I have Spring Fever...Literally

{H&M: Dress similar here and here, hat similar, Ross: vest similar, Rue21: boots similar here in brown}

Well, hello, hello. Sigh...I feel like I'm on an excitement crash from my birthday last week. I can't believe I'm already 21 and one week old today. I like birthdays and all the days leading up to them, and I know saying this is going to sound sooo childish, but hey I never claimed to have fully grown out of being five so here goes...I wish it could be my birthday everyday! ;) All the excitement, specialness, and well, presents are so awesome. Aww well, I guess if it were my birthday everyday it'd loose it's specialness and I'd get bored, and yes I realize that 'specialness' is not a word...but it should be.

Anyway, it seems like I've got spring fever in the very literal sense. Well, technically cold if we're going to get nit picky about it. My eyes burn and are drier than butt crack Egypt. Don't ask me why I just said 'butt crack Egypt' either, it's the fever talking. My nose keeps alternating between being stuffier than a tube sock and runnier than a broken fridge. My throat aches like I'm a vampire who just chugged a gallon of holy water, oh and lets not forget the sneezing! My sneezing is seriously getting out of hand. I'm sneezing about every five minutes...which I actually kind of have to admit that I love. I have a weird fascination with sneezes. I think they're a hoot and a half and wildly entertaining. Oh, and FYI in Spanish when a person sneezes you say, "salud", which means health, but in Spanish since we like to be all cool like we added two extra bonus phrases to say if a person sneezes more than once. If you sneeze a second time you get a "dinero", which means money, AND if you sneeze a third time in row you get an "amor" which means love, so if you're lucky enough to sneeze three times in a row you get health, money, and love! Cool huh? Anyway, I usually get the jackpot because for some reason whenever I sneeze I sneeze in three's. Not this time around, though. Today I've been so unfortunate as to be sneezing in pairs, which means NO LOVE! Oh, nostrils what's wrong with you?!? Do you WANT to doom me to living a healthy life full of riches with no one to share it with?!

I know what's causing my nose to be cursing me to die a lonely old hag...I broke a mirror in my painting class the other day, so you know what that means...7 years of bad luck! I knew having to do a dumb self portrait would bring nothing but doom and utter destruction. It was all that stupid clamps fault! We have to clamp this ridiculously tight claw type thing onto the mirror and then onto the easel. You know, I consider myself to be pretty strong with all of the working out I do so I hate having to ask males for help with things that require strength, so as you can imagine I was pretty upset when I had to ask my professor to set my mirror up for me. Ugh...I hate being a stupid little damsel in distress, but I seriously couldn't get that clamp thing open for the life of me. Anyway, at the end of class I thought I'd be all boss and get the clamp off of my mirror all by myself, hah! It did not work out. At all. I just ended up completely shattering my mirror. In other news, though, my painting is actually going quite well. I did a rough sketch of myself on my canvas, which turned out pretty nice, and I started to block in my lights and shadows. It's looking nice but we'll see how I feel when I've made a little more progress. I'm not really all that superstitious anyway and today was actually a fabulous day but maybe I should be a little more superstitious and take the 7 years of bad luck more seriously because on top of everything else dear old Mother Nature delivered me one of these today...

TMI? Yeah...that's probably TMI...but it's my blog and I'll be gross and share too much information if I want to! Gosh dang it! Ha, just kidding. :)

Much love!

The Life and Times of a Singleton

{Abercrombie: skirt similar here in the blue print, here in the floral pattern, and here, Abercrombie kids: top similar, F21: sweater similar here in white, H&M: boots similar}

This Sunday I had all the intention of getting this blog post done and up at a decent hour...and then I lied down on my couch for a couple of minutes and those couple of minutes somehow turned into a two hour nap. I guess all of this aging into a 21 year old this week had me beat. Anyway, last weekend when I went laser tagging with my best chicas we somehow came to the conclusion that what our group of Fantastic Four needed most in the world was a group blind date. Oh, the ideas that spring from a group of over excited rampant female hormones! Anyway, we gave ourselves a week to come up with suitable males for each other. My sister and I had to come up with two honeys for the other two ladies and vise-versa. 

We went into the start of this week with a clear idea of who we wanted to set the ladies up with and then it turned out that the males we had in mind were now in relationships. Bleh. Anyway, we just thought oh well we still have a good five days to come up with alternatives. Of course those five days quickly turned into five hours before Friday and still no alternatives. We were scrambling through all of our contacts trying to decide who would be a suitable match. I'm the baby of our group so of course most of my male friends were a tad on the young side and/or still finishing up their missions. We finally narrowed our selection down to a group of about five males and quickly contacted them to see if they'd be interested. Our hopes weren't high considering how short of notice we were giving them. Most of them said they already had plans, and we were still waiting to hear from one. 

We were just about ready to give up on the whole scheme and reschedule it for the following weekend when I suddenly remembered this guy from our ward who had sat next to me once during Sunday school. On the particular Sunday when he sat next to me I was a little peeved at him because I'm a bit of a snob and I'm very particular about the way people sit when they sit next to me and he was not conforming to my sitting rules. You see I'm a firm believer in that whole, "this is my bubble of space, do not enter it" idea. I've come to notice that guys have no concept of this rule, they enjoy sitting with their legs all spread out and taking up as much space as humanly possible. On more than one occasion I have felt that the guy sitting next to me is secretly trying to sit in my lap or just plain old trying to kick me out of my seat and have two whole seats to themselves. Anyway, that Sunday I was already sleepy and hungry and therefore prone to being irrationally annoyed by dumb things so when I felt him invading my bubble I was very irked to say the least. Anyway, I vaguely remembered him being cute so he was forgiven for the annoyance he never even knew he had committed and my sister and I proceeded to go into "crazy stalker mode" and look him up on our wards website. We found his name and I looked him up on the good old, Facebook. I sent him a message proposing our crazy scheme with little hopes of him reading my slightly creepy message let alone answering it. To my surprise he pulled through and answered in the affirmative. Our male #2 also came through and answered in the affirmative and we were in the clear!  

The next day we all met up at "the bachelorette pad", aka my best friends house, and whipped together some peach cobbler because what's more enticing than a girl who can bake? Little to nothing. And...well...to be honest it was actually Allison that did about 98% of the baking. I say 98% because I contributed 1% by washing the dishes and our girlfriends contributed the other 1% by providing the vanilla ice cream. The boys soon arrived and a night of dessert, high stakes Jenga, and flirting -mostly on my end if I'm being honest- ensued. My sister and I weren't really acquainted with the boys we had invited and as it turns out the other half of our Fantastic Four wasn't really acquainted with the boys they had invited either. Which actually turned out for the better. A night among almost complete strangers is actually crazy fun. Even, though, being a singleton can have it's downfalls, the biggest of which being that I'm constantly harassed with questions of why I'm still single -um I'm barely 21 people, sheesh give a girl some time- for the most part being single is just grand. If I weren't single I wouldn't be able to do crazy group blind dates, and I wouldn't be able to hang with my home girls quite as much. Granted, I don't want to be single forever. Not by any means, but there's a time for everything and right now is a time to enjoy being single and prepare for that lovely eternity of not being single. :) So, for now I'm "learning, living, and becoming." Here's to the single life, and here's to an eternity of companionship! 

Much Love!

21 Part 2

Alright, so it's time for part two of my birthday celebrations! I know it's been a few days but birthday weeks are crazy...who knew? Anyway, the birthday celebrations started off with a tradition. In our home whenever there's a birthday we serenade the birthday person in the early hours of the morning with, "Las Mañanitas". Maybe it's a little cheesy but nothing makes a person feel more special than being serenaded awake, at least in my opinion. I'm probably my family's least favorite person to serenade, though, because I'm such an early riser so they have to wake up super early to sing to me before I wake up. Anyway, once I was up, they had a birthday present waiting for me to open. Boy, was I surprised when I pulled out a LuLu Lemon jacket out of the birthday bag! LuLu Lemon, is this totally awesome fitness wear brand that has the  cutest things that are ridiculously pricey. Even though I love their stuff I've never been able to buy any of it which is why my parents birthday present to me was so perfect! Of course after serenading me most of my family headed back off to their rooms for some more rest. I, on the other hand, hit the gym in my new stylin' jacket! The birthday celebrations continued with a special birthday breakfast, and then later a delicious lunch at Sawadee! Remember when I mentioned Sawadee in this post? I never thought I'd love Thai food this much but I'm seriously smitten with this place. I was so spoiled this year. In addition to the jacket I got first thing in the morning I also got a few more gifts while we were eating lunch at the restaurant. My favorite of which being this awesome tile that my older sister bought me. 

My family and I wrapped up the birthday celebrations later in the evening with birthday cake. I got a white cake with a raspberry filling and a layer of marzipan on top. I ADORE marzipan! It's seriously the most delicious thing to ever be created! Oh and my cake, looked so adorable. My sisters ordered it for me and had the decorator write one of our inside joke's on it for me. 

See isn't just so cute?! Oh, and a quick explanation on the fish kid part. Ever since I started this blog my dad has taken to calling me 'the fish kid'. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why he kept calling me 'the fish kid'. I mean, I thought it was cute albeit a little random. When I finally asked him why, he responded with, "Well, isn't your blog thing called stories of a fish kid??" Except he said this all in Spanglish, of course. Haha, that's dads for ya I guess. :) All in all a great birthday...21...oh boy. When all is said and done I thought that being 21 would make me feel light years old, and at first it did, but now that I've had time to warm up to the idea the more I'm liking 21. It's not light years old, at all, by any means, and I have I strong feeling that 21 will be good to me! 

Even though I'm digging 21 I still occasionally miss the days when I was that wide eyed tiny human full of imagination and endless excitement. 

Much Love!

21 Part 1

Weeeeelllll, my birthday came and went and may I say it was completely fabulous!! I decided to split the birthday post into two posts rather than one because 21 is just such a big birthday that it deserves it! I started the birthday celebrations a little early by going out last Friday with a group of girlfriends for a night of ultimate fun: laser tag and Chili's! ;) I had never actually been laser tagging which is part of the reason I even wanted to go in the first place. The other part being that one of my favorite TV characters, Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother, is obsessed with laser tag and he always makes it seem so fun. I mean, watch this.

Doesn't that just seem ridiculously fun?! Anyway, real life laser tag wasn't actually anything like that. At all. We ended up playing with a group of ruthless men. Needless to say we got creamed. I mean, we gave it our best effort but we stood no chance. In our defense, we did get a good number of shots in and two of the ladies in our group made into the top 24 score wise. Anyway, we followed up our game of laser tag with a stop at Chili's in which we ate entirely too many fries and topped it all off with an oooey gooey birthday brownie covered in creamy vanilla ice cream. Yuuuuummm. Can you say food coma? Oh and of course when you eat too many fries and brownie that late at night crazy faces, laughter, and British/Spanish accents are bound to ensue.

And of course, when you don't drink what better way to celebrate 21 than with a mango iced tea?

Much love!

Kiss me I'm not Irish!

{Abercrombie Kids: button up top similar, H&M: dress similar here and here, boots similar}

Well, today was St. Patrick's day. As you can see I'm not wearing any green...or am I? I've never been one for going all out in green on St. Patrick's day. I think it's mostly due to the fact that St. Patrick's day isn't celebrated in my country so for the first few years of living here I would always forget to wear green, the price of which was always pretty hefty because kids? They're vengeful little pee wee's that pack a mean pinch. After the first few years of forgetting to wear green I learned my lesson. Not only that, but I gained a desire for vengeance, which of course inspired me to put together a plan for action. In all the following St. Patrick's days I would always wear just a hint of green on a very hidden area of my outfit and I got my revenge in full. When all the other fellow children would run up and pinch me yelling "you're not wearing any green!" I would quickly flash them my hint of green and pinch them a glorious ten times in return. Suckers. Granted, even though they had it coming, I've never been one to enjoy inflicting pain on others so I'd go easy on the little tykes. Anyway, ever since those childhood years, I've just kept up the tradition of wearing just a tiny dash of green on this glorious seemingly pointless holiday. This year there was just a tiny bit of green on my flower clip. Which you can see below. Also, quick side note, Pinterest is now my favorite place for hair ideas. I got the idea for this bun on there and it turned out totally cool. Go follow me, and take a look for yourself! http://pinterest.com/lifeofacoyfish/

 Anyway, the final touch of green I wore today was in the flower pattern of my dress. Now that I'm a fully fledged adult -21 in two days!- pinching isn't really in vogue anymore so it didn't really matter. Oh and I'm still totally in love with these boots that I posted about last Sunday! AND, good news! They're still in stock in the location at Fashion Place for those of you who live in Utah. AND now their clearance shoes are an extra 50% off so you can get them for $10 instead of the $20 that I bought them for! 

Happy St. Patrick's day!!

P.S. My awesome sister Allison took these awesome photos and I LOVE how they turned out, so kudos to her and her creativity! Also, I'm totally in love with this lipstick color that two of my best girlfriends gifted me for my birthday!

Flowy Flowery Maxi and a Beautiful Day

{F21: skirt similar, basic tee similar, belt similar, Ross: denim vest similar, Charlotte Russe: shoes similar}

Today is a good day because the weather today? Yeah, it's just GLORIOUS! It's the kind of weather that just makes a girl really happy to be alive. The kind of weather that's got a deliciously bright sun showering down its beautiful rays. The kind of weather that's got just the right amount of breeze making its way through the sky's so that in the moment just before you get too hot you feel it's gentle touch tickling your shoulders. It's days like today that make me marvel at the world and all of its inhabitants. Ranging from the majestic trees and the cool shade they offer, to all the little creatures that come out of their little winter hidey holes to play, to even my very own existence. Today I feel especially blessed and grateful to be alive. Today I feel like I have the world at my fingertips. Today I feel like I could conquer anything. With all of this desperation to be alive just about to burst from my every pore, today I will conquer a ten mile run in preparation for the half marathon I have coming up in two weeks.

Much love!

P.S. this is like one of my favorite skirts EVER. It's super flattering, and so swishy that it creates a nice little breeze around my legs as I walk. Plus, when I found it at F21 a few months ago I thought it would be $20, and it ended up only being $9!

Call me Rebecca Bloomwood

{F21: dress similar here & here, denim jacket similar, belt similar, H&M: boots similar}

Oh the glories of shopping! As one Rebecca Bloomwood from Confessions of a Shopaholic would put it, "You know that thing when you see someone cute and he smiles and your heart kind of goes like warm butter sliding down hot toast? Well that's what it's like when I see a store. Only it's better." For the past three months I'd been doing SO well keeping my shopping in check. I even did a 30 day no shopping challenge which I briefly blogged about here, here, here, and here! I'd been re-inventing ways to wear "old" things in my closet to keep things interesting. I'd even been digging up old treasures from not only my closet but everyone else in my family's as well to keep things fresh. Yesterday, though, I fell off the bandwagon. My little sister informed me of a mega sale going on at H&M. H&M being one of my favorite stores I obviously HAD to go. At the very least to just go "briefly" check out what they had. I told myself I'd only allow myself to spend $20, because $20 isn't that much and wouldn't put a big dent into my college student budget. Can I just say that I was SEVERELY kidding myself. I walked in and of course everything was just heart achingly beautiful and well...on sale so of course irresistible. I had to just grab everything in sight that I liked. I was having a Rebecca Bloomwood moment. You know that scene in the movie when she says, "A man will never love or treat you as well as a store. If a man doesn't fit, you can't exchange him seven days later for a gorgeous cashmere sweater. And a store always smells good. A store can awaken a lust for things you never even knew you needed. And when your fingers first grasp those shiny new bags...oh yes...oh yes"? I was having a moment similar to that. I do have some self control, though, so out of the MANY things that I grabbed and tried on I only left the store with four. Two pairs of shoes, which were originally $50, and I snagged at $20 (One of those pairs of shoes happens to be the pair I'm wearing in the photos above. Gorgeous right?), a maroon hat, and a pair of gorgeous funky printed pants. Not too bad, eh? Eh?? If I had my way, though, I'd definitely go back tomorrow for this gorgeous wide brimmed hat that was only $7. Alas, I must resist because, although, I only bought four items and I scored mega deals I still spent around $75. Bleh. Well, at least I'm not quite as bad a shopaholic as dear old Rebecca Bloomwood. I can proudly say I don't have any credit card debt, and I've never spent $200 on Marc Jacobs underwear. Although, underwear is a basic human right...so...maybe I should. Ha, just kidding ya! Oh, and on that note, one last quote from good old Confessions of a Shopaholic. "Life is like a swap meet. You never know when great riches...are going to turn up unexpectedly." I hope in way of unexpected great riches my metaphorical swap meet cranks me out the Luke Brandon to my Rebecca Bloomwood. 

Much love!

Everyone has an inner rebel...mine comes out on the train

{Dress: borrowed similar, Jacket: F21 similar, Boots: old similar, Necklace: gift}

Oh, the train, the train, the train! There's so much to say about it! The first of which being that, call me crazy but I actually love riding the train. I don't have a car so whenever I can't catch a ride with my sisters or borrow a car the train is the way to go. Plus it's free for students so that's a plus. There's always a ton of stuff to look at out the window on the way to and from school too. I never get tired of looking out the window because there's always something different to look at and something that I hadn't noticed before. We always seem to pass the coolest places too, but the places that stick out to me the most and that I consider to be "cool" are usually the weirdest in the middle of nowhere places. I can never figure out quite where they are or how a person would actually get to them so whenever we pass them I wish that I could call out to the train driver to stop the train immediately so I could get off and dilly dally for a bit in the middle of nowhere. Of course that would never happen because not only would it interrupt the entire train schedule but also no matter how loud I yelled, the train driver would never hear me because that's another thing. The train driver has his own little compartment at the front of the train complete with a sign on the door that says, "Please do not disturb the driver". I don't know why but that sign really irritates me, I think mostly because whenever I see signs with instructions to not do a certain something I immediately really want to do the something I'm not supposed to do. Call me a rebel. Sometimes I fantasize about what would happen if I ran over to the driver's door and started yelling and banging on the door. We'd probably all get into some crazy wreck because the driver got distracted and then I'd end up in prison or something, but in my imagination I'd just run up there and really immaturely stick my tongue out at the driver and go "na, na, na, na, na, na". It'd be fun, me and the driver would have a good laugh about it with each other, and then we'd continue our journey being the best of friends. Scattered throughout the train are a bunch of other signs that tell you a bunch of rules about riding the train. You know, just usual stuff like wear headphones with your audio devices, keep animals on a leash, no crude language, and my favorite of all "must wear shirt and shoes to board the train". Well what about pants huh?? You mean it would be perfectly alright for me, or anyone else for that matter, to get on the train with no bloody pants on? I guess bare legs and bum cheeks are perfectly acceptable publicly. Go figure. Anyway, I hadn't ever really noticed ANY of these signs until I rode the train with my sister a couple of weeks ago and she pointed them out to me. The reason for this is that I generally try to avoid reading signs that tell me to do things, because as mentioned above those signs usually just awaken my inner she-demon. The only sign I noticed since day one was this sign about bicycles on the train.

This guy noticed me taking this picture and he must have thought I was taking creepy photos of him because as you can see he got pretty disgruntled. Anyway, I only noticed this sign because I used to take my bike on the train with me so I could ride it the rest of the way to campus so I needed to know proper bike etiquette. Riding my bike got kind of annoying and butt rapey because of the seat if you know what I mean, so I switched to running instead. Oh, and there's another thing about the train. There's this little robotic female voice that informs all of us wee little passengers of the upcoming stops and "gently" reminds us of train etiquette. There are two rules that seem to be her favorite to point out. They also happen to be the two main rules that I sometimes usually  always break. Number one being, and please imagine this in a soft female robotic voice, "Please consider others. Don't put your feet on the seats." Pshhh. As if. This train lady clearly knows nothing about comfort. I mean, how could she? She's a disembodied voice. The number one rule of riding the train in comfort is picking a window seat near the doors with no other seats in front of you and riding with your legs and feet comfortably stretched out on the seat next to you. Ahh sheer comfort! Now, before you all go off thinking I'm a terrible human being you should all know that I only do this when there aren't very many people on the train. I'm not a total jerk! If everyone has a seat of their own I don't see any reason why my tired little feetsies shouldn't have a seat of their own too. Right? Right?? The second rule is, "Please allow seniors and passengers with disabilities to sit in their designated areas." I'm pretty sure that my favorite seat on the train, you know, the one mentioned above, is the designated seating area for seniors and passengers with disabilities. Now, before you guys chew my head off you should know that I've never been on the train with a person with a disability (if in the future I ever do ride with a person with a disability I'd  surrender my seat to them) and the times I've ridden the train with old people they've already picked out different seats that they obviously liked better than their designated area. So fair game right? I think so.

Anyone see a pattern here, though? I'm obviously a train rule breaker. Sigh...I guess I should work on being a "considerate" passenger, huh? I'll give it a shot. Anyway, the final reason I love the train is the people watching. I'm a HUGE people watcher. It's my favorite pass time. I've seen so many interesting things by people watching on the train!

Much love!

P.S. A quick word on the outfit. I think now that it's warm enough I'm going to live in dresses and skirts. I love my weird looking combatish boots. They're so cool, even my hipster painting professor complimented them. Side note on my professor, he looks like a ginger version of Hagrid from Harry Potter, and personality wise he's like the big friendly giant. Also, my military jacket is actually from F21's kids line but I loved it so much I bought it in a bigger size anyway. I mean, I don't know if you guys have noticed but kids clothes are freaking awesome, totally cute, and cheaper than adult clothes. So why not buy a few of their items every now and again?

P.P.S. I know. I know. This post is already YEARS long, but I just have to give a quick credit to my grumpy but albeit wonderful sisters who take all of my wonderful pictures and would like to be given their due credit.