pink!

I had a lovely day with my dad yesterday. We met up at my house and then drove down to the city (Atlanta) and spent some time in the sunshine. I had a little meet-up/interview with a local production company my dad often works with (my dad is a lighting director: very awesome job). It went very well! I hope some good things come out of it. After the interview, we headed over to Little 5 Points, an part of town which is probably the closest Atlanta comes to resembling my favorite little city, Asheville, and grabbed salads at Little 5 Pizza. It was fun hanging out in the city sun and talking. I really, really love my parents so I always appreciate the time I get to spend with them. We're all very busy so we have to jump at opportunities to get together.

Once back at my house my dad did some fine-tuning on my bike (he's a bike-enthusiast and I'm a wannabe). I can't wait to ride my bike to school next week!

When Hans got home we went on a long walk and it was beautiful! I don't want to gush but that boy is a prize. Tonight we are going to a midnight release party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part one and you can bet I will be totally dorking out. I pre-ordered just to get myself a free movie replica wand. I am going to cast so many fake spell with that thing...

To wrap this up with a little spring time fun, I am so in love with the color pink right now. So I nearly fell on my face when I came across this beautiful sight while out for a walk the other day,


A sea of pink petals on the sidewalk!


Beautiful.

moleskin monday: flower child

I want to try to post sketches from my moleskins every Monday. I'm hoping this will not only be fun for the blog but also motivating because let's face it, sometimes I just don't find the inspiration to draw. So! First Moleskin Monday! Ready, go:


Because I think progress shots are fun!


I've been working on this little lady for a while now. I'm almost almost almost done, but not quite.


She resides in my favorite moleskin. I love these books. They feel so earthy and magical to me. I find more inspiration in their pages than in any others.

I'll be sure to follow up with the completed flower child, whenever I get around to it. I'm always skipping around between sketches so it sometimes takes me months to finish a single one, though I amass great piles of unfinished pieces.


I walked home from school today upon realizing my class was canceled. (I LOVE that I can walk home from school now!) Walking was a lovely thing. I can feel the sticky Georgia summer right around the corner, but I'm enjoying every ounce of spring time I can soak up. Once I got home from my walk I sent off an email to a prospective job. I hope I get to do something entirely new and exciting. I'm really quite tired of being a cashier, especially within the same walls for so long. I don't know, someone pay me to go on adventures, please?

Last night Hans sang to me while we drove home from a lovely day spent first with my parents and then with his. Things are really beautiful right now. The stars and planets have aligned. The universe is in order. I am ready for anything.

changeling

BIG changes are in the works for me. I have been working at my job for two and a half years, and Thursday night I put in my two weeks. I love so many things about my job. My boss and his family are wonderful. I have learned so much from them, and have had so much fun with them. They have also shown me how delicious Korean food can be. Unfortunately, I have been harassed by a coworker, and it has gone on for far too long, so I'm taking my leave. Hopefully onto bigger and better and better things. I have an internship in the works, which I'm very excited about, but I don't want to say too much before it's set in stone.

I also officially changed my major from art to english, and I'm excited about the classes I have lined up for fall semester.

These are certainly welcomed changes, but scary nonetheless. Just a few months ago, I was stuck at my job because I was tied to school bills and my apartment, and having to suffer through the crazy antics of my coworker. It was pretty miserable at times. I worked very hard at school and earned a scholarship, which takes care of most of my tuition. And I suddenly find myself living a magical dream life in a house with my boyfriend, instead of trapped throwing all my money into that apartment. I am finally in a position to make big changes, but I can't help but have tiny fears, mean voices in my head telling me it will all come crashing down.

And now I'm getting a stupid earache what the heck!

Anyway! Here is a picture of some geese I took on campus the other day.

Because I like geese.

chronicle of a former hair dye junkie

I used to change my hair. A lot. We're talking twice a month, here. I have been growing out my hair (I want long beautiful princess hair) and letting my natural color grow back for about a year now. I mostly love it, but sometimes I am attacked by urges to chop it off and dye it some funky color or other. One of those urges struck me last night, and inspired me to compile a bunch of pictures of all the hair colors and styles I have worn.

I first dyed my hair when I was 12 or 13, in middle school. I put pink streaks in it because I was super cool. Curiously, there are no pictures of me from this time period. My parents swear it's because they were making the switch from analog to digital cameras, but I remain suspicious. So, we'll begin with no one's favorite era, high school!


These pictures are from 2007 and earlier, wow. I had long hair, dyed black and with only a few long layers. I wore it with kinky curls or stick straight. My senior year, I got a wild hair (I went there) and dyed my hair bright orange, as I'd been longing to do for years. I walked at graduation with a traffic cone head! That raised unfortunate controversy...


After high school, I wore my hair short for the first time ever, and briefly sported fire-hair again before somehow turning my head the ugliest green and then donning every possible shade of red, ever.


A billion shades of red later, I landed an awesome job (my current job: liquor store cashier) that let me look however I pleased, and I ran back into the arms of rainbow hair, this time blue and purple. Bleaching this out meant I spent a fun few days platinum blond. (also fun to note: I became a vegetarian and started working out after high school and what a difference that made!)


I sported my "super hero hair" with a dumb blonde streak, then decided to begin the journey to rediscovering my natural color and dyed it a dark brown, which looked black for a while, much to my horror. I denied my nature and straightened it a lot. I also got adventurous and tried wearing short bangs.


This brings us to the present! I kept growing it out, chopped it off one last time, which meant my hair was 100% my natural color for the first time in so many years, and now I've been fancying messy wavy hair for a good while. I'm proud of my self restraint and how long my hair is getting! (Past my collar bones now?!) Princess hair here I come.

smoothie criminal

I make smoothies. Lots of smoothies. Hans and I have smoothies for breakfast, smoothies for lunch, smoothies for dinner. Sometimes we accompany them with other food, but sometimes just a big ol' glass of delicious smoothie is enough. I never make the same smoothie twice, and I never follow a recipe. I just throw a lot of complimentary fruits together and add some coconut milk and blend away. Here's one I whipped up the other day!


Coconut milk, mango, banana, orange, and canned pineapple because I don't have the patience for the real deal. (I always make sure I get cubed pineapples canned in pineapple juice, not that sugary syrup crap).


Juice the orange!


Slice the mango!


(Hans has peculiar decorating sense. Thus, a sword above our sink)
I added the orange juice, mango slices, and a whole banana, along with about half the can of pineapples (and a little of the juice) with a bit of coconut milk and a few cubes of ice, then blend!


And done! Beautiful, tasty smoothies, served the classy way in Hans's SweetWater glasses.

vanity post: mollusc tree

I love this dress. It's super colorful and fun.


Two of my favorite necklaces. I am a necklace fiend. I got the octopus from a vendor at Dragon*Con and the tree from a hippie store called Earthbound.

I wore this outfit over to my parents' house Sunday, and my sister and I decided to shoot some photos for fun. Here are some of my favorites, taken and edited by her.




Seriously, I'm the weirdest vegan. Gimme bones.

a mostly successful endeavor in plantain frying

Hans and I mostly buy fruits and veggies from the grocery store. We live off of smoothies, really. But the other day we decided to buy plantains, knowing we both loved them. I had never cooked them myself, though. I decided to go the easiest route and fried them up with some vegetable oil in a pan.



First I peeled them, which I thought would be like peeling bananas and which turned out to be nothing like peeling bananas. I had to slice them down the sides with a knife and then wrench off the peels. A tricky, slightly slimy task. Then I attempted to slice them lengthwise, like a pickle, so we'd have nice big tasty pieces. This was tough but manageable. Plantains are also harder to cut than bananas! Next I threw the pieces into a heated pan with vegetable oil, and kept them on low heat, turning them until both sides were golden brown. I sprinkled a little sea salt over them so they wouldn't be bland, and that was it. Pretty easy!


They looked pretty but didn't taste quite as awesome as fried plantains I've had before. I think I sliced them just a little too thick and they didn't cook all the way through. Over all though, they were quite good and I'll definitely be making more (and slicing them better!).


The plantains were the appetizer to our big Friday lunch. I also heated up some veggies (frozen, we're busy bees (and poor bees, too)) and covered them in random tasty spices and a little earth balance. He ate a veggie burger and I had a spinachy salad smothered in Goddness dressing (totally my fav right now). I was too busy stuffing my guts to snap pictures of the entire meal, though. Oops!