Please Join Team Melificent!

Credit: Flickr User Rayoom

…I just might give you cupcakes…

As most of you know, I work with therapeutic foster children as my full-time job. However, I used to (& still occasionally) work with autistic children. My time teaching them and being a part of their lives was a very special time for me and eventually, I would love to work with the population again in some shape or form. Aside from my personal experience, I also know many brave mothers (biological and foster) of children with autism that have shown to me what unconditional love and sacrifice really are. For these reasons and many more, I dedicate almost all of my charity work to Autism Speaks and this year will not be any different.

Well, maybe a little. Rather than doing the Broward Walk, I will be participating in the Miami 2011 Walk Now for Autism Speaks event, which will take place on Sunday, February 27th in Key Biscayne. I’d love to raise as much money as possible for the cause as well as get a large group to walk with me the day of. I’ve been lucky enough to receive very generous donations in the past, but hope that the amount of walkers can compete with those donations this time around! I am planning on making team shirts for us as well if enough people show interest.

So if you are one of those interested parties, please visit my team page: Team Melificent.
On that page, you can join the team as well as make a donation.

Weekend Highlights

It’s October, everyone!!!!

Why so excited? Well, aside from all the birthdays  & events I have lined up this month, it means it is HALLOWEEN! As long as I can remember, Halloween has been my favorite holiday. I think it was the whole be someone else aspect that really made it so appealing. I also have always loved playing dress up, so it’s right up my alley. I generally start looking for costume ideas around August and have made a decision by September. This year, I picked my costume relatively early and am so excited to see it come together.

But what I was just as excited for this year was decorating a house! In our old apartment, I was definitely limited in what I could do decor-wise and usually just settled for a hanging door sign. Well, limited decorations no longer! The second the calendar fell on October 1st, I began shopping and decorating. By the time Sunday rolled around, our house was in full blown ghoul mode. Unfortunately, it seems like we are the only house in the neighborhood that has gone spooky – I’m really hoping that will change as the month continues because I’d hate to live in an area where people don’t celebrate such a fun holiday.

What do you guys think of Halloween? How do you decorate?

Bush is Back!

Unless you just stumbled on this blog by chance or live on the planet Mars, you know that I traveled to Los Angeles to see Bush’s first show together in 8 years at the Epicenter Festival. I won a pair of tickets on Twitter and the rest is history. What you may not know, however, is that I was able to watch the entire set from on the stage!

Left to right: Melificent, Christine & Stephanie

The story is one you hear of in fairy tales, most definitely not in real, day-to-day life and I still can’t believe how all the pieces fell perfectly into place. But they did. And it all began with one of my many silly fangirl dreams. I was at Bush’s first show with my Twitter buddy, Christine, and Gavin decided to have us watch it from the stage! There were a lot of other ridiculous dream-like details such as having to run backstage and change into “stage outfits,” but I left those out when I decided to post about the dream on Twitter and address it to Gavin himself. I went about my business as usual, when I randomly checked Twitter during a work meeting. I was almost knocked off my chair when I saw that Gavin had replied to my tweet with a simple, “duly noted.” Shortly after, he announced a contest and the grand prize was watching their set at Epicenter from…wait for it…ONSTAGE.

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Musings

Yes, everyone, I am back!

I can’t lie and say that I am happy to be back though – I had such a great time in Southern California, I really wish my time there didn’t go so quickly. I always have a hard time when I need to come home from California trips, I can definitely see myself living there pretty happily. Unfortunately, it is not in the cards so I am satisfied to have plenty of friends (and family) allowing frequent visits to be easy and enjoyable.

The first thing that made this particular trip enjoyable was my sudden and random attainment of a pair of Muse tickets. Those of you that know me well, know that I have been aching to see them live for ages. Sure, I saw them open for U2 in Tampa last year, but it only served as a tease. Unfortunately, the band never makes its way near Florida – not that that has stopped me in the past from trying to secure tickets in other cities such as Boston or New York. However, the tickets always sold out immediately, leaving me to think that it was just not in the cards for me to see Muse headlining their own show.
So you can imagine my surprise when a friend from The Knot voiced via Twitter that she could no longer go to a Muse show in Anaheim the day I arrived in Los Angeles. In fact, she just so happened to tweet about it the same day that I found out they would be playing a show while I was there (they were actually playing several). I channeled my inner John Locke and took it to be destiny. They were meant to be mine!

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Rock-cation!

Tomorrow I head out to LA with my buddy, Bonnie, to see one of our favorite 90’s bands, Bush, play their first show together since 2002. I can hardly contain my excitement as I am not only seeing Rossdale and company, but also staying with old friends and meeting new ones: namely members of the Bush Army (I made the cute badges above for all of us to wear to the show)! It’s going to be a great few days, but that leaves the blog all by its lonesome until my return.

Thankfully, I was able to secure my first ever guest blogger and she is all sorts of wonderful! The lovely Terri will be posting on the blog starting tomorrow through Tuesday and I have complete and total faith that she will do an amazing job! In the meantime, make sure you check out her blogs: Terribull and Tampa Bay Style Online.

While I’m gone, I hope all of you behave as I plan not to. ;)
If you want to keep track of my west coast shenanigans, feel free to follow me on Twitter as I’m sure I will be as active as always, documenting the madness!

Weekend Highlights

Saturday afternoon the hubs and I met up with our friends and headed to South Beach with our bicycles in tow to attend the 2nd annual Beer Snob Bicycle Pub Crawl. The event was hosted by the Miami Bike Scene and we couldn’t have had a better time! The weather held up beautifully and although we did not make it in time for the first two bars, we were able to hustle and get there early for the last two, which really paid off. We visited The Filling Station in Downtown as well as an old favorite, the Democratic Republic of Beer. Although the Filling Station had a limited menu, we really enjoyed what they provided, especially the pulled pork sandwich and their amazing selection of beer (Blue Point Toasted Lager was the definitive winner). Unfortunately, it seems like it is closed on weekends which really is a shame because I could have seen the hubs and I doing many a date night there. The DRB seemed to have also upped their game as their food was a lot better this time around, especially their calamari.

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Weekend Highlights

Miami is finally getting the ball rolling when it comes to foodie culture and the lineup hand-picked by Burger Beast for the Fall for the Arts Festival on Sunday definitely gave all of us hope that we are moving in the right direction! Some of Miami’s finest food trucks were on site, allowing us to sample some of their gourmet cuisine on wheels, as well as other foodie favorites such as Totally Bananas (totally reminded me of Arrested Development) and Feverish Ice Cream among others.

We got there as soon as the festival began, which means we had to do a lot of waiting around for the trucks to actually begin taking orders. Unfortunately, I think this event should have been held a bit later in the year when the weather gets a little more tolerable because the intense Miami heat was beating down on us with absolutely no mercy. We spent the majority of our time under an air-conditioned tent, having to amp ourselves up to venture back into the face-melting weather and the only thing driving us was food.

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Adventures in the Pink Room

Awhile ago, before we purchased our home, I started compiling photos that served as decor inspiration. The picture to your left was one of the first ones that grabbed my attention, planting the little seed in my brain that grew into lust to have my very own pink room. Sure enough, after we found the house of our dreams, I began planning a replica based on that one little photo. I’m happy to say that after a few trips to Target, IKEA and Homegoods, that room is finally starting to take shape.

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Weekend Highlights

Saturday was the much anticipated Yelp event at the Moore Building in Miami. The theme was a mid-summer night’s dream and I can attest to it being every bit as magical as Shakespeare’s tale. All 4 floors of the building were jam packed with action! We were greeted on the first floor by Peroni beers, amazing food from Mr. Yum‘s and Maya Tapas & Grill and this ridiculously fun photobooth courtesy of Capture Pod. When we made our way up to the 2nd floor, we were thrusted into foodie heaven! We tasted goodies from such great places as JB Kitchen & Bar, Bongo’s Cuban Cafe and Maitardi. We also were bombarded with drinks at every turn, including Fenom Absinthe and Buck 15 bombs. As if our tummies weren’t thanking us enough, when we pulled ourselves up to the 3rd floor, we met the sweets! Nothing but cupcakes, brownies and ice cream galore from such wonderful places as Sweetness Bake Shop, 2 Girls and a Cupcake and Feverish Ice Cream Truck.

The event also featured beauty stations where you could get some false eyelashes applied amongst other salon favorites as well as a silent disco, where you donned a pair of headphones and jammed to the music quite literally in your own head. I know, you are jealous. How could you not be? Did I mention that all of this was free? My friends and I had such a wonderful time and I have to thank Yelp not only for putting on one hell of an event, but also for turning me on to a whole slew of new restaurants I wasn’t aware of! I really hope Yelp continues to host such amazing events in the future because it’s hard to find ones that feel so warm and inviting down here in South Florida without some sort of pretentious attitude.

Keep up the great work, Yelp Miami!

Have a great week, everyone!

Weekend Highlights

Like I expressed last week, I could hardly contain myself with excitement for the release of Scott Pilgrim. The hubs and I planned a date night on Friday consisting of dinner at Yellow Submarine (the best food truck in South Florida) and dessert at Sweetness Bake Shop. I had featured Sweetness on this past Lovable Friday, so I thought it would be appropriate to pay it my first visit! My full review is on Yelp, but to make a long story short & sweet (appropriate), it was lovely. My favorite were the Guayabera cupcakes, which were pure heaven. In fact, I would go back just to eat those. Over and over again. However, the bakery is full of all sorts of goodies, including daily rotating cupcake flavors, which leaves me with quite a few new treats to try for a long time to come! And if that sounds like a challenge…it is! Better up my cardio! ;)

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