Royal Weddings are Tiring

...Both for the American Anglophiles who got up early to watch, and for any little Flower Girls involved:

[Source: Elle, via A Cup of Jo]

Royal Wedding Slumber Party Extravaganza!

Are any of you watching the royal wedding?

I am, and we are having a slumber party at the Shamba and pulling out the two couch beds in the living room so that when the coverage begins at 4am (or, let's be real, at 6, when the actual ceremony begins) we can just open our eyes and watch it without having to get up or anything! ...and then probably fall back asleep.

(This might be the worst decision I've made this entire month, seeing as I have to be at work at 10. But really, how often does a Royal Wedding occur? ...not often. Also, I feel like I need to live up to my self-professed love of England.)

P.S. Wedding blogger Kathryn of Snippet & Ink has been posting some wonderful Royal Wedding posts in preparation (hats, wedding gown predictions -- it will probably have sleeves -- tiaras...) One of my faves was this collection of photos of Royal weddings past:

Prince Rainier III of Monaco to American actress Grace Kelly, April 1956.

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent to Katharine Worsley, June 1961.

Charles, Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer, July 1981.

[images via Snippet & Ink]

I Love Scarves and I Love Ice Cream

Currently Eating: an M&M frosty. We might have gone through the Wendy's drive-through on the way home from finishing our final presentations in my class tonight...

Confession: I usually delete emails from stores, but I always look at Anthropologie's. Always. Because they are always so beautiful. (The emails themselves, I mean, let alone the fact that they feature beautiful items that I cannot afford. It is an emotional experience every time I interact with this store, let me tell you.)

This one on Monday blew my mind:

SCARVES disguised as ICE CREAM CONES?!? Oh Anthropologie marketing team, why are you so creative? Why can't I just be you, but minus all the actual business-y parts of marketing??

Actually, there was a sign in the window of our Anthro a few weeks ago that said they were hiring a window display maker (or something like that). I may or may not have momentarily considered dropping this whole Ed School thing and embracing a future of making this and this and this. Except, you know, I'm already kind of committed. 

But y'all should just know that when I am a teacher, I am probably going to have the best bulletin boards in the entire building.

Hello Monday

It's the last week full of classes? I have three final projects due by next Tuesday? Finals start next Thursday? I have 24 pages of papers to write? My dad will be in this country in a week? I have a bridal shower to plan in less than two weeks? It will be summer in less than three weeks? 

Wait, what?!

[image via Pinterest]

Christ The Lord is Risen Today

Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? 

He isn't here! He is risen from the dead! 

(Luke 24:5-6)

Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

(1 Corinthians 15:54-55)


Jesus told her, "I am the resurrection and the life. 
Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. 
Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die."
(John 11:25-26)


He is risen!

Schuyler

Schuyler Fisk is one of my favorite artists. I fell in love with her around this time last year, and brought my housemate Margaret down with me. And then I found out that she went to UVA, graduating in '06 (I missed her by two years...) which is just extra-wonderful. And makes certain things, like her Blue Ridge Parkway reference, make more sense. (One of my fave lines from The Good Stuff, because it makes me think of Virginia in the spring, aka right now: I swear I saw some flowers by the freeway / Reminded me of spring on Blue Ridge Parkway / Things are always better when you’re laughing)

Anyway, I downloaded her new album, Blue Ribbon Winner, today to listen to as I was finishing up my Shakespeare paper. It is currently on repeat. I'm still getting to know the songs, but here's one that I think is particularly beautiful:

Taylor Swift Was My BFF

Currently Listening To: all the Taylor Swift songs I own, duh (currently playing: Ours)

So my mom has always told me that Taylor Swift went to our church's Vacation Bible School back when we lived in Reading, PA. And yes, Taylor is from Wyomissing, PA, so this is plausible, but I was always like, sure, Mom. Right. 

In 2008, I won tickets to a Taylor Swift concert on the radio (true story), and my mom and I went. Taylor started out the concert with all these home videos from when she was a kid through now, and my mom makes this comment like "Wow, Taylor's mom looks a lot older now!" and I'm like, alright Mom. Sure.

But my mom knew. And, in the past week or two that she's been moving all our earthly possessions that have been in storage in Virginia Beach for eleven years to the new house my family just bought in Crozet, Virginia, she has come across a myriad of forgotten things. 

One such thing being a photo album of said Vacation Bible School that holds the photographic evidence: I. Knew. Taylor. Swift.  (Alright, Mom, I believe you now...)

So, without further ado, Little Taylor:

See the blond sitting in the back left? (click on it to see it bigger!)

Here's a close up of Tay and (the 1996 version of) ME:

This is my dad (my dad!) playing the guitar to Little Taylor 

(the blonde in the middle with the yellow shirt.)

Bonus points if you can find Taylor on your own...

Here's the close-up...and yes, I am the one posing hand-in-chin (really, Caroline?) 

right in front of her. I guess we were BFFs or something? ;]

Also, the sitting in the front middle is Taylor's mom, Andrea.  

Here's the proof written on the back of the picture:

I know. I probably just got about 57382849 times cooler. And I'm sure Taylor will be writing a song about me any day now...

Edit from the madre: They didn't just come to bible school that one time, their whole family were members of our church. Her grandma even sang in the choir. So you two were in the same Sunday School class for a couple of years. But you didn't go to school together because I think they lived in Governor Mifflin school district (like the Haskers) and we were in Wyomissing. Anyway, maybe we'll find sunday school pictures... :)

This Weekend Has Been

This weekend has been working long hours and rain then sunshine and coming home to a surprise (to me) fully cooked dinner with our neighbors and running around in the pouring rain and roof-sitting with chocolate milk and the nursery at church and a bridal shower and making bridal shower invitations and errands and getting to know my family's new house and hanging out with my mom and rediscovering old journals and photo albums and run-on sentences.

And now it's about to be planning a paper (the role of sexuality in Antony and Cleopatra, particularly as pertaining to Cleopatra and Octavia. In case you're interested). And maybe a cup of tea.

And it will definitely be this playing in the background:

(Also good: Kiss The Rain.)

Uggghhh

Alright. I am taking back everything I said yesterday about that daggone porch, because it made me SICK. No, really. I have never had allergies before. Never. I've lived here for three years and never experienced this. But last night, as I was sitting there, all of a sudden I could feel my nose clogging up (aren't you glad for that visual?) and, within about 10 minutes, BAM. I couldn't breathe. And basically still can't. And for most of last night and this morning it just made me very confused, because I didn't know what had happened, and, really, how could that happen so quickly? What could it mean? So I called my mom this morning for some reassurance. This is how our conversation went:

Me: "...and now I can't breathe and I don't know why."

Mom: "Well, that's probably allergies."

Me: "But I've never had allergies before."

Mom: "Well, it's probably just one certain plant that triggers it."

Me: "But I was on that porch last week as well for two hours, and nothing happened."

Mom: "Well, it's probably because everything just started blooming."

Conclusion: Moms Know Everything. And I'm convinced. 

And now I am feeling very sorry for myself, and consequentially for everyone who has dealt with this their entire life. If you have ever been led to believe that it's alright, let me just be the voice of truth in your life right now and tell you that no, it sucks. Because it's (finally) beautiful springtime outside, yet my stuffed up nose makes me feel like it's still winter. And I've had to be a mouthbreather all day. And it just makes me uggghhhhh. 

Therefore, I am going to bed now. Good night :]


[image via We Heart It]

Porch Therapy

House Quote of the Day: (yelled from her bedroom) "Guys, guess what! Some dinosaurs were nocturnal!"

Can I just say that there is probably nothing -- no amount of being overwhelmed by having to be a my new job a bajillion hours a week, all my culminating and daunting papers and projects and paper prospectuses, bridal shower invitations to get out, plus the usual weekly obligations -- that can't be fixed by sitting on a porch* at night for a few hours with some friends, drawing/making cootie catchers, and singing Taylor Swift or Wagon Wheel or Disney songs along with the guitar, with the smell of strawberry hookah floating in the air around you? (Um, wow, that was technically all one sentence. This does not bode well for all these papers I'm about to be writing.)

In other words, I'm sorry for neglecting y'all. (Especially you, Alessia Santilli.)


*Unfortunately, not the porch pictured. That's just a pretty one I could probably be perfectly happy living on for the rest of my life. Tonight's porch belongs to a college guys' house...sooo, nope, it doesn't look like that.


[image via We Heart It.]

Shimmies & Fist Pumps

Y'all, something amazing happened the week before last: I won a giveaway on one of my favorite blogs, Today's Letters! If you've never checked this blog out before, do so NOW. Tim and Emily Loerke are one of the most inspirational, fun-loving couples I (don't actually) know, and therefore I like to stalk them on the reg. I mean, just look at them:

Precious, right? Em writes daily letters to her husband/everything, which are a) wonderful, b) clever, c) hilarious, or d) all of the above. Added bonus: I don't even feel like that much of a creeper for stalking their lives so much because she used to be my housemate Madeline's Bible study leader!

Anyway. One day, she asked all the college students who read her blog to answer a few questions. So I did, and my name was one of the ones chosen to win a mix CD of her fave jams!! [insert major excitement about winning, new music, and getting something in the mail HERE.]

I tested out the CD this past weekend, while sitting in a coffee shop across from Margaret, drinking bottomless coffee and a eating a pumpkin muffin and reading articles about things like “Pleasure, Pain, and the Power of Being Thin: Female Sexuality in Young Adult Literature," and it was the perfect accompaniment. 

Here's a sampling of my faves for you to enjoy too:

(Bonus points for for having some of my already-faves on the CD, such as Timshel by Mumford & Sons, Laundry Room by Avett Brothers, and Poison & Wine by Civil Wars).


Thanks so much, Em, for making me want to shimmy across the floor and throw some fist pumps and leg kicks!

You Make Beautiful Things

Quote Love: "We were created in such a way that music erupts from us when we are squeezed. Whether it is a violent wringing or love's embrace, song drips out. So sing with all your might. Paint with fury. Write words noisy with color. Dance. Dance until we can see your soul." - from Praise Habit by David Crowder

Vision Dinner 2011 from Chris McKinney on Vimeo.

We just watched this in small group. Isn't this a cool idea? They're called cardboard testimonies (and the awesome thing is, when I searched for this on Youtube*, there were like a bajillion different ones out there).

Then made our own. 


If you made one, what would it say?

*And I didn't find it because it's on Vimeo... p.s. Thanks for the link, Haley!

Differentiation

Currently Listening To: a preview of Lenka's new CD on itunes! (If you've never heard of Lenka, start with these. They're my faves.) (p.s. I saw her in concert my first year of college, before I'd actually ever heard of her. It cost $3. I'm pretty sure she's charging more than that now...)

Differentiation is one of our buzz words in the Ed School. (along with other words like “scaffolding” and “Bloom’s Taxonomy”) It essentially means knowing all your students and their individual strengths and weaknesses and being able to tailor your lesson plan to meet all of them. It’s what, as a teacher, you should be striving for.

Right now, I’m working on an assignment dealing with all of this – taking a lesson plan, creating ‘student profiles’ for three made up students with individualized needs (por ejemplo, one of mine is an English language learner, one is below grade level in reading, etc.) and then marking how you would change (excuse me, differentiate) the lesson plan to meet all these needs.

But the ‘student profile’ is made up of things like multiple intelligences (based on Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences) and learning styles and all that, and before I knew that(/while I was tring to figure out what 'student profile' means and googling things like “differentiating instruction student profile example”), I of course came across all these tests to discover what intelligence I have and what’s my learning style and just personality tests in general.

So of course I took them.

And although maybe I wasn’t quite so efficient in getting my work done, I really feel like I've searched my soul and learned a lot about myself tonight:

• Intelligences: Language (linguistic), followed by social (interpersonal) and body movement (kinesthetic)
• Learning style: Kinesthetic
• Temperament: NF (idealist) (…and because my parents are somewhat obsessed with Myers-Briggs, I already know that I’m an ENFP.)

…What are yours?? (The links above all go to the tests. That's right, I made it that easy for you.)

Slash does anyone else find this as interesting as I do? Maybe this is why I’m in the Ed School and you (probably) aren't...

p.s. I made chili tonight! And it was GOOD.



[image via We Heart It]

Nom?

T-Streez (aka Taylor) just informed me that "nom nom" has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Sure enough, it's true:

Informal, chiefly North American

exclamation an expression of delight when eating.

plural noun (nom noms) delicious food.

verb (nom-nom) eat delicious food with obvious enjoyment.

adjective (nom-nommy) descriptive of delicious food.

[origin — imitative; popularized by the noises made by the character 

Cookie Monster on Sesame Street (usually as “Om nom nom nom”)]

Truth: this. is. frightening.

But let's be real, I'm glad that I now have an Oxford English Dictionary-approved way to describe what is happening in our kitchen right now, thanks to Streez and Monique's celebration of sponteneity: there are currently some nom-nommy nom noms* that I am about to nom-nom. Om nom nom.

*chocolate chip cookies

p.s. Speaking of noms, we definitely had these last week at small group:

[source]

History

Sometimes I forget that I used to live this.

These pictures from a trip I went on to Harar and Jigjiga, in way eastern Ethiopia, in the fall of '07 (another trip in which I tagged along with the Lunsford family, just like London!). It was a 2 day drive, and I remember we spent a significant amount of time in the car learning lines from The Importance of Being Earnest for school. Probably not the backdrop Oscar Wilde intended...

Disclaimer

Quote Love: "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." - CS Lewis

Currently Reading: Coriolanus, by Shakespeare. If you ever thought reading Shakespeare was hard, try reading one of his plays that no one's even ever heard of...

Y'all, I don't know if this is the case for you, but April is a month that is busy and just builds and builds into even more busyness. I think it's because, in college, this is all we've got (the first two weeks in May are our finals weeks, and then...summer!) and as people start to realized this, they're like "OH NO we need to do that thing we were going to do before the end of the year!" ...But when everybody realizes this, then there are a lot of things that are happening. Combine this with the end of semester culmination of projects/paper proposals/actual papers/tests/everythingintheworld, it's a lot. AND, on top of that, it's finally spring and beautiful (well, we're still getting there. But I have high hopes for this week) so really all you want to do is laze around in the grass with a book open in front of you for show but really just talking to your friend and possibly drinking an iced coffee. (Correction: Definitely drinking an iced coffe.)

And for me, piled onto this already-occurring phenomenon, I just started a job last weekend -- hours which I am now cramming into the leisurely time I previously had to do all my work. I mean, it will all get done -- it always does -- but it's going to take a little more concentration and intentionality and unfortunate things like that.

All that to say, I will try not to neglect you all, but on some days, it might happen.

But not to worry, come May and you all will have my undivided attention!

In the mean time, here are some pretty pictures that caught my eye on Pinterest today. There's really no rhyme or reason to them -- just that they are lovely(/delicious?) and I think we need some of that up in hurr. Enjoy!

Impossible Things

“I can’t believe THAT!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” said the Queen in a pitying tone. 

“Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said, 

“one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. 

“When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour 

a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six 

impossible things before breakfast!”

- from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

[image via Pinterest]

Don't Forget To Be Awesome

Currently Eating: ice cream

Quote Love: "If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane." (from Looking For Alaska)

I had the best intentions to get so much work done today. But unfortunately (or really fortunately) my work involves looking up a bunch of YA Lit stuff. And, of course, in doing, I got a wee bit sidetracked (story of my life) when I started watching Vlogbrothers...

Let me back up just a minute. Have you ever read a John Green book? I read Looking For Alaska for YA Lit at the beginning of the semester and it was phenomenal. It was one of those books that makes you sad when you finished because you just want to keep being part of those characters' lives. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, I read another one of his books, An Abundance of Katherines, last weekend, and it was also great. His writing is 1. hilarious, 2. so real (in terms of characters and life and stuff) and 3. addicting. I highly recommend it.

Now back to Vlogbrothers. About four years ago, John Green and his brother, Hank, decided to only communicate through video blogs that they had to post to each other every day for an entire year. This was called Brotherhood 2.0. Of course, because these guys are hilarious, about a bajillion other people started watching them, and they kept on making them, and became Vlogbrothers.

You can start with this one: 

(For our YA Lit final project, which can basically be about anything we want as long as it relates to YA Lit, one of my friends is going to focus John Green and how he's an author yet he's created this entire community, which is awesome. And I'm a little jealous of this idea because I have no idea what my project's going to be on. Even though technically I think we were supposed to let the teacher know our ideas like two weeks ago. Whooops.) (P.S. If you have any ideas for me, that's be cool.)

Saturday Afternoon

Currently Reading: Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita

Currently Sitting: on the couch next to a sleeping Monique. Madeline is making cupcakes nearby, and in less than an hour our neighbors are coming over to cook us dinner :]

This is what I did yesterday:

before                                                                                         after

Items discovered on the desk include (but are not limited to): 6 books, 2 magazines, 2 notebooks, 1 catalog, 2 mugs, a lot of random junk (such as a solitary glove and a bunch of safety pins) and a billion papers.

...successful day?