The Road to Temple University

Soooo back when Trading Spaces was all.the.rage. I was in the 6th grade. And I came home every single afternoon from school and watched it before dinner. And it was right around that time that my parents took us all to IKEA and my sister and I got metal loft beds and matching dressers and bookshelves, and got new bedding, and moved back in to the big room together. And then a few years later we re-did the basement. And then the entire first floor. And then on my 15th birthday, right after Kayla went away to college, I got my own bedroom for the first time ever and I got to re-do the entire thing. And I was in heaven. I’ve always loved interior design. Always.

So this past May my mom’s dear friend invited me to go with her to the Bucks County Designer House where she had designed one of the rooms. We spent hours walking through the house and around the grounds. I was in my glory. She really thought I had a chance in the business and encouraged me to think about going with her to paint at one of her client’s homes and even maybe submit a design board to have a room at the house next year. That scared me A TON and made me want to run out of there as fast as I possibly could. I told her it would be such an amazing experience and I would love it, but I felt like I didn’t know enough. It was simply a hobby. She mentioned something about Temple University… and I don’t even remember having this part of the conversation when I think back to that day, but for some reason Temple stuck in my brain…

And one afternoon when I was sitting around moping and crying about the fact that I had not one clue what I wanted to do with my life, and more frustratingly, not one clue what I really want at all, I googled Temple Interior Design. And guess what? They were offering the certification course in one 6-day package at the Fort Washington campus which is 35 minutes from my house. And it was ridiculously affordable. I was interested, but my humungous fear of putting myself out there caused me to lightly mention it to my parents while they were both distracted, with the great hope that they both would ignore me and then I’d be off-the-hook. No such luck. They were so excited and demanded that I sign up. They ever offered to pay :) Lucky me!!

Well then the whole couple of months leading up to the class were also the weeks leading up to the wedding… and I knew that once the wedding was over I was going to be a little deflated and would need something to look forward to, but I was so so nervous because I was afraid the class was going to be full of wonderful design people who were snotty. And I was also afraid that I had no clue what to expect at all and I was going to be completely in over my head.

But alas, I was not. And it was so so amazing. And I loved every single second of it. And this week I’ll be posting more about the things I learned :) Can’t wait to share!!

I love my job because…

1.  I get called Rachel all the time.

2.  I get called Becky. A lot.

3.  I talk about the weather more than I talk about anything else.

4.  I learn Spanish from one of the residents who is from Cuba – we’re progressing quite well…

Good Morning! How are you?
Good Morning…. Alive.
Well that’s good!
I am very bad, I’ve completely lost my memory.
I’m so sorry to hear that…
I’m going to sit outside. I’ll be back for dinner.
Ok enjoy!
(Of course that all happens in Spanish… I just don’t know how to spell the words I’m saying…)

5. The ladies I work with are amazing. And hilarious. And make me smile every single day.

6. Employees now get unlimited iced tea for free – SO GOOD!

7.  I get to listen to soft rock the entire time. My current favorite song is Tonight, Tonight, Tonight by Genesis. It’s a good one.

8.  The gym is five minutes from work – which is major incentive to actually get my butt in there…

9.  I catch up on current events during single shift via the yahoo home page and I learn something new every single day. My dad will be very proud to learn that I too have become an Associated Press article  junkie…

10.  The residents. They come to the desk and always have words of wisdom, compliments, and smiles on their faces. They encourage me to live every day to the fullest and to always be content. Yesterday one resident told me to “live it up”

Thank you Mr. S – I think I will :)

And yes that is a picture of me rockin’ my work ID.
Go big or go home, say it loud say it proud… yeah ok, not really – it’s mandatory :)

Why do you love your job?!

You’re gonna wanna check this out

So my best friend from college, my college roommate, my friend since FIRST GRADE…
has started blogging :)!!

yep :) this beautiful blondie – I’m lucky to call her a friend, that’s for sure!!

You can find her here –> A Little This-That!!

Happy Hump Day Friends!!! Hope you’re enjoying the playlist I posted earlier :)

Bandwagon Wednesday: Pandora Picks

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it before but I am 100% on the Pandora bandwagon.
I love Pandora.
I have been introduced to so many new artists and new songs that without Pandora I wouldn’t even know exist! When I was in school, I listened to the same couple of stations whenever I would do homework. I write papers better/faster/easier when I listen to easy music – it helps me focus. And there were a few songs that would pop up pretty frequently and I fell in love them.

On Monday we finally got some rain after days upon days of  oppressive heat and I sat in my window seat listening to those stations again as I watched the rain drops bounce off of the leaves… here are some of my favorites! Some are old and some are new!
Hope you enjoy!

[Mark you’ll be proud. There’s some Blink 182 in here. Eat your heart out. Or listen :) Whichever’s easier]

One of these things does not belong…

Did you guess which one it is?

Nope it’s not the 11-year-old having a pre-teen freak out session with her best friend. And it’s not the super fabulous mirror pic or Philadelphia city sky line from last weekend. It’s not the flower that we’ve been waiting ALL summer to see that finally decided the 102 degree day would be the best day to bloom. It’s not my old workspace that I got to revisit on Friday for a special project at work, either. And it’s definitely not my curly hair – cause I am loving the humidity for blessing my otherwise straight mane.
SO that leaves one option.

The.Dead.Cicada.

Thursday night it was about 97 degrees at 9:05pm and I was already starting to sweat as I walked from my car to the front door. I had just driven home from class and was tired, so I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was walking and BAM. I almost stepped on this guy. Who landed smack-dab, dead-center, in the middle the sidewalk that goes to my front door. I am actually really surprised to see him laying there because we usually don’t get cicadas until August. It’s the August symphony – their constant clicking from the trees. But they started last week and evidently they don’t have very long life spans… I almost felt bad for the little guy if he hadn’t been so ugly and gross…

Anyways – that was the one thing that definitely did not belong in my week :) I’m just glad my sandals were spared :) Hope you’re staying cool in this wicked heat!! In a few months we’ll be shaking our fists at the sky when we’re shoveling our driveways of snow for the zillionth time…. so live it up!!

Twenty-Three

Today my sweet, organized, over-achieving,  super cool, night owl, coffee-making, life-loving older sister turns 23!!

Happy Birthday Kayla Marie!!

I hope your birthday weekend was an amazing ending to the best month of your life.
I love you :)

CAUTION!!

Gertie Girl is currently under construction.

OBV.

And right now my contacts are killing me and the internet has gone wonky SO she’s going to stay under construction until further notice :)

in the mean time I hope you thoroughly enjoy this lovely little song…

Bachelorette No More

So I just realized I completely skipped over the Bachelorette Party and went right from the salon to the rehearsal dinner to the wedding. I was so excited to get to those wedding pictures up here that I just got ahead of myself :)

She’s not a bachelorette anymore, nope, she’s an old married woman, two days away from being twenty-three. HAH!! But the bachelorette party was one last big giant sleepover with the bridal party… Thankfully I have NO pictures of any one of us in our skivvies, but here are some pictures from before we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner… Melanie met us there and I have no pictures from the restaurant or from the hotel afterwards :( But she was there…. I’m just bummed we don’t have a real group shot…

L-R: Sarah, Sarah, Me, Kayla, Brittany & Erin. Sarah Z is a photographer and a friend of Kay’s from college. You can check out her Photography and her Blog!! Brittany and Erin are Kayla’s sisters-in-law from SC and TX – LOVE THEM!! Erin blogs too and you can check her out here :)

I love this picture of me and my sisters. Sarah’s looking a little like Casper but what’cha gonna do??? Gosh, she’s growing up so fast :(

But it was definitely an amazing girls night!! Somebody please cue Beyonce and some Single Ladies… I’ll bring the black leotards :)

A Day Date…

Between class, work, driving, sleep, and family time there are only a few hours/evenings every week that I get to spend with friends or spend alone… and this past weekend after 6 very full days of class, I spent the ENTIRE day with my best friend. We went downtown and it was absolutely wonderful. I love Philadelphia.

 

After church we drove downtown and it was so gorgeous out that our walk to the Art Museum from our car didn’t seem long at all! We were lucky and didn’t have to face the heat and humidity that we’re suffering through this week…

One of my favorite things about this city is that view from the top of the Art Museum steps that looks back towards Center City - Logan Square, Love Park, and City Hall.

Mark and I also obviously had a little fun while perusing the art… I spent so much time looking at all of the furniture because I learned so much from my class at Temple last week (more on that soon), that we got a little silly and felt it was 100% necessary to photograph that goose and that schnahze… Seriously! Look at those things!!

And then in typical us-fashion, we drove to Manayunk and had sushi and delicious sandwiches at the Manayunk Brewery. The USA Women’s Soccer World Cup game was on so we kept checking the score every time everyone at the bar yelled!! So sad they lost but I think Japan may have needed this one… I always love to see triumph bring hurting people together. Ok enough Remember The Titans love…. back to dinner - The live band played the most relaxing, summertime music I’ve ever heard and made us feel like we were actually on vacation somewhere along a beach… instead of the stagnant brown/green Schuylkill River :) On the drive home we got to see the sun set on the flip side of the Art Museum and then took 95 all the way home along the Delaware…

The fabulous weather, delicious food, inspiring art, and wonderful company made Sunday a wonderful day date… I wish I could relive it all over right now :)

If you’re every in Philadelphia I STRONGLY encourage you to go to the museum, take your picture in front of the LOVE monument at Love Park, and definitely eat a cheese steak!

My Best Friend's Wedding

Here are a few of my favorites… it was such a beautiful wedding and an amazingly fun reception. Highlight of this year for our family for sure :)

I was waiting for people to e-mail/facebook their pictures so I’d have more to choose from, but these will be good for now. Once the photographer edits hers, I’ll post a link to her blog. I can’t wait to see them because she was such a fabulous photographer!! Hope this wedding bliss brightened your Monday!!

The past 7-10 days…

Have been really fun and full and fabulous… and obviously I’ve had enough time for one solid blog post – and mostly that’s because I needed to process everything myself, so I took to writing… but here’s a look at my life via the pictures from my phone… and a few of these will be explained in more detail soon :)

 

I love starbucks. I love the Phillies. I love my dad’s front flower bed. I love super Wal-Mart. I LOVE THE MOON. I love prosource. I love room renovations. I love sushi.

And that, my friends, is a super speedy look at my week :) And as I’ve promised – the wedding recap, major gushing, and many pictures will be coming this week!! Can’t wait!!