Happy New Year

Dooley wants to wish you all a happy New Year! We hope you have your party hats on to ring in 2014! 

New Years

I thought I would share some lovely outfits that would be fun to help you ring in the New Year. I will not be going out where I could wear this beautiful number, instead I will likely be sitting in a hottub drinking champagne. 

What are your plans?

New Years - Black by maddy-lehman featuring nars cosmetics

Date Night - F is for Festival

F is for Festival...a Hot Air Balloon festival to be exact! A few weeks ago I saw a LivingSocial deal for this festival and I knew we had to go! Andrew and I love hot air balloons, but I've never been close to one! 

I wanted to surprise Andrew but quickly realized I had to tell him why we needed to get up at 4am and make our way down to Phoenix. I knew he wouldn't get up if I didn't tell him and sure enough he got pretty excited! 

We didn't plan our week very well because we ended up going to the midnight showing of The Hobbit two nights before the festival. So on extremely little sleep we woke up many hours before dawn (AZ doesn't do daylight savings) and made our way down south. We arrived with plenty of time to spare apparently, because we wound up waiting in line for about 45 mins! They were operating on a ridiculous system that no one liked, but whatever. 

When we finally made it inside I became super giddy! I had never been around hot air balloons and I just think they are the coolest things ever! We managed to see quite a few balloons fill up and take off before we went to grab breakfast. Unfortunately we didn't know the schedule prior to going (the website was very sparse) and there wasn't much going on until that afternoon. 

At that point we decided to call an end to our adventure-filled morning and make the trip back up the mountains! Even though the morning was short I still had an awesome time! Just check out the photos! Haha. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from my crazy family to yours!

In case you forgot the front door will remind you which holiday it is!

Andrews family are so photogenic...

Until we take selfies! (Lobsters optional)

Andrew being silly

And those poor buggers got eaten. 

Of course the sink was leaking Christmas morning...

And Andrew was very happy opening all of his presents! (This took me forever to get a smiling picture of him!)

I had to rep New Zealand! The weather in LA certainly made it feel like a NZ Christmas too!

And Now It's Saturday

Why not continue with yesterday's music video!?  I give you Rebecca Black's follow up to her hit single Friday...Saturday. Duh.

Happy Friday

It's throwback Friday....enjoy!

Photographer Spotlight

Dan Marbaix is my photographer to spotlight this week.  I found him through an article I was reading and fell in love with his work.  I mean...how could you not?  His images are breathtaking and then you realize that he shoots in abandoned places and it just about breaks your heart.  His images capture times long gone, loss, decay...and still you can't tear your eyes away. 

He has been arrested 20 times for trespassing...but isn't it so worth it!?

If you're as obsessed as I am, go check out his pages for more photos:

Facebook

Flickr

Website

Catching Fire - Kick Ass Clothing

I still haven't seen Catching Fire yet...I know, I know.  I just haven't gotten around to it yet.  Regardless, I recently learned that the woman who was hired to design the active-wear costumes went to the same school as me in New Zealand!

Pretty spunky right?  Well she's a designer over at this awesome active-wear company in London called Lucas Hugh.  I'm completely obsessing over all the designs, even though I can't remotely justify a purchase from them right now.  So beautiful though....

The Prince Albert Look

The Aelita Look

The Rover Look

They even make swimsuits...seriously!

Themis Swimsuit

Click here to jump to Lucas Hugh to get your shop on!

Date Night - C is for Concert

As I posted here, Andrew and I are going through the alphabet and going on a date for each letter. Originally I was planning on hitting each letter in order, but that's boring. Also I have a couple good ones lined up and didn't want to skip them just because it hadn't done the letters before them.

So...C is for Concert. A B.B. King concert to be specific! Andrew and I had such an amazing time at The Lumineers a couple months ago we decided to go to more concerts. That night we looked at our local performing arts center and saw that B.B. King was coming to our tiny town! We both got so excited we immediately bought tickets! 

There was a random long line outside the doors!  They weren't checking tickets there...I guess no one thought to check if another door would open!

We've been looking forward to this night for so long but didn't realize it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I only looked at the calendar last week and saw that we had to book it back from San Francisco to make it in time. And make it we did! 

We got free popcorn! (I had a coupon in the mail)

Dinner was popcorn and a huge gin & tonic!

It was an incredible concert. The venue was small enough it felt pretty intimate (mind you there's still probably about 1,500 seats). B.B. was joking around with the audience and gave a beautiful performance. I'm so glad that we got the opportunity to see him live. He's 88 and still touring, but who knows how much longer. It was seriously awesome! A great date to start off our ABCs!

The man himself!