Plaza Lights

In a sad attempt to capture The Plaza lights before they come down to put an end to the holidays, Walt and I ventured on top of a parking lot to see what kind of picture I could get...

Needless to say, I really need photography lessons AND I really need to book a room at the Intercontinental across from The Plaza on the 15th floor in order to get the kind of picture I was hoping for.

Any who, this is what I accomplished in my pathetic attempt to be artistic tonight.

I do think it's pretty cool how the buildings disappeared and the lights popped, but I was hoping for a bit more of the view. Guess the parking lot doesn't cut it :) Next Christmas Plaza lights I will get you!

Plaza Lights January 2010

Matt Shaw the Designer

For Christmas this past year I told you part of what I gave Walt. Now I want to tell you about his gift to me.

Recently Angela's fiance, Matt Shaw, made an awesome picture of her Italian Greyhound, Carmine.

 Carmine by Matt Shaw

I quickly became obsessed with her picture and was dying to have my own of Mia. Well as it so happens, Walt had asked me what I wanted for Christmas and this was one of the first things that popped into my head!  Walt tracked down Matt Shaw and asked if he would make a picture of Mia for my Christmas gift. Matt said YES! I was SO excited to see the final result. 

Mia by Matt Shaw

I absolutely LOVED it.  Matt was so sweet and altered the background to whatever color I wanted and got it done pretty quickly considering the holiday business and his getting engaged and all :)

If you or someone you know is interested in getting your pet's photo designed, or have another picture in mind, I would highly recommend Matt Shaw.  He gets his work done in a timely manner and for a great deal. To reach him, you can email him at: mshaw8730@gmail.com.  Additional details on getting that perfect gift or decoration for your house:

Price: Negotiable

Timing: Takes about 3 weeks

Requirement: Provide 3 pictures of your pet/subject you would like him to work with and choose from

I plan on using my Groupon from CanvasOnDemand to get mine put on a canvas and so pumped to hang it up in my room!

Again with the Canvases.... Great deal!

CanvasOnDemand & greatBIGCanvas which I mentioned in a previous blog are having a great sale today.

25% off your everything when you use the code: NEWYEAR

The sale ends tonight, January 6th at Midnight.

Happy Shopping! I plan on using this today!!!

Little Mia

Introducing.... my kitty Mia. 
If we did this Mia's way, she would have some grand entrance sitting on a fluffy pink pillow titled princess riding on me as I walk in on all fours. Yep, my cat thinks she owns me, kinda sad but kinda true at times.

Walt, my boyfriend as you may remember, gave me her for our 3 year anniversary after I begged and begged to have a kitten.  She was cuddly, cute, laid back, friendly, and purred her little heart out, and to top it off she was a Calico cat which is my all time favorite (although I found out AFTER I got her they tend to be a bit neurotic).

Now, after having her for over a year, I have learned that having a cat is not as easy as it sounds.  Sure they sleep half the day away and are cute a cuddly and Mia personally looks like a baby rabbit, but when YOU want to sleep, nope try again.  Mia becomes crazy around 5-6 a.m. every morning because she wants to be fed.  This is the smallest cat and the fattest cat EVER. Always wanting to eat, no matter what.

She will walk all over my face, meow, shake my blinds above my head and so on.  In effort to get her out of my room I shut her out and put a towel on the other side of the door.  You would think that would work to muffle her meows and tampering with my door, it doesn't. She pulls the towel aside and sticks her paw under my door and shakes my door until inevitably I roll out of bed and feed her breakfast.

While I have many of stories about her, I'd rather not spill them all now. For now, I'll just leave you with an idea of what its like to really have a cat like mine. I love these Simon cartoons and highly recommend them for hilarious entertainment.

All and all, Mia is my baby kitty and I love her to death and nothing will change that.

Still Looking for a Canvas?

Just a quick note this morning.  I received an email from Living Social featuring today's deal which so happens to be a 16x20 canvas for $39 from Image Canvas.  Visit the site and check it out: https://livingsocial.com/redeem_invite/1798408-lmajor?ref=lnk

I have not used this site directly, but I would assume it would be similar to all the other options out there for a cheaper price (I'm all for the deals these days!!!)

These deals are very similar to Groupon Deals and come daily if you subscribe, they have some pretty good offerings. I recently purchased a 2-hour photography lesson. 


Stay tuned for today's post later this afternoon/evening.

She's Engaged!!!

After waiting her whole life to meet price charming, my good friend Angela Suzanne Hunter found the love of her life, Matt Shaw.

A little over a year ago the two love birds met. As it turned out they had many things in common.  Mutual friends. Their careers in advertising. They lived two miles away from each other. They both love to have fun and they can both put down a Natty Light or two :)

Angela knew he was the one almost instantly.  I just remember hearing her say "I think he's a keeper!"

After hearing multiple stories about him and seeing a picture of this guy I was just dying to meet him.  So one night when I had had a liiiitttle too much to drink and noticed Angela and her man sitting across from me at Kona Grill I decided to send them some drinks.  She waved me on over and off I went.  She introduced me to Matt Shaw (she never referred to him as Matt, always Matt Shaw, which I thought was a term of endearment). After quick slightly intoxicated introductions, I leaned over to Matt Shaw and said in more or less words, he better not hurt my friend in any way or I'd sick my cat Mia on him!! (You will meet Mia tomorrow on my next post). He assured me he would not.

As it turned out, he also found the love of his life and had intentions to marry her!

So he proposed on New Year's Eve, Eve 2010. Long story short, Angela is the hardest person ever to surprise, and Matt Shaw really wanted this to be a surprise.  After playing sick and suggesting they stay in for the evening, Matt was taking out the recycling at Angela's house and started to yell for her to come over  and see something in her dining room.  Matt Shaw is pretty much on the ground trying to look for something as Angela walked into the room.  He slyly looked up and shifted to one knee and told her how much he loved her and wanted her to spend the rest of her life with him. She said YES!!! Angela now has a BEAUTIFUL ring on her left hand and they couldn't be more happy!

So congrats to Angela and Matt Shaw on your engagement.  I love you both very much and wish all the happiness in the world for you!

P.S. Matt Shaw also has his own blog for you to check out it's called LunchBlogKC

The happy couple and Ang's bling! 

Re-Cap From Last Night's Bachelor

For those of you who didn't have the opportunity to watch Lovely Lisa last night, you can catch her online:


Part 1 was the introduction, including meeting with Jenni and Deanna, the two women he did NOT choose his last time around.  It also included all the girls getting out of the limo including Lisa (located at 41:28-41:56) in her ruby heels (P.S. The shoes were just a joke, she switched into her hot little sparkle ones inside you can notice during the rose ceremony).  Just FYI this was not in sequential order based on when they really arrived, according to Lisa they mixed it up a bit....

 Lisa's Ruby Red Shoes

 Being her cute self! 

Also, fun fact, all I REALLY wanted to know when she went on the show was if they watered down the driveway since I noticed every single season (including The Bachelor Pad - yes I watch that one too...).  The answer.... YES. She said they spray it down before tapings occur so keep your eye on that and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Part 2  The girls get their time with Brad. Lisa actually DOES get time with Brad, however, due to editing this portion was not shown during the episode. For the rose ceremony they try and make it seem like she was near the end when she received her rose and kept zooming back to her, but really she wasn't.... ohhh reality TV!!! Gotta love it! 

If you want to zoom just to Lisa's portions here are the majority of the clips based on the timer at the bottom of the screen:
Throughout the Evening: 8:42-8:54 when they watched Brad get his wrist waxed

Throughout the Rose Ceremony multiple zoom ins!!! 24:38-40, 24:48,24:59,25:04, 25:22-23, 25-59 27:07-08, 27:39

She got her rose: 27:17-27:28 She looked so cute and excited!

Celebration making it through the first round, wahoo!!: 33:54

In the season preview that followed the celebration; She gets pushed in the bright green: 35:28-30 and they show another close up at 36:08 by the pool!

Again, you can follow Lisa or Me on Twitter.  While she can't post anything while the show is running, I sure as heck can!  Also, ChasingDavies can keep you up to date on her fashion throughout the show so visit her blog and follow her on Twitter as well!

Check in later tonight and today's main blog post will be posted.... Hint, its a tribute to my good friend Angela Hunter....

Lovely Lisa

Some of you may or may not know that my roommate/best friend, Lisa, recently was selected to be on this seasons "The Bachelor" with Brad Womack starting TONIGHT, January 3rd 8-10 CST on ABC.

Here's the story(it's a long one, but worth it....)

Lisa and I had heard that there was a casting call in Kansas City this past summer and I thought it would be a fantastic idea for Lisa to try out.  She's GORGEOUS as you can tell, a sweetheart, and most of all SINGLE!!! We needed to occupy ourselves this fine Wednesday night and thought why not???

Once we got to the casting call (me filling in as her moral support since at the time this was a tiny little secret), we saw hundreds of girls and a few guys (for the Bachelorette try-outs) everywhere, our first thought was "holy crap how long is this going to take..." We decided it was best to have a few glasses of wine to to loosen up a bit before having to be on an on-camera interview! Lisa filled out her paperwork, got a quick snapshot taken and then came the waiting.... a lot of waiting, more like 2-3 hours of waiting.  The only thing that made it worth while was A) I knew Lisa was the prettiest girl in the room B) Analyzing every girl/guy standing in the room thinking about what their story was and why they were here.  You know you would too if you were me!

As we were waiting patiently, a woman who was carrying around an iPhone with an ear-bud in her ear kept eying Lisa every time she walked by. Finally, this woman stopped and asked what number she was in line, Lisa told her and the woman walked off, this happened at least two more times, and finally she came by to tell her that her number was coming up. Lisa and I both knew SOMETHING was up because this woman was taking A LOT of interest in her.We assumed she had to do something with casting or producing of some sort for the show. As it turns out she did.  She actually interviewed Lisa and handed her a packet right then and there advancing her to the final casting call! Needless to say we walked outside and she told me what happened and we both started jumping up and down with excitement!!!

A few weeks later, Lisa was off to the final round of casting which was a long and tedious process..... After a few week, she gets a phone call from the producer saying that she made it onto The Bachelor and a packet will be arriving in the next day or so for her to fill out and send back.

Here is where I stepped in, Lisa needed to provide a quality head and full body shot of herself to send with the packet.  Since I hadn't really put my camera to use yet, I thought it was a good time to try it out.  We took quite a few snapshots in our house against our white wall and this is what we came out with (I will post most later this evening so check back).

 

Lisa didn't make it hard to take pictures because she is the most photographic person I know!! So thanks Lisa for being my subject in today's post and the best friend a girl can have.

For those of you who are Bachelor fanatics like me, tune in tonight for the premiere and print off your Cheat Sheet to follow along throughout the season every Monday night on ABC at 7pm CST. Lisa is on there as "Lisa M" from Ottawa, Kansas, however, she lives in Kansas City now. I can't tell you what happened, but I can tell you the show will be good and you will want to watch!  It lasts two hours so I would recommend recording it for an hour and then start it to avoid the commercials.

Good Luck Lisa!!

P.S - You can follow her on Twitter @LisaMorrisey or me at @lmajor9 and I'll be posting comments on there as well about the show.  You can also visit ChasingDavies for more fashion related information about Lisa's outfits.

Katie in Cabo

This past Thanksgiving my amazing mom took my sister Katie and me to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico to change it up a bit. We stayed at the Riu Palace, which was a phenomenal all-inclusive resort right on the beach (I would highly recommend).

With such a beautiful view and a beautiful sister, I wanted to capture the moment when we were hanging out in the pool one day.  Katie and I waited FOREVER to take this picture since this area was a hot spot for people to enjoy the view.  After jumping in the pool almost immediately after the last person left, this is what I captured. I went through today and really wanted to show you all this picture since the view was amazing and really made me wish I was there right now!! I boosted the color a bit and sharpened the image to give the full affect in iPhoto.

On a separate note, for anyone that is interested in any of the images that I post feel free to reach out to me at lmajor9@gmail.com and I can send you a copy.

Additionally, if you ARE interested in printing a picture of your own onto a canvas, in yesterday's post I made a few suggestions of places to look. I also got a notification from GroopDealz for canvases at a discounted price if you wanted to take a look, just click the hyperlink above.  The deal is $36 for $80 worth of high quality canvases from Canvas Lifestyle (with FREE SHIPPING).

Off I Go....

With this being my first start to the new year post, I got a little nervous. What do I say?  What should I show as my first picture of the year? Will people even like the things I post?  But then I realized, I'm doing this for ME.  This is a blog right, you can say what you what and how you feel and people can judge you however they want but I'm doing something that will make me happy.

So, with that said, here is my first picture of the year: Walt's Christmas present.

Walt is my boyfriend of four years, who I love and adore.  We met at The Hawk, a popular college bar at the University of Kansas where we both went to school. I actually saw him from across the room and marched on over to him, tapped him on the shoulder, and just said "You're Walt!" He looked at me like I was a weirdo at first and then I let him know how I knew of him.  He was my best friend/teammate (for KU Cross Country Track) Lisa's boyfriend's friend/teammate for  the KU golf team.  How we had never met in the past was beyond me... All I knew was that I  got myself a catch and plan on holding on to him. 

For Christmas this year I had some trouble thinking of a Christmas gift for him, and after tossing some ideas around with friends ,I narrowed it down to taking a picture of the place we met and giving him a little piece of me. After a quite a few attempts I captured this one.  Coincidentally enough, I got it by jumping in a tree to goof around with my roommate, Lisa, and it turned out to be the best one!

After getting the picture I wanted I  searched high and low for the best deals on canvases.  I narrowed it down to Snapfish (where I recently ordered one for my mom) and Canvas on Demand (which came highly recommended by my friend Megan.  Both canvases turned out to cost less than $100 with the coupons that I found on RetailMeNot (my favorite coupon site EVER) and some other deals when I just Googled Snapfish or Canvas On Demand Coupon Codes.   Canvas On Demand also tends to have Groupons in various cities, so search through Groupon's cities to see if you can find a deal.  Last Groupon was pay $45 for a canvas valued at $126.  I of course bought it for my next project I have yet to determine.

The end result was that Walt LOVED it, as did I when I saw the finished product. If you are looking for gift ideas, I highly recommend using a photo and blowing it up on a canvas, it adds a personal touch and you can never have too many pictures, right?