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Each year, Charlie’s favorite shop, Tails in the City, has a Halloween parade and costume contest.   As you can imagine, this is one of my favorite events of the fall!

This year Charlie was a lion - and a very ferocious one at that!  It’s definitely the cutest costume he’s ever worn - it matches his fur perfectly.

I think the side view is the most adorable.  When he wagged his tail, the lion tail wagged too.

And here he is with his new friend Brady, who dressed up as a lobster.

What’s your most favorite fall activity?  And you dog-lovers out there, what is your pet going to dress up as for Halloween?

E.

{…Sentimentality alert…}

When I woke up this morning to do my daily check on EADL, I suddenly realized that the next post would be #500.  And I thought… wow - how lucky am I to be doing this?

Being a blogger, which started very innocently (as I’m sure most others will also tell you), has been such a rewarding part of my life.  I have made so many friends, many of whom blog right here on EAD Living and over on EAD Weddings.  And not only that, but I’m lucky enough to have formed relationships with many of ya’ll reading this.

EAD Living has been an awesome experience so far - it’s a completely different creative outlet from EAD Weddings and I can’t even tell you how much I enjoy reading the posts that the amazing women that are a part of this site create and the comments that you all leave.  As silly as it sounds, every little comment means the world to us bloggers!

So… I’ll just close by saying thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading EAD and being a part of our community. And here’s to more amazing times with you ahead!

xo,
E.

Hi ya’ll!  Gosh, I feel like I haven’t talked to you guys in forever.  If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I just returned from a two-week tour of the Baltic sea.  Here was our itinerary:

Sept 1-3 - Copenhagen
Sept 4 - At Sea
Sept 5 - Stockholm
Sept 6 - Helsinki
Sept 7-8 - St. Petersburg
Sept 9 - Tallin Estonia
Sept 10 - Gdynia Poland
Sept 11 - At Sea
Sept 12 - Oslo

I’m going to do a few recaps shortly, but here’s a few photo teasers until you get the real thing:

{Catherine’s Palace, St Petersburg}

{Stockholm}

{Peterhof fountains in St Petersburg}

{Overlooking Tallin, Estonia}

{Fredericksborg Castle, Copenhagen}

{Copenhagen}

Lots more to come!

xo,
E.

PS - In other news, who else is over the moon that it’s fall TV time?  I bawled (naturally) during The Biggest Loser and am absolutely in love with The Vampire Diaries, Melrose Place, and Glee.

If you’re like me, you hate standard greeting cards.  I can’t tell you how often I’ve stood in a Walgreen’s picking up card after card and *not* laughing.

Well Hard Cards is going to change all of that, because I have to tell ya’ll, these things are hilarious.

I have a boxed set of Hard Cards to give away to one of you!  To win, go to the Hard Cards website, click on Shop Cards, and comment below to let me know which card you think is the funniest.  :)  I’ll pick a random commenter on Friday at 12pm CT.

xo,
E.

EADW contributor Juel is stopping by EADL today to share her DIY chalkboard calendar, inspired by (who else) Martha!

{ image from Martha }

Anyone else get Martha’s daily emails? Well, I stored this one in my “collection” a while back and I’ve been excited to do it ever since. We were in serious need of a calendar for our new house and so I decided to give it a shot!

It was rather time consuming but the most difficult part was making the checkerboard. If I had just done a solid color it would have taken me like half an hour, most of which would be waiting for the paint to dry.

So…here’s my final product:

Now, I didn’t do it exactly the way Martha said to do it. Instead, there were some comments to her original directions that I followed instead. What I used:

For each paint color:
4 tsp acrylic paint
1/2 tsp unsanded tile grout

Other than that, I followed what Martha said and taped off the calendar, and put on several coats of each color. After the whole thing was done, I sanded it lightly, rubbed the whole thing with chalk, and then wiped it down with a damp cloth.

I love it! The best part is that you can use any color you’d like so there are lots of possibilities!

Have you tried to make your own chalkboard paint? How did it turn out?

When Feisty twittered about the House of Night series, I knew I had to grab the first one and check it out.  And I must admit, it’s pretty awesome.  Picture Harry Potter only slightly more grown-up and with vampires.

The Premise:  The book is set in present day Oklahoma, only in a reality where vampires exist.  You become a vampire not by being bitten, but by being chosen, or “marked”.  Zoey, a high-school student, is marked by the vampires and therefore is sent to the vampire school, the House of Night.  Hogwarts for vampires, if you will.

The first book in the series centers on Zoey finding her special vampire talents and meeting her new friends at the House of Night.  Zoey is a special fledgling vampire, who is going through the change far more quickly than her classmates, and who has attracted the attention of Erik, an upperclassman hottie.  That, in addition to her very unique talents, quickly make her the leader within her group of friends and also immediately earn her an adversary in Aphrodite, the leader of the ‘popular kids’.

My vote?  Read and love, as I did.  I can’t wait to read the rest of the series!

I am a sucker for “young adult” series such as Harry Potter, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and Twilight, so when I saw the Pretty Little Liars books I had to pick them up and check them out (er, voraciously complete them).

Premise: Junior High group of friends in affluent suburban Pennsylvania is traumatized when their leader, Alison, goes missing at a sleepover.  Fast forward to high school and someone calling themselves ’A’ who knows all of the group’s secrets AND what happened to Alison, begins stalking said group of friends.

I admit it, I’m addicted.  Sara Shepard does a fantastic job of building up each of the characters with a) motive, b) likability, and c) secrets and flaws.  The story is written in present-day, but flashbacks to times with Alison give hints into her disappearance and the circumstances that led up to it. 

Is Alison ‘A’?  Could she have been alive this whole time?  And if Alison isn’t ‘A’, how does A know all of their secrets and why is A stalking them?  We find this out over the series, which so far includes Pretty Little Liars, Flawless, Perfect, Unbelievable, Wicked, and the soon-to-come Killer.  I’ve read the first four and I can tell you that I’m going to rush to get Wicked after the ending in Unbelievable.

Verdict?  If you liked the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books, the Pretty Little Liars series will not disappoint!

The Feisty Tourist is making me nostalgic for travel photos. So I thought I’d share with all of you details from a trip to Hong Kong in February 2007.

Getting There: From Chicago there are two flight options to get to Hong Kong. First option: O’Hare to Tokyo (overnight) and Tokyo to Hong Kong (arrive morning). Second option (and my preferred): O’Hare to LAX (morning) and then to Hong Kong direct (arrive evening). I generally prefer arriving at destinations in the evening, and sleeping through the night so that I’m ready to go the next day - it also tends to reduce my jet lag. Upon arrival at the airport, there is an easy high-speed train into the city, which connects to the subway (the MTR).

Hotel: We stayed at the Four Seasons in Central, which was a great location. Kowloon is the tourist mecca in HK but Central is the business district and it’s also by all the ports so to ferry anywhere you want to go from Central. Plus, it’s a major MTR station for a couple of good lines. Hong Kong is crazy. You seriously have to go through 3 malls, down 16 escalators, up four ramps, and through 2 footbridges to get anywhere! It’s all connected above or below ground. We were right by one of the big malls, the IFC Mall.

Must Sees in Hong Kong

The Big Buddha: An aerial tram takes you on a glorious trip up to the Big Buddha, Nyong Ping Village, and Pin Lo Monastery. This was such a fun day trip and something I consider a can’t-miss for any trip to Hong Kong!

{Read the rest of this entry…}

I am a HUGE HUGE fan of Stephen White’s books (did I say HUGE?). So much so, that every few years I go back and read them all again, in sequence.  Stephen White is an author in the classic suspense tradition of John Sandford - and similar to Sandford’s Prey series, which by the way are also beyond fabulous, White’s books all center around one main character, Alan Gregory, a clinical psychologist in Boulder, CO.  Alan’s wife Lauren Crowder, a deputy district attorney in Boulder, his neighbor Adrienne, a urologist, his best friend Sam, a police detective, and his practice partner Diane carry significant storylines in all of the books as well.

A few things make these series of books one of my favorites (if not my favorite):

1) I love sequence and story lines.  Each of these characters has been a part of my entire fiction-life as an adult.  Each book builds upon the last.
2) The character of Alan Gregory is incredibly well-written.  He’s smart without being cocky, impulsive without being stupid, and completely relatable.  And on top of that, the supporting characters are so developed that they can (and do later in the series) carry a book on their own.
3) With Stephen White, it’s the little things, as well as the plot, that are important.  The way he describes the meals that Lauren and Alan are eating… Or the description of their dog’s beard after drinking water… Not a single detail is left unfinished and each nuance is carried through the storyline.

Now, before I delve into my review of Harm’s Way (which was actually the third Stephen White book I re-read this week, but is the oldest of the three hence my reviewing it first), I have to say one thing.  And it’s important.

Although the books are all written such that you can pick one up and not need to read the predecessor books to have the current book make sense, all of Stephen’s books are so great and their personal stories develop so well over the series that I can’t recommend enough that you READ THEM IN ORDER.  That means, start with Privileged Information and move on from there.

The other evening, I picked up my old paperback version of Harm’s Way.

As with most of White’s books, Harm’s Way’s plot centers around a crime that has been or will be committed that Alan, Sam, Lauren, or another character, must help solve.  In Harm’s Way, that unfortunate crime is the murder of Alan’s neighbor and friend and Adrienne’s husband, Peter.  Peter has a troubled past and at the behest of Adrienne and the request of Sam, who is investigating the case, Alan begins to put the pieces of Peter’s past together with the list of suspects in the present to solve the case. Soon Peter’s murder is wrapped up into two others and the police fear a serial killer is on the loose.

Because the victim is a friend, this book has a great deal of emotion and the grief that is felt is palpable, yet it doesn’t overpower the story and isn’t emotional in the sense of being distracting.  The focus in White’s books is always on the plot, which is fast-moving and concisely delivered.  I definitely rank this book as one of my favorites of the series.

This installment in the Alan Gregory series was written in 1997 - but picking it up Tuesday night and reading it through, it felt incredibly current (except perhaps for the lack of cell phones!).  Although White’s writing has obviously grown and matured over the years, the older books are still so strong.

I can’t recommend these books enough!  Has anyone else read the series (or the Prey series, which I also love)?

E.

Go check out today’s issue of Honeysuckle Life to read my travel journal from our trip to Ghana in December 2006.  Such an amazing country with wonderful people.

{The hubby and I with some new friends in Cape Coast, Ghana}