happy new year!

i've had fun this morning, reminiscing about my last new year's celebration [dinner, wandering, haunted house, festival food, trolley riding & countdown @ the shrine] with cassie. i REALLY miss cassie a lot <3

but i'm jazzed i get to spend today and tomorrow with this girl:

cleaning the closet

when i got home from japan this past summer, i started cleaning out one of the closets in my old room. this afternoon i got started on yet another closet in my old room. it was hard work! dust, tons of books, millions of old class notes, college dorm room decor, etc. etc. ICK! now that i'm pretty much done with that closet [except for the hundreds of photos in a box] i've come to a mind-blowing conclusion.

I USED TO BE A GIANT PACK-RAT!!!

double ick. mom thinks i must have changed my evil ways subconsciously after moving across the world and living in a 400squarefeet apartment in himi last year.

i just realized that all that old "sentimental" stuff wasn't doing anyone any good anymore. then, i thought about the books i've bought and/or received in my lifetime. THAT thought is making public libraries seen even more wonderful than i already knew they were.

the books/clothes/etc got sent to salvation army. the papers got recycled. some of the other junk just has to be trashed. i probably should have done it ages ago, but it feels good to have conquered it today!

confession*

*i love reading blogs. home decorating blogs. style blogs. personal blogs. photo blogs. and embarassingly, wedding blogs. it's really absurd bc none of my super close friends are engaged at the moment. but it's really a fascinating subject and i feel as if i've become a wedding-to-NOT-do expert after all the shenanigans i've seen the past few years. SO, wedding blogs are interesting to me.

today i stumbled upon a most thrilling blog... this couple had their entire wedding for under $2,000! i've read basically the entire blog history in the past couple hours and some of the writer's ideas are really anti-culture. which i think is REALLY cool.

my top four examples of why this blog is wonderful...
4. she focuses on the main goals of the day [most notably, time with friends&family]
3. she can make cool things herself [like the little extras on her $15wedding dress!]
2. she and her husband decide to pay for the wedding themselves[and thus make EVERY decision without unwanted input from relatives ahem-mothers -in-law-ahem]
1. she maintains focus on THE most important factor: preparing for the long-term-ness of a marriage as opposed to a day-long-ness of a wedding.

AMAZING!

wordle

i've spent the last five hours looking at millions of blogs online. i stumbled across this one. and created this and this.

you can type in any string of words and it creates a cool arrangement. you can change the colors if you want. SO rad!

four winds farm

so there's this cool place i know. most people don't know about it, but i spent many summers and christmases [and other days, naturally] there as a little kid. there's a big white house and two red barns. and a muddy pond. and a corn house. and a creek. OH, and my grammy.

we went there yesterday for christmas dinner and a little nature walk to let our food digest. i used my latest toy [gorillapod by l.l.bean!!] to aid my photography endeavors. isn't it BEAUTIFUL?!

a very kent-y christmas

it's going to be christmas in one hour and ten minutes. [i've had a countdown since about 9pm!]

meliss and i were home alone last saturday and got in the christmas spirit... early... we decided to do a photo shoot and then we decided to include kent.

now, neither of us particularly love kent. but we think he's sort of cute sometimes. and he adds a little extra flavor to our quiet weekend hours...

surfwise movie

i read about this movie [surfwise] on "a cup of jo", the blog i read compulsively. it looks like a great documentary, one which i will search out over christmas break.

i love water, love the beach, love the ocean... i would totally surf. okay, scratch that.

i would probably surf if: 1. i wasn't really afraid of sharks 2. i had a lot of money to spend traveling 3. i had someone to learn with me, and 4. i had a cute instructor.