Because We Could All Use a Good Laugh....

I absolutely adore Pinterest, and I love looking at their humor section for some good laughs. Here's some of my favorites that have made me laugh recently.....

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Hope you all are having a great week. It's been a crazy past few weeks for me. Hopefully one of these days I'll get back to regular posts :)

Future Business Professional and Sorority Girl?

Hey! I'm just dropping in real quick to do a little update on some recent things that have been going on.

First off, who knew that being a business student for a month results in having to dress business casual and business professional so much? Definitely not me. I'm not complaining though, because I really don't mind dressing up and looking nice. I'm just a little shocked at how frequently I've had the dress the part of a business professional when I still feel like I am far from being a business pro :)

Earlier this week I had to be in business professional attire for an interview for one of the business fraternities on campus. I'm really excited to say that I got a bid from them on Friday! I guess I'm one step closer to being a business professional - ha! I took this picture as I was sitting outside waiting to go in for the interview. I had a little glimpse of future UC graduate/business professional me and it was a little scary....

In other news, it looks like I may be a future sorority girl as well! I'm going through formal recruitment on campus right now, and although I can't share any specifics yet, I'm really excited about the process already. I really think a sorority is going to be something I enjoy. On Wednesday night my recruitment group met for frozen yogurt and watched a little bit of the soccer game. It's been fun to branch out a little bit and meet some new people.

Tonight I stayed home, caught up on some homework, and ran and grabbed Chick-fil-a for dinner with my sweet puppy.

I was so tired from recruitment. Oh my goodness. I was not expecting it to be SO MUCH TALKING. I've honestly enjoyed the experience so far, but it is so much talking it's insanity. Every house you go to, you talk to people for about 40 minutes straight, and I've gone to 8 houses in the past 2 days. So basically, the equates to a lot of talking, which is really more like screaming because all the houses are so loud.

I'll share more about the recruitment process and everything next week after I {hopefully} receive a bid and get accepted into one of the chapters. They've asked us to keep everything hush hush for now though.......

Photography Apps

I get in grooves when it comes to apps. I'll love an app for a few weeks, then I won't use it for a long time, and then I'll start using it again. I've got a bunch of photography apps that I tend to do the same thing with. Sometimes I'll edit a photo I take on my iPhone, but sometimes I won't.

But today I thought I'd show you all the photography apps I have and which ones are my favorite. Maybe you'll find a new app to download!

I'm not big on using the folders to organize my apps, but I do have a photography folder just since I have so many photography apps.

I have a few that don't fit into my photography folder, so those are just kind of scattered throughout the rest of my apps.....

First I'll show some of the apps that I have and like but aren't my favorite.

Snapseed - FREE!

You can do a lot of basic editing with this app. Straightening, cropping, and adding filters and frames are all things that are easy with this app.

Camera Awesome - FREE!

This one is similar to Snapseed in that it has a lot of basic editing features. However, what makes it different is that you actually take the picture through the app instead of through the basic camera that comes on the phone. Personally, I don't like that as much, which is why this app isn't my favorite.

Cinemagram - FREE!

I have actually never really used this app, but it's on my phone for some reason. The idea behind this app is that you create really short videos and then share them. I think it could be fun if a lot of your friends were on it, but mine aren't.

SplitCam - FREE!

This is an app that I think is really neat but I always seem to forget about it. The app allows you to take two pictures and kind of blends them together into one. I love the idea behind it!

Insta Booth - FREE!

This one doesn't get used that often, but I think it's such a fun app to have. It allows you to take lots of silly pictures with tons of different special effects.

Now these are my top photography app picks and the ones I would definitely recommend that everyone should download......

BeFunky Photo Editor - FREE!

This one has tons and tons of filters and things you can do with your pictures, and most of them I just ignore completely. My absolute favorite feature of this app is the Vibrance filter. It really enhances the colors of your picture and makes it look 10X prettier!

Big Lens - $0.99

This one is SO fun because it makes your iPhone pictures look like you took them with a DSLR camera. You can choose what parts of the photo you want in focus, and then it blurs the background. Love it!

TouchRetouch - $0.99

This app makes photo editing a breeze. If you have a picture that has a telephone pole, unwanted people, wires, or anything you don't want in the picture, all you have to do is highlight over it, and the app takes it out. It's so much easier than photoshop.

360 Panorama - $0.99

This is one of my all time favorite apps and the one that I use to create those 360 pictures. I love doing them when I'm vacation, and then you can upload your panoramas to Twitter, Facebook, or your blog. I absolutely adore this app.

TrueHDR - $1.99

This app is neat if you're trying to take a picture of something with a really bright background that would normally result in a dark foreground. This app takes 3 pictures and fuses them together to make a picture that looks perfectly exposed. The only downfall is that the subject can't be moving since it has to take 3 photos.

Diptic - $0.99

This app is the absolute best for creating picture collages. There are tons of different layouts (some of which are really different and unique!). I love using this app.

Bokehful - $0.99

This app is neat because it allows you to add bokeh to your pictures in whatever colors you want, wherever you want!

A Beautiful Mess - $0.99

This is my newest photography app, and I am absolutely obsessed with it. You can add filters, borders, graphics, and text (my favorite!) to your pictures. It makes it so easy and cute.

And my favorite photography app ever is.....

Instagram - FREE!

I'm sure you are all familiar with Instagram, but it is my very favorite. I love the filters, I love posting pictures, and I really, really love looking at my friends pictures. Such a fun place to share photos (and videos now too).

What are some of your favorite photography apps?

A Busy Season

Ever since starting college, I really feel like I am in a busy season of life. Not that I haven't been busy before (in fact, the end of last school year was probably the busiest season of life thus far), but I just feel like there is a never ending list of things to do. In fact, there is always something to do, even if it's not due tomorrow. And for an anti-procrastinator like me, it can make me feel a little overwhelmed. I'm trying to take a step back though, calm down, and just enjoy this season of life that I am in, especially since so many people say it's one of the best times of your life.

All of that to say that basically I am just super crazy busy. So tonight I'm just trying to catch up a bit and share with you all what I've been up to over the past few weeks....

On Tuesdays my dad goes over my grandma's house, which usually leaves just my mom and I, so a lot of times we grab dinner somewhere. Chick-fil-a is usually our favorite pick!

A few weeks ago we had cake at work to celebrate an employee who was leaving. Sometimes you just need a little slice of sugar to brighten up your day!

I went to my cousin's soccer practice a few weeks ago since I can't make most of her games, and it was so fun to watch her play.

Macy's already has some of their Christmas decorations out. Is it weird that I'm kind of excited about that?

My family and I decided to go out to dinner last weekend, and I was in the mood to try some place different. We ended up at a place called Zip's because some of the girls from my high school talked about it one day in government, and I've been wanting to try it every since.

Sleepy girl......

Wow. College has so far required FAR more organizational skills that I ever thought would be necessary. Thankfully I am a very organized person to begin with, but I have had to resort to creating weekly to-do lists so I don't forget to do anything. The highlight of the week is crossing off the last item on the list Sunday night.

I'm not sure why this picture keeps publishing sideways, but it's too late for me to care enough to figure it out :) One of my favorite parts of fall is the Pumpkin shaped Reese's. Why is it that the holiday shaped ones always taste so much better than the normal ones?!

I was so excited to get my high school yearbook in the mail the other day! As I flipped through it though, it made me a little sad to see all the things and people I miss so much now.

Friday night was super fun - probably the best night I've had since starting college! My program/learning community had a formal dinner/dance that I went to. Pretty much all of my new friends that I've met since starting college are in my program, so it was nice being able to have an excuse to get dressed up and hang out with everyone. I ended up leaving a little early with some other girls to go the Cheesecake Factory and get dessert. Yum! So happy I met a few girls who love dessert as much as I do. This was the first time I had ever gotten their Red Velvet Cheesecake, and now it's probably my favorite.

Fall temperatures finally hit this weekend, giving me a good reason to bust out my scarves. I admit that scarves are my weakness, considering I have fifteen and counting...... ;)

First day of scarves and boots for the season!

On Saturday night my family had dinner at a place called Keystone that has the best macaroni and cheese. So good!

The sky was so pretty on the way home from dinner.....

Today I went to Target, Ulta, Zip Dip, and a walk down by the river. It was a pretty great afternoon and an even more gorgeous day in the 70s. Perfection!

Hope you all are having a great month of September. I can't believe it's already half way over! Life just keeps going faster every day.....

College Observations

I've only been in college for three weeks, but man have I made some observations and witnessed a whole lot of new things in such a short period of time. Here's just a few things I've been surprised about/observed in college....

I have lived SUCH a sheltered life.

Like, really sheltered. Let's just say I've seen a few things in college that probably wouldn't fly at the Catholic schools I attended for twelve years - ha!

A fair amount of college students smoke.

Seriously, I think every time I walk somewhere I pass someone smoking. I was shocked by that - I've never known anyone my age that smokes?! The business/finance side of me always wonders why poor college students would spend so much money on cigarettes anyway. Doesn't seem smart to me.....

"You have more free time in college" is the biggest lie ever told.
Plain and simple, there is NOT more free time in college, as evidenced by my blog posts this month.

The professors don't mind cursing in class.

Not that a teacher in high school didn't say the occasional cuss word, but college professors do it so much more frequently. It's weird! I guess that could be the difference between private and public schools though.

Not wearing a uniform is so bizarre.

I have to actually think about what I want to wear! It's funny because some people dress very casual, while others will wear dresses to class. People interpret not having a uniform in a wide variety of ways.

There are a lot of foreigners on campus who only speak their foreign languages with each other.

I mean, they have to speak English in order to understand classes, right? But I've never heard one group of foreigners speaking English to each other. It's like they don't want us to know what they're talking about!

A lot of the girls wear their hair down to class.

This is the complete opposite of high school, where half the girls didn't even brush their hair every day!

People are very diverse.

I actually kind of like this. For the first time in my life I'm not going to school with people who are pretty much just like me :)

For being a big campus, I almost always seem to see someone I know.

I swear that pretty much once a day I see someone I went to high school with or pass someone in one of my classes. I am not a popular person what so ever, but I almost always end up saying hi to someone just walking across campus every day.

People seem to forget what college we actually attend.
People wear apparel from other colleges and universities all the time, and it really just baffles me.

Most college students don't care about getting a lot of sleep.
Sure, everyone complains in class that they are dead tired, but then every day those same people are talking about how they were up until 3 AM. No wonder you're tired! Just because I'm in college doesn't mean my preference to be in bed by 10:00 or 10:30 has ceased to exist. What can I say? I'm just one of those people who needs a lot of sleep.

Learning communities are the best idea ever.
I am a part of a group of 34 freshman that are in the same program and share a lot of classes together. It's super nice and a very convenient way to get to know people in your classes.

I am super, super, crazy thankful for my 12 years of private school education.
I think attending a public university is good for me, at least as far as broadening my horizon goes. However, I don't think I would be where I am today without my private education, and I am glad that certain values were instilled in me at such a young age because it makes it so much easier to be resolute in those values and not be swayed by the things going on around me. The way I see it, just because I'm not at a private school anymore, doesn't mean I can't still hold onto my Catholic school values :)

Overall, I'm definitely enjoying college so far. Of course there are days where I still miss high school (like today when I got my yearbook in the mail!), but I think there are a lot of opportunities ahead of me that I am really excited about!

College really is a whole new world.....