gee, what is this pinterest th- oh, no.

soo, it happened.

I apathetically avoided Pinterest for several months, mostly cause I didn't really understand what it was and was too lazy to try and figure it out. But all my friends were raving about it and all the cool kids were doing it so... I checked it out today. And then I didn't leave my room. For a day. Except to go to the kitchen to grab handfuls of Trader Joe's salt and cracked pepper chips. I may have gone to a crazy birthday party last night involving hot chocolate and rumpleminze which made me lazy beyond belief today.

I still don't really "get" it... like, what are you supposed to pin? how do you pin? what's the point of it all again? But I do really like scrolling through and looking at the pretty pictures and clicking on the links. It's like refined, feminine stumbling but with all the goods laid out in front of you so you're not clicking a button for hours hoping for the best. Or, it's like we heart it with links that go with the pictures. Either way, I like it. A little too much, perhaps.

Here are some cool things I found today:

mmmm, i love gin and tonics... except that one that had roofies in it (never trust an australian in mykonos). these look absolutely wonderful and sooo refreshing... something that would be wonderful in this atrocious heat!

This would be the cutest gift idea to give out to friends and family with little ones. you could buy everything in bulk and make a bunch of them to give away!

Bit 'sessed with this project. I've always thought having little candy bowls around the house is a cute idea, but these diy apothecary jars are even better than that.


so yeah... that was my day. oh, except for i found a little puppy to take home this weekend! I'm so freaking excited about it... i'll overwhelm you guys with pics and stuff once I get it :) hope you all had a nice, relaxing tuesday!

<3
ems

my new(ish) favorite way to start the day

This summer, I have found the secret to bright-eyed mornings, refreshing and healthy yet delicious food, easy weight-loss, and general happiness and well-being. I've also found the meaning of life. Excited yet? Perhaps I exaggerate a bit... but seriously, I've found a breakfast to end all breakfasts. In my opinion. Of course... I kind of detest breakfast so I guess my opinion isn't much to go on.

I'm sure half of you are gasping in shock and clicking the unfollow button- for how could one not like breakfast? People are serious about their breakfast, man... some people even eat it for dinner. I don't know. I can't explain it. I've never really been into eating mountains of doughy or bready stuff sopping with sugary syrup that early in the morning... and eggs have always kind of been meh. As for sausage and bacon... I just never really fell in love with it the way the rest of the world seemed to. maybe it's the vegetarian thing. I can appreciate a good eggs benedict though, provided the meat is substituted with sauteed greens or grilled tomatoes or artichoke hearts or something and they use real hollandaise sauce. Because seriously, how can anyone dislike something that's smothered in hollandaise sauce?

I'm getting off topic. Not liking the typical breakfast food can be difficult in a grand-slam kind of world. I did oatmeal for a while, then chocolate protein shakes, then cereal, then fruit and granola and yogurt, and then just fruit. I like eating fruit for breakfast because it's refreshing, delicious, and low calorie, but it still wakes my body up and gets my metabolism going. This summer though, I decided to mix it up. Enter my parents' blender.

Yep. That's my super awesome secret to everything wonderful. Breakfast smoothies. You're free to go.

Seriously, though! Breakfast smoothies are freaking amazing. The ones I make range from 150-250 cals each and fill pint sized glasses with some usually left in the blender. They are soooo delicious, take a while to consume since you sip it slowly (usually while doing something else, like blogging for instance...), give you an awesome boost of energy, fill you up for hours, AND they're super duper healthy, being low fat, low cal, and chock full of fresh fruit and vegetables and all.

I've been drinking these every day this summer... except for when I went to Greece for 5 weeks. Breakfast in Greece, by the way, made me pine for a big ol' stack of that bready syrupy nastiness. It's bad. Like really, really, really bad. Most times it consisted of shitty coffee, one type of cereal which was the same at every place, room temperature milk, and about 9 types of breads and random pound cakes on which to spread unsalted butter and individually packaged jams. If you were lucky there might be some hard boiled eggs, greek yogurt, or sliced cheese and processed bologna like meat. But fresh fruit? Oh hell no. You're going to eat bread and bologna for breakfast and you're gonna like it.

I hated it.

But now I'm back, and the age of smoothies has begun again!

also, not to like, toot my own horn or anything, but I've lost about 12 pounds this summer. Not saying that it's all to do with drinking smoothies in the morning, but yeah, it totally is.

so whip one up and have it for breakfast tomorrow. It will give you super powers and you will feel like the most amazing person on earth!

Here's what I've been drinking lately:

1 cup frozen blueberries (get the giant bag of them at costco, they will last FOREVER)
1 cup spinach or kale (you can't even taste or see it in the final product, but it's so good for you!)
1/2 a banana
1/2 a fuji apple
1/2 cup water, or soymilk if you're feeling frisky.

dump it all in a blender, turn the blender on. done. total cals: 169, or 214 if you use soymilk.

here's what I'm drinking right now:

1 cup frozen blueberries
2 cups diced watermelon
1 cup spinach
1/2 cup soymilk

total cals: 217. It's so creamy and sweet and light and delicious. and a kajillion times healthier than jamba or robeks!

Tomorrow I'm going to start posting greece pictures. Prepare to be wowed! Or bored. we'll see :)

love you all! happy monday, by the way :)

<3
Ems

20 in my 20th: #3 Drink Ouzo in Greece

Hooray for accomplishing the first of 20 things I wanted to do before next May 10th! Unfortunately I did not get a picture of this event- you see, I drank ouzo a couple times but I was waiting for the perfect moment to really "count" it- and when that moment came my phone was dead and I didn't have my DSLR! the unjustness of it all... anyways, I can describe what I considered the best ouzo drinking occasion in Greece to be.

For those of you who don't know, Ouzo is a clear Greek Liquor with a 40% alcohol content, like most other hard alcohols. It's made from anise seed and so it has a distinct black licorice-y flavor, similar to that of Jagermeister and Absinthe. I'm not a huge fan of black licorice-y alcohols... or candies... or anything, really, but I figured hell, I'm in Greece and I might as well do as the Greeks do ;)

You can shoot ouzo like you would any other hard alcohol, which is what we did before we went clubbing in Mykonos (THAT's a whole other story altogether...), but the more proper way to consume it is in a tumbler poured over ice cubes, which slowly melt and chill/dilute the ouzo.

Anyways, It was July 2nd, if I remember correctly- we were in Santorini, an absolutely gorgeous crescent shaped island with lots of beaches named for the colors of their sand. We spent the first half of the day at the archeological site of Ancient Thera, which was interesting, although by this, the 27th day of our trip, we were all kind of site-ed out.

 Anyways, we then wandered our way down the mountain to the black beach, where we bought 2 euro gyros and half liters of amstel or mythos and strolled down the boardwalk in search of a good place to lay out and enjoy the beach.

  I was with two of the boys I spent the most time with on this trip, Trevor and Kellner. We wound up finding a spot under the shade of a tree, where the black sand was warm but not scalding like it was in the sun. We laid out our towels and spent a while reading our various books for a while before Trevor eventually decided he wanted to get some ouzo. He and Kellner went off in search for a bottle, cups, and ice while I watched their stuff. It wasn't terribly classy, laying on the beach drinking ouzo from flimsy plastic cups which got sand all over them from the condensation, but it was wonderfully fun and relaxing sitting there with the boys, laughing and chatting and joking and people watching and getting just a little tipsy. It was great :)

I'm on the verge of completing a few other things from my 20 in my 20th list, like writing a song and getting a puppy- so look for a few more of these posts coming up in the next few weeks!

Woah.

So much has happened! All the crazy things I've been planning for and working on all year have come and gone in a blissful whirlwind of activity and fun. The past 6 weeks have been insane. Insanely amazing!

I'll get back to regular blogging- movie mondays, tasty tuesdays, lovely little things, etc in a few weeks when I get back down to Tucson and start getting ready for the school year and everything, but in the meantime I'll be popping in here every few days with tales of my summer adventures! Instead of overloading you with a trillion Greece pictures (after we left athens, I didn't find another computer to upload my pics to for the next 4 weeks!) in one post, I'm going to post about 15 a week so that I can be detailed in my documentation and the memories can live on for a while :) I've also got to tell you guys about the youth retreat catering thing, which went spectacularly. But more on all that later! Now begins my summer "vacation"- the part where I get to do nothing but kick back, drink fruity cocktails, go on river and camping trips, and host picnics at dusk with tiki torches. You know, all that summer stuff.

Thanks so much for being patient with me as my life went into crazy mode and I abandoned you all here for 6 weeks- I missed blogging so dearly and unfortunately I wasn't organized enough to actually plan out scheduled posts before I left- but not to worry, there are wonderful things to come! I love you all, can't wait to get back to reading and blogging! And hello to the couple new followers I picked up in my absence- I'm so glad you're here! Be back in a bit, lovelies.

<3
Em