And then there were 27

Wow. Another year has come and gone and I am still in shock. I turned 27 a few weeks ago and let me tell you....that is even more of a shock, yo! I can't believe it. For a bit I was struggling with the idea of entering my late 20's. I don't know if I am the only one who does this but I kind of tend to treat my birthdays like New Years. I look back on the year, I take stock, and sadly most of the time... I make myself feel like horse poop.

It's easy to compare your life to the picture you have in your head of how things should be. And truth be told, if you have a picture in your head of how it's supposed to be, it's pretty near perfection. And that makes real life REAL hard to measure up. Especially when you are using a skewed yardstick like most of us tend to do and are super hard on ourselves. I know I am.

I tend to get disappointed with things and think to myself "This is SO not what I pictured I would be like, or how things would be when I was (insert age)!"

And before you know it I am stuck in the comparison trap.

I compare my life to others.

I compare my circumstances to others.

I compare how I handle things to how others do.

I compare what others have to what I have.

I compare my body, hair, makeup, talents, etc to all those seemingly perfect girls around me and blogs plastered all over the place.

And pretty quickly I feel like I come up ridiculously short.

But you know what I have finally started to realize?

I AM ME. There is NO one else who is me or ever will be, EVER.

Heavenly Father created me individually. He has molded my life individually. He has blessed me individually. He has loved me individually. He never intended for me to measure myself or my blessings by the yardsticks of others. He just want me to try my best, and be measured against what HE wants for me. And that changes daily. Sometimes my efforts for the day are amazing. I accomplish a lot. I use my talents. I serve. I study and pray more. I do better. Then some days are really hard, and I fall SO short from the day before. But you know what? If I am having a hard day He isn't expecting me to be my best self from another day. My best self for that day is what He wants. And He accepts my meager efforts, because sometimes that is all I can manage. He just says, "That's ok, try a little harder tomorrow."

He is not hard on us. WE are hard on us.

And when we compare ourselves and our lives to others it is only being ungrateful for the multitude of blessings He has given US individually.

I went into 27 with a much better attitude than I have the past few birthdays. He has blessed me to learn SO much over the past few years of my life. I have been stretched to the point of breaking. There have been trials I never would have wanted in a million years. There have been days so incredibly hard I couldn't picture them ever being even close to "good" again.

But over these last few years there has been SO much growth. I have been given SO much. I have been blessed WAY more that I have been hurt. Everything that has been a trial has turned into a blessing, or is on its way into turning into a blessing.

26 was SO good to me. I am so grateful for this year.

I crossed some major items of my bucket list like going to California and dipping my feet in the Pacific Ocean (which was a trip I WON, HECK yeah!)

I got 2 amazing jobs with families that I absolutely LOVED and were SUCH blessings to me

I expanded my photography skills and business

I traveled around and took day trips

I saw One Direction in concert TWICE, one if them was in FRONT ROW!!

I read the Book of Mormon 5 times

I started my own business selling shirts and prints I have spent years working on

(Wow as I read that I have a lot of blog posts to catch up on...haha...)

I am so grateful He has given me another year to be SO blessed. 27 is exciting! I can't wait to see what happens this year. I plan on making it AMAZING.

Words Will Be Just Words Till You Bring Them To Life

H  A  P  P  Y     2  0  1  4
EVERYBODY!

(My sister, me, & my friends Christi & Amanda- AKA The Fabulous Four! New Years Eve)

I am SO excited for the New Year.  It is so wonderful to look back and see how blessed I was over 2013.
I remember starting off in January 2013 saying how I was DETERMINED to make it a better year than 2012.  I had spent that entire year healing from heartbreak and trying to figure out how to keep going, trying to figure out who the heck I even was.  So I was SO ready to say hello to 2013, and now, I cannot BELIEVE it is over! Seriously, it FLEW by. And I am happy to say I accomplished 2 out of 3 of my HUGE resolutions for that year.

They were:

O N E:  Go through the Temple and take out my Endowments- CHECK!

That April day was the best day of my life so far. I have such special memories from that day and it has been a gift that keeps giving and will my entire life. I truly LOVE the Temple!


and T W O:  Move To Utah- CHECK!




I TOTALLY packed up my Camry, busting to the gills with all I could fit of my earthly possessions inside, and drove the TWO THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED miles across the country to try out Utah. How freaking awesome is that!? I am so proud that I took that chance and literally went on faith all the way across the country for an adventure. And after a few months and a LOT of prayer, pondering, phone calls, and fasting, I have since moved back to Pennsylvania. But I couldn't be happier to have had that adventure for those few months in 2013, and to be back on the east coast!
But that's a different story for a different time.

I am PUMPED for 2014 and I have A LOT in store. So many big plans for myself. This will be the year of

C    H    A    N    G    E
and I am ready! So here we go 2014, let's do it!  I am ready to bring my goals to life!

Apparently, I have a life

I can't believe how long it's been since I've blogged! The last few weeks have been flying fast. This year is flying by sooooooooooo fast.  I cannot believe it is mid October already, MID OCTOBER PEOPLE! 

I love fall.  I love boots. I love scarves.  I love warm fuzzy socks. And I love any excuse I can get to drink Hershey's Hot Cocoa fresh from the stove top.  

I have had some exciting things happen over the last few weeks.

I went to Six Flags again.  My sister's friend scored us some free tickets, heck yes! 

Then me and my sister went to see There For Tomorrow. Um...AMAZING!!!! So flipping good.

And this past week me and three of my best friends went to Atlantic City for two days! More to come on that.

Overall, I have been SO blessed, and blessed to be too busy to blog, and I have some more exciting things coming my way!

That One Time I Dyed My Hair Brown and Went On Vacation (Part II)

The second day of vacation my sister and I went to Six Flags for the first time ever....and let me just say...AWESOME!! I died over all the Batman, Superman (Smallville/Tom Welling anyone?), and Coke paraphernalia. 

And this, my friends, is called "Supreme Funnel Cake" and can I just say that it's strawberry chocolaty goodness was TO DIE FOR.

And this was my little sister after experiencing her first upside down roller coaster:

I was seriously hoping Tom Welling or Christian Bale would be there walking around,  but no luck. Maybe next year...

That One Time I Dyed My Hair Brown and Went on Vacation (Part I)

First of all, I cannot BELIEVE that it is almost August. Seriously, I have no clue what happened to the past two months. 

Therefore, it has been nearly 2 months already since my vacation! My first vacation in 5 years, yo!

And it was glorious.  My sister-aka my best friend- and I went to the Baltimore/DC area for a 5 days and went to many, many places and ate at many,many more. haha.  

Our first day we went to the National Geographic Museum in downtown DC and saw the Titanic exhibit. If you know me at all, you know I LOVE the Titanic.  The history of it, and the movie. This exhibit was incredibly well done! And BONUS...it had real props used in the movie! AH! 

Observe:

To the right of this picture there is the real cherub statue the used on the bottom of the grand staircase on the set of the movie.  Of course I had to walk down the staircase like Rose:)

 Here is my sister (and then me) standing next to a lifeboat the used in the movie!!

 And this is a model that they used for shooting some underwater scenes in the movie:)

And this is me geeking out over Leonardo DiCaprio :)

We thought this was fitting....

I'm flying, Jack!

The Hot German Life Guard Who Gave Me Sun Poisoning

I just got back from my first vacation in 5 years!!! (9 if you don't count that "vacation" driving across the country 5 people to a 5 passenger car in the middle of the summer in 2007)

  I had SUCH a good week!! I feel so refreshed,  that is, when I am not moving...

because every move I make hurts...

and this is why:

(right-me, left-my sis. pardon the immodesty, it hurts to wear anything but tank tops and even that is pushing it)

Yeah, painful. Real painful. And this picture doesn't even begin to do it justice, haha. I am seriously red. I look like  I am wearing a white bathing suit top over a red jumpsuit.

 Hot, I know ;)

I ended my awesome vacation getting incredibly sick with sun poisoning...i.e. chills, hot flashes, nausea, aches, etc. Not fun.

So the moral of the story is: WEAR SUN SCREEN YO! Especially if you are fair skinned, and NO MATTER how distracted you are by the hot,blonde, German life guard watching you at the pool.

Fried Oreos Will Save Your Life

On Friday my sister and I went up to a festival called Mayfair on kind of a whim to see one of her favorite bands, Boys Like Girls. It was a free concert, so why not?! 

 It rained...like, a lot.  Thank goodness there were different giant tents to sit under. We got there and right away met Martin from BLG.. SUCH a nice guy, and easy on the eyes too;)

Then, we definitely got a...wide variety(to say the least).... of entertainment while we were waiting for the show to begin. Like...

 kids performing songs from Fiddler on The Roof, a band playing who were no older than like 17, and a DJ and a huge dance party. And let me tell you.... if you know any white boys who actually can dance, cherish them, because it is a rare, rare thing. 

Then we had to sit through a rapper name Chiddy Bang. 

Then finally there was Boys Like Girls.

And in the midst of all the rain, weird entertainment, and white boy arm-flailing, my sister bought us fried oreos. And THAT made it all worth while.SERIOUSLY. 

If you haven't had any, I beg you..go change your life and partake at your nearest fair/festival right now.

Never Trust Parking Attendants

About 2 weeks ago my friends Amanda, Christi, sister Hannah, and I all went on another mini road trip...this time down to Washington DC. I LOVE road trips. They are just awesome, period.

And even though I used to complain about where I live, it's actually pretty cool because I can take day trips to SO many different places...Philly, DC, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, etc...and they are all within 2-3 hours away and you can just make a day of it without having to drive forever. 

Well we looked all over the place for a parking garage close to (where we thought) the museums were knowing we would have to be paying $25 stinking dollars to rest your vehicle in between 2 dinky white lines for a mere 2-3 hours...(seriously, who came up with the whole "paying for parking" concept, and THAT stinking much?!)...and we thought we were within like 3 blocks of our destination...and we see a sign for $10 parking...HECK yes. We thought before we parked we would double check with the attendant to make sure we weren't too far away...and he said

"Oh yeah, you are only about a 5 minute walk from all the museums."

 Boy, he played us like a fiddle in the middle of a country dance in Mississippi.  

Try a FIVE mile walk through the city!! Ugh. We were so ticked. Good thing we brought the GPS with us walking.

But the museums we went to were really awesome, and the company was even awesomer. We went to the ones with pop culture and real artifacts from movies and stuff. AWESOME! Like, we got to see Dorothy's ruby slippers, and the scarecrow's hat and shoes...for real!

I was totally thinking about Night At The Museum 2 the entire time.... 

"why these aren't real rubies at all..." LOVE that movie...haha

And you KNOW i had to reference Titanic when we came to a part about ships...the railing was just screaming my name.

Amanda, Hannah, and Me in front of the Washington monument (you can kind of see it in the background).

Christi, Hannah, Amanda, and Me 

Sisters! Hannah and Me

And guess where we stopped on the way home...

heck yes, the Cheesecake Factory!! 

I am in love.

Me and Christi!

Seriously, when are they gonna build one of these closer to me???

I stole all of these pictures from my friends facebooks...I totally failed and lugged my heavy SLR through the city and when I went to take the first picture...no battery! FAIL! Oh well, maybe that made it lighter to carry around through 5 miles of city?? Haha, yeah, I didn't think so.

Swimming With The Fishies

I mentioned in one of my last posts that a week or two ago my sister Hannah, my friend Amanda, and I all went on a mini road trip down to Baltimore. It was a GLORIOUS day!! We had SO much fun.  There were some majorly good heart-to-hearts, belly laughs, picture taking, and good music and food shared that day.

We ate at The Cheesecake Factory (only the 2nd time I have ever been in my life, the closest one is 2 hours away!!) OH my. I have no words to fully describe its deliciously wonderful mouth watering goodness:) 

and, it was RIGHT on the beautiful harbor.

Then, we went to the Aquarium. SO much fun. I love, love, LOVE the ocean and it is just so amazing to look at all the beautiful (and some scary) creatures that God has created.

And we took lots of pictures, being our incredibly smooth selves:)

(hannah and me)

(me, hannah, amanda)

and I kissed a fish...picture...or, picture of a fish...

and then we took pictures out a the beautiful harbor and city at night.

VERY good day.  I love friends. And road trips. And cheesecake. And laughing. And all those put together? HECK yes!