Aha! Bet you never thought you'd see me again, right? Well, I hope this is a nice surprise to see a notification somewhere on Blogger or Google+ or your email (to my huge following of absolutely zero people!). Summer's been on a roll now for about 3 weeks and, of course, all I've been doing is working. Frappuccino after frappuccino after frappuccino has been made. My entire body aches from pumping syrups, scooping ice and squeezing caramel drizzle bottles (because people just HAVE to have "extra extra EXTRA caramel.").

       Recently, to relieve some stress and maybe do some nice stretching and get my tush off the couch, I've invested in a yoga mat! With the help of good ol' YouTube, I've been watching videos with super basic yoga instructions and doing about a half-hour every day (that's all my body can handle right now. I'm so out of shape.) It's not much but I feel SO much better afterwards. It helps me get moving in the morning and sets a positive tone for the rest of my day whether I'm working or not. I absolutely love it! If you're curious, here's the first video I tend to stick to:

Aside for the basic stress-relief, I've been taking a summer class. Yeah. Just one. Because tuition is NOT a 22 year-olds best friend. I also ended up changing my major to English and I couldn't be happier! I feel like I'm finally where I "belong" so to speak and I can't wait to start taking some more upper-level English courses on my schedule for the fall. 

Back to this summer- I'm in French! Such a beautiful language, I love it so much. The only thing is I really didn't expect it to be so fast-paced. I've only taken another summer course before back at my local community college a couple years ago and it was a 100% online American Lit class. There was just a lot of reading in a short amount of time (thankfully, that wasn't a problem for me at the time. I had a babysitting job so I had plenty of downtime when the kids were taking a nap or while watching them play in the driveway) and a couple mini-essays (most of which were written last minute...but still got me some nice A's) but online learning has never been my strong point. Perhaps it's the lack of the learning atmosphere? Who knows.

So no need to fret, I'll try and stick around and post with at least some form of consistency for the next couple of weeks until it's back to school. Boo. Hope all is well! 

Finals Week Survival Guide

      The semester is slowly starting to wind down. It's almost time for finals and the fun that comes along with them. (All nighters, caffeine binges, the works!) So for any of my dear readers out there (there's at least one of you, right?) I figured I'd round up some sites that might make those late night last minute study sessions a little easier. No, this doesn't really follow the theme of my blog but hey, when life gives ya lemons- make some lemonade. Here's your finals cold glass of lemonade.

Music definitely makes studying more bearable. So why not check out some cool playlists? 8tracks.com is an AWESOME music website. Since it's user created playlists, you'll never know what you'll find and that's what I love about it. Here are some of my personal favorites:

• "The Science of Studying" - Piano covers of popular songs (without lyrics)
• "Indie/Folk Covers the 80's"  - Indie and folk artists cover popular songs from the 80's. (with lyrics but quiet, smooth and sweet so it definitely works great for essay writing) 
• "Insert Indie Song Here Dubstep Remix Pt. 5)- There's an entire series of these by the same creator but they're all equally awesome. Pretty self-explanatory, indie songs remixed and dub-stepified. This playlist definitely keeps me awake the later in the night I listen to it but beware, it's hard to resist the dancing.  

       Now say it's one of your Dead Days. You've finally cracked down and are in the zone when it comes to going over those flashcards or finishing that review when your stomach growls. Food sounds amazing right now but you are in no way putting on pants and going out for food even though there's nothing in the pantry. So what do you do? Check out CollegeDelivery.com! You can easily order and pay for your food online and they'll deliver it right to your door.

• Need some help studying? This site can help you get started! 

• Beat that urge to sleep- here's how you can pull an effective all-nighter. (This definitely helped me last semester!) 

• A super cute incentive to get that essay written. 

    

Room Make-Over!

     I get bored with boring rooms. I like color, even if it's just a little splash. For the past year and a half since I moved away from home all the eggshell white walls in this apartment and the one I lived in last year have just been killing me and I feel like I'm in one of those padded rooms for crazy people. I've also been looking for a way to re-arrange my room so I made a pretty spontaneous decision to hit up Lowe's and get some supplies.

     I picked a sort of hot pink paint. If you know me, I'm not at all a pink person Everything in my room is blue or a shade of blue or as a back-up color, green. I don't know why I just gravitate towards them but for some reason, a blue room would be a little ridiculous and I'm instantly reminded of this song. There are little spots of pink in my bed comforter anyway so why not?

     It was about 9 o'clock at night once I actually started painting and I painted the night away- but only the lower half of my wall. Painting all the walls in my room this insanely hot pink would give me a headache so I tried my best to tape straight lines across the wall (which let me tell you, is MUCH easier said than done). Thankfully, I had some great music to accompany me (Ever wanted to hear 80's songs covered by some really great indie folk artists? Check it out!) and was finished about 2 o'clock in the morning. Here's some pictures of the finished product!

I made a video!

So here's a nearly 3 minute long video showing what else I did over my Spring Break that wasn't covered in my previous post. Enjoy!

Oh, deer.

      My Spring Break can easily be summed up in a few words- boring, stressful and just downright miserable. I'd prefer not to go into detail, but I lost a very near and dear pet this past week and that's never an easy thing to cope with and I'm still trying to get my feet back on the ground after making that very difficult decision. But where there's downs, I guess there's a few ups as well. 

      I spent way too much time at work. Whenever we weren't busy, I got to practice making hot drinks on the espresso bar which is my favorite thing to do. I decided to try and make latte art which is a lot more difficult than it looks. The pitchers we use are too wide and have too short of a stout to pour the milk in the stream you need for precision and it's a pain in the tush to get the milk steamed just right- not too much foam but just enough to coat the top of the espresso. I managed to snap a quick photo of my accidental latte heart. 

      I went home for a couple days for the first time since Thanksgiving and was feeling a little down after recent events. To try and cheer me up, my friend took me out for our favorite meal- Pad Thai. It's been way too long since I've gorged myself on rice noodles, spicy chicken and tofu. I've missed home and Thai Cottage the most since I moved to San Marcos. We then went on a quick walk in my neighborhood hiking trail where I said hello to some DEER friends. (Hah. Get it?!) I tried to get as close to them as possible for a quick pet but they ran for it. The picture I snapped is super zoomed in. I feel like my dream as a Disney princess was ruined.