Owl Obsession

I’m feeling super-sick today. I got attacked by a cold the day before yesterday, and it is totally kicking my ass. Luckily I had yesterday off to stay home, drink tea, eat soup, and be miserable. Unfortunately, I have to go to work tonight. I’ll be doing my best not to sneeze in anyone’s food. ….Yikes. Anyways, I decided to show you guys some of the many many owls I’ve been giving homes to. Some of the thrift stores down here are just filled to the brim with all sorts of owls, so I bring both the cutest and most hideous of them home with me.

Thrifting Day with Stacey and Kendra

This post is a bit late, since this shopping trip was on a couple days before Christmas, while my little sister was still visiting. Stacey, Kendra, and I had an awesome day full of thrift stores, crazy-busy malls, and The Great Portland Cupcake Tour (more about that next time!).We started off the day with some Black Rock Coffee. The ever-angsty Batman was upset that he couldn’t drink any of it with his plastic mouth, and thus spent the whole trip staring out the window, totally ignoring us.

One of the first vintage shops we stopped at was Lounge Lizard. This place has AMAZING furniture and lamps.

I was totally in love with the dresser in the above picture. They had a large version of it AND a desk in the same style. If I had lots of money, I probably would’ve walked out with the whole set.

Next was Vintage Pink, with its fun assortment of retro furniture, clothes, and magazines. They always have really fun window displays.

I found my dream couch there! Call me tacky, but I’ll always love anything made of fuzzy animal print.

Last, but not least, was the grandest of all vintage stores, House of Vintage. At over 13,000 square feet, it’s definitely the biggest vintage store in Portland, and the largest I’ve ever seen in my life!

They have everything you could imagine, from any era. I kept seeing owls everywhere, and had to seriously restrain myself from taking home all of them. Here’s just a few of them:

Stacey kept finding gorgeous vintage hats. She ended up buying the pink netted hat! It’s adorable and perfect for our random days of dressing fancy.

Christmas lights on the way out of downtown Portland!

Here’s some of the goodies I ended up taking home:

Adorable snowy owl painting on wood. Too cute to not buy.Funky wood painting by a mysterious “Patti”.An Ewok plush from the original Star Wars! Ahhhh!

Ceramic owl. I think he’s a bit drunk. or possibly hungover.
Another wood painting. I’m finding that I really love any weird/tacky/cute painting done on wood. Hmmm.

Retro space rangers from The Dollar Scholar. I bought five of these awesome guys for a buck each!

I just realized Kendra wasn’t really in any of these pictures, then I remembered that she was the one taking most of the pictures.  She just got a new camera, which is wayyyy better than mine. I was having some crazy camera-jealousy while she was here, so now I’m thinking it’s time to buy a new one!

Christmas Presents

I got a lot of amazing presents this year! My little sister, Kendra, visited us for the holidays and brought down a huge duffel bag from my mom. It was bursting at the seams with homemade Christmas candy (nom nom nom) and presents!

Crazy-wrapped present from my dad. Inside was this!

My mom got me a much-needed dremel tool. It’s going to be super useful for crafting, jewelry-making, and claywork! I’m really excited to use it for sanding and polishing clay, it’s going to make everything look much better! Kendra also got me something to use for crafting: a Sculpey cray conditioner. It’s such a relief for my hands. You have to “condition” or soften polymer clay before working with it. It can be kinda rough on the hands. One of my first times working with clay, I spent about eight hours or so playing around with it and making things. The next day my hands were insanely sore and slightly bruised! So a clay conditioner is very helpful!      I got lots of other neat stuff from my family, like super soft flannel sheets, a microwaveable aromatherapy stuffed animal, and some awesome knee socks!

Andrew got me a cute old-fashioned drinking bird (you know, the kind that bobs up and down “drinking” from a cup of water. yay, thermodynamics!) and some awesome Portal-themed stuff. If you don’t know what Portal is, it’s an amazing and hilarious physics/puzzle game. Andrew got me an adorable stuffed Companion Cube and a PotatOS science kit. Basically, in Portal, one of the characters is a piece of A.I. software known as GLaDOS. During a large portion of Portal 2, she is powered by a potato (as potatoes are an excellent conductor of electricity). So the science kit involves attaching the A.I. unit to a real potato to make GLaDOS talk and say phrases from the game! It’s really neat, and hilarious to listen to.

My lovely best friend, Stacey, got me some really awesome presents, mostly owl-themed! She got me two adorable fuzzy owls. I think the white one may be my favorite owl I own (there’s a lot of them) and probably the most realistic-looking one! She also got me a giant felted mushroom that I’m in love with.

She also got me a Star Wars Scanimation book (so cool to look at!), and stone owl coasters and White Ale Beer (with owl labels and bottlecaps! eeeee!)

One of my favorite co-workers, Drew, got me this adorable owl mug!

So that’s what I got for Christmas this year! I’m very thankful for all my family and friends. I had an awesome Christmas season, and really enjoyed giving and getting such great presents!