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.

Stripes and Flowers

I will be the first to admit that I am a little leary about the mixing-prints trend. I feel like every time I open up Vogue or Bazaar I see pages and pages of mixed prints and find nearly all of them absolutely unwearable or impracticle. I've found though, that sticking to the conservative side and using striped and flower patterns of similar color palettes can create quite an elegant statement look that does not appear to be too over-the-top. These skirt and shirt combinations are perfect for a fun lunch date with friends or even a night out on the town. Hope you enjoy!

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Listening to: You and I by Ingrid Michaelson

Picture this

In art history this past semester we learned a lot about photography and the more believable illusions of realty it created. Cindy Sherman posed in staged photographs that were made to look like film stills, feeding into the phenomenon that not all photography is telling a true story.

Untitled Film Still #7 (1977)

Untitled Film Still #14 (1977)

Untitled Film Still #43 (1977)

Listening to: Act Naturally by The Beatles. Hear it.

Summer's Past

I'll never be condsidered a west coast girl, and that's okay. I can't imagine living in such a busy and ever-changing place like California, but I will say that visisting San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto and Sonoma Valley with my family was one of my favorite trips. We visited a beautiful winery, strolled through Fisherman's Wharf, canoed through a redwood forest, walked along the cliffs above the ocean, and had wonderful food although I'm not partial to seafood. It was such a wonderful trip.

Listening to: West Coast by Coconut Records. Hear it.