101 in 1001

if you've never heard of the day zero project, before you read this post, you may want to take a quick trip over to their website just to find out about the idea behind the project i'm currently working on. i'm not going to explain to you why 101 in 1001 and why not bucket lists or new years resolutions, because literally, it's all explained on their website. 

if you've heard of it, those two silly and similar numbers in the post title are probably looking pretty familiar to you, and it probably instantly clicked in your head ("ah, another one of these, damn it", maybe was your exact thought, but yes, another one of these!). my best friend decided to start on her day zero project recently and it made me remember the not one, but two abandoned day zero projects i had begun (one of them was shamefully recent, but i just wasn't interested in like, half of the goals anymore, so it seemed to make more sense to me to just start fresh). 

so two days after she posted hers, i started mine. i set the start date as the day i even conceived the idea to start, without even completing the list first. i thought, this is more genuine this way. so all of my dates i'm about to list were taken from her, and we're going to pray she calculated them all right, otherwise i'm either giving myself too much time or stealing precious time from myself, because i just added two days to everything. i had to wait to post it until i had completed my list, so here we are, a little over a week later. 

Start Date: June 19, 2014

250 Days: February 24, 2015

500 Days: November 1, 2015

750 Days: July 8, 2016

End Date: March 16, 2017

everything that is in bold is completed. anything in italics is in progress. dates of completion will follow completed tasks. anything that requires more information (maybe a what or a how many complete so far) will be listed. i'll try to keep this updated at least once a week, but no promises. 

1. come up with 101 ideas for my list (june 24, 2014)

2. save 10 dollars per goal completed (30/1010)

3. amend my list at 250 days

4. amend my list at 500 days

5. amend my list at 750 days

6. use futureme.org to send a letter to myself for the end of this experience (june 24, 2014)

7. send 5 birthday cards

8. buy someone a present just because it makes me think of them

9. cook a meal with someone

10. go on a romantic date

11. go on a double date (emily i’m looking at you)

12. kiss in the rain

13. find emily the greatest graduation gift ever (since she’ll be graduating about a month after this ends)

14. make a new friend (clearly i have huge ambitions since i only want to make one friend)

15. fall in love

16. make my own cookbook

17. bake a loaf of bread

18. make cannolis

19. make cinnamon rolls with emily

20. make doughnuts

21. go to a new restaurant

22. make popsicles (june 25, 2014)

23. make a pie on pi day

24. visit emily in ann arbor

25. go to the drive-in

26. go to the zoo

27. go mini golfing

28. go tiny towning

29. go to new york city

30. go stargazing

31. go to an amusement park

32. attend a concert

33. go to a sporting event

34. attend a festival

35. fly a kite

36. make flower crowns

37. sew something

38. knit a cardigan

39. knit a pair of socks

40. chalk my hair

41. build a blanket fort

42. crochet a granny square blanket

43. knit someone an ugly christmas sweater

44. sew a quilt

45. build a snowman

46. build a gingerbread house

47. make a collage

48. create a self portrait

49. buy sexy lingerie (no shame)

50. buy a watch

51. become the proud owner of a stationary set

52. get my belly button pierced

53. own a pair of hunter boots

54. buy an ipad

55. tip 100%

56. buy super mario 64 and beat it

57. get new glasses

58. get prescription sunglasses

59. buy a bathing suit that i actually like

60. get my driver’s license

61. graduate from college

62. quit biting my nails

63. make my bed every day for a month

64. nighttime yoga every day for a month

65. take a selfie every day for a year

66. morning yoga every day for a month

67. learn spanish from duolingo

68. read 101 books (4/101)

69. learn the state capitals

70. learn the united states presidents in order

71. learn to drive on the highway

72. complete the 30 day squat challenge

73. get my first real job (as in, babysitting doesn’t count)

74. complete the 30 day unsent letter challenge

75. keep a daily journal for at least a month

76. spend an entire week without checking facebook

77. get into grad school

78. read every book a single author has written

79. open a new checking account

80. do something spontaneous

81. moisturize every night for a month

82. read the old testament

83. read the new testament

84. keep up with my planner for an entire school year

85. get my goodreads “to read” shelf down to 100 books (255/100)

86. get my ravelry account up to date

87. do a full clean out of my clothes and shoes

88. get my computer’s files completely organized

89. organize my yarn

90. watch 10 tv shows on my list

91. make ten playlists

92. rewatch all of gossip girl

93. grow a cactus or a mini bonsai in my room

94. record a cover of a song

95. watch all the star wars movies

96. beat story mode on at least one mario party game

97. teach penny a new trick

(since i'm doing this project for me, not for the blog, there are a few goals i just am not comfortable sharing publicly on the internet, you know?) 

98. private

99. private

100. private

101. private

um okay bye,

kristina

friday quote

this week's lovely quote comes from the mouth of a talking, shapeshifting dog from one of my favorite shows, adventure time. you possibly either know this show as a children's show or the show the weird stoners you know watch, but i think everyone should watch it. 

case in point, this quote. i don't have nearly as much to say about this quote as i did about the last one, but, i mean, come on, this quote is super important to my life. 

as a perfectionist, i have a lot of trouble with being bad at things when i start doing them. as in, if i'm not immediately the best, i want to quit. sometimes you have to be bad before you can get good at things, and that's okay. 

i guess that's all i've really got for today. 

um okay bye,
kristina

princess picks: stuff i like a lot

so i guess i have some explaining to do, on two fronts. first of all, i just came up with the cheesiest name for this series, so now it's just going to be "princess picks" because i'm a cheesy dweeb, and also because i'm princess of something. this is the last time we'll even mention the horrible uncreative nonsense that is "stuff i like a lot." 

second of all, i didn't post on monday. i had a really... intense post that i was going to write for monday, and i just wasn't up for writing it, especially because monday was not exactly what you'd call a good day (i failed another road test, not exactly the biggest ego boost). 

anyway, here we go with the actual post, right? 

aimless driving. em and i did a whooole bunch of aimless driving two weekends ago, and my dad has been taking me to do a bunch of aimless driving for practice, and i gotta say, it's really calming. the open road and whatnot? i finally kind of get why people like driving so much. i was never really a fan because i used to feel like i was in a rolling metal death trap (still kind of do, can't lie), but all this aimless driving is kind of changing my mind. 

bandannas. i've literally been wearing a bandanna every day for the last week. i think the idea came from a picture meghanrosette posted on instagram, and then i googled how to wear bandannas and all these pictures of cher lloyd came up, and if you know me, you probably know that i have a massssssive crush on cher lloyd and i want to be her, so then it just kind of cycled andd here we are, bandanna obsession. 

the office. i literally have only watched two episodes of the office so far but i can already tell i'm completely and totally hooked. 

day zero project. if you don't know about the day zero project, you should totally check it out. i just began my third list (because i failed at the first two) (also a post is probably going up about my list on saturday), and i'm prettttty excited about it. like, too excited about it. you'll see on saturday, maybe, hopefully. 

taking selfies. as part of my day zero project, i'm taking a selfie every day for an entire year, and posting them on instagram and it's really made me feel pretty good about myself, in all honesty. 

squaaaaaats. i go through a phase every few months now, it seems, where squats are the best thing to ever happen to me. last night i did my daily set of squats for the 30 day squat challenge, and then i thought about crying tears of joy because i felt so good and powerful and happy. oops. 

um okay bye,
kristina

take a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow!

iiiiiiii can go anywhere! no, just kidding, this is totally not a post about reading rainbow because that would be really kind of weird, and honestly i only ever watched reading rainbow for the theme song and then i would turn it off, because well, to be honest, i didn't want to watch a tv show about books -- seems a little counterproductive, you feel me? 

when i was little, i was like, a huge bookworm. i used to read every night before i went to bed, and i owned like, 6 book lights, and i also used exclusively poop while reading (now i just text/tweet, let's be real, #endthepooptaboo). anyhow, in tenth grade, after i tutored this older boy in my chemistry class (who i was like real real in love with even though he kind of hated me, but i was brilliant so obviously he wanted me to tutor him, and he paid me like fifteen bucks to hang out with him so i guess that was cool) for our midterm at the library, i lost my library card and henceforth fell out of love with reading. 

in the last like, eh, year probably, i became really obsessed with reading, especially because of goodreads. i cannot say enough good things about goodreads, and if you don't have a goodreads account and you read, what are you doing with your life? i currently have 257 books on my "to read" shelf on goodreads, and i'm hoping to make a dent in it this summer. so here's some of my most desired reads for right now!

popular: vintage wisdom for a modern geek by maya van wagenen

from the moment i heard about this book, i knew i wanted to read it. if you haven't heard about this book (to be honest, you're wrong, because you have, you just don't know it by title), maya van wagenen is a teenage girl who found a 1950s "guide to popularity", read it, took its advice, and wrote a book about it. that's a pretty rad cool thing for a teenage girl to do, and it's also allegedly just a great book. i'm pretty excited to read it and see if it's as great as it sounds, but also slightly envious that i did not think of this idea before maya because it's a good idea.

gone girl by gillian flynn

i'm just going to admit it. i know nothing about this book other than that it's (apparently) being turned into a movie, but when i witness book recommendations, i throw myself at them very, very hard. the other day i was hanging out on facebook, as i am prone to doing, and i saw one of "boy"'s friends posted "the lovely [her cousin] told me Gone Girl the movie was made, and debuting on October 3rd, so before the date read this amazing book! I finished it last night at four in the morning it was impossible to put down!" and from that moment forth i knew i was going to read it.

the spectacular now by tim tharp

you may have heard of the spectacular now because it's a super cute movie with shailene woodley in it. i have because it's "boy"'s favorite movie, and he made me watch it, and then the other day, the beautiful and wonderful emily made a post very similar to mine today and brought to my attention that it was actually based on a book, so now i gotta read it. i actually have no idea if the book is supposed to be any good, or if it's going to make the movie suddenly piss me off, so this might be a mistake, but i have to try, you know? 

ask the passengers by a.s. king

this one has been on my goodreads shelf for a long time, and i probably just came across it in suggestions, but the other day emily, again, brought a book to my attention, this time by telling me it was the first book she'd read in a while, and it was spectacular, so now i guess it finally stands out from the other 257 of them as something i absolutely need to read as soon as possible. like i said, i'm really a huge sucker for unsolicited recommendations, so even if this is completely solicited, go on and tell me more books i need to read in the comments because i'll probably read them like, tomorrow.

psychos: a white girl problems book by babe walker

i can't even begin to explain white girl problems because it was simply the funniest, most ridiculous thing i've read in a long time. i want to explain it, but i can't. you'll just have to read it. if you need a little motivation to read it, there is honestly a chapter called "maybe people would take me seriously if i wasn't so hot." there's also a brilliant part where she hires a personal trainer who has sex with her as "a workout." you will seriously question (and probably google) whether this book is a real memoir or complete fiction, and i am not going to reveal that answer to you. i've been dying to get my hands on psychos since before it even came out, and this summer, basically, my sole reading mission is to read this book or i might actually die. i made this picture huge because i'm already so pumped about this book and i want the world to know. i want to scream "i love babe walker" from the roof tops.

there are plenty more books i intend to read before the summer is up, but i don't want to over do it. i mean, i have 257 books that i consciously plan to read. this could be one long post if i don't stop now.

um okay bye,
kristina

friday letters

michal, thank you for helping me cross the first task off my summer bucket list. our dweeby salad date/picnic/rolling around on a towel in the park/spontaneous crop top shopping trip turned out to be the perfect thing to really make me feel like summer had begun. 

abc, yeah, american broadcasting company, i'm talking to you. i hear word that you air the middle on your fine network, and trust me, i'm really pleased about this. i love you, really, just, we need to talk. i finished watching all of the aired episodes two days ago, and i already miss the heck family. i told my mom i "miss my friends", meaning the hecks, and i need them back asap. i've even started picking up axl's mannerisms the way i do with real people. 

emily, hey hey hey girl. you're probably going to be in every edition of friday letters. you've taken me on quite some adventures the past two weekends, and hopefully next weekend, i can finally take you on one. i look forward to it. 

my girl scout troop, honestly, adios bitches. glad last night was the last meeting, and i hope none of you see it coming when my schedule is suddenly "overwhelming" in the fall and "a lot more work than i expected" and then i "just can't commit my time to the troop anymore." y'all are just a thorn in my side and i am pleased to be washing my hands of you. 

twitter followers, i hope you enjoyed my psychotic rant about vomit last night. i know that i'm a classy lady, and i also know that i vomit a lot. 

kids i babysit, stop criticizing my fashion choices. my shirt is supposed to show that strip of my stomach, my shorts are supposed to be that short, and my other pair of shorts are supposed to be multicolored and ripped. i think i look good, so just stop it. you're all under the age of ten and you know nothing about fashion so shut your mouths.

baby bunny, every time i see you i cry a little. i'm pretty sure we're cosmically linked, or you're my spirit animal, or something. my mom told me i can't capture you and keep you as a pet, but god, "boy" and i really want to do that. i'm sure your raspberry bush is a really nice home, but i could show you a whole world of niceness. my mom and i kind of named you brick, so i kind of hope you're really a boy bunny like i've just been assuming you are since i haven't gotten close enough to check out your itty bitty private regions. 

um okay bye,
kristina

outfit of the day: daisies

two weekends ago, my best friend, emily, and i took a voyage a couple towns over to a cute little festival where they have like, art vendors and food vendors and whatnot. my area has a lot of these kind of festivals, and i usually avoid them because OH MY GOD PEOPLE EVERYWHERE, but this is actually the second one i've been to this year (the first one was the maaaaajor one for my city, as in literally it is famous, and i had to take "boy" because he's lived in the area for like, his whole life and he's never been, like what are you doing "boy"?). we didn't stay very long, and then we took an accidental trip to get her ears pierced and then went to a playground, and basically you can read about the experience over on her blog riiiiiight here.

the real reason i agreed to go was a perfect excuse to look real cute, because, to be honest, i don't get out much so i don't get many of those. i buy a lot of cute summer clothes, and then i have to wear them to like, walk my dog, which is a less than ideal situation for wearing cute clothes, because i only see old people and children (except these really cute guys who live on my street, and if they ever found out how cute i think they are i would die of embarrassment. i actually have no idea how old they are, but there are two equally quick ways to navigate my neighborhood to get to my house, and emily always takes the way past their house to get there because they're actually that cute) also walking their dogs.

basically this is me pretending to play on a playground, pretending i'm a model (i have no modeling experience if you cannot tell by how awkward i am). excuse my glowing white legs. my shirt is from forever 21 and was in my haul yesterday, and it is amazing and comfortable and soft and such high quality for an 8 dollar shirt from forever 21, let's be real. it's not even see through, which shocked and astonished me. my skort (hell yeah skorts) is from target and can be seen in my haul here. i've got some hella old shoes on from payless (they're actually from like tenth grade, don't judge me, i bought them when my family went to puerto rico and i needed nice sandals to wear to restaurants), and i bought my cute little yellow crossbody bag from marshalls, but it's definitely like, an isaac mizrahi purse, and one time in physics lab some boys (including "boy" himself) made fun of me regarding it and i'm still not really sure why. 

you can't see it in this picture, but in the pictures below, you can see my little triangle necklace that actually cost like, $2.80, MAYBE, from forever 21. you can, however, see the heart bracelet that i used to wear as an anklet when i was like, 8, and one of those wonderful, wonderful hair ties that don't leave kinks in your hair (mine is from urban outfitters, and i probably bought it to get free shipping).

i don't know, i was pretty pumped about this outfit, which was why i made emily take me to a playground to take pictures of me in it, and then we stood at the top of the slide and camwhored. ready? 

um okay bye,

kristina

haul: forever 21 (+ a bonus jonas)

be not alarmed; this post has nothing whatsoever to do with the jonas brothers. you may now all breathe a sigh of relief.

i know what you're saying to yourself. monday is post day, not tuesday. i know. emily even sent me a text about it and was all, "was there a post that was supposed to go up today?" and i was all, "no i was super lazy and spent all of sunday night watching the middle" (if you watch the middle, feel free to read that last sentence in axl's voice because that was the tone i typed it in).

but it was okay. because the post that was supposed to go up yesterday was a forever 21 haul, aaaaand by chance, today, i went to forever 21 again, so now you only have to suffer through one haul, not one haul and a baby haul, and therefore i figured, why not throw a bonus jonas in there too and include my kohl's purchase from friday. so here we go. i dropped a lot of money on stupid clothes, and i'm sorry, i'm trying to be a better person, but i'm just not.

so my first set of purchases, and the bulk of this haul, was made online a couple weeks ago. the real reason i made this purchase is because i'm addicted to purchasing shorts (i have a problem and any time i go anywhere with anyone now i tell them to not let me go near any shorts because it's seriously embarrassing how many shorts i have, i mean, i only have one pair of legs). but anyway, i only owned one pair of high waisted denim shorts, and they were getting some serious wear time, so i figured maybe i should purchase some more, just for convenience's sake.

i bought both of these pairs of shorts in a 28,  because the levi's i own are a 28, and a lot of people said they sized up from their normal forever 21 pant size in the review. apparently listening to reviewers was a mistake, because both of these pairs of shorts were huge on me. huge. but forever 21's return shipping policy kind of sucks, they fit really nice in the hips (they were really only extremely loose in the waist, to be honest. as in i could pull them down and wear them as low rise shorts with a drop crotch which is not a good look or a good quality to have in high waisted shorts), and i really didn't want to wait for more pairs to come, so i kept them and figured i was crafty enough to make it work. so far i've taken in the ones with the pink bleached spots, and you can barely even tell i took them in. i will gladly show y'all how i did that if you want to see, it was actually pretty easy.

because i have this shorts buying problem, i tend to end up with a loooot of bottoms and not many shirts to wear them with, so i'm trying to find more shirts (i literally wear the same 4 shirts -- that are the same shirt in four different colors -- basically year round and that's it unless i'm wearing a sweater or a sweatshirt) so i can diversify.

so i ordered a couple shirts, but mainly crop tops. the only one that actually isn't cropped is the beaaaautiful greenish bluish watercolor one (this shirt was a little pricey for forever 21, in my opinion, but it's absolutely gorgeous and seems extremely high quality so far). so basically right now i've only helped myself for the summer, oops. they're all really nice length crop tops though. i have an excruciatingly long torso, so usually buying crop tops is like, literally 75% of my torso hanging out, and that's not what i'm about. i want like, a strip of skin right above high waisted shorts, and that's what these shirts give me! you'll see the black one in tomorrow's outfit of the day.

also um, hey, can we talk about this one navy blue polka dotted shirt because um. hello. the back. the back of this shirt was the whole reason i bought this because i'm like painfully in love with open backed clothes right now. this, unfortunately, also makes this shirt most likely the least practical article of clothing i own, but i figure i'll find a time to wear it. because. like. hi. beautiful perfect back. also, this shirt is the thickest, nicest, stretchiest material of all time, waay better than i expect from f21. since i'm president of the itty bitty titty committee, i don't even have to wear a bra under it. a++, f21.

but like i said, i headed to an actual forever 21 store yesterday with one of my friends, kind of on a whim. she actually bought the super cute polka dotted shirt i bought but in a different color, and then we bought two of the same shirts. we were both on a crop top pursuit, though neither of us is really sure why. i think after wearing the black crop top i bought online, i wanted more like it, but unfortunately the only solid crop tops i could find were like, extremely short. like, just barely covering the bottom of my bra short. kristina does not like that. butttt i found two crop tops that were manageably long enough.

to be honest, i didn't really see myself liking the tank top one, and i just kind of tried it on because my friend was trying it on, but it's soo cute and so flattering. the tribal print one is a little more off white/beige-y than it looks in the picture, and it's veerrrry see-through, so i haven't quite figured out how to deal with that yet, but i'll work it out. i ended up spending like, 15 bucks on two shirts, so i figured even if i don't wear them a lot, it's probably alright. 

and now, the bonus jonas. i took a quick trip to kohl's with my mom and my sister on friday. my mom was on the pursuit for new shirts because she can't seem to find like, 50% of her short sleeve shirts, and my sister was on pursuit of job interview clothes, but i was just kind of on pursuit of nothing, but then... these shorts happened to me. 

they were labeled "soft shorts" and had elephants on them and pockets, so it was a done deal. they look like a veeerrry short skirt and they're very comfortable and my love for them should be equated to my love for skorts because you get the comfort of shorts with the cute flirtiness of a skirt, so it was basically over from the moment i saw them on the rack. i actually went back over to the rack to see if they had a different print in my size, but they didn't so my heart was broken. 

i probably should put myself on a shopping ban for a while, considering i am making no money and all i seem to want to buy is summer clothes buuuuut when fall comes around i'm probably going to need new fall/winter clothes. oops. 

um okay bye,
kristina