Five Things

I wanted to do something different for this post. Normally I write about one thing that I really love, but I thought it would be fun to share five things that I really love as the last Friday post of the month.

1. Reading. It’s no secret that I love reading, and that I’m always looking for new books to read. Not everything is my cup of tea, but I am willing to give anything a fair try. If you have book recommendations, feel free to share them with me!
2. Coloring. I just wrote a post about coloring a couple of weeks ago. It’s something that I love to do, and I love to unwind by coloring after a long day. It’s a great way to calm my brain down at the end of the day and not worry about everything.
3. Weekend Adventures. Weekend adventures are one of my favorite things ever. I love going out with my family or my friends and going shopping or finding a new place to eat or just finding a fun place to be.
4. Writing. I love writing. Writing helps me shut my brain down. It lets me create entire worlds on paper. It lets me explore my thoughts and my ideas.
5. Blogging. This blog will be 3 years old in May. I haven’t missed a month since I started, and this month has been an especially good month for posting regularly. I love sitting down and deciding what I’m going to share with you and everything else that goes along with it.

BrittanyM

Journaling

One of my goals for this year was to get back to journaling every day. It’s a habit that I’ve had for a long time, but when I was student teaching it just felt like too much of a struggle, so I stopped writing every day. And then I realized that I’m the type of person who likes to write in their journal every day. It’s actually really important to me.

The other part of my journaling goal was to be more honest in my journaling. I was good about writing every day, but I wasn’t good at actually saying anything. I’d write something about my day, what I did, and that was it. I wasn’t talking about anything in depth. I wasn’t talking about the things that made my heart sing or the things that were stressing me out. And I knew that needed to stop. If I was going to write in my journal every day, I was really going to need to write.

I wasn’t sure how that would go in the beginning. I’ve always had a bad habit of self-censoring because a lot of the time I don’t want to deal with things. I don’t want to talk about it so I don’t, but that isn’t always the best choice. I really believe that if one is going to keep a journal they should be honest in it, really honest. So I resolved to do just that.

And it’s been going really well. I don’t think when I sit down to journal. I come up with a place to start and then I just write. I write about whatever comes into my head, until it makes sense to stop. It feels great to be so free in my journal and say whatever is on my mind.

Open journaling is really something I recommend.

BrittanyM

Coloring

It’s been a while since I’ve written about something fun, something I just really love doing. I’ve shared quotes, and I’ve written Sweet Sunday posts, but I haven’t just talked about something that I love.

And I love coloring.

Seriously. I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember, and I don’t plan on ever not loving it. I have an array of coloring books. I have simple ones and holiday ones and Disney ones – lost of Disney ones. I also have “grown up” coloring books, which just means that the pictures are more intricate and require more thought.

My favorite “grown up” coloring books are Johanna Basford’s. She has 3 out currently, and I own all of them. I love them. I love the detail that goes into them. I love the pictures. I love figuring out what colors go together and what colors will make the pictures come to life. Coloring in these books is a great way to unwind and decompress after a long day.

What about you? Are you someone who colors? What are you coloring? If you aren’t someone who colors, how do you unwind after a long day?

BrittanyM

Fairy Tales

I love fairy tales. Buried somewhere deep in the archives of this blog is a post talking about how I love fairy tales. I grew up on Disney fairy tales. I’ve spent my life falling in love with different reimaginings of fairy tales. In today’s day and age there’s no shortage of them, and some of them are really rather fabulous. Recently I’ve discovered a number of creative inventive fairy tales that I’ve fallen in love with. They all derive from somewhere – from a fairy tale or a fairy tale author. And they’re great. I’ve found reinventions of Alice and Wonderland and reinventions of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales which are just amazing.

And here’s the thing. What’s so great about fairy tales? Why do we love them so much? Why do we keep coming back to them?

Because they’re familiar with room for creativity. They help us deal with our own problems. They provide us with a place to escape to if life is just too much. They’re something we ourselves can create if we so choose.

Fairy tales are awesome.

BrittanyM

Gayle Forman

I’m an avid reader. I’ve always been an avid reader. Sometimes my reading ebbs and wans because I’m busy. It’s hard to be a grad student and an intern (soon to be student teacher) and a family member, and read as much as I might want to. But it’s summer right now, and I’m recommitting to reading as much as possible. Reading is important for a variety of reasons, which is most likely a post for another day. But I’m digressing.

It’s no secret that I read YAL all the time. It’s my favorite. And sometimes I justify reading it by the fact that I’m going to teach 7-12 graders, and I need to be able to recommend things to them. And sometimes I don’t bother justifying it because it’s a free country and I can read whatever I want to.

I’ve read Gayle Forman‘s books before. I read Just One Day and Just One Year quite some time ago and loved them. The truth of the matter is though, I read them in part because I was looking for If I Stay and the library didn’t have it. So I read these other books instead. And they were awesome, and well-written, and the type of story I wanted to be telling. But they weren’t If I Stay, which I couldn’t find in the library to save my life. And I like the library because it’s free, and I’m short on funds, so even though I could have bought the book, I didn’t quite want to.

Then, this summer, as the school year and my internship were wrapping up, I went on one of my many frequent trips to the library and found If I Stay AND Where She Went, the sequel. I was ecstatic and checked them out and read them my second full week of summer. And they were awesome. They were so awesome, and I’m so glad to have been able to read them. I’m a book lover, not a book reviewer, but these books were everything I could have wanted and more. Again, they are the types of stories I want to write and I want to show to my students. They’re beautiful.

So go read them. Or read something else that you find equally fabulous. But really, Gayle Forman’s books are so worth it, and once you pick one up you won’t want to put it down until you’re done.

BrittanyM

Grown Up Coloring Books

It’s no big secret that I love to color. I have color books galore. I have an entire Pinterest board devoted to coloring pages. I grew up coloring and certainly haven’t given it up as I get older. I don’t plan on ever giving up coloring. Why would I? It’s fun and relaxing and I get to be creative without going completely bonkers. For me that’s a winning scenario.

I still love to color Disney pictures and Hello Kitty and coloring pages that are generally meant for younger children. I think that’s all pretty fabulous. I also think that grown up coloring is pretty fabulous. I like the intricate patterns and the more detailed pictures. It’s a fun challenge for me, and I like challenges so long as I can find some fun in them. So I’ve scoured Pinterest for “grown up” coloring pages, and I’ve found oodles.

And then I read about something cool on the internet.

Johanna Basford hand drew these two amazing coloring books – Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest. They are seriously some of the coolest things I have seen in a really long time. These picture are most definitely meant for grownups and for the finest tipped markers. My dad got my mom and I the Enchanted Forest coloring book, and I’ve had so much fun with it since getting it. I’m only on the second picture because they are definitely a labor of time and love, but I’m so excited to color this coloring book and invest in the Secret Garden one.

Happy Coloring!

BrittanyM

A New Favorite

Summer is here which is a wonderful thing. And as spring was ending and summer was starting I found myself a new favorite. I know, I’m the girl who claims to not have favorites for a variety of reasons. And for the most part I stand by that. I don’t have set favorites. I don’t have one favorite book or one favorite movie or one favorite color. A lot of that depends on my mood and what’s going on in my life and all the rest of it. But I do have groups of favorites. Favorite books. Favorite colors. Favorite TV shows and/or channels.

Lately, my new favorite is HGTV. And to be completely honest, I’m about as likely to take on a home renovation or decoration project as I am to take on a big cooking project. And yet two of my favorite TV channels are HGTV and Food Network. I get completely sucked in. I love watching people cook. I love watching homes get renovated. It inspires me for what I might do in the future. I get just as sucked in to these shows as I do to my mystery shows and sitcoms and teenage dramas.

It helps that these shows, the HGTV and the Food Network shows, make for good background noise. They’re what I listen to while I clean my room or while I blog or while I color in the awesome new coloring book my dad bought me. I grew up in a house where we used TV as background noise, and these channels make good background nose.

What are some of your favorites? Let me know!

BrittanyM

Touching Base

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t gotten around to writing my July blog posts yet. I’ve found that if I write them in advance then I don’t forget to post (because it’s scheduled) and you, my wonderful wonderful readers have new posts to read on a regular basis. But I haven’t written this month’s posts yet. It’s a goal. It’s on the top of my to do list. I was going to do it today but then we went mini golfing and shopping and had a wonderful adventure filled family day. The best kinds of days, and the type that I will write about soon and share with you. (Tomorrow maybe…) Anyways, it’s Friday which means I do owe a post, and I didn’t want to start July off by missing regular post days, so this is my teeny tiny I promise it will get better, post. And for all of you who have been checking in and reading and whatnot, thank you! There will be new, better, longer, more interesting posts coming soon.

BrittanyM

My Perfect First Car

I have to admit, this post is probably a couple of months late. But there’s been all sorts of things I’ve wanted to talk about, and tonight I’m choosing my first car.

In the spring of 2009 my parents bought me a car. Probably the funniest part of all of this was that I didn’t have a permit yet. So this cute little car (a ’98 Ford Contour) was sitting in my driveway and going nowhere.

But I did get my permit because otherwise this would be a very short story.

I named my car Charlie, and I really loved Charlie. He was this cute little car that was great for driving around town, which is all I was really doing. Admittedly, he had some flaws. The air conditioner didn’t work. He didn’t go exceptionally fast. He really didn’t like going up hills. But he was perfect for what I needed in a car, and I loved him.

In the fall of 2010 I went to college, and Charlie stayed home. Even if I’d wanted a car with me, I didn’t have the credits yet. And besides, I liked the idea of Charlie waiting for me at home, safe and sound and with a guaranteed parking spot. So that’s how it was for all four years of my undergraduate career.

Now, while I was gone, my parents drove Charlie periodically. That’s how we found out the brakes needed to be replaced. And of course I drove Charlie all the time when I was home. And he remained my perfect slightly quirky but wonderful first car.

Now remember, Charlie was a ’98 Ford Contour, and by the time I graduated from UConn it was 2014. Charlie was old, especially by car standards. I didn’t love him any less, but a simple fact. Charlie was 16 years old.

And it was the summer of 2014 that Charlie really began to have problems.

My grad school is located in Griswold, and over the summer I was driving Charlie up there periodically. At first it was fine. But then it was almost as if he developed an extreme case of the hiccups. This is something that sounds endearing, but really it’s terrifying. I was so scared that Charlie was just going to stop working on my way to or from grad school.

So unfortunately I had to stop driving him to Griswold.

Really I probably shouldn’t have been driving him anywhere. But I was still driving him locally. And even that began to peter out rather quickly.

And then we found out why Charlie had the hiccups. His transmission was shot.

Now, I loved Charlie, and the truth of the matter is that I still love Charlie. But I couldn’t drive him anymore because he wasn’t safe. And just a couple of months ago, April 2015, we decided to junk Charlie.

And sometimes I miss Charlie, even though Charlie Junior (my new to me car) has entered my life.

Because Charlie really was my perfect first car.

BrittanyM

Favorite Things of Summer

The fun truth, is that even if the weather isn’t summer weather right now, summer is right around the corner. That means longer days, warmer weather, going to the beach, and a million other little things. In honor of the approaching summer, I thought I would talk about some of my favorite summer things.

• Grilling. I love when we grill food. We have burgers and hot dogs and cheese dogs. (I really love cheese dogs.) We make kabobs. We make barbeque chicken. We make not barbeque chicken. It’s just really good seasonal food that makes me happy.
• Going to the beach. I’m not the type of person who goes to the beach and spends all day in the water. But I am the type of person who packs some books and magazines, maybe a deck of cards, and goes and spends a day at the beach. Plus, I love people watching at the beach. I love snack shack food. And I love enjoying the outdoors without having to be too outdoorsy.
• Lazy days. I’m not lazy. Not even a little. But what’s great about the summer is that I can have lazy days. I love being able to take a whole day and read. Or veg in front of the TV and not feel bad. I love spending entire days with friends or going on summer adventures.

Those are three of my favorite things about summer. I’m sure that there are other things I love, and I’m sure that I’ll share them with you as summer continues.

What are some of your favorite summer things?

BrittanyM