happy birthday, sammy pooh!

today is my sister's 24th birthday so i just wanted to take a minute and tell her happy birthday! so, happy birthday to the best sister a girl could ask for! thank you soOOOOOoooo much for my goofy nephew and my niece(who will be here any day now!)! you are such a good mommy and anyone can tell just by seeing how happy that sweet little boy of yours is. you've worked hard and definitely deserve all good things that come to you. i love you, my seeesterrr!

(taken at her baby shower on sunday. 9 months pregnant and still glowing and beautiful. i wanted photographic evidence showing the one time in our whole lives i've had a flatter stomach than her, haha)

this is how we roll

everyone and their friends have a "thing" you do when you hang out. some groups of friends watch sports together, others dress up and camp out days before certain vampire movies are released in theaters(none of mine, that's for sure. juuuuust kidding?? :). there are literally tons of things to do.

i'm pretty sure me and my co-worker friends have figured out our common denominator...

food.

not just food, but, specifically, eating food. it started off with beth's and the 12 egg challenge. after having a blast with that we decided we wanted to visit every restaurant in the seattle area(or at least within driving distance of the seattle area)that we had seen advertised on the food network and the travel channel.

next up was red mill burgers.



now, if you click that link and go to their site you will see that red mill burgers is home to "one of the 20 hamburgers you must eat before you die"according to oprah and gq magazine. i mean, if THEY say it's good, then it MUST be,right??(note:sarcasm)

on our way to red mill! like my new glasses??:


my fellow adventurers:
pattie and estelle


me and katie


not gonna lie, it definitely was some delicious food, but i still stand my ground that the best burger i've ever put in my mouth was/is at zayda buddy's in ballard. the onion rings are also supposedly the best ever in the universe of all onion rings that have existed, but the breading tasted like corn tortillas and that was...well, weird.i do give them a high five for their milkshakes though. mmmmmmmmmm. ask anyone, i'm not a huge ice cream/milkshake fan, but i would drive the hour to red mill in order to get one of these shakes. my favorite part:the chocolate chip part of the shake was ACTUALLY mini chocolate chips. totally adorable.



good service,good food, and good (looking) friends. a girl couldn't have asked for any better.

we had a friend who couldn't make it,but they REALLY wanted to try the onion rings, so pattie cake, being the amazing friend she is, took some to-go. we wanted to make sure they got to their final destination safely. click it or ticket!



we all agreed our next stop will be at 13 coins. i'm especially stoked about this because i've been wanting to go here for YEARS. apparently they are "known" for their breakfast and if you know me even a tiny tiny bit you know that the way to my heart is through a delicious breakfast entree. lemme know if you'd like to join us!

my sister's best friend shot me

holy moly i am sooooo behind on my blogging! i can think of about 3 posts right off the top of my head that i've been meaning to write but haven't had the chance. i guess the only way to really catch up is to jump right in...so here i go!

this first one is gonna be a shorty...

a few days ago my sister's best friend april, who is an aspiring photographer, and i did a photoshoot together. we headed to the tacoma waterfront and got to work! i've never been shot like that before and we used props and tried to get as creative as we could in the area we were in. it took about an hour, was tons of fun, and if you need photos taken for any occasion, i highly recommend her! she's giving me a cd with all the photos sometime next week,but here's a preview of some of my favorites:


hanging out by the water:


i've had my back tattoos for a couple of years now, and still have NO pictures of them,so that was one of the goals of our shoot,to capture my tatts:





he loves me,he loves me not...


bookworm:


sooo colorful:


ok,that's it for now,i'll post more when i get the rest! if you would like your picture taken by the multi-talented April Villenueva you can email her at akv527@gmail.com.

my roommate heidi is going to shoot me in my previously mentioned red party dress on monday...can't wait to do that and share the pics with you! hope everyone's having a great weekend!!

biggest loser update (MILESTONE!!!)

sometime in the near future my roommate will be taking pics of me in previously mentioned dress. i'll be posting those as soon as it's done!

in the meantime, check out my roommate's other pictures. do it. do it now.
Heidi Vladyka photography