looking back on summer 2018

These summer storms have been keeping me pensive lately. In some ways, I feel like summer is just beginning, but looking back, it's actually nuts that so much has happened over the past few months (both good and bad). Today, I'm only sharing the good.

My summer has consisted of...

Graduating with my master's. Obviously one of the biggest moments of my summer (and probably life). It's been a long three years back in school and working at a restaurant again, but this chapter of my life is finally coming to a close.

Getting engaged! It's been almost three months since Ryan proposed. Since then, we've been easing into the wedding planning, but we've still knocked a few things out! More on that to follow in a later post.

Taylor Swift's Reputation tour with my girlfriends. In case you missed it on Instagram, we all dressed up in a variation of matching "I Heart TS" shirts (like from the Look What You Made Me Do music video, of course!) with high waisted shorts (I got these from Amazon and they are strangely amazing) and danced the night away. Despite our great seats, I managed to leave my glasses at home, so I couldn't exactly see everything the way I would have liked to. I scrolled through Taylor Swift hashtags the next morning and actually felt FOMO about a concert I attended. Sigh.

Staycationing at the Sandpearl on Clearwater Beach with girlfriends (again). Following graduation, Ryan and I initially wanted to take a trip together to celebrate. However, it's been a stressful time at work for him, so I ended up doing a little "staycation" for one night at a beautiful resort on one of the local beaches. We brunched, we beached, we conquered.

Blogger/"influencer" events. While I hardly feel like a blogger anymore, I've managed to get myself invited to a few local events which always keeps my spirits high. I love connecting with other bloggers and influencers in the area, and most times we get to do some pretty cool stuff together. I got to make this future house/wedding sign at AR Workshop, and hopped around downtown St. Pete for an exclusive block party featuring some of the cutest spots in the area.

Lots of reading! Now that I'm done with school, I've had alllll the time to read. This month I finished up Little Fires Everywhere, To All the Boys I Loved Before (so I could watch the movie...duh), and Firefly Lane, and now I'm reading Vanishing Girls. Guys, I really tried to get into Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis but I just could not. I totally get the appeal, but it simply wasn't my cup of tea. I ended up returning it after getting about 50 pages in...and then I got a new pair of shoes instead. Ohhh, Target.

My birthday at the beach! I had my heart set on a beach party to ring in my 27th birthday this year, and it did not disappoint. Neither did this one piece from Aerie. Still obsessed!

What were some of your favorite moments this summer?

a little update in my newest season of life

I'm not quite sure how we've gotten past the midway point of August without so much as a blog post about me graduating (though I'm sure you're over hearing about it via Instagram), but here we are. I am a fresh little graduated petunia, and I'm scared out of my mind. But we will save that for a later date, yeah?

August has actually thrown me for an emotional loop. About a week after graduation, my grandad passed away. He'd been battling cancer for a number of years - was in remission for awhile before it came back and metastasized - but he's been in a lot of pain for the past year, so while I'm heartbroken, I'm also a tad relieved. I'm fortunate enough to be able to say that this is my first time dealing with the loss of a loved one, and it's definitely been a process. I posted a little something about it on my Instagram story on Sunday, which felt weird. I felt like I needed to acknowledge it in some way, but for the most part, I've been trying to keep it all pretty personal. So this is me acknowledging it again - not to say, "hey, feel sorry for me!" but to say "hey, sometimes social media makes it seem like things are pretty and perfect and all is going well in the world, when really, I'm crashing in ways that I don't necessarily want to talk about...but this is proof that it is happening." Does that make sense?

Shout out to Ryan for being a damn trooper during all of this - from hand holding to laundry, making dinner, and being on pooch patrol. I will say that I really lucked out in the life partner category.

In other lighter news, it's certainly weird to know that I'm not going back to school this week for the first time in three years. In some ways, the last few years felt like the longest of my life, but for the most part, they flew by. I've been job hunting and trying to find the right "fit," but I've also been trying to relax and enjoy this little season of unemployment. I'm still serving tables until then, so in between shifts I've been going to the gym, reading books, and getting together with friends.

To cap off this mixed up post, I figured I'd drop a little "currently" closer to keep you up to date with the frivolous bits in my life:

Reading: Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah and Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis.
Watching: Not a whole lot, honestly. I need to find something to binge watch.
Buying: These, these (which I would check your local store for...I bought them for $6.88 before the coupon!), and these from Target because they have a 30% off flat sandals coupon on Cartwheel (until August 25!). I nevvver buy shoes, so getting all three of these for less than $40 was a real treat. Additionally, I bought an Enso ring for work/the gym because I am deathly afraid of ring avulsion. I went for the pyramid stackable in pink sand.
Establishing: a morning routine. Well, attempting to, anyway. More on that later.
Attending (?): Taylor Swift's Reputation tour! I went with a group of girlfriends last week and to no surprise, Taylor killed it. I left my glasses at home (womp womp), so aside from the giant screen, I couldn't see her very well, but I had such a blast.
Booking: wedding things! If you follow along on Instagram, you'll see that we signed a contract with a venue in downtown St. Pete, and we are so pumped! Now to book everything else...yikes.

what's up with the wedding? vol. 1

Due to popular demand, I have decided to commence a semi-regular wedding planning blog series to keep everyone up to date on the whereabouts of the Future Fredericks and our eventual wedding.

(Note: there was no popular demand. Nobody asked. Moving on.)

It's been almost two months since Ryan and I got engaged. For the first couple of weeks, I tried to just enjoy being engaged. We popped a few bottles of bubbly, let our friends take us out to dinner, accepted cute gifts like personalized wine glasses and ring dishes. I reallt wanted to enjoy the 'cloud 9' phase that comes with being engaged before launching into wedding planning.

...but that time came and went when I emailed my top choice for a wedding venue and they were already booked for every Saturday in October 2019. YIKES.

Fact about me: when it comes to big decisions, I have an 'all or nothing' mentality. Translation: if I can't plan our entire wedding and calculate our exact budget in the next 15 minutes, it's not going to get done. When I get into this mindset, my mom tells me that my brain has hopped on its "hamster wheel." In other words, approximately 32984293 thoughts are running through my head at one time and I try to acknowledge, crack, and solve all of them in one fell swoop. Not an easy feat.

Thus, I am trying to tackle this whole wedding planning thing one day at a time while trying to keep it fun. After all, that's all we want our day to be: fun. We aren't an extravagant couple to begin with; we've even talked about having gourmet pizza at our wedding. But imagining a dream wedding and actually planning one are two completely different ballgames.

So far, we have...

• Toured five venues, with a few more to check out in the next couple of weeks.
• Decided that we are more than happy to have a Friday wedding. In fact, we prefer it.
• Attended two bridal shows (well, I have). They give you a lot of free cake at these shindigs, which is worth the price of admission if you ask me.
• Cried. Okay, I cried. Not sure why. I think "partake in unnecessary dramatics" is listed in a wedding to-do list somewhere.
• Bought a cute little bullet journal as a wedding planner.
• Not decided on our "colors." Pretty sure choosing colors falls into the "don't pet the sweaty stuff" category, but here I am, sweating the petty stuff.
• Looked up 100+ photographers, 300+ venues, 20+ rental companies, etc.
• Decided on a potential hashtag: #AreYouFreddyForIt? Ryan's last name is Fredericks (his nickname is Freddy), and it was obviously inspired by my favie Taylor Swift. In the running: #FreddySetGo and #FreddyOrNot. Can you think of any that include my last name (Rose)?! Let me know!

All in all, it is definitely a process. Wedding planning is not for the weak, and I am truly in awe of the individuals who pursue it as a career because good lawd, it can be stressful. But having said all that, it's also a lot of fun, and I'm trying to soak up every minute! 

pre-graduation chit-chat

Almost three and a half years ago, I quit my job to begin my journey into speech-language pathology. Nearly two years after graduating college, I abandoned my initial bachelor's in mass communication in exchange for post-bacc classes and a GRE book. That first year was one of the most difficult years of my life - I questioned myself a lot, didn't feel smart enough, didn't feel good enough, cried in the shower, didn't get enough sleep. Once I actually got into graduate school, I did a lot of the same things.

...and now I'm eight days out from graduation and in the process of looking for jobs. Like a real-life, paying, not-working-on-weekends kinds of jobs. How did I even get here?

A lot of my friends have been messaging me things like "you're already done?! that went by so quickly!" And when I look back on my journey, I think the same thing. The days are long but the years are short and all that, right? 

My underlying message beneath my rambling is this: if there's something you want to achieve, but you're worried about the time it would take to complete, just start. Make the sacrifice, take the initiative, and simply begin where you can. The time is going to pass, anyway. As the end of my academic career nears, I rarely think about how difficult it was to get to this point; instead, I think about the light at the end of the tunnel and the future I built for myself. It was all worth it.

Is there something you've been wanting to do, but you're worried about the time commitment? Let me know in the comments!

our first date

Nearly five years ago, on October 12th, 2013, I had my first date with a guy I'd met out at a bar.

We met on a Friday night, and we actually became Snapchat friends (I'd downloaded Snapchat that very day), then Facebook friends, then started Facebook messaging, then started texting by Saturday morning...but he didn't ask me on a date until that Wednesday.


"How about lunch on Saturday, since you work at night?" he'd asked me (I was a few months post-undergrad, and still serving at Carrabba's). I told him I could "probably pencil him in." Even though we'd only been texting back and forth for just a few days, I already felt something along the lines of "this is different." It felt like I'd known him forever; but of course, at the risk of sounding daft, I kept that to myself.

He was tall (like, really tall) so naturally I set off to DSW to find a new pair of wedges so I could be tall, too. As it turns out, wedges are really hard to come by in October, even though Florida has absolutely zero reason to break out the booties until February. Thus, I settled on my black version of Target's popular pair of braided summer sandals, and a black and cream striped high waisted skirt with a black crop top (obviously all on trend for 2013).

He lived in a neighboring city about 45 minutes away from my parents' place, where I was living at the time. I told him that if he drove to my parents' house, I would drive us to a restaurant in downtown St. Pete. He agreed, and off we went.

He was so shy that day, to the point where I even had to tell him, "you can look me in the eyes, you know." I'm very subtle, right? He ordered sausage and lentil soup, which I later learned was his favorite; something his dad had been making for years. I had spinach in my teeth for about a half an hour before he finally told me about it.

Nearly five years later, I can't remember much about what we talked about. Maybe past relationships, what we did in college, our viewpoints on first-date appropriate topics. What I do remember is just how easy it felt - and how easy it's been ever since (and now I get to marry this guy - turns out "when you know," you really do know, huh?).

Do you remember what your first date was like with your S.O.?