A Perfectly Perrywinkle Giveaway

So, you already know that I love Perry of Perfectly Perrywinkle. But, I also love her blossoming little headband business, and I know you will too. A few weeks ago, Michelle Curl of Curl Photography hosted a photo shoot in Perry’s quaint and quiet Ballantyne neighborhood. Chris Brady Wolfe, my favorite red head, LPGA golfer, former cast member of the Golf Channel’s Big Break, and new mommy, joined us for the adventure.

Perry, also a professional golfer, has recently been working on custom nursery art (I’m currently contemplating having a baby just so I can order one!) and Easter headbands that were specially made to match little girls’ Sunday bests. Oh, and by the way, Perfectly Perrywinkle has also been featured in the 2011 special edition of Golfweek For Her. Just saying. I kind of think she’s a big deal.

Perfectly Perrywinkle caters to ages 0 on up. Most of her headbands are made in youth sizes, but you can custom order for infants or big girls like us. And if it isn’t obvious, we think that Perry’s headbands are perfect for way more than just sitting pretty on Easter.  For example:

Please visit Perfectly Perrywinkle on Etsy to check out her full collection. Or, if you are local to Charlotte, you can find these pretties at Belly Elan in South Charlotte. And since Perry really loves you, she wants to give away a customized made-with-love headband! That’s right – a giveaway! And, lucky you, even if you don't win, Perry is offering buy one get one free to everyone who enters!  Here’s how:

1)  Visit Perfectly Perrywinkle.

2)  Click on the “Perfectly Perrywinkle Facebook” link.

3)  “Like” Perfectly Perrywinkle on Facebook and leave her a comment with “Golfweek Giveaway” and the name of your favorite headband from her Etsy shop.

4)  For extra credit - I know you're an overachiever - you should probably become a follower of Titleless Tess as well.

*All entries must be submitted by midnight on Thursday, May 5th. The randomly selected winner will be revealed both here and at Perfectly Perrywinkle on Friday, May 6th. Perry will contact the winner via Facebook to get the ball rolling on your customized headband!

Thanks, Michelle, for giving us rights to these beautiful photographs.  Did we mention we had a blast during the shoot?  ("I have a ball.  Do you want the ball?")

Easter Treats

This year, we forgoed the Hoe, and headed to the mountains to celebrate Easter with my family. I know forgoed isn’t really a word, but today it is, okay? The day was filled with new board books for Alekzander, my sister’s birthday, an Easter egg hunt, a trip to the park, $5 flats from the Target, a miniature puppy, and way too many treats. I ate homemade Easter pizza while the others were carnivores. Has your dad ever made you Easter pizza? I recommend it. It’s just like Birthday pizza or Wednesday pizza or Christmas pizza, but on Easter. Except this year was my sister’s birthday, so maybe it was EasterBirthday pizza. My dad also made us biscotti. It was maybe the best thing I’ve ever tasted. And it is going to be on my EasterBirthdayWednesdayChristmas wish list every year.

Don’t you love this Alekzander sized dog? I think I need one of each. A baby and a puppy, of course.

Maybe when I’m 29 though.

The Hunt

In our family, you're never too old for an Easter Egg Hunt.

We love the frantic moments of seeing :: running :: racing :: getting :: counting :: collecting.

Everyone wins.  But I think I won biggest.  Or maybe I made that part up.

Catching

I love the sense of adventure the spring weather brings.  Warm breezes mean wasting entire days on the patio of local pubs, and sunny skies mean reading bargain priced middle school novels at the pool and ending up with a week long sunglass tan.  We’re more inclined to do the unplanned – or perhaps even to plan for the unplanned by leaving big planless holes in our plans.  Ryan surprised me with Tuesday night concert tickets, I bought a pair of $5 flats from the Target, and we started a sing along to Bon Jovi at 3am at a pizza parlor.  Little slices of spring time happy make my heart smile.  Things just feel good.

Here are some pictures to hold you over.  (If you can't tell, I'm loving my new iPhone - which has also quickly become my camera of choice.  It's so nice to finally be a part of the rest of the modern world.)

Cranes for Kids.

Sunny Selwyn Pub toes.

A little Friday night bass playing.

23 cranes for Japan.

90s rock and the city on Saturday.

Skyscrapers and quiet. 

Pretending.

I’ve got lots to catch up on.  My B, for example.  Don’t fret if things get a little out of order.  I mean, you do want to hear about Ke$ha, right?  And see the Perfectly Perrywinkle / Michelle Curl photo shoot, yes?

On Colors

Sometimes Ryan and I agree to disagree about colors. He thinks I have partial color blindness and I think he’s crazy. For example, the other night he was telling me that one of his green pillows was flatter than the other. He was very clearly pointing to the pillows on his bed, and none of them are green. None. Not a one. His bedding is gray. And I am one hundred zillion percent sure of it. So I carried his pillow into the kitchen to compare it to the black and gray granite of his countertops, and he sheepishly told me that I was right. We have a lot of trouble in the gray, green, tan, beige, brown category (and I lump them all together because our disagreements include them all – sometimes simultaneously).

And sometimes I tell Ryan that his eyes are green or gray and then the world stops turning because his eyes are one hundred zillion percent blue – according to him. So now I will sheepishly tell him that he is right:

And oh my goodness do I love those bright blue eyes of his.

Little

Today, after 25 years of life, I realized that I am a little sister. I don’t know what I thought I was – maybe just a regular sister – but I certainly never thought of myself as the “little” or “younger” one. I read it here, on my sister’s blog, and I found it kind of endearing. After all, it is true: she has three whole years on me. When my mother carried me around in her belly, Ashley announced that she, in fact, was pregnant as well – with a duck! And when my mom was in labor, my sister was whisked away to an amusement park to have her last round of only child style fun. And when Ashley was six, she wrote a short story stating that she would not trade me for a dog. Thank you.

And now, when I am 25 and she is in her last weeks of 28, I can still convince her to do crazy things like jump off mountain logs with me.

By the way: I am at least two inches taller than Ashley. Plus, my head is way bigger. So who is the little one now?

Okay, I still am, but it's just because I was on a lower rock.

And now, when I am 25 and she is in her last weeks of 28, she can still convince me to do crazy things like run a mountain mile with her. I hate running. And she doesn’t. But we both almost died and I couldn’t walk down stairs for two days. I still like her a lot though. 

And I especially like being her little sister.

Holiday Leftovers

Last night, Ryan and I were at the Bobcat’s last home game of the season (we think).  Well, we know we were there, but we think it was their last home game.  It really doesn’t matter because they aren’t very bueno anyway.  My favorite part of the game was wearing a new shirt.  And also the part when all of the local mascots jumped on a trampoline to dunk the ball.  One of them was a wolf with his tongue sticking out and he pretended to lick a referee.   Those creatures are pretty funny.  Even Rex’s great grandfather, Sir Purr of the Carolina Panthers, was there!  Oh, and also my other favorite part was when I ate a pear.  A pear!  At a basketball game.  And I also also (yes, two alsos) liked the part when one of Ryan’s coworkers told us she had these leftover pictures from the holiday party.  Remember when we did all that fiesta-ing?

There were maybe 300 too many glasses on the table that night.

The Button

Last night Ryan took me out to celebrate my brilliance. It is also our 25th seventh today, so I went ahead and stuck that into the celebration hat as well. We went to Vida for a pineapple beverage, and then walked over to Mortimer’s. Mortimer’s is nothing fancy, but it is quickly becoming one of our favorite spots. They serve yummy fresh sandwiches, wraps, salads, and other little simplicities that will make your belly smile. As a bonus, Mortimer’s plays good 90s music, has a cute logo, is tucked away in the forgotten side alley of the Epicenter, and has an awesome copper ceiling. Ryan would tell you they also have big TVs for him to watch his beloved sports on.

We spent a lot of our dinner time looking up pictures of the mini giraffe from the Direct TV commercial … mainly because Rex needs one. Immediately. We also looked up pictures of celebrities that Ryan thinks he looks like. For example: the Russian guy with the mini giraffe from the Direct TV commercial. Then we spent a lot of the rest of our dinner time taking pictures of ourselves on our phones. It mainly went like this:

Tessa, what are you looking at?

I don’t know, what am I supposed to be looking at?

You’re looking at the button. I can’t even see your eyes. Open your eyes! They look like black holes!

My eyes are open!

Okay now half of your face is in the shadows.

Alright. You're right. Okay, ready.

Tessa, look at my face. You’re looking at the button.

I’m looking at your face! Where are my eyes?!

You looked at the button again. Stop looking at the button. It’s like you’re making sure I’m going to press it. I’ll press the button.

I can’t stop looking at the button! Okay, I’m going to look at the TV. I’m looking at the TV!
You looked at the button.

And so we're left with this:

Funny and Fun Bucks

My dad makes me laugh. I think he is funny, and I think I am funny, too. Yesterday I sent a text to my sister that said: I think I’m really funny. And she wrote back to tell me: You are funny. But maybe she thinks I am funny, but not really funny, which now makes me concerned.

On March 23, I told her this: The day I went running in my purple Nikes was yesterday. And I thought I was maybe going to die. For real. Pigs were flying and I was hunched over on the side of the road about to vomit. I was thinking that maybe someone could put me on the dollar/mile program, so yesterday I nearly killed myself for a dollar and a dime that nobody is really going to pay me. Yep, that’s right. I ran 1.1 mile(s?) and died. The end.

I know that is what I told her because I looked it up on Facebook, and it’s a true story. So yesterday morning, after two weeks of my mom asking me if I’d checked my mail yet, I checked my mail. I quickly sorted through the unimportant stuff and spotted two envelopes that were clearly from someone whose name wasn’t Wachovia or Verizon or AARP (why do I get AARP stuff every day?). One was a love letter and special star sticker from my mom, and the other was a card from my dad.

The card is maybe for a seven year old. And I love it. A yellow mother bear with flowers on her head is sitting on a hill, hugging her white bear child. Inside, in his unique mixture of capital and lowercase letters, my dad wrote:

I’m so proud of

you I heard you ran a mile …

call me when you think

I owe you money.

1 fun buck per mile.

Love you,

Tessa’s Dad

Four dollar bills were enclosed. And yes, he really wrote "Tessa's Dad". It made me really happy. And I think he is really funny, don’t you? Circle yes or no.  So. Looks like I have 2.9 miles to run. And in case you didn't pick up on this, I don't run.  Or exercise.  Ever.  In fact, I just finished off a half gallon of thin mint icecream last night.

The Praxis II Miracle

Once upon a time my parents made me go to gifted school every Friday for four years in a row. It gave me terrible childhood anxiety and so every Friday I would wake up and vomit. Sometimes it happened at home, sometimes it happened in the car, sometimes on the bus, sometimes on my sister, and sometimes at the school. Via my throw up, I begged them not to make me go to that awful, terrible, no good, very bad school. Being a smarty pants just really wasn’t cool when you were in elementary school. And I hated being separated from my regular classroom friends who actually ended up being bad influences on me. Really. My 4th grade teacher pulled me out in the hall once to tell me not to be friends with a certain blonde haired girl in the class because she was rotten to the bone … passing notes and such during learning time! Despicable! I cried.

So anyway, at this gifted school, they tied us to chairs and made us memorize the dictionary and fed us smart kid food through tubes that they lodged down our throats while we screamed and pleaded for a mediocre public education. That is not a true story. We actually did really fantastic things like take classes on candle making, astronomy, or the art of ink stamping. We had a day to bring in food shaped like bugs, a day to act injured (I can’t remember the details of that one, but basically everyone at the school came in on crutches with fake broken legs), and a day to wear, eat, drink, and think all things orange! We also spent entire afternoons solving murder mysteries by asking only yes or no questions to the teacher. Wait a second. Gifted school was awesome. I want to go back. And not throw up every time … that typically tends to really ruin things.

This story is going somewhere. Like here: this morning I woke up at 5:30am to check my Praxis II scores. Remember the day I wore yoga pants and purple Nikes to do a lot of things? That was the day I took the test. And I had to wait forever to get my scores. It was a painful few weeks, and I basically knew I failed and was counting pennies to pay for the test (again), as well as the late registration fee to take it at the end of April. And then the Praxis II miracle happened. I got a good, old fashioned, elementary school style A on the test. 94%. Heck yes!

So I woke my mother up to tell her that I wasn’t the failure of a human that I thought I could possibly be (in regards to the Praxis II: English to Speakers of Other Languages). And she said something like: “See. Aren’t you glad I forced you to go to gifted school?” I don’t know if the two have anything to do with one another - especially since I think this is truly a miracle of sorts - but yes, I’ll take it. And a caterpillar cookie please.

A Thirty

This weekend I launched my international headband modeling/professional tennis playing career.  Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait to get all of the juicy details about that little slice of information until the pictures are released.  Instead, let’s talk about Winge’s 30^th birthday.  (Winge is pronounced Wing-E.  I want you to say it correctly in your head when you read it, okay?) To celebrate, we did things like: watch basketball, listen to Michael Jackson and Britney Spears, and dance our pants off.  Not really.  All pants stayed on.  But we did do some serious dancing.  In Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s VIP section at Whiskey River.  That’s just how we roll.  Plus, it helps to have friends who work in the bar industry in Charlotte.  We hung out with famous racecar drivers and I got some autographs on my forehead.  Not really (again).  So, to clarify, we really were in his VIP section, but nobody famous was there and I really don’t even have an inkling of interest in Nascar even if they were.  And I would never get an autograph on my forehead ever.  And yes, we danced our pants off.  But all pants stayed on.  Got it?  Good.

Si.  Bueno.

1) The Wolfes were adorable and smitten with each other as always. 2) Ashley and Winge participated in putting their hands in the ayer per the request of Flo Rida. 3) The boys were very important persons. 4) We were in love.

Si.  Bueno tambien.

So happy thirty to Winge!  We love celebrating.  We certainly have some amazing friends.  That is all.