My 21st Year, A Challenge!

Have you ever heard of the A Picture A Day Challenge?

It was a goal of mine to start this year when New Year's rolled around, but obviously I failed. I started for like 2 weeks, but just stopped. I think that not telling anyone and not posting it anywhere was my downfall. I decided to post my 365 photos on Tumblr to document my 1st year of being a real adult. If you ever notice me not posting for a day please please please let me know. Maybe comment somewhere on my blog or send a private message to my tumblr or even email me at calamari.designs@gmail.com.

If you want to view my pictures for this challenge. Just visit my Tumblr: http://calamari-designs.tumblr.com/
and click on the link on top that says "My 21st Year in Pictures" (<-or just click on this link, tee hee).
I'll also be re-blogging and posting other pictures on there, so you can watch out for those if you'd like to.
Also, please excuse my not-so-great-at-all picture taking skills. Thank you!

What to know more about the challenge?
Taylor McKnight says it best here.

My 1st picture of the Challenge.

Have you taken this challenge before or anything similar? I'd love to see it!

Another Ending

School just ended!!! It's been such a stressful year. I'm so glad it's over! I am worried though that this semester will be my worst semester (grades-wise). I foresee a D and many C's. Ahhh. So bad. I'm usually an A/B student. What happened?! Hopefully I'm wrong!!! Well, with the summer here I should be posting more often and more regularly! Yay!

Now on to my summer goals:

1. Get a summer Job
2. Clean up my things from moving out and completely move out of my old apartment
3. Clean up the apartment I'm moving into and move my things in
4. Clean out my closet
5. Get my storeenvy up and running
6. Get a little DIY-ing done

And so, I leave you with this picture of the summer sky over the Bay Area.

Today's My Birthday!!!

I'm finally 21! Oh my, no wait, I'm actually 21?! Time's going by so fast!

I don't really have plans for the day. Well, I have just one last final today and I'll be done with the Spring 2012 semester! I'm pretty much just going to study accounting all morning/afternoon, then go and take my test.
My boyfriend did score some advanced screening passes for Men In Black 3 at the theater right next to my school, so I may dress up in a suit for that. If I do go, do expect a post on it!

I'm not sure yet when I'm going to celebrate my birthday though. I did originally want a tea party at my house with all of my family and friends, but that's such a gigantic group to gather up and it'd be difficult to keep warm tea for that big of a group. Maybe I'll do it with a smaller group spread out over the summer as get-togethers though. At this point, only time will tell.

Here's me, trying to see how tall I am at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. At 21, I'm still only about 5'1'' tall. As you can see, I am tip-toeing and there's an extra block on the bottom. I don't think that it's very accurate measurement. Oh well, it was all just for fun. (And I get to count this for OOTD right? :] )

Target Summer Beauty Bag Giveaway!

Saw this on  my Facebook News Feed! Target is giving away makeup bags with free samples inside!

As I understand the terms and conditions:

• Target's giving away 477,500 beauty bags
• It is only open to US residents and the District of Columbia, so sorry to my international readers!
• There's only 1 per person
• and 5 per household! 

I love that it's not just 1 per household, so I can make my family sign up too!

So, sign up here!

Pretty Perfumes: Victoria's Secret Sexy Little Things Noir

Last Week at Victoria's Secret I bought "Noir" by Sexy Little Things.

Here's what the website says about it:

At once elegant and playfully provocative, it's an enchanting blend of sparkling nectarine, sultry amber and exotic cattelaya orchid. Domestic.

• Fragrance type: Fruity Floral
• Top Notes: Nectarine, Juicy Apple, Sparkling Citrus, Pineapple, Guanabana, Mouthwatering Pear, Red Fruit, Bergamot
• Middle Notes: Cattelaya Orchid, Muget, Cyclamen, Jasmine Petals, Plum, Vanilla, Dewberry, Cassis
• Low Notes: Golden Amber, Velvet Musk, Sultry Woods, Tonka Bean

I bought this in store and they had a sign up saying by any 1.0 oz + fragrance and get a sampler box free.
I choose this as my first Pretty Perfumes because of the special offer. I am hoping it will still be available to you all by the time I post this and you going to a Victoria's Secret.

I had been contemplating on getting this perfume for a while because of the pump. I knew that it was the specific reason I wanted to buy it. Isn't it awesome? It's rare to find a modern fragrance with a pump.
It's not miniature, but the mini doesn't have a pump so there wouldn't be any point at all.

The scent is alright. It does not smell bad, but I don't really see myself wearing it often. It doesn't seem very me. I'm more of a fresh florals type of gal. I would probably wear it more as a night fragrance though since the scents I'm attracted to are typically for daytime spring. I was originally debating between "Noir" and "Tease". Tease was a warmer scent which to me seemed more sensual. I couldn't really see me wearing that more than "Noir". At least Noir was a little floral-y.

I will post more on these sampler scents in the future and also individually. And if you're wondering, each vile is 2.9 oz. They're pretty big samples!

My Newly Realized Dream of Perfume Bottle Collecting

As my title explains, I have begun to collect perfume bottles. My boyfriend has been big on colognes for a while now and he would constantly bring me to shop with him. The more he talked about colognes, the more I learned about perfumes. That's when I decided that I wanted to find my signature scent. I wanted to find the perfect scent for my personality and look. I still haven't found my scent, but I am definitely still searching!
Anyways, during my search I have collected a lot of samples and also have become obsessed with perfume bottles. There are so many pretty bottles in the the world! I don't like all the scents though, so sometimes I wish I could just buy the bottle. I have always been a fan of anything miniature, so I have grown quite a collection of miniature perfume bottles and I hope to collect more. That doesn't mean that I'll never buy full sized bottles, but I am definitely aiming for the miniatures. I just realized how much more interested I am in the look of the bottle than the scent within. I sort of also realized that I love changing scents, so I may never find my signature scent. Collecting samples and miniatures is turning out perfect for my ever changing preferences.
Because of all this I have decided to start a perfume segment of my blog. I am thinking that it'll happen every 2 weeks on Wednesdays. I'm thinking of calling it Pretty Perfumes.
Also, if you have been missing my nails segment. I'm so sorry. I haven't painted my nails all semester. I took a class this semester which required me to have unpainted nails. I don't think the nails segment will be as regular because I still may have trouble painting my nails regularly. I will definitely post whenever I do though.
I am really looking forward to posting about perfumes though. I feel so prepared for this new segment and I can really see this happening. I hope you all will enjoy my new segment!

What I've realized

Well, it's been such a long time since I last posted. I had an idea of what I wanted for this blog but I haven't been able to fulfill it.
School just makes me way too busy to blog. I have had my blogging heights during summer and winter breaks. I do still get random spurs of post ideas whilst in school, but I rarely have time to perfect it into a great post with pictures and everything.
I always say I'm sorry for the long absence, which I am, but I don't want to force you to constantly read apologies.
Because of these problems I have decided to stop starting my blog posts with apologies. I've also decided to write more posts even if they aren't perfected yet. I have so many drafts of unfulfilled ideas for posts that I no longer have the inspiration to continue. I know that if I would have just posted them, I would have gone back and edited them completely. I recently got a smartphone (finally, after all the free after rebate brick phones before this). I got the blogger app and will be able to write posts from anywhere and whenever inspiration strikes.
So, with this school year ending, expect more posts. Don't expect them to be perfect though because I'll probably be posting from my phone (which I am now) and I don't believe I can add photos with this app. Unless anyone can tell me otherwise?
I may even be inspired to finish writing those drafts, so watch out for those old posts.
Well thank you for reading through the long amount of texts! You're super awesome!!!