August In Review

With school and craziness, I never actually did my August in review post! So only about 15 days late... lets go!

In August I...

• Did 3 books reviews!
  Cinder : A positive review of a book about cyborgs
  French Lessons : A very positive review of a book about life and Paris.
  Coexist : An average review of a book about elves, were-things, and a war.
• I did an Author Interview with Jody Gehrman, the author of Audrey's Guide to Witchcraft. She was lovely to work with and her answers in the interview were amazing!
• I featured August releases and accepted the Witches & Witchcraft Reading Challenge.
• I talked about my lovely sorority sisters in a post titled, For the Love of Sisters, showed of my pretty Maxi Dress, and gave advice about Dorm Style.

Off-line I...

• Started my sophomore year of university.
• Rushed some amazing girls, some of which joined my fabulous sorority!
• Welcomed some amazing new sisters into my life.
• Got back into studying French.
• Moved into the dorms again.
• Reconnected with amazing friends.

August was a pretty great month for me, despite the steep decline in posting and the sudden stop in my Youtube channel. I'm glad to be back at school and to have amazing friends and sisters. I'm also blessed to have this blog and a place to share my thoughts and opinions.

How was your month of August? 

A Catch-Up Post

Goodness it's been so long! School started and everything went crazy! I haven't been here in weeks and I haven't been on Twitter for about as long! It's crazy! Here on campus I don't have a computer in my room and I certainly don't have a private computer, so it makes anything I can't do from my phone rather difficult. Here we go now, I'm going to try to catch y'all up on this thing that is my life.

1. Classes are.... classes. There is a lot of reading in my classes this year. We just finished one novel in my English class, The American by Henry James, and we've started another, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. I probably won't review the first, I was unimpressed. I adore Henry James and I felt that novel was such a let down from the short stories I love.
   My french class is insanely difficult. We have a student who is fluent and from Togo, a French speaking country, and he gets as many things wrong as the American students do!
   History is not what I hoped it would be. I really need to read the course descriptions better! I hoped to study the great Kings and Queens of England (ie. Henry VIII, Elizabeth, William & Mary, etc.), but instead we're studying more about the uniting of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Empire! Such a let down!
   Script writing is amazing! It's a seminar style and I really love that. Each week about 4 people have 4-5 pages of a script they wrote read. Mine is being read today! I'm so excited! I've also got almost 20 pages of my script written. Perhaps I'll turn it into a short-ish film some day!
2. Joined the fencing team. This is actually a really new thing. I joined last Tuesday and had private training that day, then went to bouts on Thursday, and have private training again tomorrow! I really love fencing so I'm excite to learn more and compete for the first time in December!
3. Roommate is awesome! She's one of my sorority sisters and our room is amazing! We took away the whole dividing-the-room-between-rommies thing and made it one big room of sharedness. It's also covered in my photography and her art!
4. My sorority is great! We just got a new pledge class of really lovely, awesome girls! I'm extremely happy to see my sisterhood grow and I can't wait to get to know my new sisters more!
5. Grad school is in the works. I've picked out my top two Grad Schools (SOAS, University of London, or University of Hawaii, Manoa).
6. Doctor Who is.... GAH! I adore this show so much! I'm currently on the two part special that is the last with the Tenth Doctor and it's so sad! I don't want to see Ten go, but I'm interested to meet this Amy Pond that everyone is obsesed with!

I think that about sums up my life since we last spoke: Dorm, Class, Sorority, Fencing, Doctor Who. Yep, that's my life. I hope to be able to get back to posting regularly, but please excuse any college kid slacking I do.

How have you all been?

For the Love of Sisters

I featured this photo back a few weeks in my first Pinning Sweetly post and I've mentioned my sorority a time or two on here, but I've never gone into detail about the things I love about my greek life experience and adventure. Since yesterday was the start of work week, I thought I'd do just that and share some of the great things about my sisters.

CREDIT

1. Support - While I was debating moving schools, my sisters were nothing but supportive. They told me they'd hate to lose me as a chapter member, but were excited for me to make my dreams come true.
2. Friendship - Most of my friends at school are also my sisters. It's not because they're my sisters that they're my friend, but because they're my friends that I chose them as sisters. I love my girls and I know if I ever truly needed them they'd be there for me. I also made one of my very best friends through my recruitment/New Member education. 
3. Connections - Some of my new friends recently graduated and are now alums of my sorority. One, specifically, is moving to New York to be her amazing self and chase her dreams, but had trouble finding an apartment. At one point, she contacted a woman about an apartment and she happened to me an Alum as well. Needless to say, my friend now has an apartment and will be chasing her dreams with our New York City sisters!
4. Parties - I'm not the usual college kid party-er. I don't drink or act crazy, but I love my sorority's parties. We have 4 every year just us and our dates, then 3 or 4 more partnering with the fraternities on campus. Then again, it could be argued that every time we get together it's a party! We always have so much fun laughing and singing. We don't need to drink or go out, anytime we spend together is tons of fun.
5. Charity - My sorority's philanthropy is the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Every year we grant or help grant at least one child's wish. I love getting to meet the kids we're helping and seeing how happy they are. Last year, we grant a little boy's dream of a play house that he could really play in. After buying it, a bunch of us went out to help build it! We had some much fun playing with the little boy and his younger sister (while the men/boys built the house). I love knowing that not only am I helping myself and bettering my left, but that by being a part of my sorority I'm helping ill children get their dreams.
6. Family - I've mentioned my grand big before, even showed the picture below in my "Of Sisters, Food and Explosives" post. I love the close knit families we develop in my sorority. It's so great to know that, while I have a huge group of sisters, I also have a very close, loving, accepting family to turn to. My grand-big and I have bonded so much this summer and I can't wait to help our family grow in the coming months with my own Little sister!

Those are, obviously, just a few of the things I love so much about my sorority. I love the greek system in general and I love what it does for universities.

Are you a part of Greek Life? What are some of your favorite aspects of your experience?

Life? When did that happen?

When I concluded people, my friends and sister, may actually want to be around me! It's been really great recently! I've spent a lot of time with friends/sister. I've never been more thankful for my sisters and my sorority than I am right now, but I'll get back to that in a bit.

The other night I went to hang out with my grandbig for one of the first few times. It was so great to see her and just to chat about stuff. We also watched the above movie, Sydney White, which I may review sometime soon.

Then last night, I house sat for my grandmother and invited one of my high school friends over. We hadn't spoken since Freshman year, so about 4 years apart, but she is transferring into my current university, so we got reconnected. Here's the awesome part, though: At her old university, she joined a sorority, my sorority. Now that she's transferring she's meeting the sisters here and I'm so grateful! We may have never been reconnected if it weren't for our sorority. I'm so so grateful. We were good friends in high school, and having spent over 24 hours together, nothing has changed. We're still awesome friends and I love this girl so much!

How has the start of your weekend been?

A Friday of Fun: A Wrap Up Post

This week I've been fairly busying getting everything settled back in after my extended vacation, so I've been a bit absent around these parts. Despite the chaos and the fun, I managed to get you guys a couple of posts.

On Monday we had yet another book review. This week I reviewed Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with a sad 2 duck rating.

And on Wednesday I introduced a new feature called Pinning Sweetly. This feature is simply for me to show off a few of the lovely and/or useful things I find on Pinterest.

Also on the blog I've rearranged the sidebar a bit. I joined a group of bloggers who are all active in or are alumni of female Greek organizations called Being Greek and added the cute button to the right. I found it really interesting to see what some of my sorority sisters from around the country were blogging about and added my own blog to the list.

I also added my twitter feed to the sidebar. I'm usually very active on twitter and it's a great way to keep up with what my friends are doing. Follow me if you'd like to keep up with my day to day life!

Outside of the internet, I've had a pretty great week. On Wednesday night, my sister Marilyn, came over for a night of crafting for our future littles. It was so great to see her and to share supplies and ideas with a fellow crafter and sister!

Then last night, I had Marilyn and our friend Jacob over for a night of Dr. Who. We watched the first several episodes of the 2005 season. As unpopular as this statement may be, I do not yet find myself obsessed or even loving Dr. Who just yet. Perhaps with the next Doctor (the most popular Doctor), I'll develop a love like most of my friends to. No matter my opinions of the show, I had a great time laughing and slaughtering the English language with my sister and fellow English major. It was a great night!

Finally, today I finished the book Choker by Elizabeth Woods. I don't want to say too much, as I will be reviewing the book soon, but it was a wonderfully surprising book! I also typed up my review of The Espressologist by Kristina Springer. That review will be up 8am Monday.

I'm so happy with my week. I felt very productive and it was quite nice. Now I'm off to catch up on my YouTube subscriptions from the past two weeks and to play around online.

How was your week? Did you read anything interesting, make any interesting crafts, or do anything fun?

Pinning Sweetly #1

Today, I had planned to have a write up of my Colorado trip, but things are a bit crazy with the whole trip home and settling back into life here, so I thought I'd start something new. I've been thinking recently about beginning a series called "Pinning Sweetly." I don't plan for this to be weekly, but it will evolve as the weeks and months go on. This series is a number of things I have found on Pinterest that I think is appropriate to add to this blog and would like to share with everyone, even those who choose not to use Pinterest or choose not to follow my pins. I hope you enjoy this series and here we go!
Each photo is a link to the Pin on Pinterest.

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These have certainly been on my mind since the first rain I had last fall while at university. I've been lusting after them ever since, but I can't seem to settle on which pair I want most to begin a small collection of them. I'm really liking this pretty blue, and the idea of solid colours as well.

With Fall Rush coming up on us sorority girls very quickly, I've been looking at different styles of painting both Greek/Sorority letters as well a initials. My little sister will be very, very spoiled.

Here's another item I've been lusting after. I love these little messenger style bags. I'm really really liking the pastel and funky colour trend. I love adding a pop of colour to less than impressive outfits and one of these bags would fit the bill perfectly!

With the fall semester coming up, as well as keeping up with my Etsy shop, this blog, and my YouTube channel, I've been looking heavily into getting a day planner, but it's hard to find ones I really like and that would be functional for me. I ran across this pin and I love the idea of creating my own planner with the things I need, whether I use these print outs or create my own, I'm overjoyed to find this pin!

This pin, and so many others like it, have begun to fascinate me. Living in Louisiana, I've never needed a real winter wardrobe, but I've always loved the idea of it. Now with the potential move to Colorado, I've been pondering the possibilities of cute, but functional, clothes and shoes. I'm excited to start a collection of non-rain boots and long coats! 

Again, with Fall Rush and my soon-to-be little sister in mind, I've fallen in love with this photo pillow idea! My sorority, or at least my chapter, does the Big Sister reveal by giving our Littles photos of the family or of their Big Sister. I think this would be a neat, original idea for how to do the reveal! Goodness I have so much I want to do for my Little!

Lastly, I wanted to leave you guys with this little quote about sorority and Greek Life. There are so many misconceptions about sororities and the Greek system. So many believe Greek life is all parties and alcohol, but it is not. Greek life is about family, friends, connections, and support. It's the most amazing thing and I could not imagine having my university experience without my sisters. 

But enough waxing about sisterhood, I have a whole post in the works about that. That's all the pins I have for you today. Please leave feedback if you liked or disliked this post! I want to post you guys would like to read!

What are some of your favorite pins or boards on Pinterest? Did you like this style of post? Any general thoughts on Pinterest as a whole?

Of Sisters, Food, and Explosives

As promised Sunday, this is the continuation of the saga of my weekend. I'm leaving for Colorado tomorrow and cannot wait to see everyone and the fantastic state!

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After finishing all the baking I mentioned in An Adventure in Baking, I went to bed. The next morning, Saturday, I got up at 7:30am and began getting ready for the day. The morning was to be full of house and yard work, so I didn't snap a picture of my boring yard clothes. At 9:15 I left for the morning and hit the interstate towards the Sorority house. I got there and hung out with a few of my sisters until everyone else showed up and tasks were distributed. I actually enjoy cleaning the Sorority house, maybe it's the fact that everytime I'm there I'm surrounded by girls I love. After all our tasks, which ranged from stripping wallpaper to painting letters to dusting to weeding, we all took a break and headed out for an awesome lunch and some more bonding. 

After lunch, we all found our way back to the house and went over some awesome stuff for fall rush/recruitment, did a bit more cleaning, then broke for the afternoon.

Sorry for the horrible quality, I was in such a hurry, I had 15 minutes to shower, dress, and take this photo.

At 6pm, the real party started. It was so much fun being there with all the girls that I forgot to take pictures until things started exploding (more on that in a moment). It was a potluck, so there was plenty of wonderful food. While we ate, and after, we all sat around our main room and caught up on all the happenings of life. One thing that is never missing in our house is laughter, man did we laugh. A little later, we pulled out the board games, divided into teams, and played a rather competitive and hilarious game of Cranium. I loved seeing all my sisters' talents on display.

Finally, the sun started to set and we started lighting things on fire, or at least a couple of the girls did. Don't worry, it's not as scary as it sounds. On of my sister's parents own a fireworks stand and she brought a wide array of flamables left over form the 4th of July! Okay, it was a little scary to think of these girls with explosives, but all turned out well. We watched sparkly lights, didn't get arrested, and got some amazing pictures.

I was so happy to see all the girls, especially my grand-big! This is her after catching a "parachute" from one of the fireworks.

It was such a wonderful night and day with my sisters. It makes me hate consindering tranferring to another school, and another chapter, but they've been supportive of my dreams and I feel confident I've got friends for a lifetime!

An Adventure in Baking

This last Friday I had a lunch date with my grandfather. It was quite lovely. I really like spending time with him and I'm glad we got to do something before we leave Wednesday for Colorado! I wore a pretty, but casual, summer outfit for the whole day.

After lunch, I went to visit my grandmother and take her my leftovers, where I spent about 4 hours. My car wouldn't start! It was horrible! The key doesn't turn right now and it takes quite a bit of finagling to make it work, but at least it does work, and for that I am grateful!

After the trama with the car, I went to the grocery store and picked up a whole mess of supplies! I'd committed to baking cupcakes and cooking sausages for my Sorority's Summer Potluck (Which went AMAZING! I'll have a write up on that for you Tuesday!) The cupcakes I wanted to make were ones I saw on Pinterest. They looked like owls and were so adorable, I just had to try them (owls happen to be my sorority mascot and my favorite animal)! But while at the store, I decided to also get some muffin mix and make some blueberry muffins!

I feel like they turned out really well. I was surprised that each one was almost perfectly golden brown

After the muffins were out of the pans, I started on teh cupcakes. I made them with some yummy yellow cake mix, and resisted licking the spoon!

They baked wonderfully as well. I think out oven (we just moved to this house) is pretty darn amazing, or I am! When the cupcakes finally cooled, I got to town trying my best to get them to look like owls. I used half oreos and brown Reeses Pieces for the eyes, an orange Reeses Piece for the beak, and, of course, chocolate icing to make it all stick. I was so proud of the finished product!

I was really surprised how well the little owls held up over night and on the car ride to the sorority house. Everyone thought they were adorable! Finally done with the baking, I curled up in bed with The Espressologist and quickly passed out. It was a busy, slightly hectic day, but, believe it or not, the next day was much more busy! But I'll get to that on Tuesday. Now I'm going to run off to bed and sleep my life away!

My life: Majors/Books/Sorority/Social Media

As I'm sur you all know by now, I love books. And reading, and writing, and literature in general. Well, today it became official. I am no longer a French Major, but instead a French/English Double Major!! I'm so excited and happy! They also will have a path open for me to focus or specialize in creative writing! I'm so very very happy.

On that same subject, I finished The Alchemyst by Michael Scott. The written review is on my book blog Irrational Reader and my video review is on a new collab channel at BookishBelles. It was really good. <3

I'm also now in a sorority! I'm a Chi Omega, and I love it! I just met my big sister last week and spent a bunch of time with my pledge class over the weekend. I really think sororities are amazing things, especially mine!

I've also created a master list of my social media sites, so that'll linked in the navigation. You should totally get me out elsewhere!

I suppose that's all I got for you tonight. I hope all is well with you.

Do you do book blogging? vlogging? What are you studying? What do you think of the whole greek system on university campuses? Do you like cross over followers from various social networking sites?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of the topics!