A Lazy Sunday

I have been spending the last week looking at other blogs and seeing how I can ramp up my blogger profile a little bit. So far I have gotten a few ideas, some of which will start next week so stay tuned for that. I am hoping to keep up my blog while I start back up with grad classes in a couple weeks, but we'll see how that goes. For now I am busy getting the most out of the last bit of summer before the fast pace of fall starts creeping back into focus. In an effort to do just that, I am having a lazy Sunday afternoon with my sister in downtown Plymouth.

My extremely rich drink and Gatsby :)

A couple days ago I went to see "Hope Springs" with my mom and sister and while it was a good movie, I came away with a bigger impression from one of the previews that played before the movie. In case you've missed it, a film depiction of "The Great Gatsby" is coming out next year and the preview alone was intriguing. I have never read the book because, in all honesty, I enjoy easy, fad-type of stories rather than the great american novel. However true that may be, I have had an itch to try Gatsby several times in the past and after seeing the trailer for the movie, I couldn't get it out of my head so I made it my resolve to at least give it a go. So when my sister said she needed to make a quick pit-stop at the library this afternoon, I knew this would be my chance to check it out. In the end, we both ended up  borrowing the book (yes, I did look slightly silly checking out two copies of the same book) and decided that we will have our own private End of Summer Book Club and discuss it over coffee over the next couple of weeks. I'm not entirely sure if either of us will finish it, but at least we'll get coffee out of the deal :)

My sister, Laura. 

In more Lazy Sunday news, we are spending this beautiful day in downtown Plymouth watching the bustling Kellogg Park from a cozy booth inside Panera. We are relaxing with yummy frozen drinks and she is in the process of writing a paper for school. So I will leave you with a couple of questions to ponder and if you're feeling nice, you can answer them for me!

What is your favorite way to spend a Sunday afternoon?

Have you read The Great Gatsby? If so, what's your take on the great american novel?

What is your favorite frozen drink (adult or otherwise)?

Happy Sunday,


Emily

Progress Report

Welp, apparently it's 2004 again because I slept in until 12pm this afternoon which is absolutely INSANE! There is no reason for it - I didn't go to bed late last night, I slept just fine, I just kept sleeping until about noon and had I not gasped in shock when I looked at the clock (yes, that rhymed...) I might have fallen back asleep for a little longer. 

Now, before you all band together and start throwing eggs at my apartment - I am going to tell you some of the down side of this whole "staycation" thing. First of all I want to start by saying that I love and adore my husband and we've had a lot of fun together over the last few days but with that said, you can only hang out with each other for so long before you need to spend time with other people. Here's the catch: everyone else has to work! So you're stuck making plans for the evening and the day kind of gets lost inside or with errands - ie: sleeping until noon today. I've accomplished a couple things on my Summer To-Do List, as well as some other things that I didn't add but here's my progress thus far:

Borrow books from the library (instead of spending $ for e-books) - Going this afternoon or tomorrow
Go to the Plymouth Farmers Market (Sat mornings) and ACTUALLY buy produce!
Use our free tickets to the Henry Ford Museum
Go to Kensington Park
Do a bike riding trip
Take pictures and get them printed -- In progress
Make some pages in my Smash Book
Purge some of the stuff still in boxes from when we moved TWO YEARS AGO!
Have my parents over for dinner 

I've decided to to take the "Take Pictures and Get them Printed" goal to another level by learning more about my camera and how to use it manually to take better pictures. I've already found some awesome blog posts that explain the different functions (aperture, fstop, depth of field, etc) but the hardest part has been trying to figure out how to make those functions work on my camera...it's a work in progress and hopefully I'll be posting some awesome pictures soon!

That's all for now - Thanks for reading,
Em

Staycation

I seem to be having trouble sleeping tonight, I'm not sure if it's because I can't get my mind to stop whirling around in circles or if I had a dose of caffeine too late in the day...maybe both. It could also be the confusion that I was off from work on a Wednesday and my body thinks tomorrow is lazy Sunday not Thursday. Maybe it's because I keep wondering why I'm awake? Who knows, but anyway...

Justin and I had to make a responsible decision tonight but it made me kind of sad. We were planning on road tripping from Michigan to Texas next week to visit some friends in Lubbock, but unfortunately, due to limited funds we had to cancel our trip. It was the right thing to do with gas prices the way that they are but we were both looking forward to our first cross-country road trip and seeing our friends. So we are instead opting for a "staycation" which I normally would think is one of the DUMBEST words ever, but in light of our current predicament I have found some inspiration from this rather annoying, fake word.

Since we both already have the time off, we have decided to do some fun things while we're home and save some dough. Tonight while I was thinking of the (free) fun things we could do, I was inspired to create a list of things I want to accomplish this summer. I am slightly nervous that if I do not actually make a list and post it on my blog (that no one reads) I will not hold myself accountable to actually do these (free) fun things while I'm on vacation and I'll end up hanging out on the couch doing laundry watching endless episodes of How I Met Your Mother. So I leave it up to you, whoever you are, to hold me accountable to these summer goals. I might not get them all done on my vacation, but I would like to accomplish them before September. Hopefully that will also inspire me to post more on my blog, because let's face it - I'm not really being the best blogger.

Here is my list so far, I will add to it as I think of more things!

Borrow books from the library (instead of spending $ for e-books)
Go to the Plymouth Farmers Market (Sat mornings) and ACTUALLY buy produce!
Use our free tickets to the Henry Ford Museum
Go to Kensington Park
Do a bike riding trip
Take pictures and get them printed
Make some pages in my Smash Book
Purge some of the stuff still in boxes from when we moved TWO YEARS AGO!
Have my parents over for dinner (this one is kinda sneaky because I already have this planned for next weekend) ;)

That's all I can think of right now so I am going to try and go to bed - mainly because I am sitting in the dark living room with my laptop and am being attacked by a killer moth.

G'night, Em.

Goals - Tiny and Tremendous (and everywhere in between)

We all have them - sometimes they're little goals like making it through the day without drinking pop (ok, that might be a tremendous goal for some, mainly me and my good friend diet coke) or they can be huge and include major life changes. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the time we tend to set negative goals for ourselves by taking something away from our lives and we rarely look for positive goals, especially when looking at small goals. I also think we are so incredibly hard on ourselves for not successfully reaching our goals - why not celebrate the time and effort you put into your goals and adapting your expectations to set yourself up for success?


In the spirit of tiny and tremendous goals, I thought I would share some of mine with you in the hopes that you will also share some of yours (SERIOUSLY people, share stuff with me so I don't feel like I'm talking to myself. Please and Thank You :))


I am an organizational junkie so my first goal, while tiny, is going to bring me A LOT of relief, happiness and calmness - I plan on cleaning out my purse before going to bed tonight. I have a rather large purse and I tend to just shove things in there and that has resulted in about six birthday cards (my birthday was about two months ago, btw), old receipts, about four mini bottles of hand sanitizers, etc. Who knows what I might find in there - maybe I'm a millionaire and don't know it ;)


This next goal is a little bit on the tremendous side because it requires me to wake up a little earlier and put in more effort in the morning - I am going to start making my own breakfast at home. For months I have been picking up breakfast on the way to work (along with a giant, cold, diet coke...soooo good) and not only is that incredibly unhealthy, it's also ridiculously expensive. If you're spending about $4 a morning, 5 days a week that's $20 a week on breakfast when I already have bagels, cereal, carnation instant breakfast and eggs at home...what a waste!! So far this week, I have been successful and have even brought my lunch to work both yesterday and today - I must admit, it's nice to know I'm saving money and not wasting the food I already bought from the store. Score!!


Now, a super duper tremendous goal of mine is to save enough money to buy a house. We are so over living in an apartment and really need more space but have been screwed several times in the home purchasing department and pretty much have to start over again...in a couple years. With everything going on in our lives right now we are extremely thankful for not being stuck with a mortgage, but boy, would we love to have a house right now. Can someone just deposit a couple hundred thousand dollars in my bank account? kthanks.


These are just a couple of my goals and I'm sure I'll post more but for now I'm going to try and work on my tiny, kinda tremendous and totally tremendous goals.


Tell me about your goals!


xo Em