I Hate Coming up With Post Titles

Dress and Belt - Nine & Co. // Jacket - No tag // Shoes - Maurices

I really do hate coming up with post titles. Sometimes I have a great idea for one...and then most days I'm just like Ummm...sure. This sounds semi-intelligent and vaguely creative. I'm thinking of starting a series of purposefully lame post titles. Starting with yesterday's. I mean, seriously..."What's in a Name?" Come on. I guess it made sense considering the content of my post...but still. So lame.

On a completely different note...apparently hairspray doesn't work on my hair? No, seriously. My hair is naturally curly (see this post), but usually I re-curl it using a flat iron (sorry, if that makes no sense. But I really do use a flat iron to curl my hair--it works great!). Anyways, when I do this, my hair is in tight ringlets until I run my fingers through it and it falls out into the loose waves y'all usually see on my blog. So ...I thought I should just hairspray the ringlets and, if they stayed that way, it would look cool. Boy, was I wrong. Granted it stayed in the ringlets for a few minutes longer than usual, but it eventually just fell out and ended up looking like it normally does--as you can see in the pictures. Except this time it's not soft and I can't run my fingers through it. No... This time it's all nasty and full of hair spray. I didn't even use cheap hairspray! I used John Frieda Firm Hold hairspray. John Frieda. Firm Hold. Yeah, when I see both of those things on a hair spray container I'm thinking John Frieda? Yeah, that's a good brand. Firm Hold? Just what my unruly hair needs! It could just be that I suck at hairstyling in general...

Anyways, as a last thought...does this bother you? My sister hates photo editing of any kind. And I'm just like. Well, I have no idea what I'm doing and I see other people doing it on their blogs. So, I give to you the edited version of the last photo. Thoughts?

What's in a Name?

Skirt - Gap (Thrifted) // Shirt - Old Navy (Thrifted) // Cardigan - Mossimo (Thrifted) // Shoes - Faded Glory

Don't you just love my super creative title? Speaking of titles and names....I've been thinking of changing my blog name for awhile. I spent so long deciding on a name and when I thought of Finding Inspiration it just said me. It seemed perfect. I love inspiration and I love finding it in unexpected places. But....it's the name of so many other websites and blogs already it's just not unique. I didn't find that out until after I had been blogging for about a month though.

I have an idea for a name and I LOVE it. Heck, I even have a new header designed already. But my OCD self is screaming Noooooo! Then the website address won't match the blog name!!! (btw, it should be CDO...that way all the letters will be in order. And yes, I know you can change the address in blogger...but I wouldn't want to do that). But, I've seen bloggers where there names don't match their addresses either. So I'm torn. Just out of curiosity...would it bother you if I changed the name? It's not like a whim or anything... I started doodling designs and names in my idea book that I keep in my purse like...well long time ago. I mean, I haven't even been blogging that long. And no, I don't plan to be one of those people that changes names like 3 times a month. I just think that if I'm going to change my name, it should be sooner rather than later. It wouldn't be completely different from my name now...just enough to be unique. And actually, now that I think of it, it would be similar enough to my name now that it wouldn't bother me to have the same web address. Ideas or opinions? Please let me know I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading my ramblings. Have a wonderful weekend!

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?