Melificent

Please Join Team Melificent!

Credit: Flickr User Rayoom

…I just might give you cupcakes…

As most of you know, I work with therapeutic foster children as my full-time job. However, I used to (& still occasionally) work with autistic children. My time teaching them and being a part of their lives was a very special time for me and eventually, I would love to work with the population again in some shape or form. Aside from my personal experience, I also know many brave mothers (biological and foster) of children with autism that have shown to me what unconditional love and sacrifice really are. For these reasons and many more, I dedicate almost all of my charity work to Autism Speaks and this year will not be any different.

Well, maybe a little. Rather than doing the Broward Walk, I will be participating in the Miami 2011 Walk Now for Autism Speaks event, which will take place on Sunday, February 27th in Key Biscayne. I’d love to raise as much money as possible for the cause as well as get a large group to walk with me the day of. I’ve been lucky enough to receive very generous donations in the past, but hope that the amount of walkers can compete with those donations this time around! I am planning on making team shirts for us as well if enough people show interest.

So if you are one of those interested parties, please visit my team page: Team Melificent.
On that page, you can join the team as well as make a donation.

Weekend Highlights

It’s October, everyone!!!!

Why so excited? Well, aside from all the birthdays  & events I have lined up this month, it means it is HALLOWEEN! As long as I can remember, Halloween has been my favorite holiday. I think it was the whole be someone else aspect that really made it so appealing. I also have always loved playing dress up, so it’s right up my alley. I generally start looking for costume ideas around August and have made a decision by September. This year, I picked my costume relatively early and am so excited to see it come together.

But what I was just as excited for this year was decorating a house! In our old apartment, I was definitely limited in what I could do decor-wise and usually just settled for a hanging door sign. Well, limited decorations no longer! The second the calendar fell on October 1st, I began shopping and decorating. By the time Sunday rolled around, our house was in full blown ghoul mode. Unfortunately, it seems like we are the only house in the neighborhood that has gone spooky – I’m really hoping that will change as the month continues because I’d hate to live in an area where people don’t celebrate such a fun holiday.

What do you guys think of Halloween? How do you decorate?

Bush is Back!

Unless you just stumbled on this blog by chance or live on the planet Mars, you know that I traveled to Los Angeles to see Bush’s first show together in 8 years at the Epicenter Festival. I won a pair of tickets on Twitter and the rest is history. What you may not know, however, is that I was able to watch the entire set from on the stage!

Left to right: Melificent, Christine & Stephanie

The story is one you hear of in fairy tales, most definitely not in real, day-to-day life and I still can’t believe how all the pieces fell perfectly into place. But they did. And it all began with one of my many silly fangirl dreams. I was at Bush’s first show with my Twitter buddy, Christine, and Gavin decided to have us watch it from the stage! There were a lot of other ridiculous dream-like details such as having to run backstage and change into “stage outfits,” but I left those out when I decided to post about the dream on Twitter and address it to Gavin himself. I went about my business as usual, when I randomly checked Twitter during a work meeting. I was almost knocked off my chair when I saw that Gavin had replied to my tweet with a simple, “duly noted.” Shortly after, he announced a contest and the grand prize was watching their set at Epicenter from…wait for it…ONSTAGE.

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Musings

Yes, everyone, I am back!

I can’t lie and say that I am happy to be back though – I had such a great time in Southern California, I really wish my time there didn’t go so quickly. I always have a hard time when I need to come home from California trips, I can definitely see myself living there pretty happily. Unfortunately, it is not in the cards so I am satisfied to have plenty of friends (and family) allowing frequent visits to be easy and enjoyable.

The first thing that made this particular trip enjoyable was my sudden and random attainment of a pair of Muse tickets. Those of you that know me well, know that I have been aching to see them live for ages. Sure, I saw them open for U2 in Tampa last year, but it only served as a tease. Unfortunately, the band never makes its way near Florida – not that that has stopped me in the past from trying to secure tickets in other cities such as Boston or New York. However, the tickets always sold out immediately, leaving me to think that it was just not in the cards for me to see Muse headlining their own show.
So you can imagine my surprise when a friend from The Knot voiced via Twitter that she could no longer go to a Muse show in Anaheim the day I arrived in Los Angeles. In fact, she just so happened to tweet about it the same day that I found out they would be playing a show while I was there (they were actually playing several). I channeled my inner John Locke and took it to be destiny. They were meant to be mine!

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Rock-cation!

Tomorrow I head out to LA with my buddy, Bonnie, to see one of our favorite 90’s bands, Bush, play their first show together since 2002. I can hardly contain my excitement as I am not only seeing Rossdale and company, but also staying with old friends and meeting new ones: namely members of the Bush Army (I made the cute badges above for all of us to wear to the show)! It’s going to be a great few days, but that leaves the blog all by its lonesome until my return.

Thankfully, I was able to secure my first ever guest blogger and she is all sorts of wonderful! The lovely Terri will be posting on the blog starting tomorrow through Tuesday and I have complete and total faith that she will do an amazing job! In the meantime, make sure you check out her blogs: Terribull and Tampa Bay Style Online.

While I’m gone, I hope all of you behave as I plan not to. 😉
If you want to keep track of my west coast shenanigans, feel free to follow me on Twitter as I’m sure I will be as active as always, documenting the madness!