How to be a Shmangster...

I'M ADDICTED!!!

2010-07-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

The title explains it all!! OMG BEST GAMES EVER!!!

I've had them both for a few weeks now and I still haven't finished them. The Mario game has a million hidden little secrets and I like to solve every little part of a game before I can feel satisfied. And the Zelda game is soooo long so it keeps you entertained, plus i love how you can draw on the maps and stuff hahaa (yeah im weird). I bought the Assassins Creed 2 game and finished it in less than a week, unlike these two, it sucked sooo bad. ugh :P

NEW Super Mario Bros.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Here's me trying to beat the cannon mini game on Zelda (which i STILL haven't beat.)

Photo credit: Adeeba R. <--thanks for catching the best candid moments buddy...NOT!

No more saying, "Mannn I'm bored!"

2010-07-07T06:50:00.000-07:00

Ok so i recently came across this website that posted up a list of 50 things to do over the summer, and my goal this summer is to complete all 50 of them by August 30th which is when my Fall semester will begin (iA).

So this is an invitation for anyone that's reading this to do the same thing if they'd like. As you complete an "activity" check it off until you've completed ALL 50. There's no prize or anything, the prize for this is the feeling of accomplishment. The accomplishment of finishing 50 RANDOM things by the end of the summer. Hey, it's fun, just try and see how many you can do :)

Get ready, set, GO!

1. Gather up a few friends, and have a picnic in your backyard.
2. Go on a walk and take pictures of trees, flowers, dogs, etc.
3. Buy some fashion magazines, pick out a couple of really cute outfits, and try to recreate them for less!
4. Bead some bracelets and sell them for charity.
5. Volunteer at the local animal or homeless shelter.
6. Clean your room!
7. Bake some cupcakes and deliver them to friends and family.
8. Play some childhood games like "Sorry", "Candyland", or "Pretty Pretty Princess".
9. Take your dog (or a friends) for a walk.
10. E-mail a friend you haven't spoken to in awhile.
11. Do 25 jumping jacks!
12. Look through old family scrapbooks, photo books, and yearbooks.
13. Make a root beer float.
14. Go to the movies with your siblings.
15. Go window-shopping with a friend.
16. Write a poem.
17. Make fresh, homemade fruit juice.
18. Give your dog (or pet) a bath.
19. Make dinner for your family.
20. Baby-sit for a neighbor.
21. Have a sleepover party and watch scary movies.
22. Plan a vacation you want to take next summer.
23. Plant flowers in your yard.
24. Sign up for a class.
25. Have a bubble bath.
26. Make a mixed CD of your favorite songs and title it "The soundtrack of my life".
27. Order a pizza.
28. Splash around in a plastic kiddy pool.
29. Buy some crayons and a coloring book.
30. Read a book based on a movie you have seen.
31. Make a scrapbook of your baby pictures.
32. Get a job or an internship.
33. Start a diary and write in it everyday.
34. Spend the day at the library.
35. Draw a self-portrait.
36. Make a collage out of old magazines.
37. Run around in the sprinklers.
38. Go to a museum.
39. Go out for lunch with one of your parents.
40. Jump in the pool with your clothes on.
41. Eat last night's leftovers for breakfast.
42. Learn to sew or knit.
43. Invite friends over and have a tea party.
44. Swing on the swings at the park.
45. Tie-Dye a t-shirt or bed sheets with Kool-Aid!
46. Make a smoothie.
47. Learn how to define and spell 5 new words from the dictionary.
48. Make popsicles in your freezer.
49. Put on the radio and dance.
50. Go camping in your backyard!

Summer 2010 will LITERALLY be unforgettable.

Luxe Obsession

2010-03-14T00:40:00.000-08:00

I've just started reading Splendor, the latest book in Anna Godbersen's series The Luxe, and I had to stop reading it at 4 in the morning, so that I could write this post.

So basically, while I was reading just now, I couldn't get over how Elizabeths life pretty much sucks! BUT i was thinking, maybe her new husband Cairns isn't so ugly and so I googled him to try and get an image of what he might look like (or what other readers think he looks like), but no one has posted their opinions up on their blogs so I thought I would do it for those people that would like to see what OTHERS think these characters look like.

So below I've posted up the main characters in the book and who I think they look like in MY imagination.

(All names are ABOVE the pictures)

Elizabeth Holland (Amber Heard)

Diana Holland (Shenae Grimes)

Penelope Hayes (Michelle Trachtenburg)

Henry Schoonmaker (Chace Crawford)

Grayson Hayes (Ian Somerhalder)

Will Keller (Sean Faris)

Carolina Broad/Lina Broud (Ashley Tisdale)

Teddy Cutting (Sebastian Stan)

Tristan Wrigely (Kyle Schmid)

Henry Schoonmaker Sr. (Robert Redford)

Isabelle Schoonmaker (Katherine Heigl)

Isaac Phillips Buck (Perez Hilton...BECAUSE wasn't Buck supposed to be chubby?? Everyone always suggests Ed Westwick, but there was something in the book that made me remember him as a chubby guy :/ ...idk, this is just my opinion)

Snowden Cairns (Breckin Meyer)

Carey Lewis Longhorn (Pierce Brosnan)

Mrs. Holland (Frances Fischer)

Aunt Edith (Debra Messing)

Leland Bouchard (Garrett Hedlund)

Claire Broud (Allyson Hannigan)

Well I think that's everyone (everyone that plays a major role in some way or another in my opinion), hopefully I didn't leave anyone big out and if I did I'll go back and add them in ;)

I think it's time i went to sleep! Goodnight! :)

(I started this post at 4:45 am and it's now 6:34 am...wow i have no life!)

i <3 Bento!

2010-01-11T07:09:00.000-08:00

Today i created my FIRST Bento Box lunch! The first of many i hope.

I ordered the Bento Box from a website called 'All Things for Sale' I'm all giddy inside and even my coworker noticed it at 9 a.m. in the morning. I'm planning on making a lot of these with different designs like the ones i have seen online, so i'll be posting them up on my blog as i make them.

And now here are the pictures!

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So cute! ^_^

More to come soon!

25 Random Things About ME! :)

2010-01-08T08:44:00.000-08:00

I posted this on Facebook a few month ago, and just came across it today so i thought i would post it up here as well. enjoy! :)

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1) i MOST LIKELY love my bird Tootie more than anyone who reads this...well maybe not everyone since the people i tagged are those elite cool people i know...but still, anyone else...this might apply to you.

2) I wish I was Asian because asians are so cute and they dress so nice and they're just awesomely awesome.

3) I read fanfiction ALL the time because the Harry Potter books are now over :(

4) I have a photographic memory. When I memorize anything, I memorize it based on what color it is, or what font, or where its placed on a page.

5) I sleep on a toshak (cushion/mattress thingy...i can't describe it) because I'd rather spend my money on clothes, shoes and food instead of a bed.

6) My dream life is to one day live in a nice modern townhouse in Manhattan, New York where I'm driven around by a chauffeur in a town car and I work as a fashion editor for Vogue Magazine. Work will be my life...but I will be happy :)

7) When I was in second grade, I was in an after school club called the Writer's Club. We had to write a poem and turn it in, so I copied the shortest one I could find out of some book and i turned it in and all the teachers were saying how amazing it was (there were words in the poem that i didn't even understand). THEN they said since it was so good they were going to publish it in some book and i was freaking out cause then i knew i had to tell my parents i copied it. So i told my parents and my mom came with me to my teacher after school one day and I had to admit to her that I copied it. Did i mention i'm a writing major? hahaa jk, no but i really do love writing :)

8) The only time i ever sing is in the shower and in Nahid's car.

9) I can study 5 minutes before a big test and get an A.

10) When I was like 4 or 5 or something, I was sitting in my Uncle's lap during a family party and I was just staring at him and staring and him and staring at him, and then randomly i was just like "you're so stupid."

11) My nickname when I was a kid was shaytan (devil).

12) I was an angry kid. One day, when i was like two or three, I threw a glass ashtray at my grandmother. She had a black eye for a month.

13) Sometimes I wish we didn't live in such a technologic (is that a word) time so that my brothers and their friends could experience the childhood i had when there were no video games etc, and we would have fun by playing games outside ALL DAY with all the other neighborhood kids until it would get dark and our parents would call us to come home. It was like 'Leave it to Beaver' dude, it was so awesome.

14) During those 'Leave it to Beaver' days, my mom said that one day when she was outside she saw my sisters and Ozra arguing with a few neighborhood boys and one of my sisters said something like "....oh yeah, well if you don't stop, I'm going to go call Zohra!" and then all the boys were like "NO NO NO NO!!" Yes, i could beat up boys...and still can :)

15) I LOVED dogs when I was little and one of our neighbors had a hound named Molly that i was obsessed with. One day when I was eating yogurt, I fed her some from my spoon and then kept eating from the spoon and my mom screamed and took the yogurt from me and threw it away.

16) When I was like 5 or 6 or something, I ran into the street (i live on a really busy main road) and I just put my arms up like a crossing guard and all the cars stopped and were honking and my dad was mowing the lawn so he didn't hear until my mom screamed out the window and he realized where i was. There's a home video of me where i'm tied up around my waist to a tree after 'the incident' and im crying and whining to my parents and saying I wont run into the street again.

17) I won a CD player once from one of those Fox Kids contests they used to have every weekend, where you had to watch the show and write down the code they give you and the first 500 people or whatever win something. I thought those were fake until I won that, so to everyone in the world, do those contests cause they ARE real!

18) I have more clothes than anyone I know but all of my clothes are at the bottom of my closet and I'm too lazy to hang them up.

19) In my junior year of high school, I had a calendar where I would write down what I wore everyday so that I didn't repeat an outfit twice in a month.

20) Even though I have anger problems, I've never gotten in a physical fight with anyone except Runa, Sufia and Neelam, and those weren't even real cause we never punched, just pulled hair and scratched.

21) When Keek and I were in Al-Qalam, we went to this event called the League of Islamic Schools of America fundraiser, and there were 4 gel pens at the registration table. At the time, gel pens were the ish, so we each took two of them and nobody ever found out. Until this day we still talk about it and feel bad.

22) I used to go to Darul Hijrah for Arabic and Quran classes, and one day we had a new teacher and she was being a &#%$@ to me, no joke! So i kept saying "Shut up stupid!" really loud to her and when I got home my parents put a hot pepper in my mouth and wouldn't let me drink water until I said i was sorry and i wouldn't do it again.

23) One time when Amara and Sarah Chaudry and her family were over, all the girls got locked into our room and no matter HOW HARD my dad and their dad tried they couldn't open it so we had to climb out of our window and down a ladder.

24) I was trying to catch Mustafa one day cause he did something to piss me off and i hit my foot against the wall really hard and I kept telling my mom that I thought my toe was broken, but she didnt believe me until we came home from someones house one night and I took my shoe off and my pinky toe was purple and swollen. I got to stay home from school for like a week while being pampered by my mom because she felt bad that she didn't believe me.

25) If you counted up all the times in my life that i've been absent from school, it would probably be over 200 days. Thats almost a whole school year.

Yup thats me! Hope you learned something new kids :)

My Childhood Toy Obsessions

2010-01-07T00:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, so my friend Keek (Rahmah) is over at my house and we're talking about different toys that we were obsessed with as children (whether we were able to buy them or not), and from there this list began:

1) Sky Dancers
i was OBSESSED with Sky Dancers!! Sky Dancers were a line of toys that were popular in the mid-1990s. The toys were constructed of a pull-string base (like a lawn-mower) and a doll with foam wings. When the doll was inserted into the base and the string pulled, the doll would launch into the air, spinning its wings like a propeller as it flew. i remember that i FINALLY got one as a gift on my 8th birthday and i was fureeeaaakin out! I had wanted a Sky Dancer ever since I saw one of the commercials during my Saturday morning cartoons. Unfortunately, the day after i received my awesome gift, I was playing with "Angelica" on my porch and pulled the string too hard and she FLEW up...and landed on my roof. I yelled for my dad to get her and due to his Afghan-standard time, he got there too late and the sun was already down so he couldn't see anything. I couldn't sleep that night. The next morning, i woke him up early to climb on the ladder and grab my toy, and mysteriously she was GONE! I think a squirrel or a bird took her. RIP Angelica...we were never able to spend a lot of time together...but i still loved you. :(

2) Power Wheels!
DUDE!!! i NEVER got Power freakin Wheels! What the heck Mom and Dad! You deprived me of my childhood! I went to this prissy little boys house when i was little and he had not one, but TWO power wheels! Do you know how jealous i was of this kid??!! So jealous that i slashed his tires with the Swiss army knife my dad gave me for my 10th birthday.
...that was a joke. the tire-slashing part...but not the Swiss army knife part.

3) My Size Barbie
Okay, so i never got one of these either :( BUT i will buy one of these for my future daughter and she will ENJOY IT! When i was younger, by the time my mom would actually even CONSIDER getting me one of these, i didn't even fit into her clothes anymore. The "My Size" was no longer my size :( ....thanks mom for crushing my dreams of ever becoming a 3-foot tall Princess.

4) Easy Bake Oven
Man i dont care if you're a boy or a girl, THIS toy was uh.may.zing. for reals! What kid doesn't love creating confectionary treats in a working toy oven??!! I remember my mom got us one of these when we were too young to even realize what it is so we just ruined it without even a cookie being baked inside of it :(. But then our trusty partner-in-crime and fellow neighbor Ozra got one a few years later and we baked the hell out of that thing until the light bulb burnt out. We kept saying we would replace the bulb, but it never happened, and so the Easy Bake cafe was closed for business indefinitely.

5) Skip it
'Skip It' was the rich kids jump rope. It was an excuse for lazy kids to not use their hands anymore...and MAN did i wanna be one of those lazy kids. i LOVED these things. I never got this as a kid, so the only chance i had of playing with one was:

In my dreams

When we'd visit Toys R Us and i was able to play with the "samples."

When this white girl in my class would bring it to school and let me play with it during recess. thanks white girl.

6) Bop It
Okay, last one people (at least for now). 'Bop It' melted childrens brains. The voice that would call out the commands for this toy was soooo annoying. I remember playing with one of these during recess, and a group of kids would get in a circle and whoever was able to follow the pattern of commands the longest, was the "IT" kid of the day, no joke! The kid who got the furthest in the game was the kid who everyone wanted to be friends with that day. I mean...they EARNED that right. That hardworking kid who got through 7 heart-pounding, gut-wrenching, blister-causing 'Bop It' rounds worked HARD to focus their fast reflexes on pushing, pulling and twisting. No, but on a serious note...i was always the winner and thats why im so amazing :)

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Hope you enjoyed! PEACEEEEE!

update...

2009-11-27T23:31:00.000-08:00

My beloved Squishy passed away on the morning of Sunday November 22nd.

Tootie has been really sad lately, and is getting used to living in his cage alone. He always wants someone in his presence or he'll go chirptastic on us.

Here is a picture of my little daughter :'(

favorite |ˈfāv(ə)rət|

2009-11-04T12:18:00.000-08:00

Here are just a few of my favorite things in the world, other than my religion (Islam), my familia, my friends<3, and my birdies (tootie & squishy).

thai iced tea

sushi

anything that has to do with Korea

Movies!

makeup :)

yes some of these things may be weird to others (like my obsession with Koreans and their amazing Dramas, fashion, food and people!), but you know what...i'm okay with that :)

and one of my favorite quotes about being weird and how its OKAY...

“We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

I'm not sure who it is that quoted this, but if anyone finds out please let me know!

hahaa i thought this was so artistic..

2009-10-23T05:15:00.000-07:00

I thought i was the only one that knew how to draw this in those times until i saw it all over everyones "trapper keepers". Remember those? if you don't click the linkkkk, and if you do, click it anyway for memories :)

Btw, I saw this picture on Denny W.'s blog, Denny's World, and had to post it. Check out his blog, he's got cool background music and interesting posts :)

Valentino's Spring 2010 RTW line + GORGEOUS shoes!!

2009-10-18T07:53:00.001-07:00

Valentino's newest Spring line designed by Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli is a mix of leather and chiffon, a rare combination, but nonetheless something we're all looking forward to.

Below is Style.com's video from the show and a short interview with the new designers themselves:

Click here for Valentino's Spring 2010 RTW line

Okay, so you saw the video?

Now....did you SEE those shoes???!!!

Ahhhhhh!!! I really do feel like i was in a fairy tale gone wrong...but i wouldn't mind it if i had those shoes! :)

Here are my favorite pairs:

Oh how i love shoes! Even though i'm loving the platform pumps at the moment, i could do with a pair of these any day :)

Finally?

2009-10-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

ok...so i decided to finally start writing the book i've been wanting to write.

I had a dream when i was 18, and it was TOTALLY book-worthy. The second i woke up, i grabbed a pen and paper and scribbled my dream down before i forgot it. That piece of paper could be worth hundreds, maybe even thousands one day! I could be the next J.K. Rowling for all i know.

Now you're probably wondering what my book is about, but i'm not telling anyone yet (except for those people that I already told before), but i will tell you this, it's going to be a historic drama/comedy....hmmm...with a hint of romance i think. I'm planning on writing a series if my first book becomes famous :).

Well, off to writing for me!

...man i really want some bubble gum :/

goodbye Melbourne...

2009-08-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

today's my last day in Melbourne. I have a flight to Sydney, i'll stay there for two weeks and then it's back home. so far, i dont miss D.C., just the people there. My family, my friends....and my birds. This post will be a tribute to the cutest birdies in the world <3

my heart hurts when i see their pictures :(

Last day in New Zealand :(

2009-07-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day in New Zealand. It sucks that i was sick for most of it, but thankfully i did all the major sightseeing in my first week here. Right after i write this post i have to start packing! i have sooo much left to do but i'm a procrastinator so i always get what i need to get done in time ;)

Tomorrow morning at 8 am is my flight to Sydney which i'm excited for, the last time i went to Australia was when i was 3 so i hardly remember it.

Before i forget, while i was sick in bed, all i could do was read this book i got in LA called 'The Luxe.' I'm sooooooooo glad i got it because it's amazing! I couldn't put it down for a second, and now i'm dying to read the next one!

The book is basically about a group of high society teenagers in 1899 Manhattan. There's a lot of fashion, love, gossip, lies, and even mysterious deaths! READ IT!! <3

Chloé Fall 2009 Ready-to-Wear

2009-07-15T02:51:00.000-07:00

Chloé never ceases to amaze me.

Their Fall 2009 Ready-to-Wear line is gorgeous.

Here are a few of my favorites out of the 36-piece collection by designer,

Hannah MacGibbon.

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Kia ora tatou! Kei te pehea koe?

2009-07-07T22:59:00.000-07:00

“New Zealand is not a small country but a large village."

....and what an amazing village it is. :)

Piha Beach Auckland, NZ

The most amazing scenery i've ever seen in my life!

more to come! :)

Lollygagging

2009-06-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

enjoying an afternoon in one of my favorite cities <3

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Obsessed much?

2009-06-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

Electronic music is amazing.

i eat to it, sleep to it, work to it, shower to it...wow...i actually didn't notice how much i listen to it until writing that last one. well i'm on my way to work, so here is what i slept to last night: CLICK ME!

"lets squirrelnap it!"

2009-06-21T22:24:00.000-07:00

Random topic: My friends and i went down to DC for the day and met the second friendliest squirrel in the world. We offered him yogurt covered raisins and he ate right from my hand!

The squirrel below was one that i encountered this past Fall in DC as well. For all i know, it could be the same exact one...or his brother.