favorite things / graduation thoughts

as of friday i am technically a graduated student. i refused to walk, so i don't have any pictures to prove it, but it's real. this weekend we moved all of our stuff from utah to california, and have no plans to go back in the near future. i could not be more happy/excited/ecstatic! seriously you guys, we are out of there for good. in two weeks we move to washington d.c. for a semester, and then will be back in california.  

moving did make me a little sentimental. i mean i have basically lived in provo for 5 years (on and off), which have actually been some of my best years. of course what i will miss most is the people, many of mine and jarman's best friends live there. luckily they are all from temecula so we will be seeing them frequently. 

it is comforting to me to know that two of my favorite movies in the world start with a graduation. meaning that graduation isn't the end of an era, it's the beginning of something new. reality bites and say anything each start with the main characters giving graduation speeches. i feel like each of them confirms every graduates fearful thoughts. diane, the dream girl in of lloyd dobler's dreams, says:

Well, it's almost over.  We've gone to school together for three years, and we've been through a lot.  But with that training out of High School gone, what's going to happen to us?  We all know what the answers are.  We want to be happy, go to college, own a car, maybe raise a family.  But what if that doesn't happen?  I have, I have to be honest though, I have all the hope and ambition in the world.  But when I think about the future, the truth is, I am really...scared.

lelaina pierce reiterates the same ideas in her speech:

But the question remains... what are we going to do now? How can we repair all the damage we inherited? Fellow graduates, the answer is simple. The answer is... The answer is... I don't know.

i love that each of the girls address the uncertainty of the future. while jarman and i have an idea of where we want to be in the next few years, nothing is set in stone and everything could change in an instant. i am comforted to know that we are not the first ones to feel the pressures of our vague future ahead, and that we will not be the last. i hope that those of you who have fears and doubts come to reconcile them, and know that you are not alone (think breakfast club, another favorite.)

seriously though, if you haven't seen either of these movies, watch them today. you won't regret it.

currently obsessed / onions and weekends

so these are the two random things that i cannot get enough of as of late.  

i have never been a huge in-n-out fan. i was fine to eat it like once a month, but any more than that and i would not be happy. i never understood the obsession until 2 weeks ago when jarman introduced me to the best kept secret of in-n-out: the whole grilled onion. once, when we were younger, kira didn't order grilled onions on her burger, and jacklin told her it was un-american. since then, she puts onions on her burger every single time, and so should you. the whole grilled onion adds even more to the most american dish you can get. basically they take an entire slice of onion, grill it to perfection and then put it between the cheese and the burger. the cheese melts and the onion melds into the burger and it is seriously perfection. try it next time, you won't be sorry. i may or may not have gotten this four times in one week. oops.

a blurry picture on in-n-out from my instagram

my second obsession is the new york times 36 hours books. i got two of them from anthro this weekend to start preparing for our trips on the east coast. during our long drive on saturday, i read lots of entries to jarman. the books are great because they outline weekends in cities, show you non-typical things to do, and give you amounts of time to do them. (the writing style is also amazing and makes me want to become a better writer, i'll work on it). from the northeast book we are hoping to make it to new york (this time we want to stay in brooklyn, i feel like we haven't spend enough time there to truly appreciate it), boston, philadelphia, providence and hopefully at least one place in canada. from the southeast book we are planning on going to annapolis, baltimore, and charleston. the books are super cute, and not too expensive, i would definitely recommend them. i'll keep you updated on which activities we do from the books.

inspired by / pink

so my house is completely torn apart and is super messy and cluttered and is driving me crazy. so until the moving truck arrives tomorrow morning, i'm going to daydream of spaces that are clean, and have pops of pink. in looking over my recent 'pins' i realized that nearly every interior that i am inspired by has a pink element. my favorite are the pink flooring pieces: the rug and the painted wood. love.

from my camera / my house

luckily i took these pictures of my bedroom in January, because i wasn't able to get many other pictures of our first house before we started packing. we move on saturday! which basically means that my house has been torn to pieces and is driving me crazy! i have been avoiding packing like the plague, and even got the plague while avoiding it (or food poisoning, same thing). jarman has done most of the work and it has been awesome, minus feeling awful for a few days. 

this house has been good to us and i will always remember it fondly, but i don't know if i will miss it in an i-wish-we-could-move-back-there kind of way. it was built in the 1940's and i don't think it has been updated since. it has its cute little quirks (like the doorbell that is literally two large chimes)  and its pitfalls (like the creaky floors and ancient windows). i will always love it as our first house that we spent our first year and a half in. for the next year we will be wanderers, living in washington d.c. and then temecula, but will settle in to law school after that.

most of the stuff in our bedroom was either gifted or used at my wedding. my mom put together a group gift for my bridal shower, and bought us pretty much everything we needed for our bedroom: the curtains, bedding, painting, and a few other things that are elsewhere in the house. that was seriously the best. (i should write about how cute my bridal shower was, even though it was so long ago.) the mirrored side table was used as my cake stand, and the dresser as my dessert bar at my wedding. 

i know these pictures aren't the greatest, but they will always remind me of our cute little brick house. 

art you should know / the swing

jean-honore fragonard: the swing, 1767, shown at the phillip's collection in london. 

the style:

rococo is funny style of art. it came after the the french baroque style and after king louis xiv, but before the revolution. i used to think that i loved rococo: it has pretty women in gorgeous dresses. but that is almost all there is to it. rococo as a whole lacks depth and meaning and favors frivolity and playfulness. often the style shows scenes of men and women falling in love, reading love letters etc. it was made for the upper class to hang in their homes, showing just where that society placed its value.

the swing by fragonard is one of the most well known rococo works. it shows a woman being playfully pushed on a swing (the man who pushes the swing is either her husband or a churchman), and a man casually laying beneath her (looking up her skirt). supposedly a gent of the upper class commissioned this painting of himself and his mistress. the swing is a symbol of sexuality, and the man beneath looks tousled and aroused. the girl's shoe is flying off towards a statue of cupid, the god of erotic love. essentially, that is the whole theme of this painting: erotic love. 

can you spot the corner of the painting shown on the couch. when you rewatch the movie, because you will definitely rewatch it, be sure to look for the painting.

the influence:

the reason i was so excited to talk about this painting today is not because of the erotic love, but because it was just in an awesome movie. baz luhrman's the great gatsby features this painting on the couches in tom buchanan's love nest. in fact, in fitzgerald's book he mention's the painting being somewhere in the house ('to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of versailles') . of course this painting would be appropriate for the apartment that tom keeps for myrtle, his mistress. it only makes sense and i love fitzgerald and luhrman for it. interestingly, after doing a little bit of research i found out this painting also had influence on a disney movie as well. you know what they always say about the hidden messages in disney movies. Frozen derived its stylistic theme from the swing. supposedly this doesn't mean that anything else in the movie was influenced by it, but you have to wonder.