Roughing It

This weekend A and I were able to sneak off and have a mini-vacation. He was able to request time off for an entire weekend (gasp!) so we booked a campsite a couple hours away near Idyllwild. We both love to camp but also have very little experience doing so and as it was our first trip just the two of us, we had some minor difficulties. For instance, due to work schedules, we arrived after dark and struggled to erect our tent (a grad gift) for the first time, especially because our lantern (also a grad gift) would not light because we couldn't figure out how to make it work in the dark. Luckily a military family camping next to us took pity on us and lent us their lantern so that we could set everything up (after which we figured out the lantern... go figure).
We love camping. It is nice to just get away from the city, breathe some clean air, roast some weenies, and get away from technology. Plus it is cheap so long as you have the supplies (most of which was gifted to us for graduation) so that works perfectly into our tight "justgraduatedandhavetonsofloansandbillsandnewfoundresponsibilities" budget. It was a fantastically lazy weekend. We literally sat around, ate food, talked, enjoyed each other's company, snoozed, took a walk, and had a water fight. It was completely perfect. I even only got sunburned a little! A is far too brown to burn... Lucky guy!
One of the things that the trip made me realize is how much I need would like a nice camera. I want to be able to look back and say, "wow we were super underprepared", or "look how I totally won that water fight... sucker!"when we are old and wrinkly. Or show our kids how young and dumb we were and how much fun we had anyways and how much we love each other. I'm considering just getting an ipod touch or something since those now have cameras and then I could just upload my pictures to instagram but it seems like kind of an unnecessary purchase since I already have a really old version of the ipod touch. And an ipad. And a laptop. I fully endorse simple, uncomplicated living and having that many technological gadgets seems unnecessary to me. Any thoughts? I have a digital camera that I should probably just use instead but that makes it such a process to upload to anywhere except for here.
Wow. I sound like such a little spoiled brat right now. Never mind. I will just find my old camera, and I will make it work. I am lucky to even have it.
Anyways, hopefully the next post will have some pictures. I adore me some pictures!!
I hope everyone had an amazingly relaxing weekend <3

Pantry Makeover

So I have been getting really restless and can't focus on anything that is school related. I only have a week and a half left and its a good thing because I literally cannot take it anymore. I can't focus, I just can't seem to find the willpower. So today, after several failed attempts at studying, I decided to take on something that was driving me nuts... My Pantry.

I currently live in a small 3 bed 2 bath house with three other people: A married couple (T&G) and my former roommate (V). Because we have all lived on our own before living with each other, we have way too much stuff and have had to downsize, especially in the kitchen. Even after 6 months of living all together, we still have a lot of stuff and it tends to lead to heavy disorganization in the kitchen dept.
As for our pantry, it is just shy of being a walk in and we have divided the shelves according to:
1- Large storage, community storage, and animal food storage
2- V
3- T&G
4- Me
5- Tupperware
Floor- Alcohol
So with that being the layout I have exactly one shelf to house all of my pantry needs. We do not generally share our food with each other because everyone is very individual in their needs and wants and the logistics of trying to share would be a nightmare. Usually my shelf is pretty organized but lately I haven't been very careful and it is very easy for such a small amount of space to become out of hand. Plus it makes it hard to find anything so I never really know what I have or what I want to eat.

I apologize ahead of time for the crappy quality of all of the pictures in this post.  There isn't a light in our pantry.

So last week I needed to run some errands at Target and I decided to look into some super cute organizational baskets I had found via one of my favorite BLOGS and lo and behold, they were on sale! Hurray! Sales totally work in my broke college student budget! And what else? They just happen to come in my favorite color. You can't beat that!
At any rate I bought four and decided to leave them in my car until school was over buuuuut that was a fail. At least I waited a week right?
So I laid them out on my counter and started filling them with like things:

Snack Basket

Pasta/Lentils/Stuffing/Pasta Basket

Spices Basket

Cereal Basket

And then I put everything back into the pantry.

And now I feel so much better about my life and I can actually see everything that is in there. It is much more inspiring than before and it only took me about 10 minutes total. It's the little things that just make such a huge difference.

Finals pt.2

Every quarter  there are a few weeks that make you want to run around banging your head on anything hard enough to make you knock yourself out. I thought that this week was not going to be one of them. I thought that for once I was going to have a finals week that was calm, cool, and collected. Oh boy. I was wrong there. Due to a small oversight, that if caught a month ago could have been miniscule and easily fixable and avoided, I am now overwhelmed and stressed out. The worst part is I simultaneously let someone I really care about down AND I have to live with the fact that it's my fault. I'm sure that in the grand scheme of things, its really not that big of a deal, but right now it is, and right now I'm not feeling so hot about it.

***

In other news, A got a call this morning from his new job and they told him that he has the opportunity to start in January instead of June. A powwow with myself and our friend T later, and I think he is going to choose to start in January. He was looking forward to a little break before throwing himself into the grind of being a fully-fledged adult but I think that he's going to be ok without it.

***

On a happy note, A and I had a spontaneous date night last night. We went down to downtown for the Festival of Lights and it was beautiful. He got us caramel corn and we just walked around. The lights are incredible and there are horse drawn carriages, an ice skating rink, performances, and it was just perfect. We had a great time together. And then he took me out to In-N-Out, which I've been craving for weeks. It was a perfect way to get out from the crazy stress of work and school and just spend some quality time together. And it was cheap too so that works perfectly into our budget :]