Lonely

So Luis is away for two weeks on a road trip with our friend, Jon...

...And I'm all lonely in Atlanta ):

Jon moved to Seattle about a year ago, and now he's moving back to Atlanta, but since he bought a car while in Seattle he wants to bring that back to Atlanta too. So the two geniuses decided that it would be a good idea to drive from one ocean to the other in a stick shift car. Pray for them please.

And they can't even come straight from Seattle! They needed to make a stop in Los Angeles first and come through the south instead of cutting straight through the Midwest.

I just watched the movie Road Trip (the one with Robert Downey Jr and the slow guy from The Hangover) with Luis like last week, so I'm not feeling good about this. I even made Luis take his passport with him just in case they mistake the Mexico border for a Texaco (movie reference).

Luis is having fun though, so at least there's that. Although I am kind of jealous that he got to visit the Space Needle...

...and the first ever Starbucks... I love Starbucks!!!

And he keeps sending me pictures of all the beautiful scenery (I've never been out West), which only makes me even more jealous!

Oh well, at least I'm going to Florida this upcoming weekend, so I won't be completely bored while he's gone. I do really miss him though...

Disney Engagement Rings?!?!?!

So this picture has been floating around:

And I am totally in love!!!

But I can't find the website that they're from or if they're actually being sold at all! If anyone has more information about them, PLEASE tell me about it!!! I'm dying to find these somewhere!!

Brunna's Book Club -- Beachcombers

This week's book is Beachcombers by Nancy Thayer.

This novel is quite the journey. The story follows four women: Abbie, Emma, Lily, and Marina. The four of them are all faced with struggles, and they each end up on Nantucket Island.

Abbie, Emma, and Lily are sisters and their father, Jim, lives on the island. Lily, the youngest, has stayed with him. However, Emma had gone of to Boston to work and live with her fiancee, and Abbie was in Europe as a nanny. Marina is already a middle-aged adult, but she spent her college summers on the island waitressing with her best friend.

This summer, different life events bring all four women together on the island. Emma loses her job in the fall of '09 and her fiancee breaks off their engagement, sending her back home in a pit of depression. This leads Lily to call Abbie back home, in hopes of making Emma feel better, and help out with their father's financial problems. Marina's husband asks for a divorce after 10+ years of marriage, sending Marina on a journey to get away from everything she currently knows, which causes her to rent the girls' old Playhouse from Jim.

The four women go on an awesome summer adventure as they all try to find themselves. The four women end up growing, falling in love, forging new friendships, and fulfilling dreams. It's definitely another chick novel, soul-searching and heart-wrenching. I thoroughly enjoyed it and 100% recommend it!!!

Let me know what you think of it!!

Saying Goodbye To My Dorm

This post has come a lot sooner than I thought it would...

My lease at Kennesaw is finally over.

Talk about bittersweet.

I can't wait to a cheaper dorm, because $580 a month for my teeny tiny dorm room with no kitchen is absurd. I'm moving to a $555 dorm that has a stove, a living room, a washer and dryer. That's $25 cheaper for a lot more things than I have now. Only negative part is that I'm going to have 3 roommates this go around instead of just 1. Hopefully we'll all get along *fingers crossed*

Even though I'm sort of looking forward to changing scenes, this room has been my home for the past year, and I hate moving around. I think I just finally truly settled in the place, and now it's time to pack up and move on again. I just barely finished decorating the place, and here we go again.

So you guys got to see what my dorm looked like while packing up, but here's what my dorm looked like before moving time came around:

My poster from my Life Teen 'graduation' that the class of 2013 made for us, surrounded by two beautiful butterfly portraits that I bought this year:

My butterfly boards that I got from Wal-Mart hanging over my closet:

This is by the door to my room. The cross that Luis gave me for my 15th birthday (we weren't even dating yet!) and a key hanger that I bought this past year:

The shoe hanger over my door... honestly one of the best things I bought all year. Along with a cute little "I <3 Me" pillow door decor thing that I've had forever:

My (somewhat) organized closet:

My awesome coordinating bed. The fact that my comforter and pillows match make me happier than you can imagine. Plus my and Luis's little stuffed animal family in the corner:

My calendar, which is pretty much the only decor I haven't taken down yet, because I'm afraid that because it's a stick on, I won't be able to save it until the next dorm:

My lamp, courtesy of Luis, and the super messy makeup and jewelry drawer behind it.

I also have a little frame that hangs over my bed with the "Don't Quit" poem, a Mother Theresa quote plaque, and another cross hanging over my make up/jewelry station that I didn't take pictures of.  (Do you see the butterfly/love/Christian theme of my wall decor??) I worked so hard all year to make this place homey, that now I'm sad that it's so super empty and filled with boxes. I'm going to miss it.

But hopefully my dorm this upcoming school year will feel just as much as 'home' as this one felt, and I'll make friends with my new roommates.

Here's to a great, new home!

Packing Up

I have been packing nonstop like crazy these past two days.

My lease expires this weekend and I hadn't really started yet, so that's always a problem....

So Luis and I have been going crazy on my dorm. I have so much more stuff than I thought I did! Kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, decoration stuff, school stuff, makeup stuff, random stuff that I can't throw away but also don't what to do with it stuff, paper stuff, memory stuff, extra stuff. It's insane!

I started the packing really organized. All the decoration goes inside this box, all the kitchen stuff inside that box, books in this one, clothes in the suitcase, etc etc. But then I realized how much STUFF I have, and changed gears. Now it's, oh this one fits here, that one fits there, I think I can shove this one here.

Plus there's that tedious part about packing and cleaning that goes like this: "I was looking for that!" "What's this?" "I forgot about this!" "Oh, I remember this... Good times!" "Let me read this." and nothing ever gets done because I'm too busy reminiscing or reading.

I brought a crazy amount of boxes home from Chick-fil-A, hoping and praying that they'd be enough to put everything up with. I did forget that I have 3 suitcases, 2 laundry baskets, and tons of those big Ikea-like bags that I could also put stuff in. Plenty of storage space, thank goodness.

I'm here emptying everything out. I took everything out of all the drawers and out of all the cabinets and all storage space in my room, but the thing that makes me feel like I'm moving the most is my empty closet. I've been sleeping on a mattress without and linens other than a pillow and a quilt, and it's my empty closet that gets to me.

Go figure.

All my clothes are so neatly folded into my suitcases (read: my bulging, overfilled suitcases), unpacking them is going to be a pain and a half.

Everything is starting to look so empty.. Things are going inside boxes, boxes are going inside Luis's car. It's kind of emotional, thinking about leaving this place that's been my home for almost a year now.

Anyways, Luis and I are finding ways to enjoy ourselves while packing... Especially since the dorms give us these awesome bins to roll our stuff (and ourselves) around in!

I was slightly reminiscent of the Taylor Swift "22" music video, and I bet I was having just as much fun as she was shooting it.

Plus, on a quirky aside, we lucked out and got bin 116, which, for you non-Lecrae lovers out there, is pretty much Lecrae's anthem. Romans 1:16 I am not ashamed! I went to his concert last year and we chanted one one six at the top of our lungs, because we're not ashamed of the Gospel!

But now we're wrapping up and it's time to say goodbye to my dorm...

Bye bye...

Here's To The Crazy Weekends

So I know I'm pretty late on this, but this past weekend was insane and it deserves a post!

Friday was the real adventure.

Alexa and I bought a Groupon together for $18 mani/pedis (I mean come on, who could resist that when most mani pedis are upwards of $30???) but we didn't look at how far away the nail salon was before purchasing... Whoops!

So Friday after I got off work, I picked up Alexa and we drove all the way to Douglasville (which was over an hour long ride with traffic). We show up in a cute, dainty, old-town looking downtown Douglasville. Turns out that our nail salon was actually a one lady show inside a barber shop. And we were supposed to have made appointments because she was actually just heading out. OUCH.

We then decided to just wander around this cute little dainty town and look, but we found nothing to do. Everything closed down at 5 and we had no money anyways.

So we start heading out, super thirsty and overheated because it's a million degrees outside. We stop by at a Racetrac to get some gas and water, and the real adventure starts.

Some background information: Lulu's gas pump is on the opposite side of most cars, so I always have a hard time getting into a pump. This time, I'm lucky enough to have a whole lane to myself so I can get into the one that would have me heading out, it was great!

What wasn't great was that there was a lady trying to come in the opposite way into the same pump, but there was a car driving right in front of me, blocking my view of her. Needless to say, she was upset.

I'm not a mean or rude person, and I definitely don't have road rage (although I do get slightly upset when people don't use their blinkers). So I start apologizing. My windows are rolled down and so are hers, so I figured she heard me. She then pulls up in the pump behind me, gets out her car, and starts cussing me out like crazy.

This lady was absolutely insane. I don't know what was her problem. And it really upset me too, because she had the Jesus fish sticker on the back of her car. Honestly, it is a shame to be representing our Lord and Savior in such a poor way. I can't imagine a worse thing. The devil's best weapon is a Christian who shows of his or her faith, but lives the opposite. Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging her to be a false Christian, but her actions that day were not representing Him well at all.

Anyways, she follows Alexa inside the gas station yelling at her too. Then she comes back outside, yelling some more. She called me all kinds of mean names. Although I won't deny, the one that offended me the most was not the curse words and the degrading terminology she directed towards me. What hurt the most was the fact that she called me 'raggedy' and 'bum'.

Excuse me? Now my pride and ego are hurt. Here I was in gorgeous Franco Fortini heels, a beautiful Oriental looking red and black dress, with Talbot earrings and my red lipstick, and this lady in sweats and a tank top has the audacity to call me raggedy. I care a little too much about my looks and clothes to have people dissing on my appearance. Go ahead and call me anything else, but leave my wardrobe out of it. Thank you. It might seem extremely superficial, but my pride is my weak spot and mine of the deadly sins.

She then wrote down my license plate number and snapped pictures of both of us, talking about how she was going to find us later. She even goes so far to tell us "I have a gun in the car and I know how to use it!" She also told us she's military and she's going to use that to run our tags, and that we could write down her license plate number all we wanted to because hers is a fake.

As soon as there was gas in the car, we hightailed it out of there!

And she followed. She followed us out the gas station all the way to the highway and would even switch lanes when we switched. So of course, I called 911.

We then went to the courthouse to file a police report and tell the officers what had happened. I was literally shaking all the way to the courthouse and didn't stop shaking until I was almost back home. They assured us that military cannot run tags and there would be no way for her to find us. Still nervous tho!

That was the biggest adventure of the weekend really.

After we got back to Alexa's house we got ready to go to a party at Carlin's. It was a going away party for a friend of hers. We didn't stay very long though. I had to work in the morning and I wasn't in the mood to work on an all-nighter.

Saturday I went to work, then picked up Alexa and Alise afterwards to go back to Douglasville and get our nails done (We had an appointment this time!). We ended up getting there way early, mostly because this time there wasn't any traffic. She was about to go get a late lunch when we got there, so we joined her at a pretty cool Jamaican restaurant. We didn't eat, but she did share some of her jerk chicken with us, and it was super spicy! (For my weak taste buds at least)

Finally, we went back and she did both Alexa's and my nails. She was super friendly and we chit chatted the whole time about Alise's nail and make up aspirations, as well as my love for clothes, weddings, and cakes. She told me that I should definitely go into fashion, because I was obviously a connoisseur. I loved her the moment she said that! I was wearing the cute Forever 21 pumps I bought for my birthday, along with a peach-ish salmon colored peplum skirt and a light blue, button up, sleeve-less top. It was an adorable outfit and I wish I had taken a picture in it! One guy told me I looked like a flower!

I showed her some of my cakes and now she wants me to make her a fake cake as a display to put in the salon so she can show it off to her customers and get me some business. She was really nice and encouraging to both Alise and I in our non-traditional dream jobs. It would be pretty awesome if I could be a wedding planner/ fashion industry/ bakery owner. She got me dreaming again, which is nice, because other than the bakery thing, no one has ever really encouraged me in any way about the fashion industry or wedding planning, which I think I would enjoy even more than the bakery.

She also did an amazing job on both Alexa and I. It was probably one of the best pedicures I've ever had! I 100% recommend her, so go check her out on her page, especially if you live close to Douglasville! I'll definitely be going back to her whenever I can fit the drive and nails to my budget. She's really affordable too, even without the Groupon!

After our mani/pedis were done, we went back to Alexa's to get ready for Pedro's birthday bash/ end of summer party.

On our way to Pedro's, we got a flat tire (Alise's car, not mine. Thank God. I don't think I could handle two flats less than a month apart). We were pretty scared, because it was night time, we were in party clothes, and definitely not in the best of neighborhoods. Fortunately, a nice man stopped and he had a jack to help us fix the flat. We left him a small tip and went on our way.

Pedro's party was pretty fun. Alexa had to work in the morning, so she and Alise left early, but I ended up staying with Luis, and we had a blast!

Overall, we had a pretty crazy fun weekend. It's a shame that summer's almost over...

Although I can't wait to see what the rest of summer leads to!

Outlet Mall!

I love outlet malls!!!

They have all the beautiful brand clothes that I love, for a much much cheaper price than the normal stores!

Plus they're always having this sale and that sale, and 25% off the already 50% sale and whatnot. It's an amazing way to look gorgeous for less!

Unfortunately, the only time I go outlet shopping is when I'm in Florida, because there are outlet malls around every corner in Orlando (seriously, it's like every shopaholics heaven! They have every store possible!)

But that's all about to change, because a new outlet mall opened in Atlanta!!!

Yes sirree bobski, The Outlet Shoppes at Atlanta are up and ready to be shopped at and I am uber excited!

They opened on the 18th, and I would have most definitely been there for the grand opening, but I am dirt broke until pay day. Like seriously, my bank account is so depleted it hurts.

But as soon as I have some surplus money... You already know where to find me!

The stores I am most excited about:

Columbia Sportswear (Especially now that summer is almost over)

J. Crew

KATE SPADE NEW YORK!!!!! (Do I even have to explain my excitement on this one??)

Nike

Papaya (Just because there isn't really one close to me otherwise)

Puma

Tommy Hilfiger

White House | Black Market

Coach

Michael Kors

Steve Madden

And they have a whole page on their website dedicated to their sales and events!!! Which means it's that much easier for me to find great deals!!!

I'm super excited and I'm getting together a group of friends to go with me, as soon as we have some money to blow.

I'll definitely keep you guys updated on my outlet mall trip!

Brunna's Book Club -- One Pink Line

This week's book is One Pink Line by Dina Silver.

Warning: It's a crying book.

And for a girl with daddy issues like me, it was a mega extra crying book.

The story pretty much follows Sydney Shephard for most of the time. Other than the fact that her mom likes her sister a lot more than her, and that results in lots of picking on by mother dearest, her life is pretty good. She has some pretty amazing friends and she falls in love with an incredible guy the summer before leaving for college. The two of them do a pretty phenomenal job of keeping their long distance relationship until Sydney slips up her senior year.

She has a little too much to drink during the last sorority party before graduation, and ends up sleeping with one of her best guy friends. Eight weeks later while studying for her finals, she realizes that her period is late. After taking a pregnancy test from Wal Mart, her life goes on a crazy whirlwind journey! Her friend that fathered the baby quite clearly, and rudely, expresses how he wants nothing to do with her or her baby. Her relationship with boyfriend falls apart, while ironically, her relationship with her mother grows.

Sydney goes through the roller coaster of being a single mother working an entry level job while learning how to care for her baby. Meanwhile, some chapters follow young Grace as she finds out that her father is not really her biological father. She then faces the vacancy of not knowing who her daddy is and wondering why he didn't want her. Even though she has a great relationship with her step-father, who has adopted her and claims her as his own, she still wonders about this mysterious man living across the world from her.

It's an amazing book and you really get to see the feelings that the characters are having. The story wraps up quite nicely and it gave me the deepest satisfaction of knowing that the story had a perfect happy ending.

It's definitely a chick novel, and I highly recommend it. Just don't read it in public where people might see you crying! Nor wear mascara while reading.

Let me know what you think about the book, and I'm always open to new recommendations!

My New Favorite Pair Of Shoes

I found the cutest pair of heels ever!

Look at how beautiful these ladies are!

I found them at that mall I went to in Tennessee a few weeks back. They were on super sale and I absolutely just could not resist!

Look at how cute they are! The heels aren't too high, so Luis doesn't complain. The style is super sophisticated, so I can rock them with some cute business outfits. And that bow *swoon*

I think the bow is what really won me over.

So it didn't even matter that the shoes are a size too big, because I couldn't find my size, they were actually the last pair the store had in any size.

I'm just totally in love, so I'm going to have to start shopping for more outfits to wear with them!

Food Inc

Luis has been bugging me for weeks to watch Food Inc with him.

He kept telling me about this that and the other that happens with our food and animals and whatnot.

Finally, the other day we were cuddling and being lazy, so I asked to watch a movie on the computer, and he volunteered Food Inc. I caved in and said yes.

I'm still not sure if watching that documentary was a good or bad thing.

Watch the video on their website here

I honestly wanted to cry at some parts of the film, and on others I wanted to go purge everything I've eaten in my last 14 years here in the United States.

Both animals and humans are treated like dirt in the food industry here.

Animals are all force fed corn, because corn has become increasingly cheaper to produce, and it's produced by the masses. Corn corn corn corn. There is probably an overabundance of corn, so why feed animals anything else?

It doesn't matter that a cow's diet should consist primarily of pasture, if pasture is expensive and corn is cheap. We're going to force our cows to learn how to eat corn... And when they adapt to corn and get all super sick, we have to suffer the consequences of e.coli. that apparently originated with people forcing cows to eat corn. It's like making a lion take on a berry diet, doesn't work folks.

Then they show a whole bunch of differences between now and then, and the comparisons are disturbing to say the least.

Here's two of the ones that bothered me the most:

In 1972, 50,000 food inspections were conducted by the FDA. Only 9,164 in 2006. With more and more people getting sick from food, why are we cutting the number of inspections so drastically? The video makes several accusations against these animal farms, including the revolting one that cows walk around ankle deep in their own feces. It's really gross everything that they point out in the documentary.

Then there's the chickens. I think this picture speaks for itself:

The poor little chickens can't even stand on their own legs because they grow too quickly and their muscles never develop well enough to hold themselves up. And they never see the daylight, so sad.

This above picture is of the only farmer brave enough to speak out against the companies. And the below is of a pasture-less field filled with cows.

It's all so terrible how they treat the animals and process the food. The few companies behind the entire system make a huge profit off of it, and drive the prices for customers down, making it near impossible for others to compete.

I mean really, when you live on a budget (like me), which one looks more reasonable. Lord knows I have had more than my fair share of Ramen noodles and ravioli since moving to college. The healthiest I get is pretty much Activia yogurt. When I can buy a case of noodles for the same price as a stem of grapes, it's simply more practical for me to buy the noodles. And that is a true fact for any person or family living paycheck to paycheck.

I think that the sign of a good documentary is one that makes the watcher think, consider things they haven't considered before, and motivates the person to change something about the world or their lifestyle. I'd say that this documentary was a successful one. I definitely walked away from the film (That's figurative because we definitely watched it lying down and took a nap afterwards) wanting to change something about my lifestyle.

We both looked up organic brands and talked about how we could start eating more organically, and perhaps even making a difference in how the system works. We're both broke college kids now, and it's hard to make those changes right away, especially since my dorm lacks a kitchen (my biggest pet peeve about my dorm). But instead of buying Activia on my last grocery trip, I bought one of the organic brand yogurts. Expensive, but worth it. It was delicious. I'll just have to cook with organic ingredients when I finally get my kitchen!

Here's the flyer from the Food Inc website:

What do you think about the documentary? Any changes in your life?