Fav things of 2010

Well, 2010 is coming to a close. It’s probably been one of my best and worst years yet. (Worst because this year has been pretty stressful!) However, many a good time was had and I discovered many new favorites. Here’s a list of some of them:

[Book: The Knife of Never Letting Go]

I love discovering new books and series, and while I just read this one in the past month, I’m still going to say it was my favorite to discover this year.

Todd grows up in Prentisstown, where everyone can hear each other's thoughts. There are no secrets, or so he believes. The book follows his journey of finding out what really happened in his town before he was born and how he tries to escape the aftermath of it.

The voice of the author, interesting aspects of the story, character relationships, and use of typography all made this book a really fun and enjoyable read. Unfortunately, I didn’t like the sequels as much, but I really really loved this book.

[Hobby: Learning guitar]

My favorite new hobby for the year was learning to play guitar.

I’ve always been pretty musical (I’ve played piano since I was 5) so it’s been pretty easy to pick it up. I only have one song memorized…but I’m able to sight read a bunch more! Including “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree.”

[TV Show: Modern Family]

This show. I haven’t found anyone who’s watched this show at least once and doesn’t love it.

Brent just bought me the Season 1 DVD for Christmas and it’s been awesome watching them all back. If you haven’t seen this show, please watch it asap!! You can read more of what I think about Modern Fam here.

[Movie: Avatar]

I was going to say HP7 Part 1, but I did not see HP7 three times in theaters, two of those times in IMAX 3-D. And while HP7 hasn’t come out on DVD yet, I think ordering Avatar on Amazon as soon as I could, realizing I got Blu-ray by mistake, and making a mad rush to Wal-Mart to buy the correct DVD at 10:00 at night on a school night when my car is parked almost a mile away from my dorm is saying something.

[Place to visit: Rittenhouse Square]

(via)

While visiting Brent one day this fall, we decided to spend the day in Philly. We looked online for fun, cheap things to do, and Rittenhouse Square came up.

We found it easily, and it was so pretty. I love little parks inside of cities, and this one was great. The weather was a beautiful fall day, there were tons of people and dogs to watch, and many benches and patches of grass to sit on.

It was a really fun and relaxing afternoon. I only wish I’d brought my camera!

[Music: Anything by Greg Laswell]

2010 will always go down as the year I discovered the music love of my life, Greg Laswell.

One of the main reasons I wanted to learn how to play guitar was so I could play his songs. Brent and I saw him in Philly and really want to see him again. Love love love. Here’s one of his best songs:

[Drink: Boxed Wine]

While I only had boxed wine once this year, I see it becoming very prominent in my future.

Courtesy of my always-classy roommate, Sarah.

[Pictures]

Lastly, I’ll wrap up the post with my favorite pictures and memories from this year. Have a safe and happy new year!

Christmas Card Help

So Shutterfly.com is doing a fun promotion just for bloggers: Blog about their awesome Christmas card collection, and get some of said Christmas cards fo free! Problem is, I need your help picking which one is best.

In order to help me pick, I’ll provide you with some sample pictures. I figured I’d be nice and offer them up as family Christmas cards to my mom, so these are pictures of my family.

While I’d love to use this picture,

Mom would probably want to use something more along these lines…

Or perhaps a new one taken in winter, and not summer, clothes. You get the idea.

Option # 1: Pretty Poinsettia

I love the little designs at the bottom and the fact that it opens up.

Option #2: Peppermint Gift Wrap

Cute idea with the stripes. I also like the font.

Option #3: Confetti Flowers

I love the little flower things. And the colorful “Merry Christmas.”

Option #4: Elegant Cranberry Damask

I love me some damask. And the cursive. And the cute kids. But they don’t come with the card.

Help me out! Which design do you like best? Also, if you’re a blogger, here’s the link to the promotion!

Best day ever.

This is why today rocks.

1. Chicken Finger Thursday

Every Thursday, it’s become a tradition for the caf to serve chicken tenders, mac n cheese, and waffle fries for lunch, or as it’s affectionately called, “Chicken Finger Thursday.”

Today, my friends, was Chicken Finger Thursday.

2.  No PR class

As Emily can attest, our PR class is a joke. Bah! I strongly dislike it a lot.

Today, my friends, we did not have PR class.

This is what Happy Alyssa looks like.

3. Thanksgiving Dinner

Each year before Thanksgiving, the cafeteria holds a Thanksgiving dinner for the students, where professors and faculty serve the students turkey and biscuits and other stuff I don’t particularly like but will eat because I know it would make my mom happy.

Also, warm apple cider.

4. Camelot…fo free.

One of the perks of my awesome internship (which I love and will miss dearly when I leave in a couple weeks) is that we’re located right beside a community theater, which loves to give us free tix to their shows. Sooo the girls of Del 206 and our friend Carrie are going to go see Camelot tonight, fo free! I have no idea if this is a good or bad musical, but I don’t currrr, cuz it’s free!!!!

5. HP 7.1

And finally, as the world knows (or they should), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 comes out tonight at midnight.

SO.FREAKING.EXCITED.

For the comments: What do you think of Chicken Finger Thursdays? What do you think of warm apple cider? Have you ever seen Camelot? Did you like it?  Are you seeing HP tonight? How much did I embarrass myself with that last picture?

And Then There Were None

So, it’s almost November. As I have zero posts so far for October (…whoops!), I figured it was ’bout that time. Here’s what’s been keeping me busy this semester.

And Then There Were None is a play based off Agatha Christie’s novel Ten Little Indians. It’s full of murder and mystery and tinned tongue and British accents which = good times.

The show has really been a blast; the director is one of my bff’s, a lot of good friends are in the show (and I made some new friends/got closer to old ones), and it’s been fun to play a lead!

Here are some of my favorite backstage looking-suspicious pics from the show. Enjoy!

Backstage with the lovely Eric, playing Justice Wargrave

Matt, who plays Blore, and Eric. Love this one.

Me and  Jamie, the director

Me as Vera Claythorne, looking suspicious!

Suspicious…with a drink in hand!

Even more suspicious!

Suspicious…again!

The set…with many suspicious people!!

I just like this one cuz it shows off my gorg dress.

This weekend is the last full weekend, then one more show next weekend. Fun times!

To see what else I’ve been up to, check out the Del 206 blog!

Great Scott! I finally saw Back to the Future.

I know I’m way behind on this one (read: 25 years), but hopefully the nostalgic factor will entice you to keep reading.

This post is going to be about Back to the Future, a franchise I had never seen before Monday, September 13 (and 14 and 15), 2010.

I don’t know how this happened; it wasn’t held back from me intentionally and I had nothing against it. I guess the opportunity just never presented itself.

(I had ridden the ride at Disneyworld, if that counts for anything.)

When bff Sean found out I had never seen any of the movies, he promptly picked his jaw up off the floor and declared we would have a marathon-watching.

Monday, Sept. 13: Back to the Future

 Oh my goodness, the campy-ness. I loved it. It seems like the writers just couldn’t help sticking in call-backs to earlier moments in the movie whenever they could, and then putting even more call-backs to the previous call-backs. Seriously, the whole movie is just a freaking circle that just keeps coming back on itself. I loved it.

Tuesday, Sept. 14: Back to the Future Part II

Sigh. This movie. Not quite there. I think this franchise is at it’s best when it goes for the time joke (over and over and over again), and Part II couldn’t really do that…since it was set in the future. #fail

One thing I did love was just how wrong the writers were about the future. If only we would have the technology of flying cars and self-adjusting jackets in 5 years. Sigh.

Wednesday, Sept. 15: Back to the Future Part III

First of all, I love how the movie starts with the scene we’ve seen about 5 different times from different angles: Marty’s attempt to leave 1955 during the storm. They obviously didn’t take into account the 20-something college student who never saw the movies watching all three back-to-back and remembering where we left off. #fail

All in all though, this movie was great. They went into the past again (#win) and were thus able to make time joke on top of time joke on top of time joke, even continuing jokes from the first movie. So great.

With this one, it seemed like the writers had a game going trying to make viewers think “Oh my god, I know how this is going to end” as many times as they could, as early in the movie as they could.  I think I had the thought about 6 times, although credit goes to the writers to making me think of a different conclusion each time.

In conclusion, I loved the series. So much campy, cheesy, punny, oh-my-god-they’re-going-for-that-joke-again awesomeness.

…And next up: Indiana Jones.

For the comments: How do you feel about Back to the Future? What series do you love that I need to see?

Moved in!

Well, I’m all moved into college again! I’m thinking this is going to be the best year yet. Why? Read:

1. Senior Year
Well, it’s my senior year of college. Yeah. That went fast. Only one more year of pretending to be responsible until I actually have to be.

I have very mixed feelings about this year. On the one hand, I’m pretty nervous about the actually-graduating thing. On the other hand, this year is going to be amazing. I’m living in a suite with 3 of my bffs, we’ve been friends since freshmen year.

*BLOG PLUG AHEAD* Emily of SplendidEm is one of my roommates, and we decided to start a joint blog about the adventures of our suite. Emily just made our first post, you should probably check it out.

http://del206.blogspot.com

2. New internship
In other news, I started my internship at a local magazine yesterday, and I had such a fun time. I had an internship over the summer where I learned a lot, but I didn’t have nearly as much fun as I did yesterday. I went to a couple photo shoots, proofread a little, wrote some copy, did a bunch of things. I really like the people I work with too, they’re really nice.

3. Hardly any classes
Since my internship counts for credits, I will only be taking 8 additional credits this semester. That’s two regular classes and two 1-credit classes. Yup. Easy peasy. And it seems like I won’t have too much homework either. Yay!

Happy new school year!

For the comments: If you’re in school, what are you looking forward to this year? Also, check out the new blog! http://del206.blogspot.com. Emily and I will love you forever.

Look what I did! Look what I did!

My mom picked up these shelves from a yard sale one day.

I knew I’d need them for my room this year, but they were this ugly shade of brown. Sooo, I went to Lowe’s and bought some blue spray paint and painted them!

I was going to just keep them like this, but I got an idea from this blog I read (she was actually painting a cabinet blue too) to put some paper down on the shelves. Finished product:

Voila!

Ps, it’s wrapping paper.

Bah ha ha ha.