I Love...

This week I've been doing a fair amount of thinking about the kind of thoughts I've been having and the positive to negative ratio. Unfortunately there has been a lot more negative thoughts then positive ones, which I believe has a lot to do with my frustration at being in my current situation. I feel angry all the time, and I'm not necessarily at anything in particular, I'm just generally frustrated at my situation because I know I can only do so much to change it.

In order to change this I've decided that for the next 30 days I'm going to think of 1 thing that I love about myself, whether its physical or non-physical, I'm going to write each thing down in document and post it at the end of 30 days, and if you want to do it too and send it to me that'd be really cool.

People have an easy time saying they "love" something, like "I love chocolate" or "I love skiing", but rarely does someone use it to describe themselves. I've almost never heard anyone say that they love or even like the way they look. And its not just women, I've had guy friends question how they look, and say they need to gain more muscle or lose weight. Not to sound cliche but I think that everyone is beautiful just the way they are, and with all of my friends and family I wouldn't change a single thing.

I'm also hoping that the self-love I'm giving myself will help me see people differently and in a more positive way, I know that we all cave into secretly judging others and comparing ourselves to others. So during my 30 day challenge I'm going to spread the love, and luckily for me I'm just in time for Valentine's day ;)

To get this started here are some things that I generally love:
I love chocolate covered strawberries, and most chocolate in general.
I love goofing off with my housemates and friends.
I love my parent's cooking, I don't need a 5 star restaurant.
I love both of my doggies, both Wrigley who's with me now and Pepper who is in a better place.

Wrigley

Pepper

I love the view from my lake house, and I can't wait to spend time there this summer:

Last of all I love all of my friends, family and boyfriend who've been super supportive of me during this transition.

And for day 1 of the challenge: I love my eyes, I've always loved the color of my eyes I think that they're beautiful and unique and I think they are one my best and defining features.

Get out there and spread the love! :*

A new zone

This weekend I realized that I've entered a new zone of friendship that I wasn't quite sure existed. Since my boyfriend is abroad at graduate school, I've been hanging out with his friends while he is away. Its been a fun experience but I seem to be in this weird new zone that I've never experienced before. With my boyfriend's friends I feel strangely comfortable because everything is purely platonic and I feel like I can relax around them. This weekend we went out to a snazzy bar/club in Bellevue. I thought we were bowling but it turned out we were going to a bowling alley/club. It was for a friend of a friend's birthday, and there was bottle service which I had never had before and there was a weird club atmosphere. While at the bar it occurred to me that I had crossed into a new zone of friendship. My one friend asked me about potential girls and which ones I thought he should go for. With my other friend I was his "girlfriend". It was an odd zone to be in and I learned more about what guys think of girls, it was quite the eye-opener.

While I'm still on the job-hunt I'm spending my time exercising, reading and spending time with the family. I have a few leads and I'm hoping that I'll be employed by Valentine's day.

Things I'm reading: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Listening to: Bangerz by Miley Cyrus
Still obsessed with: Gossip Girl
Craving: The Kirk Park Medium Maise by Kate Spade


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xoxo

Time flies

So things got crazy after Thanksgiving, all the holidays seemed to come right after another, it seemed like just yesterday I was celebrating my birthday.


I had a fairly uneventful Thanksgiving and Christmas, my family always spends Thanksgiving with my dad's family down in Saint Louis and my mom's parents came up here for Christmas. It was great seeing so much family so closely together. The highlight of my holidays was going down to Chicago to see my boyfriend and my friends from high school. Over my 7 day adventure I ate like a princess, I'm still surprised that my stomach hasn't expanded to the size of an elephants. I enjoyed everything from squid ink noodles to lamb to escargot to scallops. I have a deep love for seafood and fortunately my boyfriend treated me to all the seafood that I could eat. We also got to see some real live seafood, we met up with a college friend of mine and went to the Shedd Aquarium. The Shedd is hands down one of my favorite places in the city of Chicago. Although I'm terrified of deep water I've always had a deep love of sea life. We checked out the jellies and the sharks and the dolphin show. However after watching Blackfish the other night I felt bad about watching the dolphin show. The documentary really causes you to question what you saw in your childhood and what to do with big marine animals.

For New Years Eve this year I went out with my bf and a good friend from high school and her boyfriend. We started the night off like champions by splitting a bottle of Andre and then headed out to a bar in Lincoln Park that for a mere $60 you could have all the alcohol you wanted and a champagne toast. Supposedly there was food as well but I didn't notice. The night was super fun and super snowy! The only downside of the evening was that I had accidentally worn my skirt inside out and the fact that I may have had one too many cran and vodkas.

Chicago was a great winter adventure, for the Midwest is truly a winter wonderland. In my time there it snowed about a foot as well as the temperature dropped down into the negatives. It was a good throwback to my childhood and spending many long winters in the snow. It was great to see both my boyfriend who I hadn't seen since early September and my high school friends who many I hadn't seen since last year. It was great how no matter how much time had passed that things never really changed and we could just pick up where we left off.

Since I've been back in the PNW I've started seriously training for my half-marathon, so far I'm on week 2 and doing a variant of the run-walk and getting above 2 miles. It gets a little boring running the same routes but I hope as I increase my distances I'll find better places to run. With my return to Seattle my contract ended so I've been enjoying a lot of me time as I look for a new job. So far I've been feeling fairly positive and haven't quite given into the unemployment despair quite yet.

As for now I'm going to keep reading and running and looking. Tomorrow I'm going down to help my sorority house practice for their upcoming recruitment.
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The Daily Gym Struggle

Recently I joined a gym near my house with the hope of obtaining some sort of adequate physical fitness. Today was my first day at the gym and its my first time being at new gym that I haven't automatically joined because of school or family. Its a scary thing walking into a new gym and its something I'm slowly learning to adjust to. Mostly the adjustment involves getting into the mindset of "no one cares what I'm doing"; which I'm slowly moving into. I have stayed away from free weights and most of the machines generally because I really have no clue what I'm supposed to do with them… I am however having my first personal training session (a perk of my membership) on Monday so hopefully I'll get some tips and tricks on how to more effectively use my gym time and feel less like a fool.

Other things, this past weekend was great! My friday started off fantastically by getting a surprise delivery of flowers and chocolates to my office from my special friend. My face stayed a slight tinge of red the rest of the day because everyone stares at you when you have flowers; but could they not stare because they were so pretty:

They were a fantastic way to end the week and kick off the weekend! :)

Some other great things about the weekend was I found a place that serves $4 mojitos; which is phenomenal!!! My housemates and I hit that up on Friday, also on Friday I tried to revive my beer pong skills…. I'm still abysmal, I gave up though before I trolled so maybe by default I trolled.

This weekend I also saw some college friends; and we went out and karaoked and I actually sang. It was a great night and great to see old friends!

Some things I'm looking forward to:

I'm going to a concert w/ a friend this Friday and I'm going to a friends-giving this Sunday; both which will be fun! I think I may have something going on, on Saturday but I can't quite remember. 

I'm going home to Chicago next month and I'm really really excited! 

And I'm going to St. Louis next week for Thanksgiving, we're having a catered dinner which will be a first, but it'll be good to see family.

Well that's it; here are some photos:

Weeks of Friends

So this past weekend was the first weekend in two weeks that I got to myself. The previous two weekends I had guests:

My first guest was a friend of mine who I went abroad with in Australia (See Thunder Down Under for more of those stories...) She is currently driving from the East coast around the US making her way west and eventually she'll settle down and pick a place to live. I'm hoping she moves here. The weekend she was here was also one of our first work events hosted by the Fun Committee (which I'm a member of) we had a great halloween party and played bowling. Unfortunately there were no bumpers so my performance was abysmal. After we went out on the town and had a grand old time.

The next day we hosted a taco lunch at our apartment; it went swell and everyone fit comfortably on our new furniture. I also like taco lunches better then brunch, tacos > breakfast.

It was great seeing my friend; we hadn't seen each other since our last great Australian adventure so it was great to catch up.

The weekend after my best friend from Chicago came to visit! It was so great to be reunited with my other half and it was fun showing her around Seattle. We tried to go hiking but it was soo windy that the waves were coming up over the 520 bridge; it was not ideal hiking conditions. We ate pho and sushi and went out on capitol hill. On Sunday we had a special date night, we went down to the water and rode the Ferris wheel which was much less scary in the dark. We enjoyed a fancy dinner down at the Pink Door which is excellent! We munched on seafood and watched trapeze artists twirl in the air; it was a great night. I'm hoping that Seattle made a great impression on her :)

Here are some highlights from our adventures:

After a couple weeks of friends its been nice to have a calm few weeks. Last weekend I attended a fundraising dinner and this week a panel for the same organization. I'm hoping that I can get more involved in the organization and organizations like it.

Well thats about it,
TLAM

Its Pumpkin Season

This week has been quite eventful, I was supposed to start my training for the half-marathon I'm running in April. I'm doing a couch to half-marathon program which is a 6 month program pretty much designed for the non-runner. I do run fairly frequently and I have been running since my sophomore year of high school so I could have gone with a more rigorous training program but I figured with all of my injuries from XC better to start slow. So tomorrow I'll start on my lazy kid adventure to half marathon greatness... I even got some sweet shoes:

They're supposed to be super stable so hopefully they'll provide all the support that I need! Apparently my feet turn in, or roll funny so I run funny; oh well no ones perfect.

This week was also great in that I got to skype two of my friends who are both currently "down under" I have my old Australian housemate who I have regular skype dates with and they're pretty fun; its always great to connect! I also skyped my friend who's currently studying abroad in NZ and after some technical issues it was great to see her face!!! On the same note one of the gals that I studied abroad with in Sydney will be in town this upcoming weekend and I'm super excited to see her!!!

In the spirit of fall my housemates and I plus some friends went to the pumpkin patch in search of the perfect pumpkin. It was quite an adventure since we got lost on the way there and then it took a long time to find the perfect pumpkin! We were slightly disappointed in how small the selection was, well maybe it was just me. I'm from the Midwest so I'm used to GIANT pumpkins but these were none too shabby. We shared a lot of laughs and dirty pumpkin jokes ( yes they're possible) and after finding our perfect pumpkins and taking our Christmas card photo (get ready) we headed out.

As you can see there was quite the fine selection :)

Today my mom came by to help me redecorate my apartment; she decided that it could use a "friendly" touch. We swung by Target and TJ Max HomeGoods which both have some sweet deals and gave my apartment a pretty good touch up.

It looks like real adults live here now :) We're hosting people on Saturday so we'll see what they say :) I think my next project will be the bathroom since I want to make our whole apartment cute.

Today I also talked to my best guy friend which was great! We talk about once every 5 weeks so it was great to catch up :) my other best friend from Chicago is going to be here in less then 2 weeks and I'm soooo excited!!!

Well that's about all!
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Ladies Retreat

This weekend I went on a women's retreat to Lake Chelan. Twenty of us made the journey from Western to Eastern Washington. The drive up was dreary as we wound our way through the mountains; however through the rain we could see the beautiful lakes and mountains that make up the Washington scenery. On our way up we saw signs warning us about both deer and big horned sheep. I personally have never seen a big horn sheep but I certainly would never want to run into one...

Unfortunately the misty weather followed us to Lake Chelan, we were going to take a sea plane to this isolated peninsula at the northern end of the lake; however due to the weather the plane trip was cancelled :( So instead a group of us went on a wine tasting; we hit 5 different wineries in a period of five hours. I have never been wine tasting before so this was a phenomenal experience. We tried many different reds and whites and our servings ranged from minuscule to overly generous. My favorite wines came from Benson winery; you should check out Curious, Rhythm and Sangiovese. They are all delicious and worth trying!

On that note I'm going to leave off with some pictures from this weekend and continue to enjoy my spicy hot chocolate and Beyonce's album 4

<3