Look who finally decided to take pictures for the 365 project again. Seriously I don't know what's wrong with me. I absolutely love the photo-taking process but it takes everything in me to initiate it. I guess the hardest part of something really is starting it.
Out of the amount of time I wear shoes in a day, I'd say I wear these slippers about 60% of the time. They are just so easy to slip on when going to work or pottery or breakfast when my brain can't function enough to pick a creative outfit. And one would think these would be awful for rainy Oregon, but they actually have been very successful at keeping my feet nice and warm and dry when running through the rain.
Thankfully I have friends with warm, cute sweaters to keep me warm on these rainy days. I have a couple of my own sweaters, but most of my wardrobe is filled with quirky pieces that are hard to remix on a day to day basis. It has been fun remixing things with my friends, especially since it's helping me learn what pieces I need to incorporate into my own wardrobe.
Have a great day everyone!
p.s. not sure why these photos are so pixely ... it seems like photobucket doesn't like me today.
The weather is starting to get colder and colder here, which means the coats are coming out and tights under shorts are returning again. There's a nip in the air and everyone is singing Christmas carols and decorating and participating in secret santa and making snowflakes and sipping hot chocolate. And while it is cold here, I've been pining for some wondrous Alaskan snow--perhaps not having to take outfit photos out in the snow, but playing in it and watching it fall and making ice cream out of it. My roommate Annette and I have our dorm window covered in snowflakes and it makes me smile every time I see it. If only they would turn into the real thing!
I hope you have a beautiful winter day! What's your favorite thing about winter?
We are finally entering the last two weeks of school! As time gets closer and closer to going home, I get even more excited. I seriously cannot wait to see my family and my friends again. Honestly, I didn't know if I would be excited or not, but I seriously cannot wait to spend a whole month just having fun with awesome people. Spending Christmas with my family, hanging out with my drama teacher and his wife, going to coffee with my favorite boys, and maybe even playing some mini golf with three sexy ladies, eee I can't wait! And at the same time, I'm also really excited for next semester at school. I'm signed up for some great classes, including my very first photography class! You guys don't even know how insanely excited I am to learn how to develop photos in a darkroom. I'm going to be in heaven.
For now, it's just a matter of keeping on top of things and not getting too distracted by the excitement of the future. I have to keep up with the last bit of schoolwork I have and also keep myself busy with personal projects so I don't die of the anticipation. Man, this is going to be hard.
As you may have noticed, Introvert's Introduction got a facelift! There are just a couple detail things I'm still working on, but for the most part, this place is as good as new! I really loved my old design, but I love change and just wanted to decorate it a bit differently. Hope you guys like it!
for some reason this looks really gross on my blog, so you should look at it here.
I have to tip my hat in my friend Kameron's direction, because I thought about her editing style while I edited this. I'm making a ton of stars for a photo series, so I decided to utilize one today.
a beautiful Oregon sunset // yummy Thanksgiving dinner with some of my favorite people // decorating our door for Christmas! // ice cream all day every day // ceramics class // my college getting ready for Christmas // glazing a pot // pretty fall colors on a rare sunny day // sitting at a fancy art Christmas party
This week has been really long and weird. But there were still some awesome things that happened! Hope you guys have a fantastic week.
I know this picture isn't really creative, but I played around with it in photoshop and I wanted a new facebook profile picture, hehe. My date Amy and I went to a fancy Art Christmas party and it was so much fun! You guys would have been proud at how much I was talking. It was seriously a blast eating and hanging out with people and then dancing. You would think that art people would be boring dancers but man, they can get crazy! I can't wait to be an art major! (I'm currently an English major, but I'm going to double major ... I just have to fill out the paperwork!) I seriously love being able to go to a school where everyone is passionate about what they're studying and I love being surrounded by passionate people. Plus the Christmas season always puts me in a good mood. (And this note is for my parents: at the party they played a song from that one Christmas orchestra that you guys always play and it instantly took me back to Christmas in Alaska. I can't wait to come back home in just two weeks!)
Wow, another month has come and gone. Here are some of my favorite posts from November, which definitely went by way too fast. I can't believe I only have two weeks until I go home! Before I went to college, I had always heard that people change so much their first semester. But I really don't think I've changed any more than I usually do. I've certainly gotten better at managing my time and I can handle living on my own, and I've gotten better at making friends and things like that, but for the most part, I'm still the same. And I like that. Being Lauren is pretty cool sometimes. Needless to say, I am excited to see my family again and hang out with the snow and moose. Be good to me, December.
I'm too tired to really write a story to go along with this photo, but rest assured there is a beautiful one lurking in the darkness.
And since I'm so tired, I'm simply going to number what happened today.
1. I didn't realize until dinner that it was Friday and it made me really happy.
2. I successfully presented my introvert/extrovert psychology project.
3. We watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and it made me very excited for Christmas.
Hey guys! Here is the second Film Friday video! I just found this yesterday and was planning to show a different video (and even another video before I found that video), but in light of my big psychology project that I've been working on for about a month about introvert and extrovert group idea generation and just that relationship in general, I figured this was more appropriate.
My friend Jenna came in my room while I was watching this video (and subsequently crying because of it, hah ... this subject has meant a lot to me for a long time), and she watched it with me and helped me with my psychology presentation since I'm super nervous to present it, go figure. It was nice to be able to talk with her a little bit about it, even though I'm not always good at expressing my thoughts. I'm so passionate about this subject because it's my very nature and I just want to get the word out and gain awareness because I don't want anyone to feel the way I feel for being who I am. You shouldn't be ashamed or embarrassed for who you are, and if people hate you for it, please please please don't think it's your fault. I'm struggling with this right now, and it's hard to appeal to an extroverted world. Every individual has to find a balance to be sensitive to all personalities. I have to constantly work hard at being more outgoing and initiating things and relationships, because I am no good at it (which not only stems from my personality, but from people in the past not wanting to have relationships with me for whatever reasons. I've written about this a lot before, not on this blog but in my own personal journals and to my mom, but I never want to invest in a relationship if the other person isn't willing to invest because I have been disappointed and hurt in the past, so I usually wait for other people to initiate relationships with me). And other people have to work hard at initiating things with me and being okay with me not feeling the need to express things.
And really, I think I am most myself on here. If you want to know who Lauren is, just read Introverts Introduction. I feel free to write my thoughts and express these subjects that I don't ever get to talk about with people. So thank you guys for being willing to engage with me. I really count you as a friend and I feel like this place is constantly a two-way conversation, which I absolutely adore.
Hopefully this helped you a little bit, if you're an introvert to be confident in who you are, and if you're an extrovert to be understand to those who are different than you.
And hopefully next week's video will be a little more lighthearted!
The highlight of my day was getting my compass plate back from the kiln. It has really deep meaning for me and I really love it a lot. Really everything about the ocean has so much symbolism with my own life.
I feel like sometimes I'm the ocean. I don't know if that's prideful to say or not ... but the ocean is so big and huge and so many people only want to sail on the surface. Sometimes I'm calm, sometimes I get angry, but I feel like very few people have been willing to plunge into who I really am. I know I'm beautiful and am filled to the brim with things waiting to be discovered, but sometimes I need help with that. More often than not people are fine with just staying on my surface and to be quite honest, my surface is boring. My surface is shy. My surface doesn't understand very much. My surface is quiet and curious and naive and gullible and too trusting. My surface is too judgmental of myself and it doesn't think I'm good enough. But underneath my surface, the part that only a few people get to see (and parts that no one has seen yet), I think is overflowing with greatness. Everyone has greatness and for once I actually want to talk about my own. My depths are bursting with color and ideas and it's loud and sometimes my thoughts are so loud it literally hurts to speak. My depths are infinitely curious and filled with wonder from the world. My depths whisper aspirations that seem impossible but they drive me. My depths have deep pain and sadness brought on by storms and shipwrecks and sirens that I thought would stay in my life forever. I've learned all too soon that nothing lasts though (or at least, very few things), so I don't want to open my depths to everyone. It's hard for me to express things sometimes. I constantly have to redirect myself because I'm always failing, whether that be actually failing or just being too hard on myself.
So to bring this post full circle, my compass plate reminds me to share the depths of who I am, and it also reminds me that it's okay to fail as long as I continue to point myself home.
Big thanks to Ben for moving my camera around for the expansion when I couldn't really move from my spot on the wall, haha. We ran into each other today so he came with me when I took this photo. I was super glad he came along because he is a great human being as well as an incredibly talented photographer. And while talking to him, it made me realize just how relational photography is. I think I will have failed as a human being if I didn't meet as many people as possible, and photography is such a beautiful way to do that. Even if I was horrible at taking photos, I think I would still be happy if I could be with other people who loved what I loved. Because what makes me happiest is not coming up with ideas or taking photos or editing or posting them to share with others (though those do make me happy); what makes me happiest is being with people, and people who share the same passions as me (and even people who appreciate my passions). There's just something special about having something that is such a part of you also be such a part of someone else, and being able to connect in that way.
Even though I like this photo, I wish I could create some photos with an actual concept. I have tons of ideas sketched out in my sketchbook, but for some reason (one that I do not know), I never actually do them. I feel like I've reached that stage in photography where I've learned a lot of the editing and shooting process and mostly have that down (I say this lightly because there's always room for improvement), and the 365 is good for figuring those things out. But now I need to learn how to go through the process of coming up with a concept, preparing for it, and then shooting it successfully. It seems to me that the 365 (at least, if you actually take one photo each day) isn't quite the best for something like that. I could be wrong though. I could just be extremely lazy or scared to actually go out and do the more crazy ideas in my head. I don't know, I'm just sort of rambling on. Regardless, tomorrow is my busy day so I may not get a killer concept out the door just quite yet. But I hope you guys have a great day!
Part of me feels like I'm cheating completely with this whole personal style blogging thing when I wear outfits not even from my own wardrobe. (As if we could cheat with this stuff anyways.) I mean, not everyone can just pick out clothes that they didn't have to buy and wear them around. It's like my life is a walking pinterest dream. But really, I feel like there's an added challenge of going into a closet you're unfamiliar with and putting an outfit together without trying it on and then having to wear it the next day even if it looks bad on you because you already feel like you've outwarmed your welcome by invading someone else's closet in the first place (which I actually couldn't do because the girl I borrowed these from is the sweetest girl in the entire world) (and I really like this outfit, so Lauren got lucky!) I won't lie, it's awesome getting to have virtually eighteen other closets to pick and choose from, kind of because of feeling like I'm inside pinterest and kind of because it has really challenged me to explore different things and put together outfits based on patterns and color and proportion and not necessarily on how it looks on me. But what do you guys think? I want to know what your thoughts on this are!
But on to less controversial topics, I hope you guys had an awesome Thanksgiving break! Some of the highlights of mine were getting to see Matt, playing bingo, watching Skyfall, and watching Matt's family's old home videos. Little Matt was so precious and adorable and kind of made me fall in love with current Matt even more! It was so awesome being able to see him in person and I'm already counting down the days until when I get to see him again.
And now we officially can be in the Christmas spirit! Hope you all have a great day!
