Sometimes, a great commotion

Ken Kesey. Battlestar Galactica. And now this.

Everyone and their mom is doing some sort of summer bucket list/manifesto/look-how-packed-my-summer-vacation-is list. No, I'm not bitter. Jealous, maybe a little, but bitter? Nah. One of the perquisites of working nine to five is the opportunity to remind others how good they have it. Whatever it is, they have it made. 

Last year when I created my summer manifesto, I completed only two out of eight of my list. Yes, I was working full-time. Yes, I purposely made a small list so I could realistically cross off all of them. Yes, I know two is a small number. But. BUT. Two divided by eight is one-fourth is 25% and that's a quarter! Woo hoo. Real math. 

This year, I only have one item on my summer list (do you smell...cop out?). Don't worry, I predict that the awesomeness of said item will be so great it will spill over into a full list of a summer manifesto. Between you and me and the interwebs, this summer will be sweaty, awesome, and documented. 

By the way, if you have a summer list, I ain't mad atcha. Would you actually mind sharing your MOST AWESOME ITEM of the list in the comments so I can hijack it for future ideas? 

See you on the other side.

Oh Snap.

It's Friday.

Everyone get your freak on. ;D

Makes Me Happy: new living space

Geez, the past few months have been a whirlwind of awesome and when I get caught up in it, life is just incredible. I don't mean that life is perfect and everything is wonderful but in the sense that it's unbelievable how the highs and lows of life are so close together that they mix into a cocktail of crazy.

Now I realize I might be late to the party, but I've been noticing that blogs have evolved over time (cue A Space Odyssey theme song). With the onset of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine it's so much easier to micro-blog. To type a limited amount of characters, to post photos, to poke people as a means of expression. I'll keep this site around (as I always have) but if it's quiet around here that just means life's craziness has taken over and my Instagram is babysitting for a while.

recent trip to IKEA :)

Anyways, onto the fun news: the fiance and I signed for our own apartment a few weeks ago and this means I get to decorate our space! Expect some posts about carrying furniture upstairs, trips to IKEA, and trying to figure out what kind of interior decorating style I like (traditional modern? cottage chic? eclectic collector?). Looking forward to sharing yet another adventure with you ;)

To Be a Mrs: Picking a Venue

I got engaged in December last year and I'm currently planning to get married in August. Yay! To Be a Mrs. is a series of post to document the journey of planning a wedding and preparing for marriage. Thanks for following along!

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One of first big steps in wedding planning was deciding on where to get married. At first, the Fiance and I wanted have the ceremony in the church because our faith is a huge part of our individual lives and our story. However, some complications led us to be flexible in the location.

Another factor in determining our location was the demographic of our guests. Most of our guests were going to be out-of-towners so we didn't want our guests to have to worry about transportation between the ceremony and reception locations. We decided the most convenient thing (and probably the most cost-efficient thing) would be to hold the ceremony and reception locations at the same place.

We looked at several websites of locations in our area and narrowed it down to three to visit. If you plan to visit more than three places then you will be doing much more work than you need to. Trust me. Look at photos, look at reviews, look at what's included in the package, and look at whatever is important to you (for us it was keeping within the budget so the price). For us, it was important that there was room for a ceremony and a reception. Second, we narrowed our choices to places that included catering. Third, we looked for the best deal for a pretty place.

We ended up visiting two places because we fell in love with the first place we visited. We just held off deciding on it because it was a little outside of our budget. It's also outdoor and since we're having a summer wedding we're afraid that our guests will be uncomfortable in the Fresno heat while hearing our vows. Well, if they love us they'll endure it, right?

It's a beautiful lake view location with great sitting areas and beautiful greenery. We were able to work it in our budget by shrinking our nuptials to a small and intimate wedding. Woop woop.

Once we decided the venue, everything else started to fall into place. It was nice to have that big to-do item checked off on our list.

Super excited to have a big party at this gorgeous place, just hope it isn't too hot on that day :/ Have a great Wednesday!

Remember when I won a slam poetry contest

My freshman year of college I was really into spoken word poetry. It started with a video of a short film that dramatized a spoken poem by Adriel Luis. I was floored. I didn't know poetry could be so... vocal. Between classes I would write little things while pondering life and the stars on the grass. Ah, how college of me. When I heard about a spoken poetry contest being held on campus I figured, "Why not?" (YOLO had not been invented then.) 

I wrote up a new piece and practiced the poem in front of some floormates. It was the first time I performed my poems outloud, much less shared them with anyone. So as you can imagine I was shocked when I won the first competition I participated in. Granted, it was super small and judged by audience members...but a win's a win! 

For this layout, I wanted to try something new too: a background cut-out. I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the hexagon background and used it to fill the white cardstock. I also misted some arrows on the background using some home-made mists. I have a paper pack that has an aqua + pink scheme so expect to see those colors often :p

More layering around the page using some Basic Grey ephemera and Dear Lizzy Neapolitan papers.  

I also found some vector images of decorative frames on Google and cut them out with the Silhouette. 

I've been on a glitter fix lately, and I found these awesome glitter "Lullaby" Thickers for half the price at TJMaxx. 

Whew. Tried anything new lately? What's been inspiring you these days?