Almost there...

Happy Memorial Day, beauties. In honor of the upcoming season, I'm taking this as an opportunity to mentally get in the right place. After all, a new blog layout always means new beginnings, duh. I've come back to this with a completely different mindset than I ever have. I've been thinking a lot about this blog, and what it means to me. Writing/blogging has always been a part of me (hello LiveJournal) and I don't think I'm ready to give it up. Maybe I just needed to step back to put it into perspective. I like writing, I like sharing. I'm not writing for anyone else, I don't need to filter myself. I don't yet know where I'll go specifically with it, but maybe I don't need to know. Maybe it'll always be a work in progress. I'm okay with that.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to cold drinks and yummy BBQ today. Also, Mike comes home from France! I'm tracking his flight every minute. 2 hours and 9 minutes can't come soon enough!

Here's to a beautiful day, xo.

Photog-blog

So, thanks to my recent obsession with Kelli Murray's blog and an inspiring post about photography, I have decided to get more acquainted with my camera.  I got a Nikon D3000 when I graduated hair school just over a year ago, and haven't taken it off Automatic mode since.  Kelli's post about her tips and tricks - super amazing!  I fully took advantage, and now I will never switch off Manual mode - Kelli, you saved my photography life!  Here's some fun from last night with Mike...

My only gripe about summer

So, last night was the first happy-friend-summer hangout session.  Our friends from England are in town, our other best friends from a town over are also... in town, so we decided to have a night drinking by the fire pit.  Great idea, right?  WRONG.  It would have been a great idea if we didn't live somehow in the only swampy/damp area in this part of New Jersey, and mosquitoes didn't mate all winter, rather than die because the temperature didn't get cold enough to kill them.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to come down with a terrible case of West Nile soon... if that horrible disease is still even around, because I literally got eaten alive last night (no bath salts involved people).

I was wearing a maxi dress, thinking I was this super smart and cute human who would deceive all the bugs.  My boyfriend even vouched for our combined brilliant-thinking.  Happy as a clam, I'm sitting by the fire with my glass of wine when my right buttcheek starts to itch.  Must be the lotion I put on after my shower... or the chair I'm sitting on.  Or the weather.  Or anything besides a mosquito bite.  I am wearing this long dress, after all.  So, I'm sitting there scratching at my butt, not even embarrassed of what my friends are thinking, until I feel a huge bump starting to swell.  Then one on my other cheek.  I walk inside to take a peek at my situation, and what do you know - those little sh-ts went to town on me!  I have no joke, 11 bites between both cheeks.  ELEVEN!  I'm not even mad about the itching, the gross swelling bumps on my behind, or the potential killer virus that could be floating around my bloodstream at this point - I'm mad at that little bug up my dress having a four course meal!  He had to have been there for a decent amount of time to bite me as many times as he did - that, or he had friends in town for a summer hang as well.

Either way, mosquitoes make me hate summer.  My butt, feet, and hands are ruined.  I don't know why I'm always the one that comes inside at the end of the night and has upwards of 38 bug bites.  How does a mosquito even bite me IN BETWEEN MY FINGERS, and I don't notice?  Seriously, I had my drink in hand all night and I didn't realize there was some little black thing all up on me?  I hope he didn't decide to go for a swim in my wine, because that drink is long gone and in my belly at this point.  Ugh, those bastards.  Total invasion of my personal space.