giveaway: zinio digital magazines

True confession: I'm a magazine hoarder. I used to keep every issue of every magazine I got in a box in my closet - and I got Entertainment Weekly for several years, so it was a LOT of magazines! When I moved out, I had to throw them all away. It was hard...I remained convinced that someday I would really need to find one of those articles again and what was I supposed to do now that I'd thrown the magazine out???

Of course, I never did go back to an article in all the years I kept those magazines in my closet, because (surprise) it's really hard to find a specific article in a slipper pile of paper (mostly bent too...I wasn't very nice to my magazine stash)! Luckily, we live in a beautiful modern age where all the content you could ever want is at your fingertips!

Zinio is the world's largest newsstand, providing digital issues of pretty much any magazine you can imagine. Seriously - I spent a while flipping through their categories and I saw pretty much every magazine I've heard of plus a ridiculous number than I never had! Everything from Smithsonian to Rolling Stone to Cosmopolitan to Taste of Home to Cigar Aficionado which I'd never heard of but apparently has Jeremy Irons on the cover this month (YUM).

And all these thousands of digital magazines? You can read them on your laptop, your iPad/iPhone, or your Android-powered device! I love the idea of flipping through Dwell on my tablet - we're all addicted to home/lifestyle blogs (or is that just me?) but I'll admit that I do miss real magazines. It always feels like a treat to sit down with one at the salon, and now I can have them with me without any of the guilt of recycling!

But what's really awesome about Zinio is that they're giving 9 readers a FREE subscription to the magazine of their choice! That's right - nine of you will get to choose from the thousands of titles Zinio offers to read on your computer/phone/tablet/wherever!

To enter:

1. Follow this blog (duh!)
2. Comment here and tell me which magazine you'd like to get for free! (This doesn't have to be your final choice, no pressure!)
3. Make sure you leave your e-mail so I can get in contact with you.

The giveaway will be open for a week; I'll accept entries through midnight CST on Saturday (3/30). Winners will be randomly selected.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED.

Note: In order to receive your subscription, you'll need to provide me with your first and last name to pass on to Zinio. This will all be conducted privately through e-mail, and I'd never use the information to Facebook stalk you or anything weird like that!

I'm sure all this magazine talk has you raring to go, and winning a single subscription won't be enough to quench your thirst for content. Lucky for you, you magazine fiend, Zinio is running some awesome deals right now - but you have to move quick! Through the end of the month (3/31), get $5 back for every 10 you spend on a new subscription (don't you love when that happens?) and five of their titles are available for just $5. Personally, I'm eyeing up Midwest Living (that's where I live!) and Eating Well. They're also having a 2-for-1 deal on select titles: get a 2 year subscription for the price of one. If I already got Eating Well, maybe I could try Boating - I could get into boats! This deal is good through 4/2.

Basically, now I'm facing having a hard-drive filled up with magazines instead of a box in my closet...but these will be searchable and significantly more portable!

Disclaimer: This giveaway was sponsored by Zinio. I was compensated for this post with a subscription for myself.

how to: start a book club

When you reach a certain post-college age, it can be difficult to find people to befriend. No longer are you milling around a confined space with all people about your age. No more classes to introduce you to a new crop of people who share your interests every semester, no floating down the dorm hallways looking for open doors, no happening upon a drum circle out on the quad (or was that just my school?). Nope, you have to actually make an effort to find people you want to spend time with. There are lots of meet-ups and activities you can pursue to meet people who share your interests, like dance lessons and knitting circles and cooking classes, but my choice was one that any English major might make:  a book club!

A book club is easy, fun, and (best of all) can be entirely free if you want it to be! Here's what you need to do:

1. Find some friends! Book clubs work best with a mix of people, so encourage your friends to invite their friends along, and everybody will meet someone new!

2. Pick a book Your book club might have a theme or genre, like sci-fi or travel books or books by authors whose names start with "G." Or maybe you'll just read whatever sounds fun!

3. Pick a place and time to meet Rotating between members' apartments is always fun, as is meeting in a coffee shop. We've found that meeting at a book store with a cafe is optimal, because you can get your snacks and beverages and then investigate the shelves to find your next pick!

4. Read!

That's all there is to it! I've borrowed all the books our book club has read from either the library or a friend, so it's only cost me the occasional frappucino (mmm frappucino). We've read a wide variety of books: everything from young adult to nonfiction to modern literary novels. It's a lot of fun to try a new book every month (which seems to be the optimal schedule for our group...enough time for everyone to find and read the book without people feeling rushed or overwhelmed), particularly when it's one you might not have picked yourself.

For bonus points, set up rules. In our club, if you miss a meeting or don't finish a book, your "punishment" is getting skipped when it's your turn to pick a book. It's not much of a punishment since our club has settled into a core group of four, so you're never too far away from your next pick, but it's a nice incentive to make time for reading. In your group, the punishment might be buying the rest of the club cookies.

Our club is a pretty casual read + talk set-up, but it would be a lot of fun to expand the concept: you might have a book & food club where the host prepares a treat inspired by the book or a book & movie club where you watch the film adaptation after you read and discuss the book. The possibilities are endless - the point is hanging out with new friends, thinking and talking about books, and enjoying some new stories!

This month's book is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which I just finished last night (it's on the top of the stack in the photo above). We'll be meeting up to talk about it in two weeks, and I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks!

dream a little dream of spring

True story: the other day, I thought to myself, "Hey...isn't there a time where you can...just wear skirts and no jackets and not be cold? What is that?" Yup, I forgot what spring was. Anyone who lives in a northern clime can probably relate. So I thought I would look ahead, past the darkness of winter, and share a little bit of springtime.

retro spring by ficklekitsch 

Ahh, can't you just feel that warm breeze? Spring is all about color, of course, but I'm not married to the traditional pastels. Why say "oh, hey, here's a little color" when you can say "WOW, here's a lot of color!"? (I take the same stance on chocolate, cookies, and episodes of the greatest sitcom ever, Frasier.) I was feeling a little retro feminine flair when I made this outfit: pair the bold, fun skirt with a sweet pretty top (love that bow!). Like the rest of the fashion world, I'm obsessed with these metallic toed flats and darling little leather satchels. The earrings call back to both the chevron and geometric trend without being overly trendy and top it off with a chunky bracelet in a contrasting color. Since it's springtime, you'll obviously need an adorable pair of sunglasses too. I would pair this outfit with a classic trench, just in case you end up in some spring showers. Man, I just want to put this on right now. Why is there still snow on my stoop?

I'm also excited for...

Source: roadkillrescue.net via Jennifer on Pinterest

DIY! There's a great deck off the back of our apartment that I think will be perfect for any kind of outdoor projects, like spray painting. Secret confession: I have never spray painted anything. Not even once. What have I been doing with my life??? Every DIY blogger I follow has shown me how something s simple as a can of paint can transform a piece from bland to bold. I've had this project over here waiting on my Pinterest for 6 months. 6 whole months, and look what cute stuff I could be doing with a little lace and some paint? I'm definitely hoping (as I previously mentioned) to paint our new bookcase and after that, who knows! I'm still on the hunt for a dresser for my room; if I pick one up at the thrift store, it very well could end up getting a fresh coat of paint (there's a new Habitat Re/Store that just opened up the street AND a brand new Goodwill about to open, I'm going to be second-hand heaven!).

Speaking of the deck, I'm SO excited to finally make use of it! There are already some cafe lights strung through the railings, but there's so much more to be done. The deck might be half covered in snow now, but it could look like this:

Source: shelterness.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Wow! Upholstered furniture may not be in our future, but I definitely want at least a cute cafe table and chairs. Sitting outside on the weekends, writing blog posts in the sun? Hanging out with the lights on at night, enjoying the breeze with my roommate? Sounds just about perfect.

I can't wait for spring.

things to do: brewcity bruisers

When I was in college, the movie Whip It came out. The local roller derby team sponsored a premiere with free posters and such, so I figured I would check it out. I loved the movie (female friendships! awesome music!), but more than that, I was super intrigued by the sport. I wished I was tough enough to be a roller girl (for reference, I somehow managed to scrape my hand on the couch yesterday. The couch!), but the fact remained that I still hadn't seen a live bout. Well, no longer! Last night I checked off one of my year goals: I attended a roller derby bout! And it was awesome!

Warm-ups! Everybody was already blurry and this was the slowest part of the night!

The Brewcity Bruisers are Milwaukee's rollergirls; the league is made up of four teams, so really, it's two bouts for the price of one. Last night, we saw Crazy 8s vs. Maiden Milwaukee and Rushin' Rollettes vs. Shevil Knevils. Each bout has two periods, so we got plenty of halftime shows too! Halftime for the first bout was a dance performance by the Beerleaders; during the second, there were Racing Beers ala Miller Park's Racing Sausages (if you aren't familiar, well...it's a quintessentially Milwaukee thing, kind of hard to explain. Basically people dressed as anthropomorphic sausages (or in this case, beer bottles) race one another in a humorous fashion). The main halftime between the two bouts featured a bout by the Micro Bruisers, the youth derby league. Man, I wish I was that awesome when I was 8-17 - maybe I would be tougher today if I'd been doing derby instead of whatever it was I was actually doing (reading, probably, or theater. Both worthy hobbies, but not lending to athletic prowess).

For an $18 at the door/$15 in advance (or with a promo - K and I got a discount for bringing nonperishable items for a food drive) ticket price, you get an awful lot of bang for your buck. There was a communist lime cheering on one team, beerleaders slingshotting t-shirts into the cheap seats, and rollergirls going flying into the crowd seated around the track (K and I decided to stay off the ground level in some real seats for our first outing). If you're not familiar with the rules of the sport, don't worry! The announcers give a lot of information in their play-by-plays, and it's really not hard to pick up on the basics. Even if you aren't sure what's going on, it's always exciting to watch!

K and I came home with the urge to make our way to the local roller rink to strap on some skates ourselves (for some much slower, hopefully less hip checking fun), and are definitely planning to hit the next bout on March 9th - if you're in the Milwaukee area, put it on your calendar now and prepare for some high-speed fun!

home improvement: writing nook

This weekend, I added another room to our apartment. It didn't take any construction permits (and trust me, you don't want to see me handling power tools) or even good ol' fashioned magic - just some simple rearranging! I even did it all by myself to surprise my lovely roomie when she came home from work. The cat mostly got in the way.

 

From the first time we saw our apartment, I was brainstorming how we could set up the slightly odd living room. The illustration below will show you what I mean! The previous tenants had their TV blocking the front nook with the couch against the back wall, leaving the entire nook empty and useless (I think they put a litter box back there? Whatever.)

Man, how long has it been since I did an MS Paint illustration of something? ...not long enough, you say?

 

Look at all that wasted space in question mark land! I wasn't about to let a perfectly good nook go to waste. My plan was to put the TV on the back wall and stagger the couch in the middle, leaving enough room to access the nook. I put my desk back there as a kind of console table. Which was cute, but not really functional. So the wheels in my head started turning around and around, like they do. I eyed up the desk. And I eyed up the wall. I'm not especially gifted in spatial reasoning, but I was Pretty Darn Sure that the desk would justtttt fit alongside the outside wall.

 

In a surprise boon, I got some free furniture from my mom's newlywed boss (mazel tov!), and the new bookcase I brought home was just the motivation necessary to do a little switcheroo. Switch switch it went, and suddenly, we had a writing nook/office where naught but "behind the couch" was before!

 

 

I have so many plans for this nook; there's a decorative craft project I'll hopefully be undertaking soon, and I'd love to brighten the space up with more art (Belle is lonely!). Once the weather gets warmer, I plan on repainting the bookcase, so I'll have to start pinning ideas for that! (Right now I'm sort of feeling ombre on the inside? Maybe a stencil? Anything goes!) Obviously we have to decide what sort of things we're going to keep on the shelf - leaning towards more decorative, since just out of sight there are three massive bookcases double-shelved with books with more books in the built-ins AND an entirely separate shelf K is keeping in her room. Maybe I can put some of my pretty coffee table books out (they were banished from the proper shelves for being non-regulation size).

Here's a close-up of the bookcase:

It's a cute pale blue in real life, but it has a few dings (probably from when SOMEONE was trying to haul it in and out of the back of a Nissan Versa...oops) so refinishing is on the list. Oh, and up on top is a peek at an easy and quick "project" - I framed a page from my alma mater's calendar. This one is of the old-fashioned mailboxes student receive their mail in. Old-timey, black and white, a secret personal connection, AND free? Sounds like a winner to me!

As always, pics are from Instagram. Follow me there to see it all in real time!

rec: challenge accepted

This is probably brand new shocking information for most of you, but I have a little bit of a procrastination problem. One only has to take a look at my history of blog posting (or dish-doing...) to realize the sad truth. I'm a procrastinator. I put stuff off, then I feel guilty for putting stuff off, and then I put stuff off more because I feel guilty about it and I don't want to face it, and et cetra et cetra the vicious cycle continues. I know a lot of folks have the same problem (especially internet folks - big ups to Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, all of you beautiful timesucks), and I'm happy to say that I can recommend a website that's helped me a lot:

 

 

Challenge Accepted/getyedone.com is awesome. The concept: earn EXP for completing tasks and level up, just like you would do in a role-playing game. It seems simple, but for me, at least, it really works! The points don't "mean" anything, but having a tangible reward (seeing the points add up and getting to a new level) is super motivating for me. Suddenly, cleaning the bathroom doesn't just get me a clean bathroom - it gets me points! Much like an arcade, where many hours and many quarters would net you enough tickets to receive some plastic trinket that you could probably buy for a single quarter, it's not really the prize that motivates you; it's the escalating success and the feeling of accomplishment.

 

The site is also super intuitive and easy to use. There are three nested categories: Tasks, Quests, and Odysseys. You can do a solitary task list or create a sweeping plan with multiple layers. Personally, I have a bit of a mix; I have a "Chores" Quest to which I'm constantly adding tasks. I also have a "House Snark" Odyssey with separate quests for each room/DIY projects/etc. so I can keep running track of things that I want to do. I have a quest for writing that rewards me every time I get another thousand words done (I also get points for making blog posts, which might explain the upturn...), one for fun so I can still reap the rewards of succeeding at recreational tasks like beating Super Mario for Wii, one for beauty/fashion since I get lazy and forget how much I like doing little things to stay fabulous (I got points for getting my bangs, and this week I get points for wearing makeup everyday). Basically, the possibilities are endless! You can categorize each task with a "skill" or "attribute" (most of mine fall under "Cleansing," "Adulting," "Wordsmithing," and "Drudgery") but it's optional. You also get to decide the level of difficulty of each task, and you'll be awarded points accordingly.

 

There are still a lot of exciting things coming down the pipeline; I follow the creators' Tumblr, and I'm pumped for a lot of the upcoming changes (especially an expanded social system). It's both interesting and cool to be getting into a site that's still so new; I was one of the first 600 people to sign up, I believe, and they've already blown past 1000 and are still growing. I highly recommend checking the site out; if you're a nerd who tends to put off everyday tasks but could grind for hours to get your character levelled up, it's practically mandatory.

Now if you excuse me, I need to go check off "write blog post"!

bangarang

Once again, the cat was out of the bag on instagram before I came to announce it here...

I got bangs! Also had my hair colored, but really the bangs are the big news. I've never had bangs before in my whole entire life. But I've been wanting to do something different with my hair/look, and some thick blunt bangs were always something that I'd yearned for. Call me a hipster, but there's something about a fringe of hair just brushing the tops of chunky black frames that makes me say "brava!" (The color is more of a deep red in person, and it should lighten up in the next week or so.)

With bonus Historical Disney Belle print in the background

I love them! It's going to be a bit of an adjustment for me, since I need to blow dry them straight and I usually just let my hair air dry with...pretty much no input from me. It does what it wants! But I'm willing to give it a go for the sake of fashion. Also on the table is the products I use in my hair. I asked my stylist about my shampoo/conditioner woes and I got a wrinkled nose in response to the brand I'm currently using. Obviously, they'd like to promote their own products, but I do think it might be time to bite the bullet and buy something salon-quality. I have notoriously uncooperative hair, which somehow is always an inch away from being dried out AND an inch away from looking slimy and weighed down fresh out of the shower. I'm also interested in trying a product without sulfates and parabens. Right now, I think I'll probably stop by the salon and pick up travel-sized versions of the products the stylist recommended to try out - but I'd love any suggestions you guys might have (especially if your hair is a ridiculous prima donna like mine).

What do you use in your hair? What was your last big change-up?