You've bewitched me body and soul

Ms. Starpup

So. Since my last post we've made more progress in preparing for our trip. Last weekend we booked all of our flights for flying from country to country in Europe and I am pleased to say, we scored some smokin' deals. For 6 flights it came out to $359 a piece. Crazy! It would cost that much for one flight in the US. Sheesh.

The only things left to do are figuring out/booking our lodgings, buying our Harry Potter London Tour tickets (can't risk us getting there and them being sold out), and making final outfit decisions. I had this goal to wear a cat themed outfit for every day of our trip but that hasn't worked out for me so far. I thought that finding a cat print dress, skirt, sweater and leggings (I wouldn't wear all at once, of course) would be easy peasey but in reality it's turning out to be quite difficult. Grrrr...I guess I'll just have to make due with what I already have. I already did a trial run to see how much clothes I could fit into my carry-on suitcase and everything fit even with some spontaneous outfit additions so that's a relief. I wanted to bring a mini backpack as my purse and ordered one off Jansport but it came in the mail today and was friggin' ENORMOUS so now I have to return it. Returning things is such a pain in the butt :(

Only 2 months to go. I can't get over how close it is!

Other than freaking out about my trip (in a good way) I've been super busy crafting. Here's some photos of my recent work:

Jiji (this one I made for me :3)

Lumpy Space Princess Hoop $34.00

Pink Squid Hoop (a gift for a friend)

Pusheen Hoop $33.00



Squirtle Hoop, $35.00

Bubbline Hoop Set $78.00



All of the hoops with prices attached can be found in my Etsy store www.iggystarpup.etsy.com

I'd like to have a giveaway sometime next month so I'll have to make a special hoop for that. You'll be able to enter from Tumblr, Instagram or Facebook. I'll post more about that when I actually have a hoop to give away, haha!

Another thing that's been going on lately is that I've fallen madly in love with "Pride and Prejudice". I finally got around to reading the novel 2 weeks ago and since then I've watched the Joe Wright film adaption about 4 times (once with the director's commentary--I love listening to commentaries), watched the mini series with Colin Firth (100% babe) twice and tonight I'm going to be watching the Sir Laurence Olivier version. I'm just soooo in love with Mr. Darcy. I can add him to the list of fictional characters I'm madly in love with. Doesn't look good for real men at this point. Not. Good. At. All.

It's Poetry in Motion

Le Me

 Thanks to modern technology something magical happened yesterday. Two friends who live an ocean away from each other got to have a face to face conversation via Skype. To be honest, I was pretty nervous worrying that she might hate my voice or think I was weird or something. I've met a few online friends in person and it's always exciting to hear their voice after only imagining what it sounds like. Usually, people tell me that my voice is a lot higher and girly than they imagined it would be (I'm not sure why people would assume that I have a scary deep voice).

It was so cool to get to see her wee face (I had only heard her voice once in a video she made me over a year ago) and hear her adorable accent again. I love loved seeing her laugh and just being super cute. It made me really happy too how well we got along. It think it'll be a  great time. We're both very enthusiastic and excitable girls so I think there will be a good energy on the trip.

My favorite thing she said was when I asked her what kind of stuff she wanted to do on the trip and she said, "Oh, I don't know, take pictures of you when you're sleeping." (SO GOOD)

The Lovely Melissa

We organized this meeting to discuss plans for our upcoming Europe trip since I'm going to be meeting Melissa in Glasgow. I had had some free time so I did some research on cheap and/or free things to do in each city we're visiting (free might be my favorite word in the English language). In case I haven't already mentioned it, here's an updated list of the cities we plan on visiting during our Euro Adventure:

*Glasgow
*London
*Amsterdam
*Copenhagen
*Berlin
*Paris
*Versailles

I was surprised by how many things we can do for free in Europe but I guess some of the best things in life are free, right? I'm just super stoked to simply wander around and explore these cities and soak up all of the history and culture. There are a few museums I'd like to visit but we found out that many of them don't charge any admission fee (party. bonus.) What's probably going to cost the most will be transportation and lodging but we're going to try to get transportation cards whenever we can and stay at youth hostels and maybe a few b&bs. I'd like to take a train at least once but for longer distances we'll probably be flying since flying is getting cheaper and will save us some time (maybe).

Oh, man! I am just so excited for this! It's going to be such an adventure and we're going to make so many memories. I CANNOT wait to take a billion selfies with Melissa. Can you even imagine it? A buddy pick of Melissa and I in front of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower? It's MADNESS! Only 11 more weeks to go! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

All About New Year's Eve

HAPPY 2014, MAH BABIES!

I'm really really stoked about this year. I have all kinds of positive feels for this year. I think good things are going to happen, which is rare for me but I dunno, I just feel it in my bones that this year is going to be awesome.

But before I start fangirling 2014, let's wrap up 2013 first. So my New Year's Eve was pretty good. Not great, but still good. I met up with my friend Ashley for dinner at Pita Jungle and I must say for a place called Pita Jungle their pitas kind of (really) suck. All of their other dishes are great but c'mon guys, let's work on making the pita bread edible. My jaw seriously hurt after choking down one pita.

Me and Ashley

Anyway, we finished eating around 8:30pm which was still super early but we had nothing else to do so we walked down to Crescent Ballroom. They didn't open up the actual ballroom until about 9:45ish so there was a lot of standing, eye rolling at creeper guys attempting to talk to us, and evaluating other folks outfits. When they finally let us in to the ballroom there was an opening band that's music wasn't very memorable for me (sorry, guys) but soon after a DJ came out and everyone started dancing. The first hour of dancing was pretty good but then it got SUPER crowded and kind of nutzo. It was just a wall of bodies in there and everyone had spilt their drinks EVERYWHERE so the floor was wet and sticky and we kept stepping on empty cups. I kind of don't get why they let people drink on the dance floor. You should have to drink your drink in the bar and when you've finished it THEN you can come out onto the dance floor. But that's just me.



I saw this dude who I was very briefly interested in but later rejected and he saw me too so that was kind of awkward. He kept dancing nearby wherever we were too so that made me feel a bit weird but at least he didn't say anything. I hate that. After midnight people got really crazy and were like shoving each other and we thought we were going to die. Ashley managed to plow her way through the sea of sweaty drunken bodies but I wasn't aggressive/strong enough to navigate my way through so I got separated from her for about 3 minutes and it was TERRIFYING. I kept thinking, "SHE LOST FRODO!!!" And I don't have a cell phone so that made it extra scary since I couldn't just text her. But Ashley had the good sense to wait for me outside so I wasn't lost for too long. When I found her I said, "Don't you lose him, Samwise Gamgee." and got no response u__u

After things had calmed down a bit we went back inside and danced a bit more but decided to leave at about 1:30am. By the time we got home it was a bit after 2am and I was friggin' exhausted but still didn't fall asleep until around 4am. Although I didn't work until 2pm the following day I awoke around 8:30am and couldn't fall back asleep. My work day was easy though since it was a holiday and it's usually pretty quiet on holidays. One of the residents at my work even brought me a whole plate of food! It was a FEAST!

I got out of work around 8pm and made a beeline for my friend Heather's house so we could watch episode one of Sherlock Series 3. I don't know if it was due to our lack of sleep (she had only gotten 2 hours of sleep that day) but we found the episode to be all over the place and hard to follow. Sherlock is our favorite show and we'd been waiting to see this episode for 2 agonizing years so we were pretty bummed that things didn't go the way we'd hoped they would. I don't want to spoil the episode for those who haven't seen it but I'll just say I hope the next two episodes will be better.

Alright, I guess that's all for now but I wish you all a very happy and healthy New Year!!

xoxo,

Courtney