Good morning, Mr. Magpie

shirt/vest: borrowed // suspenders: hot topic // jean: gift // shoes: target // jacket: forever 21 // scarf: asos





People have always told me that high school would be the best years of my life. Well I've finally come and gone through all of high school, and part of me thinks they were right, and part of me thinks they were wrong. I suppose it's like everything in life though, there were good things about it and bad things about it. Another thing that people have always told me is that college will be the best years of my life, and while right now I'm loving college, I still hope those people aren't right. Every day you gain a little more knowledge than the one before, so hypothetically you should be better prepared for each day that you come to. Now of course there are some things in life that we can't control, but for the most part, there's a lot that we can, including how we feel (all of this is to an extent of course, because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that there are always exceptions to everything).




So what did I learn today that can improve my life tomorrow?

1. When I actually sit down to do my homework, it takes a total of five minutes to do. All day I had been avoiding my homework, and after stressing about it for so long, I actually read the paper, typed up the half a page that I was supposed to, and was done in five minutes. Seriously, starting something is the hardest part.

2. It's hard to do something after you haven't been doing it for a long time. I've been working on my story for my photo assignment, and man, my writing is pretty rusty and it takes everything in me to even write one good, creative sentence. Even though writing is something I love, sometimes it does take a lot of work.

3. While usually sleepy Lauren makes bad wardrobe decisions, sometimes she makes awesome ones. My outfit was awesome today. And I was still half asleep when I put everything together. I didn't get any photos of it, but trust me, it was super cute.

4. My outfit making mind is ready for summer. After seeing this outfit on tumblr, I've just been thinking up so many cute summer outfits. I need to write them down.

5. I love my friends. Right now they're all sitting on Annette's bed watching stumbleupon videos and I just really love them so much. It's the small moments like these that I'm really thankful I finally have a good strong group of girl friends that love me and get me. Thank you, Lord.





Basically, I'm constantly learning that I should be thankful for every little thing I have.

diy earrings

Even though this could be considered a diy, it's so simple that it's hardly worth mentioning. But regardless, here's a quick and fun diy that really has an infinite amount of possibilities: diy earrings.



You'll need some earring posts and scrapbooking flowers (I got both from Michael's for about $4 total) and a hot glue gun if you don't want to use the adhesive on the stickers.



Step one: attach flower to post. I opted to take off the adhesive and instead hot glue the flowers to the post to ensure they stayed on.



Step two: let dry, then wear. Seriously, it's that simple. And since there were a ton of posts in one package, I'm already thinking of using other things like beads and stickers to attach and wear as earrings.

my week in instagram #36 + weekly roundup

drinking hot chocolate and doing homework // celebrating two years with my best friend // beautiful clouds over a beautiful school // goodies Matt sent me // sunny days // developing film in the dark room // making lasers // the best spy with the best time through the obstacle course // hopscotch and blanket forts

You can follow more instagram awesomeness @impulsings :)

Weekly roundup (an effort to maintain my new years resolutions):

1. novel: currently working on a short story as this is on hold.
2. photos: done!
3. diy project: coming up later tonight!
4. outfit photos: yep!
5. college street style: not this week.
6. book: working through reading it.
7. sketch: I'm changing this one to anything creative, in which case yes, yesterday I worked on making photo props.

Have an awesome week everyone!

on writing a novel

Over the past few days and weeks I've gotten several inquiries about my novel writing endeavors, and since writing isn't something that is as blatantly obvious on Introvert's Introduction as, say photography, what better way to talk about it than with a blog post!

Writing has always been a big interest of mine. I still have my very first "book" I ever wrote, which was written in a spiral bound notebook and illustrated in colored pencil. The title was humbly called "Lauren goes out to eat lunch" and depicted not only my burrito lunch, but also the adventures of my stuffed animal cat, my move to Iceland (which actually happened before I wrote the book, but in my story it occurred after a lot of events that it preceded in real life), and other things such as getting sick and going to the zoo. One of my earliest memories was of me sitting at our cedar chest in the living room one morning eating a bowl of cheerios, watching tv (I think it was Winnie the Pooh), and writing that story. I still have it today thanks to my hoarding self.

So writing has been a part of my life for my entire life, and since it's been so steadfast, I think that's a safe bet I'm meant to do it for a long time. My first "successful" short story was one that was an assignment for our sixth grade literature class, in which it was voted the best story by my peers. And I've been working on that particular tale ever since.



So for about seven years that short story has been cultivating in my mind to one extent or another, and it was only in my senior year of high school when our final project was to write a 100 page novel did that story come alive again. I won't give away too many details about it, but basically the entire allegory is actually about the human depiction of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs from the Bible. The story is also about pirates. I would say it's a fantasy fiction geared towards upper young adults (16-25 or so). As I keep writing it while I grow older, the age range grows older, go figure. One of my resolutions was to write one page in it a week, but currently that's on hold as the entire novel is on an external hard drive which I currently cannot access, also go figure.



In the meantime, I've been doing what I always do when I put off my novel (I've put it off for seven years, and I'm sure it will still be a long time before it's done), which is write other stories, write assignments for school, write for this blog. With photography entering my life, much of my energy goes into that, which is not a bad thing in the least because it is something I can't live without and has given me a lot of meaning in life, but I really am trying to combine the two arts that I so dearly love. Like I mentioned in a previous post, for one of my photography assignments I'm also writing a story to go along with it, and I can't wait to share it with you guys. As for the novel, I'm still dreaming about it and am fine with it cultivating some more in my mind. It's grown a lot from the short story I wrote in sixth grade and I'm sure it will grow even more as time goes on.