my equality is a response.

choiceful and empowered.

my equality is not a reaction.

i am not

me to complement you.

i am

me, choicefully me.

i am

no one’s reaction.

i am

me, choicefully me.

my faith, my feminism, my identity.

they are not reactions.

they are choices.

mine.

my whole heart engaging my whole mind.

i am

justin made this triangle shelf for me on our two-year anniversary. he attached some brass hooks on the bottom, and voi-flippin-la, we have ourselves a stylin’ entryway! happy dance!

tiny trinkets from all the travels have been finding a home on our shelves, and it makes my heart happy when i see mementos from time spent overseas. also candles are my addiction...and i finally broke down and purchased some pf candles to warm up our digs and make the place smell like heaven when guests come over!

it’s not far from my hometown

i have friends who already live in the city. need those!

thrift stores and flea markets are everywhere and have become my favorite places...i think 90% of our things are second-hand, the rest we purchased from artisans who handcraft with intentionality or we created it.

i want a garden. concerning green thumbs, this apple fell very far from the tree. my lolo and mom are genius with plants, and i’ve been incredible at killing them. though that hasn’t stopped me from trying to grow my own, and i’ve found desert plants are hardier and more my people...

we’re moved in. and i’m readjusting, doing an intensive job search, studying for a law & ethics exam, and making our la digs cozy...

as much as there is to do, sitting inside can make this girl stir crazy and i’m finding myself needing an outlet real bad. thus, blogging’s seemed to stepped nicely into that niche.

i’ll post about our honeymoon to iceland and norway soon. it was crazy fun spending 3 weeks away from the daily grind. but for instant self-gratification, here's a snap (more to come) of the home we’ve been piecing together this past week.

i got married! a month ago to date. we opted to have an ‘unplugged’ wedding, which means the hired photographer and videographer were the only two people with devices in their hands for the ceremony (we wanted attendees to be totally engaged. and we wanted people’s faces in our photos, not phones/ipads/cameras). that also means we don’t have many pics from the day and i’m dyyyyying to see how all the pics turned out slasssssh my mind is going bejeeezzzezz to see the video!

It’s been awhile since I’ve actually written a post, as opposed to uploading a bunch of pictures I’ve taken. So here I am, 12 days away from graduation and 19 days away from getting married. I’m freshly road-tripped and preparations for wedding are running the clock.

It was only fitting to get out for a weekend. Big Sur has been our favorite place, and I think we needed it. Our souls needed silence from the deadlines, rush hour traffic, car horns, and ambulance sirens. We needed a different soundtrack. Here are a few pics of our journey to and back. 

Scout is one of our favorite coffee shops of all time, it’s located in the happy town of San Luis Obispo. If you get a chance, try their Sunshine Latte. It’s a combination of orange and cinnamon, and the taste….heavenly.

Once we hit the first pull-out, we had to hop out of our car and drink in the fresh air and the coastal gold. Here’s Jones bustin out his camera and grabbin magic.

It was foggy all weekend, and I loved getting pictures of the clouds playing with the landscape.

When we finally hit Nacimiento-Fergusson, all the pull-outs were taken (Memorial Day Weekend–arrrggh!) so we ended up driving on up and in, until we broke the clouds and were met with this:

Wowwwwww amiright?!

For breakfast the next day, we headed back down the 1 and made our way over to Nepenthe Restaurant for a pot of tea and this view:

After, we tracked up the coast all the way up to Carmel. We stopped at Bright, a coffee shop conjoined with a local artisan shop called Lilify. This space is amazing, if you’re in this area of California, you MUST go. The owners of the coffee shop serve all their drinks in handmade mugs they find from thrift stores….their plants are on point.

Lastly…we just chilled. Music-ed. Read The Little Prince, and relaxed the heck out of the weekend until relax we could no longer. Every stop along the road was tugging at us…so we couldn’t resist getting out of our car and grabbin a few more coastal shots.

And to the hottie driver….I owed you this shot. How could I not?