Monday Update!

Okay so maybe I should have considered how busy I'd be with my Mom's visit when I was making my schedule. I guess I should of just had planned to start it on an even day, like August 1st instead of... June 25th? Guess I was just anxious.

I got a few of my things done here and there. But mostly I was just so happy to be with my mom and the blog kind of went to the back of my mind.

But I had an amazing weekend.

We got some great food, went thrifting, shopping, flea markets, watched the Olympics, and just bonded and talked. I actually cried saying goodbye to Bernadette at the airport. And usually it's me yelling at her to stop crying and she's sobbing. Yesterday was the opposite. I guess that I've just grown up so much in the past couple of months that I just missed having my mom take care of me. Now instead of me telling her about stupid girl dramas, I'm talking about the bills and grocery shopping and cleaning and my work schedule and this and that. Instead of arguing about stupid things, we both fought over washing the dishes.

I didn't even take pictures! The weather wasn't the greatest so I wasn't too motivated to do that. But, like I said, I was just so into the moment and hanging with my mom.

I showed her the scrapbook I was making for her. She couldn't stop looking at the three pages I made and told her that made her night and she couldn't wait for me to finish it. She's going to mail up some baby pictures she loves, too. She wants a little of everything in her scrapbook and I think that's an awesome idea.

My mom was also so impressed and interested in my little craft life! She was asking me questions and really into it when I showed her some of my favorite blogs. She actually asked me to email her the links!! It was so great to have her behind me with all of this. Usually she's like "oh you won't do that" and now she's like "oh can you make me something like that?!" and I love it! I even showed her Project Life and she thought the idea was really cool. She doesn't think I'll be able to keep up week to week but also agrees it's pretty simple to document each week so she has some faith in me. I can't wait till the new products are available to buy! Ah!

My boss is so good to me. He let me have Monday off so I could spend the day with my mom. He even made sure I got a pay for it :) So thankful how lucky I've been. Except now my week is a day behind. My Tuesday feels like Monday. But that's okay, I can't complain :)

SO! For the UpDaTe!
Today, before I go home from work, I plan to....

• Rearrange the Calendar
• Create 2 goals for the month
• PostalPix order
• Finalize Financial Aid things for the Fall 2012 semester
• Insta update
• Work on some formatting of the blog

 For after work I plan to...

• Catch up on some at home projects 
• Work out "What I Wore" for the first post on Friday
• Clean
• BE PRODUCTIVE!

I can do this!
I know I've been slacking and not doing everything I've wanted, but it's not like I'm sitting around doing nothing. I've just been so busy with things I just need to take care of first. That's life. I know when classes start I'll have way more free time to do all the things I want.

As for home life, there's good news!!! Alex is moving in! So I'm so glad I sacrificed one of my days last week to spend the day with him and Ben and talk to him about moving in. I love Jack but I'm over living with him... I'm excited that the house is about to change up a little bit. Yay!

July 27th, 1991

Today would be my parents 21st anniversary if my daddy was still alive.

anddddd in 5 months I'll be 21...

hmmmmm shotgun wedding much?!

I'm glad I get to spend today with my mom. And tomorrow is my sister's birthday! (For the record, I got everything I wanted/made for the box nicely on time for my sister! It also got to Hawaii in THREE days. Crazy!!! She loved everything though :) Made my all my efforts worth it!!)

Love you guys and happy anniversary <3

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

I was a bad girl :(
I didn't do either of my two plans last night... BUT! For a good reason!!!

So I live with my boyfriend and our friend Jack in an apartment. The least ends August 31st, and we're going to have to resign soon for the next year. Except, Jack told us he's moving back home! So the roommate search has been on. One of Ben's friend's from home, Alex, is looking to move to Boston and has been applying to jobs here and we offered him the open spot in our apartment. So yesterday, he had a job interview in the city, and he called us when we were done with class/work and asked if he could come over and see the apartment and hang out for a little bit. As much as I wanted to clean and do my project.... we need a roommate too. We hung out just talking about the area and this and that, and then Ben had this idea to take Alex and I to the Arboretum at Harvard's canvas to do some butterfly catching. The first time Ben went butterfly catching in his hometown, Alex went with him. The second time Ben went butterfly catching was at the Arboretum with his friend Rob. I didn't get to go to either of the outings, so Ben wanted to bring us both there since we haven't been. How could I not go?! It was a beautiful day out and I couldn't stand the thought of them hanging out outside, especially in the Arboretum and not just around Boston, while I was sitting inside!! Ben's friend Rob also came with us cause he couldn't deny the Arboretum either! Then when we got back we were starving! We dropped off Rob and then Ben, Alex, and I got pizza and then went for ice cream. My old friend was working at the ice cream shop and ended up giving us three free ice cream. That was a sign I was right to go.. right?!? Plus I did so much walking and exercising and climbing!!

I have photos at least :)

Today after work FOR REAL I'm doing work. Making up for lost time. I actually had a guilty conscience the entire time I was there.. but I almost never go out and do things like that. Life happens. How crazy would I sound if I said I couldn't go because I couldn't cheat on my schedule? :P

1. Alex and Rob scoping out the butterflies

2. Blonde hair and Toms!

3. Mmmm. What a treat it is to see trees instead of buildings

4. Flowers :)

5. Rob and Alex both caught these GIANT wasps!

6. Putting it in the jar...

7. SO BIG!

8. Safely in the jar!

9. I was hoping a little coon would stick his head out of here

10. Ben stalking his prey

11. Alex and Rob on the hunt

12. Pretty rocks

13. Pretty bridge and the boys

It was for the sake of potential roommate bonding :)

Currently!

Loving: This week. Ben and I have been stressed lately and this week we've been good and patient with each other. We too easily let one of our blah moods ruin the other's good one. It's just because one of us isn't happy, we get frustrated and get ourselves in a shitty mood.. But this week we've been good. Lots of loving, talking, communicating. Ben is applying for Co-Op jobs for next semester, so I know how terrible it could be. And he's a design major, so he has his portfolio. Being a management major, I just make sure my black and white resume is full. And not to mention, MY MOM FLIES IN THIS WEEK!!!! I haven't seen her in awhile so I'm super excited to spend some quality time with my momma dukes!

Reading: Does Cosmopolitan count? I have been slacking on my reading game, ah! But I really have a couple on my list to read...if I could jussssstttt start them. Once I start reading, I'll be glued. It's just the actual motivation to go do it. Haha.

Watching: Project Runway! The new season just premiered last week and the next episode is on tomorrow night. So far I really like Christopher, Sonjia, Dmitry, Fabio, and Gunnar's designs. Too early to pick favorites based on personality. But I've also been watching a lot of movies lately! I've been watching the Grindhouse movies, Rob Zombie movies, and a few other older ones like Trainspotting and Secretary. As you can see I don't enjoy your typical romantic comedy....

Anticipating: Bernadette's visit!!! Bernadette is my mom. I have definantely reffered to her as "mom" the most on this blog. When I was younger, I just started to call my mom Bernadette. She kept telling me, "Call me 'Mom'!!!" But then I just told her "Call me daughter, then" I just love my mom's name and how unique and original it is and I just love it! But her visiting is all I could talk and think about. I miss my mommy so much!

Listening to: The clock tick.... 45 minutes until I'm out of work!!! 

Planning: To be SUPER productive and get my little calendar on the right track! I'm not gonna let myself slack on the first day! I'll be seriously angry with myself if I slack on this one...

Working on: Planning, planning, planning. I seriously just had toooooo many ideas. Not that that's a bad thing! I just have so much I want to do and experiment with, I needed some organization and order. Now I'm ready to start tackling some projects one at a time and on a reasonable schedule. Yes!

Wishing: I could make these new habits real and be a better, more organized person who actually does all the things they plan and promise themselves :)

All this talk and no work!! I can't wait to get out of work and be my new productive self.

A little organization....

Honestly, I'm a little all over the place. I have so much I want to do that I'm just being completely sporadic. So time to change!

I decided that I work the best with calendars. I like physically seeing the month ahead of me and seeing my tasks written throughout. So I made a calendar.

I made one for July 25th - August 25th.

My process:

1. What do I want to get completed this month? I made a list of things I want to do, projects I have to work on, TV show schedules I want to watch, etc... I made note of everything.

2. What types of tasks do I want on my calendar? Then I decided what my calendar would show. I decided on everything! I thought if I had separate calendars for different things, I would probably favor one schedule or just completely forget about one. I decided I wanted everything together on the same page.

3. How should I format my calendar? Hand make it? Microsoft Excel? Find a website that helps you organize things? Microsoft Project? Buy a daily planner? Get a desk calendar? Buy a graphic wall calendar? So many options! I wanted mine to be tangible, as well as cleanly edited or revised. The best option for me was Microsoft Excel. You could easily move around ideas, change format, change anything! and it doesn't have to be permanent and you can't ever mess it up. You could always resave and reprint. After I decided on making it on Excel, I decided to color code my tasks. I would just simply write, or type, the task I had planned in the appropriate box, with it's assigned color.

• TV Show
• Craft
• Sewing
• Scrapbook
• Blog Posts
• House/General

Then, specific dates like birthdays and visits were written on the top of the date box in black ink but italicized. For the TV shows, they're written in a smaller font at the bottom of the box as a little reminder.

4. How should I assign my tasks? This was the hard part for me. I was thinking about how my weeks usually go, how much free time I have on what days, what days I'm most productive, things like that. I didn't just want to write things to do on the calendar. I wanted to assign them so they'd be realistic for me to get done. First I thought about which projects I wanted to get done the most, what days they'd best fit in, how long they'd take, how many breaks I will or won't take... it depends! When I sew, I take a lot of breaks. My room doesn't have an AC so when I get too hot or frustrated (which happens a lot) I take a couple minutes of just sitting in Ben's room collecting myself in the cold. Or I'll sit outside for a smoke break and try to clear my head. But when I scrapbook, my head is just stuck looking down, positioning and repositioning and gluing and cutting. I work different depending on what it is. I made sure I thought about this when I picked the days of what to work on. I really feel that I did good on this. I spent a good amount of time thinking about it.


5. Well, did it work?! Too early to tell! Today is the first day of my self-assigned project schedule. Today I have Clean kitchen, Scrapbook Flower Canvas, and Currently Post on my to-do list. Then in little font on the bottom, is 10 PM - Virgin Diaries. I'll have one down by the end 3PM today, the Currently blog post!


6. What are other ways to stay on top of things? The calendar isn't enough for me. I really am trying to push myself into a more productive habit. I decided to put the Reminders App on the iPhone to use. I always use this App when I'm taking classes, to keep track of homework and classwork. I decided to put it to use for my projects! In the morning I'm going to put in my daily tasks and set reminders for the timeblock I want to work on them. I'll probably try and clean the kitchen within a half hour of being home from work, shower, eat, and get ready to start the scrapbook flower canvas project shortly after. With, of course, my Reminders going off every fifteen minutes. I need to be more disciplined and less lazy! On with the crafting! I also am going to start embracing post it notes a lot more. At work, I run through post-its. I want to get some colored ones to hang reminders in my room and on my laptop to have little motivators. My other secret weapon is Ben. Whenever I try to break a habit, I always have Ben as my backbone. I'll tell him "don't let me have ____ if I do _____" or "make me _____ if I don't _____" and Ben usually sticks to it. Permission to annoy me and keep me from something I want? Ben is usually up for it.

7. Anything else I want to add? The best thing about doing it on Excel, is that I could open up the document and move around everything and change my entire month around. Or I could add to my already packed schedule or delete it all! Last night I thought a lot about my calendar. How if I had tasks to do today how long would they take and when would I have fit them in, but also, what else should I add? Last night I made myself soup for dinner and made some apple crisp for dessert. Ben got home from class and ordered Chinese. Then I thought, I should put goals on my calendar. First one being, COOK dinner (with real food) at least twice a week. Twice a week sounds like a low expectation, but I'd be setting myself up for a downfall if I try anything more. I consider cooking dinner as making a meal with meat and preparing everything myself. Usually it's store bought pizza dough and we make pizza or grilled cheese or frozen things. Ah! We're getting older and it'll be sooner than later that our bodies change and we can't eat the crap like we do now. I also considered adding future blog features, and other little things to my calendar.

I hope this could help some other overwhelmed future crafter. Haha. I know it helped me spelling out what I expected from myself and typing it and rereading it here. This blog is helping me so much. Just being able to keep a record of what I've been doing, it just helps me stay motivated and just want to fill this blogs' archive with awesome content and watch myself grow as a woman, adult, and a crafty lady.

Yay! :)

Insta Post!

My third Instagram post!
Nicely on time :)

1. Tyler, the Creator. I cannot stop listening to him or Odd Future. Say what you will but.... he's too good!
2. Flowers outside of Wentworth
3. Late night selfie :p
4. Selfie at work!
5. Watermelon mmm!
6. Finally cooking the Striper I caught last weekend in the Cape!
7. Breaded and fried and butter with mac and cheese on the side. oh god was it good.
8. Dillan challenged Benjamin to a game of darts, if Dillan won, we went out for ice cream
9. DILLAN WON!!!! :)
10. Mint chocolate chip Clif bar!!
11. Cutting up VIP Commencement tickets
12. Our back deck. Surrounded by other houses.
13. My Massachusetts driver's license came! Gross picture but still :)
14. Our friend is a glass blower, well he's learning. When he visited Friday he brought me this glass pendant :) Love it!!! and him!!!
15. Hanging in the industrial design shop with Ben, gotta wear protective glasses of course!
16. One of Ben's hobbies. He catches butterflies and insects and pins them to preserve them. Then he's gonna mount them. I love my nature boy!
17. Part of my canvas art includes state art! Got all the states represented in my little family. Gonna try transferring map images to canvases! 
18. Johnny Cupcakes billboard "Do More of what Makes You Happy" I agree :)
19. Had some bananas getting to brown, so Ben begged me to make banana bread. It's delicious if I do say so myself!
20. Started this morning with some Bolthouse Mocha Cappuccino and a Black and Mild Filtered Tip. It was a good morning.

As much as I wanted to be productive this weekend...

I wasn't. Sigh.
It was more of a

• sleep
• relax
• be with friends
• prepare
• and clean

sort of weekend.

Friday - I worked while Ben went out catching butterflies with his friends. Luckily, I was able to leave at lunch time! So while Ben was out and I was home alone, I cleaned the bathroom, hallway, and tidied up the kitchen. I then rewarded myself with a much needed nap! I woke up around the time Ben came home. Then our friends came to visit! We all went out to the Cheesecake Factory. No one ever cares about the bill and we all just order whatever sounds good and share. It's the best time. We always plan on dessert after but everyone is always beyond stuffed. We got home pretty late and I crashed.

Saturday - Ben had lots of homework! He was in the last stretch of finishing up his portfolio (Ben studies Industrial Design at Wentworth. Last semester he had a Co-Op at Puma! He's so good, I'm so proud of him) but since no quality print places were open, so it was okay if he finished his work on Sunday, Ben and I hung out. We filled the day with Dexter, darts, and relaxing. I did a little shopping! I went to Utrecht Art Store to get some supplies. They had a big summer sale going on, and I really wanted to start making my own wall art and experimenting and getting crafty. I bought Utrecht's version of Mod Podge, a couple of different sized canvases on sale, and a brush! I started my first project that day, but got side tracked...That night we saw Savages. It was pretty good! We got home pretty late that night too and, of course, I passed out right after.

Sunday - Ben's Dad, Bruno, came to visit for lunch. We went to my favorite place to eat, Victoria's Diner. They seriously have the best breakfast, EVER! And, I have a big love for diners since New Jersey is filled with them and they were a common meeting place for my friends and I back in the day. Ben worked on his portfolio while I relaxed. I really wanted to clean my room and rearrange our pantry (that sounds so sad but seriously it's a mess and there are just boxes of food all over the shelves, in no order whatsoever... and it drives me crazy!) and sew and do one of my canvas projects, but I really have just felt so spent lately I just needed the weekend to relax. I thought about what I wanted to do with the canvases, though!!! That's good enough.. right????

So now, I left myself with a ton of things to do for this week. I feel overwhelmed, but as Ben as told me, "don't stress! these are personal projects, you're doing them for you. Take your time and do it how you want it and when you want it. Stop rushing and trying to get all of these things done." It was good advice. Obvious... but what I actually needed to hear. Ben has been slaving away on his portfolio, and he just kept telling me how he was jealous he couldn't work on any of his personal things because he he had so much work that he needed to do. That made me realize I'm very lucky to have an open as a schedule I have (despite my 38 hour work week). He was right! It made me take a breath and kind of put my projects into a different perspective.

My room is a mess, and each corner is evidence of a different project. Today I NEED to clean my room and organize all my little to-dos.. Then I need to finish all my half done projects. I don't have the space to work on multiple things at once and need to concentration on ONE until I'M DONE.

new motto? one until I'm done?
Hmm....

Currently Post

So I had an urge to do an update, but had nothing for an entire post. So I decided to do a Currently post! I always read Danielle's of Sometimes Sweet blog and wanted to give it a go myself. A little personal and a little update, yay!

Loving: My job! As much fun as an internship is, it could super boring. Especially since I have a desk job. My boss was on vacation last week and only left me a few tasks to complete. I went crazy with all my free time! This week he's been keeping me super busy and the days have been flying by. I'm done today within the hour so I'm just organizing my things and getting ready for tomorrow's tasks. Always keeping busy keeps me awake and alert and I actually am motivated to work on things I need to get done at home when I get out of work. It keeps my work flow consistent. Otherwise I just want to go home and take a nap. Isn't it weird how actually doing a whole bunch of nothing makes you tired and lazy? Hm!

Reading: What the rest of the world is reading... 50 Shades. Ah, this book. First I read the Twilight series because a good girlfriend loved them and wanted someone to discuss it with and see the movies with. I hate Bella as a character because she is so weak and dependent on Edward, so it made it difficult for me to read. But honestly, I was just waiting for the sex scene which was incredibly disappointing (I know it's a tween series, but still! Their sexual tension was ridiculous and just ugh.) But then, I heard about 50 Shades... then I heard about how it was banned in libraries which immediately sparked my interest What can be that bad that it's banned in a library?! and then I heard it was Twilight fan fiction. So, I was interested. I wasn't expecting to get anything out of it and honestly it wasn't as crazy as I thought it'd be. I got threw the first book, and was interested enough to get the second, but I can't get into it. It's just blah. It's too much Twilight and not enough sex. I know it's Twilight fan fiction, but I wanted it to live up to it's banned in libraries rep!!! Oh well. I gave up on that book and I'm about to start Lolita. Ben's sister, Lauren, gave me her copy. Can't wait to get into that.

Watching: BREAKING BAD!!! The finale season just premiered on AMC this past Sunday night. I could talk about this show for hours. Ben and I are so obsessed. It's about a high school chemistry teacher who gets diagnosed with terminal lung cancer with a prognosis of two years and he decides to cook meth and be a drug dealer to get money for his family before he passes. It gets crazy and super intense. Ben and I are also watching Dexter. He's never seen it before and I'm rewatching the entire series before the 7th season premieres. Ben has gotten addicted to that, too. We're currently on the 4th season. I can't wait until he's caught up and he could finally watch the first two minute sneak peak of the new season, ahh!!

Anticipating: Dinner tonight. Ben is cooking the fish that I caught on Sunday! I always cook for us, he even convinces me to take lunch at home some days so I could make it for him, so I'm pretty excited to be catered to a little bit. Ben is all about his fish so it should be delicious and I can't wait to watch my man cook for me!

Listening to: Lots of Lily Allen! She's back in the studio so I got in a Lily kick. My sister and I used to listen to her all of the time and saw her in concert a couple years ago. I just love her :)

Planning: My next project and ASB! For a short term plan, I'm deciding on what shorts and dress I'd like to start tonight. I'm done with work early today so I want to finish at least one of the two by the weekend! I could definitely get them both done if I start one tonight! And for a long term plan, last year I went on an Alternative Spring Break trip to Homestead, Florida to do volunteer environmental work in the Everglades. I applied to be a coordinator for next year, and I got picked! My co-coordinator and I are already starting to plan out details. We both were on the trip last year and are so excited to plan a similar trip this year. We'll be able to eliminate all the bad parts of last year, too! Not that there were many significant ones, but we could of planned better for dinner for 15 kids every night. As you could imagine that was difficult!

Working on: A student survey for work. Every freshman during orientation fills out a survey of what they expect college life to be like. My job is to organize the survey raw data and get it formatted and ready for my boss. It's pretty interesting to see the college from this perspective. It's also interesting to see where all those things we do as students go within the college and what the college actually does with the results. But I'm done with that for today and have the last stretch to complete for tomorrow!

Wishing: It was July 27th! My mom is flying in from New Jersey! Ben's dad has a ton of frequent flyer miles and offered to fly my mom from Newark to Boston for a weekend. Of course we had to take advantage of this!! I can't wait to have some quality time with my mom. She's my best friend! My sister's birthday is also the 28th, and since she'll be in Hawaii and spending it without us, it's kind of like we're celebrating in spirit. We're glad we could be together even though Sam is away. I can't wait to see my Mom and these weeks have been going so fast, she should be here in no time!

I loved doing this! Probably something I'll have to keep up :)
Tomorrow I'll post an update with some pictures of the things I start working on tonight!

Instagram

I took SO many Instagram photos this week! So here's my weekly Instagram post! (Last week I mentioned I wanna do two features, with Instagram posts as one. The other being a what-I-wore type thing, But I'm still working out how I want to go about that. Check here)

1. My desk at work! Can't believe Co-Op is over half way done

2. Watermelon Arizona. Summer guilty pleasure mmmm!

3. Stuffing Commencement invitations

4. Commencement Invitation

5. Jelly Doughnut

6. The lady I work with is from Brazil and she always gives me Brazilian candies and treats. This one was a salted peanut butter thing. It reminded me of the peanut butter from a Reece's, except there were some peanuts in it and it was a little more salty. So delicious!!!!

7. Watermelon Strawberry Nantucket Nectars, yesss :)

8. Mike's Hard Black Cherry Lemonade. I sipped on this while the boys played darts and drank beer on Thursday night.

9. Empty Wentworth hallway during the summer semester

10. Homemade bracelet I got from my Umba Box this month

11. Orange Line T map. Going from Ruggles to Chinatown

12. Converting my New Jersey license to a Massachusetts license. Now I'm officially a Massachusetts resident... kind of weird.

13. Pattern laid out to cut for Sam's dress

14. The Triton!

15. Out on the ocean

16. Brian caught a stingray before he caught a striper. Probably one of my favorite pictures of all time. That's the stingray's mouth and nose, but it looks like a little face. He look so happy, so funny!

17. A giant hermit crab was caught in the lobster trap. I wanted him as a pet so bad!

18. Lobsters in the trap

19. Measuring lobster size, one lobster, a couple lobster... 16 lobster!!!

20. Relaxing on the front of the boat

21. On the way home, Ben took us out for ice cream. He's the best. I got a banana ice cream cone and that's Tony's Snickers ice cream with chocolate sprinkles on top. Nothing makes me happier when Ben takes me out for ice cream haha