So perhaps my proudest achievement is tackling my mom’s sewing machine. The last couple times I tried to use this thing, I felt like I had to fight it and I just ended up frustrated and swearing at an inanimate object. It’s been a few years, so I thought I’d try a relationship with the sewing machine again. And whaddya know?! We get along!! Mostly…. There are still a few rough patches, but with a little practice, the help of the instruction manual, and occasionally calling in my mother for an emergency rescue, I’ve completed several projects! What do you think?

Camera Case

SD Card Case

Anyways, over the summer, me and my gal pals actually drove up to good old GR on a few occasions to go clubbing at the Wednesday night 18+ place. It was lots of fun, and quite enjoyable. Though at first it took some convincing of my mother, but that was settled. I love clubbing now. Dressing up cute and just letting loose and dancing for a while with a bunch of girlfriends until you’re exhausted, and then piling back in a car to drive back home.

However, on one of these particular rides home, I grabbed shotgun. And as we get away from the city lights and out on the dark highway, I begin seeing little flashes of light out of the corner of my eye in the sky. I begin watching the sky and realize that there’s a meteor shower! About every 1-3 minutes we would see a shooting star streak straight down towards the southern horizon in the sky. It was beautiful, and I loved having a, literal and figurative, front seat. Haha.

So this post is very late, but it still counts right? Of course it does. Onwards to check off more on my list of 101 Things to Do in 1001 Days!

I do not garden. The last time I  “gardened” I picked weeds out of the bricks for my mom when I was 9. That’s the extent of my green thumb outdoors; killing weeds.

My mother however, loves to keep a garden. A few years ago she decided she was “too old” to go crawling around in the garden, so she’s hired a gardener to keep tending it and planting new flowers. And now, it’s made a nice place for me to take pictures! I use it as a background for senior portraits, and now I make it my subject as there are quite an abundance of lovely flowers in bloom. So check out this new lovely set of a Summer Garden.

So I’ve been going to WalMart lately and have been passing this “Off to College” section they’ve rolled out that has bedding, bathroom stuff, mirrors, lamps, kitchen equipment, and some furniture. And I’ve been walking past these storage ottoman things… and yeah. Now I have two of them. In purple. With micro-suede. Mmmm. So nice. But I love them! A fifteen inch cube you can put stuff in! It’s brilliant! And they’re comfy! So yeah… that’s what I got.

Then after I brought these home, my mom remembered she had some gift cards that Bed Bath & Beyond gave her when she was buying wedding presents for a relative’s wedding. She said I can have them! So I’ve been stuck in the Bed Bath & Beyond website for two days, browsing through all the stuff they have. It’s awesome! Problem is, I don’t know how much is on the gift cards yet. Probably not very much, so we’ll see what I can actually get. (Instead of that nice $130 bookshelf, settle with $20 in throw pillows or something.)

Well, I’m still thrilled to be moving back to school! As predicted, I’m getting tired of being stuck in the ‘rent’s house. College, here I come!!! Again… !!!

EDIT: I just found out, you can totally play tic-tac-toe on the top by “drawing” in the suede! Woohoo!

I have to say, it’s been a very good driving mix and I’ve gone through it about ten times by now. Not sick of it yet. I’m thinking of making a second one as well… my brother can spare some more space in that 6-CD changer for another CD of mine. Hehe.

My home at college was so exciting. I lived in the same building as many of my friends, I didn’t have to ask my parents if I could go out or have my friends come up for a movie. We just did it. And I loved the freedom. Now that I’m back in my parent’s house, it’s a little restricting again. Even though I do have more freedoms than I did while going to grade school here (read: car), I still have all those memories of being trapped here because I wasn’t allowed to go out. It makes it pretty suffocating here still. So my goal, as I leave my little dorm room an come home here, is to try to make it more exciting again. Basically, stay active and creative so I don’t feel so suffocated at home.

So guess what I did?! First thing I did when I came home Thursday, was jump in my car (I missed it) and drive down to the beach and take pictures of the sunset. I had about three minutes before it was gone when I got there, so I snapped until my battery died. Then I just sat in the car for a while and watched the sky get dark. It was nice. As much as I hate the clichéd pictures of my town’s lighthouse (there are only so many angles one can cover), I don’t think I can ever get sick of the sunsets over Lake Michigan.

I went out again last night. This time in an attempt to chase some lightning. I didn’t get any good lightning pictures, but I got some cool rainy night shots  of the bridge and the river downtown. I also have found some good locations for shooting lighting on the lake for when the weather is better. It’s still a bit chilly out here. Some summer rains will be more comfortable I think. See the results from both nights of shooting on my Flickr.

For one, I can never answer the question, “What’s your favorite season?” because it’s a tie between summer and winter. I always recall once when I was in preschool I was babysat by my best friend’s mom. So when we weren’t in school, I was with my best friend all day long! And I remember, standing at the big bay window at the front of the house, complaining about the heat of summer jumping up and down singing, “We want winter! We want winter!” in that generic child sing-song voice. But then after winter rolled around, we would get sick of being wet and cold from playing in the snow. We would go to the same bay window, where the snow drifted up to our chest level against the window, and sing, “We want summer! We want summer!”

That has basically stayed the same, and now I love both summer and winter equally. Now, why do I hate spring? It’s because of where I live. My house, which I’ve lived in all my life, is next to a steep, slightly wooded ravine with a stream at the bottom. It’s beautiful and we have huge windows in our kitchen that look out over it where we can watch all the little critters run around and birds eat at the feeders. But the thing with all the trees dropping their leaves in a temperate area, is they soon get covered in snow for a whole winter. That means, come spring, when the snow melts, all the dead leaves get soaked and start rotting under the sunlight. Rotting equals disgusting smell, not to mention the worms. Also, living next to a ravine with a stream means that there’s stagnant water around which is prime breeding ground for mosquitos. We literally get clouds of mosqitos by my house and as a kid I was always covered in mosquito bites in spring. I’m still shocked I’ve never gotten West Nile or Malaria or something. Haha! (I’m kidding about the Malaria, only half kidding about West Nile….)

It’s these events that have made me come to the point where I hate spring. I hope this is more understandable now and you can excuse my disgust for the season. I make up for it with enthusiasm for summer and winter, and even fall in the right conditions! :)

See videos of my ravine in late winter when the snow first melts and in late spring when its more bearable.