challenges

the last few weeks have been incredibly difficult. it honestly feels like it's just one thing after another, and it has been incredibly overwhelming. but amidst the troubles with work, money, school, commuting and missing andrew a lot, i have just kept telling myself that God never gives us more than we can handle (louisa was so good to remind me of this when i truly thought that i was going to lose it recently). and i have been coming to the realization that God is pushing me...challenging me to push the limits that i set up for myself a long time ago. prior to this week, i was becoming frustrated with myself because i saw a lot of limitations that i had set for myself and thought that i could never accomplish "adult" things with these limitations in place. with the events of the past week or so, these limitations are being knocked down and i am forced again and again to make the mature decision...i've been putting on my big girl pants a lot. and through these mature decisions that i have been forced to make, i'm realizing that i will be able to handle being an adult. i know this sounds silly, but come on, i'm in college...i have insecurities galore about being a grown up and what that will require of me. and every time this week that i have made a decision that is in complete contradiction of what i want to do, or what i think shawn spencer on psych would do, i am coming to the conclusion that i can do this...i can handle the stress of juggling a million things all at once, and even when i drop something, i CAN own up to it like an adult would do. had i been confronted with this week a year ago, even a few months ago, i would have made excuses about the mistakes that i made. not taking ownership of my mistakes is one of my biggest faults, and rather than deal with the humiliation of admitting that i messed up, i would honestly much rather lie about it or hide until the situation is diffused. but this week, in working rather than going to jubilee, in not lying to Dr. D about why i missed a chorale performance and in still going to class, even when i was 20 minutes late (i was so tempted to skip), i have punched my old self in the face again and again. growing up is frustrating and not fun at all. but at least now i have a little bit more confidence in my ability be a grown up.

let's play catch up...

so much has happened since my last post. no, for real. i'm not just saying that.
first off, on january 1st, we had a nice goodbye party for andrew. it was mostly a bunch of church people, plus his family, but it was great fun. we even practiced talking britishly!

"toss it in the bin"

"BLIMEY!"

"hope you brought your mum"

"pip pip cheerio and all that jazz..."

the food table before it got completely full.
notice the cheese "sphinx", compliments
of my brother...

gingerbread cookies that a great lady from church made. they
all said something clever. they were super cute.

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on january 2nd, i had to say goodbye to my love. we managed to spend almost the whole day together, which was nice. we went hiking in the snow, watched wallace and gromit, harold and maude, went to dinner and just sat and talked (and maybe cried a little). it was a really beautiful day. and super duper sad, but oh well...

"throw to drowning person in pond". thanks quail hollow for
making us laugh a lot :)

 

"big b"...according to andrew, this is my new nickname...

i can't help but miss this face a lot.

here we are together...notice the lack
of make-up on my face. i was prepared :P

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january 3rd, at 6am the comforts flew out of ohio. we were oregon bound!

YAY mountains!!!!

i spent a lot of time looking at old photo albums and memory
books that my grandparents had. this was their
engagement announcement.

their engagement photo. i want to duplicate this whenever i
get engagement photos taken.

their wedding in 1961. they donated the dress to the george fox
university drama department when they downsized a few
years back. thanks to my asking, however, my
grandpa is currently trying to get it back for me!!!

aidan fell asleep before we had even eaten dinner. it had been
a really long day...

oregon was absolutely fantastic. it was nice to get a vacation and to see my family. we don't get to do either of those things very often, so it was such a treat. here are just a few of the highlights of my time there:

we spent our first full day in portland, which
was about a 45 minute drive from my
grandparents' house in newburg. powell's, as
always, was our first stop

powell's is a crazy big, crazy awesome book store. we spent so
much time just browsing there.

for our lunch break, we drove about a half an hour away from
downtown portland to this really great overlook thing.
we were able to see about 5 or 6 mountains from where we
were (a rare sight for ohioans), plus all of portland.
it was a cool place.

mt. hood...as you can see, it was a really overcast day.

the burgis were the first of the cousins we saw.
this is cassia (my sister) and rachel. they
are the two youngest cousins. 

we visited the evergreen aviation and space museums.
they were both pretty cool. 

i got to touch part of the berlin wall in the
space museum!

and........I GOT TO TOUCH A PIECE OF THE
MOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i woke up saturday morning to this.....

ethan, sophie and i got to go to coffee cottage on saturday
morning. saturday was the day of the big 50th anniversary
party for my grandparents (the reason we were out there), so
we had to drink our coffee in a hurry...but this is the coolest
coffee shop ever.

the cake

and here they are. aren't they the cutest?

13 of the 14 grandkids :)

              i flew home by myself on sunday
 afternoon...i got to see the sun set over
mt. hood :)

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school started the next day (monday, january 9th) and everything has just been crazy since then. just trying to get all my school work done, trying to make as much money as i can and trying to not miss andrew too much. life is good :)

i love it when daddy's home :)

the day after christmas, my dad had a day off of work. those are rare for people of the postal profession, so it was rather exciting for us to have him home. while he was home, he helped me do several things around my room, one of which was a magnificent scarf hanger :)

i had found a nice design idea several weeks before when i searched "DIY scarf hanger" on pinterest. this is what i found:

i love the fact that neither the hooks nor the boards are uniform. so i let this idea sit in my mind for a while. i knew that we had some old cupboard doors in the basement, and i figured that could make a phenomenal base for the scarf hanger. i also knew that we had a drawer just chalk full of old hardware and various random things that had been left in this house when we moved in.




so,  i approached my dad with the idea. at first i was just going to ask his permission to use the stuff, and then work on it later on my own. boy, am i glad i didn't do that. this project proved to be time-consuming, rather technical and slightly labor-intensive, but it definitely paid off :)








STEP 1: find the materials. i managed to find a
good sized cupboard door as well as about 5 or
6 hooks that i could use. initially my dad thought
that we could use an old faucet as a hook as well,
but after thinking on that for a bit, he decided that
that would just be too much for us. so we just stuck with what we had.






STEP 2: decide which side of the cupboard to use. i really liked the hardware (especially the hinges) on the outside of the door, so i was going to try to use some technique with the paint to get an
antique-y look. then i just turned it around and there was exactly that antique-y look that i had wanted. so dad and i took the handle and the hinges off of the outside (picture on the left) and affixed them to the inside (picture on the right)

STEP 3:
 affix to the wall. this was the most technical part of the whole process. when i was thinking about doing it on my own, i was not thinking about drill bits, screw lengths, levels or anything technical really. just about how it would look when it was completed. also, when we were actually drilling the board onto the wall, that took a lot of strength. i would never have been able to accomplish that on my own.
this part took a lot of measuring, a lot of "measuring twice, cutting once", drilling holes, putting screws into those holes, checking to see that the board was level, etc. it was work.

STEP 4: affix hooks :)
we settled on the four most "rough" looking ones. the only technical aspect of this part was tracing the hole onto the door before drilling. this was the easiest part for me, especially since at this point i could finally see it coming together. this is the finished product before i put my scarves on it :)






and here is the final product with scarves/purses hanging on it, YAY! it really made my room feel like it's starting to come together...since moving out for college, my room has been the guest room and i never really felt like i was contributing much to the atmosphere of the place. now that i will be living here until august of 2012, i decided that it was finally time to make the room a little more my style. there are so many more things to do, but this definitely gave me the motivation i needed :)

good morning!

well, it's christmas break. so it really does not make any sense that i am up this freaking early. but i am, although it was not at all intentional. since it is christmas break though, it's time for me to actually blog...yay!
1. i am sitting on my bed drinking coffee and listening to the disney pandora station
2. i am avoiding actually unpacking my room right now. it is currently pretty crowded in here, what with all of the unpacked boxes and unorganized piles of stuff.
3. annual bohemian group caroling tonight...YES!
4. the biggest news of the last few weeks...i'm staying home this semester! i'll still be taking classes at malone, but i will be making the half hour commute to get there. which is why there is so much stuff in my room. if this were just a normal christmas break, i wouldn't be dealing with all of this....
5. thanks pandora. i want to watch tarzan now.

i've had several things that i wanted to blog about, so i'll just do one of the most pressing matters: all of the wedding dresses that i want to post. i have been planning my wedding for several years, so this really isn't all that unusual for me...
i found all of these on etsy. there are plenty of other dresses that i love, but i decided to just stick with the etsy finds today.

this is from the etsy shop MuseClothing...and it's only $88!

this dress is called "Creams Golds Vintage Boho Romantic LACE Dress Kimono Sleeves"

 these next two dresses are from the same shop (whiteromance) and they are both only $250 :)
 

Vintage Affair- Wedding Gown In Vintage lace                      Dove- Wedding Gown 

                                                                                                                  Eco Bride

this dress is from the etsy shop GraceLovesLace. the style of the dress is "French lace Ivory Bohemian wedding dress" and it is $890

these next two are my favorites of this etsy search. they are each individually handmade and are sold on the shop RawHemline. i especially like the first one, but i prefer longer dresses. so, since they are each made to order, if i were to get this, i would ask the seller to combine this top with the skirt of the second dress.  

Sea Shore Dress- Textured, Gathered, Natural Sculpted Dress

                     $129






Sea Urchin Dress. Textured, Gathered Dress

                     $135

on the subject of goodbyes

i'm really bad at saying goodbye. a lot of times i find goodbyes to be awkward and slightly unpleasant. especially when it comes to saying goodbye to andrew. even when i know i'm going to see him in a few hours at dinner or whenever, i just cannot let him go. i cling to him and hold him tightly as he laughs at me and tells me to go away. and now i have to prepare for the second most painful goodbye of my life thus far. the first was when i was 14 and i had to bid my best friend goodbye as she and her family moved across the country to montana. the night before they left, we stayed up until 2am and woke up at 5:30am. we saw the sunrise together. we hugged a lot, but neither of us cried. 

this second goodbye will occur in january. probably january 1st. i will be getting on a plane to visit oregon for about a week, and while i'm gone, andrew will board another plane headed for a much farther away (and more dreamy) place...england. he won't be gone long, just a semester, but it will be difficult nonetheless. i already feel like crying. of course he is too distracted now by application things to be sad, and when he gets there, he will be surrounded by so many crazy amazing things, he'll probably hardly miss me at all. but here i will be, at school...where i met him and where we have spent so many good times. i will be surrounded by great, great memories of him.

well, i guess this is what happens when i find myself a brilliant, ambitious man...he decides to spend a semester in england. the day of his departure is approaching fast...january 6th. and he won't be returning until april 13th or so. of course that really isn't that horrible. we can make it. but i'm still sad.

so, as i'm preparing to say this goodbye, i can't quite figure out how i'm supposed to act. i know the time is coming fast, so i want to spend as much time as i can with him. but at the same time, i cannot neglect my friends, who will truly be my support system while he's across the pond. plus, at this point he's more concerned about getting his papers in then about how we should spend these next few months. so then i just appear goofy when i want to spend all my time with him.

so now i need to practice saying goodbye. and letting go. i'm so, so happy for him that he gets to be over there. i just wish i could go with him. i'm not trying to sound melancholy...in fact i really am not in the least. but i am a tad concerned about that day. but for now, i'm just not going to think about it. i'm going to love this beautiful life and really just live in the moment. because these moments are too precious.

on a completely different note, i am going to blog more (promise, promise). i am currently reading the flipside of feminism. as of page 8, i am still not sure what to think of it, but i am becoming increasingly more skeptical as i read. i do fully intend to read the whole thing, however, but i will be keeping a running list of the things that seem strange to me. hopefully every few days i can update you here, just to keep track of my thoughts.

holy cow. it's super dark outside and it is only 7pm.
today was the first frost.
i so love this time of year.
the colors.
the crisp air.
the smells.
the food.
deeeeelightful :)

i am yours

"She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was a union that must have been to the advantage of both. By her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance."
-Pride and Prejudice

some pictures of nice things

school starts soon. in fact i will be moving in on saturday. lots of packing to do. mom and i mapped out the bus route that i will be taking this year as i go from school to panera and back several times a week. it was really interesting and eye-opening, especially since it was preceded by handing out food for the food bank. i will be learning a lot this year, as well as overcoming a lot of silly and irrational fears. i am really excited to see what the next few months will bring.

since i really need to be packing rather than blogging, i will leave you now, with a few pictures of beautiful/interesting/strange things that i own. p.s...the item in the final picture is of no use to me. if you are interested in owning it, please contact me ASAP.

batman and his handy sidekick robin...on a pillowcase. i am a huge fan of the batman, so when my brother saw this at a garage sale for 25 cents, he was kind as can be and bought it for me :)

this is zachary quinto. there's not much else i can say about him. if you are unable to recognize his beauty, then shame on you.

ma bling. i honestly forgot that i owned this until about 5 minutes ago. i guess my sister was sick of having some of my things lying around her room, so she gave me some things to sort through. this was amongst those things. i have never used it once. i think i bought it to be ironical. i should do something with it. but it is more likely that i will be rid of it. oh whell.