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

summer bucket list

i'm not entirely sure what it was that inspired me to make a summer bucket list. i believe one day i was talking to the lovely emily about some things we wanted to do this summer, and somehow, i ended up starting a list of things i wanted to do before summer kicked the bucket. there are a couple things i maaybe plan to do this summer that i felt too weird about putting on the list and exposing to the internet, or even saying to anyone other than myself as a passing thought which i quickly shoo out of my mind (maybe a winky face should go here, maybe not, you know what i'm saying?). but this stuff all made it.

go to the zoo. i've made so many people promise to go on trips to the zoo with me this summer, and if i don't end up going to the zoo at some point, there will be some serious blind rage come september. there was a phase in my life (it was sometime during middle school, maybe sixth grade), where i went to the zoo approximately 10 times in a couple months, and i probably haven't been back to the zoo since because no one ever wants to go to the zoo with me. if you know me in real life and you wanna go to the zoo, please, let me know. i need more zoo buddies. 

obtain driver's license. don't talk to me about this. i'm 20 and i have no driver's license and two nickelodeon shows have mocked me for this openly in the past, and it hurt my feelings. i've failed two road tests (frowny face) so even though i am the proud owner of my own car (maybe we'll do an episode of mtv cribs about my car in the future) i cannot legally drive it by myself because stupid no driver's license. hopefully this will be corrected soon. 

scrabble tournament. "boy" and i have big scrabble plans, and by "big scrabble plans" i mean we've been talking about playing scrabble together for over a month now when i noticed that on an entire shelving unit in his apartment there was only a rubik's cube and scrabble. it only got better when taylor swift tweeted "Super weird how all of a sudden everyone is busy when I text them "hey want to come over and have a Scrabble tournament??"" and by "better" i mean we needed to play scrabble even more.

go minigolfing. i believe this might be the first big expedition emily and i will go on once i get my license. by big expedition, i mean a 10 minute car ride from my house to the minigolf place. the other plan is the drive in, but that's a bigger expedition. 

finish watching the middle. you know i'm hella into the middle right now.

get belly button pierced. okay, now this one might never get achieved. when i was younger, my dad told me if i ever got a piercing that wasn't on my ears or a tattoo, he would disown me, disinherit me, and kick me out of the house. i think he was kidding. i'm 99% sure he was kidding. that 1% doubt and my massive fear of needles may stop me from achieving this. 

make flower crowns. you don't know how bad i want a flower crown. i found a really nice diy tutorial for making your own flower crowns one time, so i'm going to hopefully do this with emily this summer so that next summer we can go to lots of festivals looking like indie princesses. 

go on a picnic. picnics sound really cute even though they probably aren't, and they sound like something i would do while wearing a flower crown. 

go stargazing. this just sounds all romantic and stuff, and i'm big into romantic and stuff. it's probably not so nice, you probably get bit by lots of mosquitos, and it's probably chilly and gross, but i will try many things that sound romantic and fantastic once. 

catch fireflies. cliche summer yes please.

make a scrapbook. so my estimate is that most of my friends will go back to school before i start classes, you know, since moving in and stuff and we all probably start classes at the same time. so i think i can spend like the last week of my summer chronicling my summer in a scrapbook and that would be kind of cute and fun, right? 

30 day squat challenge. if you've never heard of the 30 day squat challenge, this is a link to it. once upon a time, i was incredibly close to completing it, and then i gave up on like, the last two days because i'm a lazy, lazy son of a bitch. so now i'm going to do it and actually finish it. today is actually day 6. 

go thrifting. i always think that thrifting sounds like a really fun idea, but then i never find anything good, and everything completely reeks of laundry detergent and i have a baby asthma attack in the store, buuuut i feel like it could be fun to go thrifting for stuff to upcycle? i've been kind of into upcycling and sewing lately. 

make popsicles. because i'm allergic to anything, i can't go to the store and buy a box of popsicles and get sticky and disgusting while eating them. but sometimes a girl just wants popsicles, okay?

put on fake tattoos. literally, i don't have any clue. this sounds fun. 

watch the office and arrested development. i feel like these are two things i was supposed to have done long before now, so i plan to achieve them this summer. 

hair chalking. due to allergies to everything, i will never be able to dye my hair funky colors, so once emily finishes her fancy professional job where she can't have weird colored hair (aka sometime in august) we are going to potentially chalk our hair weird funky colors (for some reason this just reminded me of the "spell eye-cup and then say funky colors" thing you used to do to kids when you were little) (if you didn't do this, it's "i see you pee funky colors", which i don't know why we ever thought was funny but i'm still laughing now).

bake a loaf of bread. i keep saying i'm going to bake bread, and it's at a point where my own father believes it is never going to happen, so now i have to make it happen.

have a sleepover. would it be a sort of teenager (i'm not a teenager at all who are you) summer without a sleepover? 

make a summer playlist. this is probably going to be a really lame playlist full of cheesy romantic songs because that's the kind of summer i'm anticipating. like actually. i think it'll be pretty cool to have a list of songs that remind me of the summer of 2014, though. 

watch a sunset. honestly this just falls under the category of more stupid romantic sounding things i want to do. what if i had a picnic while watching the sunset and the picnic was comprised of sandwiches on the bread i baked and at the time i was wearing a flower crown in my chalked hair and then also i was wearing something i thrifted and listening to my summer playlist and also i drove somewhere with my license and then we stayed there and stargazed and caught fireflies and i took pictures of all of this to put in a scrapbook? 

blanket fort. what i really mean by "blanket fort" is that i want to build a super rad blanket canopy and then get under it and watch movies all day with somebody who will snuggle me as it happens. 

ride a carousel. a fact you should know about me is that i really, really like carousels, possibly more than any sane person should love carousels. one time i picked a college to attend based partially on the fact that they had a carousel (it didn't work out), but like, they had a carousel. and i love carousels. 

take up yoga. i always want to be super into yoga and like earthy and healthy and exactly the kind of person you would expect to do yoga, and i figure the first easiest step to doing this would be to start doing yoga in the first place.

establish a morning routine. to be honest, the best times in my life correspond to times when i am sleeping in a regular cycle, getting up early, and doing a morning routine, but instead i generally spend my summers sleeping in and not having any kind of routine. i don't want that this summer. 

and a nighttime routine. i think a nighttime routine might help make a morning routine a little easier, that's all. 

those are all the things on my summer bucket list for now! i might add some more later, or just do some cool stuff and think "wow that should have been on my summer bucket list." i am curious what everyone else plans to do with their summer so please share your feelings with me.

um okay bye,

kristina

friday quote

last week was friday letters, and alternatively, this week is friday quotes. this is going to be a pretty regular, every other week thing. we'll see how it goes. 

sometime in january, a friend of mine told me i should pick up a man without a country by kurt vonnegut. i immediately did; literally, i came home from class that afternoon and read the entire thing in one sitting. i was pissed. i was pissed because the book wasn't longer, because it only took me one afternoon and not a lifetime to read. it is a book full of the most beautiful sentiments, and i would strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading. 

but that's not what i want to talk about today. i want to talk about this exact quote. but to start off, i want to show you a picture of me and some of my former friends in high school (i'm in the middle, lookin' a little frizzy because it was like, at least 1000 degrees and humid out that evening).

i can honestly tell you that this picture was taken during one of the least happy times of my life, and there are probably around 30 pictures of me from this night, and you know what? you can't tell in a single one of them. this was a phase in my life when i was miserable all the time (as was most of high school, but i'll talk about this some other time), and i still managed to look happy. 

thing is, this quote is totally the right idea. it's okay to feel like shit, and it's okay to have dark times. no one wants to stay in dark times though. dark times aren't fun in any way at all. but just because you're having a dark time doesn't mean you don't have happy moments, just like how when your general feeling is happy, you can have sad moments.

it's all about acknowledging the happy moments. that night was a happy moment. and i acknowledged it was a happy moment, said to myself "if this isn't nice, i don't know what is", and maybe later i went back to feeling miserable, but for that moment, i didn't let my misery stop me from feeling happiness.

in another dark time in my life, i used to keep a journal of happy things about my day, just to keep myself accountable and reassure myself that it wasn't all bad. and it's not. you just have to let yourself feel it when it's nice.

but really, go read a man without a country, it's a stellar read.

um okay bye,
kristina

stuff i like a lot

i suppose this is sort of going to be a series. every other wednesday, i am going to do a post called "stuff i like a lot" (wow original wow creativity wow go kristina really work that noggin) where i just talk about/show you stuff that i happen to like a lot at that moment in time. it's sort of fun, maybe? we'll see. maybe it'll catch on, maybe it won't. if anyone at all has a title suggestion, please. let me know. 

anyhow, since i forgot to prewrite this post (oops) this one is going to be maybe a kind of short one. i'm really tired, and it's late on tuesday night, and i have to babysit tomorrow, so this is just going to get pounded out. my sincerest apologies. 

so currently stuff i like a lot:

denim high waisted shorts. i could actually live in the cut off levi's i bought from urban outfitters (cough severely overpriced) last year. i seem to have lost some weight recently so they finally fit juuust perfect and they're so comfortable and adorable and anyone who tells me high waisted shorts aren't cute can take their opinion and shove it somewhere that the sun don't shine that's all i'm saying.

the fault in our stars. i saw the movie yesterday kind of by accident, and while, to be honest, i thought it could have been better, i cried so much that i think it's earned its place on this list. 

young and beautiful. the lana del ray song, yes. the one that was in gatsby, yes. the one that maybe gave me a panic attack the other night from listening to it for too long on repeat, yes. it's just so hauntingly beautiful, okay? leave me alone! 

the middle. i've been trying to catch up on the middle for like months now, but i kept being not that into it. then i got really into girls for a while and stopped watching it. and then i caught up on girls and didn't want to binge watch any shows ever because i was depressed about having no more girls to watch. but now! let me tell you. i'm kind of obsessing over the middle. sometimes i secretly swoon about axel a little (don't tell "boy"). 

can't blame a girl for trying. this song is by a fifteen year old (sabrina carpenter) who happens to be starring in the new boy meets world spinoff, and i'm pretty excited about her. this song is actually my jam and reminds me of the day i spent cleaning my carpet while listening to it which brings me to...

cleaning carpets with shaving cream. i'm ending my post with this because honestly it is the most brilliant thing i've ever witnessed in my life. so if you're all pretty dumb like me, you probably have black eyeliner stains all over your cream colored carpet from when you were in ninth grade and wore your eyeliner like taylor momsen post leaving gossip girl (i can't lie, i looked like a raccoon, i'm sorry). also you probably one time dropped a pot of loose black eyeshadow on your carpet and left the largest stain of all time that could not be vacuumed out. i had almost lost hope when i read about this online. 

all you gotta do is take some plain old shaving cream (i literally borrowed my father's... thanks dad!) and put it on wet carpet and rub it in really really hard with a wet washcloth and then once it's real rubbed in (you won't be able to see it anymore) rewet the washcloth so it's not shaving cream-y anymore and rub it some more until the shaving cream comes out and you will be amazed. if you do not believe me, i display here my before and after pictures. life changing shit, i tell you. i actually promise you that's my actual carpet in the actual same spot. i almost wish i had more eyeshadow spills to clean. 

um okay bye,

kristina

one and a half

a little under a year and a half ago, on january 26, 2013, the newest member of my family came home. she joined us to become the most spoiled dog of all time. when i met her on december 29th, she was 20 days old, weighed just about a pound, and was all snuggled up with her sister and three brothers, looking remarkably like rufus the naked mole rat from kim possible (if you don't want to play the rufus bueno nacho game now, you're lying). i shall spare you the images of her at this phase in her life, because honestly she wasn't that cute and is cuter now.

but once she came home, she was damn adorable. and annoying. she used to do the most yippiest bark in the world, and she's still pretty yippy, but i accept her. when she first came home, she was afraid of the kitchen floor, couldn't even do the single step from our family room into our kitchen, and couldn't even dream of hopping on the couch. it's funny because i think she's so small now, but really, she came home like a third of the size she currently is. but she's still small enough that i get to carry her around like the baby that she is.

oh right, but annoying. she's afraid of bowls, so we have to feed her off a spare kitchen floor tile. sometimes she drinks out of glasses. sometimes she refuses to eat. sometimes she forgets to finish pushing when she's pooping so i have to wipe my dog's ass. but i wouldn't trade her for the world. the puppy love is real in this house. there's no other dog i will let lick my face (sometimes in my mouth no shame). if any other dog peed on me, i would lose my mind. my love for this dog is unreal. i think i love her more than 99.9% of people i know.

be real, no other dog is going to let me put her in a halloween costume and love it, or be happier once i put a bow in her hair than she was before it was in. get. real. being the first and only dog i've ever owned means that knowing her for the past year and a half has been a constant adventure of ankle nibbling, leg jumping, chasing around the house, and a constant hilarious case of the "zoomies" (if you have a small dog i promise you know what i'm talking about if you think hard enough).

but like i said, nobody's got my heart like you do, penny. happy half birthday! thank you for a year and a half of kisses, naps, farts in my face, and loving, and hopefully here is to many many years more.

um okay bye,

kristina

baby haul: jawbreaking and target

i have a confession to make. i maybe like shopping too much. but the other side of my struggle is that i like having money too much, so it ends up balancing out to a healthy amount of buying and saving. thank god that i love counting money is all i'm saying. 

aaaaaaanyway, last thursday i impulsively did a little online shopping in the fifteen minutes before i needed to leave my house, and i am now 130 some odd dollars poorer. oops. i'm still waiting for my forever 21 order to come (it'll probably be here by the time this post goes up, though... oops), but the shirts i ordered from jawbreaking came on tuesday, coincidentally the same day my sister needed to go to target to get some new shoes for a job interview and... wellllllll.... let's just say i'm now more like 170 dollars poorer. 

i'm actually slightly ashamed to admit i spent 30 dollars on the "don't know don't care" t shirt from jawbreaking, but i have been obsessively checking the website approximately 5 days a week for approximately two months waiting for it to be in stock again, and when it finally was, i was not missing out. 

that shirt, and the "overdressed" shirt (also from jawbreaking, but this one was on sale for only 20 dollars heck yeah!), are literally the softest shirts i've ever owned in my entire life. i want to live my whole life in them. my only complaints are that the "overdressed" one is a little see-through (or, well, maybe it's because i tried it on with a hot pink bra under it. yeah. maybe that one was my fault) aaaaaaaand that their t-shirts don't come in xs. come on, jawbreaking, when you're selling unisex tees, you gotta think of the tiny girls. literally everyone hates this complaint in the world, but it's a real problem. i don't like buying the smallest size possible and still slightly swimming in my clothes. 

nothing some tucking and tying up can't fix, though. 

since i'm unorthodox, i obviously just went bottom to top, and now i'm going right to left, #sorrynotsorry. the other side of the image is my target purchases (i also bought some pepper jack cheese sticks, but i figured you could live without seeing those), both of which were priced at a delightful $17.99.

the black thing is not yoga pants, but instead the world's softest black maxi skirt with a yoga pants waist and it is extremely comfortable. they didn't have an extra small at my target unfortunately (story of my life, apparently), so it's a little loose at the waist, but some appropriate styling will make it work out just fine. you gotta do what you gotta do to get soft and cute clothes. 

aaand if you didn't anticipate this after yesterday's post, the last thing is a skort. a cute little daisy print skort. yes i am in fifth grade, yes this saves me from wearing spandex under everything, yes this makes it so i can wear a really short skirt without worrying about flashing my butt and my lady bits to every person within a fifty foot radius of me. again, they only had a small (seriously... so much the story of my life that it hurts), but it's an elastic waist meaning it's not actually too big. i am so obsessed with this skort. they definitely had them in other prints, and i am definitely thinking about going back and buying more. 

anticipate seeing most of these clothes eventually in outfit of the day posts and probably anticipate another haul of my forever21 purchases (well, hopefully. because. well, hopefully they actually fit and are cute and great). 

um okay bye,
kristina

friday letters

emily, thank you for letting me use your blog as inspiration for my blog. thank you for letting me read your novel as you write it. thank you for writing everything you do. you inspire me every day, and i am very lucky to call you my best friend. also i'm really looking forward to adventuring with you tomorrow. 

forever21, i'm pretty pissed at you for never sending me a shipping notification even though (according to your website and fedex) my clothes totally freaking shipped. can you not do that? rude. 

any and all of my friends, someone please go to the zoo with me asap. this is not a joke. this is not a test. do not pass go and do not collect 200 dollars. just go to the zoo. seriously, i'll pay, that's how bad i want to go to the zoo. 

skorts, thank you for being kind of fashionable again i like the fifth grade style freedom you give me.

adam, i know we have our differences (a lot... we have a lot of differences, okay?), but i'm glad you're coming back around to being part of my life. when we can avoid fighting, i have some of the most meaningful conversations with you, and it's also really rad how willing you still are to help me out when i'm in crisis mode.

my neighbor's son, i should be completely pissed at you that i walked up through the woods so you could find the path into your backyard for you to not even show up that way, but i got the most stunning view of the sunset over the water, so i forgive you.

target, why do all of your dresses suck right now? okay, but thank you for deciding to hop on the skort trend because i missed skorts. 

baby pygmy goats, all of you, come live with me. you're so cute and hoppy and i want to squish your little bodies in a loving way.

"boy", any time you want to repeat sunday night and watch spongebob, i am one hundred and ten percent down with that, as long as you are one hundred and ten percent down with me quoting along with the episodes out loud. i literally have the best time with you every time i'm with you.  

um okay bye,
kristina

hola tannerinos!

welcome, my new friends, to this corner of the internet. my name is kristina, and i will be your benevolent guide! i've cycled through like 37 blogs, and i'm just never feeling it. that's probably not something i should tell you, but i like to be open and honest. open honesty and i are truly good friends. i think i'm really feeling it this time. 

so here are some things you should know about me, other than the fact that i am named kristina. my dad picked my name randomly out of a book, so i picked my blog name randomly off of fashionblognamegenerator.com, which i'm pretty sure is a joke anyway. i'm 20 years old, and i used to go to community college but now will be starting at a university in the fall, where i'll be studying physics, probably with lots of boys. i really like sparkly things, malteses, the number 37, and going to the zoo. i have very limited shame regarding what i say on the internet, so this might be fun. i am passionately opposed to capital letters, the fact that i'm not blair waldorf, consuming raw or undercooked eggs, and wearing loungewear in public. 

my goal is to blog 4 days a week: monday, wednesday, friday, and saturday (or as i fondly refer to it, caturday). please be gentle with me if i do not succeed, i am a very delicate flower. i'm just gonna do me, and if you like it, you can read it, and if you don't, you're lying to yourself because i'm hella fun. by "gonna do me" i mean probably a combination of random babbling thoughts, really crappy advice, fashion stuff, and diys.

before i go, there are some people you need to meet. and by people i mean a person, a dog, and an ambiguously titled individual. 

this is my best friend emily. well, or, half of her. she's like, my partner in crime, and this is us adventuring in some woods. you'll probably see her a lot, or maybe you should just go over to her blog, which is gotta get back to her, which you should at least look at for no reason other than that i made her stunning breathtaking amazing gorgeous header (i don't mean to toot my own horn but ah-toots mah-goots). no but seriously, her blog is pretty rad. you will certainly be seeing much of her, at least through the summer until she leaves me again for school (insert the sound of my heart breaking into a million little pieces here). she is the serena to my blair and tolerates all of the embarrassment contained in this tiny body all the time, for which we are very grateful. we officially became best friends in 2012 when i was her yearbook editor (that inappropriate boss-worker relationship, am i right?).


the next most important individual you need to be aware of is penny, aka penelope, aka poopster, aka my main bitch (literally). like hell yeah you better believe that's a picture of us spooning. she's a maltese who is approximately a year and a half old at this moment in time, and she weighs a little over six pounds. she is both the largest pain in my ass in the world and the love of my life. i swear she is either the stupidest dog alive or a dog genius, but i'm not sure which one. 


the last individual you should be aware of is going to ambiguously be referred to as "boy", at least for right now (quotations and all) mainly because he doesn't know about this, and i'm not ready to tell him, and i don't want to violate his privacy. we're probably going to go on hella adventures in the future, so just, don't be confused about "boy", alright? 

well, welcome to my corner of the internet. i'm not sure what exactly, but i'm pretty sure i'm princess of something (i'm still waiting for my grandmother to tell me i'm princess of genovia, but apparently genovia is a fictional country anyway).

um okay bye, 

kristina (i'll work on my sign off i swear)