Vision board magic.

For the past few months, my cousin Lyndsay and I kept promising each other that we would sit down and make vision boards together. I had been hooked in the idea for a while; she learned about it after a spa retreat last summer.

Last night, we FINALLY sat down with my mom, some sangria, and a crazy collection of magazines and got to work.

As most impromptu girls nights are, this was an escape from the stresses of life and an instant mood lifter. Work has been insanely busy and I was running dangerously close to empty in the emotional/spiritual sense. This was very necessary, and to top it off, I'm in love with the board I created.

Working (and chatting).

Finished product!

Favorite quote.

Favorite image (yes, that's T-Swift but it was included because of the pink sparkly dress).

If you've never made a vision board, I highly recommend it. Just flip through some magazines and tear out what speaks to you, even if it doesn't make sense. You can always toss some out, but I found that somehow everything gelled together effortlessly - it took two hours to find the images and only about two minutes to lay them all out.

Happy Friday!

summer photo challenge: week 8.

hosted by Stopping for Daisies!

This week our challenge was black & white. I took a couple of artsy photos yesterday, but then I remembered the ridiculous photos I'd taken with Lyndsay during our girl's night on Monday and decided I liked those much better. This one is my favorite - it shows how crazy we are during our dance parties. (Yes, I realize our heads are cut off, but I sort of like it better that way. Not sure why.)

never alone.

{Dancing to Britney Spears; Christmas 2008}

Last night I had the most perfect date night with Lyndsay. She gave me a PostSecret book for my birthday and we bonded over the secrets we loved. We ordered Chili's To-Go, curled up in our sweats on the sofa and cried our faces off to P.S. I Love You (seriously, why did I even bother putting on makeup?). There were discussions about anxiety, family, and boys, particularly how much she wanted to meet E because I seemed so darn happy.

The night ended with an empty bottle of Chardonnay, hugs, and a rekindled friendship that I deeply missed. Although we've had our issues, she will forever be the person I can go to for anything, one of my biggest cheerleaders, and the little sister I never had.

Reminder: Don't forget to enter my giveaway! It closes Sunday with the winner picked on Monday.

christmas weekend recap.

Christmas Eve was relatively quiet and relaxing, just the way I needed it to be. We visited with my mom's side of the family at her brother's house in South Jersey, which we visit only every couple of years. They recently redid their kitchen and it was beautiful. I should know, I spent plenty of time in there since all the "kids" still sit in the kitchen while the "adults" eat in the dining room. (In case you couldn't tell, I don't appreciate being almost 24 years old and still being relegated to a completely separate table.)

All the grandkids together, a rare occurrence.


My family with my grandparents.

Aside from that, we had a nice time. I chatted with my grandparents, we were able to maintain conversation during dinner at the kids' table (the last time we had Christmas Eve there, we sat in silence most of the time), and we took some perfectly awkward family photos. Before I knew it, we were on our way home to get ready for the following day.

After changing into my Santa pajamas, I got to work baking cupcakes, making mini cheesecakes, waiting for Firetruck Santa, and opening presents. Unfortunately, Firetruck Santa never turned up (he went down BOTH blocks on either side of us, but skipped our block. Rude!), but I did make out pretty well with gifts. I received a Wii Fit, a SYTYCD sweatshirt, Beauty & the Beast on DVD, the Jack Johnson To The Sea album, a pair of leggings, a cute top, and some Victoria's Secret body spray.

Christmas Day was a lot more exciting. I was up early setting the table, putting together appetizers, and doing any last-minute cleaning. We opened gifts soon after everyone arrived, which was an event. I made out with a new headband, clutch, two adorable shirts and a jewelry rack.

New clutch and headband from Lynds!

My cousins absolutely adored the bracelets I bought them - they were silver chain-link with a heart charm that I had engraved with the words 'olive you' on the back. It's an inside joke that my dad started, but Lynds and I always say it to each other. Needless to say, she got a little teary-eyed when she opened it. Considering that was my favorite gift to give this year, I'm so very glad it was well-received. Another hit gift? My brother's two-case pack of Guinness from my aunt. He was a happy, happy boy.

Her little face! I almost cried myself.

My brother's favorite gift pretty much ever.

The best gift of the night, however, had to my dad's. As I've mentioned several times, his favorite Christmas movie is A Christmas Story. He watches it every year and quotes in non-stop. So, around the time of Thanksgiving, my aunt decided to get him a miniature night-light version of the leg lamp. She and Lynds then took it a step further and wrapped it up in a large box and wrote FRAGILE on it, just like the movie, and, well, here's how it went down:



We snapped a handful of pictures before sitting down for dinner, which was delicious. I was feeling really good and anxiety free, which might have had something to do with the lovely cranberry-and-orange-juice-mixed-with-raspberry-vodka cocktail I was sipping all afternoon.

My girls and I, all dressed up for Pretty Girl Christmas.

My brother wasn't really having any of this picture-taking nonsense.

There, a smile!

Once upon a time, we used to fight over holding my cousin John as a baby. Now he's way taller than both of us.

Dinner table!

After handling dinner clean up, we sat down for a few games. There was a quick round of A Christmas Story trivia - the game didn't go over as well as I'd planned - and then we stuck to our traditional game of Outburst. More pictures were taken before we sat down to a jam-packed dessert table.

My cousin Clancy playing game show hostess.

Traditional stair picture, with the prompt that we should put on scary faces.

Height order Brady Bunch picture, complete with gang signs by the guys.

Charlie's Angels.

Once dessert was finished, I had to drive my cousin out to the parkway. When I returned, the parents were involved in some Serious Talk, so we played Wii and then Lynds and I iced cupcakes for the following day. Unfortunately, due to the snow, there was no party the next day. I was seriously bummed, but it was nice to have another day to sleep and recover from my exhausting (and fabulously fun) week.

The snow has been a relaxing little break for me. I should be plenty rested for New Year's Eve festivities.

How was your Christmas? Did you get anything good? Spill!

grace in small things.

It's been a long, long while since I've done one of these posts, but I think I'll pick up the habit again. Collecting my lovely moments at the end of every week is good for my soul.

• Getting a great big hug from my favorite little girl, Isabella (my dance teacher's daughter). I haven't spent too much time with her recently wasn't sure she remembered me now that she's a bit older, but when I showed up at the wake on Wednesday night, she smiled and ran right up to me and nearly bowled me over.
  
  
• Finding the perfect game for Christmas on my shopping trip with Lynds - it's based on A Christmas Story and we're surprising our parents with it.
  
  
• Visiting my alma mater and feeling like I've never left. The drive down felt like I was going home, I got to park in my old (and always frustrating) parking deck, and hanging out in Lynds's dorm made me want to go back immediately.
  
  
• Spending quality time with Lynds, complete with ridiculous car dancing to Christmas songs, buying gifts for ourselves from Victoria's Secret, and gushing about boys.
  
  
• Planning to grab dinner with Natalie's brother (who will be further known as E so I stop mentally associating him with Nat), which I'm trying not to freak out about because I always think five million steps ahead of myself and really, it's just dinner between friends.
  
  
• Filling up my calendar, chatting with friends, finding the perfect gifts, and crossing things off my to-do list.

A quick little reminder that if you'd like a Christmas (or other holiday) card from me, just click over and fill out this form!

belated long weekend recap.

Is it really Wednesday already? Yikes. I really got knocked on my ass by a cold I woke up with on Sunday until right now. Anyway, here's my belated recap of my long weekend, because it was just too fun to not talk about.

My Thanksgiving was calm and casual. I woke up early to watch the Macy’s Parade on TV (the beginning of my demise, I’m sure, considering I got only five hours of sleep) while perusing the Black Friday ads and drinking tea to settle my stomach. We headed over to my aunt and grandparents’ two-family house in North Jersey and had a relaxing afternoon of chatting, looking at old family photographs, drinking wine, and of course, eating. There were too many biscuits and the typical myriad of desserts from our favorite bakery, which meant lots of yummy leftovers to take home.

The cousins with Grandma & Grandpa on Thanksgiving.

On Friday I had plans with Lynds for a food coma recovery day, which entailed salads from Quiznos for lunch and lying around in sweats. After catching up on family drama – and boy, was there plenty – we settled in with my aunt to watch A Christmas Story. This movie was chosen specifically because my dad and aunt both love and quote it, but Lynds and I had yet to see the entire thing.

For about the past four years, we swore to watch it on Christmas Eve when it’s played for twenty-four hours on TBS, but we never got around to it. It was wonderful to finally watch it from start to finish, and we joked that we no longer had any more life goals because this was the ultimate accomplishment. I guess we just peaked at ages nineteen and twenty-three.

Saturday was Natalie and her fiancé, Kyle’s engagement party, which I arrived at much later than intended. But, the party was still a blast. I got to catch up not only with Danielle and her boyfriend, but also a few people from our college crew I hadn’t seen in a while and the couple’s hometown friends. We talked about our careers as a slideshow of college pictures played in the background, occasionally causing us to pause, laugh, and reminisce. And, most exciting of all, Danielle and I were asked to be bridesmaids! I almost cried and honestly, I haven't stopped gushing about it since. I'm going to drive my family mad.

The gaggle of "kids" - the couple, their siblings and friends - posing before the cake was cut.

During the cake-cutting, there were jokes about how this was really a baby shower (to which Kyle responded, not for ten more years), criticisms of Natalie’s cake-cutting abilities, and a short-lived icing war between Nat and her brother. We then retreated to the basement for intense games of Foosball and more chatting. I ended up talking to Nat’s brother and ultimately giving him my number (mostly because he asked in a way in which I couldn’t really say no, but also because a small part of me wanted to), so we’ll see what happens with that.

I had grand plans to figure out my life on Sunday – I was going to settle in and make meal plans and daily schedules for myself, but then I woke up and found out that the three days’ worth of sleeping and eating poorly had caught up with me. I was completely out-of-service from Sunday through Tuesday, only feeling better towards Tuesday night as I tuned in to watch the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

My love of fresh starts will most likely cause me to spend most of today making up lists, completing some easier chores, and getting on track. Seeing how much damage I did to myself this weekend by having to cater to my anxiety (especially how out of it I felt at Saturday's party) served as the final impetus to really start making changes now. 2011 is going to be my year.

faltering friendship.

Change is difficult, both to experience and accept. I believe it’s even harder when it’s a person who’s changing, something I've been struggling with in regards to my cousin. I usually talk about it in a forgiving way, where I defend her and hope that she’s just going through a phase. Recently, however, I’ve learned that I’m only hurting myself by continuously making excuses for her.

It all started just before her senior year of high school - in the summer of 2008 - which is when I could feel a significant shift in our friendship. It stopped moving and stopped growing – gone were the days when we spent hours together, baking brownies and having mock photo shoots in her back yard.

Instead, any time we had together was spent silently watching TV while she texted friends, which I tried to brush off despite finding it rude. I let a lot of things slide – I wanted to pretend things were okay, that our friendship wasn’t morphing back to being ‘just cousins.’ She would treat our time together like an inconvenience, both in the planning stages and while we actually hung out. Getting her to pin down a time to hang out was difficult and, once I did, I felt as though she really didn’t care to be there. Of course, there were exceptions – the occasional fun car ride around her town or visit to her shore house – but for the most part, our time together was awkward and forced.

I quickly made my way to the bottom of her priority list as time spent with her friends became more appealing. It was clear she found my company boring, something she once actually said to me via an anonymous ‘truth box’ on Myspace (yes, I know, Myspace is breeding ground for drama, which is why I deleted it soon after). I remember receiving the message and being so taken aback and hurt that she would ever outright insult me like that. It should’ve been the breaking point, but I continued to defend her actions in my mind.

Still, for a short while after that, our friendship was visibly fractured. We only saw each other at family events, at which point we barely said two words to each other. I saw her mother (with whom I have a separate relationship) more often than I saw her; she would walk in the kitchen to say hi before going out with her friends, even as I sat there helping plan her graduation party.

Last summer, I chose to confront her about everything in a series of Facebook messages, because I'm a coward and am terrible with face-to-face confrontation. Her first reaction was to be extremely defensive, claiming that she wasn't to blame for any of the issues I had listed. After a few replies back and forth, she eventually showed compassion and agreed that we were drifting because we were at two completely different points in life. She said that we just needed to give it time and that hopefully, in the future, things would settle back into place.

We eventually recovered from all the drama, but things haven’t been the same. I see her once every couple of months and we put on a good show both for the family and for ourselves, acting like we’re still as close as we once were. We exchange heartfelt picture collages and graduation speeches, though it mostly feels like we’re playing pretend. It’s emotionally exhausting to act like we’re still close when we’re not. My texts still go unanswered most of the time and there is literally no effort on her part to see me. The only communication I get that originates with her is an occasional enthusiastic Facebook comment about how much she misses me.

The hardest part of it has been that we were once similar people with similar interests. We were best friends, relying on each other and expecting our friendship to be there when all others failed. When she was still a sophomore in high school, she experienced a falling out with friends and explicitly said that she was glad she could always count on me. I expected us to remain close for the rest of our lives, being in each others' wedding parties and spending holidays together with our families. I thought she had those same expectations; now I'm not so sure.

Her life has morphed into something different than what it used to be – which isn’t in itself a bad thing. Whether I like it or not, though, she’s changed. Obviously she still retains some of her old self, which is the part I can connect with when we have our good moments, but there is too much newness to which she thinks I can’t relate. The most unfortunate part of it all is that she’s let the change in her life affect our relationship for the worse, seemingly without any regret or concern.

Sometimes I wonder why this shakes me up so much, why I defended her for so long and tried to make everything seem okay. It comes down to this: until college I never had many solid friendships, and my biggest fear is that any friendship I have is going to dissolve. Essentially, she perpetuated that fear. But it’s not just that she walked away from me as a friend, or that she changed, or even that she doesn't seem to care that our friendship is falling apart; it’s that, in my mind, she was the one person who was never going to do that to me. Our friendship bordered on sisterhood – I may expect friendships to fall apart, but not a bond between almost-sisters.

To have your ‘sure thing’ turn around and not be as sure as you expected is earth-shattering, which is why I still struggle to accept that things might never be the same. There will always be a part of me who hopes she just needs to grow up and that, in a few years, we’ll be laughing about all of this. I really hope that part of me is right.

birthdays, birthdays, and more birthdays!

Oh, there have been too many birthdays lately. Not that there could ever be such a thing - because I love birthdays - but every time I turned around I had to start prepping someone else's gift. In true Cait style, I got a little crafty and, in one case, did some Target searching for cute things for the birthday celebrations.

First up was Melissa's birthday in April. Hers was a very last-minute, spur-of-the-moment idea, although you would never know it. It turned out amazingly, if I do say so myself. I mean, I always set out to do really good work, but I'm a huge critic and it's rare that it passes my own standards. I'll let you decide.

'Basically just 4 years of pure insanity' is the new tag line to our friendship. Also, PIPE CLEANERS AND FOAM DEALIES.

Next up, at the very beginning of May, it was my dance twin Ashley's 25th birthday bash. Since the first project went so well, I decided to go the same route and I was equally as impressed with myself.

Penguin love!

Finally, my BFF Danielle's birthday was two days ago, although we surprised her with a little birthday celebration during our reunion last week. Natalie and I set up my family room with leftover luau decorations and some delicious drinks, and we ordered in from Chili's and watched Hairspray. It was fabulous. I went scouting for gifts at Target and wound up with an adorable stationary set, picture frame, and jasmine-scented candle.

Yes, I bought three. One for me, one for Dani, and one to use as an emergency gift for someone.


Perfection.

I've got one major birthday left - my cousin - and I'm at a loss because she and I have done everything crafty for each other. I made her a scrapbook and gave her several picture frames and collages, she's made me a big collage and gave me a lovely speech at my graduation. Her birthday's next week and I'm totally going blank. Any ideas, crafty or not, are appreciated.

So that's what I've been up to craft-wise. I'm saving up all my creativity for my grandmother's scrapbook which we'll hopefully get started on soon - we only have about a month to go!

{Also, as I finished up this post I realized that today is also my friend Kyle's birthday! So, happy birthday!}

drowning in christmas spirit.

I've been filling this week to the gills with Christmas spirit. As I've mentioned, I tend to overload early in the season, so after a week of taking a break, I'm back in the full swing of things.

Monday I hit the mall with Lynds to buy last minute gifts and cute Christmas dresses from Forever 21 (can't wait to show you!). Yesterday I was extra sniffly and was glad that my plans included snuggling under blankets and watching Christmas movies. Natalie came over and we caught up on each others' lives before settling in to watch Elf (which I've never seen, and now LOVE) and The Santa Clause. They were perfect get-in-the-spirit Christmas movies.

Today is dedicated to cleaning the house top to bottom and baking desserts for Christmas Day with Lynds. Then it's early to bed so that I (hopefully!) feel tons better for the festivities. We celebrate both Christmas Eve and Day around here, so I've got two days packed full of family, food, and of course, presents! (Which I'm excited for moreso because I can't wait to GIVE my gifts, not because I want to get gifts. Seriously, I did good this year.)

And because my hands have been busy wrapping gifts and gripping warm cups of tea, I've been slow on the 24 Days of Christmas pictures. But! I have been finding time to take photos, so here they are, all at once. Just a few days left!

thanksgiving recap.

After a weekend of eating nothing but Thanksgiving leftovers (including copious amounts of pumpkin pie and brownies that nobody ate), I am so ready to get back on a regular diet. I spent the past three days "recovering" from the holiday, which basically meant sleeping, staying in my pajamas, and cruising the internet for Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping deals. But let's backtrack to my Thanksgiving.

The nametags I slaved over for two hours.

I had a decent Thanksgiving. The "kids" are all older, so all of the excitement has really disappeared. This year felt very, very different compared to previous years. Maybe I was just in a funk because I was worried about my anxiety, maybe it was because I had to keep leaving to drive people around. But something just felt off.

The day went by lightning fast, which is my biggest gripe about holidays. There's so much build up and anticipation, and then suddenly, it's done. We always have a small crowd for my dad's side of the family. Mine is a family of four, my cousin Lynds's family is four more, and one of my older cousins joined us as well, making nine.

My cousins Lynds and Clancy, and me. The girls of the family.

Leading up until dinner, we sat around playing Wii while the parents had Serious Discussions. Dinner was okay, but as soon as we were done, I had to drive my brother to the cat shelter where we volunteer. The kitties still have to eat dinner, even on Thanksgiving. Then I went to pick him up, after which we all played an annoying and drama-filled game of Outburst. Although after discussing it the next day, I seem to be the only one who was a stick in the mud about it. Guess it was the fact that I couldn't drink yet because I had more driving to do.

We took some pictures, sat down for dessert (which barely anyone ate), then I was off again to lead my cousin out to the parkway. I got back, had a shot of vodka and a beer, and we played Wii for about a half hour until my mom and aunt got into some silly tiff and then suddenly it was time for Lynds's family to leave.

All that being said, we had a ton of fun getting our drink on and playing Wii tennis. It was nothing short of hilarious.

(Just a warning, there's a bit of objectionable language. My brother likes to drop the F-bomb.)


In true holiday fashion, I barely ate anything throughout the day because I tend to get really anxious. It sucks, but I've learned to deal with it and put up with everyone making comments on my nearly-empty plate. Of course, this means that as soon as everyone leaves, I engorge myself on all the leftovers, which isn't always the best plan of action. I cross that line from "mmm, yummy" to "MISTAKE BITE" really, really quickly.

Hopefully everyone else had a wonderful holiday. Personally, I'm looking forward to Christmas and thinking it will probably go better than Thanksgiving.

learning my limits.

Last Friday into Saturday, I had the absolute best time reconnecting with my younger cousin, L. She and I are... well, we're hard to describe. We're not exactly alike, although in many ways we are. I'd say we're different in all the good ways, ways that make us able to tolerate each other.

One of our biggest differences is choice of social activities. In college especially, I was (and still mostly am) the laid back type. I didn't go to frat parties every weekend - in fact, I only drank on a handful of occasions in college, most of them happening after I turned twenty-one. My friends and I spent our time watching TV shows, going to the movies and the mall, or going out to eat. That's just what I chose to do and I was perfectly content with it.

L, on the other hand, was ready for college before she even got there. When I went to visit her last weekend, all of this was on my mind. I had simply assumed we'd be drinking, so it didn't surprise me when she suggested we pick up some beer or vodka. I chose vodka, just because I knew it would be easier to mix into something else and go slow. I was wrong. (Although I'm still glad I didn't go with beer, because she'd surely have me chugging and I cannot chug anything, for the life of me.)

Let me just say, even after turning twenty-one, I haven't really ever gotten drunk. I'd also never taken a shot. So ... definitely killed those two birds with one stone.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all good, either. A big mistake I made (and that I knowingly made) was that I had barely eaten all day. I know, I know, novice mistake. But I figured I'd have one or two shots, then mix it with sprite and call it an evening. Nope. The equivalent of four shots later (I had a couple of half-shots in the beginning, since I was a newb), I was having. a. ball. L decided to call up my brother and we had a nice little chat, and a couple of her friends had come over. It was all good.

Then in the span of about ten minutes, it was suddenly not good. I got quite hot and dizzy and was no longer happy to be drunk. L noticed and I could tell she was worried, but I think she thought I was just overreacting. Luckily one of L's friends was pretty sober and noticed, and I have a feeling she said something to L when I went to use the bathroom down the hall. When I got back, everyone had left and L said we could just go to bed.

Most of the problem was that L didn't really pay attention to the fact that her tolerance was much higher than mine. I didn't drink often; she drank every weekend. She was basing her decisions to take more shots on how she felt, not realizing that I was likely more drunk than she was at any given time.

The good news? I didn't throw up and I didn't pass out. I did start getting a little emotional because I wanted to feel better, but that moment came and went. I think L got a little overly concerned because she felt bad, so we put on a movie and she ended up falling asleep by 1am. Within an hour or so I felt loads better, but I couldn't fall asleep because kept having to pee. Wonderful.

Overall, it was an absolute learning experience. L told me the next morning that it was good I was with her to test my limits, because hers were tested at a point where it would've been uncool to go crying to someone about overdoing it. I'm mostly appreciative of the fact that we were just hanging out in the dorm and that I learned my limit. Now I know better for next time how far I can go before it crosses from this-is-so-fun-OMG drunk to must-stare-at-one-thing-so-I-don't-throw-up-from-dizziness drunk.

The best part? I wasn't even hungover! Bonus points for me.

~

Super Serious, "Day" 2 (Thursday night into Friday morning)
"Breakfast" (8pm) - 1 whole egg & 2 egg whites, scrambled with cheese; 1 slice rye toast with Smart Balance butter.
"Lunch" (Midnight) - shrimp-flavored ramen noodle soup
Snacks - chocolate chunk granola bar; 2 vanilla sandwich cookies
"Dinner" (5:15am) - Smart Ones frozen meal

Exercise - nothing

why i can't wait for friday.

It's almost Friday, and I'm more excited than usual.

Why?

Tomorrow I'm visiting my cousin at college.

This is awesome for many, many reasons. First of all, she and I are the closest out of our family, close enough to consider each other sisters. We've recently been having a rough time keeping close, not only because we were so busy in our senior year (hers in high school, mine in college), but because we couldn't relate to each other. My college career was ending, which meant that everything that I had gotten used to was going to change, and not necessarily in a way that I liked. Her life, however, was just beginning, as she enjoyed her senior year and got ready to go to college.

Whatever the reasons, now that I've settled a bit into the post-grad life and she's finally gotten her freedom in college, all the annoyances we had with each other are fading. While things are far from perfect, they're definitely getting better. I had felt, at one point, like we were reverting back to being simply cousins and not acting like sisters. I don't feel like that anymore.

The second reason I'm looking forward to visiting is that she ended up going to the same college as I did. Visiting her means I go back to my old campus, my old freshmen dorms, my old... dining hall. Well, maybe not there. We're doing a mini walking tour, just to see what's new (like the controversial public art pieces that were just installed), then taking a trip to the mall to look at Christmas things. Even the mall is a place full of college memories, where I shopped for Secret Santa gifts and a last-minute strapless bra for the EMS formal (where I first met The Boy).

I am incredibly lucky to have her at the college where I "grew up." One of my bigger problems recently is my anxiety with new places and situations, so if I were visiting a college I didn't go to, I'd probably be a bit of a mess. But since I'm so familiar with the drive there, where to park, and where everything is, it just feels like I'm going home.

being productive RULES.

There's something about being productive that I absolutely love. It makes sense that getting things done results in a good feeling, but I get absolutely giddy.

It's probably because I spend much of my time lollygagging around, especially now considering my job search is on pause. I'm the kind of person who can go on doing nothing for days and days without even really realizing it, until I sit down one day and go, oh wow a WHOLE WEEK has gone by, and I've just been sleeping and eating all the leftover Kit Kats from Halloween.

(True story. Bouncing between sugar rushes and sugar crashes really isn't healthy.)

Last week I kinda dipped my toes in the Doing Stuff pool, but all I accomplished was my little craft projects and finally sending out my cousin's care package. So today I vowed to get things done. As much as I despise Mondays, I usually look at them as a fresh start, and fresh starts are my BFF. Why? Because I'm one of those crazy perfectionists who falls off the wagon of whatever I'm trying to accomplish as soon as one little thing goes awry. Mondays, in my mind, equal a clean slate for me to totally fuck up again be completely successful.

First I ran errands. I mailed the Playstation 2 game that I sold on eBay, picked up photos from Walgreens, and put gas in my car. Then I sorted the photos, put them in albums for my cousins, and wrote little captions by each picture. I cleaned the entire living room for my mother, vacuumed my own room, finally hung up all the things that needed to be hung, and threw out posters I'll never put up again. And it felt oh. so. good.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I'm on a Successful Day High right now. That, and I'm abnormally excited about my just-planned sleepover with my favorite cousin at college. Having fun things to look forward to is definitely a good thing.

labor day weekend.

My new favorite event to go to on Labor Day Weekend is the block party held at my aunt’s shorehouse. I attended last year and had a blast, so I knew I had to do it again this year and managed to convince The Boy to come with me. The theme was armed forces, and earlier this summer my aunt had already come up with a great idea: the girls would dress as army nurses while the guys sported fake wounds with food-dye-colored “bloodied” bandages. Since The Boy was a last-minute addition, he came up with the idea of being – what else – the head doctor in charge of the nurses.

The weekend started off on Friday night when I decided to split up the two-hour trip to the shore and head to The Boy’s house to sleep over. We were up bright and early the next morning at nine, mainly to be awake before his sister arrived with her three roommates and found us half asleep. Our first task was to bake brownies, which we did promptly. Once the girls arrived, we hid out in his room to pick out his “costume” while they all had lunch and rushed out to the beach.

Before we left, I put my finishing touches on the brownies to fit the theme a little better:



Then we were on our way. We didn’t hit much traffic this time around and got there about a half hour before the party officially began. Since my costume was being supplied mostly by my aunt, we freshened up at the house and I got dressed up.


Hellooooo, nurse!

I was surprised to find out that Lynds had decided to come home from college for the long weekend. Her best friend was over for the better part of the day, so I never really got a chance to talk to her.

We made our way down the end of the block where the festivities were centered. Within minutes, the color guard made a special appearance to kick off the party officially.



Then food was served, and as my aunt was one of the people in charge, I fell in line as her helper. Of course, I took time to catch up with my cousin and his girlfriend, say hi to the neighbors, and enjoy the wonderful spread of barbecue food.


My uncle and aunt.


My cousin and his girlfriend.


The Boy and I.

A few games were arranged, the most popular by far being the water balloon toss. Although The Boy and I were out after the second or third toss, my cousin and his girlfriend made it all the way to second place (after the water balloon popped right in the middle of her skirt, making it look like she had peed herself).


That's my cousin the foreground, his girlfriend in the back. Sadly, this is a shot of the losing toss.

As the sun was setting, it was time to put out dessert, and I dutifully helped carrying tray after tray of cupcakes and brownies to the table. My favorite were these adorable cupcakes, which are definitely something I would have come up with:


So cute! My only complaint was that the "beach ball" was a gumball. Ew!

We retreated to the house after this, seeing as the swarms of gnats that were bothering us all afternoon had become increasingly worse. We sat on the back patio and talked about silly wedding mishaps and stories on my dad’s side of the family. After about an hour, we decided to make our return after thoroughly covering ourselves in bug spray.

It was, of course, my favorite part of the day, because now that the sun was down and everyone was thoroughly tipsy, the DJ began playing the fun, danceable music. It didn’t take long for all of us to hit the makeshift dance floor, especially me and Lynds.


All the nurses, getting low, including my aunt!


As you can see here, we're the only two dancing. I have no problem with this whatsoever.


Dancing to Pussycat Dolls, doing the same move for the same part in the song.

By the end of the night, I was sweaty and exhausted. My very patient and wonderful boyfriend was getting antsy as well, seeing as all he was doing was standing on the sidelines and taking pictures (at my request). I changed into pajamas, we said our goodbyes, and were on our way.

Being the weirdo I am, as soon as we arrived back at his place, I was starving. I don’t eat too much in social situations, because I have mild anxiety and am never really hungry, so I’m always ready to chow down as soon as I leave a party. At eleven at night, I was sitting down to a full meal of grilled chicken, pasta, and steamed corn on the cob, followed up by green tea ice cream and leftover Rita’s water ice. Basically, anyone in real life who doesn’t think I eat enough really needs to see me late at night, when I will snack on anything and everything.

The rest of the weekend was calm, but I was glad to get out just for the one day. I love big parties and the sense of community I feel when I’m at my aunt’s shorehouse. It’s definitely a party I’m going to look forward to for years and years to come.