NEW SKILLS!

Guess what I am so very excited about? The new skills I'm picking up to change my perspective on things. I read a quote earlier that says it takes the same effort to make ourselves miserable and it does to make ourselves stronger. I could not agree more. Anytime I relive the bad stuff from the past, it feels like self abuse and from talking to a good friend of mine, I realized that I have to pull my shit together.

I'm getting better at not focusing on what happened and instead finding the skills to forgive and move forward. As my good friend says, it's impossible to forget so that's a lost cause.

My gratitude journal is working out for me as well. I'm making it a priority to fit in friends time and surround myself with good vibes. Finding funny things to laugh about is great too. I'll be visiting a LMSW just to gain more resources about making myself stronger. Let's do this!

More Numb

For a little over a month, I've been through such an emotional rollercoaster. Honing in on the incident and coming up with a million questions when it's really just so simple did not help. Although unnecessary, I still came to work with puffy eyes and face. Noticeable to my boss as well.

Yes, I still get sad every now and then, but not compared to the pain I felt several weeks ago. There aren't really panic attacks (or at least as often). My doubt and feeling of betrayal has dwindled. Time really does heal.

There's such a wealth of tools that can be used even in your darkest times. Some days I felt like I couldn't get through. I wanted to reach out to everyone that I felt could give me words of affirmation that I'll be okay but instead only sought the emotional support of a couple people. I realized that I don't need for someone else to tell me that things will turn out fine. Only I could do that for myself otherwise I build a dependence.

Take the love from family and friends just for existing (not necessarily to help with the situation) and focus on the happy moments. For dark moments, I read blogs and quotes. I'm a big quote person so this worked out better and better. C'est La Vie.

Strength

So in an effort to draw strength through some hard times right now, I could go on and on about what I should be feeling like but instead I'd like to note some characteristics from people in my life that I truly admire. Funny thing that the self-conscious mind can easily bash on one's physical attributes, however, that's rarely what attracts me to people dearest to me.

Calmness: The ability to think situations through and respond with well thought out ideas rather than on pure emotion.

Kindness: This applies to kindness towards other people as well as to yourself. Even on my worst days, I like to remember the quote, "

Vulnerability: Knowing that everything doesn't have to be perfect and owning your story for that. The women in books that I admire the most all have this in common. My fear of having every situation be perfect is out of whack and I have a lot to learn from this situation.

Impermanence: This I draw from my mother. Through all the grief she's been through in life, her ability to cope with impermanence is astonishing. Even if sometimes she "fakes it till she makes it", it gives me strength to continue.

First World Problems

As mentioned in my previous post, now that graduate school is dwindling down, I'm starting to pick up more on keeping up with current issues and Spanish articles. I promise I'm getting to a point... with wedding planning, I tend to get a bit antsy when people don't deliver and respond in a timely manner. Antsy to a point where it frustrates me all day. But then, I read about what people in West Africa or even Greece are currently dealing with. Suffering from Ebola or going months without payment. How could I possibly become upset because someone doesn't respond to my e-mail in a week? Perspective, y'all.

Dating, Socializing, and Careers

More than ever, I'm feeling a divide between my friends from college. Now that it's been a whole four years since I've graduated, I can reflect on how much has changed. We were all scrambling to finish our degrees and/or find a job, enchanted by the idea of making some money! In year three, things really started to change. Around 25, it seems like couples that were not ready to commit broke up and everyone else started to get engaged. Single and newly single friends who want to be in a relationship socialize the most. It's actually quite exhausting learning about all of the social media dating sites, but would be happy to know that there's a platform to meet people easier. The friends who much rather focus on careers also seemed more committed to their lifestyle choice.

Where do I feel like I fall? With the wedding, a couple family trips, and other big events coming up, I want to save where I can. This means that I don't care for spending $40 a night on going out when we're not actually celebrating something. The house has become such an investment - both expense-wise and responsibility in keeping up with everything. When I can be a homebody, I will. Yet somehow I keep feeling guilty for not getting out there more. I read an article recently that said, do the things that you think you'll wish you had five or ten years later. I doubt I'd regret not going out this one weekend, but I would be ecstatic to have things I can show for it.

Now that graduate school is winding down, I've found more time to catch up on shows and even pick up on learning Spanish.

On My Way!

Just got our grades back for the second to last semester of graduate school so this should be an appropriate time for an update! 4.0 again this semester, which is beyond fathomable compared to how much I was struggling in undergraduate. I guess your approach for academics really changes how well you'll do. For the final hoorah, we had to complete an internship requirement, spanning a minimum of 150 hours over the summer. Now having to do this in addition to my full-time job is going to be a bit of a killer but I am so ready to get that M.Ed! After oh about three attempts to get internships approved, I finally found an opportunity that fits in line with my interests and for the first time in a long while, I feel like I'm able to directly contribute to something. Couldn't be happier!

Power of Now

Over the weekend, Alex and I had time to run some errands and I mentioned wanting to get a book and wished we lived near a bookstore with more choices. He made a detour and drove to the nearby mall which, as I forgot, has a Barnes & Nobles! I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I wanted something fresh to dive into during my two weeks or so without classes.

While Gone Girl and the Goldfinch caught my eye, 10% Happier by Dan Harris looked particularly interesting. After reading the summary and seeing a 30% off sticker slapped onto the book, I knew that this book was right up my alley. Two days in and I'm flying right through it - his personality was a lot like mine, quite a bit of unnecessary worrying and an overall stressed out persona, always just trying to get through the current obstacle. It's becoming more and more interesting and I can't wait to see where it goes. The idea of "living in the now" is both something that I love to read about and practice. Unfortunately the only time I actually utilize it is during yoga so I need to try to incorporate it more into my daily life.

I still have quite a few books at home that I've bought/received and need to finish:
Bossypants - Tina Fey
Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation - Aisha Tyler
Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
The Lone Survivor - Marcus Luttrell

When I'm actually done with these, then I'll gift myself another book!

Tomorrow will help determine whether or not I need to continue my search for another internship opportunity. This is the only thing that's really holding me back from graduating by the end of the summer but I am fortunate that the next few months are a bit more flexible on my schedule.

Driving Myself Crazy

If I were to go into another interview, I think my biggest flaw would have to be my ability to overthink things. I love researching things so much that I end up becoming completely overwhelmed. Case and point: we went wedding dress shopping for the very first time this weekend before the engagement party and I actually fell in love with a dress that just felt like me. While I adored other dresses too, this one made me smile just a bit more :)

Being that my wedding is a whole year away and we already put a deposit on the dress, I need to stop looking at other dresses or I really will drive myself crazy. I guess one good thing is that when I look at other dresses, I wouldn't trade mine for 95% of the ones I see and I can only wear one dress that day, right?! I'm pulling the plug on looking at other dresses. Now.

Throwing an Engagement Party

Now that I've somewhat recovered from our engagement party this weekend, I'd like to share all the ideas and work that went into it! Obviously if I could have it my way, I wanted tiny perfect cupcakes with tiny perfect signs that say our wedding date and "save the date". Unfortunately this didn't happen since I just simply ran out of time! Oh, and I had to scrap an entire batch of "the best red velvet cupcakes" I found on Pinterest because they tasted like playdough. I hate playdough! I ended up buying chocolate cake mix and used my favorite cream cheese icing (Sprinkles recipe) to quickly decorate a bunch of mini cupcakes.

I received a ton of help from my family to set up and cook for the party. We must have had between 25-30 guests there and needed to feed them all but in a fun and not formal way. I was running around so much that day that I forgot to take some pictures of the actual set up of the food but here's what we served:

• Shrimp ceviche
• Antipasto Pasta salad - I doubled this recipe for the amount of people that were there and had tons of leftovers for my coworkers the next Monday, very easy and very tasty
• Stuffed mushrooms - these were amazing but my sister luckily had her husband to help her clean the mushrooms and scoop the filling since this is a rather time consuming meal
• Spinach and Artichoke Dip, tortilla chips, pita chips, and salsa for variety
• Crockpot Sweet & Tangy Meatballs - the recipe also includes a step further for creating meatball sliders but the meatballs alone were such a huge hit, fed a bunch of people, and were complimented on! Do THIS if nothing else. 
• Cupcakes, store bought chocolate and coconut macarons
• Pre-made sandwiches that we set next to a panini grill if anyone wanted a grilled sandwich. This was such a great idea of my sister's and a lot of people did utilize the "panini bar"

Drinks:

• Lots of ice on the side, one tub to cool the beers and another for serving
• Mimosas
• Soda

Antipasto Pasta Salad

Stuffed Mushrooms

Crockpot Meatballs

For the decorations, we made six pom-poms as seen here. I made two white, two sea green, and two peachy/vanilla for variety. It became fluffiness overload inside so we hung two of these outside where people would be hanging out too.  

My proudest decoration would have to be this right here:

It was such a blast having our closest family and friends (only the wedding parties were invited otherwise we'd be on capacity OVERLOAD). For our other friends, we just decided to meet them up for drinks after and there were no hard feelings! Love it. 

Wedding Planning

I'm not going to lie, jumping into the whole list of everything that had to be accomplished was extremely scary. A month into our engagement, we were able to narrow down from several venues in the area (and some a little bit more on the outskirts of town) to decide our 'perfect' place. There's probably no harm no foul in creating a list of venues that we were considering right? I just won't mention where we have chosen (just yet)!

1. Event 1013 - This location was so unique and we loved that it was in downtown Plano. While we didn't entirely want a hotel ballroom feel, we felt like perhaps we could meet in the middle a little bit more with the upscaleness. This venue also let's you decide on how hands-on or hands-off you'd like to be with their package choices.

2. Noah's - Such a close contender! The facility itself is gorgeous - we loved the ballroom, gameroom/guy's room (there's a pool and shuffle table!), and the ceiling options. The only downside was that this place is pretty much completely hands off and again, we wanted just a little more service provided. They also have multiple locations available, with some even being built as we speak.

3. The Oasis on Lake Travis - While we have always dreamed of getting married in Austin, it would be so much easier to be able to plan a wedding in town so I could make tastings and trials. First of all, Kelsey Shipman (the coordinator) is pretty much amazing and provided us all the information we needed. It came down to be much more affordable here since they're an actual restaurant so you don't have to hire additional service. Let's just say that this is where we're leaving our hearts for more convenience.

4. Food minimums/all-inclusive packages helped us narrow down from these amazing venues that we considered: Marie Gabrielle Restaurant, The Milestone, Chapel at Ana Villa, and Ashton Gardens. All four of these locations had stunning decor and would be lovely to have a ceremony at. Keep in mind, I believe that most of these choices are still able to work with their clients to possibly be flexible with their options.

5. Our special venue. It's just perfect for us. We were looking for a place that still worked closely with vendors and could provide us a list but did not require any sort of food or beverage minimum! There's also plenty of  not awkward spaces for our guests to mingle between the ceremony and reception. We personally hate nothing more than going to events where we're all stuck in a certain area with strangers. This is when our inner-introverts come out! Another important priority was having a location convenient for our guests and plenty of parking. I'll say more at another time.

High Stress!

This past month has been an extremely intense time, and not necessarily in the best way. Before our trip, I'll be going to a conference for my job, taking a comprehensive exam, and a midterm exam for my graduate school program. We're also having the floors re-done, so in the meantime, we went ahead and tore up the carpet and are prepping it with Kilz to get rid of any of the pet urine smells (apparently this works?) from both the previous owner as well as the little brat who lives at home. In addition, my dental appointment has been postponed yet another week and I never realized how annoying and exhausting it is to be done with any work for the teeth. I need the next couple weeks to fly by smoothly!