I Loved, I Pinned

F's out of town this week, and when he's out of town, he knows what to expect when he gets back: that I will have rearranged and redecorated at least some part of the apartment. That's why beautiful interiors and exteriors have consumed my internet searching and obsessive pinning (what, you don't obsessively pin?) lately. Here are just of the some spaces I'm currently coveting, for their pops of pink (I'm slowly but surely becoming a pink girl, don't know when that happened), their bright airy feel, their cozy or striking textiles, or their playful organization.

Image credits: Pink exterior | Airy living room | Wintery bedroom | Playful dining room | Covetable kitchen | Colorful book-loving living room. All can be found on my Pinterest

Travel Thursdays: Eye Candy in Tent Form

Camping is not exactly my idea of fun (I'm not really a fan of nature if it doesn't involve sand, some waves, and a cold drink), but if Micha came home with one of these FieldCandy tents, he just might be able to convince me to rough it for a weekend outdoors with him...

How great would it be to bust out one of these babies in the middle of a campsite and make everyone else around jealous?

Which one's your favorite? I'm torn between the kissing couple and the your-momma joke one.

Eye candy tents by FieldCandy via Travevlettes

A Hilarious Art Project for the Horror Movie Lover

So, Nicole and I are mildly obsessed with horror movies, we've admitted it. If you are, too (or hey, even if you aren't but have enjoyed a good stabfest once or twice in your life), I'm pretty sure you'll get as big a kick out of this photography project as I did. By photographer Federico Chiesa, it's a series of photographs imagining where movie villains are now--stabbings, shootings, and oh yeah, immortality later. I nearly died looking at them all, made even better when paired with the captions. So if you're not a horror movie fan, or if you're squeamish, forgive my indulgence and skip on to our next colorful post--I just couldn't resist! But if you are, check them out below. My favorite goes without saying:

"After being trapped for most of their ghostly eternity in the snow bound Overlook hotel, even the most mundane tasks are almost impossible for the terribly maladjusted Grady twins."

And my second favorite, due in large part to the oh-so-apropos caption (although honestly, it was hard to choose because they're all just too frickin good!):

"After surviving multiple machete wounds, axe blows, being buried alive, and a lightning strike, Jason Voorhees' crushing medical debt and inability to just lay down and die forces him into poverty and life on the streets."

Photography by Federico Chiesa, styling by Carolina Trotta, via ManMade DIY

Berlin Love: Kastanienallee and Beyond

I  meant to start a Berlin Love series of posts a long time ago to work on my photography skills, but that seemed to fade away quickly when our camera lens decided to crap out on us. But now he's back and so is this perhaps semi-regular series!

This edition of random city snapshots is from the area around Mauerpark and Kastanienallee in a nearby area of our neighborhood, Prenzlauer Berg. The perfect location for a laid-back Sunday afternoon beer and eavesdropping on English-speaking tourists and residents.

Hefeweizens outdoors at Cafe Schwarzsauer (If the weather allows, we make sure to sit outside here since it's a smoking bar. Yuck.)

Neon spots in the middle of a construction mess

Cafe Schwarzsauer

April buds

Prater Biergarten | Berlin wall remnants at Mauerpark

Mauerpark flea market and bear pit (sans karaoke still) from above

TV tower | Gleimstraße tunnel

Gleimstraße cherry blossoms (you can see more about these awesome cherry blossom trees here!)

Screw Kaffee und Kuchen, we're all about beer and cake in this household

Nameless bar basement

Inspired By...

...bright, geometrical spring tiles that are totally swoonworthy and, conveniently, would fit perfectly in my Miami digs.

Available by Popham Design

...words to smile about in a font and color combo that's lovely enough to frame anywhere.

Available by Ship & Shape

...a succulent garden for my bike. I can't think of a more perfect--or adorable!--spring-y, outdoor accessory!

Available by Wearable Planter

...probably the most beautiful (if most nausea-inducing, for the squeamish among us) site for a movie theatre ever. I mean, it's on the water! I want to go now.

Designed by Ole Scheeren, Photo by Piyatat Hemmatat

Image credits: Spring tiles by Popham Design via Design*Sponge | Longtime Sunshine art print by Ship & Shape via You Are My Fave | Bike planters by Wearable Planter via ManMade DIY | Floating movie theatre via Black Eiffel 

Sidebar Spruce-up

So I did a little work on prettifying the blog this weekend that I just wanted to quickly show off. You see the sidebar over there on the right? Look how much more fun and colorful it is now! I'm loving it. Here's a little screenshot for posterity, but if you're reading in a reader, come by and check it out today!

We needed some new buttons and I'm super happy with the ones I found on Etsy. I bought these from Twenty Three Oh One! after quite a bit of searching and I'd highly recommend her if you're looking for something similar. Not only did she send super clear instructions for installing the buttons (I even learned a few new shortcuts), but she did it really quickly and -- the best part -- I got to specify the exact colors I wanted, instead of having to pick from only pre-set options. That sealed the deal for me because I knew that we needed some bright pink and chartreuse on the blog to accurately represent Nat's and my love for color. (Fun side note: I totally ordered chartreuse icons for Natalie before she posted about her new file cabinet. If you didn't believe in twin psychic powers before, you probably should rethink it...)

The new picture of Nat and me on the side is clickable and the About Us page will be ready soon, but in the meantime, you can already click on the The Hive icon below it. Have you heard of this first European blogger's conference? I signed up immediately, since it's in Berlin, and can't wait to meet everyone there!

So those are our newest colorful changes. I'm sure we'll have some more in the future but for now, I keep coming back to our new sidebar eye candy and smiling at it.

My Weekend in Pictures

This weekend was about one thing for me: the South Beach triathlon I competed in on Sunday! (And of course, hanging with the kittens.)

Saturday: race packet pick-up and pre-race jitters!

Distracting myself the night before by cleaning and doing laundry--these two didn't help any.

Sunday morning: sunrise on the walk to the starting line

Ready to start (I hope)!

Sunrise over the huge wave of swimmers. I'm in there somewhere. (So is F's thumb, covering the left side camera lens.)

Finished! And, quite frankly, about ready to fall over. Of course, then I had to bike home...

This little guy was excited I finished the race and came home. (And how cute is that chubby striped belly?!)

As wiped out as I was from a long day, obviously.

- Saturday was pre-race day for me, pre-travel day for F (he was leaving Sunday afternoon for a week on business). So basically, we ran errands and I cleaned to distract and de-stress myself. Cleaning can be oddly therapeutic for me when I'm stressed, if that makes any sense at all. Of course, the kittens thought I was just piling things around the apartment for them to chew or lie down on. But who could get mad at those cute faces (or at those giant kitten eyes)? 

We also headed down to the beach in the mid-afternoon to pick out my race packet and see the starting line and the bike set-up. Which calmed me down in terms of knowing where everything was and what lay ahead of me, but freaked me out in terms of the race was finally here!

- Sunday was...drumroll please...race day! The event started at 6:30, but my age group wave didn't start until 8:10, so we left the house, me on the bike and F on the scooter as my guided escort, around 6:20. After setting up my bike, we all walked down the beach to the starting line just as the sun was starting to come into view over the beach (not a bad morning walk, all in all). Then there was a lot of waiting as alllllll the other waves went in the water before mine, the third to last one. (Which left a lot of time for pre-race nervousness, let me tell you!) But soon enough, my time came and I started the 1/2 mile swim, 19 mile bike, 4 mile run race. It was hard, it was hot, but it was super fun and I'm glad I did it! Immediately afterwards, I pretty much wanted to be carried or wheelchaired home my legs hurt so bad (although I wasn't so lucky--I still had to bike home! If only I knew how to drive a scooter, we could've switched...). But once home, F had to leave for the airport, so the kittens and I turned on Netflix to catch up on our past Mad Men episodes, passed out for a while, and lazed around for the rest of the day. It was great. Now I'm just hoping I can stand up long enough to make it through work today.

And how was your weekend? Anything quite as fun (or quite as tiring)? Thanks for indulging my tri tales and my trillionth kitten picture of the week!