11-11-11

What a day! I was given three stories to cover - quite the varied lot of stories, and each full of fantastic moments, which I am now going to share.

The first story I had to cover was 'Kisses for the Troops' It's a project that Cosmopolitan Magazine, Maybelline and the USO do together. They have postcards that are going to be put in USO care packages that people can give big kisses to with a little Maybelline lipstick. They can also write notes to the troops. And for every postcard that is kissed $1 is donated to the USO.



Pretty cool deal.

Ok, you do NOT have to tell me twice to go out where there are some military men! Sign me up!

And of course I was immediately talking to a couple.... and then hanging out with the Marines.



What can I say, there is not much sexier than a man in a Marine dress uniform. Give me a really smart man in Marine dress uniform and the drooling will commence...

And for you guys, the Rockettes were there too... as USO girls....



Another person that was there was Actress Lucy Hale from Pretty Little Liars. She was the 'face' or would that be she was the 'lips' for the event. She kissed the first postcard to get things going..




and then... yes... even SHE wanted to be with the Marines... They both got kisses later :)



I am kind of feeling bad for the other branches that were there... they really did not get as much attention...



So my side jaunt on Lucy Hale... she liked my jewelry and we talked skulls. You see, I was wearing this necklace I have that's got a skeletal little guy on it and while I was interviewing her she stopped to tell me how cool she thought it was and then that she was a skull fan. Then she flashed her purse and showed me the awesome leather tooled skull design all over it. Yes, I know I should have gotten a picture of that.. but I didn't.... the only other thing I had to show were my skull candy blue metallic headphones, and she said I may have won the skull-off, but I think her purse still kicked the butt of both my items...

Here's one of the stories I filed from the scene telling people to pucker up and get to Times Square!
　


and in case you did not make it to Times Square... you can still take part in this project through Cosmo's website! The kisses will arrive with care packages just in time to be 'New Year's Kisses!'


Ok... off to the next story... The Christmas tree arriving and being set up at Rockefeller Center.



It's a 74 foot tall tree that was cut down from the yard of 79-year-old Nancy Keller. Now, don't get me wrong, the tree was awesome, but Nancy, she was the real bright spot of the story!



She was just this amazing soul that would make you smile whether you wanted to or not. During a 5-minute interview she had me laughing and tearing up with her and was just one of the highlights of my day... yes... although it pains me to say this, she might have even beat out the Marines...maybe... I just wanted to reach out, hug her and take her home with me!

Here's a pic I took of her, her family and the tree.



And her granddaughter on the left told me that the media was getting tiring. I asked her if people like me were annoying her with too many questions and she said, yes, we were, but then wanted to tell me other things later. I love kids :) Seriously it was adorable and made a good soundbite!

Ok, so once again, I had very limited time to do much here, I did one full story and then filed a lot of sound for the newsroom and I was off to the next story.

It's 11-11-11. It's supposed to be the luckiest day of the century and a lot of people wanted to get married on that day in order to be 'lucky in love'. Well the Crowne Plaza Times Square selected 11 couples to get married at 11 am on 11-11-11.



Ok, so I couldn't get all 11 couples in the picture from my vantage point, trust me, they were there.

The funny story during the wedding was that couple just to the left of the minister... (who, by the way is VH1's Steve Ward). Aaron and Sabrina were so into each other they did not notice that Steve had said 'exchange rings'. When they realized this they rushed to put rings on...and well... you can listen to the rest of the story...



But they were having a great time. All 11 couples had become fast friends in the past couple days of their pre-wedding celebrations. They even had a joint reception which was interesting. You know how you always have the 'first dance' of the couple? Well they had that... 11 times.... they did about 2 minutes of each of their songs and then the next couple would come up. It was quite the unique event!

They seem to be very happy with the way things went. They were telling me they are planning on putting together a Facebook page to keep in touch and were already talking about celebrating their first anniversaries together.