Hometown Hunt: San Diego

Hello! It's been ages, I know, and I apologize. I have so many posts lined up but I haven't had the chance to do any of them because school has been keeping me incredibly busy! Maybe I'll upload some photos of the crazy projects I've been working on, but in the meantime, I'm here to bring you some of my homesick blues with this fun post about some of my favorite places in my hometown. Unfortunately, since I'm not home to take pictures of these places, I'm using pictures that I have of these places that are either on Instagram or on my phone!

Of course, I'm a San Diegan currently living in North Carolina, and let me tell you, there's nothing I miss more than some good food. One of my favorite places to go is this cute little family-owned pho restaurant in Chula Vista (although they also have a location on Convoy) called Pho Convoy Noodle House. Their food is absolutely amazing, and it's one of those places I seriously miss when I'm so far away. The staff is incredibly sweet, and they even know Andrew and me! In fact, when I left for college, some of the waitstaff asked Andrew where I had been.

Another amazing place in San Diego that I absolutely adore is the theater I had the opportunity to work at this summer! Of course, I don't think it's amazing simply because I worked there. It's a truly incredible and groundbreaking theater, only a couple miles from the beach! That place is the La Jolla Playhouse. Located in the theatre district at UC San Diego, the La Jolla Playhouse works directly with the theatre school at UCSD, and is known for working on upcoming musicals that sometimes even make it to Broadway -- like Jersey Boys for example. It got its start at the La Jolla Playhouse!

Sometimes, you can find tickets for the La Jolla Playhouse on Eventbrite, or if you have tickets for your own event, you can sell them there! The fun thing about Eventbrite is that it gives you the option to search for events in your area, so if you're ever on the hunt for something fun to do on a Friday night -- including free events -- check out Eventbrite! 

This is seriously such a bout of homesicknesses for me. I've been back in North Carolina for a little more than a month now, and I have a countdown on my phone that lets me know how soon I can come home. It's been so rainy and dreary here. I'm ready to come home to the California sunshine!

What are some fun venues or restaurants in your area that you love? Let me know in the comments below!

- D. 

 

This post has been done in partnership and inspired by Eventbrite. All opinions and photos are my own. 

Holiday Decor!

This year is my first year all on my own. Well, sort of. I live in an off-campus apartment complex that is owned by my school, so I kind of live on my own, but kind of not. My roommate and I decorated a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving this year, because we knew we wouldn't have a chance after Thanksgiving break because she is playing the Sugar Plum Fairy in our school's production of The Nutcracker, and she's super busy with rehearsal. I thought I would just show you some pictures and tell you all about the various decorations we put up this year, and hopefully inspire your own cheap and easy decor!

My favorite decoration that we put up this year are these super affordable clear string lights that we wrapped all the way around our living room.  It only took two sets of these lights to wrap all the way around the room, and I'm kind of thinking about asking my roommate if we can keep them up till the end of the year, because I just love them that much!

On our floor lamp, we decided to make a super skinny Christmas tree by wrapping basic unlit garland from the bottom of the lamp all the way to the top. Because this garland is on a wire, we just used the end of it to wrap around the switch on the lamp to hold it all in place! 

On the side table, we got these fake flowers from Dollar Tree, which is my favorite place for artificial flower arrangements! We got these pretty red flowers that look like poinsettias, along with a white flower as an accent, and some glittery pinecones! To top it all off, we threw them in a tall, cylindrical vase and wrapped a sparkly gold ribbon around the middle. 

Between our living room and our kitchen, we have this little counter where we place things like tea, fresh fruit, candy, etc. We thought that the perfect way to frame this would be with these adorable blue and white snowflake lights! My favorite part about these lights is that they alternate colors, but unfortunately, these specific ones are no longer sold. The closest ones I could find are these, from Home Depot, or these, from Target.

Last, but definitely not least, is our little tree! This amazing little 4 foot artificial tree is from Amazon! It is an unlit tree, so we used a fairly short 50-ct string light, and of course, we decorated with very simple red and silver ball ornaments! While we wanted to get a tree topper, I'm not really sure this tree is sturdy enough to handle the weight of a topper without falling over. I think it's super cute regardless though!

I'm super excited for the holidays! In just a few days, I will be flying back home to San Diego, and I am very excited to see my family and friends. What are you looking forward to this year?

- D. 

My First College Apartment + Life Update

I feel like I've been away for ages, since I haven't typed up a post in almost two weeks. All of the posts I have had recently have been queued, but I finally have my room in the apartment looking just the way I want it to look (for now anyways)! For those of you who don't know, about a week and a half ago I left my southern California childhood home for something a little more...east. Or rather, a lot more east. I moved almost 2500 miles from San Diego to a little town in North Carolina, where I'll be pursuing a BFA in Costume Design. A lot of things have changed, obviously, but I'm trying to make this a fun new adventure!

I think I'm going to do a new apartment favorites post, so that I can talk about some of the great things I have found for someone who has just moved out, but for now, I'm going to do a little mini room tour!

First, of course, the highlight of my bedroom is my bed! The bed set is a bed-in-a-bag from Target. This bed-in-a-bag thing is absolutely fantastic. It makes everything compact and easy to find. I'm thinking I might at some point add like one or two small gray pillows, but I'm not entirely sure yet. Of course, I had to add a personal touch with some of my favorite stuffed animals from home. The giant hippo was given to me by my boyfriend Andrew, since he knows how much I love hippos, the bunny was given to me as a baby, and I got the Alice doll from Disneyland, but you can also order it on Amazon! My bed is a full-sized bed, which is much bigger than I'm used to, so the stuffed animals usually stay on my bed while I sleep since there's plenty of room.

Now for my bedside table, the alarm clock was bought at Walmart. I usually use my phone for an alarm, but it's great to have so that I can see what time it is even from farther away. The statue was another gift from Andrew, and is a statue of the Hindu goddess of arts, music, knowledge, wisdom, and nature, which I think is perfect since I am at an art school! My flowers were bought at Dollar Tree, and the mason jar was found at Walmart, although you can find them at pretty much any craft supply store. 

I am completely heartbroken over the fact that we aren't allowed to have candles in my apartment. My apartment complex -- although off-campus -- is owned by the school, so we have to follow rules similar to the on-campus dorms. So in order to keep my room smelling nice, I have this "Leaves" room spray from Bath & Body Works, which you all should know by now is my absolute favorite scent! I'm considering buying a wax warmer since I am allowed to have those, and then I can just buy my favorite candles and make them into wax cubes! Any recommendations? Let me know in the comments! 

And of course, I couldn't have my bedside table without one of my favorite photos of me and Andrew at Disneyland. I bought this frame years ago in a set at Kohls. 

Above my desk, I have what may be a familiar sight. I have some of my collection of musical playbills hung above my desk, the same way I had them hung above my bed in my old room. The frames are all from Dollar Tree, which I find is a great place to purchase frames for gallery walls because they are so inexpensive! Careful though, they will break if you drop them from too high, so make sure they are secured to the wall. On the chair is a blanket that Andrew's dad bought for me in Mexico, which is perfect because my apartment is always freezing!

My lamp doubles as a desk organizer, and has an extra outlet on it (for those late nights when your phone is losing charge and you have to sit at your desk), and was purchased from Walmart. The frame is another one of those frames from the set from Kohls, and my little cactus arrangement is from Home Depot! I love cacti and succulents because they require so little maintenance, and they remind me a bit of the San Diego desert. To keep up with all my classes and deadlines, I also keep a desk calendar and a small to-do list notepad. The desk calendar was bought at Walmart, and the notepad was bought at Target in the ever-so-tempting dollar section! 

Finally, the gray and orange supply organizer was a DIY project. I took a plain photo box from Michaels and painted it the colors I wanted, then hot glued fun colored paper towel rolls on the inside to create the dividers for the pens, pencils, markers, etc! If you would like to see a DIY post on how I did this, let me know in the comments below! It's a super easy way to organize your desk, and it really makes all the difference, especially when you are required to have as many art supplies as I am!

My room came with a dresser for my clothes, as well as a large closet. The top of the dresser is perfect for storing anything that I might grab for on a daily basis. I put all of my mani/pedi supplies, as well as lotions and hair products that are too big for my bathroom, in this letter tray from Target. It works perfectly to keep everything from slipping and sliding. I keep all of my jewelry on this cute little tree stand, which I got from Michaels ages ago, but you can also purchase it here.

On my wall above the dresser are two square cork boards, as well as this photo print that my best friend bought me. The cork boards actually came in a set of 4 from Walmart, but they were super thin and flimsy, so I stacked two on top of each other and super glued them together, to give them a little more of a substantial thickness.

The little storage bin is a Sterilite bin from Target, and unfortunately they no longer sell this model. However, for makeup or art supply storage, a Sterilite bin like this is absolutely perfect! As for the mirror, this is wonderful for places like dorm rooms and apartments where you can't hang things up, because it actually comes with hardware so you can hang it over a door. I purchased this at Walmart! 

And that's my room! I'm sure that over the next year, it will change, but as of right now this is what everything looks like and I love it! It's great to finally get to start over and have things all exactly as I like it.

Would you like to see more back-to-school posts? Let me know!

- D.