Brought to you by a girl with a very, very sweet tooth.

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

I spent the day mostly alone, though you’re never really alone when you have pets. My husband was in school (yes, school on a Sunday!), Brett was at a soccer tournament, and Erin’s pretty much moved out… though I did get a text from her

I downloaded an app called Cinemagr.am and played around with it Sunday afternoon. Sophie was my 1st attempt, she’s a little choppy. And, Oscar was my 2nd and his turned out a lot better. I think I’m going to try some others, maybe something blowing in the wind or something subtle like that.

Here’s a post I did in the past with a bunch of cool cinemagraphs… I’ll have to use some of those for inspiration!

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

You all know that I love blog design and I offer, for free, a rainbow of colors in social media icons for anyone who visits my little nook in the www. In my free icons post all I request in return is for the reader/downloader to leave a comment so I can check out their site & see where my little icons are hanging out.

I truly do visit every site & every once in a while I stumble upon a golden nugget. Like this morning, Julie Hawkins from Ontario, Canada left me a comment saying “thank you!! love the icons, just put some on my website, thanks!!” When I got to her site I was immediately in love with her art work that is displayed prominently on her site… and my little icons are in her footer – she chose to go with a rainbow of colors, which is also my favorite combination… loud & proud!

I was so attracted to her art, I clicked over to her Etsy shop and favorited the shop, favorited a couple of pieces, and went back to her site to sign up for the email newsletter.

What I’m saying is, if I  hadn’t been a blogger, in all probability I would never have stumbled across Julie’s website & store.

These are my favorites…

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

• The band director was convicted of 4 counts of engaging in sexual activity with a minor.
• A law enforcement officer, tasked with campus security, was charged with 5 counts of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor.
• A wrestling coach and substitute teacher was charged with taking indecent liberties with a minor.
• The principal retired early at the end of last year – gee, I wonder why.
• The “fill-in” teacher that I mentioned earlier, she’s a fill-in for the rest of the year because the original Shop teacher was put on leave for cursing out a student in front of witnesses. Yeah, I know, brilliance in the making.

Yesterday, the fill-in Shop teacher gives the class a free day, which essentially means free talking, no class work, kind of day. Except my son was telling me that this ding-dong was telling the class that AIDS is a disease that was created by our government to reduce the population in our states, so that we could reduce homelessness and be able to feed all Americans. It was also placed, by our government, in the 4 corners of the world to see how quickly it would spread. Yes, you read that right, and apparently even if you have a college degree it does not mean you are granted with wisdom & common sense. When all of the students in the class, who apparently are wise to her bullshit rhetoric, called her on her nonsense her response to them was “you’ll understand when you get older, you’ll see.” Because, really? Belittling teenagers is such a smooth move – it’s almost a 100% guarantee that they’ll resort to any means to pull the proverbial rug out from under your feet.

Granted, her stupidity is not as serious as the previous events mentioned above, but geez!

Then, we had dinner with the in-laws last night, it was my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday and we had a wonderful time. Until she started talking about how the nuns at their high school would always flirt with “the good looking boys.” Lord, have mercy, do I not have enough on my hands with the high school without their own grandma condoning this behavior – saying that it’s harmless & cute? I don’t think she was too happy when I called the nuns pedophiles and that if an adult ever flirted with my children, I would have a serious problem with it.

Don’t mess with a mom, I’m just saying.

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

I’m in the middle of the book and have to say this is a great read! Being a teen from the 1980′s I have to say I’m loving all of the 80′s references and the overall concept of OASIS.

Ready Player One takes place in the not-so-distant future–the world has turned into a very bleak place, but luckily there is OASIS, a virtual reality world that is a vast online utopia. People can plug into OASIS to play, go to school, earn money, and even meet other people (or at least they can meet their avatars), and for protagonist Wade Watts it certainly beats passing the time in his grim, poverty-stricken real life. Along with millions of other world-wide citizens, Wade dreams of finding three keys left behind by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of OASIS and the richest man to have ever lived. The keys are rumored to be hidden inside OASIS, and whoever finds them will inherit Halliday’s fortune. But Halliday has not made it easy. And there are real dangers in this virtual world. Stuffed to the gills with action, puzzles, nerdy romance, and 80s nostalgia, this high energy cyber-quest will make geeks everywhere feel like they were separated at birth from author Ernest Cline. -Chris Schluep

If you’re in need of something to read, this is a good one. check it out.

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

To download any of these sets, please visit this post or my design site.

Each set includes an icon for: BlogLovin’, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, RSS, YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Email, Flickr, Tumblr, and Twitter.

There are 15 colors, each icon is 72×72 and .png file format. – something for everyone:

I hope you enjoy these icons & leave a comment to let me know if you put them on your blog… I’d love to see them in action!

Need to learn how to install the icons on your blog? Here’s a great tutorial from Eli Rose.

For all of you wonder Mac users, who get a .cpgz file when downloading – I’ve read that Springy (http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/systemdiskutilities/springy.html) fixes this problem.

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

This past week I had the honor of working with Gina over at Isola Bella. She is such a sweet person and… Hello! – She lives in the Caribbean.

We went all out for her site, including a Flash Header, which you should click over to see… it’s beautiful with all of her wonderful images from her shop & island life. At her request, this was the first time ever, I customized my branding to blend with her blog… what a great idea! I think I’ll offer than on all of my custom designs from now on.

Also, a must see is the popular posts widget… I customized it by removing all of the titles & text and putting it into a grid layout – and when you hover over the images they twist & turn.

There are also other little customizations throughout the blog pages – check out the contact page!

Hope you like the design as much as I do. If you have any questions or are looking for a new design for your blog, just let me know – I’d love to work with you.

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

I turned to my husband and said “definitely going to see this… with my girls!”

The film stars Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Joe Manganiello, and Matthew McConaughey, and from their appearances in Beastly to True Blood I feel like most of these gentlemen are no stranger to taking their shirts off. In fact, one might argue that McConaughey is almost exclusively famous for not wearing a shirt. [via]

Tatum, 31, stars as the titular “magical” male stripper, a role that’s loosely based on Tatum’s real-life experience of exotic dancing in Tampa.

By night, Mike plays to the fantasies of his patrons, being the “husband they never had, the dreamboat guy that never came along.” But by day, he’s more interested in crafting and selling furniture – and perhaps falling in love with Paige, as played by Cody Horn. A stripper/entrepreneur, if you will.

So why does he strip? First of all, he’s making good money – although you don’t want to know what he has to do for a $20 – and there’s also “women…and a good time.”

Tatum has called his time spent as an exotic dancer “a wild and pivotal time” in his life, and it looks like some of that will be carried over to the film as well.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh, “Magic Mike” also stars Matt Bomer, Alex Pettyfer, Matthew McConaughey and “True Blood’s” Joe Manganiello as “Big Dick Richie.” [via]

June 29th ladies!

June 29th.

xo

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

Lucy – click for live demo
This Blogger template comes complete with custom header, custom welcome box, post dividers, choice of up to 12 turquoise social media icons, favicon and free installation – $30.00.

Mustard – click for live demo
This Blogger template comes complete with custom header, custom welcome box, post dividers, choice of up to 12 light grey social media icons, favicon and free installation – $30.00.

Check out the shop!

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.

Caine Monroy is a 9-year old boy who spent his summer vacation building an elaborate DIY cardboard arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store.

This video is so, so sweet.

©2012 CarrieLoves. All Rights Reserved.