I just finished "Water for Elephants" this morning.  Mom gave me the book for Christmas and I was able to start it over Spring Break during our 20 hour roundtrip drive to and from the Salvage Gulf in Tennessee for a backpacking trip.  And then school came back into play when we returned and I have been working on it during gym time on the bike.  I did not even know that they were coming out with a movie for it until someone mentioned it to me while I was reading.  But I saw the previews the other day for it with Reese Witherspoon and you just can't deny her personality being perfect for the part of Marlena in the book.  This is the first time I have finished a book before seeing the movie.  I tried to do it with the Twilight series, but just got too excited about seeing the movie with friends that I gave up on the text.  I am about to do lunch with a friend, but then I plan to upload my paintings that I finished over the weekend.

Yay!  It is Earth Day!  I got up this morning and started working on paintings to go to Raleigh and the store Pink.  One of my interests is to recycle items to paint on because there are many surfaces to paint on and give them a new purpose.  So I am going to head by the Habitat for Humanity today to check out some recyclable options.  Consider your footprint on the earth today!...
No luck with Habitat today because they are participating in the Friday of Goodness.  And I totally had Humane Society written up here earlier, meaning to write Habitat for Humanity, but I must have had the little furry ones on my mind as well.  I happened to ride by the dog park while I was out and about.  There were lots of happy pups making their rounds, but what really caught my eye was the guys that were planting trees out there.  Made my little treehugger heart smile!  During my outing adventure I also ran into this store that I have been wanting to cruz through called Jeffersons.  I met a very nice lady upstairs as part of her and her daughter's interior design company called Coastal Fog.  She introduced me to the restaurant that was within the building, Copper and Vine (check out their facebook page), where I enjoyed a salad featuring their honey-lemon vinaigrette.  Delectable!  I would have had no idea it was there, but met the young owner sitting at the bar that went to ECU for political science and whom decided to open a fine dining restaurant featuring an extensive menu of wines which she is quite knowledgeable of.  I found out that Thursdays are their half-bottle of wine days.  This is perfect because I have been wanting to learn more about wines and it seems like a great place to do that with a few friends.  I feel that is an important part of Earth Day too, is supporting local businesses.  They will see me back there!  Now back to painting and music!

I went by the store Pink yesterday.  And it is a go!  I have just got to hop on the painting wagon and knock out some paintings to take in and put up on the wall.  I had some extra time on my hands while on campus yesterday and picked up our school newspaper.  And a former student that has launched a business with her brother in Wilmington in the past year and a half.  It is called Half United (watch the clip).  They take a humanitarian approach to hunger locally and globally by allowing customers to provide a week's worth of food whenever they purchase a Half United product.  If you have heard of TOMS shoes, Half United shares the same concept and ideas because she used to work for TOMS before she came back to the east coast to start up her business.  Lovelovelove.  Im inspired!  Like them on Facebook today and get involved in your own community to give back!

This past weekend was our final for my sailing class at Camp DonLee.  We had some lounge time considering the tornado weather and high winds.  But the last day was beautiful outside and we were able to sail in flying scotts.  It was one of my dreams to learn how to sail and I did it.  I can see where working at that camp would be very rewarding, especially working with younger kids in the summer time.  It is something that I would consider for a summertime job.
And now this morning I woke up with that inspiration and was able to work on a couple of paintings that I had started.  My hope is to take them up to a store called PINK here that sells Lilly Pulitzer and colorful high-end clothing to see if the owner would be willing to work with me to put up some paintings in her store.  Crossing my fingers!

first day

Cottage background is the theme to start things off because I feel that cottage living by the beach is so ideal for me.  But this is day one...I am figuring things out with this blogging stuff.
Today was also my first Twitter day because I was sitting on the bus on the way to class and wanted to talk to someone, but do not have people on my bus that I would want to tell them about how the staircase smells like fresh cut cucumbers.  Know what that smells like?  So I decided to let the cyber world know about my staircase.
I am looking forward to having this blog of inspiration and something to look forward to each day.
And here my day has resided after class, about to grab dinner at a friends' house and then the library for the night.