Old Friends

Dress - Converse One Star // Shirt - Walmart // Shoes - Maurices

Had a wonderful day today. Some very old friends came over for dinner. Now, I don't mean old...as in age, haha. I mean that I've known them since I was 6 years old and I haven't seen them a lot since I was 12. They have 10 kids (which is only two more than my family!). So, when I was 6 I met their daughter who was the same age. We were best friends until she moved back to China with her family when we were 12. We kept in contact via email, letters, phone calls, and eventually Facebook. But, we were never as close as we were when she lived in America. I haven't had a close friend like that since, but some of my favorite childhood memories are of spending time with this friend.

Anyways, back to our two-family dinner. Only the youngest kids came tonight, so I didn't get to see my friend (she actually just got married and lives in Columbus now--that was the wedding I was in a couple weeks ago!). But, it was still wonderful to see this family that has always meant so much to me.

Pickin' Strawberries

Shirt - Land's End (Thrifted) // Jeans - a.n.a. // Red Canvas Shoes - Faded Glory

Well, this is ironic. Especially after yesterday's post. I do, however, assure you that this is my best work for today. I started feeling bad this morning but I thought it was just me being really overtired (which I am). But after the strawberry picking things just went downhill. I was tired while out picking strawberries but I thought it was just because I was out in the hot sun. It was pretty awesome though 'cause we got like 10 or 11 baskets of strawberries in only an hour and they strawberries are amazing! Anyways, as soon as we were done and I got in the car I realized that I was pretty sick. So yeah. This is all you get today. (oh yeah, this is excellence haha). Well, I'm going back to my Supernatural marathon and hope that I feel better tomorrow.

PS Don't you love my strawberry print shirt? I was so excited to wear it strawberry picking!

Excellence?

Dress - INC (Thrifted) // Shoes - Mossimo // Necklace - Walmart

I hate posting when I'm not at least 90% happy with my photos and writing. But, sometimes that ends up happening. Honestly, I'd rather be 100% happy with my work, but I'm positive that's never gonna happen 'cause I tend to over-analyze my work. At first I really didn't care too much about my writing, but now I like it when I've written a post and my reaction is either Yes, this is a great post or Yes, this is hilarious. Which, yeah, doesn't happen too often. There are days when I really just don't have anything to say. And, more often than not, there are days when I feel just plain lazy. Today? Definitely the latter. I love days where the writing comes natural and takes little thought. And today here I am just like I have no idea what to write.

Although I do think I'm finally happy with my pictures, even if there are always days where I'm not feeling creative enough to get interesting shots. But since I've basically permanently borrowed my mom's camera the quality's so much better than my awesome cell phone pics from my earlier blogging days (haha...like only three months ago) when neither of my photographers were available. And even if I'm happy with the pictures I'd love to learn more photography skills...and eventually upgrade to a better camera. But, for now I'm good with the quality of the pictures.

It's great to look back at older posts on my blog and see how much it's improved. But, it's still a long way from where I want it to be. So, my Mid-Year's resolution (haha) is to only post when I know it's excellent work. That's why there's been fewer posts the last few weeks. I want to post as often as I can, but I'm all for quality over quantity. But, having both would be better. So basically I want to post as often as I can, but only if I can say I'm proud of my work. This post? I'm decently satisfied with the writing.

Ironically, right after writing this post I had to go outside and take pictures. I usually have the pictures taken beforehand, but I decided to write first today. So here's a perfect example. I tried. I really did. I tried my absolute best to get these pictures to look ok. But, I spent I don't know how long taking pictures and nothing looked good. This outfit is one of my favorites, but I could not get good pictures to save my life! It was so frustrating. The lighting was all weird and, while I'm not that photogenic anyway, I just looked more ridiculous than usual today for some reason. Well, these pictures aren't too horrible (and I'm definitely not even 90% satisfied with them) but they were my absolute best effort today.

Helping Hannah's Home

Shirt - Old Navy // Cardigan - Express (Thrifted) // Shorts - City Streets // Shoes - Faded Glory

Don't you love my alliteration?

Honestly, not my favorite outfit. But, hey it was comfortable. Wait no...actually it wasn't. I can guarantee that these shorts will never be on the blog again. I wore pants instead of a skirt because I was volunteering at Hannah's Home (they assist single, pregnant mothers under the age of 25) helping to organize all the donated clothes. Turns out that these pants were not made for sitting on the floor. No rips or anything, just a huge gap in the back (thankfully, I had the sense to put on a belt...). I changed into a skirt later for a graduation party. I actually did get pictures of that, but I'm saving them for a day that I don't feel like taking outfit pictures...or perhaps a day when I don't even feel like getting out of my pjs...

Anyways, yes, Hannah's Home. So I went with my mom and 4 of my siblings to do some work there. As I said before I organized a lot of the donated clothes. So I spent my time sorting and folding. Actually I organized the clothes that were already there to make room for the new clothes. But still, a lot of sorting and folding. I kept finding these random 4T clothes in the 6-9 months clothing!! Just a little weird... So, some of my family helped with that. The rest went upstairs to dust and clean the bathrooms.

My church has always done fundraisers and stuff for Hannah's Home and I think I may have participated once or twice, but I never really knew much about it. After the tour of the place today I'm so excited to have been able to help them! The house is beautiful and can accommodate around 10 girls at a time. It has care and counseling and also helps the girls learn valuable skills like sewing!

Gosh, I haven't volunteered in a long time. But, it was a good use of my time! What about you? Do you enjoy volunteering? Where do you like to volunteer?

Lots of Nothing

Dress & Cardigan - Mossimo // Belt- Thrifted // Shoes - Maurices

I love being at my house! It's just so quiet and I'm (usually) much more productive there than at my parents house. I only say "usually" because I pretty much slept the entire day today. After all the birthdays and such I'm exhausted. Yesterday I sat on the couch for a minute and then woke up like an hour later. And the day before that I fell asleep at the dinner table. Gosh, it made me feel so lazy, but at least I'd been busy and working hard before that. Speaking of being lazy...it's gonna be a lazy post today. As much as I like being productive, I'm happy to just have a day to do nothing. What about you? Do you ever just take days to do lots of nothing?

Back to Akron

Dress - Mossimo (Thrifted) // Shirt - Coupe (Thrifted) // Belt - Thrifted // Shoes - Maurices

Back to Akron...for just a day, that is. These pictures were taken at my parent's house, but I decided to head out to my house in Cuyahoga Falls for the night so I could go to a NAVS bible study. It was a little weird at first 'cause it was a Kent bible study....and I go to Akron. But a few Akron people showed up. We broke up into smaller groups and discussed Acts 7. We had a list of questions to go through and they were decent enough questions that we got a good discussion going! I'm rarely in a Bible study that has a good discussion like that so I was happy that at least some people were talking :p

So I loved this spot for taking pictures, but I feel like I didn't really get very creative pictures this time. I'll eventually go back and take some more. I mean, it's still my backyard. But, it just takes a lot longer to walk to than my normal picture spots. And I can't believe I haven't worn this shirt on my blog before! At least I don't think I have. I thrifted this for a couple dollars sometime last year and wore it...well, all the time. But it's been in the back of my closet for awhile! So I'm excited to wear more this summer! I usually have my closet well organized, but there's always clothes that I forget about (wow, that's kind of sad...). What about you? Do you ever find something you love in your closet that you forgot about?

Luau!

Dress - Thrifted // Shirt - Body Central // Necklace - Walmart // White Sandals (Not Pictured) - Montego Bay

My family doesn't really do birthday parties that much. Eight kids, ya know, and that's not fun to have that many birthday parties in one year!!! Especially 'cause almost all of our birthdays are in June. If you read my blog this past month, there were a lot of birthday posts! And even some days when there was a birthday and I just didn't post about it! But, now that my dad's birthday is over we're done until July!!! Wow, that was a busy month. Anyways, back to birthday parties. Even though we don't do parties every year, we still get a couple. 6, 10, 13, 16, 18, and 21 are the years we get big birthday parties. I remember as a little kid thinking it was weird that some of my friends got birthday parties every year and I didn't. But it was pretty early in life that I actually appreciated only having a birthday party every few years. It made it more special and fun to plan. I really like what my family does with parties and I hope to one day continue the tradition with my own family! I mean, we still celebrate every year. But, it's just not a huge party.

I remember I almost had a luau theme for my 10th birthday, but my mom gave me a choice between a luau party and extra presents. ....Guess what I chose.... She was awesome for letting my make my own decision though. We had decorations left over from some other winter party so we just used those. Shows what I really was concerned with when I was 10 'cause even then I hated winter. So yeah, a winter party in the middle of winter. I loved it (not really. I mean it was a fun party, but come on... a winter theme? Really? Who wants a winter party...in the middle of winter?). But, I got extra presents so it was totally worth it.

We finally got a luau party though. My sister, Catherine, had her 13th birthday party yesterday. Honestly, I can't believe she's 13! Now we have 4 teenagers in the house. And, well I'm sad I can't be counted among them anymore. I really liked being a teenager. Back to the luau party. It was really fun decorating for this 'cause we got a bunch of cheesy decorations from Dollar Tree :p We strung paper lanterns up, wrapped some Christmas lights around the deck. And well, you can see some of the decorations in the pictures. And I made a pineapple cake! It was perfect 'cause it fit the luau theme. And...my sister loves Psych. If you don't know, there's a hidden pineapple in every episode of Psych. So yeah, this cake fit the theme very well. I know I haven't put any pictures of my cakes on my blog before, so I don't think this is particularly my best cake or anything. But, considering my time crunch, I think it turned out alright! Normally I do cakes the night before. Usually all night before. And I've had some cool ones. But, this was actually done before and even a little during the party! Yeah, very last minute!

So what does your family do for birthday parties? Every year? Occasionally? None? Have you had a favorite theme? I'd love to hear from you!