Wanderlust

I've been feeling all bogged down and itchy to get away. Not travel away. Away, away. Away from nursing school and home selling, away from police work and gas prices. Away from people and rudenss. I wish I could just wish my way to a place with land and trees and animals. Where work is gardening, and cooking. Where meals are occasions. Where there's wine and laughter. Where there's stars.

I think we need a commune.

Loving

These Stainless Steel Popsicle Molds - Onyx

This popsicle recipe - Lottie and Doof

This Post - Pacing the Panic Room

This Book - Radical Homemakers

These classic tortoiseshell wayfarers

These Words

26

image via Kiki La Rue

 It's my 26th birthday today, and I've spent some time reflecting on the past year. Sometimes when you look back on a year, it seems to have gone by so fast, yet so slow at the same time. Somehow things feel like a lifetime ago and like yesterday at the same time. I will definitely not forget how I rang in 25 with two buck chuck and Jameson followed by the worst headache ever and days of lingering nausea. But 25 has been great; met with new decisions, beliefs and opinions all shaped by different people and different experiences. It seems I've finally gotten to the point where I am able to freely create and maintain the life that makes me the happiest, that I'm able to "design" my life for me and my family. I've felt more than ever like I'm beginning to become the person I will be for the rest of my life. We all go through our 20s trying to discover ourselves, often with relationships and education, jobs and homes. I've had another blissful year with my husband, full of laughter, understanding, and love. Everyday Olive does something that makes me laugh and love her even more. Mike always says that if we could love a dog this much, imagine how much we'll love our children. This past year I started my nursing program, with the belief that it will be the one thing left to finish before I get my life to where I truly want it to be. I've learned that nursing is the best fit for me and it allows me to to channel my sometimes inconvenient emotions. Where I often care or dwell on things that don't matter, I'm able to instead be a compassionate and understanding nurse. I do my best to no longer wait for my life to "start", is if having everything where I want it to be will somehow bring about this inner peace and calm, a perfect place where my house is always clean, the laundry is always done and I look stylish and put together everyday. Instead remembering to enjoy and appreciate everyday. To live in the now instead of in the future. Here's to 26.

Monday

I'm really dragging today. Although I was able to sleep in past my 5 am clinical wake up call, my body has not adjusted to so little sleep. But since it's cold and blustery, I don't mind spending time inside trying to play catch up on housework and homework. So, here's some links to help you get through your Monday.

This beautiful loft studio. I'm obsessed with that gray kitchen with farmhouse sink! via Design Sponge

Fun uses for cupcake liners. via Hip Hip Hooray

These adorable french slippers. Via A Cup of Jo

Everything from LetterboxCo.

A Few of my Favorite Things

Here are some lovely little things I'm loving right now.

Desert Essence Daily Essential Moisturizer - For winter dry skin

Dansko staple clog - The most comfortable nursing shoes ever

Tea Forte tea bags - aesthetically pleasing and delicious, I especially love the white ginger pear

Kashi Oatmeal dark chocolate cookies - Amazing

Image 1, 2, 3, 4

What are you loving right now?

New Years Resolutions

I know we're already a few days into the new year but I felt it was necessary to proclaim my resolutions.

Be more independent

Get up earlier (a little)

Spend more time outside
Floss regularly

Exercise more

Enjoy the journey instead of anticipating the destination

Success

It's hard to define success when it comes to a blog. Is there such a thing? There are those blogs out there that are ad free and proud of it, blogging only to share their worlds with the rest of us. Then there are those with sponsors, product giveways, affiliate coupons, google adsense ads, and amazon associates store pages. I read both. For me, it's more about the content than the commercial, but I do enjoy a nice giveaway or links to products. I always try to tell myself that I blog for myself. But I can't seem to get over the fact that I'm not outright-amazing-quit-my-job successful with this whole blogging thing. I pour through my reader and find all these blogs with a thousand+ followers, sponsors, and freelance opportunities and wonder what magic formula I'm missing. My super computer brother Eric once said that if I could blog for a year, I would start to see some growth. Well it's been about a year and I have seen some. My radius has expanded outside of my family members and now includes some email subscribers and some who subscribe to the RSS feed. But, I still find myself checking my monetize tab daily in hopes of seeing a small jump in page impressions. Last Sunday, I hopped on to work on a post and found a nice new tab in my dashboard titled "stats" I combed through it excited to see that I had visits from all around the world and a whopping 800 page impressions a month. Energized, I decided to contact some friends with small businesses and ask if they would be interested in some free advertising as "sponsors" on my blog, excitedly sharing my magic number. So the next day I check my blog per my usual routine and the stats tab is gone. It felt like I dreamed the whole thing, like some delusions of grandeur. I hurriedly scoured the blogger help topics and nothing seemed to explain the appearance of this optimistic tab or it's subsequent disappearance. I did find a sentence somewhere stating the words "blogger stats" and "google analytics", so I signed up pasted the code and waited, eager to see the encouraging stats. I'm still waiting...

To me, my blog is similar in content to many of the blogs I follow. It may not be topic specific but it is narrowed down to a smattering of topics that appeal to myself and I imagine, other women. I played around with different designs and fonts but I kept coming back to the basic blogger "minima" with a few (painstaking) tweaks such as a three column layout. I want it to be classic and simple, how I've always seen myself. I tweet my posts on Twitter, I post them in my facebook status, I use all the feedburner tools I can find, and still, mediocre success. For someone who has had relatively immediate success throughout life with good grades, award winning sports teams and success in the workforce, this is hard.

Much harder than I thought.

7 Random Facts

1. I originally wanted to be in fashion

2. I'm married to my high school sweetheart

3. I don't like watermelon

4. I cannot wait to have children

5. I can say the alphabet backwards

6. I have two tattoos; a ladybug on my ankle and the word "live" on my wrist

7. I'm a huge Harry Potter fan

Check out Leigh's 7 Random Facts at Marvelous Kiddo

Happy Easter

I'm spending Easter weekend with my family at our cabin "up north" in Michigan. We already spent yesterday afternoon sipping cocktails on the deck over looking the river, and spent this morning on a five mile hike through the forest preserve. Next up, we're doing an early Easter dinner which I'm finishing off with a delicious carrot cake. I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter weekend as well!

Flowers

One of my good friends spent the last 2(?) years living in Seattle with her husband. Although, they recently decided to move back to Michigan, I was inspired to post this picture when she mentioned she was soaking up her last bits of Seattle while sipping an americano while watching the pike's place flower vendors. So quintessentially Seattle. Also this picture makes me yearn for the warmth of spring, which has been sadly lacking around here. I just might have to head over to the local french market and fill my house with fresh flowers.

Sushi Etiquette

I learned something today.

via SwissMiss

Change of Scenery

So after months of deliberating, I finally decided to do it. I dyed my hair black. I really wanted to create a strong contrast with my fair skin, and to make my blue eyes pop. Here are a few of my beautiful inspirational ladies.

Manners

There's this phenomenon I've noticed lately and it seems, the older I get the worse it seems. No one has any manners anymore and I don't mean a man standing up when a lady enters a room kind of manners. I mean the "thank you" basic kind of manners that everyone was supposed to learn before kindergarten. Here's a good example, Mike's family came into town and we went to the pool. Well my 7 year old niece wanted me to go with her on the water slide. So we headed up the moldy stairs to the top of the slide and on my way this little boy snakes around me to get in line in front of me. I'm like "don't worry, we weren't in line" (yeah I'm that person with the passive aggressive comments) anyway, Mike tells me to relax as he's "just a kid". It's not that I'm upset because I now have to wait behind another kid to ride the water slide, my frustration stems from a deeper disgust of the lack of manners in today's children, and frankly today's adults. I worked as a nanny for almost 4 years, and one of my rules when any of the kids had friends over was that everyone had to use their manners. I didn't care if kids didn't want to come over because they had to respect me (even though I wasn't their friend's mother) I got tired of kids just acting like they owned the place, not that I did, but I was responsible for those children and that house when I was there.

Anyway, I can't count how many times Mike will hold doors for women who just walk in like they deserve to have the door held. Yes, you should be treated with respect, that is what he is doing when he holds the door, but no you're not entitled to not say thank you. Don't people still teach their children to say please and thank you? Along the same line, don't walk though a door when someone is behind you and let the door slam in their face.

I'll finish my rant with one example I'm sure we all face everyday. I learned to drive in Michigan, where although the speed limit is faster, there are less cars and less traffic. One of the first things I noticed upon moving to Illinois was that everyone just assumed that they could cut you off. Don't confuse me leaving safe space between myself and the car in front of me as space for your car. Or maybe, if you didn't see me you should give me a little apology "sorry I'm kind of an asshole" wave. Similarly, if I do let you over, just raise your hand off the steering wheel for one second to show your appreciation.

Now I'm not perfect and before anyone thinks I'm up on my high horse, I definitely have my moments. Sometimes I'm tired as hell on the way in to work and deliberately press the 3 button again and again until the door closes, even if I see someone enter the building. I'm also not awesome on formal R.S.V.P.'s, mostly because I don't want to finalize the fact that I'm not going to an event. I feel like maybe if I postpone saying no, I'll end up going. I even know from personal experience how frustrating it is when people don't RSVP, I mean how hard is it to send write your name and send back a stamped envelope.


Damn it.

Netbook

After receiving some much appreciated graduation gift money (and after paying for my nursing prereqs of course) I had a little bit left over to be able to buy a netbook for school. I figured it would be easier for my online course, as well as taking notes in Microbio. An added bonus, of course, is my new found ability to blog with ease from the comfort of my couch or bed. My brother Eric, who knows more about computers than any IT nerd you know, advised me to go with the HP Mini 110 XP. The price was right, it has everything I need, I can carry it to and from school and it also has a chic black swirls design on the top.

Now that I can blog with ease, I hope to be able to start posting on a regular basis.

Waiting

I feel the need to write something. I’ve been going so fast for the past few months that I need to slow down and reassess. Life as a twenty something isn’t the same as it used to be. When my mother was my age she had two children and stayed at home. She never went to college and instead partook in a myriad of part time jobs as we began to get older. She cleaned houses; she worked as a bank teller, water aerobics instructor, and most recently as an office receptionist at my former high school. At this point in time I know very few people my age that have children or are even considering them in the near future. It seems all the twenty somethings close to me are going through a mini existential crisis. We are not where we thought we would be at this age. I always thought I would be married (well, I got that part down) and have children by now. One of my closest and most talented friends thought she would have hit it big by now. We all went in to college thinking things just went full speed from there only to find out that life after college is just a lot of aimless job searching and waiting. Waiting for what? I don’t really know and I don’t think most of them do either.