Roadtrip: Bellingham

Hello again internet! It's been a long time and I apologize for that. I recently lost someone very, very important to me and so I have been spending these last few months reflecting on different aspects of my life like who I am and want to be. When my birthday rolled around at the beginning of March, I decided to have a little get away by myself. I am someone who really appreciates my alone time and so a weekend trip down to my family's place in Birch Bay, Washington helped ring in my 25th birthday. I am a creature of habit and tend to do the same things over and over, like eating the same things or visiting the same places so I decided that this trip would be a chance to see some parts of Bellingham that I haven't seen before and all that I can say is that it is BEAUTIFUL!

I went to the Fairhaven Area of Bellingham which is the historic district of the city. It is beautiful, the buildings are brick and sturdy but have been reclaimed by local stores and companies. Village Books is famous for this area, is it a gorgeous book store with three levels and so much personality.

I am a huge fan of sweets and candy, my favourites being salty black licorice and I couldn't pass up going in to Papa's sweets - I left with lots of licorice and delicious salt water taffy, I posted a picture of the flavours I picked up on my instagram

Tony's Coffee is another staple in Fairhaven and the coffee is delicious - something you can not miss!

Buildings like these are all over Fairhaven and I love the look

I couldn't have asked for a nicer day to explore the city. Since Bellingham is also a port town, there was a beautiful seawall where you could pretend the yacht's belonged to you  

Fat Pie Pizza was by far the best pizza I have ever had! The taste is so fresh and the service is great - plus there is a donut and ice cream place next door so that is always an extra bonus ;-)

This building was my favourite by far - someone had shaped the vines on the side of the building to make a beautiful heart.

I finished my day back on the beach in Birch Bay to watch the sun to go down and to think about my Oma who passed away a few weeks before. I miss her everyday and sitting on the beach reflecting made me feel closer to her than I had since she was gone.

Thank you everyone for letting me share! I will be back posting regularly and have new projects coming soon!

stay clumsy

xx jamie

Surviving a Quarter Life Crisis

First off, the name quarter life crisis, and don’t get me wrong, I want to live to be old, adorable and short but there is no way that this body is living to 100 with all of the McDonalds I ingested in my University days (hello dollar menu). So then if you put it into perspective, I’m pretty much a third of a way through my life. Well, that just made this so much worse. There is a number of reasons people have a quarter life crisis, my reason is that everything is just changing way too damn fast and not in the best way possible. I am already a fairly emotional person – which is why I can’t watch Army Homecoming videos or Ellen without an entire roll of tissues however, I feel like I’m even more of a Unstable Sally over here lately.  It’s the feeling of an elastic, one thing after another is pulling the elastic tighter, and tighter, and tighter until the elastic will snap. What will happen when I snap? My guess is that I will be in the fetal position on the floor with lots of candy and smart food wrappers littered around me. However, I am doing everything I can for that to not happen. Then I realized that there are tons of people on the internet who may be going through the same thing so why not talk about it.

I am currently in the mode of Operation: don’t turn into Jack Nicholson from the Shining. After Googling about quarter life crisis it didn’t help ease my stress about it – does googling what’s wrong with you ever really help? But there was some good ways to help get me through it.

Have a planner…and use it. I don’t know how many planners I have had over the years that became half full (read: 4 pages full) before I stopped using it. I am going to scour Etsy to find an adorable planner that I will enjoy writing in and planning out. I feel that having things organized in my life will really help and I can preplan most of my time so I know what’s going on.

Have my friends there. I don’t have a lot of friends but I’m totally okay with that. I am a bit of a homebody and while I tell the friends I do have basically everything going on in my life, I don’t usually get into how I’m feeling about it or how it’s affecting me.  I opened up to a friend the other day and it was one of the best things I did – of course we looked like crazy people at the restaurant we went to because I was crying at the table and she was tearing up but hey, we just wanted the full dining experience, am I right? One thing I have also learned from this is that not every friend is that kind of friend. At first I was frustrated because I tried to open up to one of my friends and it wasn’t the same as my cry fest with my other friend but then I realized that not everyone is the same. Friends are all different, so remember that - they all have their amazing qualities that make them so special to you!

Budget. For a while I was tracking my budget on an excel spreadsheet and it was going great. However, once I was starting to feel upset, stressed or whatever else was happening that day, I went shopping. Soon I didn’t want to track my money since I knew the outcome wasn’t looking good. Staying on top of that will really help me feel less stressed out about financials in the long term… Starbucks will never be cut from this budget, just sayin.

Making time for doing things that I love. I love this blog but I am also getting lazy. I have days where I come home and just want to lay in bed for the rest of the night and go to sleep. It’s not healthy for me and it’s not healthy for my sleep pattern either. I need to keep motivated and make some of the projects I have written down on paper a reality, this going in tandem with having a planner. After I do finish a project I feel so much better and then I’m think to myself, why don’t I do this more often? And then I go off to bed at 6pm and don’t look back. Doing something that makes me that happy should come as a priority so that’s what I am going to make it from now on!

Healthy Body,  Healthy Mind. This one will be hard. I am not really a gym person however, I know what I should be doing and how to be healthy… it’s just a matter of actually doing it that makes it hard. I just joined the gym in my office tower so I am going to work out every morning before work to help start my day. Yesterday was my first day back and I will admit – it felt great. I had loud music in my ears, weight lifting and running again plus my workout clothes are cute so that is always a bonus. Diet is also a part of that. I have been eating healthier in the last week or so and I already am feeling better. Less heartburn (I always have it!), less stomach aches and less bloating (heyo!) so I am going to try to keep it up but I am also going to indulge because hey, we are all human.

Don't be hard on myself. I am constantly thinking, I should be doing this, I should have accomplished this by now. And you know what? I haven't. I need to stop comparing myself to others and humming and hawing about how those people are doing and celebrate my accomplishments. Taking the pressure off and not letting outside expectations take control over the life I'm living is the key to not being Jack Nicholson. I am my worst critic but I am also going to be my biggest fan.

Thanks for letting me share this with you and things will go back to regularly scheduled programming here soon!  Leave me a comment if you have any advice to help this crisis go away or if you have gone through the same thing to help me feel less crazy ;-)

stay clumsy

xx jamie