These Are A Few Of My (new) Favorite Things

hello there,

I heard on the news tonight that today is statistically the saddest day of year. And I get it. The holidays are officially over. Reality is in full force. The weather in Canada is dreary, to say the least. The next holiday time isn't till summer. The future seems grim to some.

Because today is the first day of the new semester I feel as I though I can relate all too well. But, as I mentioned in my previous blog, 2013 wasn't spectacular and I want to make up for it in 2014 by trying to have the most positive attitude possible towards whatever may or may not happen. So this morning when I woke up I tried to do just that. It was a day filled with setbacks and for lack of a better idea, I will just take you through my "saddest day of the year".

(slight forewarning: although I in no way, shape or form endorse using material goods as a means for coping with sadness or any other emotion, I admit I am a comfort shopper and appreciate the odd indulgence to lift my spirits from time to time. Today was one of those such times. Sorry bank account...)

My morning started at the barn, as it often does. Instead of being discouraged by the frozen ground that prohibited me from riding I chose to admire how beautiful the mountain looked covered completely in frost (I snapped the above picture on my phone driving home, naughty naught me, I know).

Back home I stared at my mom's cat, Grace, while she sent me death glares through the slits of her eyelids. I pondered how lovely it would be to be a cat. She spends all day laying on my bed, doing nothing. In retrospect, sounds exactly like what I did for the last two weeks...

After a hardy workout, shower and lunch I readied myself for school and reality finally set in. I had class in an hour and a half. But it was a new semester, new year, new beginnings. The impending doom of sitting on a plastic chair for the next five hours was not going to get me down. No sir. Not today.

And I knew just the thing to help.

Shopping.

Oh dear...



Like I said, I don't support shopping as a healthy coping method. But what can I say. I'm only human. And clearly a weak one. I blame the people who were in charge of opening the new High Street Shopping Mall in Abbotsford... Anyway...

My lovely friend got me this neat Bodum loose leaf tea travel mug and some very extravagant teas to go with it but my gastroenterologist informs me I am not allowed to consume any of the yummy teas I was gifted (insert really pathetic pouty face).

So, what was, in my opinion, the only reasonable course of action? Drive all the way to the other side of town to pay a visit to DAVIDsTEA and pick up my favourite flavour tea (that we were coincidently out of at home).

 Oh hello peppermint tea. You smell oh so lovely. I cannot wait for you to warm my tummy in the morning.

Now I happen to believe there is a DAVIDsTEA in the mall ten minutes from my house which is closer than the one I went to. Therefore I admit. I had ulterior motives for going all the way to High Street an hour before class was about to start. There's an H&M there...

This will be the death of me.

Well perhaps not me. But definitely my bank account. I used to never shop in Abbotsford and now I spending money like I have money to spend...

But I was sad about school starting (and remember it is statistically the saddest day of the year, so my behaviour was excusable, right? Right..??) so I headed over to H&M.

Now, for Christmas I got the most beautiful pair of Steve Madden boots and since then I have become rather obsessed with them. I have a shoe problem you see. And my new boots needed a new pair of tights (obviously). And H&M happens to be the place to buy the best tights. And although I already have two black pairs and one grey pair of the exact same pair of tights I don't have them in navy. So naturally I had to buy a navy pair...

(the tights are navy, I realize now that I have the photo on the computer it's not so obvious)

 it's not normal how much I love my shoes...

Boots - Steve Madden
Tights - H&M

 Steve Madden knows shoes. He gets me.

And after I tried on my navy tights, I tried on a grey sweater and figured that the navy tights deserved a new sweater to accompany them and after the grey sweater I did something that I can really only blame on sheer "back to school blues".

I bought leather tights...

But it's okay because I have actually found a way to justify buying them as well. I need them for when I go see Demi Lovato and Little Mix on the Neon Lights Tour in February. It was only logical to buy them, really.

Now that I had nearly emptied my bank account it was time to head to school. And somewhere between walking from my English Literature class to my Cultural Policy class my new LifeFactory water bottle (a gift from my barn mom and one of my most favorite new things at the moment, I adore it) decided to pop open and flood the insides of my purse... AND! As an added bonus, a bottle of Tylenol had dispensed its tablets all over the floor of my purse. Tylenol plus Water and suddenly my Kate Spade wallet was coated in a white powdery goo, making me look like the front for a cocaine trafficking business.

That was lovely to clean. But I still love my water bottle. It will not, however, be riding in my backpack ever again.

Bottle - LifeFactory

Needless to say, this day was a lot busier than what I had been used to over the last couple weeks and I got home from classes very tired from the stress of going back to school and the natural fatigue associated with spending money. But the night was still young which meant I had time to indulge in one last favourite thing.

My Christmas break consisted primarily of me watching movies. Lucky, lucky me got the entire Fast and Furious and Harry Potter Series on Blu-Ray for Christmas. I managed to watch all the Fast and Furious movies in the first two days of receiving them but didn't completely get through Harry Potter so tonight I ended my day by watching The Deathly Hallows Part II.

I realize this was a bit of a silly little blog post and rather pointless but it was my day. I really want to try and expand my creativity and writing which will require a lot of trial and error. If there is one thing I got out of today it is that joy can be found even in the most simplest (or most ridiculous) of places. And as I mentioned before, although I don't endorse comfort spending, everyone deserves a little treat every now and again. 

If you did in fact have a terribly sad, saddest day, I hope your tomorrow is better and if you need to, have a cup of tea, buy yourself a present, drink some water and if those don't work, just snuggle under your blanket and watch your favorite movie. Life's tiring and hard, don't wear yourself down.

-m.o

p.s. I haven't done "My Monday Music" in a very long time and it's Monday, so I will leave you with Ellie Goulding's new single and music video she just released this morning, 

"Goodness Gracious" - Ellie Goulding