Camera Time: Canon DSLR & Lens Trio for a Steal Today!

{Brigitte Bardot: Photography Seductress}

Eeks! Today is most exciting because I'm getting a new camera! Not only am I getting a camera, but I'm also getting a massive collection of lenses and accessories to boot!

Amazon is having an incredible deal today for a Canon EOS 60D DSLR Camera Kit that comes with 3 Canon lenses and attachments (wide angle, telephoto and macro), plus a ton of other goodies for only $1,099. I'll include a detailed list below. Almost every customer review was 5 stars. I'm pretty over the moon right now!

This Kit Includes:

• Canon EOS 60D DSLR Camera Body (with all standard manufacturers accessories)
• Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II Autofocus Lens
• Canon Normal EF 50mm f/1.8 II Autofocus Lens
• Canon Zoom Telephoto EF 75-300mm f/4.0-5.6 III Autofocus Lens
• 0.45x High Definition Wide Angle Lens with Macro
• 2x Telephoto HD Lens
• 3 Piece Pro Filter Kit (UV, CPL, FLD)
• 4 Piece Macro Lens Close Up Kit (+1,+2,+4,+10)
• Extra Replacement LP-E6 Battery
• External Rapid Travel Charger with Car Adapter
• Flash
• Full Size Fluid Head Tripod with Case
• Memory Card Wallet
• Lens Cap keeper
• Starters Kit
• 32GB SDHC Memory Card
• High Speed Card Reader
• Deluxe Shockproof Weather Resistant Backpack
• Exclusive Sunset Electronics Microfiber Cleaning Cloth

If you've been wanting to upgrade your camera (especially if you're a blogger or Etsy shop owner) this is a fantastic opportunity to take your work to the next level. I have so many ideas and plans brewing in my head right now!

I have a feeling that my Etsy shop is going to get a huge revamping in the weeks to come, and my blog is going to include a lot more personal photos. I think I'll try some new Pinterest recipes now that I'll be able to take quality food photos, too.

My nieces and goddaughter better watch out - Auntie Jen is about to be armed with a pretty camera and new glass, and is ready to snap some portraits :) I don't usually make big purchases like this on a whim, but this is a smart investment and I can't snooze and lose on this deal!

Favorite Posts

{via Design Gem}

I'm coming up on my 6th year of blogging at Haute Whimsy. That is such a surreal realization! I'm taking a look back at some of my favorite posts over the years ...

• Idealist Opportunist

• Haute Whimsy Sounds (check out my super rad mixing skills!

• Whimsical Bees  

• Brilliant Music, Novel and Art Covers

• Vintage Disneyland 

• Kate Nash vs Buffy the Vampire Slayer 

• STP on NYE 

• Magical Celebrities - a photo series 

• Breakthrough 

• Game of Thrones vs Mad Men  

I'm sure these aren't my ultimate favorites. I do have almost 800 posts to sift through to be absolutely sure! I'll have to do this again when I'm a bit more organized!

Coming up next: "Rant about something. Get up on your soapbox and tell us how you really feel. (a pet peeve, a current event, a controversial topic, something your husband or roommate or neighbor or boss does that really ticks you off)"

The Driving Conundrum

{via Terry Mills}

I have a dirty little secret. I don't drive.

This isn't something that I like to tell people. Hardly anybody understands the level of fear that I have when getting behind the wheel. At first it was an unfounded phobia, but as I've grown older I've known more and more people who have lost their lives in car accidents.

Like with anything in life, practice makes perfect. But what about the stretch of time before I reach perfection? In order to face my fear, I have to put myself and others in danger.At least that's how I see it. I wish I still felt the invincibility that I felt when I was 15 years old. That's when I actually wanted to drive!

At 31 years old, this is becoming ridiculous. How can I start a family and cart my children around without a car? I don't live in NYC with stellar public transportation and I certainly can't afford a personal driver! Something's gotta give.

What are you struggling with right now?

Coming up next: "A list of links to your favorite posts in your archives."

For the Love of (The 5 Best) Blogs

{For the Love of Blogs via Art Carried Away}

1. Cupcakes and Cashmere - As I mentioned before, Emily Schuman is an excellent blogger. Her fashionable photographs are beautiful and reading her blog is almost like hanging out with a good friend at brunch. Mimosas in hand, of course!

2. Cup of Jo - Joanna Goddard is a constant source of endearing entertainment. She's a fantastic curator and brings all sorts of goodies from the farthest edges of the internet to her readers. Her blog is the perfect mix of random and personal, and she's just a lovely person all the way around! Bonus: she's a big fan of the Ace Hotel & Swim Club, which is where I spent my last anniversary and where I'll be spending my upcoming anniversary!

3. Hyperbole and a Half - Laugh-out-loud funny! This is my jam.

4. Bakers Royale - A perfect collection of decadent desserts, all tied up in a pretty bloggy bow. The food photography is incredible and I can't help but share the images on my Sugary Goodness Pinterest board.

5. The Beauty Department - I adore Lauren Conrad's beauty blog. The tips are great and the website itself is a visual beauty!

What are some of your favorite blogs?

Coming up next: "Get real. Share something you're struggling with right now."

My Girlish Crush

I fell in love a lot as a little girl. It all started with the boy down the street when I was in kindergarten. He had a great big tortoise and I was highly impressed that he owned such an exotic pet! My little parakeet seemed so boring in comparison. Then I fell for a classmate named Edmund in the 1st grade. He had a little mole on his chin like I did, so we were obviously soul mates. Each year brought a new school crush. I was completely boy crazy!

In my last year of elementary school, I found a crush outside of school. He was my paperboy and I was sure that we were going to fall in love and get married. You know, as soon as I found the courage to actually speak to him.

I would rush home from school every day and peek through the living room curtains, waiting for him (and his grandmother) to bike their way around my cul-de-sac tossing newspapers at everyone's door. Except ours. It made perfect sense that the first step to wooing my greatest love was to order his paper. How could a paperboy love a girl who didn't subscribe to his paper?! I begged and begged my mom to get a subscription. I can't remember if she did or not (I'm guessing that she did. She's cool like that.), but what she did do was tell the grandmother that I was crushing on her grandson! It happened one day when he was home sick and couldn't make his route and she had taken it over for him.

While I was hiding inside the house, completely mortified, my mom took it upon herself to get the scoop on the boy who had my heart. His grandmother was so tickled by my crush that she happily gushed about "the apple of her eye" which included vital info such as his name, age and where he lived.

His name may have been Michael. I really can't remember. To me, he was always Paperboy. He was the same age as me, and most importantly ... he lived on the next street over!

With this new found knowledge I ran to my bedroom which had a perfect view of the back of a two-story bluish grey Victorian-esque house on his street. Since I didn't have his exact address, I reasonably assumed that the dream house in our neighborhood belonged to him. And since I could see it from my window, I also reasonably assumed that he could see my window from his bedroom. We were so close to falling in love with each other, obviously ;)

His grandmother stopped by after school the next day, sans Paperboy, and gave my mom a Polaroid of him to give to me. Best grandmother ever, right?! He was posing and flexing his 5th grade muscles in black and neon green bike shorts - gotta love the early 90s fashion. Swoon! Again, I ran to my bedroom window and stared lovingly at "his" house.

This all happened right around the time that My Girl came out on VHS and I had the soundtrack memorized. Day after day, I blasted Hot Fun in the Summertime and Wedding Bell Blues as I looked at his picture and twirled around my room, always slyly peeking at the window to see if he was watching and swooning over me. In my imagination, he was!

This continued for months, and I still couldn't find the nerve to say "hi" to him. Little did I know that a child labor law was about to pass, making cute paperboys extinct. You snooze, you lose. A grown man in a truck started delivering the paper, and I was in a 10-year-old-girl fit of rage. My mom called the newspaper and found out that children were no longer able to deliver papers.

That was the end. 

Until the premiere of Disney's Wake, Rattle and Roll, that is! The star looked strikingly similar to Paperboy and the show helped fill the void left in my heart. We moved to Oregon shortly thereafter and I had to leave my paperboy and bluish grey Victorian-esque house behind. But I could watch Wake, Rattle and Roll anywhere.

Coming up next: "Five of your favorite blogs and what you love about them."

Disneyland Has My Heart

My true nerd is about to come out here! This is a favorite photo of mine because I'm absolutely in my element. It was taken at Disneyland a few years ago. I'm cozy in a "Pirate Princess" hoodie and Mickey Mouse gloves, donning a Disney Princess tiara and playing with the scenery from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (one of my favorite kiddie rides).

It doesn't take much to make me happy!

Flash forward to my last birthday (at Disneyland, of course) and here I am refusing to ever grow up.

Coming up next: "Tell a story from your childhood. Dig deep and try to be descriptive about what you remember and how you felt."

My Lot in Life

{image via Nerdy Little Stitcher}

Jenni challenged me to explain something difficult about my lot in life, and I've been racking my brain trying to come up with something worthy of such a post. That makes me more thankful than you could imagine! I have plenty of small complaints, a few middle of the road woes but not too many biggies. 

As I mentioned in my 250 word autobiography, I come from a semi-complicated broken home. Sure, I wish my parents lived in the same state and that we could share holidays together, but I adapt by hopping on a plane a spending a few weeks with my dad each year.

Aside from that, money could always be better. Living in southern California is expensive! I choose to live in an area where it's nearly impossible to accumulate a good savings because my family is here. They mean the world to me, so I forgo owning the affordable dream house in middle America and opt for renting my little condo a few miles away from the ocean.

Sure, I'd like to have more ... but I'm happy with what I do have :)

Coming up next: "A favorite photo of yourself and why."