things I'm loving lately.

So I've been reading a bunch of new blogs and watching a million and one YouTube channels lately and I can't help but be jealous of everyone who has established themselves as a "famous" online presence because I so feel like if I had the time to do more with my blog and with my crafts and cooking and everything else I love, I could be doing the same thing. And I would love it. So I'm going to start by just making more time to blog even if it's about nothing because let's be real - at this point in time I'm pretty sure I'm the only person reading my blog anyway, but if no one ever decides to read it, at least it'll be something I have to look back on. I want this blog to grow with me whether people are reading or not.

ANYWAY, I digress. These are the things that make me happy right now.

1// LIPSTICK.
Reds and corals, specifically. I'm becoming a hoarder.
2// YOUTUBE.
Check out JacksGap, SprinkleOfGlitter, Shaaanxo, Zoella, MarcusButlerTV, & PointlessBlog - a few of my current favorite channels.
3// FRANK HAMILTON.
See my previous post to hear about him.
4// PLAY DATES.
Bringing Max to play dates with his friends really breaks up the day for us and I've met some really great nannies and mommies that have become new friends. My "co-workers", if you will.
5// DRIVING.
I've always loved driving, but I'm really loving the spring weather and my air conditioner is broken, which seems like a bad thing, but it's forcing me to drive with the windows down and then I have to make my music louder and it just all feels so lovely. Hard to describe, it just makes me really happy.
6// ONE LINE A DAY.
On January 1, 2012 I started a five year memory book that has 365 pages, one for each day of the year, with spots to fill in five years of that same day. Now that I'm going through my second year, it is really nice to be able to read exactly what I did on the same day last year, compare notes, remember funny happenings, see little coincidences, and feel like I have grown, but am still so connected to last year me. This week last year was my senior week at Scranton and it's been a rough week writing in my journal because senior week was the best week of my life to this day. It makes me sad that it's been a year since I graduated, but I'm also really glad that I have most of it down in a nutshell to recall upon forever.
7// TIMEHOP.
Along the lines of my One Line A Day, I downloaded an app on my iPhone called TimeHop, which lets you connect Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and a few other apps and every morning a new timehop is ready to show you all of the things you did on social media in the years before on the same day. The furthest mine has ever gone back on any given day was five years to my facebook when that was really the only social media I used. So most days it's only last year or two years ago, when I started to get social media heavy, but it's still so fun to look through every morning while I eat breakfast. And like One Line a Day (probably worse), it was senior week last year so all of my loving Scranton tweets and pictures of events and facebook statuses about how much I love all of my college friends and the place I spent the best four years of my life thus far have been up every morning this week. It's hard to look at because I miss it so much, but it's really nice to have everything there so I can rememeber exactly how I felt one year ago today, two years, three years, and beyond.
8// THE GREAT GATSBY.
Ok, so I didn't read this book in high school, we only used it to talk about our unit on symbolism, so I knew all about the green light and whatnot, but now that I've read it as an adult and seen the amazing on screen representation in the style of the amazing Baz Luhrmann, I'm obsessed. It is such a great story. It's a little bit crazy when you think about the plot of the story and what actually happens and how it all ends, but it's just so beautiful if you strip it down to it's core: hope keeps us going and as long as we have it we'll have something to look forward to, but hope can be deadly if things don't turn out the way that you had always planned. I guess it's all about finding a balance between having no hope and getting your hopes up. Either way, I just think the story is wonderful and Fitzgerald definitely knew what he was doing with words and storytelling.
9// PRECLEANSE.
If you've never tried Dermalogica precleanse, go get it. It's an oil-based, (exactly what it sounds like) precleanser before your makeup remover that clings to oils in your face and makes your skin feel fresh and light before you've even fully washed it.
10// AMPERSANDS.
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what a magical character. Find my latest apparel purchase with this little beauty on it here.

And that's pretty much it y'all. Happy hump day!