Hoots of a Night Al

Night Al Migrations: The Pearl

April 18, 2014 4 Comments

Howdy y’all! Remember me? Sorry…I’ve been MIA (no, not the singer/rapper M.I.A.) for a minute! Don’t fret. I’m back.

I wanted to share a pretty cool, new (to us) spot that hubbs and I explored a few weeks ago: The Pearl in San Antonio. We moved to San Antonio almost 2 years ago from our beloved Houston (where our families live) with the attitude that San Antonio would never be as good as our hometown. While that may still ring true, we recently decided to abandon our bitter attitude towards San Antonio and start exploring! I’m hoping as we venture throughout the city together, I can share our experiences here as Night Al Migrations. I’m sorry…I love a good theme, so I’m sticking with the bird idea here.

Our goal was to branch out from typical tourist spots like the River Walk and find other cool locations around the city. When we visited Bakery Lorraine for our anniversary, we drove through an area known as The Pearl. The Pearl is a grouping of restaurants, shops, and lofts in buildings that originally housed The Pearl Brewery. We recently made a trip there to enjoy lunch and browse around some of the stores.

We arrived around one o’clock on a Friday afternoon and headed to The Granary for some BBQ. (Side note: I instagrammed the picture above and misspelled “Granary” in my caption. So embarrassing.) The Granary is located in a charming house from the 1800s and is covered with rich wood, unique lighting, and handwritten chalkboard menus. They also have a dog-friendly, wrap-around porch, which was a nice touch! We got our drinks first (glass bottle Coca Cola for me, house-made root beer for Lou) and waited a few minutes for our meal.

We weren’t too intrigued by any of the sides, so we each got a chopped beef sandwich and 1/2 lb of beef brisket to split. The Granary is big on only serving humanely raised meat (humanely raised to be slaughtered for our lunch…contradictory?), and it showed in their prices! I can safely say though, that their chopped beef sandwich was one of the best I’ve ever tasted! It was on fresh baked bread, and their BBQ sauce (which is a crucial component for me) was super tasty. However, the brisket was marbled with LOTS of fat, which we’re not fans of. I can’t recommend it if you prefer lean brisket.

Once we finished lunch, we decided to walk around and explore some of the boutiques and shops. One of the boutiques we went into was Leighelena, which contained a mixture of vintage boots and clothes, handmade jewelry and various gifts and decor. It was kind of like a vintage, western Urban Outfitters? They had a ton of unique pieces and some really beautiful jewelry.

Another favorite store of mine was The Tiny Finch. They had some of the most beautiful home decor unlike anything I’ve ever seen providing several one-of-a-kind pieces. We popped in a few other shops including Ten Thousand Villages (pictured below), which contained pieces from around the world created by various artisans. Each store we visited was distinctly different and offered special pieces you’re unlikely to find anywhere else.

In fact, The Pearl was so unique, I was kind of worried we weren’t hip enough to be there! Stupid, right? The Culinary Institute of America also has a campus at The Pearl, so, obviously, there is no shortage of adventurous (and pricey) restaurants. They have everything from an authentic Mexican street food ice house to a kosher vegetarian restaurant to a seafood and oyster bar. There’s something for everyone! Be warned though…most of the restaurants aren’t for picky eaters. Louis and I are pretty boring when it comes to food, and several of the restaurant menus require much more sophisticated palates. 😉 Like I said…we may not be hip enough for The Pearl…haha!

The Pearl has incredible lofts on site that would be a dream to live in! They are also in the process of renovating the historic brew house into a luxury boutique hotel. In addition to all this, they host a huge Farmer’s Market every weekend, which brings in tons of local vendors. I think The Pearl is on the brink of being really popular. I’m sure within the next couple of years once all of the storefronts are occupied and the construction and renovations are complete, the area will be booming. We had a great time exploring it, and I can’t wait to see how it grows in the future! If you’re a local, or you visit San Antonio, add The Pear to your itinerary for some unique food and shopping!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend celebrating Easter, and I’ll be back next week with some more Beauty Blurbs and posts!

See you then!

Beauty

Beauty Blurbs: Rimmel ScandalEYES Eyeliner in Nude

March 29, 2014 5 Comments

Hey y’all! Today, I’m reviewing the Rimmel ScandalEYES kohl eyeliner in Nude. First of all, way to go Rimmel for that witty name. Even though “to scandalize” means to shock or horrify, I’m all for a good pun. Hopefully this eyeliner doesn’t shock or horrify you though…because I really like it!

I read somewhere that lining your bottom waterline with nude eyeliner helps reduce the look of redness and make you appear more awake. I’m not sure if it really works, but I do love that it makes my eyes look a little bigger. This particular pencil works pretty well. It glides on very easily, but it doesn’t typically last the entire day. I’d say it only lasts around 3-4 hours before you could reapply.

However, the color is great for my skin tone and is well pigmented. Also, I haven’t noticed any smudging with this liner, though if there was any it would just blend in with my skin (hah.). I think the nude liner looks great with a more understated makeup look when you just want to look polished and refreshed. This could be an easy addition to a quick makeup routine.

At around $5-7, this is a relatively inexpensive liner you could try the “nude” trend with. I hope you like it!

Family, Food, Humor, Married Life

High Five for Friday!

March 20, 2014 3 Comments

Happy Friday everyone! I’m so excited to enjoy a weekend of movie dates and relaxation with my hubby! I just wanted to drop in and share five of my favorite things about the past week!

1. Fogo de Chao on the River Walk: The week leading up to our anniversary, Louis kept saying we could just grab dinner somewhere after he got off work, so I figured we would just have a chill night and not really do anything special. Then, he surprised me by taking a half day off work! When he got home, he had a dozen roses and a beautiful card with our plans written inside! I was so surprised and excited. Our first stop was Fogo de Chao on the River Walk. If you’ve never been to Fogo de Chao, you need to go ASAP. It is SO delicious! It’s a Brazilian restaurant where the waiters walk around with skewers of meat and slice off as much of each kind as you want. They also have an amazing salad bar and delicious sides. Seriously though, the meat is the star of the show. We were in carnivore heaven! There are something like fifteen different meats, and each one I sampled was juicy and delectable. After we were stuffed, we strolled along the River Walk enjoying the beautiful weather and each other.

2. Bakery Lorraine for Macarons: Louis’s anniversary plans continued with heading to a local bakery to get some macarons. I found out about Bakery Lorraine a while ago and have been wanting to go for months! It’s an adorable bakery in a converted house run by two amazing pastry chefs from California. We got half a dozen macarons to try in some fun flavors: Lemon, Grapefruit, Raspberry, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Buttermint, and Angel Food! I’m still on the fence about whether or not I like macarons though…the consistency was totally different than we were expecting! They were much denser and richer than I thought they’d be, but the flavors were so fun and inventive! Can’t wait to head back to Bakery Lorraine to try some of their other creations, soon! They make Poptarts in house that I have my eye on…(only I would go to a bakery and get a Poptart haha!)

3. Cards & Flowers: Our anniversary gift to each other was our February trip to Disneyland, but we always exchange cards for special occasions! We both picked out Papyrus cards because they’re the best, and we also received the sweetest anni cards from my family (thanks y’all! 🙂 ). Louis also surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of red roses because he’s sweet like that. I also have to give a shout out to my pink hydrangeas in the background that have been going strong for two weeks!

4. Charlie & Harry: I finally watched the Dancing with the Stars premiere, and the gold medal wining ice dancer, Charlie White is one of the “stars” (I feel like they use that term VERY loosely on that show). The entire episode I knew he reminded me of someone, and finally, it hit me! Charlie may be Harry from Dumb and Dumber. I mean…look at this comparison.

5. New High for Blog Views: This is probably a silly one, but I was really excited that I achieved a new “high” for views this week (on St. Paddy’s day!…guess it was my “lucky day?” Hardy har har…)! I know my stats are nowhere near as high as many other blogs, but it still makes me happy to know people are reading (and hopefully enjoying?) my posts!

I hope everyone’s week was wonderful and that the weekend is just as good!

Humor

Stories of a Sub.

March 20, 2014 8 Comments

As I’ve mentioned before, I occasionally substitute teach in our district. So far, I’ve only chosen to sub in middle schools, and it has worked out great. Mostly because middle schoolers are at their peak awkwardness. And yes, my header is a little dramatic…my experience subbing for these little devils has not been reminiscent of a creepy murder scene. However, they can be challenging at times to say the least. Here’s a little chronicle of some of my more interesting experiences thus far.

Best lunchbox ever. Everyone needs a PackIt.

First of all, every school I substitute in has morning announcements during 1st period. They start with the pledges, and EVERY TIME, I say the Texas pledge wrong. Want to know why? They CHANGED IT since I was in school! It is now, “Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.” Apparently it changed in 2007 with the addition of “one state under God.” Who knew? Well every middle school student I guess because I’m the only person that jacks it up every morning. Note: Learn the pledge.

I love when teachers leave me seating charts because I can call kids by name, and it totally freaks them out. Sometimes, albeit rarely, all it takes is a “Jimmy, stop talking!” and the rest of class I have a quiet, wide-eyed boy who’s mesmerized that I mysteriously know his name. A few weeks ago, I subbed for a teacher who added descriptives next to students on her seating chart…perhaps to help her remember who was who early in the year? It was very entertaining for me because the adjectives included: best, smart, sweet, tall, amazing, weird, fun, colorful, random, and another tall. I think weird, best, and tall were my favorites. Note: They were all very accurate.

I did love that teacher’s seating charts but not her grammar…she used the wrong ‘there’ on her instructions! Ugh. She wrote: “Turn in their papers when THEIR done.” Gross. If you’re teaching our future generation, you should at least be able to figure out there, their, and they’re! And your and you’re for that matter! Get it together teachers. (Also, now that I’ve complained about grammar on my blog, I’m sure I’ll make a huge error soon.) Note: Proofread posts multiple times.

One morning, as I was reviewing my assignment for the day, I saw a small carton on the teacher’s desk. I tipped it towards me and saw it was full of small black and white spheres with red lights. I set it back down on the desk, and suddenly all of the red lights lit up and the spheres started beeping. Y’all, my immediate thought was that they were bombs, and the teacher hated her job and students, so she planted bombs and called in a sub to do her dirty work. I was seconds from sprinting out of the classroom when they stopped beeping and lit up different numbers. I then realized they were dice. Crisis averted. Does anyone else jump to the worst possible scenario possible first? Note: Stop overreacting.

My face half time time I’m subbing trying to figure out these kids…

Whenever I take attendance each period, I always try my best to pronounce each student’s name correctly. Growing up, subs always pronounced Ali like Muhammad Ali. I understand that they’re spelled the same, but to this day I get mail addressed to Mr. Ali…awkward. Anyway, while taking attendance one day, I reached the last name on the sheet, and it was: Abcde. I said, “Is someone’s name in here actually A-B-C-D-E or is this a typo?” A girl replied, “Oh, that’s me! It’s Ab-suh-dee.” Obviously. Note: Sound it out? (But not, because then I would have said Ab-kuh-duh.)

In that same class, a 7TH GRADE boy came up to me and asked what we were doing for the day. That wasn’t so out of the ordinary. What was awkward was the fact that he looked me in the eyes and asked me while picking his nose. We’re talking finger halfway up the nostril, digging for gold, totally unashamed. I somewhat awkwardly responded that it was a free day, and he strolled over, dislodged his finger, and started typing on the class computer. Note: Always bring hand sanitizer when subbing.

Until next time…

Beauty, Uncategorized

Beauty Blurbs: Maybelline Unstoppable Eyeliner in Onyx

March 19, 2014 2 Comments

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been using Maybelline Unstoppable Eyeliner in Onyx as my go-to black eyeliner. It’s been around forever, and I can see why. It glides on easily without tugging on my eyelid, which makes application a breeze. If you’re new to eyeliner or wanting to try it out, I think the Unstoppable Eyeliner is the perfect tool because it goes on so easily.

I always use it along my top lash line, and I often use it to line my lower waterline as well. The formula doesn’t irritate my eyes regardless of how long I have it on (though I never sleep in my makeup and neither should you!). It also never smudges onto my eyelid regardless of what eyeshadow I’m wearing, which I’ve encountered with other eyeliners.

Another great feature is that you simply swivel it up to “sharpen” it. I hate eyeliners that I have to sharpen with a pencil sharpener because I always feel like I’m going to get a splinter in my eye or something. Anyone else? No? Just me? Ok. Anyway…the width of the liner is great for creating thin lines, but it can easily be layered for a more dramatic look.

Adding Maybelline’s Unstoppable eyeliner to my eye routine really makes my eyes stand out, and I love that I can count on it to stay put and not smudge all day. At around $5.99 most places, it’s a great purchase in my opinion. Hope you agree!

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