On letting go..

You might have seen this list of "things to let go of in 2014" floating around your social media feeds. I have found myself referring back to it (already) in times of stress, annoyance, frustration, etc.. and would like to share them with you. 

The author, Shannon Kaiser is a motivational speaker and is becoming well known for her work. Let's see if we can let ourselves let go so that we can live a happier, healthier life.

Here are 20 things to let go of in order to reach unlimited happiness.
1. Let go of all thoughts that don't make you feel empowered and strong.
2. Let go of feeling guilty for doing what you truly want to do.
3. Let go of the fear of the unknown; take one small step and watch the path reveal itself.
4. Let go of regrets; at one point in your life, that “whatever” was exactly what you wanted.
5. Let go of worrying; worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.
6. Let go of blaming anyone for anything; be accountable for your own life. If you don’t like something, you have two choices, accept it or change it.
7. Let go of thinking you are damaged; you matter, and the world needs you just as you are.
8. Let go of thinking your dreams are not important; always follow your heart.
9. Let go of being the “go-to person” for everyone, all the time; stop blowing yourself off and take care of yourself first … because you matter.
10. Let go of thinking everyone else is happier, more successful or better off than you. You are right where you need to be. Your journey is unfolding perfectly for you.
11. Let go of thinking there's a right and wrong way to do things or to see the world. Enjoy the contrast and celebrate the diversity and richness of life.
12. Let go of cheating on your future with your past. It’s time to move on and tell a new story.
13. Let go of thinking you are not where you should be. You are right where you need to be to get to where you want to go, so start asking yourself where you want to go.
14. Let go of anger toward ex lovers and family. We all deserve happiness and love; just because it is over doesn’t mean the love was wrong.
15. Let go of the need to do more and be more; for today, you've done the best you can, and that's enough.
16. Let go of thinking you have to know how to make it happen; we learn the way on the way.
17. Let go of your money woes — make a plan to pay off debt and focus on your abundance.
18. Let go of trying to save or change people. Everyone has her own path, and the best thing you can do is work on yourself and stop focusing on others.
19. Let go of trying to fit in and be accepted by everyone. Your uniqueness is what makes you outstanding.
20. Let go of self-hate. You are not the shape of your body or the number on the scale. Who you are matters, and the world needs you as you are. Celebrate you! 

desperate times..

call for sleeping on the floor.

via

Today is Tuesday.

Which is not a whole lot better than Monday.

So why not make a list:

1. All of your posts with photos of Easter Sunday are filling up my dashboard. I absolutely love it. And I'm kicking myself. I made such an effort to remember to bring my camera in the first place, and the darn thing ended up sitting in my bag until I got in the car to go home and realized I had even brought it. Reason for an Easter reenactment? I think so!

2. April = Spring = Sun.. wait Sun? Are you sure? Here in New England.. it's been a whole lot of fog and mist and rain, and not so much of that yellow, hot, beaming stuff. What gives?

3. I'm really looking forward to the end of this week! It is going to be SO FANTASTIC. My Birthday. Family Fun. Concert with boyfriend. Sleep. Dance. woot woot. You better bet your socks that I'll have photos of all that!!!

4. My eyeballs feel like they're going to fall out of my head. I cannot function on only six hours of sleep (Ha Ha.. only..) I know, I know. The vast majority of people are lucky if they get that many.. and they probably go about their day perfectly normal. Seriously, I commend you. Cause this girl here.. Needs. Her. Sleep!

5. Our house warming party is just under two weeks away. Although D and I have been trying to convince ourselves that it doesn't all need to get done, my somewhat obsessive compulsive brain is struggling to find time to finish all our projects. Nonetheless.. I know our party is going to be the bomb diggity.. Are you coming?
6. Finding new blogs to read, and gathering new friends/followers is making me very happy lately! It's like a carton of ice cream at the end of a really terrible day =]

What's on your mind today? Do you hate Tuesdays as much as Mondays? Do you love/hate making/reading lists? Have exciting plans for the hopefully Spring-like weather?!

Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.

Technology: still & always will bloggle my brain & drive me nuts!

I can't believe this just happened. I wrote a post about how much technology drives me bonkers, was about to click this lovely orange "publish" button, and BAM! Just like that.. everything disappears. How ironic. 

Instead of making my brain relive each idea in my previously drafted and saved post, I will just settle for some sort of angry, annoyed, but of course, organized list:

No internet at home

Desktop computer at work crashes

I rob the boyfriend's laptop to work on

Boyfriend swears, bangs, wipes clean, re-installs, yells at, and slams computer

For two days..

Computer still doesn't work

I finally get a chance to share my lovely, annoyed thoughts about technology

Blogger deletes my post

end of story.

What do you think? Are we better off without technology? (with the exception of blogger of course!) Do we depend on it too much to organize our lives/work?

*

Favorite thing today:

Shoes <3
I promised myself that I would buy some new fall-like shoes this weekend since mine are falling apart, ragging-looking ol' things!

Boyfriend's birthday is tomorrow. I'm hoping he'll win the lottery or something to lift his recently computer crashing spirit.. if not, I at least hope that he likes his gift. I'm really excited about it and wish I could share with you now, but you know the one time that he reads my blog will be today, and he'll see it! Soon I promise : )

 What's the best/most memorable gift that you've gotten for your birthday?

Give it a try..

This should be tattooed in everyone's brain!

Happy Monday ; )

college-free life thus far.

 There's no doubt that I've been busy. As I'm sure most of you have noticed. Or haven't. By the time I even get around to thinking about blogging, I'm already tucked in bed. And once my teeth are brushed and clothes are laid out for the next day, [yes, I do that! Stop laughing!]  there are very few things that are more important than my pillow. I don't know how all of you daily bloggers do it. 
So I guess this post's intention is to catch all of you lovely people up, on my oh so entertaining life. Post college!


Here it goes..
It's been about a month and a week since we left NYC/NJ and it feels as though it was a lifetime ago. It's so strange that such significant and important moments in our lives approach all of a sudden, pass ever so  s l o w l y, and disappear in a heart beat. 

My life currently consists of:
working at the boyfriend's office usually 9 am to 6 pm everyday.
teaching dance to some of the most energetic and inspiring little people I've ever known.
living with my wonderful and loving boyfriend.
making jewelery, scarves & blankets in hopes of selling.
dancing in a modern dance company [we're going to be on tv in a couple weeks!]
looking for more opportunities to teach & perform [I'm auditioning for The Nutcracker tomorrow!]
cute little daily routines that the boyfriend & I instinctively repeat [waking him up & getting his coffee, having lunch together, carpooling to work, going to bed ridiculously early.. ]
trying to be all photographer-like by taking pictures whenever I can.
So. Yep. That's it.


I'm trying to post more of my photography. Although, sadly, I haven't been able to spend as much time with my camera as I have wanted.
A few weeks ago, I taught a summer dance intensive, and we took a trip to Jacob's Pillow. I still can't believe that this was my first trip there. It's in Becket MA, which is seriously only an hour from my house. Anyway. These are just a couple of the photos I took while we were there. We saw a show on the Inside/Out stage, which was amazing. If you ever get a chance to go, please do! It's simply breathtaking. Especially in the summer. OH! And they do weddings.. check out their website. So lovely. I told the boyfriend about it. Not sure it went over too well. So.. I intended to post something about Jacob's Pillow weeks ago, and it was saved as a draft which I had obviously forgotten about. Surprise, surprise.


Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival

more Jacob's Pillow photos to come.. maybe some others too ; )

Until then..

"May you always have,
enough happiness to keep you sweet; enough trials to keep you strong; enough success to keep you eager; enough faith to give you courage; and enough determination to make each day a good day"

love.

Weekend number six..

Arrival of boyfriend, despite nasty tornado. CHECK!

Successful order of fries, calzone & sandwiches. CHECK! 

Trip to The Museum of Natural History. CHECK!

Visiting NYC bars, catching up & laughing with our friend Paul. CHECK, CHECK!

***

These are some of the pictures that I took at the museum. I would have taken more, but it was so hard to stop and take pictures when there was so much to focus on. Not to mention fighting through what seemed like millions and millions of people. I'm sure Alivia took more than me, so make sure you visit her blog when she posts them!

 [Didn't mean to catch that kid in the photo. But it's kind of cute!]

 I think that if you plan on coming to visit the museum, you're going to need two days. Unless you don't want to see every exhibit. We spent about three hours there and probably only saw about half of the museum. It was wonderful though. And air conditioned. This weekend it was about 100 degrees, so the museum was a very popular escape from the heat. The animal and dinosaur exhibits were my favorite : )

Even though I know that The Night at The Museum wasn't filmed in the actual museum, I was sort of hoping to see a teeny, tiny connection between the two. I kept looking for the Teddy Roosevelt/Robbin Williams replica. Hmph.

We decided that we had enough fun this weekend to make up for all of the other laid back, "I-don't-feel-like-leaving-the-apartment" weekends. And "fun" might even be an understatement for our Saturday night escapade : )

***

We're starting our last week at Ailey tomorrow. Well, I guess we sort of started it tonight. We had to go to the school for about an hour for our tech rehearsal [with lights and costumes on stage]. It's hard to believe that six weeks have gone by already. I'm excited to come home, but I know that I will definitely be missing some parts of this wonderfully, lively, [very dirty] City!
For now, the things I will not miss:

smelly trash on the hot side walks

walking 14 blocks to class

almost getting run over by cabs - even if it's our turn to walk!

getting yelled, whistled, and winked at [and not in a flattering way]

our very hot apartment

the five flights of stairs [64 stairs to be exact.. but who's counting?!]

 no counter space

not having laundry on the same floor that we live

dodging/slamming into people who aren't paying attention

paying $5.99 for the smallest box of cereal

I hope that in the past six weeks, you haven't mistaken my complaining/aggravation as ungratefulness. Because I don't think I could be more thankful to have been able to live here. To dance here. To do what I love everyday.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. I missed my family at our annual family picnic today. The food is always so amazing. And as usual, it rained during the bocce tournament. [I swear it happens every year!]

totally slacking..

So I haven't updated all of my lovely friends & family since Sunday/Monday. And I apologize. Here are some of my favorite memorable moments from this week. Summed up in an unorganized list [maybe more like paragraph form]..

In Dunham class on Tuesday, Ms. Peters called me out. She made me do something across the floor by myself, because I was "taking too many steps." I felt like a dummy and then more like a dummy when I got teary eyed after she finally felt bad and accepted my sorry, sorry "hop-step" of a mess.

On Wednesday, after a long day of dancing, and dealing with little girls who are immature and think no one can see or hear them when they laugh and point at people that are dancing, we came home. 

[Oh. But before we could come home we had to deal with getting called an inappropriate name because we didn't droll over  some man's so called "compliment." Give. Me. A. Break. Seriously.]

As I was about to take a very cold and relaxing shower, our toilet decided to empty all of it's contents onto the bathroom floor. There was a lot of yelling & not nice words.  We don't have a plunger or any tools, which made it a little more challenging to fix it. Not impossible. We just had to scavenge through the apartment for objects long and narrow enough to fit down the toilet. For now it is being held together with a spatula. Awesome. Luckily Dana is coming tomorrow and is bringing a whole new floater kit. He is so sweet & I love him more everyday.

So yeah. That's what's been going on in the lives of the two twenty-two year old's living without a plunger.

Stay tuned.. 

many more exciting events could take place in the next eight days : )

You never know with us..

Love you all so much & can't wait to see you!

Week four - in an organized list form..

cause that's the way I am.
And lists make me happy:

Ballet is still a little irritating.
However, Mr. Atwood's animated personality as well as his ability to sing in a combre back, continues to keep me thoroughly entertained.
Dunham still makes me cry [Not exaggerating. I'm super discreet].
The thirteen-sixteen year old dancers in my class still don't have spacial awareness.
Body conditioning is relaxing & Mrs. Amos's witty comments make me smile.
Our apartment is so much cooler than three weeks ago. We turn the AC once in a while.
The television has a cord now so we can at least watch movies.
Speaking of movies, we went to a thrift store today and I bought "Top Gun" on VHS for $.50!
I also bought "Hairspray" on DVD for $3.00!
West African is so much fun, but when it's 3:00 and time for class I'm so exhausted.
Sometimes it's a piece of cake to walk up the five flights of stairs. Most of the time it isn't.
However, the fourteen block walk [sometimes sprint] to and from Ailey is easier now, and considered a separate workout in our book.
I love exploring The City, and yes, sometimes Union City for new/interesting places to eat and shop!
I can't stop thinking about how delicious the tea & goodies from Alice's Tea Cup were.
I want to go back real bad.
Too bad they don't deliver : (
It's hard to believe that we only have two weeks left of classes.
I'm excited to perform in the show. Although everyone is clueless as to whether or not we have classes that day and what time rehearsals are.
I miss my family.
I miss Western Mass.
I miss my kitty Amber!
We've spotted a black & white kitten hanging around our apartment a couple times and are tempted to take him & love him since he seems lonely.
I surprisingly still have money in my account [I thought for sure I'd be in the negative by now].
I've been getting really excited that 1) I don't have to go back to school, and 2) I have a job doing what I love!
We've seen famous faces while at Ailey [Company members galore & Judith Jamison]!!!!!!!
I really love cold showers & usually take two a day. It's the only faucet in the apartment that doesn't constantly produce hot water.
Frozen grapes are SO good.
Thankfully, we haven't missed a bus or dance class since that day during our first week.
We've only gotten caught in the pouring rain once or twice, and it was after class so we really didn't care that we got wet.
I feel really old when dancers in the class talk about how they are going to be Juniors or Seniors in High School!
I'm still shocked that I am dancing at Alvin Ailey.

I am so blessed and thankful to my family & friends for supporting me in every way possible. You will never know how grateful I am & always will be for this experience. I love you all!

****

Things I want to do in the next two weeks:

Go to "Carlo's Bakery" [from Cake Boss on TLC] it's in Hoboken NJ, which is the town over from us!
Go to a Yankee's game!
Visit The Museum of Natural History because I know that I'll love it!
Take a trip to see our friend Mary Elizabeth who lives in Battery Park & see Ground Zero.

[I apologize for the list form. It makes me feel organized, and when I'm really tired and try to blog, I end up blabbing or forgetting what I wanted to say]




I really love this quote!

I hope everyone is enjoying summer. It will be over before we know it.
15 days till I get to see all of your beautiful faces again!

a bit of encouragment..

How to Survive Bordom Post-College Graduation

So today is the first day since I graduated, almost a week ago, that I am extremely bored. I've already unpacked kind of. Since I'm moving into my boyfriend's place I have a lot of sorting to do in my old room. However, I don't have a lot of room at his place, and soon enough we will hopefully be moving into a house of our own. This logic has not done much for my unpacking/moving/sorting motivation. So while I am sitting here on my bed, I thought I would pretend to do something so that I wouldn't be so bored.
Here's my list which will hopefully cure someone, anyone, if not me, of boredom:

Bake cookies then decorate them with someone
Make a scrapbook or photo album of important events/fun adventures
Play with the kitties (I'm doing that now!)
Re-design your blog
Take a walk down a peaceful road or trail
Plant flowers and plants in the garden
Read a book all day without feeling guilty
Sew something






I think the whole point of me making this post was to convince myself that it's alright to not have something to do every second of the day. That's what I've been doing during the past four years. So now that I have this list, hopefully I can stop feeling guilty about being bored.

I think we all deserve some time that involves not doing much of anything.

some call it destiny..

"If something's bound to happen, it will happen.. right time, right person, and for the best reason." - Aristotle






Things I'm doing today:

making my sister's duet costume
running errands
baking two loaves of banana bread
making shepard's pie for dinner
playing with the kitties
spending some much needed time with the boyfriend
reading

=] happy hump day!