Show & Tell Vlog!

Confession: I read "mommy" blogs.  Judge me. But seriously, the babies are cute, the moms are so cool, and it's confident women who are where  I want to be in ten years-why shouldn't I read it?

One of my favorite blogs From Mrs. To Mama is doing a vlog linkup, and it seemed like fun! She is also doing it with Raven, whose blog I'm just checking out!

Anyway, it's a show and tell of:

1. My favorite pair of shoes

2. My favorite piece of jewelry

3. My favorite book that I'm currently reading

4. My favorite hair product

5. Something that shows my "job"

It was a ton of fun to make, and I hope you enjoy! 

Here it is:

Hopefully that works-I'll post a YouTube link soon!

"Canning" Adventures

This past weekend, I went "canning" for the first time.  Basically, my friend is raising money for her school's Dance Marathon, and we went downtown to stand around with a big red bucket and beg for money.

Overall, it was one huge adventure, and it was a lot of fun! 

A recap of our day:

I got off work around 3 pm, and we were planning on taking the 4:47 train into the city.  But, of course, we pulled into the station just as the train was closing its doors.  My friend is not a fan of driving on expressways, but the next train wasn't for another two hours, so we decided to just drive.  

A combination of detours, confusing iPhone directions, and shady neighborhoods led us to South Chicago before we found our way to the Tollway.  This was only kind of scary and was definitely made better by the sight of this:

But...why?

That, my friends, is a Cadillac on the tallest wheels I've ever seen.  In addition to that, it had BALLS hanging from the back of it? WHAT? We were laughing hysterically the entire time.  You know you're in South Chicago when you see THAT.

After a few more wrong turns and one near accident when a little boy ran into the street, we made it onto the expressway.  Before long, we saw this beautiful sight:

The Cell and the Chitown skyline-perfection.

Canning itself was probably one of the funniest things I've ever done.  My friend has done it up at school a bunch of times, but it was never something I'd done.  We picked a light post to stand by and just started asking people if they wanted to donate.  

At first,  I was not feeling it, and it just seemed like creepy people were talking to us.  But eventually, we were getting some serious donations.  Granted, the majority of them came from drunk men asking us what we were doing later, but hey, it's for the kids, right? 

Standing on a Chicago street asking for money may seem like a weird thing to do, but it ended up being a good time.   

My thoughts in a nutshell:

• 9/10 times, women our age would NOT donate.  
• Old ladies were telling us we were cute and OF COURSE they would donate.
• When you tell me you have no money, but then pat your pockets and change jingles, you're not fooling ANYONE.

We ended before the sun set because we didn't want to walk around with a bucket of money in the city, but I did get to take one fun picture with the Art Institute Lions:

We're tight.

 It only ended up being a three hour trip, but it was exhausting!

Can't wait for my next foray in canning.

  

I Could Do That

Do you ever think to yourself, "I can do that too?"

When you hear someone sing, or read someone's writing, or listen to a long list of someone else's accomplishments, it's so easy to think I could be just as good or better than them.  For me, it's so easy to think that I could go out and do the exact same thing.

The only difference between me and that person though?  The fact that they actually went out and DID it.  Yeah, maybe I could be an awesome singer with a ton of awards if I wanted to.  But that's not ever going to happen to me if I sit in my room and watch YouTube videos for the rest of my life.  Sometimes I think I could be a great writer.  But, once again, that's not going to happen if I never actually write.

My new goal is to put myself out there and try things.  The wildly successful people of the world didn't get to where they're at because they waited around for someone to ASK if they could do it.  They're successful because they went out and SHOWED people what they could do.

It's time I do the same.

It's Time, and I'm Finally Ready

So this blog.  It's been quite a long time coming, but it's also extremely new.  A recent history of our journey together...

So this all started about a year ago.  I was feeling frustrated with myself and my surroundings.  I wanted a way to tell people what I was thinking.  I spent hours designing the page itself- I tried different backgrounds, created a header, tried to come up with a witty title, etc. etc.  But when it actually came down to it, I never had the guts to actually write something down.  I couldn't force myself to sit down and write out my thoughts.  With that initial failure, I pushed this blog to the back of my mind and went on with my life.

Too brunette to have the guts to say what I think

Fast forward a year and a half or so.  I'm living at home after my first year away at college.  The adjustment from dorm life has been so much harder than I expected, made even more difficult by the fact that my friends from school, the people I've spent the last nine months sharing every single detail of my life with, are thousands of miles away and spread across the country.

Obviously blondes have more fun.  And now, I'm not afraid to say (write?) what I want

I'm a part time law clerk, part time sales associate at a chain clothing store.  That's where this blog comes into my life again.  I'd always said I would one day start a blog.  I love writing (something I never would have admitted three years ago), and I want to make my mark in the world. This is my first attempt.

Back to my wonderful part time job...I was feeling a little under appreciated and frustrated with folding the same pile of shirts for the four hundredth time when I realized I was writing in my head.  I was literally standing in the front window of the store writing a blog post called "And This Is Why We Go To College" detailing every reason I do not want sales associate to be in my epitaph. My mind instantly flew back to my long forgotten blog.  Maybe, I thought, I should start that up again?

Three days later, and I open my computer to find the link for this very page randomly pop up. Obviously karma or God or Jane Austen is trying to tell me it's time.

So here I am.  I have no idea what direction this blog will go in because I have no idea what direction I'M going in.

But I do know one thing.  I owe it to myself to write it all down.  Starting now.