The Day I Gave a Child a Pair of New Shoes

I bet I fooled you into thinking I was just that generous didn't I?! Well, I have to be honest, this is a blog about getting those darn TOMS... darn them..

I got them. Not what I intended to get, but I got them. 

Thanks bee!  

My hunnie spoils me rotten! xoxo

*** Just as a side note, I do realize the white border on the picture now looks really redundant... I realized this after I already made the image and uploaded it.. too lazy to fix, so I shall leave it at that :)

The End

TOMS?!

Is it just me, or are TOMS looks better by the minute?!
I used to think they were the ugliest pairs of shoes on the planet, but like Crocs, they came up with more stylish... styles? And I am now seriously considering them. I mean, it is going a little bit over board I think when they show people wearing them to their wedding, but I can see myself rockin a pair on a casual day.

Which pair should I get?!

Ridiculous

I feel like I should have a picture of me pointing to the title of this post, and just end this entry at that. Because really, it's just that: ridiculous. I don't know where the time went, or how I ended up feeling like I was literally tossed into the month on June, and now facing the end of it! The question that kept popping up while I was prepping myself to write this entry was, "What on earth have I been doing this month?" The only thing that came to mind was the huge project I currently took on, but being the ever guilty multi-tasker, I know it couldn't have been just that. So that is why I am blaming my seemingly lack of events on amnesia.

This new branding project has been taking a toll on me, not because it's been particularly hard, nor is my new boss demanding, but rather it is because of my withdrawal symptoms. For those of you that know me, drinking coffee takes up around 90% of my life, if not more. The first half of the month I was convinced I no longer needed coffee, while the second half of the month I spent all my energy convincing myself that I deserved a break from not drinking coffee. That was probably where all my time went, contemplating whether or not to have coffee, then justifying to myself why it was no big deal to drink a cup or four when I finally caved in. Other than my struggle with the on again and off again caffeine addiction, the project is going great.

Another interesting event though, is that today is me and my lovely boyfriend's three years minus one month anniversary. Yes, I know it's ridiculous. I hope he doesn't read this entry or the surprise will be ruined, but here's a little something I made for this amazing person in my life :) Honestly, the constant in my life that makes it bearable. I don't know who else can tolerate me and my craziness.

This card is drawn on a regular white piece of paper, with pen and colour pencils.
Giraffe with a detachable envelope with handwritten letter.
Underneath: a heart-shaped window with hidden message :)

Besides cards, I seldom get to draw anything with a pen or pencil nowadays, other than the random sketch of concepts here and there. Since I've discovered my love of digital artwork, colouring something stroke by stroke just seems really tedious and I have now fallen into a fear of making mistakes that I can not correct with a click of the mouse. So if I ever make a card for you, you know you're special. Plus, handwritten letters are so underrated nowadays...

Taking a picture of this card has also got me to notice that I rarely use my camera now. Despite how I kept thinking to myself that I would take it on "artistic excursions" that would result in beautiful photography, I have not even taken the camera out of my house since the last fashion photoshoot. The easily accessible card reader that is now built into my computer does nothing to ease my guilt either.

Maybe I have a thing against cameras. I bought my Diana F+ with me on my trip the past week, and the only picture I took of it was of me making a silly face before I got into the car prior to departure. Epic Fail. I didn't even realize I left it in my boyfriend's car after the trip until he brought it up. What comes after 'epic fail'?

This is me attempting to update my blog. I apologize if this post made no sense to anyone but myself; or even myself, after I read this a couple days later. I feel completely groggy and my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton then was used as a punching bag by a four year old. However, after reading my dear writer friend's blog, the realization, then guilt of not updating my blog finally caught up to me.

Ok this is it, other than, spot the amount of times I've used the word 'guilt' in this entry. This may call for a change of the title for this post. Haha... working titles...

xoxo

Mail!

We live in a world where people no longer write letters by hand, and even the phrase for sending mail has a negative connotation: snail mail. You even have to lengthen the amount of time it takes to say the word snail. Snnnaailllll mail. 

Because of this, it is always a treat and almost an adrenaline rush to hear the sound of your doorbell and find the mailman/woman on the other side of your door. Even though the package I received today was an expected one, this did not dampen my excitement. 

Here it is in all its glory:

It even had a sweet note from my boss attached to it! I think its always simple things that you don't expect (like this bright coloured note) that seems to make my day. And being an intern that I am, this is actually really unbelievable! :) 

Having seen the product photos multiple times, I expected a plain black box, but it came nicely wrapped in pretty pink tissue paper. The cherry on top was absolutely the pink ribbon and the overall presentation of it all! This is saying a lot since those of you that know me, know that I am a sucker for packaging and have been known to buy products based on the packaging alone. (Yes I know, tsk tsk) 

For those of you have that have been wondering, or wasn't aware of this, but this company's name is pronounced as silk. Why this name you say? If you actually asked this I'd have to LOL at you. Their website just recently came online and you can check it out yourself at http://www.cilque.com. All their items are 100 percent silk, from their different coloured pillowcases to their bed sets. The intriguing thing to me about their company besides its benefits to beauty, is the products named after desserts like how brown is not just brown, but Belgium Chocolate, and white is not just white, it's Creme Brulee! Sweet!

Here are more pictures about
 

So this was me sharing this little piece of joy with you for today. 

Time Passes

So it's almost midnight again. Technically it's going to be a new day, but it never feels like it ends at that time. My day ends almost always around 2 a.m. (if I'm lucky) As an insomniac, this is always either the most peaceful time of the day or the most stressful, depending on whether I want to sleep that day I guess.

I spent hours trying to come up with a Twitter page for the lovely lady I am working for currently. And yes, I refer to my boss as the lovely lady as I think I am still in the honey moon phase of starting a new job. She is quite lovely and fun to work with, unlike the dread I feel everytime I know I have to go into my retail job the following day. Today was a relatively good day, as I finally got paid for my not so hard, but long-houred retail job. So I guess not I can feel a bit of the tension easing as I am now a few dollars less poor. Getting back to my Twitter page, I spent hours designing this layout, manipulating the photo I had to work with until it was almost unrecognizable (which was the entire point as I was given nothing else to work with). The whole idea could be scrapped by tomorrow, and the weird thing is, I don't think I really mind all that much!

Is this a good or a bad sign? Does it mean I didn't try enough or I just expect it to be rejected?

Another Book Finished

So this is my second post within twenty-four hours. I had expected a day filled with work and studying for the oncoming exams that are happening for the next two days. But it wasn't. I spent the better half of my day curled up in bed reading. It's the first in a long time that I've actually read a book.

I have been reading a lot, having finished series after series of Sherrilyn Kenyon's books. From her connected three series of Dreamhunters, Werehunters and Darkhunters (as well as her teen fiction series revolving around one of the characters when he was younger) to her science fiction League series. I have got to say that I have fallen in love. However, books do not grow on trees, and as I stare at the counter anticipating her next book release, I found myself venturing off to find another series in which I can indulge my time in. I often find these books at Costco.

As I wander down the aisle of discounted books, I find myself to be one of those people whom innately judge books innately their covers. I often find it both exciting to find books that I'd never pick up at Indigos after flipping them over to find their prices to be equivalent to that of a fancy lunch, but guilty at the same time that I am not only judging a book by its cover, but by its barcode as well. Despite how I relish in the fact that I can get cheaply priced books at Costco, I feel another sense of guilt knowing that a quality book should not be dismissed because of it's price and remember an elementary school teacher lecturing us on the priceless value of good literature.

Now after a long rant, most of you are probably wondering what book I have just finished.

From the images above, you will know that it's the same books, but different cover renditions. Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin.  Yes, I chose the one with the movie poster cover, and it was actually that, that I picked up the book in the first place. I had thought it was fate that I have to buy the book, as my ever-loving boyfriend had just mentioned the movie the night before and I thought it had to be more than a coincidence that I had found the book while browsing the asile.

The book was everything I expected, but at the same time anything but what I expected. I can see why it was made into another one of those chick flicks that guys loathe the existence of, and was surprised at the unexpected elements that these movies often times lack. Incase someone read this and blames me for spoiling it for them, I will not give anything away, but I just have to say it drew me in instantly from page one. Psyche!  I am so going to say what happened as I am too shocked to keep it in. I am undoubtedly a skimmer, and yet I found myself actually reading. Don't laugh but I am one of those people whom skips pages at a time because I dub them as a waste of time and can't stand a lull in conversation or action, then only flip back to skim pages only when I realized I had missed something of significance. Yes, I am one of those people.

***Spoiler***
So the book revolves around the friendship of two girls. One of which is one of those girls from high school, that always seems to get what she wants, and the other of course is the one that witnesses this from the sidelines and feels used. I know most of you are probably assuming that I fell in love with this book because I was the girl that was standing on the side being abused by her best friend and that I saw the whole injustice of it all. But you are wrong. I couldn't help but wonder whether I have used some people and knowingly or unknowingly thrived on that. But this book starts off with the popular girl throwing a birthday bash for her best friend, resulting in her fiance having one too many drinks and sleeping with the birthday girl. After this drunken affair, they both realized their love (just just lust to begin with) and have a full-fledged affair. I have to say that I found guilty pleasure in reading about their affair, sneaking around and yet they seem so guilt-free. The wedding was soon approaching and yet they still indulged in their affair like it wasn't about to happen, always pushing it aside believing that there was more time. I will skip these parts and let you read it for yourself, knowing, or just hoping that you will like it as much as I did. The juicy part however is when the book comes to an end and an ultimatum is given: call off the wedding or call off the affair. The guy shows up at the apartment, where I was sure he would tell the main character the "good news" of a cancelled wedding.

I felt like I was the one hearing the news when he decided it was too cruel of him to call off the wedding at that point, but not too cruel to have an affair in the first place. And blah blah blah, I will always still love you no matter what, blah blah blah. Then the guy tries to win over sympathy votes by crying, just because if a guy cries, it must be breaking his heart because guys just don't cry for no reason. The girl then goes off the England to visit her friend, hooks up with a random friend of a friend, but doesn't actually just because he had perfect vision and so didn't have the saline solution that the girl needed to put her contacts in if she were to stay the night. (Nice.) Lesson to the guys: always have saline solution as it is as important as having lubricant and condoms at hand.

As she arrives back in nice ol' America, who is waiting for her but the ex-partner in crime. He has called off the wedding, and they were to live happily ever after. That is when the raging ex-bride storms up into the apartment (still not aware of the affair at this point) and confesses. Not only did she have an affair of her own, which she confessed about in a prior part of this book, but she is pregnant! What annoyed me the most about this part, was that even though she got banged up, she manages to bathe herself in a good light by claiming that she felt so bad, but she is going to marry her baby-daddy and rubs it in everyone's faces that she has to be pregnant because she has a perfect twenty-eight day menstrual cycle. It was only at this part of the novel that I truly despised her. The guy at this time is still in his boxers, and crouching in the closet while holding onto his clothes listening. What he didn't remember to bring with him to the closet though, was his watch which is soon brought to the attention of the sad guilty ex-bride. She of course was sad until she notices this minor detail sitting on the nightstand and finds the real reason why her ex-fiance had called off the wedding.

She somehow manages to make it about herself again, and how she was cheated on. The best friends never talk to each other again as far as I'm concerned, and is the way it's supposed to be. I admire the author for not making a half-assed effort to make them hug it out and say how they're so sorry for everything that happened and then end with "oh our friendship is so much stronger now that we've overcome this."

This blog will now end with you imagining me applauding  the author. :)

Awake

It seems as if the only posts I put up these days are posts saying how long I haven't posted. The lack of words is really hurting my blogging in the most obvious way: not blogging at all. The time that pasted by since the last blog entry is a complete blur, with the usual school assignments, job/work search, and online episode-watching marathons. For a week or two now, it seems like life has finally settled down a bit, and I can finally take a long awaited breather.

Has it ever occurred to any of you out there, that certain milestones seem really significant, and deemed to be life changing, until you actually get there? It seems to bother me, especially looking back to those certain expectantly significant effects, that when it's over, all you're left doing is a huge "Huh? That was it?" kind of feeling. I've begun to realize that I've gotten to the point in my life where saying I'm still in school sounds just plain silly, and I've gone from saying I have homework to do, to having assignments, to thinking even the word assignment gives off a somewhat childish vibe. At the same time, hearing myself say "I have to go to work" just seems surreal and a bit overstated like a child preparing for a school play and claiming they have to put on a performance.

So I've concluded that I'm in that awkward in-between phase, like the one that you're only supposed to experience during teenage puberty. Like my limbs are too long, but I'm still too young to wear the right sized clothes, because those clothes just seem too old.


Many of you might be wondering what have set off this random rant, and yet I've asked myself this many times as well as I'm writing this. Between working days on end for a project that only really sums up to around 50 pages that look like a childish creation, trying to convince a panel of judges not to fail me so I can move on to presenting my work at an exhibition, to actually getting in and missing it all together because I work way too much, I can no longer remember when one thing ends and another begins. All I remember is working with no signs of the end in sight, my dad coping with my grandmother's death in really weird ways (like asking me to help format his computer a billion times because something is always wrong and fixing the Wii at four in the morning) and thinking I have to get that dream job. Looking back, it just all seems so insignificant, and yet, I wish I had the time to bathe in these moments that are supposed to mean something. I feel like I missed it all. In a blink of an eye, the time has passed. As my education is coming to an end, I have this ache in the pits of my stomach. The one where you feel like you should've done something differently, not knowing what should've been different, but just something, anything.

I feel like even after weeks of "slowing down" I'm still trying to catch up with all that has happened. If I were a doctor, I would prescribe a bottle of Pepto Bismol for the symbolic upset stomach for life's never ending events.