don't make me put on my angry eyes

Dearest friends,

Here are the potato costumes in action!

xoxo!

happy halloween

Dearest friends,

Happy Halloween!! Here's a lovely little picture from my trip to the pumpkin patch earlier this week with my friend, Anieca.

One year when I was younger and my Maw Maw (my mom's mom) had just started to live with us, she made about 100 candied apples for trick-or-treaters to have when they stopped by for candy. Even in 6th grade I knew that with all the paranoid parents around my neighborhood all of the candy apples would go to waste. No one's parents would let them eat something homemade. It's just a Halloween rule of safety. That year was a dud of a year anyway. Not too many trick-or-treaters came and sure enough, only about 20-30 candy apples were given out.

The following year, though, was a different story. Everyone had heard about the candied apples and by 9:00 my Maw Maw had run out of apples to give! Every year after that she made around 100-120 apples to give out and every year we would run out. Parents of trick-or-treaters always complimented my Maw Maw on how great it was that she made so many candied apples for the kids.

When she moved back to Louisiana a few years later, we still had kids and parents stopping by asking about the candied apples on Halloween.

That, my friends, is what Halloween is all about. Good, old-fashioned fun. And candied apples.

xoxo

whipping willow

P.s. I'm so in love with Willow Smith's (Will Smith's 9-year-old daughter) song, "Whip My Hair."

That girl's got sass!!

potato potaahhto

Dearest friends,

The first night of Halloween weekend was rough. It started raining at about 10:00 at night, which killed the mojo for going downtown. Roberto and I dressed up as Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I sprayed my hair black... QUITE a drastic change. If I find a picture from last night, I'll post it. Never will I ever dye my hair dark. Instead of going downtown, Robbie and I headed back home with Jack in the Box and watched "How I Met Your Mother" with Kristin.

I'm hoping that the second night of Halloween weekend will be MUCH more successful.

This morning I started on tonight's costumes... Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head!

Robbie and I got two brown mens shirts from Forever21 (love that place) and felt from Beverly's (love that place even more than Forever21). I cut out eyes, noses and mouths from the felt a few days ago.

Had breakfast while I made the costumes. Lately I've been obsessed with chai frappuccinos with cinnamon on top. Yum.

Robbie made a feast for himself. He made french toast and sausage. Delish.

I glued some of the felt pieces together then glued them onto the shirts.

Voila! Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head costumes.

Important part of the costume: potato pouch.

Enjoy your Saturday night before Halloween!

xoxo!

the tiniest of pumpkins

Dearest friends,
Two more days until the Great Pumpkin comes! Halloween may be my third favorite holiday just because it leads up to the greatest holiday of the year: HANKSGIVING.

(**Those of you who are clueless about Hanksgiving are in for a treat in about three weeks.)

Until the greatest holiday of the year comes around, I guess I'll have to settle for tiny pumpkins, handmade costumes and homemade caramel apples.

Kristin, Robbie and I carved the littlest pumpkins around.

We began by gutting our baby pumpkins...

(robbie's pumpkin was more toddler-sized than baby-sized)

then we started carving the baby pumpkins... (turns out, Kristin and I had the same idea for our design...)

... then I ate some of Kristin's aaaaamazing homemade banana bread...

then our little love pumpkins waited for Robbie to finish his toddler pumpkin....

made some baked pumpkin seeds while we waited...

and finally put flameless candles inside of them!

Next up... costume making!!

xoxo!

things i know.

Dearest friends,
I know that I love cheese.

I know that I need cozy blankets when watching a movie.

I know that every year, my family and I will celebrate Hanksgiving.

I know that watching Friends will make me laugh.

Some things you just know.

I know that I like blogger better than wordpress.

Stick with what you know.

(Sorry for the switch, yet again! I'm sure there'll be more changes to come...)

xoxo

moo

Dearest friends,

I've been online practically this entire rainy dayand I've found some pretty cool stuff that I'd like to share with you.

For my crafty friends:

Here are some cute patterns from Spool Sewing:
An adorable chef's apron

A bird pattern (I made a pair of lovebirds out of a pattern similar to this one for Page and Ryan's wedding cake topper!)

For my wedding-inclined friends:

Since I'm still kind of in wedding mode (I can't stop looking at wedding DIY blogs and wedding photo sites), here are some genius save-the-dates and invitation ideas:

Save-the-dates by kellyink

Wedding invitations by kellyink

(I love that she did photo step-by-step instructions. Great idea!)

For my photography friends:

The lovely Joanna Goodard suppliedme with this pretty gallery today: 1010.

Ten photographers around the world took 10 photos on 10/10/10. Fabulous idea.

And for my professional friends:

I've been obsessed with moo.com for quite a while. Today I found out that they make STICKERS!! So cool. If any of your PR students are putting together a campaign, you could print some sweet stuff from moo.com... Just saying.
In other news...

Anieca and I had to scrap our thousandwordsnews.com senior project blog. Our advisor pretty much vetoed every idea we had. Sad news.

BUT... we're starting a brandnew venture and we're both stoked about it...

Here's a sneak peek at our new project:

Name credit goes to Anieca. Logo credit goes to me.

We're a lovely little team.

More cool finds later!

xoxo,
Nikol

oh, miley

P.s. I'm in love with Miley's new song AND her video, even though she's getting super bad press for making it too sexy.

Enjoy!

welcome to our apartment

Dearest friends,

Sadly, I moved out of my beautiful little house last year and said goodbye to some wonderful roommates/friends.

Happily, I moved in with Kristin, my lovely new roommate who loves watching the Giants, gets my butt off the couch and into the fitness center in our apartment complex, and who cooks me delicious food (spinach ravioli yesterday while watching Wheel of Fortune). She's pretty wonderful.

Sadly (another sadly)... she's graduating in December. I'm going to miss her. A LOT. Especially procrastinating homework by watching episode after episode of Friends with her.

Here's a little sneak peek into my new apartment:

Our kitchen is small but perfect for the two of us. The oven has blessed me with quite a few tasty batches of cookies. Surprising, I know, since I'm a horrible baker.

This is where the magic of Friends happens. Rachel, Ross, Joey, Chandler, Monica and Phoebe hang out with us in the living room.

And, of course, my room. My sisters, even though they're far away, are with me every day on my dresser.

Sadly (lots of sadlys today) my Star Wars poster that Robbie got for me has fallen down.

The pile-o-crap next to my bedside table is now gone as well. My wonderful sister, Page, had to get rid of a ton of things when she moved up to San Francisco to live with her new husband, Ryan, so I inherited a ton of sweet things, one of them being that cute bedside table. Thanks, Pagey!

Please come visit Kristin and me in our apartment! We love visitors and would love to watch a Giants game or Friends with you.

xoxo,

Nikol

lady gaga by boys

P.s. One more thing really quick:

Ryan (Page’s Ryan, not the Ryan I took pictures with) showed me this AMAZING Lady Gaga remake video.

So cute. Check it out!

blogging, how i've missed you

Dearest friends,

Can you believe it? I haven’t blogged since AUGUST! This was for a lot of reasons, one being that I’ve been wanting to redo my blogspot site into a wordpress site. Another reason was because Karen stopped blogging and not seeing her beautiful photos and reading her funny stories made me really depressed (Jules- you know what I’m talking about).

Even though my new site isn’t complete, I at least wanted to get it up and running because I just plain miss blogging and posting pictures.

Here are a few!

Ryan took this one of me a couple weeks ago so I could start making yet another site (nikolschiller.com… it’s definitely NOT finished yet!) for an online portfolio kind of deal. Thanks, Ryan!

Then I took a couple of him:

We used his friend’s camera. It was beautiful and sweet.

More updates later!

xoxo,

Nikol