The Real Deal

I just got back on Monday from a 10 day trip to one of my favorite places: Rhode Island!  My grandma was born and raised there, and moved to St. Louis after she married my grandpa, so her entire family lives up there.  My uncle (my grandma's brother) lives in my great-grandmother's beach house during the summer, so every summer, my family packs up, and we head up to the beach house for the summer!  I've been going since I was literally two months old, and a Rhode Island travel guide will be coming up on the blog soon! In today's post, I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite pictures I took on my iPhone from the past 10 days, and what we did, and the stories behind them.  This is going to be a pretty picture heavy post, but I am so excited to share my favorite place with you all! I took this picture on our flight there!  I absolutely love flying, and you see some of the best views from an airplane! The giant sail boat in the airport.  Rhode I...

This past weekend, I drove up to my college town, Peoria, IL., to spend some time with some of my friends from college! As I've mentioned before on here, I am on the dance team at my university, and am also on the executive board for my dance team.  Before going home for the summer, we picked the weekend of July 7-8, to come back to school and have a dance workshop.  My entire team ended up being there that weekend, plus some people brought friends from home, making it a big and fun group! It is only a 2 hour and 30 minute drive to Peoria for me, so I left on Saturday morning so that I had time to get there and get settled before I had to head over to start our classes. The teacher of our first day of classes was the former dance teacher of one of the girls on our team.  We are a completely self-choreographed and taught team, so taking classes from a real dance teacher again felt really good!  She taught us four classes on Saturday: ballet technique, jazz ...

Lately, I've been feeling kind of down.  This is the first summer I've been home from college where I truly feel like an adult.  My friends from home are all heading back to school way early, my friends from college are five hours away, and I'm working 9 to 5 Monday through Friday.  I've been feeling kind of lonely the past few days and have even been thinking "Am I going to be this boring for the rest of my life?" The answer is no, I am not going to be this boring for the rest of my life.  I'm at a weird in-between stage in my life, and the frustration from it is so frustrating.  In honor of this feeling I've been having lately, here is a list of some things that make me happy, in hope that they'll make you happy if you're stuck in a rut, too! ONE // Reading I've mentioned this in multiple posts, but I've always loved reading, ever since I was little.  Book stores were like heaven to me, and I would have to be dragged out.  ...

Reading is something that I have always loved to do, but unfortunately I don't get a lot of time to read for pleasure during the school year.  Now that it's summer, I'm trying to make a dent in my "To Read" list on Goodreads! The other day I finished my first book of the summer: What Alice Forgot  by Liane Moriarty.  She is also the author of Big Little Lies  which I read last summer and absolutely loved, and this book was just as good!  After reading these two, I definitely need to read more from her! This book is about a girl named Alice who is newly married, pregnant with her first child, and the next thing she knows, it's 10 years in the future.  She doesn't remember the last 10 years of her life, and she tries to figure out who she is in this new life that she knows nothing about. I was sucked into this book right away.  As a reader, you are just as clueless as Alice is about her new life, and learning everything along with her as she goe...

My birthday is my favorite day of the year, and I always love to have myself a day every single year.  But, since this year was my 21st birthday, we had to make it even more special.  My two room mates from school came down to St. Louis to spend my birthday with me and some of my friends from home, and we had a blast all weekend! Friday night is when they came into town, so we just hung out in my pool, and had a relaxing night.  On Saturday though, I had a touristy day planned since they had never been to St. Louis before.  Two of my best friends from home, Robert and Logan, came with us this day since they both knew my room mates and to make the day even more fun. Our first stop was the St. Louis Zoo.  Our zoo was voted the best in the country, and is completely free to get in!  It was wicked  hot this day, so we only stayed for a few hours.  We saw some great animals and had a blast, but our favorite part was getting a mixture of a piña cola...

This past weekend, I (finally) turned 21.  I am so excited for it to finally be my birthday, but also can not believe that I am already 21!  Throughout the years, I have definitely had some ups and downs, so here are just 21 things that I have learned in my 21 years of life. 1. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.  Being you is more important than whatever anyone else could ever have to say about you. 2. It's not possible to have it all together all the time. 3. You're going to make mistakes.  It's inevitable.  Just roll with it. 4. Don't deny yourself the ice cream, or the cookie, or whatever sweet thing you want.  Odds are it won't make you any fatter the next day. 5. Cherish your family.  They may get on your nerves, but they're the most important people in your life. 6. Someone who is your best friend could turn around and stab you in the back.  It happens.  But only let them do it once.  Because once...

For those of you who don't know, I just finished my junior year at Bradley University.  Although I have had my ups and downs at my school, I absolutely love it and am so blessed to be able to attend such a good school and receive the quality education that I get. But as a senior, in high school, this was not an easy decision for me to make.  Even though decision day has passed for current seniors, I wanted to share how I ended up picking Bradley University. Orientation the summer before my freshman year As a senior in high school, I was different than most of my peers because I only applied to two colleges.  Yup, two .  I looked at way more, but there were only two schools that I could really see myself at, and those were Bradley University and the University of Missouri - or Mizzou.   These schools are so different from each other.  Mizzou is a huge state school that the majority of people in my hometown of St. Louis attend, and there...