fashion friday: month one of six months, six dresses.

I am totally a dress and skirt person. Part of it is because I got used to it in high school (we had a uniform and had to wear skirts every. single. day.), but I’ve always thought they were pretty and festive. Once I got to college and got my regular-clothes-wearing-person groove back – which probably didn’t happen until sophomore year – I made dresses part of my everyday wardrobe.

After graduating, I stopped wearing them for a while because I was sick and not going out much. Obviously whenever I was attending a party or something special, I took the opportunity to pull them out of my closet. But even that was rare. I had resigned to a lazy-day uniform – Soffe shorts and tank tops in the summer, pajama pants and long sleeves in the winter. So, recently, I decided that even if I was only going out to work for the day or sitting around, I was going to wear more of my “nice” clothes.

My first dress in this series is one that actually precedes the little bit above because I got it for my college graduation party last May. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. Forever 21 had become a new obsession of mine and as I was browsing, I found it. I knew instantly I wanted it and that I did happen to need one for my upcoming graduation bash, so I bought it.

It was perfect. Lightweight and loose, even the belt around my midsection didn’t bother me. Originally I planned on wearing heels with it, but it’s quite short and looked a bit distasteful with anything except flip flops. But other than that? I loved it and was thrilled to wear it to my graduation party.

Since then, I’ve worn it year-round – because it’s short, it looks good with jeans or leggings, and it didn’t look half bad with a long-sleeved shirt underneath. It can be dressy or casual, and I absolutely love clothes that are multipurpose. It’s held up pretty well and I’m hoping to keep wearing it until it’s completely destroyed.

{This post is part of a series called Six Months, Six Dresses dreamed up by the ever-lovely and inspiring Kyla Roma. I'm actually straying a bit from her idea by including dresses I already own and starting in May instead of April. If you wanna get in on the fun, click the banner above and join us!}

birthdays, birthdays, and more birthdays!

Oh, there have been too many birthdays lately. Not that there could ever be such a thing - because I love birthdays - but every time I turned around I had to start prepping someone else's gift. In true Cait style, I got a little crafty and, in one case, did some Target searching for cute things for the birthday celebrations.

First up was Melissa's birthday in April. Hers was a very last-minute, spur-of-the-moment idea, although you would never know it. It turned out amazingly, if I do say so myself. I mean, I always set out to do really good work, but I'm a huge critic and it's rare that it passes my own standards. I'll let you decide.

'Basically just 4 years of pure insanity' is the new tag line to our friendship. Also, PIPE CLEANERS AND FOAM DEALIES.

Next up, at the very beginning of May, it was my dance twin Ashley's 25th birthday bash. Since the first project went so well, I decided to go the same route and I was equally as impressed with myself.

Penguin love!

Finally, my BFF Danielle's birthday was two days ago, although we surprised her with a little birthday celebration during our reunion last week. Natalie and I set up my family room with leftover luau decorations and some delicious drinks, and we ordered in from Chili's and watched Hairspray. It was fabulous. I went scouting for gifts at Target and wound up with an adorable stationary set, picture frame, and jasmine-scented candle.

Yes, I bought three. One for me, one for Dani, and one to use as an emergency gift for someone.


Perfection.

I've got one major birthday left - my cousin - and I'm at a loss because she and I have done everything crafty for each other. I made her a scrapbook and gave her several picture frames and collages, she's made me a big collage and gave me a lovely speech at my graduation. Her birthday's next week and I'm totally going blank. Any ideas, crafty or not, are appreciated.

So that's what I've been up to craft-wise. I'm saving up all my creativity for my grandmother's scrapbook which we'll hopefully get started on soon - we only have about a month to go!

{Also, as I finished up this post I realized that today is also my friend Kyle's birthday! So, happy birthday!}

progress.

{taken by my cousin, circa 2006; yes, old, but I like it.}

I’m not that person who finds it easy to follow the advice “if you fall off of the horse, get right back on.” Absolutely not. In fact, I’m that person who won’t even get on the horse, because if I don't try, I can't fail. Yes, I can't succeed, either, but I'd rather not try than try and mess things up.

Twice in the past few months, I proclaimed that I would be working on feeling better and living my life. Have I succeeded? Not 100%, not even close. But for the first time, I’m getting back on the horse when I fall off. When I start sleeping late again, I let it run its course then start taking steps to get back on normal hours. When I go off my diet, I acknowledge it and – after a six-Oreo binge – get back to eating fresh foods.

For once in my life, I’m realizing that success isn’t the absence of failure, which is something I believed for a long, long time. I give myself credit for pouring myself a glass of water and don’t punish myself for choosing to have a can of Sierra Mist every few days. Sure, I have my bad days when I’m not doing anything I should be and am blatantly choosing not to remedy the situation, but those days are becoming fewer and farther between.

I’m doing silly little things to make myself feel more motivated. In addition to my cardio, I found a plan to tone my body. My mom’s given me a list of projects to do around the house and outside, like finishing up the yard and making a scrapbook for my grandmother’s 80th birthday. I’m making shopping lists of things I keep forgetting I need and actually buying them. It gives me something to do during the day and helps me feel like I’m accomplishing things instead of sitting around the house like a bum.

Sometimes it’s really hard, but I feel like I’m making progress. It’s difficult to break a habit as big as not trying for fear of failing, but every time I do something healthy in lieu of being lazy and inactive, I’m one step closer to feeling better.

and now, a song.

Because sometimes, you hear a random favorite song on the car radio and you turn the volume up to deafening levels, dance behind the wheel and belt out the lyrics. Can there be anything more cathartic and just damn amazing? I think not.


How absolutely perfect.

pretty flowers.

So as I mentioned yesterday, being the only girl at game night meant I got a sweet box of leftover wedding flowers to bring home with me. Flowers always inspire me to take pictures, so of course that's what I did.

The rose I got in the small bouquet bloomed beautifully and the other flowers were already gorgeous, so it was pretty easy to get some good shots. I'll be sad when they die.

All pictures are from my flickr. The rest can be found here.

weekend review.

Before I get started on my weekend, I want to say that I tried to stay off the internet until Sunday like I said I would, but that simply didn’t happen. It wasn’t a result of boredom or the need to stay up-to-date on everything, but mostly because the computer is my main source of communication. Yes, I waste a lot of time on the internet, but I also spend time IMing friends, sending Facebook messages, and keeping in touch. So, by Friday, I was feeling extremely disconnected from my IRL friends and found myself logging on AIM around dinner time.

That being said, had I not decided to go back online, Saturday night probably wouldn’t have happened. After months of talking about hanging out and trying to plan something, I was finally able to go visit my friends John and Kyle for a game night along with Kyle’s friend Ray. I haven’t seen either John or Kyle for a long time (one year and … three years? respectively) so it was really good to see them again. Hopefully we’ll be able to make a better habit of seeing each other – I never fail to laugh my ass off whenever we’re all together.

We played a board game called Pandemic which was completely confusing at first, but as we played, it made more sense. Instead of being against each other, all the players are on a team, and we managed to win twice. It was the first time since he got the game that Kyle had won (it’s relatively new), so I’ll just go ahead and say that clearly, I was the good luck charm. Which might’ve be true, except for the fact that I kept pulling the epidemic card (which is epically bad), so … never mind.

And! Kyle’s mom had leftover flowers from a wedding she helped set up, and because I was the only girl in attendance at game night, I got the biggest goody bag of flowers. Yay!

Sunday was my BFF Natalie’s graduation party because she’s crazy-smart and is already done with graduate school! She threw a luau in her backyard and the weather was just perfect. It was a bit of a trip – about an hour and fifteen minutes – but totally worth it. Since she’s been so busy with school, I haven’t seen her in a while, and we gave each other the biggest hug when I got there. We ate, played a bit of Cornhole (which I completely sucked at), and chatted. There was a chocolate fountain and a group decision to watch Family Guy - totally my kind of party.

The graduate and me!

After the party, I hung around and caught up with Nat, and we made plans for a Lady Lumps (what my two best friends and I refer to ourselves as, because we're that cool) reunion later this week. Then I headed out and, after the hour-plus drive home, I got home and crashed. I barely had enough energy to take a shower, but it was totally worth it.

It’s actually a pretty awesome feeling to be exhausted after a fun-filled weekend. Here’s hoping for more of those this summer!

disappearing act.

I'm taking an little unplanned, spur-of-the-moment blogging break.

Because a friend of mine - let's call him J - challenged me to get out of my comfort zone, and suggested getting away from my crazy internet addiction is a good way to start.

So, off I go. For five days. See you next week!

music is my life.

In college, I often found myself feeling very out of place when my friends or acquaintances would start talking about music. They would discuss how they loved such-and-such a group, which was not main stream and of which I’d never heard. A conversation would continue, with more groups I had either never or rarely heard of, and I would just sit quietly in the corner, nodding in fake agreement.

I’ll just come out and say it: being a pop-music lover makes me feel immature. With all the criticism that today’s popular music is uninspired, over-produced, and sometimes just loud and obnoxious, I feel ashamed when I admit to actually liking all of it. I mean, I don’t let it bother me – I like what I like, and nobody’s opinion is going to make me stop listening to Britney Spears – but it still feels awkward sometimes.

What’s weird is, I actually have my fair share of non-main-stream music in my iTunes. The way I form my library of music is downloading a specific song I heard and liked, not giving any thought to other songs by that artist. The only time I look into the artist is if I hear two or more songs of theirs that I like. At that point, I check out more stuff and debate buying the entire album. Most times, however, I just buy or download the song I like and leave it at that.

I don’t know if it’s something I developed because I’m a dancer or because I tailor my playlist to match my mood. As a dancer, I’ll sometimes like ridiculously awful (not to mention completely out of character) rap songs because they have a good beat, or pick an indie song because the musicality is amazing. When I’m getting ready for a party, I like to blast Black Eyed Peas, much to the chagrin of my music-snob brother; when I need to relax, I listen to Colbie Caillat and Ingrid Michaelson.

Sometimes I just look at my iTunes and think it has a personality disorder. Because how is it that I can completely, one-hundred-percent enjoy both of the two songs below? I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

mother's day.

My mom and I have a strange relationship, which is partially because my family is weird to each other in general. We don’t say I love you, we don’t hug, we don’t really show any kind of affection. On Mother’s Day, or her birthday, or an anniversary, I put a card on the kitchen table and sometimes a gift, and leave it at that.

Obviously I love my mother, but sometimes I don’t really actively feel it. Maybe that’s why I have a tough time understanding what love is supposed to feel like. In fact, my understanding of love suddenly makes a lot of sense – let me explain. My mom has always, always been there for me. I tell her everything, mostly because I like to talk about myself. In college, I’d usually call her every few days – sometimes even daily – to tell her what was going on. Like how I got an A on my test, or the latest drama going on, or how my interviews went.

Not only that, my mother is proactive in my life where I am not. This is great, in a way, but is mostly something that I feel has screwed me up thoroughly. A really good example was most of my college career – she looked up class and grade requirements, information about interviews, when certain deadlines were, and things like that. She was always three steps ahead of me, which was good only because I never had to do anything. The problem was that then she blamed me for not doing anything. In her mind, because she chose to be that person who looked three steps ahead, I should be there, too. And when I wasn’t, I was being irresponsible.

(I could go on more about that – and probably will, because it’s a big problem for me – but I’ll leave it there for now.)

My idea of loving and caring about someone is doing things for them. When I was in college, I gave small gifts to all of my friends for the holidays, even though I knew only my closest friends would be getting me a gift in return. As my cousin was getting ready for her freshman year of college (at the same school I attended), I spent days making lists and pouring out information she’d find useful. In my relationship, I made sacrifices at every turn without even realizing that’s what they were. Love, to me, was giving – I gave my time and efforts to helping my ex-boyfriend prepare for a presentation when he was emotionally broken over not getting a good score on the MCATs, I made numerous trips in a single week to help him study for the verbal section of the MCATs the second time around, and I was at his doorstep at school whenever he had a bad day.

In writing this, I’m starting to understand that I’ve become my mother in this aspect. She rarely says I love you and doesn’t show love affectionately – she shows it by doing things for me. Whether it’s being there when I need to talk or buying something for me when I don’t feel like going out to the store for it, she loves by giving. And I love by giving.

I dislike my mom for a lot of reasons and am usually not happy with living under the same roof with her. But there are reasons I love her, and the love outweighs the dislike. We watch TV shows together, ranting and raving about them, she lets me talk about whatever I want without interrupting, and we shop together and sometimes she’ll pick up the tab on something. She puts up with my brother and I being back at home again and still cooks dinner most nights.

So, no matter how awkward it is for me to say it, I love my mother. I’d probably be completely lost without her.

Happy Mother’s Day!

just dance.

I have a little secret to share: when I wrote about missing dance in last week's post, I already knew I was going back to class. Yes, it’s true – last Wednesday night, I got together with a few other alumnae from my dance school and a friend of one of those girls and we had a full-fledged hip-hop/jazz class.

Although I forgot to bring the right shoes (I literally brought every other pair except for my sneakers) and was dressed more for lyrical than hip hop, I slipped easily into my old routine. The warm-up stretches came right back to me, along with the across-the-floor kicks, turns, and leaps. And in case you were wondering, I’ve totally still got it when it comes to my tour j’etes.

Class was exhilarating, fun, and a total body workout. I’m not the greatest at freestyle or making up my own choreography – instead, I love to pick up other people’s choreography. There’s a rush I get in executing something that someone else thought up in their head, working to make it the best that I can. I laughed and goofed around, but I also broke a sweat and had to catch my breath a few times.

Before I knew it, we were finished and packing up our stuff. I could’ve continued for three more hours thanks to my body still being trained from spending countless hours in the studio. If you ask me to go running, I can barely make it longer than thirty seconds, but throw me in a dance studio with seven dances to rehearse and I could be there all night.

The next morning I woke up and smiled as I felt the all-too-familiar soreness in my body. It was a welcome feeling – I may be crazy for liking a stiff neck or sore calves, but it was comforting in a way. I used to feel sore all the time when I was in class several days a week. My friends at school who also took dance and I would compare “battle wounds” with each other – what was sore and what was bruised, and why.

I’m so happy to be dancing again. Over the weekend I was down the shore with my dance crew for my BFF Ashley’s birthday and, as always, we eventually broke out the dance mix and started doing choreography on the deck. It was too much fun.

Class isn’t supposed to be for too long – just a few weeks – but I’ll take as much as I can get. I’m off again tonight for my second class, for my chance to get away from life and just dance.