Saturday, December 10, 2011

diy art

Hopefully my husband won't see this, because I am going to do a post about some DIY art I made the other day that I am planning to give him for Christmas.  Maybe it's a selfish gift because it's something I'm going to enjoy too and we really need some art, but instead of buying all of our art I thought it would be nice to make some sentimental pieces that meant a little more.  Each piece that I made was inspired by projects I saw on Pinterest, so I will post the originals and then my take on them.











I'm really excited to give these to Dionis!  Hopefully he likes them.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

recipe recap

That last post made me start to reminisce about the brief glimmer of enjoyment this past semester that was our cooking adventure, so I thought I'd do a little recap of the recipes we tried.


















All of these were quite good!  It's really hard to pick a favorite, but I would probably go with the penne... or the tortellini... or the cheesy chicken?  I guess I can't pick.  So after looking at all these, I've decided to set a new goal.  Starting when I move to Charlotte next week, I'd like to set the goal of making at least one meal off of pinterest/food gawker a week.  And here's the next one I'm going to attempt:


I will try to (1) actually follow through and make it and (2) post about how it turns out!

oops.

If you look at my post on August 28th it is safe to say that I epically failed at doing what I wanted to with this blog this semester.  With my thesis, it was just too much.  I spent the majority of the past 3.5 months freaking out, stress eating, and not having a life. 

I am happy to say that, with the exception of finishing up my final thesis book (which really doesn't count towards graduation), I have officially SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED GRADUATE SCHOOL!  Wooooo!  It really is a surreal feeling, because this a moment I never expected to come.  I always assumed something terrible would happen or I'd drop out because of frustration or I wouldn't pass my defense because of my terrible public speaking skills.  Surprisingly, I made it 3 semesters without any of that happening.

Most people don't know this, but I almost dropped out after my first semester.  I had a really bad meeting with the heads of my department who basically made me feel like I shouldn't be there.  I thought very seriously about dropping out and just trying to find a job like everyone else, but I couldn't bring myself to just give up like that.  So I stuck it out, and the next semester was better.  This semester was definitely a challenge, because I think my senioritis that I was supposed to have at the end of undergrad came a few semesters behind schedule.  But I stuck it out, somehow managed to survive 2 terrible pin ups to my defense where I had virtually no negative feedback.  It was glorious.  And after a presentation the following day (I had three within a 5 day period - sucks, right?) I was DONE with school!  It was the most bizarre, happy, sad, weird feeling I think I've ever had, just because I never thought I was going to be able to do it, but somehow I just had.

So now I'm on to a new chapter in my life... I guess people call this the "real world."  I've been living in blissful college land for the past five and a half years, but unlike a year and a half ago, I finally feel ready to move on.  I'm now the old person in Blacksburg (which is ridiculous to say, but it's true) and I think it's time for a change of scenery.  I will always love Blacksburg and I know I'm going to be overcome with emotion when I leave for good next week, but I am really excited for this next step.  Dionis and I have moved to Charlotte, NC, and although we are living in an apartment right now  (which is soooo much nicer than this one in Blacksburg, omg) we are going to start house hunting soon.  I am so freaking excited about this it's ridiculous.  I want a house so bad.

So I'm going to try to renew my goal of updating this blog more regularly with the everyday "little things" as was my original intent.  I am pretty bummed that I didn't keep this up this semester, because for a big part of the semester we had weekly dinner dates with my friend Lauren where we cooked something we saw on Pinterest or FoodGawker, and we came up with some pretty awesome meals!  I'd like to start that up again when I get to Charlotte.  Anyway, here's to a new chapter!