We’ve had such a fun month!  Starting with Rick & Stacey’s wedding, then we headed up to Atlanta to see U2 in concert (AMAZING!), then FSU football games, the Fur-Ball gala to benefit Leon County Humane Society, then just this past Saturday we got to see another amazing concert….then Halloween this weekend!  I love fall!  (even though the fall weather isn’t sticking around long enough. Here’s a few of my favorite random things from this month:

Bryan Adams concert, Florida Theater in Jacksonville

(I realize the quality isn’t that great, we only had our iPhone and weren’t really supposed to use it for pictures)

I have been a fan of Bryan Adams since I was about 9 years old.  I have super fond memories of carpooling to elementary school with a friend and listening to one of his albums on CASSETTE TAPE and begging her mom to rewind and fastforward to certain songs.  I kept up with his music through most of his career and he’s just one of those artists whose voice captures me and song writing depicts the most beautiful pictures.  He’s a lot more to me than “the guy that sings the Robin Hood song” as most of my friends referred to him when I said I was going to his show.  Here’s why the concert has become my favorite ever:

~It was an acoustic performance and all he had to go along with it was a guy on the piano.  The acoustics in the tiny theater were amazing and his raspy voice just filled the whole place….gave me goosebumps.

~He talked to the audience in between songs and gave a little background on each one, who he wrote it about, where he was, or how old he was when he wrote it. He’s just a cool, unpretentious guy who is out on the road singing for people who love his music (ME!).

~Like I said, the theater was tiny and intimate, and they had the coolest lighting set up!  They had just stripped away all of the curtains and exposed the brick wall and used uplighting that changed colors throughout the show.  The other spotlights changed throughout the show too….it was just a really cool, nice touch!

~I knew he had a ton of songs that I love…but even I was surprised when he sang a few that I had forgotten about!  Ever seen “Hope Floats”?  That song he has on that soundtrack, “When You Love Someone”, I just loooove it but totally forgot about it!  But knew every word when he started singing it.

~He has a ton of songs that were in movies so it’s always fun to hear them performed live: “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” from Robin Hood, “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman” from Don Juan DeMarco, “All For One” from The Three Musketeers (he sang all the words to this one even though it was sung with Sting and Rod Stewart on the recording!), “Heaven” from a movie I forgot, but he said it’s written about a male stripper and apologized to anyone who had used it for their first dance.  haha!

~He took some requests towards the end which I thought was really cool!

~He invited people in the back of the balcony to come and sit in the few empty seats down front.  🙂  Love when artists do stuff like that!

~When he came back for his encore he told everyone to get out of their seats and come down front!  We were sitting in the 16th row so we jumped up and ended up around row 3….that’s when we got the picture above.

Overall, it was just freakin awesome!!

MAKEUP

So, enough about that.  Let’s talk about a few fun things I found at my new favorite store!  ULTA Beauty!  I wanted a red lipstain that wasn’t going to be too overpowering and found just what I needed!

They’re also running a promotion on Bare Minerals, so I grabbed a few things I had been wanting and got a $44 value bonus pack to go with it!  It came with eyelid primer and I’m really loving it so far.

MOVIES

We went to see “Whip It” last week and I just wanted to let you know that I thought it was AWESOME!  I love Ellen Page, she was so funny in Juno and was equally as funny in this new movie.  It was also Drew Barrymore’s directing debut and I thought she did a great job as well as starring in the movie!  If you need a good laugh and are tired of all the horror movies this time of year, definitely go check out Whip It!

BOOKS/HEALTH

Another cool find at the bookstore, “Eat This Not That”.  There’s several different books in the series, but this just has a bunch of simple swaps at your favorite restaurants that could save you hundreds of calories and pounds!!  Can you believe that a Quarter Pounder at McDonald’s is less calories than their grilled chicken sandwich??  They’re also on Twitter, follow them at EatThisNotThat!

PUMPKINS

Lastly, we’re heading back home tomorrow and I have big plans to carve some pumpkins!  It’s always something I enjoy doing even though it takes me about 3-4 hours to complete the design I choose…but it’s worth it in the end!  Here’s one I did from a few years ago.  I’ll try to take a better picture of mine this weekend.  Happy Halloween!