"It's 3pm, why aren't you drunk yet?"

We've got a bit of catching up to do! This weekend, Saturday was my 22nd birthday but before we get to that, my awesome friend Brooke came in all the way from Louisiana to spend my birthday weekend with me! That was a nine hour drive for her. We met on the internet through a Harry Potter site when we were about 14 and 8 years later, we're still best friends. If that doesn't show the power of technology and friendships, I don't know what does.            
        We spent our Friday night trying to find a place to eat that served margaritas- not an easy feat for a Friday night considering we went to 3 different restaurants and without fail the wait time was over 45 minutes for each place. Ain't nobody got time for that! Instead, we decided to hit up good ol' HEB. We got there completely unsure of what we wanted for dinner...so we just grabbed a bit of everything we could get our hands on that would cook faster than Chili's could get us a table. (Notice the "sparkling margarita". Not nearly as good as we thought it would be but somehow the entire contents of the bottle went 'missing' by the end of the night.)           
           Saturday was spent in Austin! We hit up the Domain to do some shopping where I spent a little bit too much money at Macy's. I swear I just went in for a few accessories and ended up walking out with a make-over and $100 worth of stuff. Oops. But I looked great and was REALLY excited for my birthday night out! Getting my make-up done was something I've never done before. It was really fun for some reason and the ladies at the Clinique counter were GREAT. We all had a huge appreciation for Beyonce's newest album and when I told one of the women it was my birthday, her first reaction was "It's 3pm, WHY AREN'T YOU DRUNK YET?!" and told me to go get a mimosa from one of the restaurants nearby. It was a little weird trying not to laugh when the lady doing your make-up is holding a mascara brush up to your eyeball fully knowing that the goop of mascara could jab straight into your pupil at any second. The picture on the right is of the finished product- all dressed up and ready to go for a fun night out! 

             Our pre-drinking/night out meal before heading back to San Marcos was spent at In-N-Out. I grew up watching Food Network and the Travel Channel with my dad and it seemed like everyone and their grandmother was obsessed with and couldn't stop praising how amazing and wonderful In-N-Out burgers were. When Brooke & I discovered one just opened in Austin, we had to check it out. The service was insanely fast considering the length of the drive-thru and the amount of people hanging out in the lobby. I did the "cool thing" and asked for my fries to be Animal-Styled meaning covered in the burger sauce and chopped caramelized onions. Everything looked so delicious and appealing that before I could Instagram both our meals, Brooke was already digging into her fries. As soon as I dug into the fries, I was disappointed. The onions had a weird gravy-like taste to them and the sauce just tasted like Thousand Island dressing. The cheese was gooey and cold and stuck to the fries.I tried one of the plain un-Animalized fries that just tasted bland and downright boring. The burgers were plain, average and even though they tasted okay, there was absolutely nothing spectacular about it. Sorry for any In-N-Out fans I just offended but I was completely unimpressed and even though the prices were insanely awesome, I doubt I'll be going out of my way to try In-N-Out ever again. I'll just stick to my good ol' Texas Whataburger for now on.
                  This weekend was full of fun and new stuff for me. Even though I was disappointed by my In-N-Out experience, my killer make-over managed to lift my spirits and I had a great birthday night spent with close friends and my boyfriend. Stay tuned for next week where I make an attempt to cook my boyfriend and I a meal- something that I have never really managed to successfully complete without something catching fire, burning, or spilling all over the place...this ought to be interesting. 

Coffee Therapy

It’s been year another crazy week here in the life of Lauren to the point where once more, my poor blog has been put on the back-burner. I still haven’t been able to upload the video of myself giving Lily the bath so I think it’s permanently stuck on my camera until I can get those technical issues sorted out. In the meantime, here’s something new that I’ve done this week!

 I finally got to pay it forward for someone. This week was a pretty stressful one for me. I had multiple tests stacked on top of each other, my boyfriend was without a car and had to borrow mine to get to and from work only to find out my car needed an oil change and tire rotation. So I take it to the dealership and I’m told it needs new brakes as well. Bam. $600 gone just like that which was essentially an entire months worth of paychecks. After working so hard and wanting to treat myself for my birthday this upcoming Saturday, that just downright SUCKED. On top of that, I found out that my two closest Aggie friends weren’t going to be able to make it out here to San Marcos for my birthday and I was really hoping we could get the gang back together again and have some fun. It was just a lame week and I was down on my luck. So why not try and make someone else’s day? Maybe they were having a crappy day or week just like myself and any little smile could do some good. 

Earlier today my roommate and I went on our Starbucks run before we cracked down on homework and study guides back at the apartment. Instead of going in, we decided to drive-thru it. I’m currently a partner at this Starbucks and I personally LOVE it when people pay for the car behind them so I decided to do that too. I paid for our drinks as well as the person behind me. Now, it seems like something small to do and yeah, it kind of is but it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. I like making other people happy and often put my friends and family’s happiness above my own which in its own is kind of a blessing and a curse wrapped up in one.

The thing I like about doing something small like paying it forward for a total stranger is that I don’t want the recognition. I don’t want to be seen as some hero just because I did something nice. Shouldn’t that be seen as human nature? I just wanted to do something nice. Maybe they were having a crappy day, too. Maybe nothing was going right in their day- they couldn’t get their car started on the way to work, they got dumped, lost their cat…something, anything. Maybe that coffee was the pick me up that they needed for the day. It made me feel a little better myself knowing that someone else might’ve been feeling better and hopefully inspired them to pay it forward too. 

Valentine's

          For some reason, it's only the third week and I'm already having trouble coming up with new things to do. I only get two days a week off and most of that spare time is spent trying to catch up on homework and reading assignments because work has been sucking up a majority of my time. On top of that, my need for sleep is overwhelming and I cave in very easily whenever I get the spare second to crash for a quick nap (even though those 'quick naps' always turn into a two hour long coma). Enough with the excuses, though.

          Unfortunately, I didn't really get the chance to do anything crazy since my last post where I went on my Ikea trip. I did, however, have a really great Valentines Day which I think maybe I should share as my back-up plan for this week. My original post was going to be a video of myself giving my cat, Lily, a bath. As you know, cats don't usually care for water…but I guess Lily is such an oddball she really didn't mind. It kind of took out the entertainment and humor factor that I was going for when she just sat there in the tub completely unfazed and nothing interesting happened. Not only that but I've been having technical issues with my camera and can't figure out a way to upload the footage onto my Mac so that I can edit and upload it.

So without further ado, here's my Valentines Day story. I know it's cheesy and sappy and most readers probably don't care to read this (in which case, that's fine. To each his own I suppose) but I had such a lovely day and was so happy that four days later I still can't stop smiling about it.

          I've never had a "real" Valentines Day before. Usually my mom would just surprise my sister and I with a box of chocolate and a teddy bear or our favorite DVD or something sweet but I've never gotten to spend it with a significant other. Actually, until he came along, I'd never had a boyfriend but that's a different story. We both agreed we really didn't want to do anything for Valentines Day because it was just one of those cheesy Hallmark-y holidays with little to no significance and shouldn't you tell someone you love them everyday, anyway? …this still didn't keep me from dropping ever so subtle hints. And quite a few of them but most importantly, I kept mentioning I like flowers. So I was very VERY happy to come home from class last Friday to him knocking on the door and showing up with these- 

I love flowers. I don't know why. But I do simply because they're pretty. Besides, it was incredibly sweet. :) Plus he brought some chocolates and took my car to be washed while he borrowed it (his was in the shop. That's a whole other story.) which is just above and beyond what I expected for my Valentines. On top of that, he drove us all the way out to Austin. I didn't think we'd actually get they chance to eat until maybe midnight- it was just after rush hour on Valentines which was also a Friday night so of course every place was packed. Turns out, his brother hooked us up at PF Chang's and we were able to sit down immediately and order our dinner. 

       I've never been to PF Chang's before and oh my god it was pretty fantastic. Everything was so good and my boyfriend was surprised calamari is actually one of my favorite foods. I even tried some of the mongolian beef - something I haven't had in a very long time because I'm not a huge fan of red meat but I always have this blog in the back of my mind now when I'm out to try something new and did just that. I didn't manage to get any pictures of our dinner (because I was enjoying my company and the awesome food and nobody wants to go out on a date who has their phone in their hand the entire time taking pictures instead of enjoying the moment).

Afterwards we went on a walk downtown and by the river. The moon was out, the sky was clear and it was really nice out. Found a beautiful view of the Austin skyline, too. 

I always have trouble wrapping up these posts but I hope this will do for this weeks update as to what's going on in my life and any new or exciting experiences I've had. A Valentines Day dinner was definitely a nice experience and something I'll hopefully never forget. 

Stay tuned next week hopefully for a something a bit more exciting (that is, if I can get more than 2 days off work…) I still have fun plans to upload a video and that would possibly require a ukelele purchase :D 

"There's a Chinese family in our bathroom."

For the past week I've been combing my brain trying to come up with something to do for this very blog post. My original plan was to go on a beautiful scenic hike up in Austin but Texas' bipolar weather has decided to put that plan on the back-burner for now…or at least until I can actually step outside and not have my eyelids freeze shut. Thankfully, my blogging professor, Laura briefly mentioned Ikea in class the other day and that's when it hit me- never in my entire life had I been to Ikea.

So Tuesday evening my boyfriend and I set out to Round Rock for my first Ikea adventure. He was such a sport about it, too…of course, on our way there, we had to stop by his favorite music shop in Austin so he could finish paying off his guitar so he could finally take it home. We finally reach the Ikea store and my first impression was -HOLY CRAP. The building was HUGE and a parking garage?! Oh jeeze. Thankfully, it was fairly late (about an hour before closing time) and a Tuesday night so we didn't have to fight with any crowds. We walk in and I notice….you guys, there's a freaking MAP for this place!

                                   `

`We first entered through the showroom area. Lots of really well-put together and awesome-looking kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, office spaces…there was SO much to look at that my short attention span couldn't handle it. I was all over the place. It was like being 10 years-old again and visiting DisneyWorld. I wanted to sit in every single chair but there was no time- Joe kept pointing out we had a lot of ground to cover before the store closed. So we continued…after we had fun pushing each other around in some office chairs, of course.

                          

Eventually, we made our way around the store to the kids section which is, obviously, the best section with all the stuffed animals, puppets and pretty bright colors. I fell in love with this really cute circus tent and was tempted to buy it…for blogging purposes, of course.  

                         

Sadly, the kids section was just a tiny portion of this massive place. I could've easily spent my entire night there but we still had a ways to go if I wanted to wander through the entirety of Ikea before closing time. So it was onto the lighting and lamps! Here we have Joe modeling the latest fashion right off the Parisian runways: Lampshade hats. As you can see, it frames his face quite nicely

                        

I hate cutting this blog post short but needless to say, we had ourselves a great Ikea adventure. Even though the marketplace scares me where I have to wander up and down hundreds of isles looking for a specific box number to buy a new chair or something...

Stay tuned for whatever adventure next week brings! 

No Way, Monet!

I've lived in San Marcos for about a year now and nearly every day, I've passed by a tiny little shop in a corner of The Square called "Cafe Monet". Cafe Monet is a pottery painting studio. Basically, you go in, pick out a piece of pottery you'd like to paint and do just that.
          I took a ceramic class a couple years ago while I was in community college. There, we made our own pottery from scratch by either sculpting it by hand or throwing it on the wheel (Which is MUCH easier said than done!) The glazing process for my ceramics class was very complicated but thankfully, Cafe Monet made it super easy and convenient for those unexperienced wanna-be-artists-for-a-day. They had lots of gorgeous colors to choose from and even though a bigger selection of pieces to paint would've been nice, I managed to find something I liked- this really cute elephant piggy bank! Can't wait to pick it up later this week!

         I know that going to a pottery shop and painting may not seem like a crazy fun thing to do but I went with my roommate. We sat and got to hang out for a good two hours and caught up on our chit-chat. It was a great way to blow some time as well while being sort of productive and creative with our pieces.

          Painting at Cafe Monet was a great, relaxing and creative experience and I'm glad I chose it as my first task for this blog. It was just enough to get my feet wet before making the plunge into stepping out of my comfort zone. Stay tuned for next week!