One day many months ago, while working at my editor’s house, I noticed these really cute instagram photo magnets on her fridge. I instantly asked where they were from, and she told me it was this cool company Stickygram. (Since she’s a fashion/lifestyle editor, of COURSE she knew about stickygram literally 7 months ago– always on top of the cool trends and products and companies out there!).

I filed that little nugget of knowledge away in my brain as something I wanted to do for our fridge, but totally forgot. For months. I’m sure some of you do this too, actually probably everyone relates to this, where then at like midnight on a random Thursday 2 weeks ago, I suddenty remembered about the idea. Nothing prompted it– I wasn’t using instagram or looking through photos or staring at a fridge magnet, I was probably like, watching a Mildred Pierce episode and my brain just went “OH YEAH THOSE MAGNETS HOLLY HAD!”

But then, I had an even BETTER idea than getting them for our fridge (though of course I did get them for our fridge). For nearly one year, I’d been meaning to do something cute for my friend Cait with the GAGILLIONS of instagram photos I have of her pug. See, she and I used to be roommates– which meant her pug was our house’s communal pug. I mean he was just another roommate. So for 8 lucky months, I got to snuggle with that pug as though he were my own, and all I ever did was take adorable pictures of him on instagram. But……what was the point in ME having those photos? Some of them were really sweet vigniettes that she didn’t even know I’d taken– of her asleep on the couch, with the pug asleep on her forehead. Or her sitting on her bed scrapbooking on a random Tuesday night, and the pug snuggled up under her arm like her trusty partner in crime. Things like that.

So then of course I thought- why yes– I’ll get my favorite of these photos turned into MAGNETS– and I’ll wait until she’s out of town and sneak into her house and put them on the fridge so when she comes home she finds a surprise photo montage of her most precious thing in life– her wee little pug!

Memorial Day Weekend afforded me the perfect sneak attack opportunity, because she went to the beach. Since we live about a 10-minute walk apart (this is the same friend I was visiting whenceupon I stumbled upon our dream couch, as chronciled here)– I have a key to her place so I can sneak in and visit the pug whenever I want, or use her rooftop pool, or just be a creep on her couch. We have the kind of friendship where if I’m supposed to be meeting her to watch the Bachelorette at 8pm but I’m not doing anything and it’s 5 p.m., I’ll just go to her apartment and watch TV on the couch with the pug, and then she’ll call me and be like “hey so what’s the plan for tonight” and I’ll be like “No plan, already on your couch. Come home.” and she’ll be like “Of course you are. See you there bye.” And then she’ll walk in and I’m under a blanket with the pug eating her Ben  & Jerry’s and already walked Tyson. We are married. Actually as I’ve written before, my boyfriend and I and her are kind of a threesome. She got two extra pool passes to her rooftop pool this summer (our building doesn’t have one–the horror) and gave them to me and Alex, and when she’s out of town and calls me to ask what we’re doing, she’s like “uh….I’m awkward that you’re NOT at my pool right now.” Like on a given day she’s basically offended if me and Alex don’t stop by her place, visit the pug, or use her pool.

On Monday of this week, we had our usual Monday Bachelorette plan where I walk to her house and we get dinner and drink wine with the pug  (if Monday doesn’t work then she records it and we watch on Tuesday– and yes we’re obsessed; have you SEEN Emily Maynard?). It was Monday, I was exhausted, the day was dragging on, I’d been up since 6 a.m., so I texted her around 11 saying “I cannot make it through this day. All I want is to be on the couch with the pug and Emily. I’m going to die before this day is over. Can’t do it.” Her response and our subsequent texts pretty much could not sum up our friendship more:

And that was all we had to say about that.

She and I have been friends since age 12. I just went to facebook to gather some photos of she and I, including some of our hilarious younger moments. We’ll go backwards, from our most recent coolest phase of adulthood, to being total highschool losers. (not actually, we were really cool, but you can definitely see a style evolution here haha…..)

At a barbecue 1.5 years ago

At our friend Kate’s birthday party two years ago

Shopping in Soho two Falls ago

At a bar in the west village..

And a little drunker now…..HAHA

At our friend’s apartment in Brooklyn two Halloween’s ago:

As two drunk Halloween girls in red and pink wigs at your basic warehouse rave in Bushwick…(she was Rihanna, I was Nicki Minaj)

At a blogger event in DC last Fall:

Overexposed, at her birthday party this year:

As freshman in college, back home after our very first semester:

Being dorks in Barcelona, when I studied abroad there:

Thinking we’re cool/hot on a stripper pole at some loser club in Barcelona:

hahaha I love this one—dancing in highschool:

Visiting her at Notre Dame when we were juniors:

Dancing to Pitbull’s “Sh…be Quiet” song. CLASSSSIC college apartment in the background (One Love Bob Marley poster, Will Ferrel Old School poster, BEATLES poster (hahaha!!!!) and Rooney poster! I mean could this BE a better, more CHARICATURE-ESQUE embodiment of your classic college dorm room circa 2006? I had posters of Sammy Davis Jr. and the rat pack + Marilyn Monroe…only slightly better):

Being ridiculous on New Year’s Eve in highschool:

Being ridiculous at a party in highschool with phallic ice cubes:

Being ridiculous at a party in highschool:

Being ridiculous at a Wiz Khalifa concert at 9:30 club last year:

Theme– ridiculousness around one another.

So now after that glorious trip down the memory lane of our friendship (it really was for me and looking back one day, sorry for the detour, but at least now you have visual proof of a decade of ridiculous moments together)……

Memorial Day Weekend 2012: it was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, so I loaded the magnet sheets into a paper bag, and Alex and I took the nice walk down from our house to hers. We let ourselves in, and got to work on her fridge. She had a bunch of stuff on it already so we had to strategically move things around and maximize grid space for the montage.

Then, as I sat down to write her the ‘surprise note’ Alex drank a Corona from her fridge and began leaving hilarious notes for her to find. Such as…….

In our re-arranging of her current fridge surface set-up, he found a to-do list of hers from April 10th, so he naturally left this note for her:

And this one, for an outdated CVS coupon:

Then we pasted my little note to her and snuck off into the night.

Actually we snuck off to meet our friends for cocktails and dinner at Pearl Dive Oyster bar on 14th street and then we all strolled leisurely all the way from 14th st to Georgetown (about a 25/30 minute walk) to get an ice cream cone and more drinks, on one of those super balmy, slow, lazy, summer nights where your skin is bathed in warmth (in an easy, calming way; not a stifling way),  and everything around you feels like summer when you were a kid, from the way the air smells to the actual humming sound of crickets and fireflies. It was the perffffffffect Memorial Day weekend day/night itinerary. Is there ANYTHING better than summer??? Why not inject a little adventure/surprise into a lazy summer Saturday with a break-in (or non-forced entry using an actual key…) to an unsuspecting friend’s house to leave a thoughtful little gift. Could be a bottle of their favorite wine, a trio of bright Essie nail polishes, or instagrammed magnets on their fridge!