"Hot Spot"

Yesterday while eating my breakfast, I received a very exciting email...It was from Lilly Pulitzer saying we could now preorder their new agendas for the 2014-2015 school year! For the past couple years, I have bought myself a Lilly Pulitzer agenda and loved their whimsical patterns and fun stickers on the inside! As a busy nursing student, I absolutely live by my planner as it is essential to my time management. If it doesn't get written down, it doesn't get done! Since I bring it with me everywhere, I like that its a good size (I like the large size) and its cute! 

If the large is too big or too small for your needs, they also have small, medium and jumbo sizes as well. I've included some pictures and print names of the agendas that I like the best this year...I hope you like them too!

"Tripping and Slipping"

        

    

"Biggest Fan"

                                                                                 

What is your #1 organization tool?

Washington D.C. Adventure! Day 2

The Capitol Building on a perfect spring afternoon!

If you haven't read about our first day in D.C., click here to catch up on all the fun! Otherwise happy reading:
To start off our second day in Washington D.C., we woke up early so we would have enough time to explore the rest of the museums that we want to cross off our list. For breakfast, we ate at a little diner across the street from Ford Theater (where President Lincoln was assassinated). The food was good but it was loud, crowded and the service was spotty, sooo it wasn't the best experience. After breakfast (which ended up being a brunch because we waited in such a long line to get into the diner), we tracked down a Starbucks because I hadn't had nearly enough coffee during our meal. Once sufficiently caffeinated, we had planned to head down to the National Mall but on the way, we passed the National Archives. We weren't planning on going here, but I immediately recognized it from its scene in National Treasure so I told John that we had to go in.

John looking incredibly pensive outside the National Archives.

I was in awe of everything we saw in this building! I wish I had been allowed to take pictures because I probably would have snapped a picture of every single document in there. My favorite part was the famous Rotunda where they keep the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. To be completely honest, I teared up a bit in here because of all the history that I was surrounded by in the room (secret's out--I'm a history nerd...scratch that, I'm a everything nerd).

From there, we went to the National Air and Space Museum. This one was definitely John's pick, but I still thought it was a little cool. What I really liked about this museum was John's enthusiasm for every single exhibit. He was so excited to explain the type/use/significance/specifications/etc. of all the planes in the exhibits and I couldn't help but smile while watching him talk (sorry for the sappiness!). 

Right next door is the American Indian Museum, which John and I  had high hopes for because we were expecting a ton of historical artifacts from tribes across America. Unfortunately, we thought that there wasn't a lot of exhibits in the museum to actually see so we didn't spend as much time there as we thought we would. One thing that I really did like about it was that some artifacts they had were dated B.C. so they were extremely old. I think they are supposed to be expanding the museum, so we will have to go back and check it out!

The last place we wanted to be sure to visit was the steps of the Capitol building. On the walk there, we took a slight detour through the Botanic Gardens, which was so pretty. I would love to see the gardens in the summer, when more flowers are in bloom!

Slightly dorky pose, but I couldn't resist taking pictures in the garden!

We had ourselves a little photo shoot around the Capitol building and then just sat on a ledge staring at it, wondering what goes on inside. Maybe Frank Underwood up to his manipulation tricks?? House of Cards anyone?! 

This was our last stop on our trip unfortunately. We had an absolute blast on this quick weekend...we were able to see so much history. I love how all of the museums are kept so close together; its how we were able to see everything we had on our list! We had so much fun so we want to plan another weekend trip this summer, but I am unsure where yet! 

My favorite picture from the whole weekend!

Do you have any weekend summer getaways planned?

Washington D.C. Adventure! Day 1

One of my favorite buildings that we saw...The Treasury Department!

Over Easter weekend in April, John (the boyfriend) and I went for a weekend trip to Washington D.C.. I go to school about two hours west of D.C. and we wanted to do something exciting since we both had long weekend breaks from school. I did some searching around the internet and found a good hotel deal at the Grand Hyatt right in the center of everything. It was a beautiful hotel and we ended up with a corner room with huge windows to look out over the city with (SCORE!). Once we arrived at the hotel, we were eager to get our tourist on-- and where would you go first if you were in America's capital?? The White House of course! I had been so excited to get up close to the fence of the White House and spend a while taking pictures there, but unfortunately, it did not work out like that! There were police everywhere that wouldn't let anyone up close and it was so crowded that we did not feel like staying very long. BUT we were able to snag a few pictures!

Me outside of the White House!

 Then, we headed to the American History museum. We spent hours here just obsessing over every exhibit. John's favorite was the transportation exhibit because it had old cars and even an old camper! He is in love with cars so it was right up his alley. My favorite exhibit featured some of the First Ladys' inauguration ball gowns. I loved this exhibit because I just could not stop thinking about how these women must have felt on the nights they wore these dresses! Also, another favorite thing I saw were the ruby slippers that were worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz!

After leaving, we had about an hour until closing time at all the museums so we hurried next door to the musem of Natural History. Although I like this museum, I wasn't overly excited to visit it because I had already been there a few years ago. Since we had a limited amount of time to spend there, we decided to just stay around the dinosaur and fossil exhibit!

This T-Rex was huge!

Once we had to leave the museum, we had a little photo shoot while hanging out around the National Mall. The weather was perfect, not too hot or cold, so there were so many people outside! 

These are my favorite pants---awesome color and so comfortable for lots of walking! 

After I had sufficiently bugged John by begging for selfies with me, we headed back to the hotel for a quick nap before dinner. For dinner, we ate at an American-style restaurant called Clyde's. The food was okay, but my cosmo was delicious so the meal was balanced! After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to call it a night, but on the way, we saw a giant rat in the street. GROSS. We nearly ran back to the hotel after seeing it! 

Overall, I would call our first day in D.C. a success because I got to see the American History museum which I was sooo looking forward to going to. Check back soon for a post about the second and final day in D.C.! 

This was my favorite picture of the day! 

If you've been to Washington D.C., what was your favorite part?

What I'm Looking Forward To: May 2014

I apologize for disappearing for a week...I watched the first episode of the House of Cards on Netflix last Saturday and that lead to me watching the two seasons in 5 days. Embarrassing or impressive? You can decide. Anyway, to continue on with our scheduled programming, I wanted to write about a couple things (both big and small) I am really looking forward to/just really excited about this month: 

1. My New Job

I start next week and I can't wait! Its different than any job I've ever had before (and more difficult), but I think its going to be worth it for the invaluable experience I will be getting. I don't want to write too much about it because I am slightly superstitious and don't want to jinx anything so this is all I will say for now!

2. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's Wedding

I spent a good chunk of my day watching the Keeping Up With the Kardashian marathon on E! today in order to get my hopes up that the internet will be hit with a slew of pictures of the wedding tomorrow. I am most excited to see pictures of Kim's wedding gown...I'm imagining something as opulent as the venue?! I was sad to learn that they will be not filming the wedding for the show, and as I was unable to secure myself an invite, I will just have to hope that a sneaky wedding guest will leak some pictures!

3. Bedding for New Apartment

A few weeks ago, I moved out of my sorority house and in the fall I will be moving into an apartment near school thus giving me an excuse to buy new bedding for a new room! With Memorial Day Weekend upon us, my inbox has been inundated with emails about special store sales and I thought it might be a good idea to start looking at duvet covers and decorative pillows with the hopes of getting a good deal. Much to my luck, I found nothing in my price range that I liked so let's just cross our fingers and toes for a good Fourth of July sale?

4. Warm Weather

The past few days here in Maine have been chilly and raining. Being on summer break, I really hate this and wish I could snap my fingers to make it 80 degrees outside and sunny. Lately, I have found myself obsessing over the weather and can't help but constantly long for the beach. Unfortunately in Maine, the good summer weather does not descend upon us until July, meaning I still have five weeks of dreary cold weather with maybe a few "nice" days spread about ("nice"= 65 degrees and partly cloudy). Just give me my beach weather Mother Earth!!

I took this picture on my last beach day I had last summer!

What are you looking forward to or excited about?

  

The First, and hopefully not Last.

I have debated for many weeks about what I have wanted my first post to be...I kept thinking "Should I indulge in a shopping trip to Ulta and review a beauty product or maybe go crazy in the Express sale that's going on right now and show a bit of my style?" But then I also thought, "It might be cool if I start off with something a little more exciting like some pictures from a recent weekend trip I took to Washington DC?" There were many other thoughts of what this first post should be about (that I won't bore you with) and like usually I do with everything, I completely over thought it. After a couple weeks of deliberating and figuring out the delicate art of Gadgets, it hit me that I should just write my first post about why I am starting this blog. 

 The blogging world has interested me for a long time and I had always wanted to start one to be able to share my interests and connect with other people who share similar passions! However, I always lacked the self confidence to write about myself and I was too worried about what people would think about me out there in the big scary internet world. Just this year, the self confidence finally hit me and I decided that I am not going to let the thought of negative people potentially not liking me or my blog stop me from doing something I have always wanted to do!

After many hours spent Googling all my questions about how to actually make a blog (who knew formatting was going to be so difficult??) and many more hours figuring out what I wanted to write about, this blog is officially born. I'm still a little nervous, but that orange Publish button is yelling my name and I can't wait to click it!

What were you feeling before you published your first blog post?