this week I am thankful for:

freedom, sweet sweet freedom, my wonderful boyfriend & his family, super fun photo shoots, prayer in the woods, meeting new warm people, drinking deliciously made coffee, being in love, flowers, my photo essay project, productivity, access to expensive equipment w/o expensive pay, God’s timing & His patience, letters, and of course great tunes. Have a good weekend tumblrs! <3

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As of late, the weather in PORTLAND, OREGON has been amazing. If the weather was like this all year round I could easily see myself setting anchor here. I’m very excited for what is to come. Recently, I got my review back from my job as an RA in student housing & it turned out to be a very positive response. That really made my day because it’s an easy job, super resourceful & it helps out my family a lot with finances. I’m going to stay in the position for another year and continue my focus on school. My plan is to start interning and pursing more “major-related” jobs during the beginning of my senior year which is next summer. So I have a whole year to freshen up my photography & designs. In the meantime, I’m just going to focus on myself as a WHOLE being. Staying healthy & exercising a lot throughout the week is one of the many starts to my summer. I’m going home for two weeks! Cannot wait for: cruising to Mexico with the fam, visiting my bff Jessica Tipton in Santa Cruz & eating breakfast in Monterey, driving down to LA to see my cousins, going to VENICE BEACH with Schmeckle, driving back up north, spending a few days in San Francisco, Berkeley and Muir Woods, hanging out with my grandparents in Sacramento, and doing absolutely nothing but relaxing and eating In N Out Burgers in Vacaville. It’s gonna be a dooooope summer & my boyfriend is going to be in Portland all summer too! We’re both doing summer term so that means lots of long boarding, Portland festivals, swimming, and hopefully not being productive… just keeeeeding. Anyways, that’s all that is new with me. Happy Tues!

"We’d said we’d keep in touch. But touch is not something you can keep; as soon as it’s gone, it’s gone. We should have said we’d keep in words, because they are all we can string between us—words on a telephone line, words appearing on a screen."
– David Levithan

friendships, relationships, all those ships

April, you’ve been good to me.

This month has been full of ADVENTURE. I’m thankful for having a great circle of friends & for having a ZipCar account now so that we can go places together. These past two weekends have been amazing. 

Mark and I celebrated our six month anniversary at the Tulip Festival in Woodburn, OR.
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My dear friend Mariana just moved to San Antonio, TX. She’s already missed, but we threw her an awesome going away party at our friend Nick’s apartment. We had a lot of fun aaand maybe a bit too much alcohol, but everyone had a great time and danced so no regrets! The next day we ventured off to Saturday Market and Fire on the Mountain for lunch. Portland was extra sunny that day, so it was a nice day for walking. Then I found this awesome yellow brick wall (top) and took photos of everyone.

Portland’s EAT MOBILE: Food Cart Festival was shall I say… DELICIOUS? Out of the 52 food carts that were present, we (Mark, Baird, Andy and myself) were able to cover 26 of them. There was just so much food. I definitely burnt my taste buds on some of the spicy dishes, but thankfully there was ice cream there to recover. Definitely one of my favorite festivals that I’ve been to so far. I just lovelovelove FOOD. 

Speaking of food, I’ve been reading a lot into food styling & seriously may consider looking into it as a side job. It’s pretty fascinating how much detail goes into the art of stying and perfecting the look of food.

Anyways, Portland is in full BLOOM these days. We still have quite a bit of rain most days, but I love how green everything here is. It’s fun to watch the city trees evolve in a years time. I hope everyone has a wonderful week! <3

It’s been a while//

WOW. I haven’t posted on here in a record amount of time. I used to be on Tumblr non stop at one point in time. As of late I’ve been trying to stay more focused on school, which has been pretty successful in my book. Mark and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary last Friday at the Tulip Festival. My dear friend Mariana is moving to San Antonio, TX next week. I’m bummed that she is moving, so we threw her an epic going away house party this weekend. Portland weather has been ABSOLUTELY beautiful these past three days. My family is doing really well, and my brother has shown a great amount of improvement these days. I can’t wait to see them all soon. I’m going to Mexico this June.