Day 3

3. Guilty pleasure things/secrets. That thing you like that people might make fun of you for.

Certain television shows definitely fit into this category. I loooove investigation/crime shows. Ever since netflix got a whole bunch of stuff from the investigation discovery channel, it's pretty much all I've been watching. I'm watching one right now.

I also love ranch and sriracha. Seriously, if left to my own devices I will put them both on anything. If I go to dennys, I will even mix ranch and hot sauce together to dip fries in.

Hm, what else? I like to bitch about stuff. Not a lot, really, but it feels stress-relieving to get off work and bitch with other co-workers about stupid customers or annoying situations. Mostly because we can sympathize with each other and laugh about it.

I like corny totally hollywood-ized romantic comedies. Like Sydney White, The Holiday, 50 first dates, 27 dresses, you know the deal. They're just so simple and formulaic and feel-good.

Maybe the weirdest thing I like to do is go to cemeteries during the day. I've been doing it since senior year, when me and my best friend megan used to have picnics in cemeteries and then look at the different graves. We lost touch shortly after I moved away for college, but I still go to a couple of the cemeteries in Prescott. One is up on a high hill in the middle of town, kind of tucked away so you wouldn't know it's there unless you paid really close attention. I like to drive up to that one, park my car on the edge, and look out on the city while listening to music and thinking/writing. The other one is much larger, and I like to walk around and think or just sit and enjoy the sunlight/breeze/grass. I know it sounds weird but it's actually quite calming and serene.

And last but not least, I really like taco bell. I know it's disgusting, but some of it (minus the beef and guacamole) is delicious.

<3
Em

Life. Or, that silly little thing that gets in the way of all your plans: A lookback on 2011.

me at the beginning of 2011. i was in mexico when i made my new years reolutions. lookin' fresh and ready for the roller coaster ride of a year ahead of me.

 I have a habit of setting goals for myself. I think it's because I love to make lists, and I love the idea of bettering myself in all sorts of ways. Sometimes they are healthy, attainable goals- like getting rid of products and using cheap homemade alternatives, like I talked about in my post yesterday. But lots of times I just bite off way more than I can chew, assuming that everything is going to go according to plan and nothing tricky or difficult is going to get in the way.

The good thing is, I don't feel too bad about myself when I don't achieve all the goals I set for myself, because I know that I did my best under the circumstances.

So, I want to look back at some of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of 2011. I accomplished some of them, and a lot of them I never really got around to completing. But you know what? That's life. If I've ever had a year where life got in the way of all my plans and good intentions, 2011 was that year. Life totally kicked my ass, actually. It didn't just send me down a road I wasn't planning on going down, it sent me to an entire different dimension.

Anyways, here were my new years resolutions of 2011:
1. Continue to strive for happiness (above all other things). I think I did this pretty well. There were a lot of times throughout 2011 that I threw caution to the wind and did something that was going to make me happy despite how unconventional it might have been. I took a lot of risks and had a great time. After Linn died I found it difficult to know or remember what made me happy, but I think I did the right thing in taking the last 2 months of the year to just be with myself and remember.
2. Maintain a weight of 120 pounds. I did this all year, until Linn died. then I blew up a bit. Now I'm working on getting back down. No more alcohol and eddas cheesy bread for me!
3. Be more outgoing and make several new friends. I think I pulled this off pretty well. I got really close with everyone I went on the Greece trip with, and now I'm good friends with all my coworkers at Brooklyn. In 2011 I also got much closer to my friends from Eddas.
4. Spend more carefully and save more money. I accomplished this in that I got a job and took a personal finance class, but I didn't actually save much.
5. Continue going on dates, playing games, laughing, joking, and loving with Stewart. Hmm. Well, Stewart and I had a great spring semester together, although shortly after I returned from Greece we broke up. Luckily, we stayed very close friends and lived together for the rest of 2011. So I guess I accomplished this.
6. Find more things to be passionate about. I love a lot of things, but I don't know that I found anything new to be passionate about this year. Unless Pinterest counts.
7. Always be reading a book. I'm in the middle of several books right now, but unfortunately I haven't read much since I got back from Greece. I'd like to start again. I feel like before shit went crazy last year I had so much time and I was doing so many things at once. School, working out, blogging, reading, socializing, traveling... I hope I remember how to do that again.
8. Worry less. Hm. I think I definitely became more apt to try risks, but new fears were also introduced into my life. But that's the way it goes, right? I think a small dose of fear is healthy. It keeps us from doing stupid things.
9. Do more creative things. I think I accomplished this. I learned to play some new songs on the piano, and spent a lot of time singing. I also wrote a few poems and started a couple stories. My film production class last semester also provided a great creative outlet. When linn died, I wrote a lot and also constructed a lovely 20 page scrapbook that helped me to take my crazed, grieving energy and focus it into something that turned out to be beautiful and healing.
10. Write 300 blog posts. Obviously I failed at this, but I don't really care. One of those things where life got in the way :)
11. Start compiling recipes and cooking new ones from online, cookbooks, magazines, etc. I think I accomplished this. With the help of foodgawker and pinterest, I was very cuisine-inspired last year. My favorite dishes included alton brown's chicken pot pie, that absolutely divine crazy feta recipe I posted, the pioneer woman's burgundy mushrooms, some feta saganaki I made when I returned from Greece, and pdubs brined turkey. A church down the street gave me a turkey for thanksgiving, and I was really excited to cook it because I had never tried before. Totally easier than the movies make it out to be.

Here are things I accomplished in 2011 that I didn't even fathom would happen:

1. Date Linn, who I secretly had a crush on since I met him in May of 2010.
2. Get a tattoo. In a very visible place, no less.
3. Be the guest of honor at a surprise party
4. Get roofied in Greece. Not exactly something I wanted to happen, but a crazy story and life experience, none the less.
5. Hike the Samarian Gorge. Something much better that happened in Greece.
6. Learn to cope with immeasurable loss.
7. Record a song
8. Work on foley for an independent film
9. Successfully live with my ex-boyfriend
10. Love something unconditionally, no matter how early it wakes me up with barking and gnawing on my fingers or how many times it pees on the carpet.
11.  Pull off catering for a camp after a sleep-deprived month in a different time zone.
12. Pull myself together and push through it all, coming out on the other side (mostly) unscathed.

Obviously this is a little late, but I wanted to talk about it anyways. New Years resolutions are funny. We can try and attain all these goals we set for ourselves, but I've found that most of the time life seems to get in the way. Hopefully its for the better.

I hope your new years resolutions are already working out :) I'm not sure if I'll make a list for this year (now that we're one sixth of the way through) but we'll see. Have a lovely weekend!

Love,
Em

Day 2

2. Some of your favorite things. Smells, songs, food, movies etc. Why are they your favorite?

Favorites! That's a fun topic. I have lots of favorites. I'm one of those people that goes to the same restaurant over and over again, always thinking I'm going to try something else for once... but I always get the same thing. Like at mexican restaurants. It depends on which restaurant, but I'm always going to get either a quesadilla (hugos in prescott or taco bell), spinach enchiladas (casa alvarez, macayos), or a chimichanga (any other mexican restaurant i go to ever). I'll try to break this down into actual categories though.

smells: some people have photographic memories, i have a smellographic memory. I will catch a whiff of something walking down the street and it will bring me back to an exact memory. For instance, I might smell the cologne that one of my past boyfriends used to wear and it will give me butterflys in my stomach. That's definitely one of my favorite smells. The cologne of someone I love/used to love. I also love the very stereotypical smells of rain, roses, and a hot cop of coffee in the morning.

songs: I've been in love with first aid kit for a super long time now. I love "I met up with a king", "ghost town", and "heavy storm" the most. I also have always loved modest mouse, it reminds me of high school. I love "missed the boat" the best. hmm... what else? get up and go by broadcast 2000, bon iver's skinny love (linn loved this song), and many many others.

food: i'm such a foodie. I'm really not picky at all. I love me some good cheese (on bread with a side of fresh grapes? mmm.). I also love Indian food, particularly the taj mahal in prescott. Speaking of prescott, Hugo's is always a winner too. Basically I just love food. Spicy is always a plus.

movies: Life as a House, Dakota Skye, Wristcutters: A Love Story, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Love Actually. 

etc: my favorite day of the week is saturday, because it's the only day I don't have work or school. My favorite season is autumn, because it's beautiful and inspiring. My favorite holiday is st. patrick's day, because I love making irish food, drinking irish beer, and wearing green and gold. 

and those are just a few of my many, many favorite things. here's another one:

 <3
Em

Shampoo? Toothpaste? Face wash? Who needs 'em!

I am all about the semi-recent movement from fancy, expensive store-brought products to healthy, cheap alternatives. It turns out most of the things we are raised to believe are absolutely essential to personal hygiene are actually doing the opposite of what we want them to! One by one I've ditched my once-beloved products and moved on to things that not only feel better, save the environment and save me a whole lot of money.

1. The first things to go were shampoo and conditioner. I stopped washing my hair with them about a year ago and I haven't looked back. I wash my hair maybe once every two weeks with baking soda and vinegar, and other than that I just rinse it well when I shower. Shampoo is designed to strip our hair of it's natural oils, which is not only irritating to the skin but is completely counterproductive. These natural oils are responsible for shiny (not greasy), healthy, protected hair. When they are stripped away, our scalps overcompensate and create too many oils, leading to greasy hair that needs to be washed more often. Conditioner is just there to replace the oils that Shampoo takes out... so really it's entirely unnecessary if you leave the oils alone in the first place.

 When I wash my hair, I use a combination of a couple tablespoons of baking soda (because I have verrry long hair) and hot water, poured over my head in the shower and lightly massaged in. This gets rid of the dirt and grime without irritating my scalp or stripping away too many oils. I follow this with a mixture of a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and hot water, which acts as a natural conditioner/softener and leaves my hair shiny, soft, and voluminous.
To read more about washing your hair without shampoo and condition, you can look here.

2. I just ditched toothpaste about a week ago. That might sound absolutely appalling, but toothpaste is actually a pretty modern invention. One of those ways corporations trick us into paying money year after year when we don't really have to, you know? Instead of toothpaste, which is full of all kinds of fancy chemicals that I can't even begin to try to pronounce, I use a combination of baking soda and sea salt. Baking soda. It's just so useful, isn't it? Not just for the back corner of the fridge anymore. I made a mixture that was probably about 75% baking soda and 25% sea salt and I store it in a quarter pint sized mason jar in my bathroom. The mason jar helps keep the mixture air tight and moisture-free. I just wet my toothbrush, shake out the excess water, then dip the tip into the powder. 

When I first tried it I was pretty worried about the baking soda flavor- I am not a fan of the whole baking soda/warm water heart burn relief method- but I pretty much just tasted the salt. This was no problem for me because lately I've tended to prefer savory over sweet anyways. The baking soda cleans and whitens teeth (my teeth are whiter than they're ever been with "whitening" toothpastes), and the salt gently scrubs and promotes the production of saliva which keeps gums healthy.

Honestly I didn't research this nearly as much as I first researched using BS and ACV on my hair, but I felt pretty confident today when I went to the Co-op grocery store on 4th ave today (a haven of all things super healthy... and overpriced) and found a small bottle selling for 5 bucks called "tooth powder". The ingredients? baking soda, salt, and a small amount of peppermint to give a minty flavor. If the co-op is selling it and touting its health benefits, I feel pretty good about doing it for cents in my own home. For more info, you can look here.

3. I haven't officially tried this one, but it's getting hype all over the blogosphere. The idea is to ditch your fancy shmancy 8$ face wash (or 30$ if you use proactiv, like I did when I was a teenager) and wash your face with oil. Yes, oil. It's the same idea as the shampoo thing. Face wash basically strips your face of oil, which contrary to popular belief is NOT the cause of acne. Acne is caused by changing hormone levels and dirt and bacteria that clog the pores. Face wash gets rid of the grime, but also the naturally created oils that keep our skin radiant and soft. Thus, our skin over-produces oil, making our faces greasy and more likely to get clogged. Washing your face with oil dissolves the grease and grime and replaces it with clean, healthy oils. Also, it's apparently a great makeup remover.

When I stopped by the co-op today, I picked up a bottle of castor oil. I already had a bottle of grapeseed oil from some beauty products I made my mom and sister for christmas, however, I've heard extra virgin olive oil, sunflower oil, and several other types work well also. When I got home I mixed the two in a bottle I used for icing cookies last year (75% grapeseed, 25% castor). I plan on using it tonight for the first time. Here's what you do: put a small amount of oil in your hand. massage it onto your DRY face for about a minute. Get your tap water as hot as you can, and wet a washcloth with it. Put the washcloth over your face and just wait until the cloth reaches room temperature. Doesn't that sound like a great way to start/finish the day? Like a mini spa. Anyways, then rinse the washcloth and wipe the oil off your face. And that's it! Soft, smooth, radiant skin. Or so I hear. I'm super stoked to try this. Supposedly you only need to do it once a day (tops) for results. For more information, look here. 

Do you guys have any diy beauty products that you swear by? I'm pretty sure the next thing to go is going to be my deodorant, and then probably my volumizing mousse and hairspray. Let me know if you have any other suggestions!

30 Day Challenge: Day 1

I'm such a sucker for these things. They remind me of the days of MySpace bulletins, where I'd waste the majority of a weekday evening answering survey after survey full of silly, pointless questions. Ahh, junior high. 


I feel like I've been out of the blogosphere for so long I literally have to go months back to catch up on all my favorite blogs. I was reading my friend Chloe's blog today and found that she made up a 30 day challenge like a week ago. It's a good one too! So I've decided I'm going to follow it. A good way to breathe fresh life into this old blog and hopefully get it rolling again. 


Here are the rules, I encourage you all to visit Chloe's blog and follow along too!
1. Your name, nicknames, changes to your name (if any), favorite usernames and meanings behind them. Insert your favorite picture(s) of yourself.
2. Some of your favorite things. Smells, songs, food, movies etc. Why are they your favorite?
3. Guilty pleasure things/secrets. That thing you like that people might make fun of you for.
4. Tattoos you have, their meanings, and/or tattoos you want to get.
5. Opinions on those things everyone argues about, brief or not so brief, and any one or more topics. (Politics, religions, rights etc) i.e. Things you feel strongly about.
6. Things you want, rational and irrational. Places you want to go, famous people you want to meet and more.
7. Working out: things that work for you; things you should do vs. what you are doing etc. Get motivated!
8. Style your hair in at least four or more ways and take pictures. Do you ever do these styles on regular days or for occasions? 
9. Comfort things; what do you do when you're sick to feel better? What do you eat/watch/do when you're having a bad day?
10. Childhood things; traditions and things that take you back. Did you have a favorite stuffed animal? What kind of books did you read? What were your favorite movies?
11. The best day; describe a good memory or the elements of a good day. 
12. Your best traits and your worst habits. Personal struggles as well as accomplishments. Balance it out. 
13. Things you're addicted to. Foods, sites, shows, whatever. 
14. Your favorite meal of the day and the elements that make it perfect. Obviously, post lots of delicious pictures. 
15. Things that make you jealous, whether it's possessions or people. 
16. Things you can't let go of. 
17. Something (or things) you haven't done in a while that you would really like to. 
18. Your hobbies or hobbies you would like to pick up. 
19. Your significant other. How you got together, your favorite things about them and maybe even things that bother you at times. 
20. Things you don't like that other people do. It's ranting time. Be specific.
21. Things that make you laugh really hard. Include some youtube videos. 
22. Your favorite video games and/or board games/card games/party games. Also include your least favorite.
23. Songs from your childhood/teenage years. Post some 90's/ early 2000's songs that take you back/make you laugh etc. Talk about the memories attached to them. 
24. VLOG DAY: take a video of yourself for this! Pronounce the following words: Aluminium, salmon, talk, caramel, lieutenant, mirror, scone, nearly, bath, grass, near, bacon, beer can, again, been, garage, process, hot, coffee, thought, not, tomato, potato, cheese, cake, Barbie, fond, duck, dog, cat, fish, chips, milk, friend, fried, disenchanted, sleep, dream, state, cinema, last ,lost, Raxocoricopalavitorious, antidisestablishmentarianism, dance, aunt, copper, win, one, on, herbs, rotten. Where were you born?
25. Three completely unselfish wishes for other people, and three selfish just-for-you wishes.
26. Some things you always think about. Where does your brain go when you try to fall asleep? 
27. Things you wish you could do. Skills, traveling etc. Include a video or pictures.
28. If you absolutely had to go back and relive a part of your life (say, a few months), what would it be? Would you change something, knowing it would most certainly have an effect on your future? 
29. If you could see a day of your future somehow, would you take the chance? How far forward would you go? What do you hope you see? What do you dread to see?
30. Admit or confess something. 


 Day One:  Your name, nicknames, changes to your name (if any), favorite usernames and meanings behind them. Insert your favorite picture(s) of yourself.


My first name is Emily, my middle name is Louise. I haven't made any changes to my name and I don't plan to, aside from maybe changing my last name when I get married. 

 I've got dozens of nicknames. Literally dozens. My mom called my "lou", "louie", "lou-lou", "lou-la-belle" and many other things as a kid. She still does, actually. My friends in middle school and high school called my "auntie em". some of them still do. I also got "mama emmy", because I was like the mom of the group at times. I also got just the standard "em" and "emmy" and of course "emi-lou". Stewie called me "emilem" all through our relationship and he sometimes still does. Probably the nickname that stuck the most was given to me by stewart's brother, brian. That would be "msoss" (it's pronounced em-sauce) or often just "soss". Brian calls me "sossy-poo" on occasion, too.

 usernames? hmm. lately I've taken to just using my first two initials (el) and attaching it to my last name. That's what college email addresses do for you anyways, so I just go with it. Sometimes I've used Emilemsoss (like on my twitter and stumbleupon accounts) because It's a combination of my two favorite nicknames. When I was younger I used to come up with all kinds of ridiculous screen names for use on msn messenger. remember msn messenger? does it even exist anymore? all I know is that is was all the rage in 8th grade. How else were you going to talk to your crush over summer? or before text messaging was something everyone had access to? I don't know if I can remember them now, but I can guarantee that many of them were cring-worthy emo song lyrics that I thought mirrored my life exactly. Thank god I graduated that phase. Now I just post them as my facebook statuses ;) jk. kind of.

See you tomorrow for day two!

Love,
Em

A visit from my mother: aka, all my problems are fixed!

 Last weekend, my wonderful mom visited me down here in Tucson. My dad came as well, but for the most part he was at my grandpa's house doing some work. So, it was pretty much a mom-daughter girly weekend. I thought we'd pretty much just hang out and maybe visit a few of Tucson's modest attractions, but we ended up getting a lot done!

A little back-story. My car, a 1997 Subaru outback, is great. However, over the past few months little things have been breaking or falling apart. Nothing serious, just aesthetic things. For example, my radio stopped working. Then my cigarette lighter (which is essential for my handy-dandy two-in-one phone and ipod charger) completely fell out. There were also a few things wrong with my apartment... I tripped a breaker (faulty outlet) and lost power to half my apartment. I still had my fridge, my stove, my internet, and my dining room light, so I put off calling maintenance and just waited for my dad (an electrical contractor) to get there. Also, as much as I love my little pup clementine, she wasn't exactly house-trained when I first got her. My apartment has carpeted floors and even though I tried to stay on top of taking her out frequently (and cleaning up the messes when I didn't), there were more than a few stains after 7 months. Enough to keep me from inviting anyone to my apartment. Finally, stewart moved out last month to get his own place, and took half the furniture with him. This left me with an empty living room, since the futon was his. My poor mother had to sleep on an air mattress on the floor.

But all that changed this weekend!

My mom borrowed one of those steam carpet cleaner things that looks like a vacuum from my aunt and uncle. At first I was seriously skeptic, and told her we could definitely try it but I seriously doubted it would make much of a difference. At this point I had pretty much given up on ever getting my security deposit back. After running a few other errands on the first day, I took an hour long nap and she decided to try out the cleaner. When I woke up and walked out into the living room, all I could say was "oh my goodness. oh my goodness!" over and over again. I was shocked! The carpet literally looked brand new. If you have ever been to my apartment before, you know how crazy that is.

We also went out to a little car accessory shop, where my mom bought me a new radio for my car- one with an auxiliary output, which my last radio didn't even have. AND, the guy fixed my broken cigarette lighter for free when he installed the radio. This combined with the ipod dock/charger that stewart gave me for christmas turned my previously mute car into mobile musical awesomeness.

Finally, while my mom was finishing up the carpet, she had me look on craigslist for futons. I found an awesome cherry wood one with a super comfy mattress for only 200$. The next day my parents and I drove out to buy it, packed it into my subaru, and then brought it home and set it up in my living room. I have a real living room now, people. Not just a barren puppy pee-stained room with a bookshelf.

Ta-da!

 The futon has a bed sheet over it right now, but the mattress is actually a lovely cream color with decorative cinches. I just moved the furniture around today, so some of the pictures aren't in the right places. I'll probably get to that tomorrow.

I took a picture of my typewriter, just cause I love it so much.

Anyways, it was definitely a super productive weekend. It was also a lot of fun, too!

My mom and I went to the Tucson Art Museum, where there was an exhibit of photographs of Frida Kahlo taken by one of her lovers. There was also an awesome exhibit of artwork featuring text/words called "con(text)". some really cool, inspiring stuff. We also tried the museum's restaurant, which I had been dying to go to for MONTHS. Stew and I tried to go once, but downtown Tucson can be confusing and hectic if you aren't sure where you're going, and since we didn't see it (or the museum) right away when led by my phone's gps, we decided to just get out of there and go somewhere else. This time, however, we did find it, and it was awesome. It's called Cafe a la C'Art- so cute, right? They have lovely outdoor seating with mosaic benches and pillows running around the perimeter, and lots of delicious sounding salads and sandwiches.

 This was a sandwich with baby spinach, havarti cheese, tomatoes, bacon, turkey, and apple slices on a ciabatta roll. It came with a small side salad and a thin asiago cheese and sesame seed cracker. sooo good. I will definitely be going back.

One other exciting thing happened last weekend, and that was Clementine's birthday! Clemmy turned one on Friday, February 24th. To celebrate I bought her a little "happy birthday" shirt...

a little green squeaky bear (although her mouth isn't big enough to make it squeak so she just chews on the arms and legs)

And of course a special birthday dinner. I also let her come to the pet store with me and sniff around at all the yummy goodies.

All in all, it was a lovely weekend and I definitely feel much more comfortable in my car and in my apartment.

I hope you all had a nice weekend as well, and a happy leap day! the world is back on schedule now.

Love,
Em

I'm back, and there's change a-comin.

Hello lovelies, it's been awhile.

This happened:

This is less than 24 hours after it was done. it's not like that anymore. If you can't tell, it's on my right chest.

This happened:

and a lot of this happened:

I can't really describe the past 3 months because they've really just been an absurd, emotionally strenuous (but also at times wonderful) blur. Linn- my boyfriend and best friend- passed away and that really shook the reality that our friends (his roommates) and I had come to know. There was a lot of crying, and a lot of talking, but even more silence and numbness which made things complicated and difficult in some ways.

Regardless, the experience brought us all closer together than we have ever been before. As best we could we put the horror in our minds aside and tried to connect with one another- sharing family dinners, having dance parties in the living room, drinking (probably too much) together, and on more than one occasion having snowball fights at 2AM in completely snow-inappropriate attire. I learned a lot about myself and about my friends, and although most of the time I felt (and knew) I was skidding along rock bottom, they kept my from hitting the ground.

As for school, I didn't go back. Not for the rest of the semester anyways. I attended one class on the last day to turn in all my assignments from the entire semester. Luckily, none of my professors hassled me at all. I turned in half a semester's worth of work in one week and pulled off a 3.0 average for the semester. Not too much worse than what I would've gotten anyways (I'd like to hope).

I'm back now though. It's a new semester, and new year, and I just can't justify continuing at the pace I've been going at any longer. When Linn passed, I let all my responsibilities and good judgements slip away and put myself first. I let myself take the much needed time to process and grieve, and I stopped thinking about things like doing homework, eating right, working out, and generally just taking care of any part of myself aside from my emotions. And now, while emotionally I feel much better and I feel I've learned how to cope with and manage my everlasting sadness at losing Linn, I feel like shit physically and mentally. So for the next few months at least, you all get to watch me pick up the pieces and put myself back together into the person I want to be, the person I used to be. This girl:

The girl who eats lunches like this:

and throws brunches where she makes shit like this:

and takes pretty pictures of flowers like this:

and takes silly webcam photos like this:

Not the girl whose DSLR has been sitting in the back seat of the car I haven't cleaned out since summer for god knows how long.

I'm going back to an all vegan diet, but here's the thing: I love being healthy and good to my body, but I also love to cook! And it's hard to develop your cooking skills if you limit yourself too much. Also, there are a gazillion recipes I want to try which contain meat, dairy, or eggs in the original and yeah, I could sub, but I'll always wonder what the dish was meant to taste like. So I'm allowing myself a max of one cheat day a week where I can cook something new (or an old non-veg favorite) and not feel bad about it.

I'll also be attempting to get back into working out, but I'm going to have to get more adjusted with school before I really set up a regimen. I'm just going to go back to my tried and true one that I love, but I have to figure out scheduling.

The most fun thing I'll be doing over the next few months, though, is whipping out those 20 things I want to do in my 20s. A couple I've done and just haven't posted about yet, but a lot of them are going to take some serious time and effort, and I'm running out of the former! My 21st birthday is on May 10th, and I'd really like to give this project my all. You might want to check back on the page in a couple days, because I'm making some minor tweaks to the list. For example, #10- invent a cocktail, name it the soss. Really an endeavor that makes more sense to do in my 21st year, don't you think? So instead I'm going to make a sauce. A really freaking good sauce that would bring magic to whatever you dump it on. And name it "M Soss" (my full nickname). A couple other things need tweaking too, but we'll cross those bridges as we come to them :)

Anyways, at least for a little while I'm not going to be doing my regular features such as movie mondays, tasty tuesdays, lovely little things, etc. Since I'm just stepping back into the blogging world after going on a verrry long hiatus, I don't want to make any promises I can't keep. As I get back into my blogging habit, I'll begin reincorporating them in with my regular posts.

But I think I'll have plenty to post about anyways.

So, welcome back to GO1000F! Thanks for still being here :)

<3
Em