Random Links & Stuff (v.3)

So summer is over again and last week I started my 4th year of university...  It is crazy to think that in just 8 short months I am going to be graduating and this chapter of my life will be over! 

The whole process of university has been such a time of personal change for me but at the same time I do really feel like the same little Emily who walked into that big lecture hall 3 years ago...  I am excited to see what this year and the rest of the future bring... I'm sure it will be a wild ride!

In the meantime... Here are a few things that I have been enjoying recently:

These spaces are beautiful.

If you are a Lord of the Rings fan then you need to read this.  Some concerns about Sauron's battle plan.

Ok so I'm may be a bit of a wimp but I can't help but feel sorry for the poor ants...  Super cool though!  But, would you want it in your house?

I have been working on figuring out what my personal style actually looks like lately...  Right now it is looking a lot like this:

via

Not that different from what I usually wear, but I have found that having a visual of something that I like and know looks good on me really helps for those days that I feel like I don't have anything to wear!  If you are interested in seeing more of my inspirations you can check out my style board here.

 Are you right-brained or left-brained?  This 30 second quiz will help you find out!  Unsurprisingly, I am an almost exact 50/50 split :)

What would you add to this list of things to teach your daughter?  What would a list of your son look like?

This is such a cute project!  It also looks like it would be pretty fast which is my favourite kind of project!

And finally, 41 pictures for when life sucks.

Have a great week everyone!

questions

How much is personal expression and how much is facade?

How much of what we are, and do, and see, and wear, and how we do our hair, and where we send our kids to school, and who we choose to be our friends is really us?

How much of it is planted in out heads by the media, and the 'world views' that are constantly being streamed in to our heads?

And, even ignoring that, how much of it is our innate desire to 'fit in', to 'blend' with the people around us?  To not stand out as 'different'?

When I choose what I am going to wear in the morning how much of what I like is really my subconscious analyzing the world around me and telling me what will make me look the most like everyone else?  Is this concept of individuality really real or is it just something that we have come up with to make ourselves feel better and unique?

How much of how I react to the people around me and how I act in my everyday life is really me and how much of it is how I have been shaped by my environment?

How is anyone really a person without their environment to shape them?

How often do we inadvertently hurt the people around us just because we don't understand their environment and way of thinking?

How often do we deliberately hurt people just because we don't understand their environment and way of thinking?

Why?

Why is it so important?

How much of that desire is just everything around us telling us to be the same, to not stand out?  Do we have that desire because we know that to stand out will cause us pain?  Or does standing out cause us pain because we have been told that it will?

Will this ever really change? Or will the only change be what we identify as different?

Life lately/Winter

So I just realized that I never did a wrap up post for Guatemala.  You know,  the post that goes: "I got home safe, now here is a beautiful wrap up of the whole month".  Well here I am so obviously I got home safe :)  And, maybe sometime in the future I will find the time and energy to do a full recap (probably not :) ), but in the meantime I will just say that the whole experience was wonderful and that the last week was full of laughter and tears and went by much too fast.

Currently I am surviving  my third year of university (which is doing its utmost to kill me slowly) and trying to figure out who I am and what I want to do for the rest of my life (light stuff).  But right now I'm on reading week so all of that is on hold :)

I have also started crocheting and knitting as much as I possibly can, lighting a billion and one candles every night, and drinking more tea than is humanly possible (except that it obviously is) all of which is really helping with the stress :)


So, here is a little bit of my life lately:

My 22nd birthday was yesterday which means that now this song can be the soundtrack of my life (except maybe not :) )

Forever Amber is my favourite blog to read any time.  She always makes me laugh and I looove how she dresses :)  Meg Fee is another of my favourite bloggers..  Her words are so beautiful.

I recently discovered 8 Tracks which is an awesome music sharing type place that I love :)
(If you're interested, here is the playlist that I am listening to while I write this).

Also, this because space is cool :)

And, here are 27 picture to restore your faith in humanity (and maybe make you cry), and here are 29 people to crush that hope (but maybe make you laugh).

I am really wanting to travel right now...  nowhere in particular.. just everywhere!  So I occasionally do searches that go something like "student travel" travelling on a student budget" or "working vacation".  So far all the options those bring up still require money to get where I'm going so it looks like I will be staying home this summer...  Oh well, a girl can dream :)  

I am definitely going to try to make these sometime soon!

Annnd, I have started some choreography again so I have been watching a bunch of dance stuff and this improv is just gorgeous.

ALSO, (sorry got a little excited there :) ), also, this is the 150th post on this blog!!  I feel like that is a pretty big accomplishment!

Finally, it has been pretty cold here this winter and this is what I have been looking like when I catch the bus in the morning :)

Have a great week everyone!!

Broken

I believe that as we are all broken in some way or another and that it is only by the grace of God that we are saved.

via

I think as Christians we have a tendency to forget that we are all equal in our brokenness.  I read a post a while ago by Annie over at what she saw that really takes this idea home for me.  She is talking about how we see other peoples sins (brokenness) as worse than our own and then judge them for it.  Crazy right? You can check it out here if you are interested.

But that is not what I really want to talk about today.  I want to talk about the fact that we as Christians also have the saddest tendency to go the other way, to swing to the other extreme.  We get so focused on our own brokenness that we forget that the people around us are broken too!

What I mean by that is that we get so caught up in wanting to fix ourselves and 'oh I need prayer for this', and 'oh God help me',  that we forget to really open our eyes and see the people around us, our brothers and sisters in Christ that need that help or that prayer too!  I am not saying that they need it more than we do by any means; but we are supposed to be a body, and a body is in trouble when each part just decides that it is going to do its own thing!

I was having a conversation with my mom about something different the other day and she said something that really stuck with me:  She said that we all spend too much time on just looking out for ourselves and that if everyone just looked out for everyone else, we would have more people helping us way better than we could ever help ourselves.

And that does not just apply to Christians, it applies to everyone that you meet in your day.  We as humans need to care about people other than ourselves.

In our culture it is so easy to just focus on yourself and your own problems and forget to look around you.  It doesn't even require that much effort,  just a smile or a 'how are you' that you really mean.

And the thing is that yes we are all broken.  But just because something is broken doesn't mean it isn't beautiful.  And, in helping someone else you might just find that you take that part of you that is broken and turn it into something better than it was before.

via

Red Shirt

If you have ever watched any Star Trek then you know that the unnamed crew member in the red shirt is always the one who dies.  

And I have realized lately that I am afraid of being the red shirt.  I am not saying that I think that I am going to die on an alien planet somewhere.  I am saying that when things get tough or when something is going on I don't want to be the poor sap who doesn't have a clue and ends up getting shot or blown up or something within the first five seconds.  I want to be Captain Kirk, or Spock, or Dr. Mccoy.  Because they always know what is going on and they always come out on top.  

But, the truth is that it is easier to be the red shirt (up until you die).  If you are the red shirt then you don't need to make any hard decisions or face choices that could effect a lot of people,  you just follow orders and trundle along in your own little world doing your own little thing and you don't really need to do all that much thinking.  

And maybe that is what I am afraid of.  That I will take the easy way out.  But the problem with that is that in the end the red shirt is always the one that dies.

via

So I guess the lesson here is not to wear red.....

Or I could go deep with it and say that I am going to do my best to make my life mean something and not take the easy way out.

Whatever works for you.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Orange

So excited to be doing The Nail Files link up again!  A little surprised that it is now hosted by Jennie (look what happens when you leave for 5 weeks!), but I am excited to see where she takes it :)

So I am taking a day off today and actually had some time to do something a bit more interesting than one solid colour :)  So, I did a ombreish drippy thing with a couple of oranges I had sitting around.   I know it is still not that crazy but I really like it :) 

(I took these pictures right after I finished so it is not the cleanest (sorry :P) but I was too excited to wait :))

Also, I have started posting on bookworm again.  I will be doing a twice monthly roundup of what I have been reading and a short review of each book/series.  If you are interested in reading the first one just click here.


Now back to watching Dirty Dancing!

Have a great weekend everyone :)

I'm baaaacck!

Hi everyone!

So I am back home again after my gallivanting all over the world :)  I had tons of fun but it is good to be home again :)

I still have to go through the zillions of pictures I took, but prepare for a picture overload as soon as I am done!

In the meantime... here are some of my favourite songs of the summer:

More than usual I know, but I hope you like some of it :)

Happy Sunday!

30 Day Snap | Day 16

We had two major thunderstorms and a tornado warning here today!

On a brighter note most of the craziness that we have been surviving for the last month is over now and we are going to take a day off tomorrow :)

Also, this is my 123 post which I just think is cool :)

30 Day Snap | Day 13

Today I wrote some letters and made some shrink art :)

30 Day Snap | Day 12

So today I have more than one picture for you!  (I know that everyone is just wildly excited about that ;))  But hey, today was a good day and that constitutes more than one picture :)  

It was a beautiful sunset tonight... this picture totally does not do it justice.

Some sort of blossoming tree that I thought was pretty :)

I got my hair cut today!  Not that you can really see it in this picture but it seems like a good enough excuse for a blurry phone picture ;)

Blurry out the car window picture that we will say I did on purpose because I actually really like it :)

P.S. One of the many reasons today was a good day is that I am now officially done all my class time for this school year!  Majorly excited for some hardcore vacation time :)

going out

I wrote this post about a year ago and even added to it more recently meaning to post it but I just haven't been able to yet...   I am still in a way traveling through this place in my life and I think I will to some degree or another for the rest of my life. 

I have to be careful what I wear when I leave the house these days.  Not that I do it all that often but when I do I feel like I have to look as good as I possibly can.  If I know that then I can almost convince myself that all the looks people give me as I walk past them are because they are thinking that they like my top, not that they are wondering why I am limping and what is with the cane and the huge brace on my leg.  I sometimes feel people almost leaning away from me as if I am defective and I feel like screaming at them...  Other people, they kind of just ignore me...  But it's more than that, I don't mind it when people don't care... It is more that I can feel them trying way too hard not to look at me.    Maybe I should wear a shirt:  Don't worry I was only hit by a car, it's not contagious.

Not everyone is like that though... For some people it seems to open something up and they tell me their own story about a knee or hip or whatever. Or they genuinely want to know what is up.  Other people just really don't care and treat me normally.  Some people know.  But most people don't.

The hardest are the ones who think that just because I currently walk with a cane I must be mentally disabled.

I sometimes worry that I worry too much about what I look like...  This is just a season in my life when I am dealing with something hard.  Should I really care what other people think?  Does it matter if people look at me like I am defective?  I know that I'm not, and all the important people do to...  Why does it matter so much?  I know that I have always in a way used my appearance to help me... I don't mean that in a weird way, just that when I feel down I wear something that makes me feel happy or when I am scared, or nervous, or excited, about a situation I am going into I tend to spend way too much time on my outfit...  I know that most people work that way but for some reason it freaks me out a little bit that I worry so much about what all these random people think of me.

I know that part of it is that I like to look my best and I feel like I can't do that right now so I am compensating but it is still hard.

I think that I am using my appearance as a shield right now both for the people around me and for myself... If I can keep myself busy enough then I don't think too much... Because if I think too much then everything becomes too much for me.

I am using it to tell everyone around me that I am fine, even when I am not.


When I wrote this post I was right in the middle of recovering from the initial accident...  I was well enough to walk around and to want to get out, but I could only last for about two hours and it was a lot more obvious that I had trouble walking.

I have slowly gotten stronger and I have a new brace so it is easier these days.  I can wear pants again so my brace is not quite so obvious, and I limp a bit less, but people still look at me strangely.

Just because someone is walking with a cane or wearing a brace does not mean that they should be treated differently Please remember that, because it really does hurt.

It hurts quite a lot actually.


What really bothers me about the fact that people treated me differently (and still do!) is that I am, aside from the brace/cane/crutches, a fairly 'normal' looking person even after the accident.  And if I am being treated differently enough that I can feel it, then how much more is someone in a wheelchair going to feel it?  Or someone who has slurred speech?  And you do get used to it eventually, and find ways to deal with the really rude people, but my point is that you shouldn't have to.

one year

Guess what!!!  Today is the one year anniversary of this blog!  Craziness :)

This has been a year full of ups and downs for me.  One thing I think I can say with certainty though is that I have come a long way since my very first post...

I participated in some fun link ups:  The Sunday Social and The Nail Files....

I have listened to lots of very awesome music....

I have had some good days and some not so good...

I have found some quotes to live by...

And I have just enjoyed this journey that I am on....   Thank you so much for coming with me :)

Hellloooo!

So, I thought that today would be a good day to share some cool links from around the interwebs :)

22 amazing places.  Mind Blowing :)

 Some super cool art.

So excited to go see this movie next week! (I know it came out yesterday but we always wait for the crowds to die down a bit :))

Collage Fashion does a great Hautelinks post once a week :)

I really want to try this on my nails soon!

As you may or may not know I am going to be doing some traveling this summer and herpackinglist.com is my latest and greatest favourite packing tips website....  I really like that it is geared specifically to women :)

Although they are out of my price range I do occasionally love to look at the  United Nude shoes... These are my favourites.

This video of kids trying odd foods for the first time is so cute!

I desperately want to make some soft pretzels this summer!  Maybe using this recipe from A Beautiful Mess?

And finally, I think that this may be my summer song :)


Have a great weekend everyone!

Life lately

Now that school is finally over I have been able to do more stuff that I just didn't have time for while school was going on like, take more pictures... So, this is what my life has been looking like: 

(I meant to get this post out a while ago so these pictures are a few weeks old, but I am just going to go with it :))

DIY bracelet... my attempt at a tutorial coming soon :)

lots of yummy healthy food...

 flowers!

 sitting in the sun...

studying for exams... (old obv :))


Hope you are having a great weekend!

beads

My friend made me this necklace (and earrings) a few years ago :) 

Hope you are having a great weekend :)

tree

I got this necklace a few years ago on a camping trip...  I really, really like it :)

Also, I feel a bit gypped... I don't know about where you are but up here in northern Canada we just kind of skipped spring and went straight from winter into summer...  

Don't get me wrong, I love summer, but I din't really get a chance to wear any of my spring wardrobe...  It was too cold and now it is too hot :(

And on that cheerful note, I will see you tomorrow!

antique

So... I may have kind of forgotten to actually wear this necklace all day... as in, it may have only hit my neck at 7pm... :P  But, I do really like how it looks which is  a part of the reason I am doing this...  Rediscovering the accessories that I already have :)

And of course, just to really shake things up, I am putting the picture of me wearing the necklace before the close up shot.... gasp*

Could we all maybe do a happy dance because tomorrow is Friday?  No?  Too soon in our relationship you say?  Ok, I can deal with that, but you should know that I am the queen of the happy dance... :)

long leather

I am feeling better!  And it looks like spring has finally sprung here in the north (I am even wearing shorts today! Shorts people!), so I could take my pictures outside :)  

Close up...

On :)

I love this necklace because it is basically just a silver ring on a leather tie which means that I can wear it any way I want... This is the first time I have worn it long like this but I am liking it :)

not a necklace post

So, I am still disgustingly sick and I do not really feel like wearing a necklace today much less taking pictures of myself.... So instead I going to leave you with some of the awesome Youtubers that I have been watching for the past few days :)

 This is Jack from JacksGap.  I find him and his brother Finn amusing....  Although they are sometimes a bit rude so watch out :)

This is the Daily Mix... It is random and amusing :)

Beauty with Sprinkle of Glitter, Fleur De Force, and Zoella :)

And, that is it for now :)  I also just realized that they are all British...  There you go :)

circle

So this is the second necklace...

There is only the one picture because the little bit of sick that I felt yesterday has decided to turn itself into a full blown cold :(  So... I didn't really feel like sharing a picture of my face.

I had to get dressed this morning for physio so I did really wear this necklace today but, I am currently curled up on the couch watching silly Youtube videos and clutching my kleenex for dear life :)

Have a good one :)