in the spirit of fashion week

ashion week is here and i love coming across great clothes. it makes me excited about the possibility of actually being able to afford and wear outfits like the ones below. i mean when in college, there aren’t many places to wear great outfits. i have no desire to sit through lecture in a fantastic outfit to only have it be wrinkled. so here are some outfits the Brits put together. i have to say that the British do know whats going on when it comes to fashion. most people think Italians and Parisians but i have been impressed every time i come across one of their concoctions.

such a lovely dress!

i would wear this dress every day if that weren’t awkward. i love the simplicity of it and the classic look. it also looks so amazingly comfortable. the dress and belt are both from Massimo Dutti, a Spanish clothing company.

love the boots and blazer combo!

i have a considerable problem with the rain boot phenomenon here on campus. mostly because they look the same are most likely from the same place. but the original Wellies are awesome and i totally want some. they are Hunter boots and the Brits did it first. i hopefully will get this pair for my birthday this year. i love them. and the blazer is just classic. very British countryside.

would love this for my first interview!

and lastly i wouldn’t mind wearing this to work. it is so perfectly flattering and well just plain beautiful.

new fan favorites

very now and then i find some new things that make me quite content. they are quite random and have become a favorite either by chance or i became slightly adventurous. granted some are extremely new and fresh, as in i have put them among this list after only one encounter but i am sure they deserve to be here. so let’s begin:

grapefruit!

i am positively in love with grapefruit. i eat half a grapefruit a day and it makes me so happy every time. i think it’s one of the fruits that is worth the work and preparation. i eat is for breakfast, snack, and the occasional late night treat! how beautiful!

new music!

i have been really into discovering new music at my own pace. some of the songs/albums i am really enjoying have been out for a while or are new. i find that i don’t exactly follow the trends in music and latch onto the new stuff. it will happen occasionally and sometimes i will download a brand new chart topping song right after one that came out 4 or 5 years ago. for instance, i latched onto the Guster bandwagon waaay late. everyone in high school, back in 2003-2004, loved them and they were the band to like. i just never caught on. luckily a resurgence came in the form of my fiance (thanks babe!). i’m also crushing on the new Dave Matthews Band album. mostly just 3 songs. “Why I Am“, “Funny the Way It Is“, and “You & Me“. i can play them back to back to back and not get tired of them. they are amazing songs. the new Train song “Hey, Soul Sister” is another song i love right now. its fun and typical Train. an ‘oldie’ (not so much, i think its maybe 2 or 3 years old) is Joshua Radin’s “I’d Rather Be With You“. such a beautiful song! oh and then there’s always John Mayer. his cover of “Free Fallin” gives me chills and is absolutely beautiful.

Modern Warfare 2!

so i realize i might be shocking some people with this one but i love playing this game. it is maybe the weirdest most masculine thing i have ever enjoyed doing (other than skeet shooting, but i am convinced that is no longer a “man’s sport”). my fiance and i play this all the time! we have completed the alpha and bravo missions on veteran and are working on the other missions. sometimes i think we’ll play for an hour or two and not even realize the time has gone by. my favorite missions are the ones involving snipers, ghillie suits, sneaking around and precision shooting. the juggernaut ones give me nightmares! (not really, but i fear them the most) and overall its an awesome and fun game.

awesomeness!

PE classes!

i adore tuesdays and thursdays! i have rock climbing at 9:00 am and then spin class at 11:20 every tuesday and thursday. it is the best. those mornings make the week go by fast and add an enormous amount of energy to my week. i am nuts about rock climbing. i went and bought 7 feet of climbing rope to practice my knot tying (which after typing that i now realize how much of a dork i am). i love belaying and working as a team to complete climbs. the whole experience is amazing. falling is not to fun but its part of the game. we have to do announced falls every now and then to help the belayer practice the proper procedure in the event that an unannounced fall happens. it keeps you on your toes (literally). mostly what i love is the feeling when you get to the top of the wall. its 25 feet and you feel like you can accomplish anything when up there. and the harder the climbing route the better that feeling gets.

spin class is equally rewarding, but in a slightly different way. i have begun to tone muscles i don’t think i realized i had. the intensity of the class is amazing and allows me to sleep deeper at night due to sheer exhaustion. i don’t know why i have just now begun to enjoy working out and exercise. as a kid i loved sports, especially swimming, baseball, and volleyball but when i got older and was a teenager i got really lazy. i mean crazy lazy! it was bad. i just didn’t want to do anything that required me to work my body. luckily its back. the drive to work so hard sweat is drenching my t-shirt. i love the feeling that i just pushed my body, heart, and muscles to the most extreme (but still healthy and safe) point. i really love the feeling of being fit and healthy and strong. feeling strong is new to me. not that i was completely void of muscle before but i feel it in my core. its amazing!

our bike for class!!

and the last, but never least, Trader Joe’s!

how amazing is this place?! i mean cheap, cheap, cheap. it is awesome. i love the fact that shopping there a. makes you feel like your in a different country, b. you have just discovered new brands and favorites, c. its organic and guaranteed freshness, and (maybe the best part) d. there is always wine tastings and food tastings! it is quite possibly a place of complete happiness. even when it’s busy the people just smile and will drop anything to help you find something. there was even a guy there with a huge question mark sign and a heart with a question mark around his neck just walking around waiting for questions from customers. i bought ingredients for a taco pizza and had plenty of leftover tomatoes, cheese, etc. and it was a grand total of $20!! i was in shock as i stood at the cash register. needles to say i will be shopping there quite a bit!

trader joe's bags!

the rediscovery of oatmeal

lease tell me this weather is going to change. those darn groundhogs gave me conflicting stories. puxatawney phil, up in PA, didn’t see his shadow and claims 6 more weeks of winter. but sir walter wally, in Raleigh, did see his shadow and says winter will be ending any day now sooner than normal. either way, i just want it to stop raining. snowing. sleeting. no more precipitation please! poor DC keeps getting slammed, my sister in Harrisonburg just got snowed in, much to her excitement, and wake county kids got 3 days off this past week. 3 days! people just don’t seem to handle snow well in the south. however, as much as i would like it to stop i have to say sledding on saturday was awesome and the 8 year old inside of my finally got to exercise some control over my body. i’ve got the bruises to prove it too.

so, my spinning class is promptly at 11:25 on tuesday and thursday. and my dilemma is what to eat beforehand. i have rock climbing on tuesdays for 2 hours and 45 minutes before i got spin and thursday is a free morning for me. my roommate recommended oatmeal. now i haven’t had oatmeal in probably 10 or 12 years so i was a little forgetful as to whether or not i liked oatmeal in the first place. i think i remember oatmeal being the breakfast we ate if there was nothing else good in the house. so i bought some maple brown sugar oatmeal that was high in fiber (and i mean HIGH). i also took more advice from my roommate and made it with milk instead of water, another new thing for me. and might i say that i am hooked! its amazing! and perfect before spin class! i have tons of energy and at the same time don’t feel like my stomach is being put through something awful while my heart rate is at 180 bpm! needless to say i am an oatmeal fan and will forever speak its praises!

amazing!

SAG Awards

officially love awards season. its the best excuse to visit sites like Eonline.com or People.com and buy all the magazines that show the latest fashions being worn on the red carpet. and even aside from the fashion i genuinely like to know who the Hollywood foreign press, the screen actors guild, and the academy of motion picture arts and sciences thinks did the best in the past year in film and television. but back to the fashion. i have to confess that fashion is one of my guiltiest pleasures. i was recently in Paris and went to La Galleries Lafeyette. apparently this a shopping/fashion mecca in Europe and i actually got to touch. try on. and see genuine garments made by Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Burberry, Ralph Lauren, and plenty more. i mean check out the beauty of the dresses from last night!

Gorgeous!!

{via}

oh and here’s a fun random website. wordle.net, try it! its fun!

weekend blogging

learly i have been extraordinarily busy and neglectful of this blog. and i am shocked i have posted nothing about the ever growing list of details about my impending nuptials coming this fall. i have been spending way to much time on the crazy list of wedding blogs i have accumulated on my blogroll. however the time spent is time used. i have gotten so many ideas and found amazing bridesmaids dresses all because these blogs are full of info! i am so thankful that i have access to these. granted i know women for years were planning weddings before the invention of blogs or the internet but this just makes it fun. i also have 9 wedding magazines that make me so happy and i could look through 25 more times and still find things i love.

so here are the bridesmaids dresses i have chosen. my four sisters, best friend, and lovely cousin are my 6 bridesmaids and i have decided to let them choose the necklines of their dresses. i realize these girls might not wear a bridesmaids dress all that often after the wedding but if they get a part in choosing maybe wearing them will become more frequent. so the designer is Alfred Sung and the company is The Dessy Group.

Beautiful Alfred Sung dress!

I mean i am officially in love with these dresses! i kinda wish i was getting one. i know all my girls are gonna look amazing. the next question i get a lot is “what are your colors?” part of me finds this funny because the colors really aren’t that important to me but apparently they set the tone for a lot of details. my amazingly creative mother is making the ring-bearers pillow out of the lace and organza from my grandmothers wedding dress. i’m named for her and so its only fitting that she be a part of the ceremony. i would have worn the dress itself had it no been for her 18” waist! apparently i’m related to miss vivien leigh. the flowers are also going to come from the local farmers market so i don’t have a picture but here are some ideas:

very appropriate for fall

love the green, orange, and pink!

the cake is a whole other story. my fiance doesn’t exactly like cake or sweet things in general so his input will be at a minimum. i can’t decide between round or square. and i want colorful but i do not want it to look like it came fresh off the set of tim burton’s alice and wonderland….or a 5 years old’s birthday party. i also like the idea of a smaller cake with cupcakes to accompany it. and the filler is a toss up of fun-fetti or red velvet. maybe i am a 5 year old on the inside after revealing that detail. the idea would look like this:

Something like this....just no Carolina blue.

however, this is beautiful!

and local!

and as far as the groom’s cake goes it will remain a surprise between me and the bakers. not even my mother, who is paying for it, will know. i am so excited and quite proud of the fun idea i have!

well that’s about it. anything else will be updated. i clearly can’t put a picture of my dress up but trust me it is perfect.

fun predictions for the year

o i just had a fun idea. i am going to make some fun predictions for the year. like what will be my favorite movie? how many books will i read (for recreation)? this is mostly for me. i’ll have fun looking back at the end of december this year and seeing how close my predictions were to the real occurrences. so:

favorite movie of 2010: Inception

amount of movies seen in 2010: 12

amount of books read in 2010: 8

cumulative GPA at graduation: 3.5

movies in 2010 that are going to be amazing:

Iron Man 2. Inception. Alice in Wonderland. Knight and Day. Shutter Island

that’s all i got. hopefully more will happen this year.

2010:expectations

edding planning is turning out to be exciting. stressful. wonderful. and time consuming. i found the online marriage license form and wanted to immediately fill it out and be married. i was compelled to have the name of my fiance attached to my first name. it was exciting and made me smile and feel completely and utterly in love with my fiance like it was the first time i felt i loved him. i wish i could have a snap shot of moments like those. but wedding planning isn’t the only thing that is happening in the upcoming year. i will be graduating from college. thankfully. i’m happy about leaving the academic world and entering the workforce i just hope that the entrance into the workforce is smooth. but that;s probably wishful thinking. either way i have a fiance that loves me. i have a very strong faith and will need to rely on that to get me through this year.

so the expectations i hold for myself this year are:

wake up with purpose

keep my goals realistic but optimistic

remember that things can change

and this is proving harder than i realized so i might have to update throughout the year.

movie review: Inception

bviously i can’t write a review of a movie i have not seen so this is a review of the trailer. inception looks awesome! i love the director. i love the actors. i love the concept (which i’m still trying to fully understand). and i love that it is going to be mind boggling. please check out the trailer. nolan makes amazing films and the production quality looks phenomenal and fitting for the concept of the film. enjoy: Inception

another ten

ever in my right mind did i think the first decade of the new millennium would go by so fast. i am still a little shocked. i can still remember ringing in the new millennium at my aunts house wearing paper glasses that read 2000 and banging pots and pans. that night i never thought that in ten years i would be engaged. graduating. beginning a new career. or simply breaking out into the real world (although i knew it had ot happen sometime). it’s still an odd concept to realize. ten years ago today i was 12. oblivious about boys. worried about how to spend my $20 allowance. concerned about the difference between UNC and NCSU (i grew up in a strictly UGA household so no other college mattered when it came down to football so UNC and NCSU were not on my radar hence me not knowing any difference). all the while trying to figure out the unofficial public school rules of surviving the 7th grade. now those worries seem amazingly simple compared to now.

i am optimistically looking forward to this new decade and the new year. i don’t want to make any predictions for the next ten years. knowing that i might be disappointed if they don’t come true or freaked out if they do come true and i’ve predicted actual occurrences in my life. either way the first year of this new decade is going to be amazing and wonderful because i will become part of a new family. my own family. i will be changing my name. the location of my home. my direction in life. and will have my best friend at my side throughout all of it.

i do look forward to spending the rest of my decades with my fiance and devoting my life to loving him and loving the Lord. with that as my foundation i feel that i can accomplish anything. and that is the best feeling to have going into this new year. goodbye 2009. hello 2010.

engagement

APPY HOLIDAYS!!! i am a newly engaged person and have decided that being engaged over christmas is awesome. i also am loving the small fact that i have a fiancee and i am a fiancee. it’s all so surreal. i think when he was on his knee i was watching it all from afar. i had to nudge myself to breathe and believe. this. is. happening. the flood of emotions never came and i am thankful for that. i was more content. loved. peaceful. full of joy. and blinded by the light…that came from my ring. (i had to slip a little humor in there)… i hope the holidays are wonderful for everyone! i know the peace of Christ is always around us. i just like to think it’s a little more present this time of year. put down all grudges. forgive little grievances. and truly try to see the joy in things. the lasting effect of feeling that joy is far better than actually getting revenge. so i pray for the whole blogoshpere and the rest of the world (as daunting as that can seem) that the truly rewarding gifts come to each of you this holiday season.