Cheers to the holidays!

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Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever they mean to you, I hope they are all you wish for.

See you all in the new year <3

Love,

C

P.S. I forgot to snap a picture of the lit up tree last night! Dagnabbit. 

Not to worry, I'll be snapping plenty tonight .

Here comes Christmas Eve!

My parents are currently residing in a small 2 bedroom condo by the beach until they find a house to live in permanently. The condo is already furnished so most of their things are in storage. Including our Christmas decorations.

Since the condo is pretty tiny, we weren't even sure if we'd be able to get a Christmas tree this year.

Yeah,  like I would have let that happen.

So this past weekend, my parents and sister went on a business trip and I went on a mission.

 I stopped by Home Depot in hopes that they might have a little tree that would fit my budget and this one was so perfect I almost squealed at the sight of it. It was only $15 dollars and was already set up in it's Christmas tree stand! I was sold.

I made another little pit stop at Target and bought a $2.00 pack of candy canes and two 8 packs of Ornaments for just a dollar each! I threw in a small pack of clear lights for about $5.00 and that was that. I found some extra ribbon left over from wrapping Christmas gifts to top the tree, and I wrapped a blue blanket around the bottom  a la Charlie Brown.

All in all, it was $24.00 and totally worth it.

It was so much fun to see how excited and happy it made the rest of my family upon their arrival home.

Who says Christmas has to be expensive? :)

I'll post another picture of the little guy all lit up tonight.

Happy Holidays everyone!

-C

I want to go on an adventure...

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However, I'm spending this Sunday evening drinking red wine 

and watching Eat Pray Love with my sweet little pup.

Which is still pretty nice.

I think this is my new favorite part:

"A friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. 

It's called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. 

When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. 

The great Augustus, Rome's first true great emperor. 

How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. 

It's one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. 

The city has grown up around it over the centuries. 

It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won't let go of because it hurts too good. 

We all want things to stay the same. 

Settle for living in misery because we're afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. 

Then I looked at around to this place, at the chaos it has endured - the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. 

And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic,

 it's just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. 

Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation."

-Eat Pray Love

Beauty-full.

I love the internet.

One night over the summer I ordered take out and rented the rom-com It's Complicated 
with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.
The movie was pretty cute, but not as cute as the house Meryl Streep's character lived in.
I remember drooling over the kitchen and wishing I had a picture of it to post.
Wellll ding dang, guess what I found?!
There is this nifty blog/site called Hooked On Houses that posts pictures of houses featured on movies, as well as celebrity houses. 

It's pretty awesome and I'm pretty obsessed.

Anyways, I hopefully scoured the TV/Movie House section for the It's Complicated house
and there it was!

(all photos from Hooked on Houses)

Sa-wooon. That kitchen island. Those pendant lights. The dining table.

I. a.dore.

This interior was actually designed by the same person who designed the house from 

"Something's Gotta Give" with Diane Keaton and and Jack Nicholson. 

I remember that house being a beaut, too.

Wellll, enough daydreaming for me. I'm off to the grocery store.
Happy weekend!

-C

One blow from caving in.

I've been trying to write this blog post probably as much as I've been trying NOT to write it.

Most of what's been going on in my life, as I've mentioned, is not really for the blogosphere.

So I won't be specific in any way, but shoot, sometimes a girl has just gotta blog it out ya know?

I think that if you read this blog or know me at all, you are aware that I love Christmas.

Love probably isn't even the right word.

I adore Christmas.

It can do no wrong in my eyes.

I don't care that it crowds the mall or that people get annoyed with Christmas songs.

It's perfect in every way and you can't change my mind about it.

Which is why this Christmas is really hard for me.

Because right now, I don't feel very spirited.

I feel sad.

I don't feel very hopeful.

I feel like sailing away to a desert island so I don't have to think about anything at all.

I feel more bogged down in GOO that I've ever felt in my entire life.

And my gosh, I hope this is as much "goo" as I will ever come across at one time.

I don't know why the world "goo" seems appropriate, but it does.

I guess because when I think of goo I think of something disgusting and slimy that is all over you and it won't come off no matter how much you scrub at it.

That's what this feels like.

No matter how many solutions I think I've found or how many right turns I think I make,

it feels like I keep coming to the exact same spot.

The holidays are so important to me because of what they represent.

When I was growing up, I just always remember being happy at Christmas.

There were plenty of other hard times, but Christmas time always felt magical.

And that's what I want to believe in more than anything in the world right now.

Magic. Hope. Faith.

So tonight, I'm sad.

and I don't feel in the Christmas spirit.

In fact, it doesn't feel like Christmas time at all to me.

But things change every single day.

As quickly as something bad happens, something good can happen just as fast.

And I know that after everything my family has been through this past year,

we are due for many, many good days down the road.

I know Katy Perry isn't the most talented singer, but I'm living for her song "Firework" right now.

It makes me smile (and/or cry) every dang time I hear it.

"If you only knew what the future holds,

After a hurricane comes a rainbow"

Til next time...

-C

Take this into the new year with you.

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Hope you're all enjoying the holidays.

 Time for wishes and hope.

-C

Dream Homes.

I had to stop in again and share...

If I could paint in a picture in my head of what the house I live in when I get older would look like, it would be pretty darn close to this:

I love the walkway and the trees and the darling picket fence.

I want to jump through the picture and live there riiiight now.

I wish you could do that.

Just like in Mary Poppins.

The inside is just as lovely. Take a tour here.
(oops! I had the wrong link, try again if it didn't work before)

See you next time!

-C

Happy Holidays!

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the best time of year is upon us!

I hope you are all enjoying your December and making lots of cookies and Christmas wishes!

I'm down in Texas with my big, crazy family and am helping get ready for my little cousin's 3rd birthday party! I can't wait to see her face when she opens up her gifts :) 

I'll post a picture of what we got her soon!

I only have one Christmas wish this year

 and I'm wishing on a star every night that Santa makes it come true.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays <3

Love,

C

I miss...

                                 good friends.

                                my BSA ensemble. i don't care how long ago it was. 
                                i love each and every one of them.

                                great adventures.

                                young(er) love.

I don't know what it is about tonight or this snow that is making me so nostalgic,

but I can't help but miss all of these things.

C'mon 2011.

Let's make it a good one eh?

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend!

-C

Daydreams.

I'm quite the daydreamer, and when I am daydreaming, it's usually about coming home to a place like this

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I love the yellow double doors.
The walk up stairs like that always remind me of the exterior to Carrie Bradshaw's apartment.

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I think "home" is one of my favorite words. Just brings a smile to my face.

Unfortunately, it's time to stop daydreaming and time to start studying...

definitely not as fun.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

-C

whats next?

This past weekend was my cousin Whitney's wedding in New Orleans, and it was simply awesome. I can't wait to tell you more about that weekend as soon as I get some pictures, but I'd just like to say that there are few couples that you look at and just get a feeling in your stomach that they are right, no doubts, no if ands or buts. Whitney and Jeff are one of those couples and I'm so happy my cousin has ended up with a guy like him. I hope all of the awesome women in my family never ever settle.

Anyway, during the weekend in Nola, Trevor and I got to talking on a walk to get lunch one morning about if we were applying to colleges now if we would choose the same major or school as we've chosen. 

It got me thinkin'.

I don't regret my decision to come to Cincinnati, I am grateful that I ended up here. 

It's brought me so many amazing things.

 But it's interesting if I were to apply to college now,

 I would look for completely different attributes than I did before.

Before, I was looking for a program for a BFA program for acting.

That ended up being completely wrong for me, and looking back, I see the clues in why it was wrong all along. It just took a big dose of reality for me to truly recognize it. I think for a long time, that was exactly what I wanted and it was exactly what was right for me. But I've grown into someone who doesn't suit that life and doesn't have the willpower to try to fit into it anymore. 

I do miss it sometimes. And usually when I do, it's an overwhelming amount of missing that sort of pangs in my stomach and makes me feel really sad that it ended up being so wrong for me.

 I have some of my happiest memories in theater, and I still find it to be so essential to who I am that I'm sometimes afraid to lose it. But I've learned that the reasons I loved theater wouldn't take me far enough to turn it into my full time career. I love performing and I love connecting. I love giving someone in the audience the gift of being able to relate to something a character says or does to let them know they aren't alone. I love inspiring people or at the very least, leaving them with a happy heart for an hour and a half. 

But my priorities have shifted a lot in the last couple of years, and they no longer suit a career in acting. So there's that.

Whewww. There's a tangent I didn't mean to go on.

Anyway, the point is, after I left the acting program I was almost instantly a lot happier 

(which was a relief).

I just felt lighter. I was excited for all of the new options I had. (I was also terrified)

But shortly after I started to feel empty in some way. 

I was taking these really lack luster, boring classes, that didn't challenge me at all. 

I don't like this about myself but I really need to be challenged to be really successful. 

It's the best way for me to really stay on top of things.

If it becomes too easy I become too lazy.
I had all of this creative energy still and I wasn't sure how to channel it.
Theater wasn't feeling right anymore but I also wasn't content just sitting at my desk doing administrative jobs at work. I wasn't sure what to do.

Which brings me to my point. There is something that I've found really interesting in all of this change,
and it relates to blogging, actually.

I used to use blogging as a way to stay connected to "normal" life. I loved reading blogs about families and marriage or just whatever was going on in regular, everyday lives, because when I really started blogging, that is what I felt so far away from. I was surrounded by theater and school and artists, and while that has perks of it's own, my heart started to fear what taking that route could possibly make me miss out on down the line.

But now, I use blogging mostly as a way to stay connected to art and design and creativity. I love to scour the internet for design blogs. Nothing makes me feel quite the way I do when I see a beautiful table setting or a warm, inviting interior. Blogging has fed that desire to be connected to creativity when I wasn't sure where else to put it.

I've been updating this poor blog less and less and it breaks my little heart.
Most of what has been going on in my life wasn't really right for blogging.
 I like to be open, but there are boundaries and unfortunately,
posting about a lot that has been going on would have been crossing a line.
I've been really drained this quarter and I'm ecstatic to see a new year rolling around.
 I'm feeling really positive and hopeful about what 2011 will offer me and my family.

So, with the new start of 2011 I've decided to revamp this blog to hopefully help it fit in better with where my life is leading and what I hope to get out of blogging. I'm going to dedicate a lot of my winter break to getting it redesigned and set up and I'm so excited!

Are y'all gearing up for the new year too? Have some changes in the making?

By the way...I don't know about y'all but it was a great day for hot cocoa here in Cincinnati. Mmm.

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'Til next time...

-C