Haute Girls Eat Dallas

Just doing Dallas..

The Normandy- French Toast stuffed with raspberry jam and homemade cream cheese topped with raspberries

Cinnamon Roll French Toast stuffed with Strawberries

I want Sprinkles (of the red velvet variety)

Nutella + Toasted Marshmallows + Pear Pizza

Reality, sometimes it's not all it's cracked up to be

Some day, I'll be living in this big ole city....

One of the saddest moments in life is realizing that everything that made up the dimensions of your universe is gone. Sometimes I forget I have a support system at all. I feel like there is just me, and I am all by my lonesome. The truth is that's how it is. I don't have my sister here to brush my wet hair, so I work out the snarls all by myself. I don't have a mother to walk with me and listen to me talk about my problems, so I don't talk about them. I don't have a father to eat breakfast with me, so now I just eat my muffin alone. I don't have a golden retriever to cuddle with me when I'm alone, so now I don't cuddle. I don't even have my best friends to be with, so I constantly feel like I am walking through my life having experiences that are entirely worthless because I'm alone. Of course I'm not alone, but what's the difference really if you don't feel supported or loved? All I have are these overpriced textbooks to love me, and they don't. That's the problem with putting all of your investments in one place, when it fails you are left with nothing.
I'm not scared of being alone in a big city. Most of my childhoods fears don't plague me any longer. I'm not scared of flying by myself, or talking to people on the phone. I'm comfortable arguing with adults when it is justified, and taking cabs by myself. I know how to cook basic meals, and I can successfully take care of myself. I have so much to be grateful for. I was given the privilege of being offered a wide open space to try and make a new life for myself. For this I was always grateful, until the day my parents moved the last of the furniture into the room and said it was time to go. In that moment I realized that space was highly overrated. The one lesson I have managed to grasp in Economics is the concept of opportunity cost, that with every decision you give up the next best option. The opportunity cost of going away for college was much, much, higher than I anticipated. So high that I have a feeling if I had known it would have been nearly impossible to force me to go. I suppose that is why no one tells you the truth about these things. The only thing that I really am truly afraid of anymore is never being happy. What if this is as good as it gets? What if this is the "good life?" Me standing awkwardly at clubs watching other people drink and be merry, and all the while wishing I was at home watching Downton Abbey with my parents. Obviously most people will think I'm lame. But I don't think anyone can really understand until you find yourself alone in a 12 by 12 room and realize that you live in a building of 300 eighteen year old kids who have no idea what the hell they are doing with their life, and are all making ridiculous mistakes in the process of finding out. Some nights are better than others. Sometimes I look out at the city lights of Dallas and I feel so free and liberated, like I'm living out what Taylor Swift sang in Mean-   Some day  I'll be living in a big ole city, and all you're ever going to be is mean. Now that it is fall and all the leaves are changing I find myself thinking:

Now I know why all the trees change in the fall, I know you were on my side even when I was wrong, and I love you for giving me your eyes and standing back and watching me shine.

It's A Funny Thing Coming Home

"It's a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what's changed is you."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Hello from a plane to the rest of my life. Do you ever find yourself going somewhere and not even fully understand why you are going? I believe it begins with the concept that we can never predict the future, that we never really know where we are going or where we will end up. We just act from the desire to find inner fulfillment and sometimes I don't even really think we know why we crave what we do. I just read the most profound sentence in the book I'm reading. It said "Maybe he didn't live in the past, but the past lived in him." I think that the past lives in us until we don't remember it anymore, and even then we will feel the way we feel and just don't remember why that is. We are made up of all the events of our life that shaped us into the person we have become, and while often it is difficult to acknowledge we become all that we were, it happens regardless. I suppose at some point I made the decision that I wanted to leave my life. So that's what I'm doing. As it is written, You must give up the life you had planned in order to live the one that is waiting for you.

What if the things we feel count more than what we do

Hot summer nights mid July
When you and I were forever wild.

Every color in the world is in your eyes
And everywhere you look you shine a light.

Tonight I'm gonna dance for all that we've been through.

I'm walking fast through the traffic lights
Busy streets and busy lives
And all we know is touch and go.

My Happiness Project

Gretchen Rubin's book, The Happiness Project has been one of the most influential books I have read so far in my lifetime. After first reading the book I was quickly inspired to start my own happiness project, which unlike many of the ridiculous projects I try to begin with myself was extremely easy to follow. I first devised as Gretchen suggests my twelve commandments that I live by on a daily basis. I find that after I devised this list, they often influence my decision making in a very strong way. I know that these are the twelve principles I want to live by, and that allows me to develop into a better version of myself.

My Twelve Commandments:

1. Be me.
2. Let it go.
3. Act the way I want to feel.
4. Do it now.
5. Keep calm and carry on.
6. Do not be scared.
7. No over analyzing.
8. Life goes on.
9. Give freely, don't expect.
10. This too shall pass.
11. Be a person you'd be friends with.
12. Get out of your head.