the cutest two people i know

...just a sneak peek of some of the 415 pictures I took

of these two adorable people.

It's hard to say, but I think they might be my

favorite people to photograph.

the story i told

I have this tendency. I don't really know when it started, but I think it had something to do with the fact that I was raised to always find and see the best in people. I believe, still to this day, in the good of people. The best intentions, the best at heart, and the best qualities. I guess I'd rather be proven right before I'm proven wrong. It catches up to me, however, and has hurt me and will probably continue to hurt me in the future. I see the potential in who a person can be instead of sometimes seeing who they actually are in front of me. I believe in them even after I'm proven that I shouldn't. It sucks, at times, to believe in someone more than they believe in themselves, but I really wouldn't have it any other way. Not when you experience a moment that they exceed even your highest expectations and for a second, everything is exactly as it's supposed to be.

On a lighter note, I'm completely in love with the Palouse and being home right now. I feel like until I left home, I couldn't appreciate the gorgeous scenery and the amazing community. I took advantage of it and never truly grasped everything that is the rolling hills until now. When it started to rain yesterday evening, I grabbed my camera and my best friend and just started driving. The greenness absolutely astounds me and astounded me when I looked back on these pictures and saw the clouds and the green and the hills and the fences and the hills. I'm already nostalgic for it when I leave.

You might remember this dress from a while back... but actually, this one is different because it's white. That's right. When I wore the Tieka's red one, I fell in love. And when I saw the ivory one on sale at Ruche, I knew I had to snatch it up. It's the perfect easy dress to wear with everything and for everything, including with my rain boots. Plus, I'm a sucker for anything polka dotted.

I'm wearing

dress- Ruche

boots- Hunter Wellingtons

belt- my mommas

ramblings

I can't help but feel like I shouldn't enjoy my commute every single day to WSU as much as I do, but regardless of the approximate 1.03 gallons of gas it takes to get there and back, there is nothing I love more than those fifteen minutes of 'me' time every morning and every afternoon. Accompanied by nothing but my iPod, those precious fifteen minutes are when I take time to marvel at what's around me; the amazing rolling hills I fall in love with every single time I come home and miss terribly when I go away to school, the simple beauty in a cloudless blue sky, and everything cliche about a pristine summer day in Northern Idaho. I love it so incredibly much. It's almost worth the four dollars of gas. Sometimes I think I want to live in a city someday after living in a teensy town my whole life, but when I'm here in the summer and everything in Moscow moves at a snail pace, I don't know that I could see myself settling down to raise a family anywhere else. Maybe I'll go to graduate school and start a career in a city, but after that, I think I might be a small town girl forever.

There's nothing better than a paycheck that's absolutely yours. And there's nothing better than buying something with your own money. That being said, it makes me calculate in my head exactly how many hours of work something is worth. $4.38 for coffee? No, 27 minutes of dissecting invertebrates. Also, having my own paychecks again is also awesome because it feels really sweet when you can take your parents out to dinner on your own dime. Huzzah.

I had my best friend change my password to Facebook a few weeks ago and I can't even explain how nice it is. There are people I miss stalking (a lot) but then there are people I don't miss stalking and am silently happy that the only means of knowing what they're up to is by my own accord. It also makes it necessary to actually reach out and contact people to find out how they're doing instead of just looking online. It's a terrible habit of mine and I've actually realized how refreshing it is to do just that. I may not have her change my password back for months because I don't miss it even the slightest bit.

I've had an insane desire to travel lately. Of course, I have no means of doing so because I bought a car and went to summer school, but I've been thinking about what I want to do when I graduate almost obsessively for the past few weeks. I know that I don't want to go back to school immediately when I graduate because when I decide to go to school again after, I want to know what I want to do and what direction I'm going to go. And while I'm still young, I want to travel and experience everything I can. I've spent a lot of time on Google researching programs that take new college grads and place them around the world doing everything from teaching kids English in Korea to working on strawberry farms in France. I'm more and more convinced that I'm going to do something abroad when I graduate and it makes me so excited for the future.

My best friend and roommate of two years Jenny and I signed a lease to an apartment a while back and it's made me so excited to have our own apartment! Living accommodations not related to the University in any way, spacious, separate bedrooms with their own bathrooms, and granite countertops in the kitchen!? I'm so excited. We've been texting each other whenever we find/buy something to put in it, like couches or coffee tables, and today at Goodwill I lucked out with a complete set of vintage dishes that are hand-painted. And, they only cost $7. For four plates, four bowls, four mugs, and four mini-plates. Also, I've already decided that we're going to have a photo wall in our kitchen like the one I saw on pinterest. So excited.

Also on my Goodwill hunt, I scored an awesome vintage red lace shift dress. At first I was unsure by the longer length and form fit, but after wearing it for five minutes in the dressing room, there was no way I was leaving without it.

I have yet to find a skinny white belt anywhere. It seems like it's impossible to find the most basic of clothing items sometimes.

mint and coral

hey! i'm guest posting over here today!

can you mix mint, navy, and coral? 

well, i did it anyways.

albums i can't stop listening to

+ // ed sheeran

synthetica // metric

headfirst // jillian edwards

unbroken // demi lovato

signal fire // cataldo

barton hallow // the civil wars

hunter hayes // hunter hayes
human again // ingrid michaelson

we are the tide // blind pilot

between my commute to WSU every single day and my long shifts at work, i have had a lot of time plugged into my iPod these days. it's kind of amazing and extremely therapeutic. in particular, these albums have been my most played recently. and by most played, i mean, they're all i'm listening to. i can be the kind of music listener who has an album or a song they're obsessed with and plays the same thing on repeat for an entire 8 hour shift at work. it's somewhat ridiculous, but i have a feeling that some of these are albums i could never, ever stop listening to nor grow tired of. especially ed sheeran, jillian edwards, the civil wars, and blind pilot. music to my ears. if you haven't heard of nor listened to ed sheeran, go do yourself a HUGE favor. i'm obsessing to the max. listen to little bird, sunburn, give me love, kiss me, drunk, and small bump. and if you're a harry potter fan, rupert grint is in the "lego house" music video. seriously, i could go on and on and on about ed sheeran if i could, but i figure you should just listen to him so we can obsess together. 

you don't know it now, but there are some things that need to be said

In high school, I think I romanticized the idea of being "closed off". I was open with a lot of people, but not about the more "serious" things. I think I kind of loved the idea of someone breaking down my walls enough so I could let them in. I wasn't particularly 'giving' or easy to get to know. There's nothing wrong with being guarded nor with being careful about who you trust, but in so many ways I now have to ask myself if that was really the reason, or if it was because I was comfortable the way I was by myself and thought I could take it all on alone. I was wrong. I couldn't.

Something that keeps coming up in my conversations with one of my best friends is that in relationships, of any kind, you should be able to be honest. It sounds so simple but it's more than just about being honest, it's about being able to tell someone you love exactly how you feel knowing that you can do that and they'll still be there. You should be able to tell them something they may not want to hear, something that makes them uncomfortable, and you should be able to defend yourself and tell them when they are just being silly. If you're not, it can eat you away and you're really not doing yourself or them justice by staying silent. It's like the way you can get in your siblings face about something and express your frustration knowing that without a doubt, you will be able to talk it out and they aren't going to just walk away forever because of something you said. Real love is more than that. I think I was immature in high school to think that someone else should have to pry something out of me; being completely honest and open is so important. I've developed some amazing friendships that way by just letting every guard down and every wall fade away because I know without a doubt, I can say what I want when I want and they can do the same, and they'll still be there. This applies to friends, family,  "significant others", and everyone in between.

That's how relationships should be.

 I've figured out just how easy it is to let people in when you need to and just how spectacular it is when it's reciprocated. It may not always be an equal give-and-take, but trying and failing is sometimes better than staying inside yourself. Honesty hurts but it is also the only thing you can count on sometimes to make things better.

just go with it

I'll start by saying this: I'm not crazy about this dress. I don't know why, but I couldn't bring myself to love it. That might be because I didn't actually order this dress nor did I pick it, it was sent by mistake in replacement of one that I did want (and is now out of stock), but I decided to give it a try. The skirt was fun to swish around in all day and I loved how the colors in my bow matched in addition to how my bike necklace worked. But I wasn't a fan. It looks like this one will be going back. But, it was fun to work with something out of my comfort zone and sometimes that's all you can do: just go with it. Right?

This week seems to be going slowly and I am thinking that it has a lot to do with the fact that summer school is OVER. What!? I can't even believe it. I've been doing homework since January and it doesn't quite feel real. That being said, I can't believe that until college, this was the norm. I pretty much did absolutely nothing this weekend except watch tv with my sister and hang out inside, but it was the first down time I've had in months and it was perfect.

My bffl for life took these pictures so thank you Margaret!

I'm wearing:

dress- Modcloth

shoes- Urban Outfitters

bows- gift

necklace- Forever21

one of the better nights i've had in a while

my life is really, really full. full of some pretty fantastic people that will sit in sharis for three hours talking and laughing about everything and nothing at the same time. the best kind of nights are the ones that leave you with sore abs the next morning because you were laughing so hard for so long. i love that kind of laughter. malted waffles are probably my favorite thing to eat in the world. and apparently when i'm laughing really hard, i use my hands. sometimes we plan things poorly and take four cars for five people (oops); i was coming back from pullman, jenni met us after she got off work, julianne came late, and taylor came straight from his work. it just happened. and sometimes i say things too loudly in a restaurant that causes a noticeable lull in conversation until everyone erupts at the same exact time. i was talking about towels, okay.

sometimes, or always, my sister is my favorite person to spend my weekends, week nights, week days, and evenings out with. she's my favorite.

dear dad

thank you for being so weird. it used to embarrass me, but now i realize that sophie and i inherited a lot of it and it's the thing i'm most thankful for. no one should take themselves too seriously. thanks for the emails during the school year (to be text messages next?); they keep me sane and you always remind me that nothing, no organic chemistry test or bad week, is nearly as awful as it seems. thanks for going to my every soccer game (and frequent practices when you were the weird 'lurker' my new coaches sometimes thought was a child lurker). thanks for always making me push myself harder and thinking that i'm smarter than i am, you believe in me more than i probably ever will. and i never would have gotten as far as i have without that. i know you always want the best for me.

i had a dream last night

i was, for some unknown reason, unable to be seen, heard, or felt. 

the first thing i remember was opening the door to my bedroom after coming home from work like any normal day of the week and discovering to my complete and utter horror (kidding, it was mostly just a feeling of extremely awkward discomfort), every single person that had every disliked or hated me at some point in my life sitting in a circle on my bedroom floor. initially, i kind of awkwardly stood there, waiting for someone to address the fact that i had entered but no one looked up. it was at this point i realized no one could see me. i proceeded to walk around my room (the way dreams seem to be able to make impossible things possible like squishing ten people into my teensy bedroom at home is kind of amusing) looking and listening to these people. they were telling stories and laughing and i soon began to feel better about the situation. so i just sat there, listening and laughing like i was part of the conversation (even though i clearly wasn't). and then, the conversation turned. and just like that, they were telling stories about me and describing all the ways i'd done them wrong or even annoyed them slightly; attacking every side of my personality, ranting about the way i dressed and looked, laughing at everything unfortunate that had ever happened to me, and roasting me like a helpless pig that couldn't say anything or do anything. i kept wanting to budge in and defend myself but of course, nothing i did mattered.

then, i got a text message. it was from 'weather underground' (yeah, i subscribe to their weather updates in real life, too) informing me via text that the neighboring volcano to my house was about to go off at any moment! evacuation was pivotal for survival. i immediately jumped up and started screaming at everyone in my room telling them to please, please get out because a volcano was about to go off and we were all about to die but no one could hear me or see me. i could leave at that moment and save myself or i could try and save these people that didn't know they were about to die. i chose, immediately, to run around the room and begged for them to hear me and that i only wanted the best for them and i only wanted to help them, but they continued to sit and laugh and ignore me. at this point, i was sobbing uncontrollably because i knew that they couldn't hear me and all of them were about to die and even though i knew that they hated me, i didn't want any of them to die or be trapped in my house while the world erupted in fire. it was the worst feeling in the entire world, knowing at any second they were going to die and i couldn't do anything about it.

i woke up (as every dream seems to do) just as the volcano went off. and just as it did, while everyone in the room jumped to their feet in a mad scramble, one particular ex-girlfriend of someone i knew looked at me and i knew from the look in her eyes that she saw me. but it was too late.

i'm trying to figure out what this dreams means. maybe nothing! maybe something! about my subconscious? about hidden feelings deep down in my weird little brain? i pulled out my dream book the second i woke up that helps decipher what your dreams mean and i think i've come up with some sort of mini-conclusion. anyways, putting it into writing makes it feel less intense than it was, but i woke up quite shaken up and all twisted about this. if you have any ideas or ever like to interpret your own dreams, i'd love to hear about it.

(source)

six weeks later

it's FRIDAY!

which i know is supposed to be like, the greatest day of the week. if you ask me, however, i would tell you that it's not my favorite day of the week. i'm more partial to mondays and sundays. HOWEVER, today is, in fact, an excellent day (not because it's friday) but because it happens to be a friday in which my new lens is making its little way to my house by UPS and very best of all, my final is in three hours! i think i'm more excited about taking my summer school final than i've ever been about finishing a semester long final. anyways, yesterday whilst aimlessly sticking labels onto tags for onion experiments at work, i came up with a little "summer to-do list" of things i will, well, hopefully do this summer.

between june 15th and august 28th i will:

• go skinny dipping
• learn to sew and alter all the clothes i've collected from goodwill and thrift stores that don't fit so that they do fit
• go running frequently
• experiment with my new lens and make it a mission to take as many pictures as i possibly can of every single person i know 
• start my DIY 'like' list on pinterest to be ready for my apartment move-in date
• GET OUTSIDE. i can't stress enough how badly i need to make this a goal. at work, i'm stuck inside all day in a windowless lab and by the time i get out of work i'm usually tired/lazy and don't want to move. 
• go camping with my friends
• watch some of my sister's favorite classic movies
• blog, like, a lot
• sit down for an hour a day and write (this is an important one). i'm done with "i need to do this" and "i should do this". if there's anything i learned in creative writing, it's that sometimes you just have to do and not think
• only shop at thrift stores and goodwill (gotta save $$!)
• eat outside more often
• explore all the creepy hidden graveyards within a fifty mile radius of moscow (there are so many and so many yet to be discovered)
• most importantly, do the things i planned on doing even if it means i have to drag my sister to palouse falls to do it. i need to stop relying on my phone to do things and just go do them. i need to stop sending texts asking people to join me and get out. i'm going to do things for me
• be happy

not the way it seems

two years ago today, you were turning seventeen. my entire extended family was in town for my graduation and we spent the entire day making trips to winco and walmart to pick up forgotten items from their grocery lists and taking my little cousins to the park when my little house became too loud. i felt guilty the entire time. why would anyone want to spend their birthday with their girlfriend and her forty some family members including one very chirpy, very excitable six year old that clung to your neck and made kissing noises at you every time you spoke? but you did. in fact, i didn’t even ask you to stay. it was the first time i realized that you weren’t just the “you” i knew on the surface that everyone else in high school also knew and we weren’t just two high school kids experiencing puppy love. there was something in your eyes that day when you looked at me and i realized then that it wasn’t that i felt guilty for stealing you on your birthday to hang out with my family so much as i felt terrified that you were seeing me surrounded by the people i loved most in the world at my most vulnerable state. i wasn’t the goody two-shoes, i wasn’t the girl who wore stupid dresses and crazy tights to school every day, i wasn’t the girl with the loud laugh, and i wasn’t the girl you’d necessarily known before that day. i was just, in the lack of a better cliche, just me. and it was just us, stripped from every high school stereotype and exterior prejudice, together, seeing the beauty in the other for the first time.

*thank you margaret for these pictures!
**it was terrifying to push 'publish' on this post today.

i'm wearing:

dress & hat- Urban Outfitters

shoes- Dolce Vita

belt- thrifted

sometimes on tumblr

i find things that make me cry.

it's rare, but it does happen.

somewhere between my taylor swift,

emma stone, supernatural, olivia polermo, gossip girl,

the oc, and joseph gordon levitt tags, i find things

that say what i wish could say in so few words

(but are usually more like five scribbled pages in my

journal circling around the same idea three thousand times).

“Many people still confuse ‘attachment’ with ‘love’. Attachments are about fear and dependency, and have more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn’t about what others can give you because you’re empty. It’s about what you can give others—because you’re already full.” *

*i'm always the type of person that gives credit where credit is due, but i honestly have no idea what original source this came from. if you do, i'd love to know!

june so far

i always feel a bit lazy when i post my instagram updates...

but so it goes some weeks!

1. my sister is arguably my favorite person on 

the planet. and she makes some funny faces. 

2. i really love my best friends' grandparents.

no, really. we're friends, mr. renner and i.

i was invited to their 50th wedding anniversary

party, after all.

3. monday morning pancakes are becoming

a ritual. 

4. summer is slow coming to the palouse,

but bare legs and ballet flats are worth 

the wait.

5. i've made some really awesome friends

unexpectedly during summer school and i even

work with one of them. being the space cadet i am,

i forgot to bring headphones to work again

and she left hers outside my work on her way to class

so i could grab them. awesome.

6. last week, my car died in the middle of the street.

i walked home and had an extra 3 hours to study.

worth it. i got a whole 30 percent above the 

class average.

7. best part about working/living in

washington? cougar country dipped cones.

8. my work's hallway is creeeeeepy.

rain, Ingrid, and yellow

• summer school has me in a bind. i'm in pullman more than im home. between class which has me hunkered down not only for 90 minutes of lecture every day but eight hours of lab a week. ugh. throw in two part-time jobs and it feels like i sleep in idaho but live in washington. 
• as much as i complain about it, i know i'm actually going to miss my schedule when summer school ends.
• i took pictures of my sister today. for someone who hates the camera, we got some pretty great pictures.
• i'm in love with button down shirts lately. i can't get enough of them. 
• my dad has been gone all week and i've spent the night in bed with my mom every night. it's been a brilliant end to the day to curl up in bed with my mama and have nightly chats.
• these pictures were taken by my sister. last night's eye liner, messy hair, rainy days, big cardigans, and an unwashed face? it shows and i don't even mind.
• i'm really, really happy that that i'm the kind of person that can make their own happiness.
• ingrid michaelson provides the perfect music for rainy day drives.
• it's been a month since i got home and i still haven't fully unpacked. 
• my mom got a pinterest this week. she's addicted.
• i realize that i never wear my real glasses on my blog and yet i wear them every single day all day long. i don't know why this is and it hasn't been a conscious choice to not wear them. peculiar indeed.
• i went to the class of 2012's graduation last night and it reminded me of how awesome my hometown is. and in a way, made me fall for it a little bit more.
• ...and also depressed me. seeing some people i graduated with there that i haven't seen in two years? weird. seeing people i graduated with that don't seem like they've grown up the slightest bit? weird. seeing people i graduated with that seem like they've actually regressed in the whole aging/growing up process? depressing.
• there are things on this blog i sometimes wish i could take back. things i said. too personal of memories i shared. things that hurt to look at months or years later. there are things i wish i could share sometimes that are perhaps too personal. however, i've always vouched to write this blog like no one reads it and i'll be darned if anything changes that. honesty is and always will be the best policy. 

i'm wearing:

shirt- Jcrew

cardigan & flats- Urban Outfitters

jeans- American Eagle

it seems that

when i'm not blogging a lot, it's because

i'm journaling a lot

and when i'm blogging a lot,

i'm not journaling a lot.

i think one of the most fantastic things about blogging is that my blog tends to be my place to document. i have pictures and written recaps of everything i've done for the past couple of years. however, on the flip side, i also have my personal journal which is definitely more personal but less of a place to document and more of a place to vent. it can get ugly. put together, i love that i'm able to look at my blog and see what i was doing and remember the small details of the moment and at the same time, flip to the same day in my journal to read how i was feeling in that moment. not that this blog is without feeling, but it does lack, ahem, an embarrassing amount of emotion in comparison to my journal. because let's be honest, i could never publicly broadcast some of that stuff, not even to my closest friends. 

i've written in a journal since i was in second grade. i have boxes of them in my bedroom ranging from entire diaries about the boy i had a crush on in third grade to an entire diary about a death in the family i grieved through in writing when i was eleven. there's the journal from tenth grade in which i single handedly decided i hated every friend i had because of one person who taught me a lot about what friendship actually meant and then there's the journal from eleventh grade that's slightly sporadic and dull because seemingly nothing happened that year minus a few funny stories from honors chemistry and the one time i had to go to the principle's office because i called my dad from the bathroom with a feminine issue (the one time i used that excuse and it was true). i have my journal from senior year and the evolution of a friendship into a relationship, i have the journal from the summer before my freshmen year of college that in one word was perfect, and i have the journalS that have several blank pages when there was too much to feel to put on paper once i got to college and not enough time to try. 

i love knowing that no matter what, i have these vivid recollections of everything i've gone through to look back on. i love learning from myself and my past mistakes and i love watching myself in my past journals manipulate myself into thinking one thing when what would happen next would reveal how stupid it was. they say history repeats itself and as much as i try to avoid it, reading my past journals this week has shown me that everything seems to happen in a cycle. between friends, relationships, school, and family, there's a pattern. the only thing that seems to change is me and how i handle it. i may make the same mistakes, but at the very least i love knowing that i'm getting ever so slightly better at dealing with them. 

p.s. journals are my favorite present to receive. ever. and my birthday is next month ;)

2am

i like 2am,

or any time after everyone

in the house has fallen asleep.

i like the people you randomly

come across (but only when they're people

you haven't seen in two years) and

i like the way music played in the car 

mixed with the blackness beyond the windshield
seems to have

more magic to it than it does at 2pm.

i like the texts and the calls.

i like the way spontaneity

seems to feel more thrilling.

i like the way it feels like you know

a secret that only the other people 

still awake share with you.

mostly, i like how you can finally hear

yourself think.

Giveaway: Shabby Apple $50 store credit!

happy june everyone!!!

to make your day all the more brighter,

shabby apple is sponsoring a giveaway on my blog!

the prize is a $50 giftcard to

spend however you please.
*U.S. residents only please*

RULES:

-all you need to do to enter

is go to their facebook page and 

'like' it!

-once you've done that,

come back here and comment with
a way to reach you and that you 

liked their page and you'll be 

entered!

BONUS:

leave one additional comment for each

- follow my instagram (maggeygrace)

- follow my twitter (maggeygrace)

also, if you're lusting after that adorable

dress or anything else from their shop,

you can get 10% of your purchase by entering

at checkout:

paperdoll10off 

and the winner of my last giveaway was kylee! congrats!