Dear 25 year old me

dear 25 year old me, there are just a few things I wanted to tell you before you left me forever. First of all, best year of our life, amiright? I know it was really hard for you to turn the ripe old age of 25, but it wasn't so bad was it? Especially on the eve of your 26th Birthday Eve (like the eve of new years eve? are you tracking with me?). We have made some awesome friends over the last year, and deepened others. It was great to see you step out of your shell and actually make friends. I am proud to say the least. We had our ups and downs, but I think for the most part there were just a lot of ups. I'm proud of you for setting out and accomplishing your goals and dreams. Maybe you started a little later than others, but hey, shiz happens. We get up, get over it, and move on.

dear 26 year old me, just keep up the good work. no point in giving up now! I have high expectations for you! Don't let me down!

dear 30 year old me, I know, "you feel old", blah blah blah. Knock it off. We know a lot of awesome thirty+ year olds that are great people and still know how to have a good time. Those are the people you need to hang out with more often. And way to go for holding out this long to have kids (hopefully). There is nothing wrong with having kids in your thirties, or even not having kids at all, so don't feel pressured.

dear just me, stop acting like getting older is the end of the world. Age is just a number, and remember we can always lie! No one will ever know!

dear mom, this would be a really great time to let me know you accidentally got my birth year wrong and I'm actually 24 going on 25. Happy birthday to me!

aka: almost 26 year old me



PS. I'm offering sponsorships again! Check out the options on my "sponsor" page.

If one more baby is born in September, I will scream!

Ok, I wont scream.
Unless it is born into my family!!
Seriously. I'm pretty sure each day is taken by a different family member!

If you are not family you might as well skip this next section, because I'm sure you don't care!

This is a shout out to all the past and coming birthdays...
{I am regretting ever giving a happy birthday shout out to anyone! You don't understand how many there are this month! And I don't want to leave anyone out now that I started this stupid thing!}


Happy birthday Hannah!! You are such an amazing little sister-in-law! I love you to death and I'm so proud of the woman you are becoming!

Happy birthday to my dear loving sister, Athena! You may be an old lady, but I still love you and I know you would always be there for me no matter what!

Happy birthday to my niece Sophia! You probably wont read this, but I love you anyways! You are growing up so fast!

Happy birthday to my other loving sister, Andi! {who probably also wont read this!} You have been such a good sister and I know I can always come to you with anything I need and you wont judge me!

Happy birthday to my brother-in-law Funaki!! You have been a great addition to our family and can always lighten the mood, even when there is drama!

Also for last month I missed my two wonderful brother-in-laws, Cody and Zach!
I'm sure you guys don't care, but I might as well add to this unreasonably long list of birthdays.
Happy birthday to both of you! Thank you so much for welcoming me into your family and accepting me! I love you guys!


Alright, now that I am done with that, let me tell you all a little secret. Which isn't very much of a secret!

This girl down here...

For those of you that don't recognize her, that is me!

Anyways, she {and by she I mean I} got a new tattoo!!

My sisters, Athena on the left and Andi on the right

In honor of my sister being an old lady, {she just turned 40!!} we got tattoos together.

For those of you who are 40, or almost 40, or over 40, don't worry, I don't actually think you are an old lady, we just like to give her a hard time! I know she will pay us back when we turn 40!!

I had a really great weekend partying it up with my family! 

I also, had a fantastic weekend because we drove up to Portland to go SHOPPING!!!
I love shopping!
Especially in Portland because they have a much better selection of stores!
Right now I am loving the fact that I am going back to school, because it was such a great excuse to buy lots and lots of clothes! Ok, I wish it was lots and lots!
But I did get some good stuff!

F21

H&M

H&M. Loved this dress, but I didn't get it :(

Yay!! I can't wait to wear all of my new fall clothes!
And show you guys everything I got!


Alright, this is the end of this incredibly random post!
See you guys soon!
{Hopefully with lots and lots of pictures of my new clothes!}

Tampons and Birthday parties

I just spent the last half hour trying to get my internet to work.
I was just starting to think that maybe it was a good thing it wasn't working when I finally figured out what the problem was and fixed it.
Lucky for you guys I can now spend the next hour writing and reading your blogs!
Unlucky for me I will now be horribly unproductive for the rest of the day.

I have to tell you guys about something embarrassing that happened to me last night.
It was one of those moments when you realize how much easier life might be if you weren't living with a guy.
Although it would be much less interesting and enjoyable.
Last night Alex was working with one of his recording clients when I got home from work.
{For those of you that don't know my husband is an audio engineer in his free time, meaning he does recording for bands and cool stuff like that in a spare room in our house.}
I got inside and just vegged in front of my computer for a little bit, when I noticed the giant box of tampons that I had bought on Tuesday sitting out on the coffee table.
Which really wouldn't have been that big of a deal if Alex didn't have a client over.
I figured they probably hadn't come into the living room at all so the guy probably hadn't seen it.
When Alex was done with his recording session I said, "You guys didn't come into the living room, right?"
Alex- "Yeah, we did..."
Me- "Seriously...?"
Alex- "Yes, why?"
Me- "Do you not see the huge box of tampons??"
Alex- "OH!.... whoops... I'm pretty sure he didn't notice."

Right... the huge white box with pictures of tampons all over it, which was the absolute only thing on our entire coffee table, went completely unnoticed.
Also there may or may not have been a pair of my underwear on the floor in our bathroom.
At least the guy spared me my dignity and didn't say anything about them.
I think I need to be home at all times when anyone is coming into my house so I can make sure all the unmentionables are cleaned up.
Or maybe I need to be a cleaner person so things like this don't happen!


Moving on to less embarrassing topics... or maybe more, depending on my dancing skills.
I forgot to tell you guys about my weekend!
Which was pretty much amazing!
Remember how I told you that some of my friends came into town from Washington to celebrate their birthdays?
Well it was probably the most fun weekend I have had maybe ever.
I'll let the pictures from my phone speak for themselves.

It was such a good weekend!!

Happy Birthday Sara!!

Thank you for being such an amazing friend!
My life has truly been blessed by our friendship and I'm so grateful to know you!

And, you are seriously gorgeous!!!

Alright, I'm out to catch up on some of my blog reading.

Love you guys!

Birthdays and building projects

Hey everyone!
My bet is that you are all wondering what I am doing this weekend.
Am I right?
I couldn't possibly be the only one that sits around and wonders what my plans are.

{btw, writing a post with a cat on your lap is not the easiest thing in the world.}

Ok, since you are all dying to know, first and foremost I will be hanging out with some top notch people! My beautiful and amazing friend Sara and her husband Collin are coming down from Washington to celebrate their birthdays with us... and I guess their family and other friends as well.

Happy birthday to both of you! Alex and I are so blessed to have you in our lives! Collin- I'm sorry I didn't leave you an FB wall post on your actual birthday, I hope this makes up for it! Also, I told Alex to text you like 15 times, but I'm not sure if he ever did? Hopefully this makes up for that also.

We are also going to try to finish my new desk this weekend!
And for those of you that don't know (because I think I've gained like 100 followers since my last project) Alex and I like to build furniture in our free time.
Key words being free time which we don't always get a lot of.
For those of you that follow me on instagram (@tanyagrasley) you probably saw these pictures

This is what happens when you don't have a truck.
Lumber in the car.

This is going to be my new homework desk for the living room!
I'm so excited!
All last term I did my homework on the couch or the dinning room table, and it was not pleasant.
I have a personal office/ craft room upstairs but I don't like doing my homework up there, it gets lonely!
So a living room desk was the solution to all of my problems.

I'm super excited to decorate my little corner and make it an inspiring place for me to sit down every day and be productive.
I'm painting it Caramel Sugar by Valspar.
This little paint sample from their website isn't very accurate.
In real life it is more of a perfect mix of orange and pink.
I'm so excited to be adding this beautiful color to my living room.

Source

Here are some pictures I am drawing inspiration from.
The color is very similar to the orange on this first desk.

Source :: Designer Meredith Heron

Source :: Etsy shop owner at Poppyseed Living

Source

Source :: Home of Monika Hibbs at The Doctor's Closet

Source

I'm going to be installing some shelves above my desk to store a few necessities since my desk is on the incredibly smaller side (which is how I wanted it).

I can't wait to show you all some pictures of the finished product!
This may end up being the cutest spot in my whole house.
Hopefully that will make me want to sit at it for hours working on mind numbing homework.
And a great place to write my blog posts! Instead of sitting on the couch with a cat snuggled on my lap.

Have a great weekend!!

The Fourth, a Birthday, and a freaking awesome cake!

Happy 4th Everyone!!

But, more importantly, Happy Birthday to my wonderful mother!!

Thanks for being a great mom to me and letting me borrow your baking supplies so I could make this amazing cake for you! :)

I made a strawberry ice cream cake from a recipe I found on Pinterest . This recipe was done by SheSimmers and there are instructions for both an ice cream cake and a Strawberry Mascarpone Cream Cake.

Here is how mine turned out:

And here is the original:

I was a little disappointed that the strawberries on the side didn't turn out like hers, since it looks ridiculously amazing. But, I still think that it is going to taste amazing, so I suppose it's ok. The only adjustments I made to the recipe are that I used frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, and I blended the yogurt and strawberries together for the middle filling portion. It was just easier to do that than to try to chop strawberries and mix them in with the frozen yogurt.

Well, I hope everyone has a fun and safe fourth of July!!

Birthday Candids {picture heavy post!}

The Saturday of Mother's Day weekend was my nephew's birthday. I brought my camera to the party because I needed some pictures for my photography class, but my sister asked me to take some of the whole party. I had fun playing "photographer" for the day.

Something I learned? Kids are so hard to take pictures of!! Most of my pictures are blurry because they move so stinking fast that I could never get a perfect picture.

Well, let me know what you think! This is my absolute first time taking pictures for any sort of special occasion so I'm totally open to feedback on things I can do to improve.