See you over there!

It’s been a while since I’ve had a good photo sesh but I’ve been feeling more and more creative lately and days like today are pretty damn inspiring.

So to keep this short and sweet I thought I would let you all know that I am having a SALE at my Etsy shop! 25% off all large prints, sized 16″x24″ and up, through Saturday March 6th, in honor of my brothers birthday. AND if you buy two or more, you will only have to pay shipping for ONE item!

Pretty awesome sale, considering oversized prints ALWAYS cost a lot for shipping. (I may have learned this the really hard way on my first sale. Ouch.)

Every print you see on Etsy, in my Flickr account or on my website, is available in these large sizes, even if they aren’t listed. Just request and you shall receive!

Prices are:

16″x24″: Originally $80, on Sale for $60.

20″x30″: Originally $90, on Sale for $67.50

24″x36″: Originally $160, on Sale for $120

Please check out my Etsy shop and if you are interested, just shoot me an email!

Oh and if you are still reading me on wordpress.com. WHY??? Go to my new domain and remember to update your readers.

Do you remember how I went to Europe a few months ago? I bet you do. How could you forget? I haven’t told any stories recently but feel like I need to start telling them again, lest you feel all left out.

One of the funniest moments of the entire trip was when I was in Essaouira (essa-weerrah) in Morocco. A little backstory: this Morocco trip was kind of one of those domino moments. It would never have happened if I had not been pranked by The Messenger who I dragged out for drinks who then followed me to London and who, in turn, dragged me to Amsterdam. I was only supposed to stay in Amsterdam for two days but I fell in love with the place and decided to spend the extra money to change my flight to leave from Brussels on Sunday, instead of from London on Thursday. Seeing that hostels were pretty damn pricey in Amsterdam, I needed a cheap way to stay there. That’s when the Messenger suggested I try Couchsurfing.

I had heard of it from previous people I had met along my travels, but I had never really pursued it. It seemed like a good option, seeing how now that I had made the change to stay there, I needed to be able to actually sleep somewhere–outside of a park bench. I started emailing people and heard back from this girl, Anneke. I ended up staying with her for a few nights and had a great time. In the middle of all this, I was also babysitting The Messenger who was suffering from a really bad hit off of a special brownie. That’s another story for you, though.

One evening we were chatting about our travels and she mentions she was going to Morocco. She didn’t have anyone to go with and she was worried about traveling by herself. I asked her when she was going and when I heard it aligned with my travels in southern Spain, I mentioned that I’d love to join her. And that’s how Morocco came about.

I do want to talk about the entire Morocco trip and experience but since this is longer than I had already planned, I will just discuss this one event. It was at the tail end of our trip and it was just Anneke and I, having shed our third traveling companion, Richard. We had just been in Marrakesh where we indulged in freshly squeezed fruit juices, fruit smoothies and excellent shopping. We also had a bit of a bad experience on the last night there with the couchsurfer we were staying with but that wasn’t stopping Anneke and I from enjoying the last of our stay.

We took this ridiculously hot, local bus that took 5 hours to get us out there and we pledged NEVER to take a local bus in Morocco EVER again. (Seriously. If you go to Morocco only take the CTM buses. Air Conditioning is your best friend.) We stepped off the bus in Essaouira and were instantly met with a cold breeze. Not just a breeze but a strong wind. We quickly learned that based on it’s location on the coast, it had some pretty strong winds and was a major mecca for wind surfers. The cool air was a welcome refresher and the fact that we were staying in an AMAZING hotel, with separate beds, a sit down toilet and a hot water shower, all things that were terribly exciting at that stage in our trip.

We ate dinner at this little shack on the beach where you could pick out whatever super fresh seafood you wanted and afterwards took a walk on the extremely windy beach. We watched the wind surfers and the kite surfers playing in the waves and then started noticing these three local boys trying to learn to kite surf on the sand.

I’d seen this done at my parent’s lake house on lake michigan but it was by professionals. The guy learning clearly had no idea what he was doing. In fact, he had absolutely no control over the kite whatsoever. The wind was intense and it was just dragging him around the beach.

To help him out one of his friends grabbed him to ground him more. When that didn’t work and the two of them were being dragged around, the third guy grabbed the two of them and eventually they were sitting on the sand.

At this point we had stopped and were watching them from a distance. The kite was literally hitting the ground at all sides and we feared for our lives. We also didn’t want them to hear us laughing, which we were doing plenty of.

They’re all sitting there, just like that, and all of a sudden a gust of wind comes along and the kite TAKES OFF.

They all lose control and the two anchor guys are shed like kleenexes. It drags the poor guy who is attached to this kite face first along the beach and meanwhile, the two guys who were shed at the initial take off are running after him.

Anneke and I are on the ground laughing so hard we are CRYING. (I’m not kidding. We had to sit down.) My stomach muscles were hurting by the time we managed to control it to a slight giggle and it was by far the funniest moment of my entire trip to Europe.  We kept walking down the beach after that and passed them again, as they were putting away the kite, and couldn’t help but laugh just a little more. Hopefully they hadn’t heard us cackling at them, or at least realized just how amusing the situation was.

Essaouira was probably one of my favorite stops on this trip and one of the few places in Morocco I would actually visit again. It’s very chill, laid back and a lot less stressful than the bigger cities. If you get a chance, go to this blue, windy city on the coast and stop by the beach. Maybe you’ll see some locals losing their battle to the wind.

Comments are closed, BUT that’s because I moved blogs! You can find Ashalah here, and you can find this post here. Please update your readers!

As I get more settled into my new home in Boulder, and settling back into my independent lifestyle, I have noticed that I’m also settling back into old, bad habits. Habits I wanted to kick when I left NYC. These included:

• My unhealthy eating habits. These include salty foods, sugar rushes, caffiene overloads, carbs galore and eating out a lot, particularly at Mexican restaurants which feature my favorite guilty pleasure: sour cream. The weight gain since I’ve gotten here is ridiculous and I’m NOT happy about it.
• My shopaholic tendencies. I had a feeling I’d run into this problem with a blank slate apartment where I’d be tempted to decorate and outfit every space. I’m spending more money than I have coming in and it’s a problem.
• Alcohol consumption. I drank a LOT in the last year in NYC and it was one habit I knew I needed to kick and fast. Not only was I drinking a lot, but I was drinking some heavy shit, like tequila. While tequila is awesome, it’s not good as your go-to-drink after a rough Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on the job.

All of these have come back full swing after arriving in Boulder and reactivating my social life. I’ve been going out for food and drinks and not ordering the most healthy stuff on the menu. The drinks thing has been nearly every night–whether it be at a bar or a bottle of wine or champagne at home. While not in mass consumption, it’s still more than I should be drinking.

As for shopping, it seems every day I pick up SOMETHING. Some things were important–a sofa, bed, sheets, food and business cards. But other things are not so important–a pair of $60 dollar ridiculously cute boots, a $5 set of plates (we already have like EIGHT in my cabinets), and Someecards postcards. And that barely covers the amount of crap I’ve purchased. I’m blowing through more money than I am making and I have to still be able to afford rent, heat, electricity, gas for my car and food for my belly on a freelancers budget, which doesn’t even make me enough for rent a month.

It’s problematic.

All these things have added up to one big bad mess for my health and for my stress levels. When I gain weight, or when I start thinking about money I STRESS OUT. And then I gain more weight because when I get stressed, I eat to feel better. Then I just feel like crap because I just gained 5 more lbs and all the weight I lost while in europe has been put back on and then I cry and then I eat some more.

It’s not just problematic, it’s a vicious cycle of crap. Which I need to put an end to NOW.

I have been kind of sad lately–not in the woe is me, depressed, angry, sad self from NYC who hated EVERYTHING, (since I infact love EVERYTHING about Boulder and my life right now. With the exception of the above.) but sad as in I miss my family and I really miss my friends. I still talk to my bests daily and my family as well, but it’s hard being so far away from all of them. The 2,000 + miles that are between me and NYC has been more and more apparent as time wears on and I get a routine settled here (that involved hours and hours spent at Barnes and Nobles). This home-sickness doesn’t hit that often which I’m lucky for, but it still sucks when it does surface. When I get sad, I tend to go to what’s comfortable which is what I know–food, shopping, alcohol. None of which solve any problems. As I think I’ve pointed out like a bajillion times in this post.

I am determined though to change my habits and get towards a new, healthier lifestyle. A new, healthier me. One that doesn’t forget where I have come from and the people who have helped shape me into the person I am now while I make new friends and new experiences. One who also doesn’t forget how a healthier Ashley is a more balanced, happier Ashley.

So, internets, I need you to hold me accountable for my actions. For cutting back on alcohol (I think I am quitting drinking for three weeks. It was jut one week but that doesn’t seem like enough.), stop eating out and eating unhealthily when I do eat out, making better food choices, stop drinking coffee and stop spending the money as if I have a steady income.

To comment on this post please go to my new site: http://www.ashalah.com or click here. Don’t forget to change your readers while I figure out how to merge the two blogs!

Bear with me until I figure out how to sync my feeds so that it doesn’t matter which one you have in your reader but for now, please update your readers with my new address! (And if anyone knows how to do this, yeah let me know too!)

It’s not that I’m having difficulties (more so than the usual) sleeping. My body has adjusted fairly well. It’s my parents who haven’t. My mom’s got the not calling early in the morning thing down but she needs to have better control over her husband who thinks 7am is a great time to start texting/calling. Sure it’s 9am his time, which is LATE for the 5am early bird that he is, but 9am is still pushing it with me. I am not a morning person.

Also, can I deviate for a second and talk about how both my parents now text?! It started because I always text and it lead to my mother texting me from downstairs when I lived on their third floor and now even my father is texting away. It’s downright frightening to see Mom Cell and Dad Cell pop up on my phone as a text message. Especially when they’re texting me at the same time. When both of them pop up at the same time, my brain feels like it might explode.

This morning’s 7am gem? Can you have apps on your phone? First, my father used an abbreviation Second, how does he know what those are and Third, is that so important that you have to text me at 7 IN THE MORNING?

Then at 8, after I hadn’t responded, he texts me again to let me know he shipped my hiking boots. AWESOME news, but still too early for me to get excited over the fact that I won’t die hiking thanks to very inadequate running shoes.

I texted him back around 10 and haven’t heard from him. The thing with my parents texting? Is that they don’t really understand them. Their phone will beep and they’ll be all, why is that beeping? What’s that little envelope stand for?

It could be days before I hear back from my dad and it’s not because he forgot to check his phone, it’ll be because he doesn’t know what that message thingy is.

Maybe I’m not giving him enough credit, maybe he does know what it is and is just IGNORING me.

This whole time difference thing (and the parents texting) is a fairly new experience to me. I have always lived in the same time zone as my family and best friends. Late night chats with friends in NYC wasn’t hard when I lived in Michigan because I was in the same time zone as them. My late night was their late night. Now my late night is their bedtime and their late night is my early evening.

It’s not my first experience with it, though. For three months I was 5-6 hours ahead of all my friends while I was gallivanting across Europe–my late night was their afternoon. Their late night was my early morning. So really, it’s not that bad of a difference being only 2 hours behind them. It’s manageable, I can still chat with my friends, I can deal with it.

Except for when my boss who is in the eastern time zone calls me at what I think is a reasonable hour and starts asking me why I haven’t finished the floorplans yet and then realizing that its noon her time and the middle of the work day and in her eyes I am late to work. Like four hours late.

Luckily, my boss is pretty awesome and instead of being angry with my being late, she apologizes for not remembering the time difference and then tells me she wants to hire me as her top interior designer when she restarts her business again.

That’s a long way off in my future though and not even sure a move back east will be in my cards, but it’s awesome to realize just how valued you are as an employee.

And then she texts you and you realize that everyone who was anti-texting is now texting you and you don’t know whether to throw your phone away or embrace the fact that everyone and literally their mother is texting you. When they start tweeting at you? THAT’S when you know  you have a problem.

I spent the first night sleeping on the floor of my new apartment (or was that the second? I can’t even remember!) and sunday discovering bulk shopping at Costco, or at least discovering it for myself since I’ve been shopping with my mom there loads. Fifteen boxes of Mac and Cheese? Three liters of olive oil? Yes please! I had to hold myself back from buying everything I saw. A subscription is in the works though and then my roommate and I can make use of that fabulous storage room we have for things like ten gallons of pine nuts and all the toilet paper we will ever need.

Monday we took a hike–which was more like a leisurely stroll through a lot of mud–which was absolutely gorgeous and one of my favorite things has got to be this weather. We were out in just sweatshirts and were actually quite warm. The weather, outside of the past two days of snow, has been in the upper forties and when I arrived, it was 52 degrees! AMAZING. I don’t even mind the snow because there are mountains in the backdrop which look even prettier with snow on them.

Another amazing thing has been my social life. Every night I have had plans. Saturday night we went out for dinner at Boulder Cafe with my roommate, her boyfriend and my father before heading out for drinks at Centro with Grace, her cousin and my valentine’s date, Monica. Sunday we went for Mexican food right near our condo and discussed blogging, life and how we need to make every decision the right decision, no matter what it is. Monday night…well…neither Doni nor I can remember what we did but we did something. Tuesday my dad and I went back to Boulder Cafe since we liked their food so much and then rushed to his hotel so I wouldn’t miss a second of Lost, which of course was as awesome and confusing as ever. Wednesday was happy hour with Monica. Thursday I went out with an old friend from NYC who moved to Denver 3 months ago for dinner at Centro (which was AMAZING)…you get the picture!

It’s been a crazy week to say the least. We have discovered our love for wine and cheese (which wasn’t really a surprise), I introduced Doni to the wonders of goat cheese in EVERYTHING, we’ve had fun decorating our apartment, and have plans to make the board game Clue into a weekly game (we even decorated our mantle with candlesticks, including the one from Clue.). Doni and I have plans to go on every hike in my Boulder Hikes book that my dad gave me and conquered our first major hike on Saturday. Let’s just say by mile 6-7 we were having discussions with nature, the ice, and the mountains about how we were going to win, even though it was intent on beating us down. Ice + steep climbs + altitude is not my favorite combination and I may or may not still scream in pain every time i stand up/walk up or down stairs/move.

Having my dad here for the first half of the week was great, we took a lot of drives into the mountains, went shopping a bit, and just spent a lot of time jut talking about this move and how it will work out for me as we ate omelettes with avocado, mushrooms and cream cheese or gawked at huge herds of elk sitting on the side of the road. When I took him to the airport on Wednesday I was surprisingly sad to see him go. OK maybe it wasn’t that surprising, after all the last comfortable part of my old life just left and while I’m incredibly lucky to have a good support system already in place here, this is a new place and it’s fantastic and scary all at the same time. It’s a new time zone, it’s a new side of the country, it’s a new life.

But that’s another story for another day. Now I must go run some errands, put together my Blog Valentine’s package and just enjoy my Monday in Boulder, snow and all.

It’s been a week since I made the move from Michigan to Colorado and while I am brimming with things I want to talk about, I need to tackle the move first before I can talk about the beautiful aftermath.

So, moving is stressful right? Seeing that packing is not my strong point, I should have started weeks before but I decided two days before was adequate (plus I’m a procrastinator. Doing things in a timely manner isn’t my strong point. Considering I’m supposed to be working on a lighting plan right now, I think you can figure out my problem). I also did not take into account that I had to pack up my car and make sure everything FIT.

Which of course, after my dad hauled everything downstairs while yelling at me that my stuff was NOT going to fit while I screamed back that OF COURSE IT WAS GOING TO, STOP BEING SO NEGATIVE, it didn’t fit. So being the nice daughter I am, I made him take it ALL back out of the car so that I could reorganize. I lost two boxes of clothing, a toaster oven, a chair and a little bit of my hair but I managed to get most of my stuff in the car.

Friday morning, bright and early, my dad and I piled into the car to head off on our 21 hour trek to Colorado. You couldn’t see out of any of the windows besides the front ones but that didn’t stop us from being the usual terrors on the road we usually are. It was two hours of Glee music that my dad was painfully willing me to play while I drove and hours and hours of NPR since my dad drove most of the way. Yes, I’m spoiled. Once we passed Chicago the landscape became incredibly boring. A lot of flatness, a lot of corn, a lot of sky.

We barreled through Iowa, determined to make it to Nebraska by nightfall and at 9pm, we rolled into Omaha, on the phone with my mom trying to get her to find us a Holiday Inn Express so we could get some much needed sleep. We were unsuccessful with that front but we did find a Comfort Inn somewhere outside of Omaha and crashed for the night.

The next morning we took off to conquer Nebraska and let me tell you. That state is a BITCH.

By the time we got to the Colorado border, we were antsy, restless and basically any word that is a synonym for BORED. I was tapping my fingers on the car door, shifting positions in my little seat (why aren’t they ROOMIER?) and looking around for ANYTHING to entertain me. There wasn’t anything.

The whole ride I was excited but it felt like I was going on vacation, just with all my stuff. When I was still driving through Michigan it just felt like I was going back to Chicago, but Chi flew by and outside of the general boredom, it hadn’t hit me that I was moving. As in, I WAS NOT GOING BACK TO MICHIGAN. And definitely not back to NYC.

We passed the Welcome to Colorado sign in the early afternoon and picked up a map and magazine on Colorado at the welcome center but it still didn’t feel like this was anything out of the ordinary. Then I started seeing mountains.

They were far off in the distance but as soon as I spotted them I started getting excited. The closer we got to them and the clearer they became, the more giddy I got. Butterflies seriously were dancing in my stomach and I wanted to scream to everyone LOOK! THERE ARE MOUNTAINS!!! REAL LIVE ONES!

We rolled into Boulder at the north end and got a little lost getting to my new apartment but luckily Doni, leaning out over our balcony to wave me down, managed to catch our attention and we moved me into the new place in record timing. What amazed me was that even after getting rid of so much stuff in NYC in order to simplify, I still had SO MUCH STUFF. Apparently I did a horrific job at simplifying.

The place is so cute, Boulder is AMAZING and I am having SO much fun but I will have to update you all on all of that another time…now I must go eat something before I eat Doni who is sitting across from me in Barnes and Noble where we are using their lovely free internet.

All I can say is, this move was the latest in a series of best decisions I’ve made for myself in the past six months and I couldn’t be happier.

Filed under: From the Big City to the Big Mountains, Life Decisions, Spontaneous is my new middle name, That warm fuzzy feeling inside ]]> http://ashalah.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/from-the-big-city-to-the-big-mountains-part-1/feed/ 17 Ashley MI Cactus http://ashalah.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/be-my-blog-valentine-announcement/ http://ashalah.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/be-my-blog-valentine-announcement/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:12:06 +0000 Ashley http://ashalah.wordpress.com/?p=529 ]]> I just wanted to let everyone know that everyone has been matched up and emails have been sent out for Be My Blog Valentine! I am so sorry for how late I was getting htem out, apparently 93 people are a lot of people to match up when you don’t have internet! But it’s done and now you all can get your packages out!

If you didn’t receive an email from me please email me at Ashalahblogs (at) gmail.com as soon as possible. ALSO, if, for any reason, you cannot send out a package (even if it’ll be late, that’s ok–it’s better late than never!), PLEASE let me know. It came to my attention this year that some people didn’t get packages last year and I don’t want that happening again. If I find out someone hasn’t sent a package and never told me, I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN.

You think I’m kidding. I have all your addresses. JUST THINK ABOUT THAT!

So go, everyone! Make love happen and Valentine away!!

As a school girl of nine years old I would get more excited about Valentine’s Day than any other day of the year.  Would this year be the year that I get a card from a secret admirer? This thought would keep me up at night and on those mornings I waited impatiently for my brother to wake up so that we could go to school already!  I wanted to hear the sound of the soft knocking on the door. The Valentine’s Squad would come in holding baskets filled with envelopes and–on the rare occassions–flowers.  They would apologize to the teacher for the interruption and then begin to call out names.

A hand would stick up and as the Valentine was given his/her card, there would be blushing and embarrassed head dropping.  There would be much taunting (the boys) and much giggling (the girls).  It would take half an hour for the excitement to ebb and another 15 minutes for our young minds to focus on our Afrikaans dialogues.  Every year I sat straight up in my chair in the desperate hope that I would hear my name. Year after year I waited in vain to open a red envelope and see some sweet nothings scrawled on the inside of a Disney-inspired greeting card.  Every year I would watch the Debbie’s and the Hayley’s receive three or four or five cards each.  Every year I wished I had an English sounding name.  Every year I wished I was blond and fair skinned with freckles on my small, thin nose.   Every year I waited quietly waiting in vain to hear my Greek name.

Then one year it happened.  My name was called! Albeit wrongly. But still!  I must have blushed.  My hand must have trembled.  My voice must have shook as I thanked the deliverer.  I pushed the light blue-green envelope into my schoolbag and waited patiently for break time.  Finally, when the bell rang I grabbed my precious possession and looked at the handwriting on the envelope intensely trying to infer the sender’s identity.  I opened the envelope slowly and gently slipped out the card. On the top there was an outline of an elephant.  It was the prettiest elephant I had ever seen in my life. [An Elephant? Really?]  I must have smiled. My heart must have been racing at a 100 beats a second. Inside it wrote, ‘Will you be my valentine? From your secret admirer.’ My eyes must have widened.  My breathing must have been short.  My cheeks must have flushed.  My heart must have stopped.  I must have thought

‘So, this is how it feels.This is how it feels to be wanted’

My dear Ashalians, when was the first time you remember feeling wanted? And if you don’t remember that, when was the last time you felt wanted?