Passionate

One of my favorite warm-weather drinks at Starbucks is the Tazo passion tea-lemonade (Venti, please). For such a brightly-colored concoction, it has relatively few calories, only 70 if unsweetened or with Splenda. Of course, it's not financially logical as a college student for me to buy a four dollar drink that I can down in ten minutes a couple times a week. So today, I did a little experimenting and found a way to replicate it and make it (almost) as good!

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What you will need:

• 1 Tazo Passion Tea bag
• 1/2 Crystal Light To-Go in Natural Lemonade (the size for water bottles)
• 1/2 packet of Splenda
• 12 oz water (give or take)

There is really no exact science to this. You can adjust the amounts if you like more lemonade or if you want it to be sweeter. First, steep the tea for about 5-6 minutes as the directions say. It does not need to be hot. Like I said before, you can steep it as long as you like, but be careful about leaving it in too long as it often turns bitter after a point. Next, add about half (or all, if you like) of the lemonade mix to the tea. Then add the Splenda and you're done! Not only is this much cheaper than the Starbucks version, but it has essentially no calories!

It you're absolutely not concerned about cutting calories, here's the full sugar homemade version. It sounds delicious and would be a wonderful party drink (if you feel like doing a lot of steeping)!

Now playing: Piano Man by Billy Joel

Raindrops on Roses

Where I am, it's been raining on and off for about two weeks. Miserable to walk to class in, to say the least. I'm always very negative about the rain, especially during a fifteen minute walk, but thanks to my new glossy Hunter rainboots I got for Christmas, I almost look forward to it! Here's some cheery inspiration to bring you out of the rainy day blues.

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There's a Choice

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There is always an option to choose happiness. It's a simple thing, really, happiness. It's something so essential to our beings yet we often forget the power it can hold over ourselves and others. It has the ability to transform any situation, bad or good, into something even better. Why should we overlook it so? Perhaps it is because the world can be such a distracting place. The world says it is better to strive  and stretch ourselves thin than to be happy. It's all about accomplishing tasks more quickly, more efficiently, and do to it better than anyone else. To be average is to be on the bottom. Surely the utter bliss of happiness is better than the constant battle of today's rise to the top.

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Happiness is acceptance. It's accepting that you don't have to be the best, that to step away from those who fit a perfect mold is okay. Having a problem isn't a misgiving, it's a blessing to help you stay stronger on down the road. Accepting that, too, is another step on the way to happiness. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that to live once is to love always, and to never forget to make the choice to just be happy.

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A Loss

It's hard to stay positive and believe in happy things when such a terrible and unbelievable thing happens in your life. Life is so short and precious already, and when someone is taken from the world early, it seems even more so. Lessons can be learned from every bad situation, and I've learned many from this one. Perhaps the most important is how essential it is to love everyone at all times. Days come and go without stopping, and you can never guess how a little act of kindness can change someone's day.

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Listening to: Everything'll Be Alright by Joshua Radin

Stay Classy

Sometimes there's nothing better than a vintage photograph. I always seem to find myself having nostalgia for a previous time period that I've never even experienced. Yes, I am one of those who was born in the wrong decade. Pretty shift dresses, bold sunglasses, and bright lipstick can never fail you.

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Now playing: Uptown Girls by Billy Joel

Mama Mia

After watching Eat, Pray, Love, I was reminded of my love for real Italian pizza and the wonderful trip to Italy I took a number of years ago. My absolute favorite place we went was Florence, where we unfortunately had much too short of a stay. It's such a beautiful city with all the classic old world architecture you expect to see in Europe and excellent shopping as well.

View of the city and the Arno River

So I looked up another recipe from MyRecipes.com, this time looking for a rustic-style pizza to bring back memories of eating in a quaint pizzeria in Naples. I decided that the white pizza with tomato and basil sounded perfect, and it was indeed. Also from the quick and healthy menu, since my mom has no affinity for cooking and I am such a newbie, it took about fifteen minutes to prepare and was very light- unlike the typical delivery pizza you see now-a-days. If you like the traditional pizza margherita, this is very similar, just kicked up a bit with ricotta and pesto (which we were lucky enough to have some homemade).

Gustare il cibo!

Listening to: Postcards from Italy by Beirut. Hear it.