Happiness is Chic: linklove

I've always loved Harry Potter and since my boyfriend grew up a mere two hours away from Universal Studios, I decided going to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was a must this Thanksgiving break. I had heard it was really well done but honestly one of the main reasons I wanted to go there was to taste butterbeer! In retrospect, driving four hours and buying $100 tickets might have been excessive to taste glorified soda but it was still totally worth it.

The park was really well done and the details were amazing, but word of warning: Harry Potter World is split up between Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure so you have to buy a park-to-park pass to see both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade/Hogwarts. Furthermore, this is the only way to ride the Hogwarts Express. Well played Universal Studios, well played. Since we knew we could only stay one day, we decided to go to Universal Studios and see Diagon Alley instead of Hogsmeade because I heard it was visually better and Islands of Adventure was more suited for children and focused on the rides. Because of our time constraints, we made the right decision but if we had longer I would have liked to do both.

Butterbeer Recipe:

-cream soda (I like A&W diet)

-caramel syrup (for coffee/Italian soda)

-whipped cream

Drizzle caramel syrup at the bottom of the glass and then fill the glass with soda and cover in whipped cream. Pour another generous splash of syrup on top of the whipped cream.

I was so pleased with how this recipe turned out. It tastes a lot like the butterbeer at Universal Studios but the main difference is that their whipped cream had a thick, sticky consistency almost like a mix between marshmallow fluff and whipped cream. You can find a lot of other recipes here but I think the key is to buy syrup for coffee/Italian sodas and not syrup for ice cream, which would be thicker and wouldn't mix as well into the soda. I'd love to hear if you decide to try the recipe and/or find a way to make it boozy (an obvious next step).

Joey enjoying a nice cold beer (of the butter variety)

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Genevieve

In front of Gringotts Bank

I love the idea of Etsy. It's a whimsical, regulated, organized space where beautiful people sell beautiful things. I yearn to belong there all the more when I see fellow bloggers and crafty women I admire thriving there.

The problem is, as much as I love to shop there and and get inspiration, I have given it two to three earnest attempts and have not made a single sale.

Here are my issues with Etsy from a seller's prospective:

I get discouraged by similar sellers' shockingly low prices. It is occasionally under the cost of materials and must be done to edge out the competition. Well played.
"It's hard to make it before you've made it" with the rating system. When a similar shop has lots of positive reviews and I have no reviews, people go for the safe bet.
It appears a lot of social media is required to run a successful Etsy shop. Lots of shops have a Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, a blog, etc. that they post to regularly. I'm a working gal who merely has time to make something pretty and then put it out there into the universe... and then obsessively check my page views.

For now, I've decided to give up on my Etsy dream. I will admit defeat and not join the ranks of attractive people laughing in good lighting together in front of SRL cameras and will return to my comfortable den of familiarity that has never failed me yet. Craig's List.

Craig's List is the wild west of the internet...so much so that they don't even have an official app. Their website is so 1995 that I think it's being marketed at Urban Outfitters as cool. I am only slightly less likely to connect with a serial killer or Ponzi schemer than a customer BUT I owe so much to Craig's List.

It's simply the best because:

It's free. A 100% free buyer/seller connection. I can't believe this is still a thing.
Correct grammar and good pictures are optional/discouraged which saves time on posts!
It's unregulated nature causes buyers to react in a frenzied way that cuts down on small talk. "I'll come now with cash" is pretty much the standard email I get these days.

Etsy, you're fabulous and one day when I'm done with grad school, I will audition again. For now I am sticking to your awkward, clunkier older brother who doesn't know what a social media strategist is.

Thanks for reading and have a fabulous day!

-Genevieve

Courtesy of Creature Comforts' Photostream

Hello there,

I've spent a lot of time watching health food documentaries lately. A. Lot.

You could attribute this predisposition to natural health interests to my home birth to obsessively natural parents or possibly a certain Paleo trainer I spent the better part of three years with. Most likely, it is because I don't have cable and there are only so many Deadliest Catch reruns one can watch on Netflix before the mind starts to wander.

There are essentially two different genres of health food documentaries:

The Scared Straight Documentary

An excellent example of this is the widely popular Food, Inc. King Corn also falls into this category. Basically, these are the documentaries that expose the underbelly of the food industry, describe how it is now a corporate machine that is spiraling out of control and how the FDA is widely influenced by the food industry itself. I would recommend watching these documentaries if you think cows are milked by a kindly looking dutch girl each morning or that eggs are painstakingly gathered one-by-one at dawn. I'm not trying to be condescending. That was pretty much me a year ago.

The Heal the World and Yourself Documentary

I'm naturally inclined to these types of documentaries because they are more uplifting, they show tangible steps an individual can take and there is a dash of "you will look and feel awesome" incentivizing thrown in. That never hurts.

I really liked the documentary Food Matters. It described how eating a plant-based diet and avoiding packaged, processed "food-like products" will not only yield incredible results in our personal health and happiness but also turn our health care industry upside down.

I always thought of myself as a hardcore cheese worshipper but Forks Over Knives presents an incredibly strong case against dairy and meat. It was an interesting and insightful watch.

Another fun documentary that I recommend is Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. A charming Australian businessman cures his rare autoimmune disease by juicing and helps a trucker from Iowa (woo hoo!) do the same.

Disclaimer: I don't 100% agree with everything I read and watched. The two most impactful things I learned were:

1. The food that is being produced and marketed to us is not, in general, produced for optimal nutrition and is not serving us well.

2. You cannot go wrong by eating loads of leafy green vegetables and cutting out as many processed foods as possible.

Since December 2012 I've cut out many sugars and processed foods and started exponentially increasing my intake of fresh produce. The results have been mild but amiable. I've lost one or two pounds, feel more sustainable energy and more importantly am taking a small step towards doing my part in being an informed and conscientious global citizen.

What has inspired you to make a change lately?

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful MLK day!

Genevieve

Governor's Island, the most developed of the Hundred Islands

Hello there,

There are two things I know for sure--bacon is delicious beyond reason and Philippinos are just about the friendliest people on earth. I just returned from my winter vacation with Laura, our last couple's trip for a while, and it is bittersweet to be back.

I only have three weeks left in South Korea before my next traveling adventures start with Jin Thompson. After that I'll move down to Austin, TX with my (rather fantastic) boyfriend. I have been looking forward to the aforementioned events so much that I forgot to get all weepy and nostalgic for everything and everyone I'll miss in Korea, until now. You can expect some very emo tribute posts in the near future.

Now, onto the trip! The first place we went was the Hundred Islands in Alamino City. It was a seven hour, gritty bus ride north of Manila and by the time we got there I was starting to question my decision to go off the beaten path, but once we were on the private boat tour around the islands the next day, my feelings couldn't have changed more.

If you get a chance to go to the Hundred Islands, I highly recommend it. It was amazingly beautiful and completely deserted! We were the only people on almost every island, which meant tanning on private beaches and amazing photo opportunities without having to block out other tourists. It was definitely an overlooked treasure. Naturally, this elicited an unprecedented number of high fives and self-congratulatory remarks.

Hundred Islands tour

We stayed in Alamino for a couple of days at the Island Tropic Hotel. It was a nice place and the Manager, Jerry, was very helpful. After that, we went an hour away to Puerto del Sol resort in Balinao for the remainder of our stay.

Puerto del Sol was gorgeous and I've come to the sad realization that I probably won't ever stay somewhere that cushy again, even on my honeymoon. Thanks a million to Mr. & Mrs. Lastoskie for giving Laura and I the RCI hookup.

The one downside was that you weren't allowed to bring in outside food or drinks, so Laura and I had to sneak in our contraband and eat our graham crackers like criminals in the night.

On the other hand, the staff was amazingly friendly. One of our waiters, Bon, would apologize every time he left our table to help other guests.

I wish I could say that I was adventurous on this trip, but other than kayaking for a grand total of 20 minutes and an even more pathetic attempt at snorkeling, we lounged hard.

There was lots of delicious food, sunbathing/food comas, quickly followed by more food. What can I say, we like to treat ourselves right.

We went into town one day and saw Bolinao's famous Saint James Fortress Church that was built in 1609. It was full of history... and animals. There was a "guard dog" that looked like he couldn't be bothered to move if his life depended on it and some bats swooping around in the rafters but it was still beautiful and worth a visit. There wasn't a whole lot in the town other than the church and a street market.

They have the most delicious ice cream in the world in the Philippines made with ube. Ube is a purple yam paste they add to desserts with a surprisingly delicate taste. They sold it in vats in the market. I wish I had thought to buy some. Yum-o.

Ube paste

Overall I had such a great trip, but at the last moment, tragedy struck. As I hurried off the bus to the airport, I left my favorite Vans hat on it, forced to watch helplessly as I realized my grave error and knowing we would part ways forever more. RIP sweet chapeau, you are missed more than you can imagine.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

-Genevieve

Hello there,

I have been feeling pretty smug for the last couple of days and you will find the source of my self-congratulatory behavior to your right. As you can see, I taught myself how to make "blinkies" or animated pictures in Photoshop and the applications are endless in the blogging world. The blinkie on my right sidebar is my blog's badge. If you copy the code beneath it and paste it in an html widget in your blog's sidebar, your readers can click on it and it will link back to my blog. Cough, cough, hint, hint.

On the downside, this small accomplishment led me to delusions of grandeur. I decided that I was surely gifted coder as well, and my internet modem crashed after my first ever attempt to add my own line of code into my blog ㅠ_ㅠ

Blinkie Tutorial

It took me a long time to find a good tutorial online about making blinkies. I wasn't sure if I would need to transfer my pictures to Adobe Flash and was delighted that I could do it solely in Photoshop, which is much easier to navigate. This video tutorial on Howcast was a godsend. Because the Howcast tutorial wasn't exactly for blinkies, I'll explain my process below:

First, create the picture you would like to use in the background of your blinkie, leaving out the text or any other object that will be animated. Click the Layer-> Merge Visible and then create a duplicate layer of the background main picture.

Now you can add your final touches as new layers on top of the main picture and each sequential copy of the main picture. For example, I added the word "Happiness" to my first main picture layer, and "is" to the second, etc.

Now, go to Window->Animations create a new layer for each change in your picture that will occur. My picture has three animations, so I will use three layers.

Make sure the first frame is highlighted and then go to your layers window and hide (by clicking on the eye icon) each layer that you don't want visible at first. In my first frame, only the word "Happiness" is visible. Now, click on the second frame and follow the same steps.

Make sure to select forever in the Animation drop down menu and anywhere between one to five seconds per frame, depending on the effect you are going for. The picture used in this tutorial changes every second so you can read the sentence at a natural pace but my blog's badge is set for five seconds to add an element of surprise when it changes. Anything less than a second is overkill, you don't want to make the reader feel nauseated, like this Korean site often does to me.

When you are satisfied with your results, go to File ->Save for Web & Devices. There you can resize your picture or test how it will look in your favorite browser. Make sure it is saved as a .gif file.

This is an important step I had to learn the hard way. I upload all of the pictures for my blog on Picasaweb but unfortuantely they don't support .gif files, which you need for the animations. After doing some snooping around on Flickr and other photo sharing sites, I'm now a proud member of Photobucket. You can easily upload your animated .gif file like you would a regular JPEG.

The picture created in this post was greatly inspired by the Sing Your Life Tutorial at one of my favorite design blogs, Pugly Pixel. You can find a link to the background color palette and retro people Photoshop brushes there.