Treat Yo Self

I love to shop.

There I said it.

I am a college student with a tight budget but I love to spoil myself when I have the chance. I never let one of those chances pass by without taking full advantage of it.

Over Christmas Baublebar was having a sale and I jumped right on it. I had some Christmas money and my last pay check stored away. I splurged, what I consider splurging at this point, and bought a pretty pair of earring. I cannot wear them around campus and to some sporting games because they are my schools colors!

On top of that I was a lucky winner of Hoasting and Toasting's latest give away. Brittany was giving away several pairs of earrings from Lisi Lerch. I do not have the best of luck but was so excited to hear I won the giveaway! They are a beautiful pair of purple jewel cluster earrings. 

Overall I am so excited to bring these new earrings into the new year with beautiful new outfits. Look out 2015, I'm coming for you!

The top, purple cluster earrings are from Lisi Lerch

The orange and blue dangle earrings are from Bauble Bar

Amalfi Horn Drops Earrings

Button - Czech Purple

XOXO

ZMH 

Have you shopped at either store? What pieces of jewelry are on your wish list? Do you ever treat yourself?

Last Monday

Today is the last Monday of 2014. I can't believe how fast this year went by. I feel like just last month was the first of the year and now we are moving onto 2015.

Before I start reminiscing about all the great things I got to do this year let me recap the rest of my holiday weekend.

Dad and I were supposed to come back to Holland on Saturday but I woke up with a pretty bad cold. Dad didn't think I would enjoy traveling that day so we stayed an extra day in Kokomo and came back yesterday. With me being sick and my aunt being super exhausted after all of the cooking she did the last few days we sat and watched movies all day. It was nice to just sit and relax with my family. We watched Clue and The Fastest Indian. Both were so good and pretty hilarious. I highly recommend both.

Later in the even my cousin Amy came over and chit chatted with us but when she left we were all still wide awake, thank you late afternoon nap haha! So my dad, aunt, and I sat down and started the series The Paradise. Oh my goodness I cannot get enough of this show. It is so good. Now most of my family watches Downton Abby and they compared both shows, so if you like that kind of time period placed show go and pull up Netflix and start watching!

My dad and I have now made The Paradise "our" show. We promised each other that we would not watch it without the other which is a lot harder said then done. Every night so far my dad and I have squeezed in two episodes no matter how tired we are or how late it is. We have to watch it!

As soon as we came home R came over and we exchanged our Christmas gifts. I got him a stars and stripes shirt so he could be like Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. He got me Adventure Time: the Art of Ooo book and some personalized stationary that he designed and printed for me. It is gorgeous and I cannot wait to send out letters to my friends. It has three ballerinas on the front with my monogram. So adorable!

Despite me being sick this holiday season and weekend has been pretty awesome. I can also say that bringing in the New Year will be just as fun and I can't wait to tell you all all about it!

XOXO

ZMH 

How was your holiday season? Did you get anything really cool for Christmas? Have you watched The Paradise?

CHRISTMAS!

Well today has been such a great and wonderful day!

I was not able to get a lot of photos today but I will try to paint the scene for you.

Last night my Aunt Shirley, Uncle David, cousin Mercedes, my dad, and I all opened our Christmas presents because we wouldn't have had the time today. Santa was nice enough to come by and drop off our few presents we asked from him super early. So last night held a lots of excitement as Mercedes and I opened gifts of things we really wanted.

I received Kate Spade's book Places to Go People to See, Banksy's newest book You Are an Acceptable Level of Threat, a whole bunch of clothes, several gift cards, a external mobile battery, and a soda stream! I had a feeling I would get a lot of the items because those were things I constantly asked for but the soda stream was a complete surprise. My dad did really well and he was so happy to see my excitement.

Today was a loooonngg day. Family started coming over around 12:30pm and everyone finally started taking off around 8pm. Holy cow it was exhausting but fun! For Christmas we have a little ham but we celebrate with several different homemade soups. Soup is a big comfort food for everyone in the Hoover family so when Christmas comes around everyone is more then excited.

My Grandpa was a Christmas baby and this year he turned 90 years old! We are throwing a big party with all of the family and his friends tomorrow so we kept it low key today for him so he wouldn't be super tired tomorrow. We spent the night looking through old photos of him when he was young and it is incredible to see everything that he has been through. My aunts, uncles, and dad were army brats so they were always moving around the world. We have photos of my Grandpa and Grandma in all different parts of the world.

I am constantly surprised by things my Grandpa did. He survived both World War II and the Vietnam war. He raced formula 500 cars and he was a woodworker. Grandpa Hoover has always been active and into things and old age is just staring to hit him. He is slowly starting to get really slow and forgetting things but it's all okay because he was able to do so much with his life.

Overall today was an amazing Christmas and I couldn't ask for a better one.

XOXO

ZMH 

There was to much excitement today that Grandpa and I had to take a break. We bond over naps.

Travels

Merry Christmas eve!

I hope every one's holiday season has been wonderful so far and filled with love and joy.

Since my mom passed my dad and I generally travel down to Kokomo, IN on Christmas eve to be with family. It is always a busy time of year for the Hoover's because not only do we have a huge family dinner but Christmas is also my Grandpa's birthday!

What a lucky guy to be a Christmas baby.

This year he is turning 90 years old and all of his children have worked together to throw a big party for him with all of his friends and family.

So today my dad and I drive down to Indiana and get right to work helping my aunts cook and get ready for the party. Wishes us to have not too many stress meltdowns, light traffic, and good weather!

Happy holidays everyone!

XOXO

ZMH 

A Friend Is A Friend No Matter How Far Away They Go

Yesterday I had such a wonderful day with a few old friends.

Hannah, Caitlin, and I have been friends since about 1st grade. We grew up together going to dance classes, school trips, and many many after school play dates.

As we all grew up each of us came in and out of each others lives depending on where we all were. Hannah was always committed to ballet to the point we thought she was going to go professional. She was hard to stay in touch with because she was always at the studio but she always was around when we needed her. Caitlin was in the grade below Hannah and I so when we got out of multi-age classes that left Caitlin to start finding new friends that were her age. She was also always around but had different sets of friend groups she would bounce to and from.

Both Hannah and I are currently at Hope College. We have been able to still talk and do things together since the campus is pretty small. When Caitlin went to college she became distant and soon found out she wasn't where she wanted to be. From there Caitlin took a huge leap and moved out to Arizona with her boyfriend. Hannah and I talked with her through text and Facebook but it wasn't the same.

Caitlin surprised us by coming home for Christmas! All three of us got together and went ice skating and just hung around chatting. It felt like no time had passed between us.

We love ice skating so much. As children our home town would make an ice rink out of the local baseball field. All three of us would beg our parents to take us there almost every single night to spend hours and hours skating. We would create games, drink lots of cocoa, and try to be figure skaters. We had so many great memories from those years that ice skating yesterday seemed like the best thing to do.

Overall I am so happy I got to see my friends. I am so happy to know that no matter what they will always be there to support me and build me up when I need it.

XOXO

ZMH 

Caitlin, myself, and Hannah

We stopped in the Amway Grand Plaza and pretended to be fancy

Hello Break!

HELLO CHRISTMAS BREAK!

I have been on break since the 10th but I have just been taking time to relax and do some fun things. I have also been trying to organize this blog so that I can hopefully start blogging every week day (I know I keep saying this but it will happen! Please have faith and patience in me). 

Any way, this past week I spent about 4 days in Chicago with R. We had so much fun! Since we are kind of poor college students we tried to keep this trip as low cost as possible which is hard to do in the city. We did a lot of window shopping and exploring. We did take a trip out to Alder Planetarium. Neither of us had been there so it was fun to try something new. We did not go and see a show there unfortunately because it was really really expensive but we looked at all the exhibits and learned a lot about space. After that we popped over to the Art Institute because that is our second home. It was free admission so the place was packed. The museum was all decked out for Christmas and it was so pretty. I really enjoyed the miniature rooms because several of them were re-done for holidays, it was adorable!

One of the days we went down to the Magnificent Mile and looked at all of the really expensive stores. I have this goal that one day I will be well off enough that I will be able to go into those stores and actually be able to buy something instead of just drooling all over it. We peeked into the Kate Spade store, the Chanel store, and the Louis Vuitton store. Everything was packed with people buying Christmas presents, it was a little overwhelming.

We wrapped the trip up by stopping into Old Town and going to a cute little French bakery. While there I picked up some of the best macaroons that I have had since being in France. They were so good. Old Town was a little busy with people doing some last minute shopping but there was a whole bunch of holiday cheer. It made me very happy.

Instead of going out to eat all the time like we usually do we took this time to try and cook by ourselves. It was an adventure to say the least. I made tacos and beans for us one night which was really fun. Then every morning for breakfast we had eggs, bacon, and toast (breakfast/brunch is both R's and mines favorite meal). Then R made a really good green chicken chili in the crock pot! I ate so much of it I thought I was going to explode, haha! 

On Friday I got to meet up with some of my Blue Lake co-workers and it was so great to see so many familiar faces again. I missed all of them so much. It was great to see Rachel after her trip down to South America. I was so happy to hear about her wedding engagement and hear about all the plans she is cooking up. I felt right at home again and it made my heart full with love and cheer. This get together was the cherry on top of the perfect ice cream sundae.

Over all it has been a pretty great break so far but I'm sad it's going by so fast.

I have another great piece of news! Tomorrow I get to see one of my friends from when I was little! She moved out to Arizona with her boyfriend before summer started and I haven't seen since then. We have kept in touch and she has been very happy with the move but man I miss her like cray. I'm so glad I get to see her tomorrow and catch up! I can't hear all about how living in the desert has been treating her. 

XOXO

ZMH

The view of Chicago from the front steps of Alder

Me at the Christkrindle market

The Art Institute was all decked out

Miniature room

Another miniature room

R's view from the 16th floor of his place 

Kate Spade store

Hey there Coco

Podcasts and Radio

Now I have always listened to the radio in the car but it was always the channels with the top 50 or 100 hits of the time. It was the popular music stations. As I am getting older though I have noticed I have been leaning more towards NPR and the classical music stations. I think why I have been leaning more towards the NPR radio stations because of what I want to go into. I want to be in the public relations and mass media side of communication and I have slowly realized it's really important for me to be up to date on what is going on in the news.

Other then the radio in the car I don't really listen to the radio. I sometimes pull up the radio portion on my Spotify account but even then I use that to listen to music that I don't have on my iTunes account.

Since updating my iPhone to the new IOS system I found the podcasts app to be really entertaining and fun. I have found a few podcasts that I think are so hilarious and awesome to listen to when I'm getting ready, alone in the apartment, or when I'm just surfing the web. I found that I have to be in the mood to listen to music and with podcasts they are just something I can put on in the background to have some noise going.

My dad and I just drove to my Aunt's house in Kokomo, IN for Thanksgiving and the whole way down we listen to some of my podcasts I had on my phone. It was so much fun to show him some of the stuff I'm getting interested in and plus the podcasts made the three hours drive seem much shorter.

So here are a couple podcasts that I am really into right now.

First up is Ear Biscuits with Rhett and Link. Oh my goodness are these podcasts gold. My boyfriend got me hooked on Rhett and Link's YouTube videos, Good Mythical Morning, and I thought if I love their videos so much I must like their podcasts to. This thought I had was so on point. These two men pick interesting people from the interweb/YouTube and interview them. Their not normal interviews, you get to learn about people's back stories, a little about their rise to fame in YouTube, and you get to find out some weird things about the people you watch on your computer. Then there are the few episodes where it is just Rhett and Link and that is even crazier. After listening to each podcast you feel like you know those people so much better and that they are now an old friend. They have 53 podcasts and are currently not making any. They finished season one and are taking a break to plan out season two, let's hope there will be one!

Now these podcasts I just started listening to, like literally 3 hours ago started listening to. I have always loved Jenna Marbles on YouTube. She is probably the one YouTube I have been consistently following since sophomore year in high school. I think she is clever, hilarious, and very insightful. Since Julien came into Jenna's YouTube world I have found him equally as entertaining and hilarious. So I thought that their podcasts would be something fun to make me happy and I was so right. They kind of just talk about whatever they want and don't have a set agenda. I like how they just talk about a few things with random other stories thrown in. It's a good one for someone who doesn't really like a set structured podcast.

Oh Serial. I got into this one because I had heard many different people talking about and there was nothing but good news coming from this podcast. This American Life publishes it and I have always been a fan of them. I have gotten several episodes in but I think I need to start over. This podcasts tells a story of a murder and how the narrator goes about finding clues and trying to figure out what is really going on. To me it is a little complicated and takes a little more thought to follow along but it is so worth it. I love the interviews brought in, the descriptions that are given, and the suspense it brings. I thought this might be a little scary or creepy but it is not at all so don't worry about that!

There is a fourth podcast series I have on my phone currently but have not started listening to it yet. It is called Gilmore Guys and from the description these two guys sit and talk about different episodes of the TV show Gilmore Girls. The reason I haven't started listening to this podcast yet is because I am almost done watching all of Gilmore Girls off of Netflix and want to finish that before I start the podcast. I don't want anything spoiled! 

I hope my little comments about these podcasts peaks your interest enough to go and check them out. Let me know if you listen to them and what you think about them!

Do you listen to podcasts or the radio? What do you listen to? What are your favorite podcast series? Any good recommendations?

XOXO

ZMH