September snapshots & roundup

Man September went by soooooooo quickly. I usually end up saying this after each month that goes by but seriously this one did! Another month closer to rain, hot drinks and homemade soup...mmmmm

I celebrated my 26th birthday this month

Did some gold panning with great friends

 Took a good friend out for a spontaneous bachelorette party

 Ugh traffic traffic traffic at the new job

 My sister and nephew melt my heart

 Niece, nephew and family moved into their dream home yay! 

 Sundays are for relaxing

Fishing into the late night

 Our great friends got married it was beautiful.

September roundup

Favorite new show : Angels among us

Favorite foods:  Crab, Crab, Crab mmmm

Favorite drink: I'm still on my iced latte kick!

Favorite medium: Watercolor

Favorite song: Stay high- Tove lo & anything Jhene Aiko 

Favorite quote: "The trouble is you think you have time" - Buddha

Favorite part of the month : Going on lots of adventures to find gold/crystals & late night fishing trips

New Moon Intentions

Guys, yesterday was this months New Moon!! Yay!!........oh.......you're not as excited as I am? Well you should be! New moons happen once a month and with them comes a chance for a new beginning and clean slate. It is a time for planting little ideas and goals, really thinking about your monthly intentions and recharging your previous goals. Whether you know it or not, we all put out intentions, lust over our dreams and deepest desires. New moons give us a chance to do this consciously, a chance to sit down and write these intentions somewhere safe. I have a small faux leather book that I have created to do just that! There is something so powerful about consciously taking time to sit down and really go over your dreams, goals and what you want your life to look like. Everyone is so different from one another so all of our intentions will look different. There is no wrong way to do this.
Now I know a lot of you may not want to do the same "ritual" as I do for this process, thats okay! I like to burn sage in the room where I am going to write down my intentions. Yes, I do this while my BF is in the room inhaling this amazingly cleansing  smoke hehe can we all say GOOD SPORT!

I take time to find a quiet place and meditate a little, if you haven't started meditating yet... dude you are missing out! Its like a magical silent cotton candy land inside of your mind. It centers me like nothing else (not even wine) and we all know I love me some delicious red wine. Usually after I mediate things seem to become a lot more clear, the time after I meditate is when I like to focus in on my intentions for the month. So lets say, you don't have sage and you don't meditate? Well, FAIL.... just kidding you don't need these things to plant your intentions. You just need a quiet comfortable place for a little while and a few of your favorite things. Things that help to calm you, help you focus, create you own perfect little sacred space. I love crystals they help me to feel calm, safe, and relaxed. I always bring them with me when I need a little comfort.

                       
So now you are sitting in your little calming space and you are feeling inspired to write down these little monthly gems, take out a notebook of your choice and begin to write down as many or as few as you would like. Since there is a new moon every month make sure to allow yourself some smaller goals, not everything has to be a life changing or major.

After you have these written down it is time to send these out into the universe! Close your eyes and one by one imagine what it would be like to have these desires be truth. I'm not talking imagine wanting them, I mean imagine that these are happening now, you have them. What does it look like to you? See the sights, smell the smells, hear this sounds. Now that you are consciously aware of your intentions, make sure to keep imagining these, keep them on your mind throughout the month. Every New Moon take our your journal and begin to examine what has changed, cross off those on the list that need to be. I hope you enjoy this process as much as I do! Time to get this damn ball rolling. I believe in you.

26 things to do before 27

        For the past few years I have been keeping a sort of bucket list for the upcoming year in one of my handmade journals. I started on my 22 birthday and decided that I would write down 22 things to do before I turned 23. I had this vision that I would do all 22 items on the list no problem, wrong. Life happens and before I knew it the journal was tucked away in a drawer where I would come across it every now and then. A few birthdays came and went and before I knew it I was adding items and changing the title. It went from 22 things to do before 23, 23 things to do before 24, 24 things to do before 25, 25 things to do before 26, and finally now 26 things to do before 27. Man writing that was a little painful. Where did all the time go?! Granted I have mostly completed the list with only a few stragglers left. I also am adding another one for this upcoming year. Guys I am determined to finish this list, that way this time next year I can create a whole new list! Are you with me? .... Well either way I am finishing this damn list!

                                     

                    

                    

1. Get moved into a house I love

2. Begin to write/illustrate my first children's book

3. Complete a scrapbook for someone

4. Have my very own craft room

5. Get a new job that I love

6. Get on a plane, fly, survive

7. Make at least 15 journals

8. Learn to sew

9. Make an inspiration board

10. Stretch my own canvas

11. Ride my bike downtown

12. Sell a piece of my art

13. Make a series of plates, cups, or teacups

14. See someone, talk it out (anxiety)

15. Blog/vlog

16. Start to recycle (lower my carbon footprint)

17. Learn to change my cars oil

18. Learn a song on a piano

19. Let go of the negative

20. Fill 3 large jars with buttons

21. Organize

22. 15 paintings 

23. Ride on a motorcycle

24. Yoga

25. Go to another country

26. Meditate at least once a day for at least a month straight. ( I'm hoping to make this an everyday occurrence later on)

I bolded the few off the list that I still have left to do. Also, I decided I need to add one for this up coming year. My goal is to start meditating more, to really put it in front of other parts of my day and realize that it is like a muscle that I must work out. I have found that having this list throughout the year has really helped me to remember my yearly goals. :) Challenge accepted! 

Birthday week adventures

I am now officially 26! Wow where has time gone, it seems like just yesterday I was having my 18th birthday, then 21st and now 26?! I  turned 26 a week ago on the 3rd, although I had to work I had a fantastic day. I was given unexpected gifts, showered with love and wishes from friends and even was brought a coffee from my sister and nephews! I am super lucky to have people in my life who have still showered me with gifts and get togethers for my "birthday week". Mainly Brandon, he is such a source of light to me. I told him for my birthday I wanted to go on an adventure to find crystals in the ground, the look on his face was hilarious. He is not by any means a crystal loving hippy soul like I am but he sees that these types of things make me happy and so off on an adventure we went. We packed up as soon as I got off of work on friday and headed out towards Jackson, Ca. Jackson is located in an old miners area, i'm talking epic gold rush status. They have the best thrift shops, old antique hotels and of course rich ground! We literally had no idea where we were going to look and decided to stop on the way up and stay at the local casino for the night. We both play poker, by play I mean that he plays and wins and I play and....well... not the point! We had an awesome time playing the slot machines( guys these are seriously my weakness) they are like super fun interactive movies that ultimately lead to impending doom for you wallet but are oh so fun! After a few hours we headed up to the room, where I fell asleep almost instantly.

The next morning we woke up bright and early, we headed out in no particular direction just knowing what our goal was, crystals! We drove around for a while searching like crazy people online looking for a spot where we could make this happen. We found out fairly quickly that this was a lot harder than it seems. In my mind I had this grand vision that we would find gps coordinates to a spot where we could make the hike to this perfect sandy location. There I would see a semi dug out hole which would be proof of the crystal vein. With my cool tools in hand, I would carefully dig out this monster pure white quartz crystal. Glorious sounds and lights would come from above and I would walk back with this perfect specimen to show off. WRONG! We couldn't find a spot for shit, we decided to go check out this local cave. I had been to a cave once before in Kentucky, there's something about underground caverns that are completely hard to believe. Its cold, dark and one of the most beauiftul things I have ever layed my eyes on. They are all different and all so utterly breath taking. The amount of time it takes for even an inch to grow down there is unbelievable. After striking up conversation with our tour guide and telling her what we were really down there for, she reveled that she in fact rock hounds. She gave us directions to a few off the map places where we could go and hopefully spot some crystals. After we were finished with our tour we headed out to a local hardware store to gather all the tools that we would need. I put the destination in our gps only to find out that it was 2 hours away. Super bummer, by that time we wouldn't have had enough time to drive down there hike up and really have time to look before it had gotten dark. I got into a little slump because I was just so excited about being so close to finding some. We drove to the downtown area and came across this old hotel. It had recently been remodled but they had still left the old furniture to give it that cool semi haunted old hotel feel. They had a fancy restaurant attached to it and we made reservations for later on in the night. We decided to head back out and explore the downtown area. Brandon could see that I was pretty bummed that we didn't get to go on out hiking adventure and stopped to talk to the hotel front desk man. He came rushing up to me telling me that we were going on an adventure. I was still a little hesitant but off we went. We ended up at this river not too far away, he told me the guy said there may be crystals around this area and I got super excited! We found a place and started to trek down towards the water. Once down there I did indeed find some really cool rocks. I came across a huge sunstone and a few other pieces that had some pyrite inside of them. We had earlier on a whim grabbed some gold panning equipment just incase we wanted to sift some dirt, good thing we did. We brought it out and he showed me the process of panning for gold. I caught on and by the time we left he had some tiny pieces in a jar to bring back with us! We found gold AND some cool rocks. By that time it was time to head back to the hotel and hit up the restaurant. The dinner was seriously amazing! I ordered Ahi tuna while brandon got some kind of chicken dish. Of course I had a glass of delicious merlot but the best thing is they had a fancy bottle of grape juice for brandon. We finally got to cheers wine glasses together, brandon doesn't drink any alcohol so it is rare that we both have wine glasses with dinner. We ended the night by getting desserts and wine brought back to the hotel room and watching a true life mystery story on tv. I really enjoyed myself on my awesome birthday weekend adventure trip, we  have planned to go back up into gold country this upcoming weekend to hopefully find some more gold! 

Weekly snapshots: 8/25/14

      

    August 28 was a super fun night! One of my best friends and I drove out to Oakland so see one of our all time favorite bands from High school play, Brand New. When I say favorites, i mean sharing ear buds in art class while blasting their music and singing along in class. It has been 8 years since we graduated,  (if I don't say it out it isn't true right??) man does time fly. This girl has been there with me every step of the way, where has the time gone? We both started to grow up and head in different directions but knew that we were not more than a phone call away. I am lucky to call her one of my oldest friends.

8/28 Snapshots:

We started our pre concert at her house playing around in all of her glorious make-up! *swoon*

I bribed her with a free dinner to drive hehe thanks BB

Of course the only option while in the area is Fat Slice pizza in Berkeley

We got to the concert and stood around until we wised up and decided to look for a seat!  #Teamgrannies

   

We ended our night with a few pictures before heading back home isn't she beautiful! :)

Overall It was an awesome and hilarious night, I seriously think i lost some pounds just from laughing so hard. We always seem to joke around and never take life too seriously when we are together, isn't that what life is all about?!