beautifully comfortable

The past few days I've been pretty tired. I've been trying to catch up on sleep, but it's really hard when I'm worried about things like Spanish essays, job fairs, and beestings.

In honor of my level of exhaustion, here are some fun pictures that I've found this past week. A lot of them look like pretty nice places to go to relax, or take a little (or long) nap. Enjoy... and happy Wednesday :)

P.S. I got a lot of the photos off of this site... it's really fun to flip through. Check it out!

pura vida

Ever realize how vacations can be more exhausting than regular day-to-day life?

Of course, the exhaustion comes from eating large breakfasts, drinking way too many mojitos, and spending time on excursions... but still, it's exhausting. 

My family and I just got back from Costa Rica and it was a wonderful vacation. The group consisted of me, my  dad, step mom, family friend, and my three sisters. Everybody got along (for the most part) and there were no huge blowups like there usually are.

The food was good (especially breakfast), hanging out by the pool was wonderful, zip-lining was a blast, seeing all the animals was exciting, and the service was exquisite. We had a thing called "royal service" which meant that we had so many privileges that the regular guests did not have access to. The whole resort was all inclusive, and the drinks were super tasty. 

Here are my top 10 favorite pictures from the trip:

1. Toucan .. there were two of them

2. View of the ocean

3. The biggest grasshoppers I have ever seen

4. Monkeys!! (this one was yelling at us)

5. I really like pictures of twisty plants/vines (don't ask why)

6. They plant hot peppers to keep the bugs away from the organic coffee plants

7. Horses that we rode all through the forest

8. Bats that line up on the trees to look like snakes

9. Monkeys that relax by laying on a branch and hanging their feet off. Looks pretty comfortable.

10. Pretty purple flowers

And a few of the family:

Sisters (Liana, me, Kelley, Caitlin)

Zip-lining (I liked the frame that the tree provided to the photograph)

The whole family on our horses (Caitlin, Liana, Kelley, me, Devery, Cindy, Daddy)

The girls at lunch (Devery, Caitlin, Liana, me, Kelley)

P.S. The coffee was FANTASTIC. I bought myself three bags of it, even though I don't even know how to make it at home!

image wednesday

Image-style Wonderful Wednesday...  the following are images that I have come across as I have gone through a bunch of different websites/blogs. I will try to give credit where credit is due.. but I'm not too good at recording where I get the pictures from. I usually just use them for inspiration. If you know where a certain image comes from, let me know and I will for sure add that info in here.

Enjoy!

(P.S. I apologize for any weird formatting. I would try to figure it out, but like I said, I'm super tired. Maybe I'll fix it tomorrow... or maybe I'll just leave it)

1. (random Facebook album)



2. (Post Secret)

3.

4.

5.

6. Xabi Alonso and Fernando Torres

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10.

blog

I woke up this morning at 8:15. If you ask me, that is way too early for somebody who technically doesn't have to wake up at all today because she doesn't have anything to do, at all (oh, except watch Pretty Little Liars later tonight). Of course I woke up, checked e-mail (and Facebook.. and Blogger) and totally willed myself to get out of bed and do something (like eat breakfast, or read a book, or something)... but I didn't. This always happens to me, I have time so I go on Blogger and end up clicking on new links, videos, other blogs, etc. Then, before you know it, I've spent three hours finding new things and getting excited about new blogs.

Anyway, since I've spent the past 3 hours going through random people's blogs (and as many of them have stated, I suppose that counts as "stalking" but in reality, I really just like seeing the cool things they come up with like photos, videos, links, etc. I actually normally skip over the long things that they write about themselves... and now I suddenly realize, if I was an outsider reading this blog, I'd totally skip over this post!) I figured I'd share with you some of the things that I have come across this morning. (Also, because I missed "Wonderful Wednesday" [what's new] I thought I would kinda combine this post and the one I should have, and could have, but didn't write on Wednesday because I was just too lazy.)

1. I found this cool article about making your own journals at this blog... They have since stopped blogging, but I was flipping through the old posts and they have some pretty cool videos and stuff. Check it out!

2. Indexed. Okay, so I don't understand everything that she writes on the index cards, but a lot of them are pretty funny. Some of my favorites:

3. Huggies Jean Diapers

Comment on the YouTube video: 144 people must have accidentally pressed thumbs down
I don't even know what to say about this new Huggies product and marketing campaign... I laugh at it and feel uncomfortable all at the same time

4. The Sketchbook Project .. umm... AMAZING!! I'm debating about ordering one and submitting it... you should too!

5. Bread

6. The British Virgin Islands (I was on vacation there all last week. More on this later.)

7. You Are Beautiful

8. My mom and I rented The Secret Life of Bees and Pride & Prejudice so we can watch them this weekend

9. That commercial with the injured dogs just came on TV... the one that has Sarah McLachlan - Arms of an Angel song... it makes my heart hurt

10. A new store at the mall: Windsor I got this dress there the other day and I am really excited to go shopping there again soon. I love so many of the dresses they have (and other clothes) and they aren't even that expensive!! yay

Okay so that was kind of a list of random, but whatever.

Oh, one final thought, my hair is growing out and it is making me really happy. The layers aren't so choppy anymore (I just want it tapered at the bottom), and I even woke up this morning and my hair looked PERFECT. How does that even happen?!

wonderful wednesday

It has been a while since I've written a "Wonderful Wednesday" post on here, even though I promised myself that I would do one every single week... let's be real, I've only done it twice. So, in honor of summer and the theory that I'm not actually supposed to have anything to do during summer, I figured I'd write one today. (Even though I do actually have things to do and this summer isn't going to be just hanging out and fun like last summer was.)

Things that make this Wednesday wonderful...

1. Shopping for work clothes (and regular clothes) with my step mom. We spent yesterday getting lunch and shopping for nice tops for my internship this summer. Too bad NONE of the pants I tried on yesterday fit me (don't worry, it just means that I got to go shopping again today). Oh and um, how on earth am I a size 10 at H&M but a size 4-6 at every other store I go to? Does that make any sense to you?!

2. Cooking dinner with my family and getting new and easy recipes that I can use next year when I cook for myself more often (one of my goals for my senior year in college). We spent the first day of summer and the longest day of the year sitting outside eating this wonderful meal and having great conversation.

Part of our meal the other night. The salad servers are from Rwanda (I'm pretty sure) a few summers ago when my older sister went to work with gorillas.

The whole meal that I helped cook. Corn on the cob, orange balsamic marinated chicken, the afore mentioned salad, and fresh green beans from my dad and step mom's very own garden (delicious).

Cindy's new lemon and raspberry dessert. It is SO EASY to make and tastes delicious. There are raspberries in the dessert, and normally there are some on top, but somebody in our house ate so many of the fresh organic raspberries that we didn't have enough to put on top...

3. Okay, that person was me... I mean I ate all the raspberries. So number 3 is all the fresh fruit we have in the house. Cindy only buys fruit from the farmer's market which means that they are all locally grown and none of the fruits are imported. I would have taken pictures of all the fruit, but we all tend to eat it too fast to get a good picture. So these are stock pictures...

I never knew that blue berry pictures could be as good as the ones we have in our fridge right now. It's like I'm in heaven every single time I eat them.

Normally strawberries are my older sister's thing, but the ones in our fridge are super good. Like, you wouldn't want to put sugar on them because they are already so sweet.

Unfortunately we just finished our last batch of cherries. Don't worry, I ate almost all of them.

4. Pretty Little Liars - it's a new show on ABC Family. It is on TV on Tuesday nights, but I will be watching it today. Normally Christine and I will watch it together, but she's in Ohio this week so I'm going to watch it with my little sister.

5. The black and grey v-neck t-shirts I got at Target today for $6 each. I'm obsessed. They are the most comfortable things ever, fit amazingly, and as I keep telling Liana, they are some of the best things to ever happen to me.

6. Boy Meets World (speaks for itself)

7. Dawson's Creek - I know I've talked about this before, but I love this show. I'm almost at the end and I just want to know what happens... do Joey and Dawson end up together? What happens with Jen and Jack? Will Pacey and Audrey make up? (shhh don't tell me...) But now I need a new show to watch once I'm done watching the remaining 13 episodes. Any ideas?

8. Reading - I borrowed a bunch of books from Christine for my vacation next week. More on that later.

9. Elephants - I'm reading "Water for Elephants" right now and I'm obsessed. It's so well written!! I've always loved elephants, I'm even staring at one right now that my dad has on the mantel in our play room, one he got from Kenya or somewhere he's been in Africa. 

10. Sunshine!!! Finally there is sun in my life. School was all dark, rainy, and gloomy (until finals week, but I was inside studying and packing the entire week and I couldn't enjoy the sun when it finally came out), and when I got home there was nothing but gloom and cold. Now, there is finally SUNSHINE!!! So happy. Welcome summer!