1. When I was a kid, I hated pink.

2. When I was a kid, I hated shopping.

3. When I was a kid, I hated reading.

Answer: #3! I did actually hate pink; I loved purple at the time, and everything for girls was either pink, or purple WITH pink, and I just wanted plain purple darn it! And I did actually hate shopping, amazing as that is now. I think I ended up embodying the saying, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, as I can now outshop most anyone in my family.

But I always loved books. My mom would send me to my room when I got in trouble, and I wouldn’t mind a bit because I’d just pull out a book (and it’s not like she was going to tell me NOT to read). At night I’d hide a flashlight under my pillow so I could read after I “went to bed”. I vividly remember dinner time being THE WORST because I always had to put my book away. It was especially traumatizing anytime I was reading (or rereading) Harry Potter. 

My reading peaked my sophomore year of high school, when I went to public school for the first time since elementary school and literally just read novels in my classes all day. Sometimes I still can’t believe I got away with reading in class, but then I realize that my teachers probably had bigger problems to deal with – that was also the year I got over 100% in all of my classes but one. Me choosing to read quietly by myself was probably the least of their concerns. 

It definitely helped that Las Vegas has a great library system (who knew?!) that could actually keep up with my appetite for books. I was reading 1-2 books A DAY that year. Then I transferred to a prep school on the East Coast. Sometime between then and last year my reading just sort of…dwindled away. Of course I still used to read all the time for school, but not usually fiction, and not just for pleasure. I read a book over the summer and realized it was the first non-series fiction book I could remember reading. 

Thankfully, a perfect storm recently emerged to fix my book shortage:

1.) We FINALLY got library cards. To both library systems. YEAH!!

2.) I got a Kindle. I resisted for ages, but it finally got me. Even as recently as October, Nick told me he was thinking about getting me one for my birthday, and I was very concerned because I really, truly had zero interest and didn’t want him to waste the money. But we ended up getting one on Black Friday (a belated birthday present for me), and my life hasn’t been the same since.

3.) The library has Kindle eBooks. OH YEAH. 

So now, I have a new problem – except it’s not really new at all. I’m back to reading too much. In the past 3 weeks, I’ve read 8 books. I read a book today. And a book yesterday. And a book on Saturday. These are entire books too – it’s not I was 75% of the way through. Literally, today I started a book in the last 15 minutes of my lunch break. I had finished it by 7. It’s like a sickness that keeps getting worse. 

And last night? It seemed to good to be true, so I asked Nick if I could really read at the dinner table. He looked at me a little funny but he said yes. OFFICIALLY MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT BEING AN ADULT. 

And it only cost us $26.

Instead of packing, I keep getting pulled in to my new favorite distraction. And I keep looking at things and thinking how cute they would be for a July 4th gathering. I’ll take any excuse to dress up, especially when it’s an event as festive as Independence Day (sunshine! picnics! fireworks!). Red, white, and blue make some perfect Americana summer combos.

Polka dots!! (Keiko Lynn)

(Jen Loves Kev at Delightful Dozen)

So here’s some fun options and inspiration for the 4th. I wish I had these in my closet right now…it would make packing so much more fun!

(Modcloth)

This is super festive – perfect for an outdoor BBQ or picnic. (via)

I want this dress. SO MUCH. (via)

Gotta have a hat! (Topshop)

(Modcloth)

(Modcloth)

For more specific ideas, check out this article. As for me? I’ll probably just end up wearing whatever I fit in my suitcase…or maybe I’ll drag N on an afternoon of shopping and see what else I can find. We’ll see!

So what do we have to show for the past 6 months?

1. A pretty legit collection of furniture. Thanks to my parents generous donation of some of their old stuff (and some of their stuff that wasn’t old, but they let me take anyways), we had enough furniture to merit a 14′ U-haul. We’ve added a few things since then – my favorite pink armchair, a bed and desk for the guest bedroom, a couple storage pieces from IKEA – and our apartment is now solidly furnished.

My favorite pink armchair – A+ Craigslist find!

2. A working kitchen…minus organization. We’ve collected everything we need to cook on the regular, but we haven’t been able to get things totally in order yet. When we first moved in we still needed a bunch of stuff, so we just threw everything we had in the cabinets and said we’d organize it later, once we had figured out what else we needed and what we could get rid of. Yeah, that hasn’t happened yet.

We hung up our pots and pans to give us extra space, but we still haven’t reorganized the cabinet they used to be in.

3. 3.5 jobs. N* is still plugging away at work; his project is launching any day now (CADT – check it out). I had my first job, which I resigned from a couple weeks ago, and will be starting my second next week. Plus my part-time work for my sister. Employment, woo!

4. Well-loved Disneyland passes. One Saturday in March I was feeling antsy. Before I started working (and even after I started working, since I always worked less than N), I would get bored sitting around the apartment during the week. Once the weekend hit I wanted to go out and do things. Since we don’t know anyone in L.A. and I hate spending money on entertainment, that usually means that I want to go shopping – which N inevitably does not.

This particular Saturday we actually went shopping for a bit, but didn’t find anything we were looking for so I was feeling discouraged. We pulled up to the apartment and I had zero interest in just going back inside and sitting around for the rest of the night. N suggested a spontaneous Disneyland trip and it was like an instant spark of excitement. We waffled a bit…no, we couldn’t really go, we’re not spontaneous like that… but nothing else sounds interesting, and we were planning to get passes anyways…but it was already 5 o’clock, and we’d have to drive down there, and we weren’t theme park prepared…

Yeah right, like any of that was going to keep me from going to Disneyland! So we totally just went. (We did run inside so I could change though… I would have been very unhappy without a sweater). We got our passes that evening and have been using them once or twice a month since.

N got off work early so we could go down on our anniversary. Notice the large score differential (just because it was our anniversary doesn’t make me any less competitive!).

Things we have not yet accomplished:

1. Doing dishes everyday…sometimes it’s a lot of days before one of us breaks down and does them. And by one of us, I mean N. (I’m a bad person, I know).

2. Unpacking/organizing everything. See above under Kitchen. That’s pretty much the same story for our whole apartment. We put everything mostly away, and said we’d fine tune it later. Ha.

3. Refinishing our furniture and shelves. We bought several pieces off Craigslist and from thrift stores with the intention of refinishing them. Of course we haven’t even started yet. We did buy some spray paint last night though, so maybe it will only be another four months before we use it.

*We’ve been living together for 6 months now, I figure he deserves his own initial instead of just ‘Boyfriend’.

Anyways, it was very exciting that she was here, because a.) she is awesome and we have been friends going on SEVEN years now, and b.) because we go to super cool shows together. One time when we were home in Vegas we put on semi-formal dresses and did our hair and went to this emo/punkish/hipster show where everyone else was wearing jeans and t-shirt combos (along with their emo hoodies). That’s how we roll.

This is us in like 2005. Being awkward and awesome.

This time Jamie conveniently timed her visit to coincide with a performance by my new fave, Ferraby Lionheart. She loves him too (of course, with our excellent shared taste). The show was in this funky warehouse venue up towards Silverlake, and it was made extra cool by the fact that it was FREE! My favorite kind of anything is the free kind. I even managed to stay awake through the whole show, and Ferraby didn’t go on until after 11! I must be growing younger somehow.

I took this during the opening song (it’s one of my faves…but so are the rest of them).

Love. A+.

I feel like this says a lot about me.

On the bright side, we managed to find a dinner recipe that used about 70% of the ingredients we had on hand, and none that we didn’t. Yeah!! Grocery shopping put off for one more day when boyfriend is stressin’ and girlfriend is tired = great success.

The important thing is… I’m back! With a new real person life and a new take and a whole new set of things to blog about!

We so excited. And it’s not even Friday!

Today’s outfit:

Jeans – Ann Taylor, thrifted
Top – Ann Taylor, thrifted
Cardigan – Merona, thrifted
Shoes – Nine West, sale, ~$20

It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. Between my senior paper, Thanksgiving break, and the many unknowns regarding my impending graduation (just a few measly weeks away), this past week didn’t leave much room on my agenda for posting. Rather than making it a chore, I decided to take a step away from blogging. In that time, I completed and turned in a draft of my paper, skiied the heck out of some mountains, and made about -2% progress in figuring out life post-graduation.

Now I am back at school and excited to get back into the swing of things again, including blogging. Taking a break from it made me realize how much I enjoy having it as a part of my routine. And even though the next few weeks will only get crazier, I want to be able to document that craziness!

That being said, there’s no getting around the fact that these are my last 17 days of college. In just a few weeks’ time I’ll be packing up the last of my things and saying goodbye to the friends that I’ve made over the past three and a half years. I want to be sure that I am really making the most of my remaining time with them. I don’t want to miss out on these last college days because I’m too busy trying to document them.

SO the point of all this is that posting will resume, but it may not be perfectly regular. I usually try to stick to 4 outfit posts during the week, and feature posts on Wednesday and Sunday, but that schedule sometimes make my head spin a little. For the next few weeks, I’m going to do whatever I’m able to without sacrificing these last days. If I skip a day or two, I’m still around, I’m just out having fun – or doing my last homework assignments. If I can make myself finish them.

Sweater – Gap (2007)
Skirt – Gap, clearance, $14
Shoes – MIA2 via Kohls (2009)
Scarf – 29 Palms via Ross or Marshall’s
Headband – Forever 21, part of 2-pack for $2.50

Not the most exciting combo, but an easy choice for a day of studying and exam-taking. For the first half of the day I was wearing this with my Sorel snow boots, because ya know, snow and California fall weather are basically the same thing. Or maybe I just have a habit of being inordinately cold (one of those quirky things that Boyfriend loves about me). I did change into normal shoes around lunchtime, but no way was I letting go of my bulky sweater and/or scarf.

These were my non-snow boot shoes for the day. I scrounged up this pair of brown flats from my home closet. I was trying to keep it minimalistic at the beginning of the semester so I didn’t initially bring these to school, but now that my brown Nine West loafers are falling apart I was super happy when I stumbled across these guys again. Of course I was less excited when there was mouse poop in them, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

Yay Friday! I would be more excited if I didn’t have to write 8.3 pages every day to get this paper draft done. This paper is doing to Thanksgiving what the mouse poop did to my shoes.