a little off...

is how i'm feeling today. While I've been bombarding you with wardrobe posts I've actually been on a fun little family camping trip with my parents, my sister, stewart, and my sister's boyfriend. It was really great and refreshing and enjoyable but also very tiring and strenuous in the way camping trips can be. I loooove getting outdoors and tenting it up, but after I'm finally home I always feel exhausted, dirty, and in need of some serious me-time. This trip was no different, although there was the added discomfort of having a million bug bites. literally, a million. We went on this crazy awesome hike that involved scaling the side of a mountain, but every time we stopped we would be attacked by a cloud of no-see-ums or gnats or something. At first we didn't think they were biting us, but oh were we wrong. My dad and my sister looked like they had come down with a serious case of chicken pox and I... well, for some reason the insects decided to only bite me on the face and neck. So I look like I came down with a serious case of puberty. ugh >.< I'm also mildly sunburnt and my upper body muscles are a little sore from the whole scaling the mountain thing... and even though I took a hour long bath followed by a shower, I still feel kind of dirty and blah.

What I really need to do is doll myself up and go out so I can feel refreshed and pretty again... but I think I'm going to confine myself to my house until these bites die down. I'm also going to skip today's wardrobe post although I will tell you what my theme of choice is going to be in a few.

I still have about a million things left on my to-do list between the youth retreat and my ever-approaching trip to greece, and I'm stressing hard. Tomorrow it's going to be all systems go and I'm going to just cook, cook, cook all day long. Maybe I can whip all this stuff out in like three days, and then finish my greece stuff in two days, and then have like 1 week left where I can just relax. That would be splendid.

I'll tell you more about the camping trip (complete with lots of pics) in a later post, but for now I'll just tell you what I've been doing since I got back. Stew and I went out with a couple friends last night to our old stomping grounds- the courthouse square. It was a nice, cool evening and we walked around and eventually ended up getting coffee and chatting. After that we went on a random adventure to the top of a hill called acker park where stewart and one of the other people we were with had burried a case 2 years ago for a game of godfather. Unsurprisingly we were not able to find the case in the dark... but it was fun to do a bit of a night hike. We then went to hang out at our friend's house where I sipped on a bottle of mead I had recieved for my birthday and we chatted until about 1am. Then stew and I came home and passed out to Big Fish.

Today I slept way longer than I wanted to because I didn't want to get up before stew, and then we went to lunch with my sis, her boyfriend, and my dad. We went to Kendalls, an old 50's style burger joint where everything is covered in grease... needless to say I felt awful about 5 minutes after finishing my meal. Stewart left to head back down to tucson, I drove my sister and her boyfriend to the airport, and then I decided to go home and teach myself the guitar until I was afraid that my fingers were going to start bleeding. Now I'm here, writing this blog and about to go for a run to work off that mid-day nastiness. For some reason I just felt like telling you guys everything that's going on. um, yeah.

Anyways, I'm really excited about what I'm going to do for this wardrobe challenge week 2 situation. As I've said before it's a wild card so I get to choose my theme for the week!

have you guys seen those funny things online that are like the evolution of the hipster or the various types of hipster? I find them to be hilarious and also remarkably accurate. I won't mince words... I definitely fit into the category of a hipster, even though I think most people scoff at that term and claim they are way better than hipsters. And everyone and their mother makes fun of hipsters. Honestly though, 'hipster' is such a broad term and it includes a ton of people. So many, in fact, that there are tons of subcategories of hipsters which are all totally different from each other. For the second week of the wardrobe challenge, I'm going to represent a few of these different types of hipsters. It's going to be hella awesome, yo. bahaha.

I didn't take pictures today because like I said before, puberty all over the face. Just not feeling very photo worthy. However, I still styled myself according to my theme.

Today I was a granola hipster. These are the hipsters that were likely raised by aged hippies- they wear tie dye, cutt-offs, and hiking boots and eat artichokes dipped in veganaise. They could very possibly have dreadlocks and enjoy being in the outdoors and making stuff out of hemp.

I wore:
a cut-up tie dye tank top that I made back in highschool
a thrifted flannel shirt
cut-off daisy dukes (ross)
suede knee-high boots (wet seal)
a necklace with a stone pendant I received as a gift
a pink bandana head band
a braided brown belt (wet seal)

I looked cute, but definitely very granola. Not something I would wear every day for sure, but I bet everyone thought I was a vegan democrat.
which is..um.. true.. lol

anyways, tomorrow will be another type of hipster and hopefully these bites die down enough for me to snap some pictures.

sorry for the absurdly long post about nothing in particular. I just roll like that.

<3
Em

today is a very special day

because today is the day that Stewie gets his license/car back! Hooray! I won't go into all the nitty gritty details, but basically almost 3 years ago stewart was wrongfully convicted of driving under the influence (if you're wondering how that could happen, consider az's 30 day law), was convinced by his crappy though expensive lawyer to plead guilty for an alcohol-related DUI, and ever since has been jumping through all kinds of hoops such as paying a 2000 dollar fine, attending drug counseling classes (at 30 bucks a week), spending a night in jail (which again, had to be paid for), and losing his license- which for me has meant carting him around everywhere! But today, after 2 years of suspended license, he is finally getting it back. I've been excited for this day FOREVER because I always complain to stewie about how I give him rides to his school all the time but I have to bike myself to the university and back at least once or twice a day. Now I can finally wear skirts to school without leggings underneath and not be afraid that something will fly up while I zip down the street on my bicycle :)

There are still a few more hoops for stewie to jump through, like a super expensive insurance that they failed to mention in the original punishment and having to have a (again very expensive) breathalyzer in his car for the next year or two. but the important thing is that stewie can finally drive again and he is finally getting his beloved ragged old maroon vw golf back. Hooray for today!

30 Day Challenge- 26

Hello lovelies! It's been a busy week and I've been so caught up in renovating the look of this blog (I'm not finished yet ^^) that I haven't been spending much time blogging! March should be a much easier month than february though, so hopefully I will have lots of time to write.

I have three tests this week but after that there's only one more week until spring break! I can't wait to have a nice long week off to go up to prescott and spend time with my parents and some old friends. Stewie and I are thinking about going to the renaissance festival as well- I haven't been since I was a kid and it's only 20 bucks for a full day- sounds good to me!

Anyways, I'm going to trudge forward with the next prompt for the 30 day challenge. perhaps I should just call it the 30 question challenge? haha. If I've learned anything from doing this thing it's that I'm way too busy and all-over-the-place to stick to a strict 30 day regimen!. oh well, it's been fun anyways. I probably would have gotten seriously annoyed with it if I stuck to doing it every day.

Day 26 - What kind of person attracts you.

I would post pictures of all the boys I've dated in the past so you could see how similar they all are (there was even a time when I dated 3 chris's in a row), but I think that would be pretty creepy. I'm sure they'd rather not have their faces plastered on my blog forever. Instead I'll just describe their similarities.

All the guys I've dated have had short dark brown hair. Stewie's hair was a little longer when we first started dating, but he cut it short after just a couple months.

They've all had either blue or hazel/green eyes. never brown. No idea why, and I don't have anything against brown eyes... the guys I like just never have them though.

Nerdy. All the guys I've dated have been nerds, even if i didn't think they were when I first started dating them. A couple of them you would never expect to be nerdy, but then they go and play wow for 17 hours straight or something. Maybe all guys are secretly nerds?

There are a few other similarities as well, but as I think about it a lot of the things about the guys I dated before stewie I would never find attractive now. A lot about what I first liked about stewie was that he was much different from the guys I had dated before. He was (and still is) just so cool, and hipster (before hipster was a bad thing), and suave. He's also kind, creative, and fun. We're really similar in that we both like to keep our living spaces clean, we both jump at the opportunity to dress up in costume, we both prefer quality food and drink that might be a little more expensive over cheap, quick, and easy cuisine, and we both would love to travel the world. There are endless other similarities too, but it would take far too long to list them all :)

So I guess the answer to the question is this is the kind of guy I'm attracted to:

Our Cheap and Lovely VDay

I thought I'd post about the Vday stew and I shared because we managed to have an amazing time without spending a huge amount of money- something that I think everyone probably would like to do! We're pretty much over big extravagant gifts and expensive dinners at exclusive restaurants... our valentines day was simple, fun, and easy on both our wallets.

Our big event was going to the zoo... so much fun! 7 bucks a person, and stew paid. I took a bunch of pics on my new phone since I tragically left my camera at a friend's house in phoenix last weekend... but I think they're still pretty cool ^^

The tucson zoo is really awesome- it's divided into an Africa section, an Asia section, and a South America section. We saw tigers, lions, giraffes, elephants, monkeys, bears (polar and otherwise), lots of birds (including flamingos!), the largest known gerbil which looked like a HUGE ginnea pig (pic below but it's kind of hard to see), and plenty of other things. It was great!

this is the huge gerbil!!

monkey chewing on a stick! so cute

After the zoo, we went to a cute little greek place right down the street that we've talked about trying a zillion times but had never actually been to. We got a chicken gyro and a falafel wrap which was delicious- and the total came to about 13 bucks after tip. I paid, which put us at pretty much even.

I had to go to class, but that night I came home and we decided to go out to dinner. I wanted italian so i looked up some places on yelp and found a little hole-in-the-wall brick oven pizza place that sounded really good. It was absolutely delicious! Stew and I shared an antipasto appetizer (I was seriously full after just this!) and then a small personal pizza that had prosciutto, olives, mushrooms, and mozzarella- oh yeah, and they make their own fresh mozzarella. yum!!

We ended up taking leftovers home for lunch the next day. We split the check and it was about 12$ each- which puts us both at about 25 bucks so far :)

We then went to the fry's down the street from our house and bought a marie callenders pie (3 $ each), and we decided to pick out one present for each other, with the agreement that it would be less than 5$. I picked out a jar of nutella for stewie (can you say best present ever?) and he bought me a beautiful white rose. So, that puts us each at an additional 8$- equaling about 32$ each for a whole day jam-packed with delicious food and wonderful fun! I imagine some people spent 32$ each on just dinner- maybe even more!

It was a really wonderful day, and I'm glad we didn't try to over do it or buy really ridiculous things for each other. I had a great time and i can't wait for our next cheap and simple vday!

Hope yours was a blast as well :)

Love,
Em

Something new and fun

Good morning lovelies,
I'ts 8 am right now- I woke up an hour ago, made a pot of tea, a bowl of oatmeal for stewie, and cut up an apple for myself. I then ate breakfast in bed before the sun was even up. That's right. I'm one of those early riser folk these days. So far I really like it. It's like there are 24 hours in the day or something and dinner is supposed to happen at 7, not 11. weird. :)

Anyways, today I am going to start a fun little 30 day posting challenge thing that I stole from my friend Mandy over at Smiles Awake You.... I'll go ahead and post the full list of prompts here so that any of you that want to use it for your own blog can do so!

Day 01 - Your current relationship, if single discuss how single life is.

Day 02 - Where you’d like to be in 10 years.

Day 03 - Your views on drugs and alcohol.

Day 04 - Your views on religion.

Day 05 - A time you thought about ending your own life.

Day 06 - A photo of yourself and write 30 interesting facts about yourself.

Day 07 - Your zodiac sign and if you think it fits your personality.

Day 08 - A moment you felt the most satisfied with your life.

Day 09 - How you hope your future will be like.

Day 10 – Someone who came into your life unexpected and made an impact.

Day 11 - Put your ipod on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.

Day 12 - Bullet your whole day.

Day 13 - Somewhere you’d like to move or visit.

Day 14 – A photo of a cherished memory.

Day 15 - 5 people in your life right now who mean the most.

Day 16 - Your views on mainstream music.

Day 17 - Your highs and lows of this past year.

Day 18 – Something that makes you laugh.

Day 19 - Disrespecting your parents.

Day 20 - How important you think education is.

Day 21 - One of your favorite shows.

Day 22 – Something you want to do before you die.

Day 23 - Give pictures of 5 guys who are famous who you find attractive.

Day 24 – Somewhere you would like to travel.

Day 25 – A photo you took.

Day 26 - What kind of person attracts you.

Day 27 - A problem that you have had.

Day 28 - Something that you miss.

Day 29 - Goals for the next 30 days.

Day 30 - Your highs and lows of this month.

 

Alright. I decided I might as well just get started with day one since I'm here at my computer typing.

Day 01 - Your current relationship, if single discuss how single life is.

 My boyfriend Stewart and I knew of each other long before we became friends or dated. I had a circle of friends in middle school and early highscool that I left about a semester into my sophomore year- around the same time Stewart joined it. He also shared a math class with my ex-boyfriend during junior year, and everytime my ex and I would walk past him the two of them would say hello. The summer before my senior year of highschool I began to rejoin the (completely transformed) group of friends that I had been friends with several years before. At the time I was kind-of seeing a boy I had befriended through my theatre and choir classes. My summer was basically split- one day I'd be hanging out with my hippie, independent, and sometimes wild old friends and the next day I'd be going to church and having a backyard barbecue with my straight-edge, clean-cut theatre friends. It was pretty confusing.

I don't remember exactly when Stewart and I began hanging out but I do remember one night when he and my friend Alex invited me to hangout at Stewart's older brother's apartment. Stewart would later move into the same apartment, and the apartment would eventually be the place where I (and pretty much all my other friends) spent every not-in-school moment. That summer night, though, Brian (stew's bro) was the only one that lived there and it was just the four of us hanging out. Alex had brought his hookah and brian had bought a 12 pack of newcastle and we basically just sat out on the porch, overlooking downtown prescott and chatting until around 1 in the morning. 

After that night, I started hanging out at the apartment on a regular basis. I developed a crush on stewart that at the time I didn't think was that obvious but apparently it was haha. We didn't get together right away, but some weekend night after drinking a couple beers we would cuddle or hold hands. Eventually he kissed me on one of those nights, and we started dating soon after. For a while it was great but unfortunately highschool-us was not a very good us. We broke up at the end of senior year and I'm so glad we did. Highschool is really a terrible time to try to date someone. How did I ever do it? 

Even though we had broken up, we still had the same friends and hung out at the apartment all through summer (stewart lived there by this time). At first it was awkward but after a few weeks it was fine. I noticed stewart starting to flirt with me,  which made me both amused and apprehensive. We started to spend more time together alone and found that neither of us was the same person we had been just a few months before. We spent the last half of summer in a blissfully happy union... but unfortunately when summer ended I flew off the portland to go to school and we broke up. 

We still wrote back and forth to each other in a pretty notebook that stew had given me before I left, though. Sometimes it was unsettling hearing about what he was doing in prescott and I'm sure he found it unsettling to know about some of the things I was doing in Oregon. When I came back for thanksgiving though we were both extremely happy to see each other, and when I came back two weeks after that for my month-long winter vacation, we ended up getting back together.

During my spring semester stew and I skyped frequently, and on valentines day we opened the presents we had gotten for each other (and mailed) while video chatting. I eventually decided I wanted to transfer to U of A (for numerour reasons, only one of them being the fact that i'd be closer to stewie) and when my semester in portland ended the two of us spent a wonderful 4 month summer together. I got my job at Mama Edda's, he worked at a subway, an we took lots of fun trips to the salt river and california. In august we both moved down to Tucson, where we are now. 

Now we spend almost every second together, and we're constantly talking and laughing. It's been over 2.5 years since we first met, and over 2 years since we first dated. Neither of us is even close to what we were back then, thank goodness. This summer we will be moving in together and hopefully we will continue our happy, wonderful relationship.

Whew, and there you have it- a full account of how stewart and I met and started dating. I'll try to not make the other 30 day posts so long!

Have a lovely Friday everyone!!

<3

Em

Date #3: A Walk to the Bridge

This is one of the ideas on the list of 100 dates stew and i found on the internet:

"36. Find a bridge and walk across it; the view can't be beat."

 Well, there aren't too many bridges in Tucson (unless you count the Interstate overpasses, which aren't really recommended for pedestrians to walk across), but there are one or two in prescott. While we were up there for thanksgiving last weekend, we went to our favorite coffee shop, cuppers, and then walked downtown to the town square and then a couple blocks over to an abandoned railroad bridge that we used to hang out at/longboard to in high school. You have to climb up a dirt hill to get up to the bridge, but it's pretty cool once you're there. I noticed that since the last time I had been there someone had brought up a little bench to sit on. The view from the bridge isn't spectacular, but it's still fun to be up there. Here are some pics!

Most the leaves had already fallen off the trees, but there were a few that still had some beautiful fall color, like the one above. It was reeeeally cold, with lows in the negatives at night time, but I really enjoyed it! The day stew and I went downtown to the bridge was one of the warmer days, and I actually wanted to take off my sweater and scarf to be more comfortable.

All in all, it was another nice, fun and thankfully cheap date :)

<3

Date #1: Time Capsule

Hooray for Date #1! This date took place yesterday, November 13th 2010. I have to remember, because Stew and I are going to try to crank out all 100 in one year.

On the list we got online, this one was actually one of the last ideas and it suggested making a capsule and burying it to be dug up in ten years. Stewie and I both agreed that that was absolutely ridiculous, since we're only 19 and 20 and ten years is a long time to ask us to keep in touch. We decided to shoot for one year instead, which works well with one 1 year of dates thing.

We took things from both of our apartments that reminded us of each other and put them in a cleaned out peanut jar. It was really fun finding different things from our relationship! here are a few:

 These are two things Stewie gave to me a long time ago. The bracelet he made for his senior math class (something about combinations and patterns... remember those?) and gave to me after. That was like 2 years ago. The little coin purse is from a year and a half ago. Stewie used to work at a little privately owned movie theatre in prescott and all summer long me and a couple of our other friends would just watch free movies when we had nothing better to do. I miss that soooooooo much. The theatre closed about a month after I moved to Portland unfortunately. Anyways, they had a few of those 50 cent machines in the lobby where you can get candy or little prizes and while Stewie was working one day he went over and got this little purse. I think he put a candy or something in it and then brought it to me while I was watching some movie (star trek maybe?). It was really sweet :)

 These are some pictures of various things we share and love... the show Dollhouse by Joss Whedon (soooo sooo good!!!), the movie Wristcutters: A Love Story, the tv show Friends, the Harry Potter series, arizona southern sweet tea, and jalapeno cheddar cheetos. Yum!

 The keychain is one I got from paris when I was 14. I got about 30 of them and gave them to all my friends, some of whom still had them when I started hanging out with Stewart 3 years later! I think stew saw one of them and liked it so I brought him one of the extras I still had. The business card is from the Arizonan motel in Flagstaff. Summer of 09 Stew and I tried to go camping and ended up driving right into a crazy rainstorm right around Camp verde! So, we decided to alter our course and spend the night in flagstaff, where we ate pita pit and hung out in barnes and noble and stayed in this awesome hotel. The next day we ate our would have been camping food in the car- we even heated up our veggie burgers in a gas station microwave haha.

All through last year while I was in Portland, Stewart and I sent a notebook back and forth to each other. We would keep it for a couple weeks at a time each. At the start of the year I bought two plastic bubble-wrap lined envelopes so we could reuse them- one with my address on it and one with his. We decided that before we sent the notebook off each time, we should draw something on the package! This is the one I sent to him- the one he sent me has different drawings.

We also wrote letters to each other to be read when we dig up the time capsule in one year's time. We aren't going to bury it until we go home for thanksgiving in a couple weeks though, because my parent's house/backyard is the only place I'm 100% certain we will still have access to then!

Making the time capsule was really fun. I think i did it once before, with girl scouts maybe. come to think of it, i don't remember ever digging that one back up haha. Anyways, you don't have to make one with your significant other, you can make it with a friend or family member or just by yourself. I've always thought it was a cool idea to preserve yourself at a moment in time and then be able to uncover it in the future. If you're so inclined, I suggest you make one :) there are even online sites that do virtual time capsules if you aren't into the whole finding various knick knacks and burying them in the ground thing. Try http://www.electronictimecapsule.com/time-capsule/index.php

After we made our capsule, stew and I made vegetarian Chicken tuscany (which was basically just lightly roasted red peppers stuffed with chicken patties rolled up with mozarella and spinach and baked- simple and delicious) and watched HP 3 and 4. tonight is Subway for dinner (blegh... sooo sick of it!) and HP 5 and 6! Hope your sunday was lovely and I will see you tomorrow.

Love,
Em

Webcam Fun

This is the 50th post of GO1000F which is both exciting and also kind of pathetic because i've had this thing since March of this year! Ah, well... I'm posting much more now and I'm going to keep it that way. This is just going to be a short and silly post of all the ridiculous pics stewie and i took last night while we were messing around with the extras on my computer's webcam.

 One of the extras makes you look like you're breathing fire when you open your mouth. We took about a zillion pictures trying to make it look like we were both doing it, but i guess it only works for one person. this pic is still hilarious though :)

 Since stewie couldn't breathe fire, I let him be the censored-eye man.

 Me as a Tim Burton character!

 two-headed emilem!! lol

 Creepy fat unibrow'd double-necked stewbean

 Stewie as a Tim Burton Character!

 lol^^

 bitey monsters

 covergirl and boy :) I didn't get to choose the captions on the magazine though :(

 my favorite! we look so pathetic.

arrrgggggg!

haha. that was our silly friday night. enjoy the rest of your weekend!