luxe chandelier

I was looking through old pictures on my computer. I know for sure I have gone through a lot of different phases with hair styles and clothes. Duh…who hasn’t!? For a while in middle high school I had low self esteem and always had to wear a long t-shirt that covered my booty. I’m so glad I outgrew this phase quickly!

I had a friend, Katie, who lived across the street that was 5 years older than me. I remember the day when she came over and tried getting me to wear my jeans low past my belly button because it was the new trend. Remember those days where we had to make sure our hair was perfect when putting it up. Katie told me to trust her and put my hair up in a messy bun. I remember cringing at the feeling of my jeans being too low and my messy bun style hair! It was a torture at first to get used to. (Thanks for all the advices & fashion help, Katie!)

2000 – Haley and me

One of those fun nights we had playing dress up especially for spirit week at school.
This was the era of bangs for me.
Blow drying it with a round brush every single morning!

2003 – Senior Picture

My hair looks ORANGE! This is one of those times when I bleached my hair.
I can’t believe I had twisted my hair on the top for my senior pictures.

Overalls, don’t you miss those? and how it was so cool leaving one strap off.

The beanie hat phase in college. A few of us bought the same hat and wore it all the time.
We even took “we’re too cool for you” pictures. Pfft!

Click on the image to see a short GIF animated video I created years ago

Transcript of video:

Me: My shaw (HOT) boyfriend!

‘Shaw’ is one of the many words we made up in high school. I never use that sign anymore. Did you see the necklace Tyler’s wearing in the video? and his earrings? Tyler stopped wearing them since he got a job. Thank god! I can’t imagine him wearing them again… I think he moved on.

Now I’m sure years later from now we’ll be laughing at the clothes we’re wearing now and the hair styles too!!

Exactly 4 years ago we were living in freezing Rochester (NY) where we both attended RIT. We lived together with a roommate in an apartment only a few miles away from campus.

I was on campus in the computer lab working on a project. A few hours later I decided to take a break because I couldn’t really receive text messages in the lab since RIT is a brick school! I checked my phone and received messages from Tyler and our roommate that said something brief like,

“The ceiling in our apartment fell through!”

I had no idea what to expect or think since they both were not responding back to my messages. I quickly got my things together and left. That was the longest 4 minutes drive home… unsure of what to expect or think. Is the old lady downstairs okay? Are our things okay?! Every possible thing was running through my head about what could have happened. I arrived and left everything in the car and walked up to the door and saw this…

Then I walked up and saw all the damage to our things…

(and that’s not snow – that’s wall insulation)

It turns out that the pipes were frozen and burst. Luckily for us, our roommate was home when it happened and had to call the office to have them shut off the water. The smell was so bad! The management crew did a horrible job handling the job. They didn’t leave a drying fan to absorb water from the carpet. They left us with a hole in the ceiling for days until they fixed it. And it took them weeks to replace the carpet.

This isn’t the first time I had my fair share of home disasters though. When I was younger we lived in Seattle and there was a really bad thunderstorm one day when I was at school. I thought it was an awesome day at first since the power was out and we were all playing games in the dark in our classrooms. I clearly remember the principal coming to my classroom and pulling me aside to tell me that my grandparents were on the way to pick me up because a huge tree fell on our house. I didn’t think anything too serious about it. I never really thought about asking my parents where exactly it had done damages to. I remember driving home with my parents and seeing that the impact was MY BEDROOM! There was a long branch poking down on my bed. For days after that I refused to sleep in my own room.

Have you ever experienced any house disasters like this or worse!? Do share!

I can’t believe I saved all of my old pagers. I wonder what my children will be saying about these pagers/phones we used to have. OMG, EW! That is probably going to be their reaction.

I remember getting my first pager, Motorola, in 2000. My parents wanted to keep in touch with me while I was away at the deaf school. Soon enough my friends had one and it became more fun to use. Although it wasn’t fun getting in trouble when the phone bill arrived. Too bad we didn’t have unlimited texting plans back then!

Wyndtell was probably one of the best & fun pager I had. Almost everyone I knew had Wyndtell or AOL pager. I loved the feature where I could see if the person read my message or not. It was cool at the time to clip it to our jeans and paint the cover with nail polish.

When Sidekick first came out I HAD, WANTED, NEEDED to get one in my hands! So my parents bought a Sidekick for my Birthday and I remember bringing it home and being shocked how I could be on the Internet while sitting on the couch, walking outside, riding in the car… my life was complete! I immediately set up another AIM screenname for Sidekick only. That is a story for another time… I was addicted to changing my screennames all the time!

I absolutely love my iPhone now and cannot live without it! Now I wonder what I’ll be saying about the iPhone in 3 years?!