1/2 way done with moving!

If you have been following me on Facebook, you know that we are in the process of moving. Moving is, in a word, sucky hard. The worst part of it is that moment when you are feeling good about the progress you have made, and then you go back to your old place and see all the other stuff you forgot, or need to still get. 

But, the great part of moving is that you begin to have a new space to dream in. If your like me, you get rejunvinated and inspired by the new quirks that your apt has. My space is a tad oddly shaped so we had some trouble learning how to place everything to make it look good!

We spent last weekend with out internet (Gasp!). It is supposed to be coming today, so that will be great! Here are some preliminary pictures of our new 1 br! 

Fiance, Kevin, is really excited to get painting! Can you tell??

We painted the bedroom Green and Blue, we need to get some pallets to tone down the blue and add my county rustic vibe that I am going for.

Here is our entryway.

 Gallery wall before and after!

6 Stages to Life on Pinterest

I, like so many others, am completely addicted to pinterest. As a hopeful refashioner and style enthusiast, my personal "My Style Pinboard" is full (828 pins and counting) of outfits that I would love to wear. My absolute favorite thing to do on pinterest is go to the everything section, and just pin away. But I think that there are a few trends on this site that I'd like to point out. So here are the INSERT NUMBER stages to life on pinterest.

Stage 1: Discovery

Pinterest is great. So many things to discover. You are going to learn so many things! Look at these common people who are just like me doing so many great things that will totally work!!!!

Look at what one pinner said! This is the BEST

You quickly forget all else but Pinterest. Kids? Life? Work? Whhaaaaaaaaat?? Justifying it quickly with how much you are learning! Shoot you will never have to spend money on silly stuff like clothes, food, lights or even decorating ever again!!! 

Summary of this stage? LIFE IS FANTASTIC!

2. Joy, Optimism and Inspiration

Life is great. Who knew that there were so many people doing so many things. You will never ever throw a sub par house party. Your family will eat nothing but the most adorable and nutritious home cooked meals. You will have the cutest house, and you will have the best drinks to sip in a hot day. Oh your cold? Throw on that camel fur coat you made.

Guess who is getting a new jacket!

You realize you are standing on the edge of a great sea of unlimited knowledge of wonderfulness!!

Joy. So much wonderful Joy.

3. Being Completely Overwhelmed

Life on Pinterest is great. You see something you have to pin. How could you never have seen this before???? A lace wedding dress with an open back, no sleeves, jewels! They have a tiara with it!!! Why did you not think of that before???? now hmmm, where should you pin it? Does it belong on your "wedding dresses I would like to wear" board? Should we put it under "Lacy Dresses" maybe "vintage dresses"? As you scroll through your 185 pin boards you realize something. You have a problem. Where will you pin this, and how will you find it again? 

You begin to realize that this soul sucking wonderful site is making you overwhelmed and confused. You need to get off...but then how will you keep up?

4. Stress

This is self explanitory. You begin to realize that your birthday party is not quite as fabulous as Martha Stewarts is....you might have to actually try out a few of these pins!

5. Trying it Out for Yourself

I mean honestly how hard can it be? The steps are in pictures and they are right there! It will totally work. I will be the life of the party!

http://www.pinterestfail.com/  Read it and see that you are not alone.

6. Soul Crushing Sadness

Life will never be that magical wonderful place of Pinspiration that you hoped it would. And all your extremely crafty friends who nail pinterest projects on the first try are just stupid.  

All you can hope to do at this point.

Financial Freedom

When I graduated school May of 2011, I had $57,676 in student loan debt. I was lucky that I found a job in Southern California that paid me about $30,000 a year. I lived on an extremely tight budget. Even if I hadn't have been saving to pay off debt, I wouldn't have had much extra. I tightened my budget and was able to pay roughly $100 extra on my loans. 

Today, 1 year and 4 months later, I have paid of 9,520 of that student loan debt. This doesn't include not working and paying off about $2,000 in credit card debt. (I would pay a lot down and then would need it for something like a plane ticket home, or an oil change).

It is still crazy to think that here I am over a year later, and I have only paid off that much. My income did come up, I make a bit under $40,000 now. Cost of living is a little higher. But it feels great to have the ball rolling and to see some income. Its only going to go faster now. My projected pay off date is Fall 2015. But, I think I can do it sooner. I paid off my $3500 loan today. Tomorrow I start work on my next smallest, $6754.54.

When I do pay off my loan. I will be having a huge party that everyone is invited to. I don't care if we never have met, I want to celebrate the fact that I have become debt free and can begin to acquire wealth!

Thanks for everyone's encouraging words through out this time!

I hope that you all can be inspired or motivated to try this out for yourself and choose one small debt and decide to pay it off and get it out of your life. 

Let me know how it goes for you!

Mini DIY Project

So I have been having major depression about my apartment. It is totally safe and secure which is fantastic, but it is just dreary. So I am on a mission to do some totally cheap renovations to satisfy my craftiness and my need for a semi nice house!

So I had two tables that we had bought that were just plain and a little drab. One was purchased at Ikea and one at Target. I think that they were about $10 each. Here is what it looked like before. Plus a cat.

Then I bought these Gold Corners for them on Amazon...here is a link to them. They cost me just over $9 including shipping, but they come with 8 corners and all the screws for it! Our house is decorated in black gray and yellow, so I thought that the gold would be a great addition to it!

Then I added the gold corners. I found that the Corners didn't fit perfectly on my table, so they dont lay exactly flat on the sides of the tables. But I made sure that they laid as flat as possible on the top. 

Here is what they looked like done! The whole project took about 20 mins, and cost me at the time less than $10! Just need to add some flowers on my side of the bed and I will be all set!

I would also like to add a huge shout out to Kevin, because there was a moment when I was about to chuck our screw driver at the wall from frustration with the tiny screws and he came and helped me whip it out!

Weekend Up Date

So, I know I know it happened again, a long period of time with out blogging, I know. You have my roommates to thank for their 'willful encouragement' in reminding me to blog. I am glad I am here. I am just very tired from my weekend. Let me start from Friday.

On Friday I went out with some girls from work in Camarillo. It was really fun, but I got there early. So as I was waiting, in my car, I was approached by a man, who said he was running for congressman. Which was silly because Kevin works in DC and he is looking for a job in the House. So I ask what his affiliation is, and he tells me one way, turns out, he is not at all relevant nor is he the affiliation he said to me. Which was weird. He was walking around passing out business cards trying to get votes. Weird. So then on to dinner and drinks with some work friends. We had a great time, went bowling and sang karaoke. Which is my favorite thing in the world! I love singing (read rapping) and love making people laugh. So it was a blast! That was pretty much my whole Friday.

Saturday was really weird, like really weird. I got a super random prank call. Or at least I hope it was. It really freaked me out. But after securing that all my loved ones were indeed safe, I headed into the valley to babysit for my cousin over night. On my way there, I was waved over by a man in a red pick up truck. He was telling me to pull over, it was the middle of the day on a busy off ramp and was on the phone with Kevin, so I stopped and cracked my window and he told me that he was a mechanic and that something sounded really weird on my car and that if I needed a mechanic I should call his shop. AKA a warning as to what was to come. I got to my cousins house finally and headed in. I was staying the night there, and my Iphone doesnt get service at her house. So I got plugged into her internet and started talking via I message. I had had Text plus however on my phone from before the days of Imessage and so it went off and I was accused of stealing a girls phone and using it to talk to her brother. (like I said, weird freaking day). But babysitting was great. Learned that I love children so much, but am no where near ready to take on the responsibility, dedication and time every single day that is needed to have children. I was worn out from just that one day!

So Sunday, I finished babysitting and came over to Lesley's Grandparents house for one of their bi-monthly Sunday dinners. Les' Grandpa is Italian, like moved over here from Italy Italian, so he makes delicious food and everyone drinks wine and has a great time. It was very fun. We watched the Kings game, and the Caps game (GO CAPS)!

On Monday, I had my spouse club event, there was a little bit of last minute scrambling. but we got it all worked out and the event went great, and we had a good time as did the residents. But on my way home, I was driving it was close to 9 at night, and stopped in for my second favorite food ever, Jack in the Box Tacos, and I heard something pop off in my car. The battery light was on, my power steering wasn't working, and I knew that this was not good. I quickly pulled out of the drive through and parked. Then called my roommates to come pick me up. I learned that I am usually an unlucky person. If something bad can happen it probably will. BUT I also have come to realize that I am a fairly Lucky unlucky person. For example. My car breaks down, But I drive on the 1 everyday, during the day when my roommates are working, and when I have an event earlier in the day. But the car breaks down AFTER the event, on my way home, past all the dark fields, and less than a mile away from my house where I am not even driving. Rob and Les come and get me, I call my dad, and luckily it is an inexpensive and fairly easy fix! We bought the parts and Rob was able to fix them today.

Today, was great. I worked 2 hours from home, wrote a rap, enjoyed a nice long hike, watched/helped Rob  fix my car (which is working great now) and then went and got some great food. I really love having roommates that really will look out for me and will be there when I need them. I appreciate everything that the do and would not be able to do survive with out them. It makes me feel a little less alone knowing that they are here and will bend over backwards for me at anytime. Love you guys!

The Lazy ship has set sail

Here is the thing, I have been so busy and it has been so hot that when I do have a moment that I am not working or babysitting, I just want to sleep. So I have slacked off seriously in my digital life. However my life is sorta changing a lot. My boyfriend of almost two years has an opportunity in DC so in a week we will start the long distance train all over again. He is going to do amazing over there and it really is the best thing for him. But it's gonna be a long four months.

I have three automatic ways to deal with stress.
1. Eating I have no money for new clothes or the plethora of food needed so that's gotta be out. Which leads me to...
2. drinking....well as my friends from Ireland will tell you sad mallory+alcohol =crying Mallory= worse situation then before. Plus no money.
3. Shopping. This is my personal fave, but as noted in #1&2 no money :(

Sooooooo what does this lead to? DIY projects!!!!! My house (and by house I mean apartment (and by apartment I mean room)) will be the cutest ever. I have so many ideas already, so this week I will be doing nothing more than some slight pouting and trying to spend as much time as possible with my boy, then it will be the start of many crafts for me. So if you are looking for some good home improvement ideas stick around and I'll give you some good ideas......hopefully.

Ode to Google.

I have recently re-established my love for stand up comedy, and have started playing it on my Pandora Channel. (Thank God for Pandora right?) It is great. I get to listen to funny segments from the greatest comedians, Jerry Seinfeld, to the not so great, Frank...that guy who had a comedy central tv show for about a minute. I love it. If i was funnier i would be a standup comedian. It would literally be the best job ever, but because thats who my life works, i was born a girl and well, 99% of female comedians arent funny. 

But something that one person said really struck me. He said we are in the age of google. If you arent getting perfect grades in school you are either retarded or you are lazy. You can type in something from your bed and get hundreds of thousands of pages on it. You can lay in bed and type a few words in and have enough information to write a complete encyclopedia on it. 

Not too long ago you had to go to a library, go through all the cards in the dewey decimal system and then search the library to find one of the seven or eight books you were looking for. talk about terrible! I would have probably failed school because when i research something. I will spend at most an hour locating and gleaning information from these places. Thats it. One (1) hour. If i have to spend more than that, i am many things: angry, disgruntled and i stop caring. I will then proceed to stop caring for the rest of the semester. 

Thank God for google.

The worst part of this whole thing is that we are still stupid!!! We have the world of information at our finger tips, literally less than a minute away and still we cannot seem to educate people enough for real conversations. I am so disappointed in society. 

Well time for me to sign off. Dont want to miss "Only in America" with Larry the Cable Guy.....

;)

Its the end of the world as we know it

This world is changing fast, all of the old methods and theories in many different fields are now an explainer of the past. As a communication major, the information I am learning is almost old and not relevant by the time they can get their work published. We had a speaker come into my advertising campaigns class and she was an online business owner, and it all started by blogging. (No I have no plans to turn this blog into a business, I just enjoy writing) She, two years later got a paid trip to Dubai to blog about a Ford Motor Company car show. How cool is that?! She has not spent a single dollar on advertisements in her full two years of service. All her advertising has been on social medias.

Social media advertising is the future of all marketing. The world is pulling away from the traditional methods of communicating. We are slowly pulling out of printed materials, books are electronically available, newspapers are dying out (which is a terrible monstrosity in itself, but a totally separate issue), and the old way of looking at communication is just that: old.

Universities are loving this. Especially the writers of communication textbooks. My intro to mass communication book was easily $100, it was updated in 2009 (i took the class spring 2010) and it was already outdated. Then because colleges love to take all our money; we werent allowed to sell it back because, surprise surprise, the information was old and outdated. (this is again a totally different topic which i will not digress on at this moment)

All of this to say. the future of the world is electronic. hate it, love it, doesnt matter, you need to just learn how to use it and then jump in it. 

The Sidewalk Chalk Guy

Some people have ridiculous talents that make the rest of the world feel like a bumbling idiot. The sidewalk chalk guy is like that. He takes a pastime for three year olds and turned it into art. I found this guy on stumbleupon.com. Which, if you have never been is an amazing site. It's free, you just sign up, enter your likes and then start stumbling. It takes you to wonderful sites randomly.

Anyways, back to the sidewalk guy. Here are some of my favorites:

As I am sure that you can clearly see. This guy is crazy. I can't even imagine the hard work that he puts into this. I was really impressed with him. How cool would it be to have a skill that you were that good at ya know? So crazy! It would just be awesome to be able to feel confident in one area of your life, like if the entire world turned its back on him, and he was all alone he would still have his art. I know that life would be sad like that, but its the same thing for like pro-sports players, actors, writers, musicians, they all have this amazing recognizable skill that everyone can admire. It would just be really cool. 

If you want to see all his work go to: http://gprime.net/images/sidewalkchalkguy/ he has a ton of different art work on there. 

When I was a Sophomore in college I also attempted to try this art form here is what i ended up with.....

Clearly I still need practice. 

Angry Birds, Words with Friends, and PocketGod

Having an Iphone is both the absolute best thing and the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to me. My addiction to a phone started in high school when I was given my first Lg and a unlimited texting plan. I texted everyone all the time, i even got my mom in on the texting plan, of course she was in my phone as Karen so that my friends and crushes wouldnt know that i was best friends with my mom.

As I grew older my phones grew nicer and after high school, my mom graduated from "Karen" to "Momma Cell" and two Christmases ago I got my Iphone. It was love at first sight and my obsession grew. My first great find was Pocket God. Controlling little cave men and finding new ways to kill them or unlock achievements. It was and still is beautiful.

Next came Angry Birds. If you have an Iphone, and 99 cents to spare; buy it. It is the best game ever. Not only is it hard and frustrating, but they rate your score with stars. So, if you are like me, you spend 15 minutes trying to beat a level, and when you finally do, you see that it gave you 1/3 stars. The first time that this happened to me i was flabbergasted. I had 15000 points and a smile on my face for beating level 1 why were they taking that away from me?! This fueled a burning desire with me to show that stupid App that i could beat all the levels and get all of those glorious 3 stars. To make a short story long, this game is a fantastic thorn in my side that pushes me to beat it.


My new favorite game: Words with friends. It is free, a scrabble type game that you play with other Iphone users, and it is so fun. but I hate losing. I get so stoked for good words. I play all day now. Work at my job is hard because I have to put my phone in a locker and cant play it for the three or four hours. if you are not very good at scrabble, my name is Miss_Mallory. hit me up and we will play. If you are pretty good at scrabble.....I don't have a user name. just kidding, I would love to play anyone and everyone! Please feed into my terrible addictions =)

Or if you know of any other games that i should try out please let me know.

The Beginning

I am a small town girl from Snohomish, Washington; who left everything she knew to try to make it big in Southern California. I moved down to the Ventura area dreaming of my new life. It was going to be a glamorous one; filled with shopping, mingling with Katy Perry and laying out at the beach. I was going to live the life that I had always wanted and it was going to be magical.

As soon as I arrived the reality of what life would be like hit me. Sure it was wonderful, the temperature above 65 90% of the time, the palm trees, great shopping and of course the beach full of tanned life guards a mere 30 minutes away. My first summer here was beautiful, I nannied for my Aunt and Uncle, I made $150 a week for laying by the pool, taking my nine year old cousin to the park, and doing crafts with her. It was wonderful, I was tan, I was rich, and I was living the dream. The only thing I didn't have was friends. Knowing I wasn't ready to give up a life of luxury just yet, I enrolled in a local school to finish my degree and make the kind of life I have always dreamed of for myself. 

As I started making friends, it became absurdly apparent that I was on the low end of the socio-economic scale. My parents made just enough for us to fall above the work study line, but not enough to actually pay for my school. I had to work 15 hours a week for minimum wage. Now I know that this doesn't sound unnatural, and at first I didn't mind, but it seemed to me like everyone I was meeting never had to work, they could spend all they wanted and they were going to graduate completely debt free. Talk about getting you down. I was working my butt off and was going to graduate $40,000 in debt. 

A year and a half later I am finishing up my senior year of college and ready to graduate and continue pursuing my goals. I have a wonderful boyfriend who I want to marry, I have great experience with which I hope to get a job, I want my own apartment for a while, and I want to help people out. I am definitely still a working girl, I balance 3 jobs working about 30 hours a week, a full 19 credit school load, along with a boyfriend, and a personal life. I am still learning a lot about myself, and about life and I am definitely not perfect. But I would like to start helping women, and men, learn to push themselves out of an unhappy life and learn to live the life they want. Whether that is status, wealth, happiness, relationships, anything at all. I want to offer my advice and my help because I know what it is like to be working hard for goals that you wish to achieve.