The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

I like strange adventures, and this one I had was one of the more interesting.

One of my best friends took a children's book class in college and was assigned to read The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward. This friend of mine grew up in New Jersey and crossed the George Washington Bridge every time she went into New York City. She read the book but refused to believe the light house actually existed.

When she moved to the city after college, she wanted to figure out if the children's book was inspired by fact. She found the Little Red Lighthouse.

When I went to visit, E.D. told me her story about the book and the lighthouse. She wanted to take me to the lighthouse. I agreed on one condition: we would go read the book first.

Ikea Ferry

I love IKEA. It's one of the best places to get random cheap stuff. I love it so much I try to go there every chance I get. Unfortunately, I live in St. Louis -- a tragic city that is desperately in need of an IKEA. So... when I went to visit friends in NYC, I secretly  hoped we would get to go to IKEA. I was in luck. My friend needed a new bed and asked me if I wanted to go wit her.

There are multiple IKEAs in the NYC area. My friend, MG, lives on Manhattan. She told me there's a ferry from the piers to IKEA Brooklyn and we would take the ferry.

An IKEA FERRY? Who has ever heard of such a thing?! We walked to the docks and I managed to snap some pictures of the boats there. MG really liked this little tug boat:

Look how small it is compared to the neighboring boats!

We walked towards Pier 11 and waited for the ferry. I really liked these wooden columns bound together with metal wires. I also really liked the view from the docks.

The ride over was pleasant too. We saw cranes that reminded us of giraffes:

a Snapple plant:

the Statue of Liberty in the distance:

more tugboats:

and a fantastic view of the city:

We ended up eating dinner there and then shopping until it closed. During dinner, I saw a bunch of school buses. I'm not sure why, but it made me excited and I had to take a picture:

I told MG that she needs to take the Ikea Ferry at least every month. :)  She agreed.

<3
Hao

Details

I went to NYC last weekend and visited two of my friends and saw three more. It was awesome and wonderful.  At the end of my journey, I took the A line from the natural history museum stop to 125 to catch a bus that would take me to laguardia. As I was waiting for my subway train to come, I noticed lots of details about the station I liked.

NYC subway stations are often filled with cool details like this. Usually, I didn't bother taking pictures, but this little guy made me take out my camera so I could capture him for my cat loving friends:

Isn't he adorable?

Stegosaurus Pillow

About a month ago, I was over at my boyfriend's place. His roommate was hosting a movie night. One of the movies we watched was Labyrinth. I had never seen it before and decided it was weird and strange and wasn't really sure how I felt about it. Everyone there obsessed over David Bowie. By the end of the movie, I decided it was amusing enough.

Anyway, in one of the scenes, the main character flopped onto her bed and my boyfriend's roommate noticed she had a stegosaurus shaped PILLOW. He yelled at my boyfriend, "That's what we need! One of those!" They decided then and there that they needed something like it for their living room. I told them I could try to find a way to get them one... somehow.

After much searching online, I finally gave up and decided to make my own pillow for them.

I drew a large stegosaurus on paper and cut it out. Then, I took two pieces of  blue felt and pinned the paper on the felt. I cut about 1-2 cm around the paper, leaving room to sew later. I also cut out some circles for decoration and sewed the circles onto the felt. I took the two pieces of stegosaurus shaped felt with circles and stacked the together circle side in and sewed about 1 cm around, leaving a little. Then I flipped it right side out (through the bit that was left -- it was difficult) and stuffed it. The last bit of sewing was done by hand. All in all, it took me 4 hours: between 11 pm and 3 am. :D

Here is a picture of the stegosaurus on a couch:

And a picture of my boyfriend's roommate and his sister. She's pretending to bite him. He's ignoring her to hug the pillow. :D I'm not sure what he's looking at. o.O;

I am proud.

<3
Hao

St. Louis Renaissance Faire

I meant to post this earlier, but I got busy.

Early in June, my friends and I went to the Greater St. Louis Area Renaissance Faire. It was lots of fun. We saw musical performers (who were willing to teach),

jugglers,

 and acrobats:

 I got to see a guy I saw at the Pirate Festival perform again. Actually, we saw him twice. :) He put himself through a tennis racket...

and then my friend tried to do the same. Being really tiny, she had a very easy time of it... so to make her life more challenging, she tried to JUMP through the thing... and ended up with a dent on her nose...(see the band-aid?) It's now (after almost two months) a not too noticeable scar.

During one of the performances, an inchworm landed on me. My boyfriend played with it and tried to eat it:

However, my favorite part was the jousting. Last year, my roommate and I saw the jousting at around noon. We sat on the evil side and I screamed "to the death" way too much. Sadly, there was no fake bloodshed. This time, we went to the last show of the day and we saw horses clashing, people falling, back stabbing, and bloodshed. My only complaint? The good guy won. >.<

What a great way to end a day.

<3
Hao

Live Action Angry Birds

One of my favorite stores in St. Louis is Star Clipper -- the local comic book and random things store. I saw it from the froyo place across the street two years ago and over the last year or so I've become a huge fan of the place.

Recently, for the month of July, the star clipper people decided to put together a live action Angry Birds Shooting Gallery in the back where they often have nifty art.

I heard it opened on a saturday, so I went there early in the morning, hoping to shoot some angry birds at evil green plush pigs. They weren't ready yet. I left and went back twice the same day. On my third try, they said I could be a beta-shooter and held out a slingshot for me and handed me a yellow angry bird. The set up was simple: cardboard boxes painted random colors and pretty silver paper so you could see what you were hitting. People would hold the slingshot for you and you could pull back and fire.

Unfortunately, they didn't have pigs in stock, so they made some out of green trash bags. They even drew faces on the pig.

A little girl in pink with her mother showed up and the girl was very into the game. Some other kids also dropped by. My boyfriend and I were there for about 3 hours helping and playing:

It was awesome. :)

<3
Hao

Paper Crane Earrings

Since senior year of college, when my friend dragged me to get my ears pierced, I've been collecting earrings. I have blue ones (3 different pairs in 3 different shades), green ones, purple ones, and more. They all tend to dangle (with the exception of the squishy spikey studs I have) and I love them all. Oddly, I never seemed to find the perfect pair of red earrings.

March 2009, I was dating a boy from Portland and when I visited his city, I came across some paper crane earrings. They were 20-30 dollars -- way out of my price range. Since then, I've coveted paper crane earrings.

Last summer, my friend "Gator" and I went to the St Louis open studios. I saw some jewelry made from bike chains and other interesting mechanical pieces. Like the paper cranes, I decided they were too expensive.

Recently, a friend dragged me to JoAnn Fabric to help him pick out buttons for a pouch. There, I saw an earring kit, and on a whim, bought it and some pliers.

After much trial and error, I made my long-coveted red, bike chain, paper crane earrings:

<3
Hao

PIE-venture!

I have a friend who LOVES pie. And I really do mean LOVE pie. Recently, he heard from his mother that there is an amazing pie place about 40 minutes outside of St Louis with good country food and famous, travel network worthy pie.

With much gusto, my friend gathered many of us on a pie-venture. We drove for 40  minutes and arrived at a dinky little town called Kimmswick, Missouri. The pie place was definitely the largest structure in the area. And it was painted blue -- rather appropriate since it was called the Blue Owl:

Botanical Gardens and Jumping. Lots of Jumping.

So early April, I went to the botanical gardens with my friends.

We climbed trees:

I pretended to be the three anti-evil monkeys:

And then we did lots of jumping. I really like this picture:

And that was that.

I'm fond of the botanical gardens. :)

Free Ice Cream Day!

Yesterday was FREE ICE CREAM DAY  at Ben and Jerry's!

My friends and I went and got a free ice cream cone! I got the coffee coffee buzz buzz buzz and it was super tasty!

We got there around 6:10 and the line wasn't long yet, so I decided to devour my ice cream and stand in line again! :D

I then got the strawberry cheesecake. It was yummy too. I offered a bite to a friend and he took most of the ice cream and then laughed at me. T.T by then, the line had gotten really long and I didn't want to stand in line again. It would've been REALLY SAD but it was too funny.

Sorry the post is boring... but it made me happy so i wanted to share.

<3
Hao