Monday, March 21, 2011

My First Post

My first blog. Well, that’s not exactly true. I used to be an avid Myspace blogger and I’ve decided to rekindle that old blogging spirit.
While shopping for jewelry I’ve often thought to myself “I could make that.” So I did. I started making my own jewelry and opened up a shop on Etsy. I’ve been trying to market my stuff and tons of people say blogs are the way to go. Well, that works for me. I used to love blogging. And people liked my blogs.
I went to South by Southwest this weekend.  For those of you who don’t know, SXSW is a huge music festival in Austin, TX. Pretty much every bar in downtown Austin has live music and there are outside stages at different locations around downtown. The cool thing is that the outside venues are free and most of the bars don’t charge cover. My sister (Katelyn), my fiancé (Zach), and I started off at Auditorium Shores - a big stage set up by Lady Bird Lake.
We stayed and watched some random band I’d never heard of and then we walked downtown to grab some food. On the way we grabbed a geocache (one of my favorite hobbies). If you don’t know what geocaching is and you own a GPS and have a sense of adventure then I highly recommend checking it out: www.geocaching.com. We stopped and ate at Fado’s Irish Pub and Restaurant on 4th street (I recommend the Sheppard’s Pie) then went back and watched Bright Eyes perform. They weren’t my favorite. So instead of watching the show we spent our time picking up free schwag.

We picked up some free M&Ms, oranges (that my sister used to brush up on her juggling skills), a coozie, and a beach ball. My hands were getting kind of full, so then came the search for a bag. Good news: Soy Joy was giving away free backpacks to people who successfully shot a Velcro ball onto a target using a giant sling shot. Don't mean to toot my own horn, but I got it on the first try. And my fiancé landed a free tshirt for his sling shot abilities. Soy Joy was also giving away samples of their food bars: limit 2 per person. Which we learned really meant 2 per person, per trip. So we made like 5 trips back to their table. After we filled up our bag, we headed back home to wash up and head downtown for the night shows.
Our first stop was The Speakeasy where we saw Ezra Furman and the Harpoons. They’re an indie rock band, and the singer has a very unique voice. Very good. I bought their cd. Check them out here: http://www.myspace.com/ezrafurman. The next band was not-so-good, so we headed out to 6th street to find some new bands. Some techno DJs got our blood pumping at a small club we stopped at, then we moved on and snuck into a “wristbands only” club (we didn’t buy wristbands). Really glad we did! I think I found my new favorite band: Operator Please. They’re an Australian pop band with a female lead singer. Very funky and upbeat. Check them out: http://www.myspace.com/operatorplease.

The rest of the night wound down pretty quickly. My fiancé slipped and fell down some stairs (he’s ok – more worried about the stains on his shirt than the fact that probably 10 people saw him hit the floor. haha), we listened to a marching band as we walked down the street back to our car, and then we filled our bellies with Whataburger and called it a night.

Me and my fiance, Zach, at Auditorium Shores



At least he's creative?



Auditorium Shores - the crowd, the stage to the left, and downtown Austin as a backdrop

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