what do you do on a weekend in a friendless city...?

You...

1. go to the farmers market and make lots of yummy food for yourself. like this guacamole.

2. spend your entire saturday afternoon at the sidewalk sale in downtown birmingham all by yourself and pay the salespeople to be your friends.

3. go to petsmart and wish you could adopt a furry animal friend.

4. peruse kayak, planning your next escape from your current city.

5. obsessively clean your room/bathroom/kitchen.

6. adopt redbox as your bff.

7. read another book and realize that at this rate you're totally going to be able to read the entire NY Times best seller list this year.

8. make facial fridays a ritual.

Monsoon.

Oh you didn't know? Detroit has MONSOON size rainstorms. During work. During lunch break. When you're more than 50 yards away from the building. Good thing it's casual Friday, eh?

Summer Reading

One pro of moving to Detroit is that I have had ample time to read. Here are my top 3 print and eReads:

Books & Mags
-The Help.
-The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.
-Marie Claire. I'm sure nobody will believe me, but they have really good editorial content.

eReads
-Aliventures. Great voice, and great content. All about life stuff.
-101 Cookbooks. One of my favorite cooking blogs out there. Beautiful photos, and tons of diversity in types of food she talks about.
-Wired. If you have an iPad, you need to subscribe to their emag. It's seriously amazing.

Poolside reads...at work!

Say hello to my current work load. Days like this make me love my job. Spend all day familiarizing myself with women's magazines? Uhh yes please.
---
Sorry for the post overload today. I may have gotten a tad behind in blogging...and a tad bored at work today!

Tigers.

Went to a Tigers game last night thanks to some very awesome co-workers. The weather was perfect, and it made me decide that Detroit may not be so horrible. I'd say this night gave them a plus 1% in my book. But hey, baby steps right?

Snow Cones.

Summertime bliss. This left me craving Matsumoto's so badly.

D-Town.

I haven't mentioned a single thing about moving to Detroit in the past month. I'll blame it on my subconscious. Moving to Detroit has been challenging in so many different ways, ways that I didn't fully understand before I moved here. Here are my top three:

1. Humidity sans ocean. I only have three words for this one: I. HATE. HUMIDITY.
2. Extreme heat. Echo same sentiments of number one. What place has the right to be 100% humid and 85 degrees at 8 in the morning, and 90 degrees at 9pm?! It's like living in a sauna.
3. Loneliness.

Yup, that pretty much sums up my feelings about D-Town.

Lemon Ice

I am obsessed. Do you see how incredibly cute and incredibly yummy these summer treats look?! To see full post on recipe, click here.

Brandon Flowers

All credit goes to Chad Rogers for showing me this one. I haven't been able to get this song out of my head today. Love it so much.

FIFA

There are only a few sporting events I ever truly get excited about. Namely the Olympics, the Stanley Cup, the World Series, and The World Cup. I will admit that The World Cup is the newest edition, but before anyone attacks me for being a total fair weather fan, I would like to say that my interest in soccer started summer 2008 after I went to the EuroCup in Geneva. Did I plan on being there because I loved soccer so much? No. But I was in Europe for the summer, the opportunity presented itself...et voila. Brooke became an avid fan of Spain's soccer team (Probably because every person there thought I was Spanish, it didn't help that I have a dark complexion and was wearing red at the game, and I thought all of their players could double as Calvin Klein underwear models.) Nonetheless, it was the turning point for me.

Brooke+Spain+Soccer=love at first sight.

Anyways, I have L.O.V.E.D. all of the FIFA games I've watched this year, but I think my absolute favorite part about it all (besides David Villa of course) are the cool ads/promotions I've seen. This one below though definitely takes the cake for me. I seriously love the concept. Also check out this link. It has a lot of my favorite promos from this year's World Cup. So much excitement for Sunday's game!!!

DTT to the SLC

Me and Delta? We have a love-hate relationship. But at the moment, I'm leaning towards love...mostly because they're the only ones who provide nonstop flights from Detroit to Salt Lake...a flight I'll be taking in exactly 20 days!!! I never thought I'd be so excited to be going back to UT. But I can't think of a single place I'd rather be more than UT right now. It might have to do a little (a lot) more with who lives there, but I promise I miss the mountains, sunshine, and dry air there just as much!

20 days. 20 DAYS!!! Yeaaaah!!!

Patience

"Patience means accepting that which cannot be changed and facing it with courage, grace, and faith."

*From this talk I just read by President Uchtdorf. Made me smile. My favorite part of this quote is how he says it takes grace to accept the things you cannot change. I know general conference was forever ago...but I just now got around to reading these priesthood session talks. They're good.

Summer Fabrics

One of my favorite things about transitioning from season to season are the fun fabrics that you see during each time of the year. Seersucker and Swiss dots steal my heart every time summer rolls around. I love how elegant, yet understated and light each of the fabrics is. They're so delightfully light and perfectly airy...not gauzy at all like a lot of the other summer fabrics, or as plain as the typical cotton. Currently, I'm on the hunt for some classic baby blue and white seersucker shorts.

These are some of my favorites so far from this summer:













I'm obsessed with the dress on the left. I love the Swiss dots in white! I also really like the seersucker jacket that they used as mailers. Loving the addition of fabrics to fun cards and invites. Yay for summer :)