week one

welcome to my new blog!!

Fiestas y Siestas is no longer (though fiesta-ing and siesta-ing are still two of my favorite things to do!) and in its place is, "picture this!," a challenge I've given myself to take a picture a day, every day, for one whole year. I started on the first day of the semester, and I'm hoping that I can manage to keep it up for the next three hundred sixty four :)

It's harder than you would think, taking a picture every day! I got the idea from a website I stumbled upon, and here is what it has to say about "Project 365" and why you should do it!

WHY DO IT?

Taking a photo a day is a big undertaking with big payoffs. Here are just a few reasons why you should consider doing it:

• Imagine being able to look back at any day of your year and recall what you did, who you met, what you learned… (Often we find it hard to remember what we did just yesterday or even last night, let alone a whole year ago!)

• Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.

• Taking a photo a day will make you a better photographer. Using your camera every day will help you learn its limits. You will get better at composing your shots, you’ll start to care about lighting, and you’ll become more creative with your photography when you’re forced to come up with something new every single day.

Sounds like fun right? Plus, I love that it has so much to do with a quote that I love,

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

- Annie Dillard

I hope you'll follow me for the next 365 days! Please help and hold me accountable for having a new, original picture for every day of the year. I can't promise I'll post my picture every day, but I'll try to do it as often as I can.

So, here are my first 6 days! Enjoy :)

xoxo Lauren

DAY ONE (Monday, August 30, 2010)

Monday was the first day of classes! I love this campus =]

DAY TWO

On Tuesday, all of my Spain pictures got delivered! (All 594 of them!) Now if I could just find the time to put them all into a scrapbook...

DAY THREE

Check out this work of art (aka, Christine and my closet!) I spent all afternoon cleaning my stuff off of the floor and the shelves and organizing my clothes. Let's see how long it stays this beautiful.

DAY FOUR

This frame is my favorite part of our living room! It's huge and has pictures of all of our friends. We spent the last few days adding pictures and making sure everyone made an appearance, and finally finished and hung it up tonight. I'm obsessed!

DAY FIVE

Ahhh, finally! I can't believe it took me this long to finally get to my favorite College Park eatery - YogiBerry! For those of you unfamiliar with this yummy locale, it's a frozen yogurt place with 6-8 different flavors at self-serve machines, and a TON of delicious fruit and candy to put on top. Needless to say, I'm in love. (Good thing it's also one of the cheaper places to eat!)

DAY SIX

On Saturday, I went to a barbeque at my friends' house. We were all hanging out in the yard, playing ladder golf, grilling, and soaking up the last rays of summer sun. It was such a great time - but the best part of the day was when we got to play with this little guy. My friends live in a pretty residential neighborhood, and across the street we found him playing outside with his mom. I went over when I saw Sam and Katlyn playing soccer with him, and it was definitely love at first sight =] We played soccer for a while and then brought him over to introduce him to our friends and play in our inflatable pool. He only spoke Spanish, which was probably another reason why I loved him so much (that, and the enormous smile he got on his face every time we splashed around in the pool!) I will definitely be making repeat visits to this house in hopes of playing with little Justin again!