A lazy person's guide to Halloween Decorating!

And by lazy, I mean a busy person's guide, because I am a very busy person. First, I got these Fall Paper Fan decorations from Target's Oh Joy Fall Collection. I love her blog and her products. I hung them at my front window.

Next, I bought some small pumpkins, because I was too lazy to carry heavy pumpkins into my apartment, design, carve and or paint them. So I got three small pumpkins and I had some gold paint. So I painted the stems. I saw on Pinterest and Instagram that people with free time have painted their stems and added glitter also. Who has the time? I wish I did.

 

Once completed, they looked like this:

 

I placed the the third pumpkin on a bowl and placed it on my dinning room table.

 

Lastly, I make Reese's Peanut Butter Cup stuffed in Chocolate Chip Cookies, in a muffin cup tin. But, unlike most years, I didn't have time to make it from scratch, like I did in this previous blog post.
Instead, I used these products, which saved me 2 hours!

I just use a piece of the Chocolate Chip dough, place on the bottom, add a peanut butter cup, then add more Cookie dough as needed. See each step here:

After about 15 minutes in an oven that is set at 350 degrees, they should be done and should look like this:

Once cooled, I removed each with a knife. They should come out easily (if you use PAM or a similar product) and then place them in individual paper cups. I don't heat them with the paper cup because, I hate eating a cupcake and some of it is still on the paper... what a waste!

The finished product! I cut a piece off to show you all what it looks like. I hope you'll enjoy making some for yourself for Halloween or Christmas, or any day really. I've also enjoyed this great song (click here, to listen on YouTube), so I had to share it before the month is out, I hope you all had a great October!

Challenges

I've decided to work on my finances and my digital bravery. First I joined Paige's No Shopping Challenge from Little Nostalgia. I just spend part of my savings on a fancy new road bike from Specialized. I have already seen results! I have been living paycheck to paycheck for the past few months, now I have only spent $200 of my last paycheck and my next pay day is in 10 days. Now I need to save all my cash to pay myself back.

I have also joined the Blog Society 30 Day Digital Bravery Challenge. I'm not exactly sure how this one will work, but I'm excited. I tend to be pretty personal and not "digitally brave". 

I also did a Forever 21 Challenge, which was horrible! I wanted a Beatles Mono Vinyl Set and took my best "Mod Photo". But Forever 21 never announced a winner, they just wanted entries for Instagram tags. I will not be participating in any Forever 21 Challenges ever again. I emailed them, commented on their blog, asked them on Instagram and they did not respond at all! At least I took a cute photo. #forever21istheworst

Smoothies

Over the summer I worked on some of my smoothie recipes. This Green Smoothie has two kiwis and and two bananas, coconut water and ice.

Sorry I took these  photos in my dark apartment. The Blueberry Smoothie recipe is two handfuls for blueberries, one banana, 1 cup or orange juice and ice.

Each smoothie is blended until smooth. The ice is there for a liquid consistency and to make the drink ice cold.

CURRENT AFFAIR: Pop Up Vintage Marketplace FALL 2014

As a vintage seller, I always wanted to go to the Current Affair pop-up show, but somehow I always missed it. Finally, I saw the email early on and bought my ticket for the Downtown LA market! I will say that although I sell vintage, I rarely wear vintage. I have one pair of vintage sandals and about 10 vintage leather belts. And this market is definitely all about clothes and fashion!!

I will say that while there were great choices and every booth designed their space beautifully. I did have a chance to wear my vintage German hunting pin at the event.

 

There wasn't a lot of room to walk around and the main issue for people was the lack or seating areas and the dressing rooms were in certain locations, so vintage sellers had to trust that people trying on clothes would come back. I didn't even have time to take photos because there would have been too many people in my shots. But here's the last one I took:

 I'm also not sure I'd go again. The prices were way too expensive for me! A $500 vintage dress and $200 used boots aren't my taste. But I'm sure that the vendors sold a lot of one of a kind items that look great on their customers! 

sound. at the Santa Monica Museum of Art: Mark Trayle

This may be the longest blog title I've ever used! Haha! Anyway, over the summer I went to
sound. at the Santa Monica Museum of Art with Mark Trayle. It's difficult to explain, but essentially made various sounds using some sort of audio contraption, unfortunately that is not my expertise. The Museum was in collaboration with the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound’s (SASSAS) sound. According to the website, it featured "new multichannel pieces intended to conjure sonic illusions". The performance took place inside SMMoA’s exhibition, Robert Swain: The Form of Color. This exhibition was actually the reason I wanted to go to this performance. I enjoy the idea of two different art pieces being made into one experience.To hear what it kind of sounded like, click here. It was definitely an experience, I will say that I am happy that it was a free event, which allowed me to use my money to buy a CD of a previous Sound performance.

The Corpse Flower

One of the most exciting parts of my job is getting to visit my place of work during major events! This event was The Corpse Flower!

This was before it bloomed, but it grew to be taller than 5 feet!! I have never seen a flower like this before. You can read about it, here on my organization's website.

It bloomed over the weekend and there was a short line into the conservatory, but it was such a thrill to see, personally I thought that it just smelled like moldy flowers... others agreed that it did smell like a corpse. The flower is native to Sumatra, Indonesia. Below is a close up on the pollination process, which you can read about on the link I posted above.