The spring line of shoes from Freda Salvador is making my brain explode.  It’s like a bunch of my favourite things aggressively smashed together into shoewear.  Expensive, expensive shoewear.

Simple, Clean, Stacked Ankle Boot??

(Fake) ALLIGATOR SKIN?

TRIANGLE BEADY THINGS???

SMOKING LOAFERS THAT TURN INTO OXFORDS?????

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph I almost just peed.

Whhhhaaaat?  Pasta, you MUST be tired because you have been running through my mind ALL day.

So it’s possible that I’m going on vacation to paradise in about three weeks, and it’s also possible that I am allowing the monsters of peer pressure invade my strong feminist mind to tell me that I should lose weight and not be a fattybobatty.  I have decided that my translucent-white whale skin needs to be wrapped around thighs that are as small as possible to detract from their horror.

At the same time, I want to resist against the oppressive social machine that tells me whaley white jiggle thighs are bad.  I MEAN, I would clearly survive the longest in some kind of horrible, meteor-inflicted famine. SHOULDN’T THAT be the REAL indicator of hottness?

With this in mind, I decided to craft a recipe SO FATTY… so BUTTER INFUSED… so CARBOHYDRATE-UNNECESSARY, that it would easily add on one extra day of survival (read: three extra thigh-pounds) in the unlikely event of a famine.

Farfalle with Exotic Mushrooms & Bacon Creme Sauce

• A heap of Farfalle Pasta
• Like, three handfulls of Cremini, Portobello & Oyster Mushrooms, coarsely chopped
• Five strips of Ready Crisp Bacon
• 1/2 chopped up Sweet Onion
• Tablespoon of chopped garlic
• 1/2 glass of white wine (leaving 2.5 glasses left to drink while cooking)
• 2 Tablespoons of Butter
• Parsley or Thyme (Thyme is always better)
• Some shakes of Parmesan Cheese
• 1/2 cup Cooking Creme
• Salt and Pepper

Instructions:

Wash your bowl of fungus:

Melt butter under medium-high heat and add salt & pepper.  Throw in chopped onion and garlic and let that stuff simmer and make your house smell like food-sex.  Chop up fungus and put in butter/onion/garlic heaven:

While that shizz is simmering, cook the Ready Crisp bacon in the microwave and pat out all the grease.  Chop it up to like, I don’t know, like 0.5 centimeter chunks.  Use your judgement.  I’m not your mother.

Chop up that parsley too.  Parsley was all I had but next time I’ll use thyme.  Let’s be honest – parsley is like the Celine Dion of herbs.  It’s totally overdone and everyone is bored with it and when you experience it, you don’t even really notice unless someone puts fireworks behind it.

WAHOO look at that steam all up.  Throw in the white wine now, if you can bear to part with it.  The alcohol evaporates off while you simmer it, which is pretty depressing.  I guess you could put your face over the pan with your mouth open hoping to let some of the vaporized alcohol enter your mouth and like, eye holes.  It would be a pretty efficient way to get drunk probably.

Anyways, let the pan of delicious shizz simmer until the liquid starts to evaporate and your dealing with a chunky, non-soupy type mixture…

Ok, so now put in the Cooking Creme.  I don’t really know the different between Cooking Creme and like, Normal Cow Creme, but in the grocery store there was a normal creme and a cooking creme, and since I was cooking with it, I was all like, “I guess I should get the cooking creme.”  Pour it in, then add the bacon and parsley.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that you should probably have the pasta on the stove and like, be boiling it so that it’s ready soon.  So that should be pretty much ready.  Sorry if I screwed up by not mentioning that earlier,  but I mean, learn to be kind of independent sometimes. Man, you are getting clingy.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.  I want you in my mouth.

Ok, so when the pasta is ready and well-drained, throw it back in the pot, and add in the delicious sauce mixture.  Toss it all around to get all the fattiness well-distributed.

Add some Parmesan cheese on the top.

I think we need a closer view:

Even closer.

Ok that last one was a little too close.  Something in between.

PERFECT.  EAT THAT SHIT AND WATCH YOUR THIGHS EXPAND BEFORE YOUR EYES.

… but I ask politely, demurely, anxiously, sexually (less so… but still), that you take 2 minutes out of your day and vote for my “spacious” bedroom in Apartment Therapy / Legget & Platt’s My Bedroom Retreat contest.

CLICK  HERE: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/natalies-spacious-bedroom-my-bedroom-retreat-contest-186628#contest-widget-7758

WHY???  See below:

1. My write up is ditzy and I sound stupid and now I’m embarrassed that I said my bedroom is for “play[ing] with my dog Molly for long periods of time… she loves rolling around on the bed.”  I sound like such a sexless loser.  So feel sorry for me and vote.
2. I am the only person I know who doesn’t have an iPad.  I know – first world fo’ sho, but still, come on.  You will significantly increase my ability to waste time AND I will be more likely to post to my blog about things that have no consequence in your life.
3. I did the whole thing myself with my brain-hole and I didn’t have any help (…not even from my boyfriend.  Like, NONE.  He sat on the couch in his underwear.).
4. The room is 90% thrifted and DIY.  I’m so Parkdale-Hipster-Lady-esque that YOUR BRAIN MIGHT EXPLODE.
5. I will send one karma unit  of incandescent happiness to everyone who votes, so your day will probably become awesome.
6. Some of those people submitted their DAMN bedrooms like four weeks ago and have FOUR WEEKS of additional voting time under their belt.  UNFAIR?  Maybe, but what would I be if  I complained about the equity regulations of a contest that could potentially give me an iPad?  A stupid person, that’s who.  SO VOTE HARD.

Thank you friends and lovers (mostly friends).

Molly is FOUR years old today!  Seems like yesterday she was a little runt puppy being picked on and pushed around by her brothers and sisters because she was too small to stand up:

I am so grateful that I have been chosen to be her person-mom and play-friend.  Even though she stinks sometimes and always looks worried and is constantly eating like, pieces of tin foil off the ground and then I have to stick my finger in her mouth and dig around to pull out the piece of tin foil, I love her more than anything.

I managed to unexpectedly receive a gift card recently for FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS to spend at Holt Renfrew, which is a bigger present than anything I have ever received in my life.  Having this much money to spend on PURE FRIVOLITY (because, let’s be honest, no one is going to Holt’s to buy like, five-packs of white cotton underwear) made me temporarily feel like an actual, honest-and-for-true, Rich Person.  I decided that, instead of being sensible and using it to buy several moderately-priced smaller items, I wanted to BLOW the whole thing on one amazing item that I could never afford otherwise.

Here are some things I contemplated while trying to figure out what to buy.

First thing I came across was this orange/burgundy/red Marc by Marc Jacobs purse that is f-ing stunning and was “within” my frivolity range at $585.00.  Seriously, it is the perfect fancy-lady-slash-hipster bag, and, as such, I believed it would make me feel like a fancy lady from the 70′s-slash-hipster from the 90′s (which is like a style orgasm for my brain-hole).  It was the first thing I saw, so I didn’t want to jump the gun, but just to be sure I picked it up and walked around the store with it the whole time so that some other fucking person didn’t steal it from me.

The Marc Jacobs bag was pretty much the only purse that I liked that wasn’t $3000.00.  There was also this Rebecca Minkoff bag… but meh.  Didn’t even compare.

 On to the shoe section.  There was a sale on so there were some fancy-person heels on sale that came within my $500.00 range (jesus it is crazy that I just wrote that sentence).  First, some classic pink Louboutins:

I have never tried on Louboutin’s, and since they cost more than a month’s rent, I guess I assumed that when I put them on my foot would start singing and I would feel as if I was wearing magic comfortable uggs-slash-slippers.  JUST SO YOU KNOW… the cost of the shoes is *definitely* not related to comfort.  It felt like I put my foot into an uncomfortable cone of razors.

And, like, seriously – don’t they look exactly the same as a pair of fucking pink shoes from Aldo or Zara or something??  Like, WHAT THE F am I paying hundreds of dollars for?  NOTHING.  THAT’S WHAT.

The only other pair of shoes I tried were these studded Chloe ankle boots.  I actually really liked them, but:

1. Outside of my $500.00 price range;
2. One size too big; and
3. They are *slightly* crazy-person shoes.  Like, if I were the waifish lead-singer of a cool British alt-metal band all hepped up on heroin and on tour in Japan, I could get away with them.  Unfortunately I am a lardy Corporate shill.  So no studded boots for me.

Anyways, fuck the shoe section.  Off to clothing.

So this was the issue with the clothing section.  I am a fat lardo right now and I didn’t want to buy something that fit because I plan on losing copious amounts of lard, and I didn’t want to buy something too small because I might not lose that lard, in which case I would be wasting my $500.00.  Such a ridiculous rich fancy rich lady dilemma.

Tried on a few Helmut Lang blazers… meeeeeeeh.

And then this shirt that I thought would look cool and edgy but actually just looked like a shitty futuristic space-uniform:

Anyways.  Of course.  I left with my new love:

Have only worn it about twice because I’m petrified that it might start raining or a baby might throw up on it or something.  Still.  She is beautiful.

And so ends my one, brief, shining moment as a rich person.  Sigh.

Seriously.  How did I even live before this album came out?

Here.

Third day at Oktoberfest was our last.  Le boo.

Anne and I tried to get our shit together and wake up early so that we could walk around and pretend that we saw at least *some* of Munich outside of the beer tents.  We gave ourselves a solid 60 minutes of walking around time.  More than enough to see a giant city with no map, right?  Here is what I look like in the morning – puffy eyes galore.  Annie is the cutest.

Being extremely resourceful (read: stuck without a map and no data roaming on our iPhones), we stumbled down a random alleyway into a small courtyard in the middle of the deserted city.  Where we found this:

What is this, you ask?  I have no fucking idea.  It looked like a giant community of German folk bands all standing together in the middle of nowhere, looking at each other.  You would *think* they would play their instruments at some point, you know, having instruments in their hands and all, but Annie and I stood there waiting for over 30 minutes waiting for something to happen.  And they just stood there shuffling slightly to the left or right.

Finally, we decided to go into the adjacent Starbucks and get a coffee so that we had something to do while waiting for SOMETHING *BIG* TO HAPPEN with the German folk bands.  I went to the washroom, too.  DID YOU KNOW that washrooms at Starbucks’ in downtown Munich are like, in super fucking cool underground CAVES?  Where you have to go into what looks like a haunted cellar door, then into the basement of a fucking underground LAIR?  YEAH  IT WAS PRETTY COOL.

Finally the bands played like three bars of music then they stopped and started looking around again so we we left to walk around some more.

See all the Police?  What is going on you say?

Two things became quickly apparent:

1. It was a national holiday in Germany and there were police EVERYWHERE to prevent drunk German mob-fighting; and
2. In order to be a female police officer in Germany you have to be tall, blond, and smoking hot.

What with all the underground washroom caves, the blond policewomen, and the instrument-holding-stand-around mob, it was shaping up to be a fabulous day.

On to the tent we booked for day three: Hippodrom.

As you can see, we welcomed the morning with another huge log of cheese paste and salted turnips.

Hippodrom was supposedly the “exclusive” tent that was really “hard to get into”, not unlike a “hot, hot club”… so of course I was automatically a bit skeptical.  I like my beer tents “trashy and non-exclusive”.

There WERE a larger proportion of ladies with fake tits… and we saw two ladies with fake breasticles doing a line of coke on the table next to us… so yeah, very similar to a “hot, hot club”.

However, the tent was beautiful, they had an all-day live band and the beer was delicious.  So I was happy.

The other main difference between this tent and the others is that this one served alcohol *other* than beer.  Two of the girls in my group (I feel the need to clarify that neither one is me…), are not partial to beer… for them, the first two days were not as enjoyable as they could have been, alcohol-wise… so this was a way for them to get drunk with a bit more comfort.

The two non-beer ladies chose to order Champagne.  Two bottles.  So like, one bottle each.  You is some cra-zhy guys!

Things started a bit slow.  I mean, everyone looks just like, sober and normal.

Apparently, I decided that on day three I was going to try really hard to look like a transvestite man, as you can see below.

 This picture is only *sorta* getting a little sloppy… Travis is pulling the fart eyes down there in the corner.

…and then Sarah drank a whole bottle of Champagne to herself…

…and then other people started acting like idiots.

Awwwww, look how nice the picture below is:

You would never know that this was the picture taken immediately before it:

The transvestite man is unhappy about something and decided to shout her/his disapproval in a low baritone:

At some point we left the tent.  I remember walking slowly in the sun aimlessly.  Then I remember sitting outside at another tent.  Which tent? I have no idea.

What I DO remember is that there were no places to sit on the outdoor patio, and they don’t serve you delicious beer unless you are sitting down.  We then noticed a table for eight with only four people seated at it.  The waitress said to us “Seat?  Seat?  Seat over there! THERE!” …and ushered us to this table.

Unbeknownst to us, these four men had been belligerent all day… had broken several glasses on the table, and were so out of their minds incomprehensible drunk that the waitress couldn’t even speak to them to kick them out.  She thought if we sat down they would get the picture and get up and leave.

But no.  They befriended us.  They really liked me and my low-cut dress.  One man made me sit on his lap as a “toll” for us to sit at the table.  So yeah, vomit in my mouth.  They were all Eastern European and REALLY liked that I am Croatian.  Oh yeah.  They liked me.  They liked me a lot.

The Serbian gentleman pictured below has no teeth (he also stole my hat):

The gentleman pictured below sat in this position for about two hours straight speaking to no one:

At some point we all realized that we should probably leave… some people threw up… some people cried… it was a clusterfuck, really.

This part got a little fuzzy – I seem to remember three of us girls having SERIOUS trouble figuring out how to get back to the hotel for the following reasons:

1. Walking was out of the question due to drunken fatigue and no sense of direction;
2. We had no idea where the subway was; and
3. There were no cabs.

I have this vision of us walking around for the Oktoberfest gate for 30 minutes… wailing to each other in drunken loud obnoxious girl voices “HOWWWW  are we going to get bAAAACK”…

…while walking in circles around a Rickshaw.  Like OVER AND OVER AND OVER:

All of a sudden, it was like we had been standing next to the rickshaw for twenty minutes wailing, when we turned around and were all like “THERE’S A RICKSHAW!!!” Like we had invented the idea of a rickshaw.

Please see below for a shot of Tomas, our rickshaw (to make it extra German you have to put emphasis on the “mas”, like To-MAS).  PLEASE NOTE HOW MANY RICKSHAWS THERE ARE AROUND HIM THAT WE DID NOT SEE.

Drunnnnk ladiiiieeesss, takin’ pictuuuuures!  Every drunk lady thinks pictures are a great idea.  It’s science.

Oh To-MAS, you so crazy.

Then we went to Pizza Hut.  End of day.

Incidentally, since posting about the two first days, I have come across some additional pictures.

From day two – Here we are sitting with the table of German people next to us for a photo.  Please note how “familiar” the gentleman in the lower right-hand corner is being with Anne…

But Anne doesn’t seem to mind.

Agnes is *very* happy about the fact that cotton candy cost the equivalent of 30 cents.  She kept yelling “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THIS COST?  DO YOU?  THIRTY CENTS!  I LOVE EUROPE!”

And then from day one below… some pictures of me sitting with a table of guys from Holland.  I do not remember this occuring at all.  Let’s also note that I am holding a cookie necklace that is not mine, and I have clearly crushed it with my overzealous man-hands.  The man sitting directly across from me is pretty upset with me – look at his kill-eyes.

Also – WHEN did my hair get French braided?  By whom?  These are still mysteries.

But award for best candid photo is the one below, where I am obviously trying to steal cigarettes from Holland Jared Leto while giving him my digits as a distraction.  I can just imagine myself being like

“…uh yeah… 1-1-3-2-4-5-6-2-24-4-2-3–6-4-3… but like, that number might not work in Holland.”

Next post is about my one-day adventure in Vienna, then off to Prague!