saison de amour

So Valentine’s Day is coming up. (Personally I think its a stupid made up holiday for nothing but making money of poor suckers who are in love. Who needs a specific day to tell your love how you feel? but anywho).

My point is, people make such a big deal out of their romantic love life on February 14th. But why is that the only love that seems to matter to people? I’ve spent a good many Valentine’s Days single. But I also had one where I was seeing someone. It was nice. But my valentines that I spent “alone” were equally nice.

I like to take Valentines Day as an occasion to appreciate all of the love in my life. I tell everyone I care about how much they mean to me. And if that isn’t a significant other, so fucking what. I’m happy being Christine. Not Someone’s Girlfriend. Or any of that. I like being single right now. Im not at a place that I need to be getting romantically involved (and godforbid attached) with anything or anyone. I have MY entire future in front of me. Not OUR. I am a singular unit at this point in my life, so I need to work on planning the rest of my life for that unit. Wow this just turned into a huge rant. Okay. 

BOTTOM LINE IS: I am single this February, like I have been for many, but that does not mean I hate Valentine’s Day and Im going to spend that day crying and eating shitty candy. No. Im going to use it as an opportunity to express my love for everyone in my life and to show them what they mean to me. Love isn’t just for your boyfriend or girlfriend or wife or husband or fuck buddy or fiance or whatever.

Love is for everyone. So why does the international day of love focus on couples?

Spread the love to everyone around you. Don’t let a less than satisfactory relationship status stop you from loving life and sharing that love with everyone you means something to you.  

Friends

I have made four friends at Greenville Tech. That brings my grand total to six. I have six friends if you count Sara and Rob. I'm proud of my progress.

Summer Time

I have this fantasy plan for the summer. It involves a VW van, a couple people I care about, and the open road. I have this dream of a perfect road trip. Just gathering a couple people that are fun and that I feel close with and just driving. Living out of a van, driving from place to place, enjoying company and enjoying life. I just kind of want to throw caution to the wind and have a huge cliche adventure this summer. In the past few months, I kind of imagined this trip with a person who has been in and out of my life in the past 6 months. There is no reason that this person would travel across the country with me, we aren't anything. We almost were. I think. But who knows. I have a tendency to care more for people than they do for me. Its absolutely silly and unrealistic of me to imagine this killer road trip with people who, in reality, don't actually care for me. I want to just travel from town to town, share a kiss in as many states as I can, camp on the beach, swim in as many rivers, see as many mountains, just do as much and love as much as I can in a few months. Sadly, this is almost positively impossible. What with expenses, lack of roadtrip companions, and a couple of parents with a vice grip on my life. But a girl can dream right?

Yeah. Something like that. 

My Mother's Largest Flaw

She is obsessed with American Idol. Early in the year Wednesday nights, my living room is absolutely plagued with the worst television program to ever exist. I'm just trying to do my homework, and I am exposed to this misery.
It is everything I don't like about pop culture.
Okay that's all, I love my mom, but she needs better taste in TV programming.

What's good Gtech?

Once upon a time... There lived a girl (me) who went off to college at the University of South Carolina! But it was big and bad and Columbia was ugly, so the girl dipped out to come home and go to her local community college!!! ;)

Just thought I would share that with the 1.5 people who give a rats ass about what I have to say! 

Sara snuck this picture of me while we were having a little lunch break down in the Student Center. For some reason that I can't quite put my finger on, I'm a little obsessed with it. <3 Featured in the picture: French and Econ textbooks, wallet, and a diet coke! 

My GTech buddy, Rob. This is how Rob and I spend a lot of our downtime at school. Sara has History on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 2 and I do not, so Rob and I just kind of hang out on the many benches outside of the University Transfer building. I see a lot of people I know around here, like Jake Xingu, my buddy Trevor, Cooper, loads of kids from high school. Greenville Tech is absolutely teeming with people I know from here or there! 

Another secret shot of Rob while we wait on Sara. We do a whole lot of sitting outside when we're at school. Its like OUTSIDE. THEN CLASS. THEN OUTSIDE. THEN CLASS. THEN OUTSIDE. and so forth.

And here's one for the road. Me and Sara and Rob! My community college crew! :) wonderful, no? 

First World Problem

My bangs always grow much faster than the rest of my hair. Or at least they seem too because they are right in front of my face. Its frustrating, and at times I want to grow them out. But bangs are kind of my thing. But look at the state of my bangs right now! Its shameful.

They aren't really even bangs anymore. Just longish pieces of hair that hang in my face. Oh well. You can't win them all.

Maybe Someday

If I were ever to be seriously involved with a man, and he wanted to get me a ring of some kind. God forbid I find someone who loves me and wants to be with me forever. The only ring I would be satisfied with would have to come from this Etsy. All of these rings are gorgeous. That would be the only kind of ring I would want from any man ever. Or from this other Etsy.

Okay I'm done being a lame-o and maybe-someday-ing.

Ear Cuffs and Ear Chains and OMG

So I've recently been obsessing over ear cuffs with chains and all that cool earring what not. So I trolled Etsy until I found the perfect shop that had the most perfect earrings! This is what I've ordered and I'm positively giddy with excitement. I can't wait to get them in the mail!!!!

I AM SO EXCITED!!! And they were all reasonably priced!!!!! They were all $6 or less!!!!! Oh I am thrilled. I cannot wait till they get here!!! This is a package I am definitely going to be tracking. YAY! 

Etsy is a girl's (well a girl like me) best friend! 

Senior Project.

So maybe I'm living in the past, but I wanted to make a post about my senior project. It is a year long  project. Mine involved repurposing materials (tablecloths, curtains, old clothes, bottle caps etc) and creating new clothing and accessories. I just wanted to display a few of my favorite pieces.

This was made out of a t shirt, flipped inside out to diminish the appearance of the white writing on it, with a crocheted piece of a table cloth inserted into the back for decorative purposes. The skirt was made by taking the inner lining of a skirt, and layering various fabrics on top. I used a scarf for the top layer, a shirt for the second, a tablecloth for the next, and for the last I used part of a curtain. My dear friend Sara modeled this for me. 

I still wear these earrings frequently. I took a Tusker Lager bottle cap that I gathered in Kenya and flattened it out and made earrings from it. I love these earrings. 

 

This one is made from different pieces of different dresses. It was my favorite piece that I made. It just had the most wow factor. When it was being worn at least... On a hanger it looked like a black trash bag trimmed in lace! 

 

Ghost

Sometimes late at night, I take silly webcam pictures. And they turn out like this. All ghost-like. So I'm a ghost.

PS- My hair is in the most dreadful inbetween length. I cut it short in May, and its been growing back out ever since. I love it short, but I also love it long, and before  I hack it all off again, I want to have it long for a while. But it is taking absolutely ages to get long again. Its just kind of eating me up inside. (SIDE NOTE: I just sneezed all over my keyboard. cold and flu season is upon us) Patience is a virtue, but not one that is easily practiced for me.

This is one of my absolutely most favorite new finds. I like to go thrifting as often as I can. And I picked up this gem at the Salvation Army store just outside of downtown Greenville. It is a 1960s salad plate that is worth up to $50. If I was a smart little girl I would try to sell it or do something of value with it, but I plan to keep it in my collection of mismatched dishes and things for my future home.

2011.

January 2011.

This picture was my first profile picture on my facebook in 2011. This is my then (now ex) boyfriend, David Paul and I eating lunch in the hallway of my high school during Arts Intercession. 

February 2011.
This is what took up most of my senior year of high school. My senior project. I repurposed used materials into clothing and accessories. I had a wonderful mentor, named Lily who helped me with my project.

March 2011.
This picture is basically irrelevant for the month of March, but it was my profile picture. So I guess this is what I looked like in March of last year. March consisted of: skipping school and hanging out with my sister and my mom on her birthday (March 8th), attending my sister's dance competitions, and thats more or less it. Oh yeah, and finishing the final product for my senior project. A book teeming with pictures and info of the clothes I had made. Also the clothes were a product of it.

April 2011.

This was senior year winding down. Sara and I outside at school. I assumed it would just end quietly, but silence was never my thing. I went out with a bang. But that doesn't happen until May. ;)

May 2011.

It deserved more than one picture. Obviously. Previously in the year I had tweeted something not so nice (aka slanderous) about a teacher at my school. So around May, I got suspended for three days and banned from my senior prom. Which wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest if I had not been so fond of my dress. See, I had designed it and had a family friend make it for me. Oh well. Such is life. I wore it for pictures and dinner and then sat at home with my other banned from prom suspension buddy, Albany. Also we had a senior lunch for the graduating class of GTCHS. That would be the second picture with my group of friends from high school (Jordan, Sara, Myself, Jessica, Ann, Albany, Ellen, Brianne and Sarah LtoR).  A few days before I was officially out of high school, I chopped off all of my hair which I hadnt done since the fourth grade. And of course, my graduation. That is the end of May.

June 2011.

I got dumped. For the first time. I had been dating a guy for nearly a year and a half, and out of nowhere he broke things off to date another girl, and 3 days before I was leaving the country for more than two weeks nonetheless. His timing was less than perfect. So to soothe myself, I went out and bought myself a dress that I looked damn good in. I was in a funk for about a month, during which I lost ten pounds and found myself again. I am glad that I am no longer with that boy. I wish him all the very best, but parting ways was a blessing. 

July 2011.
I traveled to Kijabe, Kenya for the second time. My parents and I are involved in mission work repairing cleft lip and palate deformities in children in Eastern Africa. I kept a blog while in Kijabe. I was in Africa July 1st through the 18th. So that took up a large chunk of that month.

August 2011.

My birthday month. (Its the 16th fyi) I turned eighteen this year, which was terribly anticlimactic. I sat in my dorm room alone on my birthday. In August, I moved to Columbia to go to the University of South Carolina. I knew almost immediately upon arrival, that I didn't like it. But I stuck it out through the semester. 

September 2011.

During September of this past year, I met a lot of new people who I hung out with for most weekends of the fall. I came home nearly every weekend that I was "away" at college. I became rather close with a boy by the name of Justus. Never anything official just friends who kissed and hung out and talked way too often. I hung out in the driveway of his brother Cooper's house with my lady Sara. Much like I'm doing in this picture.

October 2011.

One of the only weekends I kind of stayed in Columbia was in October. And even then I ended up going home for one night. At the end of October, the previously mentioned boy had some sort of epiphany that involved forgetting about me and moving to Guatemala. Who knows. So I gave him space. That's all one really can do in a situation like that. We were never technically more than friends anyways. 

November 2011.

In November, I dyed my hair for the first time for real. I chose a color called "truffle" and I think it looks beautiful. I've kept up the dye job into the new year, because I think that I was born to rock a sassy brunette color. My inbetween light brown was a bit bland for my taste. 

December 2011.

In the final month of 2011, I took two day trips to Asheville with Sara. Its just about perfect. I rekindled the non-thing I had with that boy for a couple weeks, but who knows. As the year came to a close, I decided to just take things day by day. I decided to give up on my plans of chasing anyone or anything. And just let life happen. Its going to be a tough thing for me, because I like to do. Im not good at letting things be, but at this point in my life I think thats what I have to do.

That was my year, in summary. A whole lot of nothing led me to be a totally different person than I was a year ago. 

Blogging.

So yes. This is my face. 

I've decided to blog more. Like a real blog. Not like my tumblr, where I reblog and post pictures of myself and whine. I want this to be an actual account of things that happen in my life and my interests and the soul searching that I'm doing this semester. I guess I'll start it off with a picture of myself. Because thats what blogging is all about, pretending like people care about what I have to say.