Bad blogger

Surprise, surprise! I haven't blogged in forever! LOL.

Well I wanted to stop by and show off some of my recent favorite things!

This adorable survival kit from Jules of Pancakes and French Fries for her niece.

This beautifully written piece entitled Save Your Heart from So About What I Said.

This beautifully rustic way of displaying photos from Stacey Woods, on The Creative Mama

Absolutely gorgeous actions from My Four Hens Photography! Currently on sale. <3

This totally adorable way of patching up jeans via Covet Chicago

And,last but not least, this fabulous new digi-scrapping store, 9th and Bloom, with some of my fav designers and fav people ever!

Taking a break... already!

So I was planning on posting more often, but I got roped into blogging for the solar car blog instead, so I probably won't be keeping up two blogs.

We are currently in Texas, and I have discovered that I kind of adore the boys I am here with. They are all sorts of hilarious and never fail to make me laugh, even when it is way too hot and humid and windy outside or when I have a carbon fiber splinter in my finger. Boy am I going to miss them! But we still have another two weeks, so that'll be fun.

I'm just looking forward to Thursday, when we will be staying in a hotel with a pool. Score! If you want to read more about the solar car... our blog is http://solarcar.stanford.edu/blog

A little more about me... Asker or Guesser?

A while back, I was talking to some of my friends about how I have a really difficult time saying no to anything. Even if I know that saying yes will lead to several hours of doing something I do not want to do. One of my friends remembered that conversation and sent me this really interesting article about Askers and Guessers today.

The basic premise is there are two different kinds of people. People who are askers, who were raised to ask for whatever they want. If someone says no to them, that's fine. There is nothing wrong with that. And then there are guessers, who never ask outright for something. Instead they feel things out and try to change situations so that what they want is offered to them instead.

The problem is when an Asker meets a Guesser, it's hard for them to understand each other. Askers have no problem asking for something, even if they actually expect the answer to be no. But Guessers have an extremely hard time saying no, so they say yes.

That is SO me. Haha. My friends, who are mainly Askers, find it very difficult to understand why I don't just say no. They don't get why I complain, when I could have just said no and avoided the situation entirely.

Someday I'll learn to be an Asker. Or at least to be more of an Asker. I know people always say, you don't need to change who you are... but this is something I want to change for me. It's difficult, sometimes, being around all of these Askers. And having more self esteem, more self confidence... what can be wrong with that?

I'll leave you with a picture! Because a post isn't really a post without a picture. ;) Taken by my friend Tatiana, who is pictured in the post below.

Another attempt at blogging...

I have tried several times to start a blog and keep up with it. But I've failed every single time. When it comes to things that I have no accountability for to anyone but myself, I tend to set them aside in favor of things that have to be done for other people. Things I have a set deadline on. But I enjoy myself most when I am not thinking about deadlines. When I do work simply on a whim, because it is what I am in the mood for.

Take my latest obsession, for instance. Photography. I am currently enrolled in a digital photography class, a class which I was ridiculously excited for and bought a dSLR for. The lectures focus on the more technical aspects behind photography. Everything from sensors to in camera processing to additive and subtractive color. It's actually pretty darn cool. We also have had eight assignments, each with around five requirements that we need to meet by taking 5-10 photos. Each assignment focused on a different aspect of photography: sports, macro, architecture, still life, landscape, night photography, and most recently, portraiture.

I've discovered over the past ten weeks that I really love both taking and editing photos. And I've really enjoyed the class. I've taken some photos that I am really proud of. I am glad for the assignments because it pushed me to explore different areas of photography. I discovered that I really don't like sports and action photography, for example, but I adore macro photography. But there were definitely some Sundays where I got extremely frustrated over having to find something to fulfill a requirement. It became a chore, rather than something that I did for the sake of pleasure.

All in all, I'm really glad that I took the class. I feel that I have really grown through those ten weeks. I wouldn't call myself a photographer, by any means, but I'm on my way! Honestly, I have to say that I think that my class helped me improve, yes, but a much bigger factor in my improvement has been Clickinmoms.

I don't even really know how to describe CM. It is a fantastic forum, mainly composed of moms. And I can honestly say that the money I spent on a lifetime membership was worth every penny. Everyone at CM is super helpful and so sweet and there is a wealth of information on every topic imaginable, from focusing to metering to post processing and more. Plus some of the photographers who are members of the forum are absolutely ridiculously talented, and it's really fun (and great inspiration) to see their gorgeous photos.

Wow, have I gotten off-track! I didn't mean to make this post all about photography. The point is, I decided that I would try my hand at blogging again. I like writing for myself, and I don't really do it enough. Part of the reason I'm actually doing this is because I'm procrastinating and avoiding studying for finals. Seriously.. so burnt out! Can't wait for summer.

I'm not sure who will be reading this, and I'm not even completely sure what I'll be blogging about. I'll definitely be showing my photographs from time to time. If I start scrapping again, I'll probably show some scrapbook pages. I'm planning on doing lots of cooking and baking this summer (I'll be living alone for the first time ever. Well... alone in a house with three other people. But not at home and not on campus) so if I am not too lazy, I'll let you know how that goes. I'm subscribed to a million and a half amazing blogs so I'll probably also be posting about random things that catch my interest. Finally, I'll probably blog about the American Solar Challenge, honestly. So this blog will be a kind of ridiculous mix between art and science. Which is kind of my life, so I guess that's not really news to anyone.

Alright. I'll end this post with two photos!

This is one of the very first photos I took for my photography class. The theme was "bad" photos. So this was deliberately underexposed, centered and mis-focused.

This was taken for the portraiture assignment this week. Tatiana's a girl in my photography class and dorm. We went around on Sunday and basically had a photoshoot.

More photos and other random things later! :)