Oh The Places I'll Go

Here's a list of places I'm traveling to over the next bunch of months, in chronological order:

1. Finger Lakes
2. California
3. Mexico
4. Las Vegas
5. Italy

These trips are all spaced out over the summer, with Italy in October to round out what is shaping up to be a ridiculously awesome summer. I'MSOEXCITED!

Now the question is...What do I pack?!

Bookshelf reorganization

As my room is slowly coming to a finish, I think it's time I start posting some of my before and after pictures.

This is what my bookcase looked like before:

Disaster doesn't even begin to do it justice. Do I even need to say anything more about it?

Here's the after:

This is a list of things that are different:

1. Approximately 65% of the books, papers, and junk were either donated or trashed.

2. The items I couldn't part with but were an eyesore are conveniently stored in pretty baskets dispersed throughout the selves.

3. The books are organized by color.

4. Some of my favorite pictures and trinkets are now showcased to add some visual intrigue.

5. There is unused space on the shelves to prevent them from looking cluttered.

      I could continue the list, but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

One of my favorite things here is something from my childhood. 

I've had a button collection ever since I was a kid, but it's always been stored in a shoe box (a children's Stride-Rite box, if you must know) which meant they were kept in a closet. But...why take up extra closet space storing things that are so pretty? AH-HA!

I put my buttons in a mason jar and now they are proudly displayed on my bookshelf. The child in me is extremely pleased with this.

Each shelf has it's own points of interest, with the middle most shelves holding most of my favorite colors and items. Those are the eye-level shelves, so I may as well put things I love on them, right?

The before-and-after difference is like night and day. In fact, the entire room looks astonishingly different, even though the furniture itself (for the most part) hasn't been changed.

Check back soon for more room-updates!

30 by 30

30 by 30. A list of 30 things to accomplish by the age of 30. I have 5 years to go.

In no particular order, I present my list:

1. Leave New York

2. Graduate College

3. Earn a Masters Degree

4. Run a half marathon

5. Go to Asia

6. Go to Australia

7. Buy a car

8. Ride an elephant

9. Drive cross-country

10. Cut my hair short

11. Go to Mardi Gras

12. Own a bicycle and ride it often

13. Start my career in interior design and NEVER WORK IN A RESTAURANT AGAIN

14. Be a vegetarian for 3 months

15. Get Married

16. Support myself financially

17. Live in a house

18. Keep up with friendships

19. Buy a Louis Vuitton bag

20. See the pyramids in Egypt

21. Visit Berlin

22. Settle into a home I love

23. Pay off all my credit card bills and achieve good credit!

24. Save $5,000

25. Enjoy yoga

26. Learn how to use a camera. properly.

27. Be proud of myself

28. Be a good daughter

29. Spend all the time with my family that I can

30. Be happy with who I am

So there you have it. Some of them are more important to me than others, but all of them are things that I want (or wanted and achieved). Perhaps my list will change as time goes by, perhaps not. But as it stands right now, this is my list. And if you happen to have the means to help me achieve any of these...DO IT! TAKE ME TO GERMANY! TEACH ME TO USE A CAMERA! ENLIGHTEN ME ON THE ART OF YOGA!!! 

Are YOU Pinterested?

Happy Summer.

Here's a list of things that have happened since I last wrote. They are in no specific order aside from the order in which they pop into my head:

1. I cut my hair. For the past 13ish years, I've had long hair down to the middle of my back. I've had different versions of bangs and layers, but the length was always, for the most part, the same. Last week, i went into a hair salon and had it chopped off. It now sits right above my shoulders and grazes the bottom of my neck. I also got it highlighted, but that's less of a drastic change than the haircut.

2. I turned 25. I'm not going to get into this one, because to do that would lead to a diatribe of the pro's and con's of being old. (I know, I'm not old. But in my defense, this is oldest I've ever been, so CUT ME SOME SLACK.)

3. I sprained my ankle. I have absolutely no clue how it happened, but if you've ever injured an ankle/foot/leg and you are an athlete/athletic/enjoy running, you feel my pain on this one, literally and figuratively. I haven't gone running in over 3 weeks and it is not fun to be so stagnant. It makes me feel gross.

4. The last Harry Potter movie came out. I laughed, I cried, Voldemort died. Let's leave it at that.

5. BF and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary. We went out for an impromptu dinner (we didn't realize until half way through the day that it was our anniversary) and the hostess took the WORST photo of us and put it in a little paper frame. It was actually a very sweet gesture, aside from us looking sweaty and, honestly, pretty shitty. The food was great though!

6. It is summer and I am tan. Mission accomplished.

7. Ah yes, getting to the title of this post. MM (my friend who lives in L.A. because she's too cool for the rest of us) introduced me to the website Pinterest. It is a virtual pin board "that let's you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web." See something, pin it, choose which of your categorized boards you want it in, give it a title, and boom. you've pinned something you love to your virtual pinboard. I am OBSESSED with this website, so much so that I was excited to get home from work yesterday to pin things. You can also "re-pin" other members' pins. See something of theirs you like, re-pin it onto your board. It's really a genius idea.

Check out my Pinterest page. If you like it, make your own, and we can be pinnies. (That's the name I made up for my pinterest friends. I only have one friend right now...maybe it's because people sense that I want to refer to them as pinnies...)

This deliciously glittery cupcake is one of the pictures I have pinned in my 'food is food' category.

I've also got a 'Randoms' category. This little pink and gold pony came from that one.

He sort of looks like a pink eraser dipped in gold paint, no?

The more time I spend looking around on Pinterest, the more awesome websites and blogs I stumble upon. It really is worth checking out.


8. Um...I think I'll wrap it up for now. Until next time...

Things that make you go "hmm".

These shoes make me go "hmm" for a few different reasons:

1. They were in my bedroom when I got home this morning from BF's house.

2. They are not mine.

3.They look like the type of shoes one could purchase on the street in Asia, but have a rubber sole with an American seeming brand name imprinted on the bottom, which is contradictory to Asian authenticity.

4. Both of the girls I live with wear a size 7. I wear a size 9. The shoes fit me.

5. They are facing away from the wall (which is directly behind where they are resting), which implies that someone placed them there, as opposed to sliding them off their feet. If they slid them off, they would be facing toward the wall.

Which brings me to my final conclusion:

6. They must have been placed here on purpose, and are intended for me to have (how nice!). But it still begs the question...WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?? Hmm.

Morning Coffee

Without coffee, is a morning really a morning? or is it just that crappy, bright, early part of the day when you first wake up?

For me, coffee is integral to starting my day. Generally I drink it throughout the day, not just in the morning, but that's a whole different story.

Sitting down at my desk in the morning with a cup of coffee makes everything a little bit better. So far I've written a to-do list which is so cumbersome it obviously can not be completed by the time I have to get to work at 4:00pm. (Right now it's 9:18am.) But then again, I like to add entirely unnecessary tasks to my lists to make it more fun to cross items off. For instance, 'blog' is an item on my list. CHECK! That was a toughie.

Also on my list is 't-shirts from gap'. The Gap has the best white t-shirts. Yeah, ok, there are better ones out there, but I'm not willing to spend more than about $15 on a t-shirt that's lasting one season and getting demoted to a workout shirt by next spring. White t-shirts are not built to last, purely based on the fact that they are white. But I live in them during the summer, so new ones must be acquired. My favorites have a little pocket on the front, but I don't think I can be that picky. I've been searching for those for a while now, and apparently they've stopped existing.

Well, I'm gonna get moving on my list. Next up: change sheets.

A list from a sometimes list maker

Some things I like:

-Jeans
-Stripes
-Glitter
-Fresh Sheets
-Jewelry that stands out
-Marc Jacobs (I am obsessed with this bag in particular)
-Flowers
-Horses

This is me riding Tea Rose in Mississippi, the summer I turned 14

-Long Hair
-Hot Summer Mornings
-Cool Summer Evenings, and
-Nail Polish-- I'm currently wearing this color, although it's a bit brighter than the picture makes it appear.

Tart Deco, Essie

The reason I have chosen to provide you with a list of things I like is this: I have done not one thing worth mentioning today. It's 2pm. I have vacuumed and swiffered my apartment, eaten lunch, and watched a romantic movie about choosing love over money. (The movie, by the way, made me bawl.)

So there you have it, today's post is a list of things I like.