just a crazy saturday night with my boy and my sister

lately...

my watch collection and obsession has grown :) 

sipping countless cups of hot green tea with honey

getting bikini ready with jayde and brooke :) 

finished reading "the happiness project" by gretchen rubin and have begun reading "the art of happiness" by the Dalai Lama; striving towards being fit and happy :) 

loving my beautiful boyfriend more everyday :) 

"the happiness project" by gretchen rubin

"there is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy"

"when a student is ready, the teacher appears"

"it is by studying the little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible"

"what you do everyday matters more than what you do once in a while"

"there is no love, there are only proofs of love"; don't let the sun go down on your anger.

"happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor thing thing nor that, but simply growth. we are happy when we are growing"

"the chief happiness for a man is to be what he is"

"the days are long but the years are short"

"the absence of feeling bad isn't enough to make you happy; you much strive to find sources of feeling good"

"the business of a wise man is to be happy"... whatever condition life happens to offer.

having strong social bonds is probably the most meaningful contributer to happiness.

people who give money to charity end up wealthier than those who don't. money is a good servant but a bad master.

"it is easy to be heavy; hard to be light"

"there are times in our lives, when we would of given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed"

"life doesn't get any better than this"

"i take care to appear happy and especially to be so"

if you don't believe you're happy - you're not. if you think you're happy - you are.

"the least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced"

periods of deprivation sharpen pleasures

only through recognizing your happiness can you really appreciate it.

outer order contributes to inner calm

"nothing can make our life or the lives of other more beautiful than perpetual kindness"

"a man may be young, handsome, wealthy and esteemed; if we wish to judge his happiness we ask whether he is cheerful"

loving actions inspire loving feelings

spring fashion 2012

 i am beyond excited for spring. for two main reasons - the weather and the fashion. fashion is a new found passion of mine...as much as i like boots and scarfs - i could live in a temperate warm climate and never wear them and be perfectly content. Spring implies skirts and bright colors and dresses and flowy sheer tops and cute sandals and pedicures and sun tans and bike rides with my babe....(stay focused andrea, this is about FASHION.) ill stop rambling and allow the pictures to do the talking - here is my take of some of fashions BEST trends for Spring. Lots of color blocking, with pastels. especially loving mint green and tangerine! and i can't get enough sequences and lace! take a peek...

on another completely irrelevant note - I baked my first ever layer, red velvet cake for Brock this weekend. I think it was a home run and I must say - I'm actually beginning to like baking :) 

visual journal

motherly wisdom

Inspirational e-mail from mom this morning...

"CHANGE: All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves;  we must die to one life before we can enter another.” - Anatole France. As you enter a new year and embrace a “new you,”  this only happens with CHANGE.  In fact, this month was almost called “Embracing Change.”  We do need to constantly change and grow as we live and learn new things.  Most (all) of us are not perfect - this is ok AND gives us the opportunity to see what areas in our life we can change or improve. There are many reasons we often do not change, or we find change difficult.  Sometimes we feel we do not have the time to organize ourselves to do what we need to do.  Sometimes we may not believe or know how to make some changes without the financial resources.  Sometimes we just do not want to change. However, this quote is one to think about long and hard.  I think sometimes we do not change and keep our current patterns of behavior because we have to LET GO of a part of ourselves.  Letting go, even if we are separating ourselves from a bad habit can be difficult because we are letting go of something that was a part of our very being. We can only make these changes a moment at a time. “Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.” - Dean Acheson. Mindfully make changes moment by moment.  Allow yourself to let go and be at peace with changing into and EMBRACING the NEW YOU.  

RELAY FOR LIFE

Well, I can go ahead and (half-way) check off one of my new years resolutions/goals...register and run/walk for a cause! I have registered myself and created a team for Relay For Life! Which is a relay walk/run that benefits The American Cancer Society. My team is named "The Fit Fighters"...a little play on words from the "The Foo Fighters" but instead of being rockstars, we are going to be fit relayers, fighting cancer! The relay is on April 27th, at 6pm...so ill have plenty of time to stretch those quads out and break in my running shoes and on a more important note, hopefully plenty of time to reach my goal of raising $500. I'm hoping I can get friends and family to log on to the website and join my team and donate. If not donate, at least join my team and come out that Saturday night because it is such a beautiful, touching event that instills such hope and a feeling of commodore among everyone. 
Click here to check out my personal fundraising web page!
that web page will provide information on Relay for Life, how to donate, how to join my team, what we are "relaying" for and where exactly your donation is going and everything else you might be curious about! This is a great opportunity to make a difference...there is truly nothing more rewarding and fulfilling than community service, than volunteering and helping others. and if you can enjoy yourself by getting some exercise, eating some yummy food and being with your friends and family at the same time? its a win-win situation! I hope to see you there!