}

{tons of animals at the petting zoo}

{deep fried butter with garlic butter sauce}

{caramel apple; fried green tomatoes (top); deep fried beer (bottom)}

{deep fried frito pie}

{chicken fried bacon}