To Me...

Love is someone seeing the beauty in you and wanting to bask in it every day all day. Love is not guaranteed. We are not owed love. That’s why when we get it, we know how lucky we are and hold on to it for dear life.

and

Love isn’t always marriage. Marriage is spending $60,000 so everyone can know that someone loves you. You know what’s certainly not love? Debt. In some cases, love can be divorce.

Credit goes to this website. 

The quotes above are the only ones I like from that site.

to true love,

cxs

Books Books Books

There is nothing I love more than an architecturally beautiful library; kind of like the library from Beauty & The Beast. Seriously, I thought such a library could not exist UNTIL this website showed up. Check it out. These designs are breath taking. To even imagine these designs in your head amazes me.

 I want to visit all of these libraries. 

2, 13 & 14 are among my favorites.

Strahov Theological Hall – Prague, Czech Republic

Real Gabinete Português de Leitura – Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Admont Library – Admont, Austria

to books,

cxs

This Weeks Repeat Artist

So right now I am absolutely, totally, and completely in love with the band "Crash Kings". Seriously they are amazing and I definitely recommend checking them out here. This week they are my number one repeated musicians on my itunes.

1. Non Believer

2. Mountain Man

3. Raincoat

are among my top most played right now

Crash Kings will be making an appearance at Lollapalooza August 5th. 

I want to go.

to songs on repeat,

cxs

Things That Make Me Smile

This Quote

"Would you complain because a beautiful sunset doesn’t have a future or a shooting star a payoff? And why should romance ‘lead anywhere’? Passion isn’t a path through the woods. Passion is the woods. It’s the deepest wildest part of the forest; the grove where the fairies still dance and obscene old vipers snooze in the boughs. Everybody but the most dried up and dysfunctional is drawn to the grove and enchanted by its mysteries, but then they just can’t wait to call in the chain saws and bulldozers and replace it with a family-style restaurant or a new S and L. That’s the payoff, I guess. Safety. Security. Certainty. Yes, indeed. Well, remember this, pussy latte: we’re not involved in a ‘relationship’, you and I, we’re involved in a collision. Collisions don’t much lend themselves to secure futures, but the act of colliding is hard to beat for interest."  —Tom Robbins

This Song

This Place

This Movie

& These Cats.

 

to smiling,

cxs

Time to Flee

I HATE BEING SHY. 

It is my worst quality, but it's also who I am. I had a job interview today for a waitress position and I feel like it was a slow motion train wreck. I'm awkward. I'M SHY. I'm not very confident. To top it all off, my biggest insecurity right now is talking about school and the interviewer drilled me on it. She couldn't even fathom why I would be doing what I'm doing for school: online classes and one french class at a city community college rather than continuing at UIC. 

RANTRANTRANTRANTRANT

I feel like I made the right decision for education and financial reasons to take a few courses, especially since I am so lost in life. Her look said otherwise:

YOU'RE TOO SHY. HOW CAN YOU WORK HERE WHEN YOU FAIL AT LIFE. INTERVIEW:FAILED.

awesome start to the day.

Time to flee the country. I want a redo somewhere else. 

let's go,

cxs

      p.s. I like this. "give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. you won’t die. you will come to life. and don’t be concerned with how others define you. when they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem. whenever you interact with people, don’t be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious presence. you can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are."

—eckhart tolle

How Funny

This is just an excerpt from a silly little rant someone wrote. It's just something funny and very true.

Tom Hanks doesn’t exist in Tom Hanks movies. Let that sink in.

“You ever think about how in, like, a Tom Hanks movie, everyone lives in a reality in which there’s no such person as Tom Hanks? Because otherwise, people would be mistaking the main character for Tom Hanks all the time? So either Tom Hanks doesn’t exist in the world the movie takes place in, or he does exist but he looks like someone else?”

True, right? well, have an enjoyable day.

-cxs

Homesick in the City

I am homesick. Homesick from southern Ohio. I miss the farm in Cedarville. I miss running barefoot in the grass. I miss the horses. I miss the stars. I miss the creek. I miss the country roads. I miss my family. I miss the atmosphere and southern hospitality. I miss everything about the south. I just need to escape the city for a bit. To cope I made a music playlist to make me feel at home. It's hard to concentrate on figuring out my life & future when I miss my past and family so much. The family reunion on the farm is this june. We have these reunions every three years so I am excited to see everyone again. I just have to keep reminding myself that I will be there soon and to keep focused on my future instead of in the past. 

The Farm.

to home,

cxs

Hello, 3 am.

Well just as the title states, it's 3 am here in Chicago and I am wide awake. With all this free time I have by being unemployed and taking mostly online courses, one would think I would get too much sleep, when in fact...I have been more sleep deprived than ever. As part of this whole "getting out of this rut I'm in" part of my life, I need to start going to bed earlier; as in before 12 am. To help start this process I highly recommend creating sleep or calming playlists on the 8tracks website. It's absolutely fabulous for these types of scenarios. Also great for making morning playlists to get your day started on a high note (pun intended). Below is my playlist to help me relax in the depths of my sheets along with pictures I envy at this time of morning. Enjoy.

Hello, Pillow

to sleep,

cxs

Valentine

Alright, the day has come: Valentine's Day. A day where those that are single snarl and glare at others who have another hand in theirs. A day where hopeless romantics, wide eyed and lovingly, stare at a single rose in hopes that the love of their life will soon appear. A day of mass head-in-cloud, mindless, romanticism of everything in sight. A holiday I only enjoy due to the chocolate overload I bestow upon myself and the flowers on every corner during the most dreary month in Chicago. However, I absolutely adore the lovely pictures I find on one of my favorite website, coincidentally named, we heart it. Below are some images that make me smile on a day where I am reminded just how romantically challenged I am. Once a year; that's all a romantic asks for. So let us stomach the sweetness of Valentine's Day together. After all, everyone falls in love at some point. So here are some facts we all must get use to. 

Valentine's Day is...

impossible to avoid

lovely when with another

a natural high

a day to ignore your brain & let your feelings show

a day where music can say more than words

a day of sweetness

a fairytale come true

a day to love

a day where little can be said, but a lot is heard

that special kiss

I hope your Valentine's Day is everything you want it to be & more. 

to the hopeless romantics,

cxs

Gatitude

A musician I love, Jason Mraz, has always been on my list of people whom I admire most (along side Audrey Hepburn and Winston Churchill). By reading his blog "Freshness Factor Five Thousand" I am able to learn a lot from him through his life experiences and beliefs. I take a lot of his advice about living a better, greener, and healthier lifestyle. He always seems so happy and content with his life and that is exactly what I am looking for. Those of you looking for guidance on how to be happier, healthier, or greener, I would definitely suggest checking him out. His writing style is fabulous and he's charmingly funny. Oh, and his music is pretty good too ;) 

Below is a picture that I like to look at sometimes when I think everything in my life is going wrong. I found it on Jason's blog and it has truly opened my eyes to the world beyond my window and shows how bless I am. Save it to your computer and look at it when you have those off days...it lowers me off my little dark cloud right away and makes me think of everything I am grateful for. 

Gratitude: Let's try it, shall we?

to gratitude,

cxs

Snow Day

This day 2 of 3 snow days in a row. Every kids dream has become my reality! Everything in Chicago is shut down which makes for a relaxing day of snow angle making, fort building, and cocoa drinking. I was finally able to omit all education, life, and career planning and trade them for the thoughts of an 8 year old: 

SNOW DAY!

to snow days,

cxs