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if you had told me, I wouldn't have believed you
























That is, if someone had told me 4 years ago today, on New Year's Eve when I was visiting New York City for the very first time, that I would soon be a tried & true resident of this city. Nope. I would have never thought it to be true. For Christmas my junior year of college, my mom gave my sister-in-law and me a trip to New York for our Christmas gift. I loved the city when I visited, but I never saw it coming: now, four years later, I'm rounding out my third year of living here!






















Cheers for a safe, happy & healthy New Year in 2011!!

check.

I finally saw my subway poster last Saturday night! I hopped on the subway on my way to a Christmas party with Brendan and my friend Ashley, and I looked up and therrrre it was. I held in a shriek, but was equally excited nonetheless and was able to snap a pic despite the jam-packed Saturday night crowd.



And Brendan saw it on the 4 train!
























Then LeeAnne saw it (I think this was her 3rd time. Thanks for being so observant, LA!) on the M (?), F, and 6 train.

on your next subway ride...

Give me a shout if you see this and let me know what train you were on!



As an interior designer by day and a freelance designer (of all kinds) by night, I was commissioned by the Women's Bible Society of New York to design their annual Christmas Subway Ad for 2010. The ad went live on the subways a little over a week ago, and I have still yet to see it! However, my sweet roommate Margaret noticed it on her train on Saturday night and snapped a pic for me. Until I lay my own two eyes on it, this is pretty sweet in the interim.

birthday partaaay

I have the best and most gracious friends in the world. And this year for my birthday, they blew me away again! I got to choose the venue in which to celebrate: so I picked, crafts. We went to the Little Shop of Crafts on the upper west side and painted pottery to roll in my big 2-5. I painted a bright rainbow polka dotted mug that is big enough to fit 7 cups of coffee to wake me up every morning...just what I need! We had rainbow cake, ice cream cone cupcakes (complete with trick candles), guacamole, punch...and everything else that is so quintessential Perryn. I couldn't ask for friends that know me any better or for a better way to celebrate my day! Thanks to everyone for all the love (these girls have blogs to call out: Maggie, LA, Pamela, Bethany, and Katherine, and of course those without blogs, too: Ann-Marie, Victoria, Michelle, and Megan) who did so much to make me feel so special...and colorful!





FG thanksgiving feast, 4th annual

This tradition was started 4 years ago by my dear friend, Carrie, who has since (very sadly!) moved to Charlotte. But her legacy lives on... On the Saturday before Thanksgiving all of the sister groups of Aaron Bjerke's "original FG" gathered together for one huge feast! Katherine and I made our first turkey, actually Kat did most of the work and I just watched, and people came in droves. I think we peaked at around 75 people in our tiny 3-br New York City apartment (hence the reason you see us sitting on the ledges of our bathroom in the hallway to eat). I did my fair share of panicking when I found out how many people were coming, but we made it, and it was full of great food, good fellowship and old (and new) friends.



Carrie, thanks for starting this tradition! And please plan to come back one year... 5 sure is a good number to celebrate!

straight no chaser

If you've followed this blog for a while, you may remember me praising this a cappella group called Straight No Chaser from Indiana University back in 2008?
Well, my dream finally came true. I went to their concert in NYC on Tuesday night! Their YouTube video, 12 Days of Christmas, went viral right before Christmas during my senior year of college. I remember one of my interior design professors sending out a blast email with the link to this video during final projects & exams. It's a good thing she did that because watching this video over and over...and over is about the only thing that got me through the end of that semester. (Remember those days, Rose Lynn?!)

Luckily for me, I was able to watch in complete relaxation on Tuesday night. And they were terrific!!! This was my favorite song from the night, I'm Yours/Somewhere Over the Rainbow:

nov 19! nov 19!

And you know what that means! Tonight at exactly 12:01 AM, I will finnnally be watching the first part of the 7th Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (perhaps even dressed in my Hermione costume?). Call me a nerd if you want, but I know five other 20-something girls who are counting down the minutes as much as I am!

the best chocolate cake in the world

Been there, done that and eaten a slice. Brendan and I went to a much anticipated restaurant on Saturday night (more anticipation by him than me) to see if we had finally found what the rest of the world has long been searching for: the best chocolate cake in the world. The name of the restaurant actually is The Best Chocolate Cake in the World. I was skeptical, but the cake was good. Sadly, though, it was far overshadowed by the incredible design of this tiny little hole in the wall. It was tee-niny space in SoHo where only about 10 people, max, would fit. Brendan spent the whole time eating the cake while I spent the whole time swooning over this beautiful, fabulous sofa. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, but I'm pretty sure it is now on my list to own something like this someday...

The sofa was covered in a cork fabric! I had seen fabrics like this before for commercial use when I worked at Perkins Eastman, but I had never seen any application of it. You can find different variations of the fabric, here, at Stratford Hall Textiles.

Then, as you can see in the photo below, it had a deep chocolate brown rope piping that offset the color of the "cork" so perfectly... the two neutrals especially set the stage for the main effect: the buttons in the tufting.


Every button in every tuft was different! They had one American flag button, solid color, multicolor, buttons with rhinestones...every button imaginable! It added such a nice pop of color but not so much that you were confused about the main design idea. I've been thinking about this couch all week and can't get over how amazing it was!

Then, for proof that we really did try out the cake, I took a pic of our clean plate!

This place gets two thumbs up from me: one for the pretty good dessert and another for the superb atmosphere and design.

the birthday boy

Saturday was Brendan's birthday and we celebrated big! (If you don't believe me, just check out the cake...) He turned 27 and for his birthday dinner he decided that he wanted to invite friends over to my apt & his old stomping grounds (in case you didn't know, Brendan lived in my current apartment for two years before I moved in. Then he graciously handed it over to me and two other girls!) for a pasta dinner and celebration. Friday night we made a run to Target and bought enough food to feed a couple armies, then cooked for a few hours on Saturday afternoon and successfully made enough food to feed 35 people! It was a blast and a great turnout!


And as I mentioned in my previous post, we had sparkler candles (Thanks for those too, Maggie!)!! They were exactly like sparkler fireworks, except in the shape of a "2" and a "7". They were beautiful and perfect, but if you ever have them for your own cake, you should be ready to blow them out immediately because they aren't like regular candles that keep burning until you blow. They, just like a sparkler, go out on their own sweet timing. But they make for some pretty great pictures, don't they?!

[Sorry the pic quality isn't that great. They are from my phone because my camera took a nose dive into the toilet early in the night, and spent the rest of the party in a bowl of rice trying to absorb all the water. Good news though; it worked!]

want to see the biggest cake you've EVER seen??


Check out Maggie's blog post about Brendan's birthday cake! Maggie is an excellent baker and she kindly agreed to make Brendan's birthday cake for me...to feed 35-40 people! It was as delicious as it was big, and we celebrated with "2" and "7" sparkler candles (which you'll see in the next post)!! Luckily, for me, we had some left over...

[And, if you live in NYC and need a cake, you should contact Maggie!]

14 days...and counting

until THIS:


Me, Maggie, Kyo, Michelle, Kova and Deb have midnight (yes, 12:01 AM) tickets on opening night in the IMAX theater to see Harry Potter 7. I'm thinking about holding my breath until then to see if it will make the time pass by faster...because I cannnnnnnot wait!!!