No Rescuer Required

February 20, 2017July 2, 2018 Nina Penalosa1 Comment

I know I put up a Valentine’s Day themed outfit post last week, but I really like what I wore on the day itself, so I thought I’d share it on the blog too! The t-shirt I wore is from TeePublic and features a Star Wars x Disney mashup by James Hance of Penny from The Rescuers as Princess Leia. He’s one of my favorite geek artists of all time and he just seems like a really swell guy. This judgement solely comes from following him on Twitter and Facebook. I urge you to check out his artwork! Not only does he do great geek mashups, but creates some mind blowing portraits of fictional faves; he recently did a beautiful portrait of Princess Leia with flowers that I’m in love with. The header on his website is “Relentlessly Cheerful Art,” and if his work doesn’t put a smile on your face, something is legit wrong with you!

Like I mentioned in my Valentine’s Day post, I didn’t have any plans. But throughout the day I felt pretty zen… and then super sick because all I ate was chocolate covered strawberries, marshmallows, Girl Scout cookies, and cupcakes. That aside, I didn’t even cringe when I looked at that Facebook feature “On This Day” where it shows you all the things you ever posted on a particular day on Facebook. A photo album full of pictures from my first Valentine’s Day with my ex popped up, but rather than roll my eyes and wistfully look at the pics, I just kept scrolling to see what else I posted. And then I came across this gem:

“Okay, look. I had to ask myself a really hard question. Who do I love most? And the answer was so obvious. It was staring me in the face the whole time. The person I love most is me. I love me most. Look, if I could run across the beach into my own arms, I would.” – Jackie Burkhart

I posted that quote from That 70’s Show on Valentine’s Day 2011. I think I relate to it more now than I did then. In 2011, I was 25 and so desperate to find the kind of love that was only seen in romantic comedies and Disney movies. At that time I was in an on again/off again “situationship” with a guy I pined over for so long — 3 years to be exact. For 3 years it was very “will we or won’t we?!” Or maybe it ended by that time? I don’t remember, and I deleted the guy’s “break up” email a long time ago, so I can’t look it up in GMAIL for reference. I’m sure I posted that quote to prove a point. Like, “Yeah, I don’t need a man. I HAVE ME!” when really I was an emo sack of shit that just wanted to be loved (goddammit)! Today, I can say I’ve experienced the kind of love I always dreamed of as a little girl, but it came and went in what feels like less than 12 parsecs. There are days where I feel completely jaded by how unlucky I’ve been with love, however I don’t put all my energy into dwelling on it like I did when I was in my early 20s. Now, I’m learning to love myself more despite my flaws (and holy shit, do I have many). There’s a million things I haven’t done, and men can wait! I will choose myself over any dude… besides Rory, obviously. Because every princess needs a furry sidekick! And if I’m going to go along with this whole princess schtick, I’m going to look up to Leia because she’s the OG self rescuing princess. If my Scruffy Looking Nerf Herder happens to come along one day, so be it. Until then, I’m not sitting by metaphorical wishing well hoping he’ll find me.

Maybe I should wear this shirt every Valentine’s Day. One can’t help but be relentlessly cheerful with such cute art on their person! How’d you spend your Valentine’s Day? Or are you like “meh, whatever” about it? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

:: OUTFIT DETAILS ::
t-shirt: TeePublic (buy here) skirt: Forever 21 (n/a)
cardigan: Merona (buy similar here) necklace: Kate Spade (n/a)
shoes: Dexflex Comfort (buy similar here)
bracelet: Love & Madness (buy here)
glasses: Glasses Lit (buy similar here)

Cheers,
Nina

geek style

Roses Are Red, TIE Fighters Are Gray…

February 14, 2017July 2, 2018 Nina Penalosa1 Comment

It’s Valentine’s Day and for once in the past three years I’m not bitter about it. Hooray for progress! I’m not doing anything to celebrate since this holiday is like whatever¯_(ツ)_/¯, but I did go out and kick it breakfast style with my friend Cailtin yesterday for a holiday that is superior by far: Galentine’s Day! But y’know, as much as I rag on Valentine’s Day like most other single people, it’s kind of hard to truly hate it because Valentine’s Day decorations are completely my aesthetic. This is something I’ve come to terms with. I love all the hearts and the pinks and reds and golds, the roses, the candy, the cute cards… UGH! I just can’t hate it. Everything is too damn cute and pretty. 😛

I didn’t wear this particular outfit today, but I thought it’d be cute to put together a retro geeky pinup look together to share on the blog for Valentine’s Day. Obviously, I had to go with a floral print skirt and Star Wars accessories! The hair flower is something my sister picked up for me a few months ago when she went to some tiki convention in San Diego. I’m obsessed with hair flowers — apparently at my tutoring gig, students refer to me as “the girl who always has a flower in her hair” — so my sister sent me some pics to see if I might want anything. How cute it is?! It’s a bit gaudy, but so fab! And I added a trifecta of Valentine’s Day-ish Star Wars pins to my red velvet top.

Roses are red
TIE Fighters are gray
I love Darth Vader
Happy Valentine’s Day!

Whether you celebrate or not, are single or taken, I hope your day is wonderful ♥

Cheers,
Nina

PS: My alternative Star Wars Valentine’s Day poem:

Roses are red
Darth Vader is blue
‘Cause Padme is dead
Nooooooooooooo!
Boo-hoo 😦

:: OUTFIT DETAILS ::
top & petticoat: Tatyana Boutique (buy here and here) |
skirt: Forever 21 (n/a) | shoes: Report (n/a)
hair flower: Fancy Fruit (buy similar here)
bouquet pin: BB-CRE.8 (buy similar here)
TIE Fighter pin: TeeFury (n/a)
Darth Vader pin: Variety Club (buy here)
purse: Loungefly (buy here)

(outfit photos by Caitlin Hamer)

bloop

Flying Solo

February 14, 2014 Nina Penalosa6 Comments

Oh, Valentine’s Day. Or Single’s Awareness Day to the unattached.

To the masses, it’s just a stupid holiday that candy confectioners, floral arrangement businesses, and greeting card companies came up with in order to rake in a few extra bucks to keep momentum up after the fall/winter holiday season.

For years, people have assured me that Valentine’s Day isn’t just a day to celebrate romantic love, but all kinds of love — familial love, friendship, whatever. The cynic in me wants to call bullshit on that because if you look at the merchandise, that’s all it’s really targeted for. But the Edgar Allan Poe tote and chocolate dipped Oreo my mom gave me (and the other presents she’s given me on past V-Days) and the stuffed unicorn I’m going to get from Jen later today says otherwise.

I remember listing Valentine’s Day as one of my favorite holidays as a youngling because I liked the fact that we dedicated an hour of the day at school to eat cookies and drink punch and pass out super adorable cards to classmates and get super adorable cards in return. But then it stopped happening. Suddenly, I became painfully aware that Valentine’s Day was for romantic couples. And at school we were given the option to buy Crush-o-Grams or some other sort of treat to send to friends during the day, and if your name didn’t get called by the delivery person, well, it was just a bit soul crushing. I always found myself bitter because I didn’t have anyone to call my Valentine, or just didn’t have anyone in general, and the only person who ever sent me a Crush-o-Gram in high school was my mom and she marked it as “From Jon Bon Jovi” because I was totally into 80s music my junior year of high school and I thought Jon Bon Jovi was pretty hot. “You couldn’t have at least put Orlando Bloom? He’s my age appropriate crush! And he’s cuter!” I said to my mom after receiving it. It was a sweet gesture, but so embarrassing! I love her for it anyway.

Even though I had someone for two years to call my Valentine, and oh God was I ever excited to celebrate my first one as a non-single lady, I still thought the holiday was a bit stupid. Like many others have argued, I agree that it shouldn’t take one particular day of the year to make all these grand gestures to show the person you’re with how much you love them. But to be completely honest, I have to admit that I relished the fact that I wasn’t alone and could properly celebrate the day by social standards if I wanted to. You’d feel the same way if you spent 24 (or 25?) consecutive Valentine’s Days alone, wouldn’t you? And I thought I didn’t have to ever worry about being alone each time the 14th of February rolled around till the day I died. Silly me for being so confident in my last relationship. I also grew up with a father that sent my mom a beautiful bouquet of flowers no matter what each year. Even if he was in the Philippines (which he was for quite a few Valentine’s Days), there’d be a bouquet waiting for my mom at work. Oh, and this year he decided to put the flowers together himself (tulips instead of his usual go-to red roses). So yeah. Expectations. I haz them… thanks to the way my dad treats my mom and Disney movies. Stupid Disney movies.

And now I’m back to where I started. Flying Solo with no wookiee to keep me company in my cockpit. Today also marks exactly two months since my break-up, so I can’t help but feel a bit woebegone and angry on this day where romantic love is glorified and I’m still trying to cope with the fact that I don’t have it anymore, and probably won’t for quite some time.

George Takei posted this meme on his Facebook page with a caption that says: “Proof that you can be just fine alone today.” I’ve done this 24 or 25 times alone before. I can do it again. And I’d like to think I’m Han Solo, so this cheered me up a wee bit.

Whether you’re taken or single, I hope the day treats you well.

xoxo,
Nina

bloop

A Smorgasbord of Mushy Cute Stuff

February 14, 2013 Nina Penalosa5 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day/Single’s Awareness Day/Thursday, everyone!

I don’t have any huge plans like I did last year, but Tim and I are going to stay in and eat pizza (I think…?) and watch movies this evening — we’re basically just doing what we usually do whenever we get to hangout over the weekend. Good times!

I just wanted to share some geeky and not so geeky Valentine greetings, including some I remember giving/receiving from the 90s, that I found on the interwebs!

Hope you all enjoy your day whether you happen to celebrate this Hallmark holiday or not 😀

Harry Potter valentines by Kjersti Faret. Click here to see more!

Doctor Who Valentines by Tom Kurzanski

Dalek valentine by Amy Liu

I actually got that Abu card from a boy I couldn’t stand in first grade!

Star Wars valentines by Katie Cook

via Tumblr

I’m pretty sure I handed these The Little Mermaid cards one year 🙂

Downton Abbey valentine by Hurricane Vanessa

Sherlock valentines by robbicide

Firefly valentine via Hypable

I can’t find the original creator for this Firefly greeting – HELP!

Scott Pilgrim valentines via Uproxx

Cheers,
Nina

Uncategorized

Love is a Mix Tape

February 20, 2012 Nina Penalosa10 Comments

“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.”

– High Fidelity, Nick Hornby

I am obsessed with mix tapes and I take the art of making one very seriously. You can’t just slump a bunch of songs together and call it a mix– you’ve got to think of who it’s for, think of what songs they might like (specifically by artists they may not be familiar with), or if it has a theme. Everyone has their own rules to making mixes. One of mine is that if you have the same artist on there twice, the songs can’t be from the same album and they can’t be placed back to back. See? I told you I’m serious about this shit.

For Valentine’s Day I made Tim a mix with songs that remind me of him (:barf: I’m sorry, I can’t help it if we’re so cute we make you sick), and I found that making a mixtape that’s strictly all love songs is quite difficult because you’re also using someone elses’ words to convey your thoughts and feelings for someone. So… yeah. I spent hours in front of my computer shuffling songs around to see how they flowed after one another. It took forever for me to come up with the final track list. Some of the songs I chose also relate to our mutual love of Ryan Gosling as 3 songs on the mix have been in movies he’s been in (“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” – Remember the Titans, “You and Me” – Blue Valentine, “Under Your Spell” – Drive).

Track list:

Ain’t No Mountain High Enough – Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
My Love – The Bird and the Bee
Wouldn’t It Be Nice – The Beach Boys
Islands – The xx
Lovers Rock – Sade
You Are My Favourite – Sophie Madeleine
Maps – Rogue Wave
Home – Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
Hand With Care – Jenny Lewis With the Watson Twins
You and Me – Penny & the Quarters
Trying My Best to Love You – Jenny Lewis
La Valse D’Amelie – Yann Tiersen
If I Came Back As A Song – Barnaby Bright
One And Only – Adele
Make It Wit Chu – Queens of the Stone Age
Here In My Room – Incubus
Secret Heart – Feist
Under Your Spell – Desire
I Wanna Be Where You Are – Michael Jackson
Hysteric – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I don’t just stop at perfecting the mix — I’m all about presentation too! I like taking old jewel cases and use scrapbook paper to create the cover. For this particular one, I made little cartoony versions of myself and Tim by using the Hipster Dress-Up Game for girls and boys, then Photoshop’d them to stand by one another and added little details to make the girly one look a bit more like me (darker hair, freckles, olive glasses). For the back of the CD I found a little picture of Mickey playing the piano with Minnie looking at him adoringly that I snipped out of a Disney catalog years ago. It was too perfect as we both love Disney, and Tim plays the piano, and I like watching him play. And for the inside part of the cover sleeve, I found a quote about love by Dr. Seuss which pretty much sums us up.

I’m pretty effing proud of this mix. I always put a lot of thought and effort to every one I make, but this is the one I’m most proud of to date. 😀

out & about

V-Day

February 15, 2012 Nina Penalosa7 Comments

I used to like Valentine’s Day… y’know, in elementary school where we’d take an hour off towards the end of the day and have a party with punch, cookies, and pass out Valentines to all the classmates. When that stopped happening and I realized that Valentine’s Day is really just a holiday for couples to express their love for one another (don’t even try to tell me that it’s not just for romantic love, but all kinds of love, because that is bull), I became quite bitter. None of the boys ever had a crush on me in school, therefore I never received any Valentine grams during 6th period (except for that time my mom sent me one and signed it as Jon Bon Jovi :(), and my track record with dating damn near doesn’t exist.

But alas, this year was not the same! I actually got to do disgustingly cute things because I haz a man now! Tim and I agree that it’s still a silly holiday, but since this year was our first one together we decided to go ahead and celebrate. Before we left for San Francisco, we exchanged presents. I made Tim a mixtape, which I will blog about this weekend because I forgot to take pictures of it and it’s too rad to not blog about (I’m super proud of it, okay?), a picture frame, and an Ellie badge from Up. Tim got me a couple of boxes of Godiva chocolates and some super awesome Minnie Mouse headphones!!! He also wrote me a sweet letter that made me cry because I’m weird like that.

ihome disney headphones minnie mouse godiva chocolate — My Valentine’s Day swag.

up disney pixar ellie badge — I was super excited when I saw that Tim was wearing a purple tie — it totally matched the Ellie badge I got for him!

We kicked off our festivities at Dynamo Donuts (I’ve blogged about them before here). Their customer service is always awesome, but yesterday was outstanding! The guy who helped us complimented our snazzy outfits and let us sample some beer flavored ice cream that a nearby ice cream shop made (it was from the last batch and a customer from earlier that day brought them a scoop). And he was super helpful in telling us about certain donuts they had available for the day, and even suggested I don’t get the powdered gluten free one since it would mess up my outfit. Dynamo Donuts never ceases to amaze me. Seriously. I can’t get over them. Dude with the bowtie, you’re awesome!

dynamo donuts heart beet — Heart Beet donut.

via spiga patent leather wedges aldo mens shoes — Matchy-matchy. This was pure coincidence.

After we ate our delicious donuts, we went downtown because I wanted to look at the Disney Store. The upper floor has a little kids table in front of a screen that plays musical scenes from different Disney movies, and we saw that there were crayons and coloring pages ready to be colored. We sat there for a good 30 minutes. One of the cast members even came by and told us we were doing a good job. Haha! 🙂

disney store winnie the pooh coloring table — After I finished coloring my princess page, I helped Tim finish coloring his Winnie the Pooh page.

After coloring and oogling at the adorable huggable stuffed Disney characters, I suggested that we go to the Ferry Building since Tim told me he’s never been there. When we got there, we saw a gaggle of pillow clad people. I kind of forgot that SF has this annual pillow fight every Valentine’s Day. It looked kind of boring to me, to be honest. I was talking to my boss about it after my shift (yes, I work now!) and she said that maybe the point of the pillow fight is to let out aggression. And then I said maybe it’s for single people who really hate Valentine’s Day. o,0

embarcaderro ferry building pillow fight — The annual Valentine’s Day pillow fight in SF looked kind of uneventful.

We were going to try and find a place to eat dinner around Embarcadero, but the place I wanted to eat at was closed! Tim suggested we eat at Sanraku, a Japanese restaurant that my family and I really like, but it was a 23 minute walk away. Since it was in the area where we parked our car, the trek there was worth it. By this time, it was effin’ cold and windy and I cursed at myself for wearing a skirt, but I knew that sweet sesame chicken and miso soup were in my near-future. I often craved Sanraku’s sesame chicken when I was in high school. I had eaten there a few times with my aunts from the area. To this day, I still think it’s the greatest sesame chicken I’ve ever eaten. Dammit, I’m making myself hungry!

After dinner, we made quick little shopping trips to Rasputin and Nordstrom. And for dessert we got strawberry cream puffs from Beard Papa (which is their GREATEST FLAVOR EVER) and orange cream soda.b

Needless to say, my first Valentine’s Day was A M A Z I N G!!!!! 😀