Where I've Been:

You may have noticed a few things lately:

1. No outfit posts
2. OK, so basically no posts at all.

Those of you who read every post word for word (which isn't many, I know. Don't worry, I've been known to skim, too) will already know that I'm no longer working, so I don't have a reason to get all dressed up every day. My boss, who had been going through some very serious medical issues, is back to work now so I'm no longer needed 6 days a week. I thought my life would get calmer and more relaxed as a result of not working, but instead it's only gotten busier, leaving even less time to blog then I had before. I am especially missing blog reading! If you haven't gotten any comments from me in a while, I swear it's nothing personal.

Anyways, I thought I'd put a blog post together and let you guys know what I've been up to these past 2 weeks to prove that I actually do have a good excuse for not posting much as of late. Brace yourself, this might be kind of long.

In no particular order:

1. Meet Up with Lea

I was so thrilled to be able to meet Lea of Pretty Prudent last Tuesday. She was sweet enough to show me around Portland and take me to her favorite thrift shop, especially considering it was the day before her final critique for class and I'm sure there were many far more productive things she could have been doing than moseying around with me. We had a great time together and I really enjoyed it. So far I have met 2 people from the internet in real life and both of them have been delightfully not creepy. That's a pretty good record, if I must say so.


2. Perfecting the Art of Having a Brother

 A while back I mentioned that we got a last minute exchange student, and that is still going quite well. Granted, things were a teensy weird at first because I have absolutely zero experience living with a male besides my dad, but I got over it quickly and now me and Gabe are basically super siblings. We both like to play piano so we've been hammering out some duets, he's been learning how to play tennis is is basically as good as I am after only a few outings (dang natural talent, you know), we both like to play dumb games like Mario Kart and Age of Empires so we play those together, and generally speaking we have a very similar sense of humor.

I have to say goodbye to Gabe on Monday, and I'm not looking forward to that at all. I'm going to miss him like heck. Well, at least until the next exchange student anyways. (Just kidding, Gabe, because I know you're reading this. I'm superly going to miss you. Come visit me every summer!)

3. Going to the Beach

The prettiest beach I've ever had the pleasure of walking along would have to be Cannon Beach. I've been there plenty of times over the years, and we went there again on Wednesday to show it to Gabe. We had lunch at Bagels by the Sea, strolled down Cannon Beach down to Haystack Rock, walked back through town, got candy at Bruce's Candy Shop, and the swung by the Tillamook Cheese Factory on the way home to get ice cream.
Oh, and of course, taking goofy pics on the beach:

Gabe, Me, and my oldest Lindsey.

Gabe did the crazy tourist thing and ran into the water. For those of you not familiar with the Oregon coast, you should know that the water here is never, and I repeat never, a suitable temperature to swim in, and you shouldn't stay in there longer than 2 seconds or you risk certain death by hypothermia. Just saying.

On our drive we had to stop at one of the view points and risk our lives standing on the rocky ledge. Believe me, you wouldn't want to fall off this thing. It's a loooong way down and not much to stop you along the way.

 We also scoped out a random cave in which Gabe and I stood and acted like dummies for pictures.

I know it's difficult to read, but the following sand message says "Leanna + Phil = <3". Gabe wrote it for me. The interesting thing, though, is that I don't know anyone named Phil, and neither does he. Perhaps Gabe is going into the prophesy business? I'll let you know if I ever marry anyone named Phil and then Gabe can start making beach predictions as a career.

4. Taking and Editing Picture after Picture after Picture.
Amanda from Anthropomorphity asked me to do her senior pictures (we played tennis together 2 years ago so that's how I know her), and we had a grand time. I ended up with over 600 pictures and have been having the hardest time narrowing it down to under 100 to edit. Seriously, she is just so dang cute and photogenic...
Here's one of my favorite pics so far:

As if having Amanda's senior pics to edit wasn't enough for me to obsess over, Gabe also wanted a few pics to print off as wallets to give to friends at his graduation party. My favorites of his:

On top of that, Gabe's friend Katey tagged along to get a few pictures as well:

Ooh, and did I tell you they needed some pictures together as well (they had their graduation party together)? Because they did.

AND one of my other buddies Micky came as well because he wanted a picture for his new blog.

I'm all done with everyone except Amanda's. I still have about 50 more of hers that I want to edit.

5. Making a Cake

The aforementioned Micky is starting his blog to showcase the thing he makes/hopes to make, and for his first entry he wanted to make a cake with me and for me. What a pal. We had a good time, and even though it didn't look like the picture when we were done it still tastes super yummy. I'd show more pictures, but since I'm sure Micky will be putting them on his blog soon I don't want to steal his thunder or anything. :)


6. Hiking/Falling into Silver Creek Falls

 Silver Creek Falls in probably one of the prettiest spots in Oregon. You can just go and see the big fall and walk behind it, or you can also do the longer 5 mile walk and see several smaller falls along the way. We had lovely weather and it was a very quiet and uncrowded.

That's a cool picture above, right? Gabe and I had to carefully cross the little creek in front of the waterfall to get to that rock. All of the rocks were wet and very slippery, and on the way over we both got our feet soaking wet from them sliding into the water. After the picture was taken and it was time to head back across, I got tired of going to slowly and foolishly jumped onto a rock without testing out how slippery it was first. The result was this:

Yayyyy. I fell in the creek. Go me. I've got some lovely bumps and bruises on my elbow and knees, but other than that I'm mostly unscathed. It was an experience to say the least.


I could go on, but those are all the interesting pictures I have to accompany my little snippets of text. Hope you enjoyed the little glimpse into my life as of late. Do you guys even recognize me wearing jeans and a t-shirt? It's weird, I know.