3 Year Blogiversary/Me at 18!

Today marks the three year anniversary of the day I sat at my little dorm room desk and decided to start a blog! Crazy. My writing has been somewhat sporadic and I don't have a ton of followers, but I am SO glad I decided to make an effort to document my life. There are so many photos and memories that I would have (and did, until browsing the archives) never taken or completely forgotten about! It is so wonderful to have the posts to look back on now and years down the road to see who I was and read what I wrote (as cringe-worthy as it might be) as I transitioned out of adolescence and into adulthood.

I was thinking the other day about how much I have changed over the years. It's almost like I can look at each year from about 14 years old to now (21) and pinpoint exactly who I was -taste in music, style, beliefs- and each year is almost completely different. I guess that's what growing up is all about. It makes me kind of nostalgic... like thinking of a group of old friends I haven't seen in a long, long time. Do you ever think about who you were at 15? or 19? I know that at both those ages I was pretty sure I had shit figured out and I did not see my tastes or aspirations ever changing. And yet I did not move to NYC and become a Broadway star.

BUT, all that stuff still makes up who I am today... all those different girls with different things they think are important. I've been thinking about maybe doing some throwback posts... looking back on me at 14, 15, 16, etc just for the fun and ridiculousness of it. Kind of like VH1s I love the 70s/80s/90s but just about me because I'm a blogger and thus inherently narcissistic. Hah.

So, in honor of this blog's third birthday, here's a little bit of who I was when this all began... 

Me at 18

When I was 18, I...
- graduated high school

Me and my fellow show choir seniors on the last day of high school!

It was raining! That's why my hair is so weird.

- moved out of my parents' house/AZ and into a little dorm room at Lewis and Clark in Portland, OR

Administration building at my gorgeous first college

 - Dated and then stopped dating and then dated and then stopped dating and then dated Stewart

- Got my first pet fish, a purply-red-aqua Beta named Mikal

- Worked at my first "real" job- Subway!

- Performed for the first and last time in a dance show - LC's Dance Extravanganza

- Spent my fall break riding in a UHaul with a bunch of other college kids to Bend, OR where we stayed in someone's aunt's vacation house.

 

 

- Ate mostly vegan, sometimes just vegetarian.

- Decided I missed AZ and my friends and my boyfriend too much and moved back at the end of the school year, just a couple weeks before my 19th birthday.

My favorite bands/artists were: Modest Mouse, Regina Spektor, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sublime, Tool

My favorite movie was: Wristcutters: A Love Story

I read: All the Harry Potters again, the first two books of His Dark Materials, Siddhartha, Kneller's Happy Campers

My best friend(s) was(were): Stewart, Sharney, Megan

The most important things to me were: Hanging out with my friends, living a vegan lifestyle, dating Stewart because I liked him soooo muuuuchhhh, coming home to arizona so I could continue hanging out with my friends and dating Stewart and cooking vegan food.

18 was a pretty weird year for me. When I look back on it I think I really had no idea who I was and was just trying to figure it out. That's probably pretty common for the first year of college. I have lots of great memories of exploring Portland, flying home to visit my best friends in Prescott, experiencing the whole dorm-meal plan-college in a new place thing, and leaving high school behind. The summer before college was one of the best ever, and luckily I filmed a good deal of it so I have a nice little video reminder of that time. I won't put any of it here, because we were being dumb 18 year olds.. but it's pretty cool to have.

I also still used Myspace when I was 18 and got a lot of these pictures from there. So old school.

Here's to another year of blogging!

Irrational Fears

hello lovelies,
I'm afraid I've been terribly busy- in the past three days I've cooked around 40 recipes (many of which are self-created), calculated the calorie count for each recipe, and the written each recipe down. Right now I'm in the process of typing all the recipes up and simultaneously converting them to serve 30 people. This whole catering for a small camp thing is a lot more work than I expected! Especially with my greece trip fast approaching. I have a whole slew of things I have to do for that as well, but I've had to put it on the back burner for now.

Anyways, this has kept me from blogging regularly. Also, I have been doing the wardrobe challenge but have been way too busy (and bug bitten the first few days) to snap/upload photos. I will probably do a collective post at the end of this week to show you all seven of my hipster-ed out outfits.

 I did want to stop by for just a few minutes today and talk about irrational fears, though. Do you have any? I have a few that I can think of and probably several more that I can't. They're so silly, and I usually don't let them bother me but they are often in the back of my head. I suppose as long as they aren't interfering with my life it's ok. Here are a few of my more ridiculous ones:

1. I have an irrational fear of walking in front of a grocery cart. If I go shopping with Stewart and he's pushing the cart, I can't walk in front of it without being terrified that he's accidentally going to push quicker than I'm walking and run over my ankles. Death by run over ankles. It's terrifying!
2. Whenever I am carrying a tea pot with one hand by the handle, I get worried that the handle will break off and the entire pot of tea will come crashing to the floor and ceramic and boiling water will go everywhere. I'm sure the manufacturers of tea pots are smart enough to make handles that are strong enough to avoid this issue, but it still scares me.
3. If I go to the bathroom- at my house or anyone else's house- and the shower curtain is closed, I have to check behind it before doing anything else. There could be a murderer or a drunk kid or a giant spider behind there! It's so much easier for people to just leave their shower curtains open. Less aesthetic, yes... but also way less stressful for me and all the other crazies out there.

Do you guys have any irrational fears? I'd love to hear about them. Cause, you know, there's nothing more amusing than finding out about someone's bizarre/OCD side :)

Love you all! Hopfully back to regular posting soon :)

<3
Em

Party it Up!

A blog party? What could possibly be better! I'm a bit late getting started on this, since there are only 3 more days left of the partAy, but I wanted to be sure and get my blog out there! For more information on exactly what the blog party is and how it started, click the image above :)

From what I can gather, the blog party is basically just a way for everyone to get out in the blog world and let each other know "hey! I'm here! and this is what my blog is about!" I think it's so great that this kind of thing exists... especially since I was just talking about how the bloggerverse is a family last week!

This is also an astronomically better way to find blogs than clicking the next blog button on the blogger navbar, at least for the blogs in my niche. There are literally hundreds of bloggers who have put their links up, and then all these blogs are divided by the content of the blog- we've got a whole bunch of mommy blogs (no surprise there!), a handful of daddy blogs, some religious blogs, business blogs, and the categories I fit into- specialty blogs and daily life and opinion blogs. I can't wait to get started and find tons of new blogger friends!

So, without further adieu, here is my party post :)

This is me. My name is Emily, but there's a whole slew of names that I go by. For instance, my boyfriend Stewart calls me Emilem.

The two of us were born and grew up in Prescott, Arizona and we went to the same high school, but we didn't start hanging out until senior year. Now we both live down in Tucson, Arizona where I'm going to U of A with a Media Arts major and Classics minor, and he's going to Pima Community College with an emphasis in history. We go on hikes, invent themed drinks, play boardgames, read Harry Potter, and spend far too much time watching things on Netflix Instant.

My blog is about us and our lives sometimes, but it's about a whole lot of other stuff too! It's about all the bits and pieces that make me what I am- all my interests, my hobbies, my favorite things, my friends and family... basically it's me in website form.

So who am I? I'm an (almost) 20 year old small-town girl living in the city where my parents met. I love movies and media of any kind really, which is why I started my Movie Mondays feature. I'm an avid cook and I want to know how to cook EVERYTHING, although I myself am a vegan (with good cheese and sushi being my only exceptions). I've got a lot of recipes up on this site, some of them vegan, lots of them vegetarian, and even one or two with meat. I really love music, my favorite genres being indie rock or folk like First Aid Kit, Horse Feathers, and Modest Mouse. I love lots of stuff though, and I'm always looking for new suggestions!

I'm always in the middle of some book. Right now I'm reading both Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar as well as Eat, Pray, Love. I've got a long list of books to read after that, too :) I ride my bike to school (which I hate... it's kind of like reading for class, you know? When it's something you have to do it's not as enjoyable) and drive my white subaru outback everywhere else. I love thrifting, crafting, and I'm hoping to improve my meager sewing skills very soon so that I can make a ton of cool stuff for our new apartment this fall.

One of my favorite things to do is work out, because the feeling after you've run 3 miles and get to stop and cool down is one of the best highs in the world. I'm awesome at procrastinating (I should be getting ready for my 2 pm class!), and would like to spend more time doing all the things I come up with in my whirlwind of a mind. I love gray skies and rain, but living in portland made me also love sunshine. I love arizona, although I'd like to leave it again for a little while. I collect business cards unintentionally... I just take them from everywhere I go and don't want to throw them away. They're an amazing way to document the things you've done and the places you've gone.

I try to live my life with joy and appreciation, and always look for the little things to find pleasure in because it makes every day fun and special. I love to sing, and spent many years throughout middle school, high school, and college in choirs. I also love to dance, but I'm not terribly good at it. I drink pots and pots of tea and love going out to coffee with friends. Blogging is one of my favorite things to do- I just love taking photos, thinking up fun posts, and documenting my life.

What else is there to say? probably a zillion things, but I'll leave it at that for now! That's me, my blog, my boyrfriend, and my life. Now it's your turn to tell me about yours :)

30 Day Challenge- 06

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

1. I haven't dyed my hair since I was 13
2. I used to be really, really into broadway. I still like musical theatre but it's not my life. My favorite shows are Rent and Spring Awakening
3. When I was younger I played the harp
4. I lived in the same house from the time I was brought home from the hospital up until I moved away to college when I was 18. When I'm home during breaks, I still sleep in the same bedroom.
5. I have always loved watching home movies of myself and my sister. I even liked the ones from before I was born.
6. My favorite actresses are Kate Winslet and Rachel McAdams. I think they are both spectacularly beautiful and talented.
7. I bought a ps2 just so I could play kingdom hearts. The only other ps2 game i own is a harry potter and the chamber of secrets game.
8. I have only ever dated dark haired boys.
9. I'm a film major and classics minor. I'm going to Greece and Turkey this summer to study.
10. I got a perfect score on my ACT Reading Comprehension
11. I drive a white stick-shift subaru outback that I bought from my aunt and uncle.
12. I have absurdly poor vision. I think I might be legally blind. I've been wearing contact lenses since I was eleven.
13. In highschool I played Meg (the oldest sister) in our musical production of Little Women.
14. I really miss Portland and I hope to move back there someday. Probably not to settle down, but just to live for a little while.
15. In elementary school my friends and I would play harry potter at recess and lunch. I was hermione.
16. I've been going to a sufi camp in Northern California since I was 3 years old.
17. In once walked to the downtown square at 3 or 4 in the morning and ran through the sprinklers.
18. I own every season of friends and have watched them all dozens of times.
19. One of my favorite meals is just cheese, bread, and fruit. Wine doesn't hurt either.
20. Tequila is the only hard liquor that doesn't make my stomach turn when I sniff or taste it.
21. Even though there are lots of career paths I think it would be fun to follow, I mostly just want to be able to stay at home, take care of my family, blog, cook, and maybe write novels.
22. This summer (after I get back from europe) I'm going to be the head chef at a camp for 20-40 young adults. I am both excited and terrified.
23. I have an irrational fear of getting hit in the ankles by shopping carts that are behind me.
24. I've been an on and off vegetarian/vegan since I was 12
25. When I first saw The Fellowship of the Ring, I decided I wanted to marry Elijah Wood. Then I saw the second harry potter movie (at age 12) and decided I wanted to marry Daniel Radcliffe.
26. When I was younger I wanted to be a scientist or paleontologist when I grew up. My grandparents would buy me chemistry sets and those blocks of sand with plastic dinosaur bones inside to be excavated and I LOVED them. Science was my worst subject in public school.
27. There was a period of time when I watched Moulin Rouge every single night before I went to bed.
28. I enjoy cleaning
29. I have homebrewed honey mead several times. Sometime I'll post about it probably
30. I wouldn't at all mind settling down in the same place I grew up, but I'd like to live lots of other places between now and when that time comes. I'd also like to keep traveling with my family until I'm too old to get out of bed.