Harry Potter Extravaganza at Universal!

Last weekend my mom and I went to the Harry Potter celebration and expo at Universal Studios and Universal Studios Islands of Adventures.  It was so much fun and I definitely made my mom go on more rides than she would have normally.  And I got to ride everything I wanted to.  Overall, it was an amazing mother/daughter adventure!

THE HOTEL

We stayed at the Cabana Bay Beach Resort, which was themed 50s/60s.  So they had great music pumping through the lobby and the decor was super cute.  It's one of Universal's on-site hotels and apparently it's fairly new.  I really liked it though and would definitely recommend it!

The shuttle that took us back and forth to the parks

Cute mural in the lobby

Fun and fancy room keys!

They had all these old school cars parked outside

FOOD AND DRINK

We had all kinds of fun things to eat and drink while we were on our adventure.

The first night we went to Emeril's restaurant on city walk
for happy hour

Duck tacos

Shrimp Ceviche

Chips and Guacamole

Saturday breakfast was at The Three Broomsticks in the park

The Pancake Breakfast

The American Breakfast

Butterbeers - regular on the left and hot on the right

Saturday's late lunch was at Bubba Gumps

Popcorn shrimp

Mom's salad

And her crab stuffed shrimp

Drinks from the hotel bar "Swizzle"

Butterbeer flavored ice cream

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS (The non HP parts)

There's more to Universal Studios than Harry Potter.  I know, it's hard to imagine but we did see other things.

City Walk

"Loo's Lounge" - It made me laugh

Parade! One of the pogo stick guys danced with me for a bit.

The Horror Movie Make Up Show

E.T. Ride - more underwhelming than I remembered

The line for the Shrek 4D movie

Seuss Town

The Disaster Ride line

Waiting in line at Starbucks

Standing outside the facade of the NY public library

All things Harry Potter to follow!

Snowmageddon

You may have heard about the snow we got recently.  Luckily it wasn't as bad as everyone thought, but I did end up working from home today since all the subways were closed tomorrow.  But here are some pictures of snow for your enjoyment!

Monday around 4pm:

Tuesday afternoon

Monica Visit!

Monica came to visit this weekend!  She made a quick stopover on her way home for a few days.  We had so much fun!  We didn't even do anything all that exciting, just chatted and hung out and made brownies :)  I've missed her!

We decorated to surprise her

New Year, New Shows

It's finally time for another blog post!  I've been keeping busy though.  I spent a wonderful Christmas with my family (and friends who are basically family), rang in the new year with friends, and now have just been hanging out and enjoying the beginnings of 2015!

One of my new year's resolutions was to actually sew on my sewing machine.  Today I completed that goal and my first project was to fix the strap of a reusable bag I use for groceries.  I was pretty pleased with myself.

I also saw two shows this weekend.  The first, Disenchanted the Musical is a Disney princess parody.  Basically the main plot was the princesses taking back their independence and their stories.  The main theme was how they didn't need a man to be successful and happy.

The show was pretty funny and I enjoyed it.  I was really impressed with the costumes though.  And also the singing, the actresses were fabulous singers.  Here's a little sneak peek video from their website, it's too bad you can't see the costumes in it though.  They were a lot of fun.



The second show I saw was the Improvised Shakespeare Company.  They were hysterical.  I laughed so much.  They are an improv group who gets a suggestion from the audience of a title of a new Shakespeare play (this one was The Mask of Murder) and then these 5 guys perform the play in the style and with the themes of Shakespeare.  This group was so talented.  It was amazing and they even rhymed and spoke in iambic pentameter at times!  Very impressive indeed!

Old School Subway!

Last weekend Seth and I got to ride an old fashioned subway!  On Sundays in December apparently the MTA runs an old fashioned train along part of the F line as part of a nostalgia type thing.  It's also good advertising for the MTA museum.

It was fun to not only see the old subway cars, but get to ride them!  The other funny part was seeing the confused looks of the people who were expecting an F train but got this instead.

Pocatello

Last night Kari and I saw a play at Playwright Horizons called Pocatello.  These were the tickets that Kari and won at the Broadway Flea Market.  This is the first time I've ever seen anything at this theatre and it was a really good play!

It was about this guy who is the general manager of an Olive Garden (though they never really say this is where it takes place) and about living in the small town of Pocatello, Idaho.  It had really interesting characters and seemed to basically just be about human interaction in small town America.

The set was really cool so I took a sneaky picture of it

At Playwright Horizons they also have a silly photo booth that sends you the picture to your email.  So here is me and Kari being silly before the show!

This is a pretty interesting interview with the author if you're interested in knowing more!

On the Town

I hear the one thing about New York is that it's a hellava town!  For Black Friday Kari and Ashley and I were able to get last minute tickets to see On the Town.

Basically....it was really weird!  I've never seen the movie either but the only way I can explain it is that it's like a dance concert where a plot breaks out in the middle.  The dancing was fantastic, but the plot definitely leaves something to be desired.  Oh well!  I'm still glad I saw it :)

Here's a fun video the cast did in actual locations of NYC!