Girl Confessions

1. You guys, sometimes I study. And sometimes…I watch adorable things like this on the internet. I feel like Zac Efron and Elmo need their own YouTube channel.

Am I wrong?

2. I am on the Instagram now so if you’d like to be Instagram buddies, look me up and stuff. I mostly take pictures like this.

Want to be a part of it?

3. This is like the coziest song for a cold autumn night. Light some candles, put on a cardigan and press play.

 

4. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday but I am sooooooooo not okay with it being just on the other side of a month from now. Nope.

5. Sometimes on my way to work, I pretend I’m auditioning for The Voice. I have it all planned out. I would sing a really unique, indie-style cover of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” and Adam Levine would be like, “I think you’re such a unique artist and I really love that song” and then Blake Shelton would be all, “That wouldn’t happen to be a COUNTRY song, would it? Cause I know a little a somethin’ about country music.” And then I would tell them both that I was so honored that they pushed their buttons for me but that I have to go with Cee Lo Green because I feel like he really gets my quirky musical sensibilities. Great story, right?

6. I have really missed blogging but I am finally feeling it again. So glad to be inspired. In honor of that inspiration, I did a little blog re-design. What do you think?

Your turn. Confession for the week?

love, elizabeth

Fall Swap

So excited to be linking up with Kristin over at Vignettes today! Kristin has been hosting an awesome fall swap this month and today we finally get to show off all of the fall goodies our swap buddies sent us! My package from Emily over at Husband and Wife was totally amazing. I was so touched by the amount of thought she put into this box. I will never stop being amazed at how much you can connect with someone you’ve only met through the internet. She went out of her way to send me thoughtful, unique fall surprises and I loved everything.

Emily sent me a pumpkin carving kit which is PERFECT because we just bought our pumpkins for Halloween and I am planning a carving night here in the next weekend or so. Also, who knew they made pumpkin-patch Pop Rocks? And how did Emily know that I love Pop Rocks??

She also sent me this cozy yellow scarf which I have been wearing to class a lot since it’s just starting to get cold here in Ohio. Which is why I am extra, super-duper excited about this cook book! I love making soup but I sometimes get stuck making the same two or three recipes over and over so I’m totally jazzed about learning to make something new. I’ll definitely post a recipe/review once I’ve tried something out!

In case you didn’t already know, Emily is also amazingly talented and creative. Look at these beautiful cards she made! I love personalized stationery and I am already using it. Emily, you’re probably way too busy these days to start a business but I would totally buy these cards if I saw them in a store. Just saying…

And she tucked in this beautiful candle that smells like someone bottled everything I love about fall into a tin and mailed it to me. So good.

Emily, it was an absolute joy to swap fall boxes with you and, if you want to, I will totally send you a box again next year!

Kristin, you are awesome for hosting this – it was a wonderful experience.

If you haven’t had a chance to meet Emily or Kristin, I encourage you to go visit them now! What fall treats are you loving right now?

love, elizabeth

Blog Birthday

Tomorrow this blog is turning two years old and in honor of that, I thought I’d share some of my favorite posts from the last year. Love you guys.

Love Letters

The Junk Mail Christmas Tree

The Day My Blog Became a Woman

Breakfast is an Occasion

Dropping the Ball

How to Pack a Suitcase

poetry found in laundry room

We are Travelers Together

How to be a rom-com heroine

the formation of giant star clusters or how Elizabeth got a peaceful feeling

Coffee

elizabeth

The Halloween Project: Halloween III

This is our third day into the project (check out recaps of Halloween and Halloween II) and we’re about to recap Halloween III: Season of the Witch. It doesn’t get more nuanced or complex than this. I spoke to a resident film buff named Brock who told me that originally, the plan was for each Halloween film to have a different theme/story but that Michael Myers was so popular, he became the recurring villain. Season of the Witch is the only departure from the Mike Myers saga. So. excited. Hold onto your face masks, this gets complicated.*

*SPOILER WARNING

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A crazy old dude with a Halloween mask is admitted to the hospital and treated for injuries before he is killed by evil zombie/robot men in suits. The doctor who treats him, Daniel Challis, has a moustache. This is how you know he will be a main character. Dr. Moustache already has lots of problems, mainly that he is an alcoholic and that his ex-wife hates him and doesn’t want him to see his kids. But when Dr. Moustache meets crazy old dude’s daughter, Ellie (we’ll just call her Barely Legal), he decides he doesn’t have enough on his plate, what with the whole being a doctor and having a moustache thing, and so he and Barely Legal decide to investigate the death of her father. This, they decide, is obviously related to the cheap Halloween mask he is wearing from some placed called the Silver Shamrock Novelty Company. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention…John Carpenter hates Irish people. Dr. Moustache and Barely Legal drive out to the factory town of Santa Mira and check into a kitschy motel where they proceed to have weirdly edited, oddly censored 80’s love scenes. In the end, it turns out that the factory is a cover for an old Irish witch-druid dude named Colonel Cochran, who is nothing like his fellow officer, Colonel Sanders. Somehow Cochran has stolen Stonehenge and installed it in his factory. You’ll never guess how he did it! No, really. You’ll never guess. He says that and then he never, ever explains himself. When all the children of the world turn on their televisions for the Silver Shamrock Corporation’s big broadcast event, they will put on their masks, which are somehow linked via computer chip to…Stonehenge…and this…makes their heads explode and spiders and snakes crawl out of their eye sockets (it’s like your mom said, tv will rot your brain). What is Colonel Cochran’s reason for this nefariousness? Does he need a reason? No, really. He wants to know and then no one is able to answer him so he’s like, “This is an ancient sacrificial blood rite on the holiday of Samhain” (because, as we learned in Halloween II, Samhain is the Irish tradition whereupon we kill children and/or sexy teenagers because that’s the Gaelic way! Kiss us, we’re Irish!) and Dr. Moustache is all like tormented and sad and also apparently has 49 minutes before the broadcast so he foot-smashes the television set and escapes into the air ducts and rescues Barely Legal and they dump mask devices on the robots and on Colonel Cochran and this makes all their heads explode. And then Barely Legal and Dr. Moustache drive away while cartoon orange flames light up the night sky (because the factory is now on fire, did I forget to mention that part?). But OMG HUUUUUUUUUGE TWIST, BARELY LEGAL HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A ROBOT BY THE LATE COLONEL COCHRAN AND SHE IS TRYING TO STRANGLE DR. MOUSTACHE! It’s cool, though, because he whacks off her head with a tire iron and gets back in his car but OMG, HE FORGOT THAT HER DISLOCATED ARM IS IN THE PASSENGER SEAT AND IT CAN STILL STRANGLE HIM SOMEHOW! So then he throws it. And it’s all okay. And then he goes to a gas station and somehow convinces the Head of All Television Everywhere that they can’t air the big Silver Shamrock Corporation Broadcast of Doom because it will kill all the children and they totally believe him and cancel the broadcast except OMG THEY TOTALLY FORGOT THE THIRD CHANNEL (THERE ARE ONLY THREE) AND THERE ARE CHILDREN AND THEY ARE WATCHING THIS AND DR. MOUSTACHE IS LIKE, TURN IT OFF YOU HAVE TO TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!! Bam. Credits.

Is your mind as blown as mine is right now? Gaelic Halloween spiders!!?! Side note: some internet research is telling me that the villain’s name is actual Conal Cochran, not Colonel Cochran but I, a) heard colonel not conal, and b) like my version better. Halloween IV…Thursday…be there….

love, elizabeth

The Halloween Project: Halloween II

Yesterday, I shared my 90-second recap of John Carpenter’s Halloween. It’s part of our Halloween project this October. We’re reviewing all the films in the Halloween franchise. Ready for the sequel? Dun, dun, dun.*

*SPOILER WARNING

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This movie picks up about 45 seconds after the first Halloween ended. The doctor runs out into the street to the sheriff’s car, shouting, “I shot him six times! And now he’s gone!” And this right here is basically the entire premise of the film. If you think Michael Myers is dead, you are wrong. So they take Jamie Lee Curtis, who is so traumatized that she spends the majority of this movie shivering and moaning and not doing a whole lot of talking, to what has to be the worst hospital in the entire United States. Haddonfield Memorial Hospital apparently shuts down at like 8 PM on Halloween and just leaves like one nurse in charge of all the babies while two paramedics and a drunk doctor run the emergency room. This means that Jamie Lee Curtis gets plenty of attention, especially from Jimmy, the sensitive “college boy” paramedic. He’s super different than his macho partner who likes to get cozy with nurses in the therapy steam in the hospital basement (this is apparently a really good way to get murdered, in case you were wondering, so…no sexy time in hospital basements unless you want Michael Myers to kill you). Speaking of M.M., everyone else in town, including the sheriff and the doctor, spend the majority of the movie freaking out about him maybe being not dead. They drive around a lot, looking for Michael. They find a word written in blood, “SAMHAIN” and then the doctor explains how the Irish invented Halloween and how evil doesn’t exist in goblins and ghosts but in our darkest selves. Meanwhile, Jamie Lee Curtis is having sedative-induced flashback dreams about this boy named Michael and then OMG WE FIND OUT THAT JAMIE LEE CURTIS IS TOTALLY MICHAEL’S OTHER SISTER AND THAT SHE WAS ADOPTED AFTER HER PARENTS WERE MURDERED!! The last third of the movie is mostly Michael calmly stalking Jamie Lee Curtis around the hospital. He keeps getting stabbed and shot and burned alive until right at the end when he’s totally dead and Jamie Lee Curtis is like, why is this hospital so dark and empty and why is the law enforcement so completely incompetent and how on earth did I get the only hospital gown in history that is NOT backless and embarrassing? Credits.

I feel like these movies are just going to get better and better. Halloween III coming tomorrow…

love, elizabeth

The Halloween Project

When Kyle and I spotted all the Halloween films on VHS at one of my favorite thrift stores, I decided to watch the entire series from start to finish.This led to one of our greatest date nights ever. I think we would probably be really annoying people to watch scary movies with because we spent the entire time doing a running commentary under the dialogue. So here’s my little Halloween project, 90-second summaries of every Halloween movie in the franchise. Aaaaaaaaaaaand go!*

*SPOILER WARNING

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On a rainy night, a nurse and a doctor drive to an insane asylum, as you do, to discover that the insane are no longer safely asylum-ed but are now wandering around. This is a huge uh-oh because the psychopathic Michael Myers was supposed to be locked up there. Michael Myers’ main issues seem to revolve around his overwhelming need to breathe heavily into his mask, stand outside of well-lit windows and murder all physically amorous teenagers in the approximate area. Meanwhile, it’s totes magotes Halloween and Jamie Lee Curtis is a hot, book-loving virgin who is too busy babysitting children and taking care of her incredibly stupid teenage friends (who spend the majority of their time having sex, planning to have sex, and making fun of every one who is not having sex) to even THINK about boys. The doctor shows up in town and is all like, “Omg, Sheriff! I have looked into the devil’s eyes!” And the sheriff is like, “Someone broke into the hardware store and stole some masks and some rope and some knives. Those kids and their crazy Halloween hijinks!”  And Michael Myers spends the majority of the day driving around town, creeping on Jamie Lee and randomly standing by clotheslines. Then it gets dark and Michael gets to murdering. His triggers are apparently female nudity and this song. Michael’s only weaknesses are being stabbed with knitting needles and girls who read books because somehow Jamie Lee continues to avoid getting dead AND continues to be a super responsible babysitter. And just when she’s about to be strangled for reals, the doctor shows up and shoots Michael Myers six. times. with his revolver that he apparently carries with him for his…psychiatric duties? And then Jamie Lee Curtis is all, “It really was the boogey man” and the doctor is like, “As a matter of fact, it was.” And then he goes to look out the window to stare at Michael Myers’ dead body and OMGMICHAELMYERSISTOTALLYNOTHEREANYMORE. Credits.

Stay tuned for the 90-second version of Halloween II…tomorrow.

Do you watch horror movies? Do you have a favorite?

love, elizabeth

oh, look. a blogger talking about picking apples…your mind is blown, I’m sure.

Saturday was one of those perfect days. We got to sleep in and when we woke up, without the aid of an alarm clock, there was an adorable ball of fuzz peeking out from under the covers. At Caribou, the barista put exactly the right amount of syrup in my pumpkin latte. The car radio played three good songs in a row and it was a perfect 68-70 degrees all day. The whole drive to Pataskala, we held hands and told jokes and ranted about the election and smiled at each other and it was a perfect day.

This is our fourth autumn in Ohio and, hands down, our favorite thing about Midwest autumns is apple-picking at Lynd’s Fruit Farm. You may remember the apple juggling from last year?

Awww, that smile…oh-em-gee, you guys…so in love with him.

Are those not the most beautiful vegetables you have ever SEEN? We even found cheese cauliflower, which is deceptively NOT cheesy but just cheese-colored.

So now that I have gloated in my perfect autumn bliss, tell me what you’re doing to celebrate October where you live!

love, elizabeth