SNAPSHOTS: A Birthday Weekend

All you can eat sushi, The Avengers, zoo trips, an evening at the fun fair and a visit from the nephews and niece was how we spent our weekend celebrating Joe's 30th birthday. Funnel Cake (mmm) coated in a thick confectionery sugar layer with the most deliciously squeezed lemonade with a gorgeous rainbow covering Detroit's sky was how we finished Saturday. A day spent with the kids raiding Uncle Joe's Transformers collection and completing on his video games. After a dinner of Coney Dogs, a trip (our first in over a year) to the zoo to not only renew our membership (more on this to come) but to see the blossom, watch the butterflies fluttering around and try to seek out the Polar Bear. And while it's fun being an auntie, they sure tire you out, that iced tea cocktail in a bath on Sunday night felt very well deserved. 

How was your weekend?

  

LIFE: A Weekend of Spiderman, Slows and Sweets

Sum up this weekend in three words you'll find Spiderman, Slows and sweets at the top of the list. Actually you could probably throw in salad cream too because I had to get my British fix in a buy some more. While Joe's birthday might not be until this Wednesday, we decided to celebrate it early. The long weekend began on Thursday night with a quick trip to Treat Dreams in Ferndale - a glorious ice cream shop which offers ice cream made on the premises with flavours you probably wouldn't find anywhere else, like pineapple curry or brown sugar ham. There's more traditional flavours too so I opted for death by chocolate (a vegan ice cream) and a double chocolate chip which was tasty to say the least. It costs $4.60 for two scoops so a little more than you'd normally pay but worth it all the same.

Joe's birthday is always, always matched with a new Marvel movie (like every year there's always a new release just before or on this birthday - which is good because he's a huge comic book fan) - this year was no different with the second of the Spiderman movies finally hitting the big screen. Taking the day off work, we caught the first showing of the day at our local cinema (9.45am early). I have to admit to being more of a Captain America, Agents of Shield Marvel fan and in the words of the comic book fan of a husband, it was "good, but not great". So there you go.

Awesome kitty design (should call it street art others would call it graffiti) along the back of buildings where the Mercury Burger Bar is in Corktown (sandwiched between Michigan Avenue and the car park). The Big Three - my tasty meal at Slows BBQ.

The day was rounded off with a trip to Corktown to eat in Slows - a rather well known BBQ restaurant in these parts. It's taken me over two years to get down there but my word the food was delicious - rich, tender meats and great sauces. The place is more then worthy of post all on it's own so stay tuned for that. Being so close to Mexicantown we headed the short drive west to grab some more red creame soda and a tasty sweet treat from the Mexicantown Bakery - another place I'd highly recommend if you're in Detroit - it's my favorite bakery to say the least.

Tasty treat from the Mexicantown Bakery - that confectionery sugar gets everywhere, first of the new vinyl boxes filled and this weeks vinyl pickings.

After hitting and having success at some estate sales in the morning, especially when it came to rehoming some vinyl, we took a trip to Ikea. Having run out of boxes for moving the vinyl collection we found Ikea do a box that is just the kind of size for vinyl, so we grabbed ten of the Tjena boxes (if vinyl storeage is your kind of thing they seem to hold about 70 mixed single and double records, each box is $4.99, they seem sturdy enough too) which are now stacked like the tower of boxes in the living room. As for Sunday well that's always just about food shopping, chilling out watching Netflix and catching up on blogs.

This weekend of relaxing and just being us was especially important after deciding to back out of the house we had put an offer on. After appraising for lower than the offer we'd place, the seller would only lower the asking price and not do some of the important work, work that we wouldn't have the money for until probably too much damage was done to the foundation. It's the right decision in the long term and the right decision for us, just hard all the same, so the search restarts.

How was your weekend?

We'll Catch the Sun and Away We'll Fly

A weekend of lazying out to early rock and roll vinyl and psychedelic blues was spent somewhat among tissues and shots of cough medicine - the joys of catching your partners cold. Last week ended were this one begins - waiting to hear back from a mortgage adviser in an attempt to get approved so we can properly start house hunting. Once the ball gets rolling I'm thinking about running a couple of posts covering the house hunting and buying adventure - tips we come across and the like especially geared for us first time buyers. But that is for another time.

Managing to hit some estate sales on Saturday and aside from buying new stock we added to our vinyl collection with LPs from the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas to Diana Ross (close enough to Motown) among others. After Easter and weddings this was the first weekend we've had to ourselves to get out and picking although we battled through a huge hailstorm and dreary weather. A Sunday afternoon lazying on the sofa watching Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire dancing their way through Carefree and pouring over vintage model and train reference books, finding old pressed four leaf clovers hidden within their pages merged into watching The Masters for hours and getting my English fix with Call the Midwife and Mr Selfridge on PBS.  

How did you spend your weekend?

DETROIT: The Anne Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory

We gave estate sales a miss at the weekend after nothing grabbing our attention on the websites so took ourselves off to play at being tourists again on Belle Isle - that island between the US and Canada. I had my eye on getting over to the conservatory come greenhouse and botanical gardens - also known as the Anne Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory for some photographs and it certainly didn't disappoint. 

To the front of the conservatory are huge sweeping lawns and boxed hedges leading to a fountain, flanked by brightly coloured flower borders. You can just see the Detroit skyline in the distance in the last image. I always love the vast grand architecture of glass conservatories and this one certainly didn't disappoint. While it was open we didn't venture inside as Joe's allergies were acting up but in the cooler autumn months ahead we're certainly coming back. Inside it's home to the worlds largest collection of orchids with many being shipped here from the UK to save British collections during WW2.

To the rear of the conservatory next to the aquarium which I'll be blogging about soon was a huge koi fish pond covered in flowering lilies, rocks and ornaments. It was such a tranquil peace to watch the water and reflect a while. I know my posts about life and things to do in Detroit don't appeal to everyone but to me they are important in providing the opposite to what people would like to see written about the city.

Hole In One

Last night [Sunday] we went for an impromptu crazy golf match. I've been a fan of the crazy golf game since childhood with memories of constantly replaying the game in Keswick [Lake District] and Filey Beach on trips and holidays. Because it's a game of part luck part skill it's always been a fun game to play and with having a really fun crazy golf set up pretty close to us has been hard to ignore. The 19 holes were based around the idea of rocks and water - with huge fountains and waterfalls all around with music coming out of speakers disguised as stones - so rad!

The course itself was pretty fun - loads of holes on different levels so you had to rely on getting your ball [provided in multiple bright colours] through the right pipes and not have it floating in the water. Although the signs constantly telling you to give up after five shots didn't appeal to the British spirit inside me! Most of the holes were par 2's - we were really off on our style! But to me that adds to the fun. Joe even grabbed a hole in one but that didn't save him from loosing. I won by just won shot - purely because of luck!

You would have thought that the weather at 5pm would have began to start to cool off - how wrong was I?! If anyone knows any tips to acclimatise to heat really well and quickly then I'd love to hear them. I'm really acting as the Yorkshire lass melting in the 30 degree heat to the point were I'm even wearing shorts. I never wore shorts in the UK because of being paranoid about my legs because of thinking theyl looked huge - how times have changed. Coming home to some of the limited edition batches of Ben and Jerries [which if you shop in a Meijer are two for $6 right now] Rocky Road-ish [which has some gorgeous toasted marshmallow twirls in] certainly helped!

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LIFE: Our long weekend

A rather belated weekend post, but a post all the same and I really need to catch up with everyones comments on my blog over the past couple of days. With Joe's birthday being on Monday he took a couple of days off work so we got to be lazy together but on my side it was rather crafty. I finished off a bookmark of cross stitched Matroyshka's and began sewing the dragonfly [I mentioned here] whilst remembering just how darn hard it is to sew with metallic thread. We've also started playing with drinks in trying to make cocktails - this weekend fully experiencing the Manhattan - a whiskey and vermouth mixture - love and strong indeed.

Not only is Joe a huge Transformer fan as you might have seen yesterday, he's also a HUGE comic book geek so on Friday we went to see the long awaited Avengers film. Going by his reactions it was a big hit. Aside from that we enjoyed more of the May sunshine with a long walk spying gorgeous forest wildlife and the peace and quiet. We also treated ourselves to a pair of tickets to see System of a Down in August which I'm so excited about. SOAD are one of those bands I got into late but I just love their style and its always good to catch a metal fix [I will always be a metal girl at heart].

And what topped off the weekend even more was receiving my winnings from Em who blogs over at a Vintage Sweetheart which included an apron, vintage crochet patterns and some gorgeous necklaces - they really made my day!

LIFE: A Weekend in April

For us, we had a bit of a lazy weekend, watching too much telly, playing too many games on the Wii, eating take outs and drinking margaritas. I think how windy and cool it was made us pretty much stay in, plus it was a pretty quiet week on the estate sales front so we're saving our energy for next weekend.

But the weekend started off amazingly well when Joe came home with a huge bunch of roses for me as a total random act of loving. They are some of the most gorgeous roses I've ever seen - pinks, reds, oranges and yellows and they actually have a smell to them. He even brought a vase seeing we lack common homely items. On the note of love i'm getting sick and bored of some of the issues of having to deal with [say family members] when it comes to me moving - apparently moving for love isn't the thing to do. I'm just getting to the verge of just wanting to remove that hassle for good. They always have the ability of making me feel shit for moving to be with Joe. What would my Monday be like on LOTS without a rant?!

Anyway .... I've been drawing out maps of the homeland to create my next crafting project which I can't wait to show and tell you all about. Finally getting word from the Student Loans company that they finally understand why I'm not earning money yet in America [seriously they have been one of the biggest hassles since moving]. On Sunday we went for a wander to Target which then became another trawl for the newest editions of Transformers [yes yes those toys again]. There's even websites which allow people to upload their latest sightings of the newest toys - it's a big craze. Saying that I don't mind Transformers to a point, merely because I enjoy selling the spares on eBay like the photographed generation one from 1985, complete some of these figures can go sky high on prices. 

How were your weekends? 

LIFE: Happy Looks Good On You

After the adventure of spending 13 hours in ER with the husband last week, there's times when you really remember what's important to you and makes you happy. Rather then turning this into a super mushy post about love, here's some other goodies that have been making me happy over the past week or two alongside the husband. Thankfully the boy is fine now and thank you for all your kind messages.

Smokey - she's just growing so much into her personality, she's little but she's feisty but you have to be around Ed. She has such a tiny meow and loves to sleep on her cardboard claw scratcher. Other kitty news is that while taking Ed to the vets for conjunctivitis, she's also lost 8lb and has now reached her target weight, although the vet wants to keep her on the diet. She's now just a slightly overweight 16lb cat. She just declares she's big boned and who's to tell her otherwise?!

Char nicely sent me a goodie box filled with my favourite crisps - Quavers! After eating them all the time with every sarnie possible going five months without their cheesiness made me crave them no end! Of all English things, it's Quavers I miss the most and these will keep me going - I'm rationing myself with them.

Date nights with the boy have been fun too, after burgers at Red Robin we went bowling [winning a game each] and played on the arcades on which I won us over 200 tokens and grabbed us a Detroit Tigers inflatable baseball. Perfect for annoying each other with.

Baking with me can be really hit and miss, often I bake way off the mark. While I often find the easiest things the hardest to bake, I've taken making bread like a duck to water. After the success of the naan bread I thought I'd try my hand at more normal breads, and what a success they were - although a little salty. I even tried baking some milk scones and even they turned out well - even better with a load of jam coating the top! I'm now saving all the glass jars I come across for making some jam.

All this and investigating into growing our eBay into selling compacts - which we already do with Transformer Toys. I think it's time I grow from being a collector but also into selling and get my name out in the field a little. Talking of compacts, I have a HUGE backlog of compact posts and really not sure about what to do with them all - SUGGESTIONS PLEASE!! Maybe it's time to create their own little web page although the idea of creating another blog from scratch scares me. This girl could do with your ideas about what to do with them!

 It's exciting times.

Happy girls are the prettiest girls

I think Audrey Hepburn was onto something when she said that line [title of today's post] and after last weeks slightly negative post about blogging and life. As it's blog positivity week I thought I'd develop that into my everyday life and think about what makes me happy, laugh, smile and why they do. Sometimes it's all too easy to focus on the negativity, especially when I feel like I have no pull or say on my future of where I'm living, but there still is plenty to be happy about. And yes this really is the second post on this Monday [back into blogging - somewhat!]

Mac n cheese, LA Colours - bargain varnish from the $ store, compact winnings from eBay, playing the pawn stars game on facebook endlessly, summer shoes, reading and more peeps!

♥ Buying the first pair of shoes for the warmer months 

♥ Sushi

♥ Getting back into reading and ordering The Hunger Games from the library

♥ Finding goodies in the dollar store
♥ Eating tonnes of mac n cheese after releasing I do actually like it after thinking for years I didn't

♥ Sorting old photographs with the boy

♥ Our kitties
♥ Winning compact lots on eBay

♥ Going outside without a coat

♥ Dortios Tacos - the new thing at Taco Bell
♥ Waking up with my soul mate every day

♥ Driving along finding a sign for an estate sale and proceeding to have a thorough rummage

♥ Endlessly playing the Pawn Stars game on Facebook

♥ Thinking about our mini road trip to Ohio to go to Cedar Point

♥ Lighter nights
 

As she sums up everything so perfectly, I'll leave you with Audrey's quote;

On the set of Funny Face. Source

"I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.” 

What's making you smile lately?

Tomorrow I'm launching the first post in my bloggers who collect series [still chance to get involved if your interested] which I'm really looking forward to releasing into the blogger world, just get in touch for more details.