IT'S FINALLY WINTER BREAK!!!

The first semester of Junior year, "hell year" if you will, is officially donezo, and I went out with a bang! I feel like I did well on all of my finals (even AP World and PreCalc) and am so glad to have school in the back of my mind for the first time in what seems like forever. 

The afternoon following my math (last) final, I did some last-minute Christmas shopping for my cousins... and may or may not have picked up a few items for myself! 

From Gap (NOT including the additional 40% off):

Two long/sleeved loose and simple black tops - $9 each

Red chunky knit scarf - $15

Knit vest - $30

From Urban Outfitters:

Black floral body-con skirt - $10

AKA it was a successful trip... everything adding up to sub-$50. Later that night, I went out for sushi with my best friend and her family, spending the night at her house after (which was last night). We stayed up until around 4AM sipping home-made peppermint hot chocolate, watching Paranormal Activity 3, and just talking about random but pretty deep topics that you can really only cover with the people closest to you. This morning we made berry smoothies, had a mini photoshoot in her front yard (photos will be up decently soon), watched Vampire Diaries (my first time), and then made tofu/salad for lunch. It was nom-tastic. 

Later this afternoon, Andon and I went on a date to a park close to his house where we walked around this huge pond/small lake, taking pictures, exchanging Christmas presents (photo posted below), and talking. Afterwards we got Chinese and then Pinkberry to top it all off. That guy makes me so happy... I feel like the label "boyfriend" covers only a fraction of what he is to me.

This was Andon's Christmas present to me: 

A much-needed classy watch for my regularly running-watch-clad wrist.

Overall, Winter Break = so far, so good

Finals Week

Ugh, I'm so sorry about the lack of posting. My week has been filled with  non-stop studying. And in the (little) free time I have where I'm not studying, I'm stressing instead. It just has been very hectic. On the bright side, my hardest final (AP World) is finished and as is my AP English final. I have three left, and I'll be done on Tuesday afternoon. Then I will finally be able to enjoy the holidays and spend time with family, friends, and Andon.

So here's a little mash-up of anything you may have missed in the past couple months...

Thanksgiving with my cousin, Megan

Blind Pilot concert in SF with Andon

Cross Country team going to State! With the highlights being: us staying in the sketchiest motel known to man.

Study Outfit

Christmas tree decorating with the family

My new jeans that came in the mail from American Eagle.. love 'em!

Photo of me by Jacky

Crazy Christmas sweater day.. I clearly dominated

New Trouvé oxfords

One of my journal pages from photography class

Stockings hung above the fireplace... =)

Still trying to figure out this whole personal blog thing.

So here's the deal. I love writing. No, I don't get 100%'s on all of my English papers, nor do I execute any particular skill in reading comprehension. I just love freestyle, nongraded writing. No stress, no boundaries; Simple as that. But I can honestly say that I have no idea how to write up a blog. What do I write about? My problems? Uh, yeah no. Terrible idea.. My life goals? My style? My talents (or lack of talents)? I have no idea!

I guess I'll just continue on blogging aimlessly with hopes that I achieve some sort of success and maybe gain some followers along the way. Who knows? Maybe someone will find my personal self slightly interesting.

I have noted that I do in fact have the ability to go on rants. I rant when I'm feeling an emotion with an usual amount of intensity. For example, if I do poorly on a test, I'll rant on and on about how horrible I am. Or if I am in a SUPER EXCITED BOUNCING OFF THE WALL MOOD, I'll go on and on about how awesome my life is, etc etc etc. You get the picture. The problem is, when I look back on my rants, I feel like I've acted like a total drama queen. I tell myself Naw, you aren't dramatic.. you just get dramatic sometimes -- okay maybe you're dramatic and then I feel all weird. I don't know. SEE! I'M RANTING RIGHT NOW. I'm going to take this opportunity to write a long post about my week.

This week has been so weird. I've had really great moments and not-so-wonderful moments. Every day is a pretty windy road for me. Tomorrow, I'm hoping, isn't going to be too bad. It's homecoming and all of the classes are assigned certain holidays that they must dress up and create a coinciding float for. The junior class has been assigned "Fourth of July". I still have yet to figure out what to wear. Gosh, I'm so behind. Anyways, tomorrow I ALSO have our league finals Cross-Country meet (which I'm missing the homecoming game for), so I have to be all fueled up and ready to roll (run?) for that! Upon my return from the meet, I will be getting ready for the Homecoming dance either by myself or with Jacky and Cammie. Andon and I have possibly the best costume idea known to man (there will be photos hopefully) which I will disclose later. It was completely HIS idea though, so I won't take any credit for his genius creativity. It's times like these where I just look at him and say "you were actually made for me and my personality."

Wish me luck for tomorrow =)

Halloween Costumes!

So if you're following my tumblr, you probably already know what I was for Halloween yesterday. BUT if you haven't.. HERE YA GO

Jacky (I wrote a post about her recently) and I went as "Fork in the Road" thanks to Real Simple Magazine's costume ideas. It was quite the hit among the appreciative faculty and we were sufficiently bummed out for not receiving some sort of cleverness award. Anyways, here's a couple photos!

I already have my future house planned out.

It will be a mixture of modern/rustic/traditional and will go along the lines of the following:

I want to live in a house that looks like this

With a bedroom that looks like this

With a kitchen that looks like this

With accessories that look like these

And a living room that looks like this

(Note: all photos taken from my tumblr)

Oh gosh. I'm a bit off schedule aren't I?

Hello again. So here's the deal: I'm a busy high school junior (which you probably know if you keep up with my muy fantastico but not really blog), so I won't be able to be typing away 24/7 on BlogSpot. However, on my off days (technically not including today considering I have 25 pages of AP World notes to do but whatever) I will be a-bloggin.

Exciting updates:

• Got my license and passed with flying colors (aka I didn't get any points off.. clearly I was born to drive)
• That's it.

I'm got a very exhilarating life.

Sadie's

My school continues the Sadie Hawkins tradition where the girl asks the guy to our Homecoming dance. I've been lucky enough to date Andon for over a year and a half so clearly it was only a matter of when and how I was going to ask him. We're a dorky couple, so he can appreciate my punny sense of humor, which is why my idea worked out perfectly.

So here's what I did: last night I went to Jacky's house to make cookies (some bunny-shaped and some regular shaped) and we topped them with homemade frosting and carrot-shaped sprinkles. This morning we put the cookies in my locker and I topped the batch with a note that said "SomeBUNNY wants to ask you to Sadie's... if you CARROT all you would say yes!"Andon regularly comes to my locker after school, so timing was a cinch for me. When he walked over, I asked him to open up my locker because my hands were full, and voile! Behold the cookies! Luckily he said yes (well, he said "maybe" but I'm 92% sure that's a yes) and he liked the cookies. So all's well that ends well!

This girl. Right here.

This is me and my best friend, Jacky. She and I are basically the same person... we're both kinda weird, both kinda dorky, and we both have tons in common. I seriously don't know what I would do without her because she is the best friend a girl could have and we're essentially attached at the hip. She always has something to say and her stories are always incredibly interesting (not to mention the fact she never seems to run out of them).. We truly bring out the best in each other and I think that's the most valuable thing friends can share =)

Trip to the Berkeley Art Museum

Jacky and I taking iPhone pictures on the car ride there...

The tickets! Personally, I didn't think the exhibit we visited (Kurt Schwitters journal pages from the mid-late 1940s) was particularly exciting considering the journal pages shown were somewhat dull.. But I appreciated the experience altogether for sure! We got to see photos in a different exhibit taken following a major fire that spread throughout Berkeley about 40 years ago.

Yes, this is essentially one gigantic seating area. Possibly the coolest place to kick back and read I have ever seen!

 Interior architecture.. fantastic

 Out-of-line window panes

I don't believe the photos they were looking at are in the exhibit we came to see, but apparently they were pretty interesting considering three of my classmates were looking at them..

Upside-down cut-out in the mirror tint that created a (inverse?) shadow on the ground.

The best place to buy ice cream cookie sandwiches. I got oatmeal raisin and snicker doodle cookies with mint chocolate chip ice cream wedged in between. All for only $2? Uh, yeah I'm coming there every time I visit Berkeley.

San Francisco buildings on the way home.

mentalbreakthrough

A couple months ago, I was a-tumblin away on Tumblr, looking through various blogs, when I realized how unartistic my blog is. Fashionably, it is quite artistic (well to me at least.. it's all in the eye of the beholder, right?), but it seems to lack the colorful creativity I really want. I loved RemainSimple exactly how it was (is) though, so I just decided to make a completely different blog, naming it "mental breakthrough", mimicking the feeling I had to expose myself to the more pen/paper (or mouse and photoshop) aspect of the internet. Thus, MentalBreakthrough was born! 

Visit it here! It's awfully fantastic, if I may say so myself.

COMPLAINING TIME! =)

As I brought up before in a decently recent post, I had two major tests this week. One being AP Environmental Science (yesterday) and the other being AP World History (today). I spent 95% of my weekend studying - not even using my weekly social event (yes, that exists) to see anyone, and that is saying something. Oh they're just tests, you say. But no. No they aren't. APES I can deal with, it's just a bunch of cycles and topics to memorize. I think I did okay on that test, but I'm not particularly confident. AP World on the other hand... the word "test" is an understatement. It should be called a "you-can-study-as-much-as-you'd-like-but-you'll-still-be-tested-on-random-things-you've-never-seen-before." And that, my friend, is exactly what it was. I spent hours and hours studying for this test, and I can honestly say I walked into the room feeling pretty prepared. But no, when the I first laid eyes on the first multiple choice question (out of thirty.. each one was a venomous bullet of its own) I only thought one thing.. "shoot". Over the course of the multiple choice, I basically accepted the fact I wasn't going to do well in that portion. Maybe I got 30% of the questions right. Moving onto the essay portion.. I think I did somewhat alright. It was't my BEST essay, but I'm certainly feeling better about that than the multiple choice...

BTW, kudos to you if you actually read up to this point. I like you.

This week needs to be over...

First off, I have an AP Environmental Science test tomorrow that I learned about on Friday, which threw me totally off guard. Not only that, but I also have an AP World unit exam that covers about 6,000 years on Tuesday. YAY. Seeing that I have no idea how to study for World, I might as well just accept the fact I will do poorly. In an attempt to study for it yesterday, I took out any notes and classwork that could possibly be on the test. If I stacked and bounded all of those papers, they would probably be the thickness of a short novel. In other words, I'm screwed.

Gotta love Junior year.

Running

Since I was 9, I've run with my dad. I started to practice with the grade school track team a grade early, in fourth grade. At that point, I had so much experience running compared to my teammates, I was put into the fifth and sixth grade races. Since then, I've realized my running abilities. Starting high school, I decided to try cross country. I figured it would be a nice way to meet friends before the school year started, and who knows, maybe I would be okay at it! I was put onto the varsity team, and I have run varsity since in both cross country and track. Only recently have I truly taken these sports seriously because I've decided I may be good enough to run Division 2 in college. I love the feeling of my shoes on the dirt trails, and of the long talks I have with my friends, and of the cleansed feeling I get one finishing. There is truly nothing like running, and even though the workouts can be a pain sometimes, it's all well worth it in the end.