Little Favorite Things

Sometimes it's the little things that make even the earliest of mornings go well, like Such as seeing a reminder of the great adventures I had this summer.




Or a bowl of fresh vegetables from my boyfriend's garden.




Or my favorite tea cup filled with my latest obsession--Teavana's blend of White Ayurvedic Chai and Samurai Mate Chai. It's dangerously good.

Old Photos 2

A hurricane filled trip home to New Jersey this weekend gave me another chance to go through my mom's boxes upon boxes of photos. Since there was no way I could scan all of my favorites in one go, my mom let me take a huge stack home with me. These are a few of the ones I've started putting online.


I love the sneaker-skates/knee high socks combo my mom is rocking in this photo.

The Best Intentions

I was going to write about how awesome it is to be in Charlottesville, and how I love the unexpected delight of finding a really cool drawing on the giant chalk wall on the Downtown Mall.

And then I realized that someone added a penis to the drawing, and the whole thing became null and void.

Except that it's now kind of hilarious. Plus, this chalking drawing was right next to it, and must have taken some serious effort.

The Last Days of Summer

The beginning of the school year always feels like the end of summer for me. Oh, I know that there are still a few more weeks before it officially ends, but being back on grounds makes me realize that this summer went by in the blink of an eye.

I find myself looking at all the photos that I took this summer, and wondering how there are so many things that I swore that I would do this summer and yet never got to do them.

Luckily, I can look back on these photos and see all the amazing things I did get to do this summer. Plus, I can look back at all the little things that make the summer so great.

Like sunsets on rivers.


And giant dishes of gelato.


And finding utterly appropriate kitchenware from my favorite store that I absolutely need, but cannot afford.

Despite all of the things I'm going to miss about this summer, one of the things I am most looking forward to is the return of this little guy:

It's been months since I've seen my favorite little guy, and I cannot wait until he is here on Sunday.

Back to Cville

Another summer has flown by, and now I have precisely 53 students to become acquainted with. This is my favorite part of the year. As a lifelong nerd, I will forever love the beginning of a new school year.

While things are just getting started on grounds (never campus at UVA) I still have plenty of time and energy to check out how things have changed, and to return to some old favorites.

I have missed this town so much. It's nice being home.

Old Photos

One of the less stressful parts of my mom selling her house is going through old photos and determining which are the keepers (baby photos & old photos of my mom) and which should be burned (any pictures of me ages 10-21).

These are some of my favorites:

My Mama, such a pretty hippie chick.

It's also nice to see that having a constantly changing hair color is genetic.


Saying goodbye to family friend Emily on vacation in Cape Cod.

Teeny tiny me.

There are still so many shoe boxes of family photos that need to be gone through and sorted. I'm going to have to hunt around on Pinterest to find something creative yet practical to do with all these photos. Just letting them sit in boxes seems like such a waste.

Friday Photos

Fridays are meant to be a delicious appetizer to the weekend. One of my favorite treats is sitting on S's back deck drinking my new favorite beer that's brewed in Petaluma, CA. It's the perfect reminder of the summer roadtrip.

As the summer winds down, we're getting all sorts of wonderful things from the garden.




Speaking of the roadtrip, I can't believe I've been back over two weeks already. Not waking up and hitting the road feels weird. I think that means it's time to start planning my next one.

Luckily, trips to Charleston and Nashville are on the agenda for the fall. I think it's time to start planning.

More Travel Writing

One of my projects for the summer was to work on a travel guide of Moscow for Unanchor.com, a new travel website venture. My project was to create a 3 day guide to Moscow for the uninitiated.

It was once again an opportunity to try my hand at travel writing-to see what works and what doesn't when it comes to finding the best way to organize the trip. I'm pretty thrilled with how it came out.

Thank You!

A few weeks ago I wrote a guide to my beloved Charlottesville as part of the Travel Blog Exchange's Backyard Gems contest.

I entered for three reasons:
1. I have a deep love of Charlottesville. Although I'm not a native Virginian, I have fallen head over heels in love with Charlottesville, and want other people to experience how amazing of a town it really is.

2. I love travel writing (as if this blog wasn't a huge clue to that). I don't have any training as a writer, so I'm completely at a loss when it comes to what makes for good travel writing. I figured this contest would be a great way to flex my little writer's muscles.

3. I found out about the contest while I was in Russia, and had been up all night thanks to the White Nights. In that state I was pretty convinced I could do anything.

After reading most of the other entries, I really didn't expect to win because some of them were so good. I even have a folder in my favorite websites of some of them called "Places I must Visit." I may have even sent one in an email to my mother accusing her of holding out on me because apparently you can go horse surfing in Sarasota, Florida, and that's just something I should be made aware of at all times.

So imagine my surprise when I received an email asking for my email address so they could officially award me one of the prizes. The photo above? It's really me jumping for joy when I found out. I was with my west coast roadtrip travel companions when I found out, and I couldn't stop jumping for joy.

So thank you, TBEX. Thank you, Cambria Suites. My next few trips are already planned, so it's great to know that I have somewhere nice to stay.