oh happy day!!

Recently in my life I have been working really hard to make a big change. I feel so incredibly stressed out and so crazy moody and just up and down with the anxiety and the worry and bunches of feelings that kind of just pop up like the numbers in a big ol' bingo wheel and I just don't want to live my life like that. I'm just not happy when I am being controlled by all these negative feelings! UGH! So I have been working on letting things go. Just letting things be what they are and taking the time to feel the feelings that are happening and then moving forward instead of all this dwelling and mental towel wringing that I have been doing lately. One of the things that I realized I could change was my attitude towards school. I have been putting in really long hours working on mastering the intricacies of substitution/elimination/addition reactions in organic chemistry. When I say long hours I mean loooooong ones, six hour study sessions with Mason almost every day for the last two weeks long. There were still days when I would be coming home beating myself up over how frustrated I was and how hard the material was and how I would never amount to anything if I fail this class and blah blah blah. Then I just decided to STOP WHINING and just recognize that even if at the end of six hours studying I was frustrated and felt stupid that there just was no possible way that I hadn't learned anything in that time! No possible way. So I just smiled and accepted that it was hard but that I was doing everything I could to do well and that that was exactly as much as I needed to be doing. It felt pretty amazing to just breathe and be able to take time to hang out with JP and the pups and not feel guilty, to indulge in some TV shows at the end of the day and just relax without fretting about this or that. I know that this kind of mind change takes a lot of practice and time and patience, but I really want to be able to show myself that patience and give myself a little bit of credit for how hard I do work. SO, that is one of the changes I am working on making in my life. I feel lighter already and I know my boyfriend more than appreciates not having to deal with the crazier portions of my sometimes obsessive personality! All of this said, I took my exam yesterday and am not letting any worried thoughts creep into my brain about the outcome and am instead taking this gorgeous Colorado day to do a little gardening and play with the little ones out back. I hope you are finding changes in your lives too that you are proud of or working towards. So often changes for me coincide with the changing of the seasons, so spring must be almost here, right?!

When I was moving the bag of soil I found two little worms (which you probably can't see in this picture) and I popped them right into my emerging herb garden!

An herb garden for the backyard.

We even have some pink flowers that just came out yesterday amidst the gloomy cloudy weather!

plug, plug!

Shameless plug here for my big brother Joe who just released his second solo album! Many of you might have heard or even have a copy of his first and now you can listen to and own another part of his musically history here! My unbiased opinion rates it as exceptionally supreme, so give it a listen eh?!

As long as I am plugging away, you should really check out my incredibly talented sister's website too. She's got links to her blog there which has some of her new stuff, and on the website you can find many of her illustrations, paintings and drawings! She is quite amazing (in many, many ways) one of which is clearly her artistic talents!

spring break '011 come and gone

I am just so blessed. I just have the most amazing family, and I am so fortunate to be able to share time with them throughout the year even though we live far apart from one another. Spring Break '011 was a complete success!! Em came a few days before my parents did and we got right down to it by eating some cheap tacos that were super tasty and then indulging in some girly time with massages and pedicures! She even let me get the same color as her on my toes, aww. We packed in the activities and every night were exhausted just from hanging out and talking and shopping and dog walking. It was perfect. Next we all met up at a cabin that my dad had found in Estes Park. It was short but sweet spending time in the mountains although our day hike was a bit snowed out when we drove up the mountain but we fixed that by driving back down about halfway and having a creekside picnic instead. After Emily departed Mom and Pop still had the whole weekend to spend with us and no plans so we went to an art museum, took the denver bike share bikes out for a little cruise, browsed a book store, checked out a few thrift stores and of course scooted about (even mom! even dad!). It was a really, really great visit that came at a good time for me to help rejuvenate me and get me ready to finish up this semester with style (errr maybe determination).

It's always hard to say goodbye, especially when we live so far apart from one another these days! I love being in Colorado, and I know it is the right place for me right now, but I still wish I could live in a secret little pocket of the US where we could all be separate but very close. I'm just going to project into the future and hope that both Emily and I get accepted into schools that are closer to each other than Colorado is to Maine in our next round of schools. It would be lovely to spend even just a year or two in the same state as one of my siblings again! Fingers crossed I suppose because applications are approaching fairly quickly and acceptance rate for my program of choice is around 5%!

But enough blithering, because after many unsuccessful attempts I have finally uploaded pictures from this spring break '011 and can share them with you all!

We made it! After (maybe) locking my keys in my car and general confusion we got to Estes before sundown!

Our little hike was a bit snowier and icier that anticipated so it was a very little hike in the end!

Oliver got his first taste of adventure in the great outdoors and did really well!

Mom angles for the best picture of the gnarly trees.

Same day, down the mountain with no snow and sun....that's Colorado for you.

Back in Denver everyone tried out the scoot. Mom threw her scarf over her shoulder in the Red Baron's signature style and even managed to drive one handed while waving to her fans!

vegas, vegas

I would show you some pictures from our trip to Vegas, but my dear phone on which I document most everything took a two hour swim in a fake Italian river while we were there so I am left with nothing to document our trip. Which, surprisingly, is ok besides the phone dying part, that part was not ok. I realized what I already knew, Vegas is not for me. You might be thinking but Elise! There are millions of drunken stumbling people there! They will probably be yelling in your face and/or telling you of all the fantastic deals you can get on strippers! And people of all ages gambling at all hours of the day and night! And incredibly expensive drinks and food! And every single person you see will be littering! Aren't those all things that you love?! Well, you've got me there...oh wait. I would HATE Vegas! Now I can fully realize my distaste for the entire state of Nevada. Remember how awful it was for you to live vicariously through me while I was biking there? Shudder. I can't believe I even went back! Fortunately the main reason I returned was for a wedding, and it was a great time. We were proud to be there for our friends Jeremy and Karyn as they got married. The setting was gorgeous, and food delicious and the dancing was the best. If any of you are thinking of getting married in Vegas, I will gladly come, but I will only enjoy the part where you tie the knot, and not a minute more.

looking pretty good from here

Oh guys, I made it!! I made it to the end of my exams (for the moment, and yes you can ask me how I did on the hardest organic chemistry exam in the world ((I GOT A B! In your face extremely hard class that makes me question my choice of future career!)), to the end of work for a while and almost, almost to spring break! This year for spring break we dabbled a bit thinking maybe a road trip to Utah, or some time in Minneapolis (I haven't seen Kathy's new kitchen OR Annie's new house!), my parents were thinking a trip to P-town to visit Joe and Em would be nice, but in the end it is ME that gets to be the proud host to my family!! In less than ONE WEEK my favorite sister in the world is coming here and just over a week until my parents arrive too! I can not tell you how excited I am for this, I've got a whole bunch of fun things planned and since this is one of Emily's first times to Colorado I can't wait to show off the state that I call home now! Holy exclamation points, eh? In all the excitement I wanted to show you some pictures of us so you can get a little taste of how much fun we have together, and why I can barely contain myself with the glee of it all! (Can people still use that word now that there's a whole t.v. show taking over the connotation?) But then I remembered that I only have pictures dating back to 2009 on this beast of a computer, most of which you have probably seen. So instead I'll just have to post some after she comes here, and if I find any on the meantime I will slap them right up here for your viewing pleasure.

In other news for the giddy exciting department, also in the dorky department but isn't most everything I write about here classified there? You might know that I am a sucker for Pyrex. Seriously a sucker, and the goodwill by my house (just a scoot away!) always has at least one piece if not multiple pieces. It takes a lot of self control to not buy every single piece I find there, but today I walked away with three and even left three sitting on the shelf for some other pyrex-loving girl to happen upon. Here they are in all their just cleaned glory:


And lastly, I got a letter from my dear sister yesterday expressing how excited she was for her visit that is oh so soon. Secretly I got a sneak peek of the card from here, but I waited patiently for her to slap a stamp on it and it came yesterday! This is how people in Vietnam would greet us, mixing up the words, but accidentally delivering an even more charming hello:

nerdiest study group ever?

I started an organic chemistry study group, which on paper consists of seven people, but in reality no one has ever shown up except Mason and I. Anyone remember my disastrously failed book group? Well if you don't, then just recall your own memories of working in groups while in college, with a bunch of different schedules to work around and no one ever wanting to motivate, and I am sure the feelings will match right up. In any case, my study group is super nerdy. Last Sunday Mason thought maybe some other people would show up for once, since our exam (tomorrow) is a particularly hard one, but no dice. He baked a pie for all of us (read: me and him), and if you look closely at the decorations you can see that it is in fact a tetrahedral chiral carbon molecule with an R group attached.

We ate the R group first to make the molecule a carbocation...

aprons, aprons, everywhere!

For some reason I have become obsessed with sewing aprons. Yes, I realize how weird that sounds especially for someone who never wears one unless I'm back at my parents home and can tie on the little kid one I used to use that hangs in the kitchen. I made my first one from the scraps of my owl costume for my mom for christmas. I even had the forethought to snap some pictures of it (JP graciously modeled it around the kitchen while swaying his hips for me) but then that horrible thing happened for the very first time to me, in which my camera and computer mis-communicated and instead of actual pictures I ended up with tiny little thumbnails that won't do anything but look like real pictures until you try to actually look at them. Sad day! I have only one picture of the whole process, and it's kinda crappy quality cause I took it on my cell phone at night before switching to a camera, so don't judge too harshly!

It's a really cute apron, my first ever and I made the pattern up myself! Which might not seem all that impressive, but since I don't sew very often and when I do it's usually for comical reasons (octopus or owl anyone?) I am taking it for a win. In any case, I was at Goodwill the other day and I found a really great comforter cover that would have looked awfully girly and weird in our bedroom, but looks awesome and not too, too girly when re-purposed into aprons. Who would have known!

If you can believe it, this isn't even all of them because I forgot to get a picture of the one I sent to Nora for her birthday present! I told you I've become obsessed!