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!

image via

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.

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

image from Pinterest via

There's a Choice

via

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.

via

via

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.

via