Thrift Store Haul

I've always loved thrift stores. 

I love any place where the possibility of finding the perfect item is equally matched with the possibility of finding pure junk. It just makes any good find that much more exciting-- and the work needed to sift through the junk typically means that the good finds have equally good prices. 

This past weekend I had unusually good luck as I browsed a couple of my favorite antique/thrift stores. For those of you who aren't sold on the idea of sorting through old stuff to find the perfect item, then maybe the cool things I stumbled upon will sell you on the idea! 

But first, a cat.

Here's Otto in typical cat fashion sitting right where I don't want him to be. He's cute but I didn't buy him in a thrift store so let's move on to (perhaps) my most exciting purchase.

I didn't set out to buy a purse-- but that's how thrifting works. Sometimes you walk in with a set goal (like when I was furnishing my apartment) and sometimes you walk in with no goal in mind.

I found this Coach purse in the back of the thrift store, hanging unassumingly next to some other black bags. It was only when I picked it up that I fell in love. You see, it's a 100% leather Coach bag, handmade in the US. It's old but looks and feels brand new (that's leather for you!). The best part?

The purse was only 24 dollars. 24! For a leather messenger bag! From a good brand!

And now for something completely different-- a postcard, complete with written message, postmarked in 1909. In the message, the writer asks her friend how she was spending the winter. "Are you still teaching? Or have you captured one of the good looking widowers and are keeping house? I just have the 'bestest' one ever and a splendid home." The candidacy made me laugh and I had to buy it for one dollar. If I can dig up some info on either the writer or the receiver I'll write a blog post devoted to that!

To call my haul eclectic perhaps doesn't cover the full extent of it. Next up, I bought two small test tubes-- some manufacturer had gone out of business or something and there was a whole box of them for sale. My mom had the cool idea to use them as single stem vases-- I haven't worked out how I'm going to prop them up yet, but they were super cute and a steal for one dollar a piece.

I have a well documented (if you've ever been to my apartment) love with stained glass. Soon I'll reach maximum capacity-- you can only fill a small space with so much stained glass before it becomes too much. I have a couple small pieces like this one hanging on my kitchen wall-- and when I saw this being sold for five dollars, I had to pick it up and add it to the mix.

 And now for perhaps the most interesting find. I was wandering down the ailse in the massive thrift store when a pile of black and white photos caught my eye. They weren't priced, just dumped into a wicker basket (which was being sold for 12 dollars). I picked one up and flipped it over. I was surprised to see the back of the photo covered in beautiful cursive, a scrawling message from a sailor stationed in Japan to his wife. I began to sort through the photos and a lovely story began to emerge-- one that I am going to write a whole blog post dedicated to because holy cow how often do you find something so personal in the thrift store? Old photos are everywhere, but I've never found ones with messages written on the back. Keep an eye out for the whole story ;)

And that's it! A purse, test tubes, stained glass, postcard, and a smathering of photos of 1950s Japan! Part of the magic of thrift stores is that next time I wander through the ailse there could be entirely new treasures waiting to be found.

I hope I convinced you (if you need convincing!) of the benefits of sorting through sometimes overpriced junk in order to find something really cool.

Thanks for reading!

Thanksgiving

Every year, when the trees start to reluctantly lose their summer coats, one of them in particular is a show stopper. It deigns to go out in style, producing a stellar burst of robust orange which lights up in the entire yard.

As you can see above, this tree is the sugar maple and since this spectacular show typically takes place in late October, I expected to come home for Thanksgiving break and be greeted more a mostly winter-ready backyard.

But, thanks to an unusually warm fall the colors started to shift only days before I journeyed home, leaving me with a beautiful fall tableau to photograph!

My photography has been a victim of graduate school-- I still take family photos at gatherings but besides that, my beloved DSLR has been quietly gathering dust in the corner of my bedroom.  

Even before graduate school I started to lean away from nature photography and into portraits. Which is an unusual move for several reasons, one of them being the lack of subjects. A couple years ago I was able to do an surprise engagement shoot for one of my high school friends and I loved it. Previously I had only shot nature but it was really cool to be able to do something so different.

To be fair, I was really spoiled for my first couple! She had not only brought coordinating change of outfits for them both, she came equipped with props and ideas for what type of pictures she wanted (and she didn't even know he was going to propose! It was a fun night).

Regardless, I really enjoyed wandering around my backyard upon arriving at home after a long car ride with my cat. Luckily Otto doesn't mind road trips too terribly-- as long as it's quiet and I'm not singing.

I can't believe the semester is almost over-- though I'm at an odd part of my graduate career where the lines of semesters ending/beginning start to blur and lose their meaning. Research, after all, is not confined to any time schedule except its own, and there's always more work to do. I'm only taking one course this semester-- and teaching two labs and three discussion sections-- and next semester I may take none, focusing on research until a class I want to take is offered.

But for now I'm on break (sort of, I have labs that need to be graded and a coding project that won't fix itself-- or will it? Wouldn't that be a wonderful world to live in) leaving me time to metaphorically dust off my trusty Photoshop and catch up on my NaNoWriMo word count. A couple weeks before November started I decided that what I really needed to do was a writing competition that I fell in love with during high school. It's called National Novel Writing Month and the goal is to write 50,000 words during the month of November...which is an awfully lot of words by the way.

Which reminds me-- my novel is woefully behind on word count (and woefully behind on quality writing but then again, that's not the point of NaNoWriMo). I'll leave you with these photos of my backyard (doesn't it look like a nature preserve or something? Considering we live in the middle of a city we definitely won the yard lottery).

I hope that you will have a great Thanksgiving-- I for one am looking forward to my third Thanksgiving meal this season. Last year I racked that number up to four or five-- I don't think I'll be able to break that record!

As always, thanks for reading. :)

Leaving/Arriving Home

Yesterday I packed up and left my little room in the French house which I had grown to love despite the fact that I was a stone throws away from a very active railroad line and a crossroads where people loved to rev their engines at three am in the morning.

I've discovered a disturbing trend to dislike where ever I'm living-- I disliked Couch, my dorm sophomore year ((and believe me, I had great reason to dislike Couch: gagging smells permeated every hallway, mold was ever prevalent, I lived with two lovely girls in a room barely big enough for one person, and I had a third roommate with an infestation of ants)). I disliked my 'room' ((which I not so affectionately nicknamed my cell)) in the dorm in France. Once again I believe I had great reasons to dislike it-- the room was just big enough to take five steps, a board would have literally been more comfortable than my bed, and at one point I found myself wearing every coat and sweater I could fit in, boiling water in a cup just to hold in my hands because the French people didn't believe in central heating even when it was literally freezing outside.

Even though I believe I'm justified in my dislike, I consider myself a laid back person and I didn't like this troubling trend of complaining about everywhere I live. So I was quite happy to love living in the French house this semester. Sure there was the odd terrifying flying bug that made it into my room but there were also crazy comfortable couches in the living room, endless hot water in the private bathroom ((a rarity in college)), a...workable kitchen, and a budget to cook weekly meals.

As a college student I live a semi-nomadic life. Every couple of months I've been packing up and moving-- sometimes to a different country, sometimes to a different town. Now, I'm back 'home'-- rapidly becoming a relative word. I drove home yesterday for summer in 55 degree weather with driving rain. Someone needs to tell the weather it is supposed to be summer. This is Arkansas-- normally this time of year I would be dreaming of a cool breeze, or anything that wasn't suffocating humidity.

I really do love my backyard. I can sit on my couch, look out the window, and only see trees; no neighbors, just branches overlaying branches.

My backyard also is great fodder for mother's day cards ((I took this picture a year ago!)).

While I am pumped that finals are finally over, I was sad to leave Hendrix and all my friends for the summer. There are perks, of course, with summer-- I can't wait to start sewing and crafting. I have plenty ideas in mind so be sure to check back to see if I fail miserably or if I create beautiful works of art (ha!).

Thanks for reading! :)

On Easter and Bubbles

The title would make more sense if I had written this post when I wanted to write it-- during Easter weekend.

However, my Methodist school doesn't even give us Good Friday off; various things kept me late in Conway, so my Easter weekend didn't contain copious amounts of free time.

Regardless!

Photographing nature has made me more observant. It's interesting, to me at least, to compare when things bloom and how that changes year to year. For example, this year, our spring is ridiculously late-- when I woke up this morning it was in the 40s. Following that, everything has been blooming later. Luckily there were some things in bloom when I was home.

I didn't take any photos that I really loved-- and not only is that due to lack of time, but also I'm out of practice. I haven't taken many photos recently, basically none, due to being crazy busy. Hopefully this summer I can remedy that.

Easter morning I had breakfast at my church and then a beautiful service followed by a huge potluck. Then, I drove and stayed with some relatives for Easter dinner-- even for me, that's a lot of good food for one day.

I had a fun time photographing my little cousins playing with their new bubble contraptions.

In other new, finals are rapidly approaching! I have one day left of classes-- Monday-- and then my first two finals are on Thursday. Electrodynamics is going to be rough, but Classical Mythology shouldn't be too bad. Then I have my French final the next Tuesday and volia! the semester is over!

Which is crazy; I feel like I just got back to Hendrix, not like my junior year of college is basically over. Because that means I'll be a senior. Which is just not okay because being a senior is one step closer to graduating, leaving Hendrix and all my friends-- which I'm not ready to do yet.

Thanks for reading!

Beautiful Barcelona

As my semester in France neared its end, a brief window of free time appeared. Right after my program ended, and right before I met up with my parents, I discovered I had a couple free days. And since my friends were planning on meeting up in the wonderful city of Barcelona I decided, on a whim, to join them. Of course, this whim was granted thanks to some great deals-- not only was my favorite hostel chain having a huge winter sale, the plane ticket was also very cheap.

So, with the stars aligned, my friend and I hopped on a plane and flew to Spain! Getting there was easy, not only was the plane ride a short one, but there were no customs to go through.

We took a bus from the airport and jumped off on the first stop to see this 'magic fountain' my friend had heard about.

These heavy-grained, high ISO pictures do little to capture the feel of the square at night. More than that, they're lacking the feel-- the 'I just landed in a foreign city I never even dreamed of visiting and look how cool it is'.

After a good deal of searching and walking, we finally found our hostel, threw our stuff down, and headed out to find dinner. After more searching and walking we ended up circling back to the first restaurant we saw, a Japanese restaurant. I know what you're thinking-- you're in Spain and eating Japanese food?? In my defense, I had just spent 3 1/2 months in a town that, while nice, lacked the Asian food options I was used to. The restaurant in Spain served delicious fried sea food rice for a good price.

The next morning we went on a free walking tour of Barcelona-- a guide met us at our hostel and then took us to the meeting point. The tour was 2ish hours long and amazing. Not only was our tour guide passionate about his job, but the city itself was covered in layers of history, stories that I would have never known about had we not taken the tour.

The tour was free, and at the end you tipped the guide whatever you felt like-- it was definitely worth it, and a cool way to see the city, given that I didn't have much time there.

The next day we headed out to see one of Barcelona's biggest attractions-- Sagrada Familia, a massive, impressively strange cathedral. Designed by Gaudi, our guide told us that it was originally designed to be a lot taller but looking at its ginormous shape that seems neigh impossible.

This picture doesn't even come close to depicting this bizarre cathedral. Gaudi thought straight lines were too man made and wanted his cathedral to have a more organic feel to it. You could stare at the front for an hour and still pick out new details, hidden in the many facets. The cathedral was undergoing heavy construction so we couldn't see all of the outside. The line to get in looked hours long so sadly we just walked around the cathedral.

After the cathedral we hopped on the metro and went to an overlook park area.

After getting off the metro we still had a huge climb ahead of us. Luckily, the lovely city of Barcelona had installed escalators for part of the trek up the hill.

The climb was well worth it-- the overlook gave impressive panoramic views on the city.

This is the Sagrada Familia-- from this distance you can see just how huge the cathedral is, and how much construction work is going on.

There was a cool mosaic area that you had to pay to go in, so we just hung out on the outside and snapped some pictures.

After 3 1/2 months of seeing nothing but pigeons, it was cool to spot these little critters in the trees.

We spent the rest of the day just walking around, enjoying the city.

This was a delicious coffee drink my friend has us all try. It's condensed milk at the bottom, with a shot of espresso on top. Mix them together and you have a tasty drink.

After two days, my quick trip was over, and I jumped on a plane to meet my parents in the south of France.

Thanks for reading!

Le Fête des Lumières

A couple of weeks ago, I headed to Lyon with a group from my school to see the Le Fête des Lumières-- the festival of lights.

Of course, anytime anyone said 'festival of lights' I'd break out in Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song. Hanukkah iss.....a festival of lights....

 Anyway! The festival of lights in Lyon has nothing to do with the Jewish holiday. Rather, it's a really cool weekend where they set up fabulous light shows that play on buildings strewed throughout Lyon, France's third largest city. 

We started off in the main square in downtown Lyon-- they projected a cute animated movie on the Ferris wheel, complete with lights and fireworks.

I was told that Lyon saw 4 million extra tourists just during the festival of lights weekend and I believe that. There was an unbelievable amount of people at the festival. Everyone was wearing black and it was incredibly hard to keep up with people-- at some points we had to hold hands like kids in order to not lose each other in the crowd.

The streets of Lyon aren't terribly big to begin with, but the flux of people stretched from building to building in some parts-- pushing you shoulder to shoulder with the next person.

Not all of the shows were as grand as the first one. Some were more modest, just lights, no images for example.

It was rather cold so we all grabbed a cup of my new favorite drink-- vin chaud. Literally, hot wine, though it translates to mulled wine. I never knew what mulled wine was, but I love vin chaud. It's delicious, sweet, and it warms you up quickly on cold nights.

As the night wore on we started to nervously glance at our watches. Our school was taking us back in a bus-- if we missed the bus, it'd be too late to catch the last train home. The massive crowds made getting anywhere take five times longer than normal.

We had heard that the city hall put on the best light show so we tried to head in that direction to see if we could see it quickly enough to get back to our meeting spot on time. We literally got stuck in a street, surrounded on all sides by a huge crowd of people. The mass of bodies had the added benefit of warding off the cold so it wasn't as cold as it had been the whole night.

We couldn't move forward, we couldn't move backwards, and we weren't sure where we were even going. Every couple of minutes the crowd would inch forward a foot or so and then abruptly stop. Time was marching forward without us and we worried that we wouldn't be able to get out of the crowd with enough time to get to our meeting point.

One of the chicks who lived in the apartments lining the street we were stuck on looked out at the huge crowd of people stuck in the street and decided to spice it up. Opening her window she started blaring some upbeat French song that everyone knew the words to. We all started cheering; it made the wait more tolerable as the crowd turned into a small dance party-- even if there wasn't enough free space to do anything but kind of sway back and forth.

Eventually we reached the end of the street and saw that we were right at city hall in time for the light show. It was, by far, the best light show in the entire city. It spanned two grand buildings and was intricately beautiful.

After the light show ended, we linked hands, put my fastest friend in the front, and set about running our way through the dense crowd to get the our meeting point in time to catch the bus. My friend was amazing at finding the little spaces between people and had us through the seemingly impenetrable crowd in no time at all. Not only did we catch the bus, we also had time to grab some churros.

Stay tuned for more posts coming soon! We've been longing around the house so I've had time to sort and edit my photos and write those blog posts I'd been putting off for weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Gorgeous Annecy

Another post? So soon?

How is this possible? I've been, for no particular reason, putting off writing about all my adventures here, which leaves me with ton a pictures and stories I want to tell before I forget.

A couple weekends ago there was a holiday in France so we had a three-day weekend. On Monday Michelle and I got on a train headed to Annecy, a town an hour or two away from St. Etienne, nestled in the mountains near the Swiss border.

The ride to Annecy was in and of itself jaw-dropping. We curved around looming mountains, passing by small villages.

When we finally arrived in Annecy, it was bracingly cold as we followed the signs to get to the main attraction-- a huge lake surrounding by mountains.

You can't really see the lake in this picture.....but it's there!

It would've been cool to be here in the summer-- the water was crystal clear and a beautiful blue. However, the cooler weather meant a less crowds in this gorgeous area. We wandered around town-- le vieux ville  was gorgeous and almost reminiscent of Venice, with all the stone buildings crowded around a little canal.

Annecy was apparently a huge spot for boating-- there were hundreds of sail boats bobbing in the water. Michelle and I were surprised to see just how many people were eating lunch in their boats which were anchored near the shore.

Bride of Love :)

We only spent a day here but that was enough time to wander around the city and take the sites in. Two trains and two hours later we arrived back in home, sweet home of St. Etienne.

Stay tuned to hear about Le Fête des Lumières in Lyon!

Thanks for reading :)

The Home of Dr Who and Sherlock

Alternative Title: Fangirling in London

Last weekend my friend Michelle and I skipped school (for the first time, my professor asked if I was sick the next Monday seeing how I'm always the first one to class everyday) and jetted off to London to see a friend. It was Thanksgiving when we left-- we tortured ourselves by checking out everything that our family and friends were gorging on back home while we were stuck in a provisional terminal in the airport that lacked even a vending machine. Our dinner was some cookies I had squirreled away.

Lack of traditional food aside, it was a fairly short flight to London.Our tickets had been relatively cheap, but that was because we flew into the Gatwick airport which is about 30 miles outside of London. Getting into London wasn't difficult, they have a train that will take you right into the middle of the city, but it's a bit expensive.

None of the prices in London look that bad-- but that is due to the exchange rate, about $1.50 = 1 pound. Regardless, we made it into London late Thursday night and tried to met up with our friend in a busy train station without a phone or wifi.

Non-surprisingly, that didn't work out so we hopped on the metro and went to our hostel. We stayed in Generator Hostel, the same hostel company I stayed in Dublin with. In London they were crazy about the security-- to get near the hostel you had to show your room card. Though I suppose that's a good thing. Regardless, the hostel in London wasn't near as nice as the one in Dublin. We got stuck in the basement, which was undergoing a lot of construction, and didn't have any showers near us.

Luckily we didn't spend much time at the hostel. Friday morning we successfully met up with our friend and set off to see all the tourist sites.

The London eye! While we didn't actually go on the London eye-- it cost like 20 pounds and the line looked two hours long-- it was still cool to see.

Big Ben! I literally fangirled when I saw this. Maybe because I never thought I'd ever go to London, or because it previously had existed solely on my TV screen before commercials during the Olympics.

This picture has crappy quality because it's a zoomed in look at my iPhone picture taken while running across a bridge while a cold rain began to pelt us.

After a lunch of fish and chips (a necessity when visiting London) we headed to the Victoria and Albert art museum.

The museum was enormous-- I could've spent weeks wondering through it.

Sadly we didn't have weeks, so after a coffee and brownie break at their gorgeous cafe we headed off to dinner.

The next morning we met up and went to Buckingham palace to see the changing of the guards.

Or rather, we saw something, I think, I'm not sure what. The crowd was huge considering this is the off season and this happens every day. Some guards walked by, some rode horses, and a cold 30 min later it all appeared to be over.

After a quick lunch at a really cool Japanese place, we walked by the Tower of London and toured the Tower Bridge.

Part of the Tower

The Tower Bridge was like the second bridge constructed in London and gives panoramic views of the city.

After the Tower Bridge we headed over to see Westminster chapel, but when we arrived there was a service going on so the church was closed. Which makes sense-- often times in France the cathedral will be open to tourists even if a service is going on; it's a little awkward to try and take pictures while people are trying to worship.

That night, after enjoying a particular delicious cinnamon roll-- don't get me wrong, I adore French pastries but they do not have cinnamon rolls over here and after three months you just start to crave them-- Michelle and I went to see Phantom of the Opera! I've been obsessed with this musical for about as long as I remember. I know every word to every song and most of the speaking parts.

We showed up at the ticket office the day off trying to buy the cheap cancellation tickets. It was 20 pounds for the seats with 'partially obstructed views' and 50 pounds for the 'non-obstructed view'. The lady working assured us that the views weren't really obstructed-- just a small little pole that might only get in the way sometimes so we bought the cheap tickets. When we found our seats that night I laughed as I sat down. The pole, which wasn't too small ((probably a good thing since it held the low hanging ceiling up)) was directly in front of my seat, making it a little difficult to see things. I spent the first act dodging left and right to follow the action. Luckily for the second act I was able to find an empty seat next to Michelle which offered a miraculously unobstructed view of the stage.

The next morning we had an early flight to get back to Lyon. Long story short, the metro opens late, the trains sometimes don't come and when they do they have mechanical difficulties, the different terminals are really far away, but one mad dash-- and a lost scarf-- later, we made to our gate just as they began to board.

Thanks for reading! :)