it's the weekend!

Oh man. I really wish I were in a pool right now. This has been the first week since summer started that I actually was bummed about the fact that my house has no AC (open windows and fans can only do so much). But just when I want to whine about the heat, I remember that my fella is currently working overseas in a country where it gets 100-plus degrees Farenheit, he gets little to no AC, and he's covered from head to toe while working in such conditions. And I promptly shut my mouth.

So instead, I'm looking forward to the weekend! Tomorrow I'll be working on a freelance assignment for Pacific Magazine, and on Sunday I'm heading to The Lafayette Hotel for a friend's birthday/pool party fiesta...so I guess I'll be in a pool soon enough! Friends keep raving about this iconic and amazing hotel in North Park, not to mention its equally amazing pool.

{via}

Right?

Now it's really starting to feel like summer :)

this is what my nights usually look like.

Except that I usually give in long before this guy does.

And the heavy sigh at the 1:01 mark just kills me. So effing true.

it's like a lemon factory around here

Dear Lemon Tree In My Front Yard, you are amazing, but you are producing more lemony goodness than I can keep up with. I make fresh lemonade regularly, but then there you go, dropping six more lemons on the grass almost daily. Short of giving away free lemons to my neighbors (which I should probably do anyway), I need more ideas of what to do with all that fruit.

So thank goodness for Pinterest.

Here are some lemon-related treats I've been pinning, and need to start making. Like now.

Lemon Chili Marmalade

I'm a fan of adding booze to fruit. Or fruit to booze. Or both.

Oatmeal Lemon Creme Bars

To be honest, I've never really been a fan of oatmeal, but I'm willing to give this recipe a shot.

 Little Lemon Souffles

Well doesn't this look fancy. And it also makes me wonder, do I like this recipe because of the actual recipe, or for the presentation? I mean, c'mon, the lemons act as mini bowls, and I am such a sucker for things like that.

 Lemon Cheesecake

I love cheesecake. I love lemons. It's gotta be a win-win, right? AND, there's even Limoncello added to the glaze (which is optional, but you know like heck I'm gonna do it). A recipe after my own heart.

Project DIY Bookshelf is complete!

So a few months back, I posted about how I wanted to re-create Morgan Satterfield's amazing-super-rad Ace Hotel-inspired DIY bookshelf. Well folks, it is done. Over the course of three weeks and two trips to Home Depot, the Mister and I finished it, and it is beautiful.

I didn't take photos through every step of the process, but here's the few that I did take.

Behold the pipe cutter and threading machine at Home Depot. Actually, I have no idea what the technical name for that machine is, but it is a beast and got the job done. Thanks, Home Depot guy!

I snapped this real quick right before I started spray-painting all the pipe pieces. Don't I just look thrilled? Prepping the pipe and the wood definitely was the most tedious and time-consuming part of the project.

Pretty painted plumber's pipe all organized neatly on the floor.  Shortly after this, the Mister and I started to hate life. A lot.

I definitely didn't hate how my stained pine shelves turned out though. Beautimous. The two longer shelves did end up being a bit darker than I wanted, but I attribute that to the fact that since it took longer to paint it, the stain had more time to set in.

So the hating life part wasn't that it was necessarily hard to put together, just....figuring out where to drill the holes in the wood so that everything would be nice and symmetrical and even. Because even though we were using Morgan's exact design, we had to adjust the measurements to fit our wall (hers was wider). But once we had the holes drilled in the first (short) piece, it was cake for the rest of the shelves.

Tip: Doing any kind of project like this with your significant other will go much smoother with the addition of beer. Especially when it's delicious, hoppy, Alpine beer.

So we basically just put it together from the bottom up once all the holes were drilled. It went pretty smoothly from here.

Almost there.

The finished piece!

Other than the overall width of our bookshelf, the only major thing we had to change from Morgan's design was the height of the top pipe pieces (from where it connects from the T to the elbow piece). I believe her top pipe lengths were 12 inches, and we had to adjust ours to 9 inches, so it could fit under that overhang on our ceiling.

And just like Morgan said it would be, that bookshelf is solid. I'm so happy with it. We ended up spending about $318 for all the materials. Not too shabby. I'm still in the process of adding some of our books and decorative objects to it, not to mention deciding what kind of framed art I want to put in that large open space.

Also, sorry for the crappy iPhone pics. I'm sure I'll take photos of this thing with my fancypants camera soon enough :)

it's gonna be an epic weekend!

{via}

I want to print this out and frame it. I want to stare at this everyday. I want to remind myself that this is why I love to do photography so much; to challenge myself, and get the heck out of my comfort zone, because that is exactly when the great and creative stuff happens. The epic shit.

I'm thinking tomorrow's fashion shoot that I've been organizing for the past several weeks just might be one of the epic ones. I just have a good feeling.

AND! My morning was totally made today when I received the nicest email from Ana Maria of anamu. She saw that I recently started following her on Instagram, so she popped over to my humble blog to check things out, and then sent me a nice email. So rad. You really should check out her writings and photos; she's a fellow travel bug with a great photographic eye. Not to mention she puts together some awesome mixtapes.

Happy Friday, and happy weekend!

the sleepiest fashion editorial ever.

{all images via}

This editorial spread that I came across on Jezebel today is both amazing and kind of confusing. What were they trying to say with this? That being a woman and doing mundane tasks is incredibly tiresome? Were they trying to bring awareness to narcolepsy? And what the heck is going on with that eyeball soup? I NEED TO KNOW MORE.

Storyline aside, I love all of it. The styling, the lighting, the good ole fashioned weirdness. I would totally wear the shirt with the eyes all over it. Maybe even the puffy pink bear sleeved dress too.

playing host is totally fun. and exhausting. but mostly fun.

I feel like I'm just now catching up on regular life things, and can now do a proper blog post. I've been totally slacking this month on keeping up with this space, but hey, it wasn't like I was sitting around doing nothing. The mister and I were enjoying our duties as Official San Diego Host & Tour Guide for a good friend who visited us from the east coast. Yay! We love when people visit!

Okay, less talking, more photos.

The nice thing about still being kinda sorta newish to San Diego is that some of the places we showed our visiting friend were new to us too. Like the San Diego Zoo! We were totally impressed and had a blasty. Also, I just realized that in the photos above, there's only one in which the animal is real. Ha. Hint: it's not the one where my husband is being petted/molested.

We like to dine and wine our visiting friends. It's only polite, right? There was obligatory tequila-sipping at Cafe Coyote in Old Town, and sushi boat coma time at Zen 5 in Pacific Beach. AND! We found out through a neighbor friend that La Mesa has its own food truck gathering every friday. WHAT? How did we not hear about this sooner? Cheap food, four or five different trucks. We are so going back. And of course, a visit to our city would not be complete without visiting a local brewery. It seems like you can't throw a rock in any direction without hitting at least one. So we hit up the Ballast Point Brewery to sample some very tasty beers and take a little tour of their operations. A word of advice: the Habanero beer is exactly what it sounds like. Oh. My. Word.

At some point during the week, I got the idea in my head to get my husband and his bff together in a kiddie pool. With lots of Yuengling. And assorted props. And take a picture of it. Just normal dude stuff right? You can check out the final image (plus two more) on my flickr page.