Tag: saturday musings

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Not Cold

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Hey, hey, guess what?

I’m cold.

I know, I know, I’ve never said that before in a blog. I have never, in the history of this site, written a blog based upon me being cold. For that matter, I’ve never even done a blog about being too hot. I am immune to the elements; they do not bother me, and I have no reason to complain about them.

Besides, who could complain when they have coffee? And not only coffee, but coffee in a Christmas cup!?!

I’m still trying to decide upon my go-to cold weather Starbucks drink. I’m happy to do a cold brew, even in the winter, but not all the time, you know?

Anyway, I’ve been experimenting around, and I think I might have landed on an option: a café Americano with steamed almond milk on top. It’s got just the right touch of decadence with the steamed milk, while still being bitter enough to make me feel warm inside.

Unfortunately, my coffee is gone now, and all I’m left with is the yellow stain on my teeth.

I’m also very cold, so things could be better. Notre Dame is presently winning though – is the win worth me standing out in the rain for four hours? I don’t know. But I’m here now, and I got some good touchdown pushup photos out of it, so I guess it’s not so awful.

Anyway, that’s it for today! See you in the next blog! Maybe by then I’ll have warmed up.

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Gonna Make It To The Game This Time

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Considering the fact that I’m sitting in the ND stadium right now, I think I’m going to make it to the game against NC state today.

For context, last week, after rushing to get back to campus in time for the USC game, I missed the game regardless because I couldn’t find the email with my tickets. Instead of going to the game, I sat in my dorm and folded clothes – so in other words, it was kind of a bummer.

This time, I made sure to have my tickets downloaded the day before, so I could definitely be there for the game.

In exchange, I might have lost my camera (with the last several days of OOTD photos on it too!) because I have no idea where it is currently, but hey, at least one thing went right today. Little victories.

It’s currently 35ish degrees right now in South Bend, Indiana, which is, to me, way too cold for October. That’s like, December weather to my Southern brain. And furthermore, that’s like, much too chilly to be standing outside for hours in a stadium without a coat.

And with a wet butt to make matters worse! It was drizzling this morning, so all the stadium seats are damp. I’m actually fairly warm right now because I dressed in so many layers, but my butt is having a different experience from the rest of my body.

Anyway, kickoff’s in 10, so it’s time to devote my attention to field. Go Irish! Beat Wolfpack!

Saturday Musings + Coffee – On the Road Again

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I like, actually don’t know a single lyric to that entire song except for what I wrote in the title – “on the road again.”

It something a tired and delirious Amanda would sing in the Atlanta airport any time we had to run from one terminal to another in an attempt to make it onto a plane from the standby list. I was too tired and delirious myself to question it – I’m not even sure it was a real song, now that I think of it, maybe she was just expressing her frustrations through song.

Welp, I’m frustrated and on the road again, so it struck me as a sensible blog title. Frustrated? I don’t know if that’s quite the right word…it’s more like, mildly annoyed. See, I’ve got another Greyhound bus to take today, and I was not so much a fan of the last one I had to take, and this time, I don’t even have home to look forward to at the end of the road.

Granted, I do have the Notre Dame game against the University of Southern California to look forward to, and that’ll be neat, but it’s much more exciting for me to get to sleep in my own bed than to get to stand for three hours in a football stadium with a bunch of *not at all intoxicated* college kids.

So you’ll have to pardon my particularly unglamorous coffee lifestyle photos today – it was a particularly unglamorous morning.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame.

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Home Again, Home Again

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Jiffity jig.

I’m back, Lexington, KY! Did you miss me?

No? You didn’t even feel my absence? What’s one less person in a population of over 300,000? Oh…okay. That’s cool too. Well, you know what I missed though? Panera. There isn’t one on campus – there isn’t even one within delivery distance, I don’t think. We have an Au Bon Pain, but it’s not nearly as good. You have to serve yourself out of these giant pots of soup and scoop it into cardboard cups, rather than getting prepared for you in those chic little white bowls Panera has. Much less chic.

Another thing that Panera has that Au Bon Pain doesn’t is Lexington people who went to my high school. That’s significantly less cool. I saw two girls I went to high school with while I was there this afternoon, and I did my best to hide. We didn’t make eye contact, thank goodness, so we weren’t obliged to speak, but I’m fairly certain that if I saw them, they saw me too. Which means we all purposefully avoided each other.

Lol, that’s high school for you.

Anyway, I’m about to head out to get dinner with some friends, so this is going to be super short. Fashion posts to resume tomorrow!

That’s all, folks! See you in the next one. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Wonderful and Autumnal

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Meta, right?

Lemme tell you a secret: I don’t actually take these pictures on Saturdays. They still usually come from the prior week, and I still usually write the actually post on Saturdays, but I don’t always have time to do the photo-taking and the coffee-drinking on Saturday. Thus, whenever I have a chance during the week (in today’s case, Friday) I go off to some pretty location, take some photos of my laptop and coffee, and then save them until Saturday.

In fact, the drink I’ve got here in this mug (which, by the way, I stole from the dining hall because I’m such an badass)  isn’t even coffee – it’s black tea.

There are so many lies being revealed in just these first few paragraphs; how can you even bear to continue reading? The next thing you know, I might be revealing I don’t even like fashion, summer is my favorite month, and Shoreditch was my least favorite part of London.

For real though, check out how cute and fall-like these photos are. I even risked sitting on a bench on God Quad surrounded by grass (which, by the way, the tradition is that if you touch the grass on God Quad you’ll fail Theology) to sit under this pretty tree and take pictures of the leaves.

I’m pretty I was judged by everyone who passed by me sitting on my bench taking photos of my planner and my computer, but I’m used to it now. I just don’t make eye contact with them, and I can pretend I don’t see them.

It also helps using an actual camera rather than a phone; that way, people might think I’m like, a legit photography student working on a project rather than a pretentious fashion blogger trying to take photos so I can look cute.

Maybe one of these days I’ll actually be as organized as my photos make me look, but as my home boy Aragorn once said, “it is not this day.”

Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com.

Saturday Musings + Coffee – First Pumpkin Spice of the Season

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Call me basic, but there’s nothing more I love in the fall season than a good pumpkin spice coffee.

I distinctly remember the first time I ever got one – I was a freshman in high school, and I had just started using Twitter. I had followed one of those “Basic White Girl” humor accounts, and I started seeing a lot of mentions to the mythical pumpkin spice latte. At that time, I wasn’t a huge coffee drinker, but I liked it well enough, so, one day when I was out with my parents in early fall, hitting up some neighborhood yard sales, I decided to stop in Starbucks and give one a shot.

I even remember what I was wearing – an oversized knit sweater from Hollister, black leggings, and Uggs – that was how earth-shattering of an experience drinking this coffee was for me.

The thing is, I didn’t even like it that much. Like, it was good enough, but in terms of decadent Starbucks coffees, I still think their Christmastime salted caramel latte is 10 times better.

I think what was such a big deal to me, was that it was one of my first experiences buying into an image. I didn’t necessarily like the pumpkin spice lattes themselves, but I did like the image of a Starbucks-guzzling, PINK yoga pants-wearing, messy bun-sporting basic teenage girl. Maybe it had something to do with being a freshman in high school who was still enchanted with the concept of being in high school.

At any rate, pumpkin spice lattes have since become a staple in my fall lifestyle. I still don’t love them, but I like to have one or two before Thanksgiving rolls around.

Today, I had my first one of the season – though actually, it wasn’t a real latte…it was just a pumpkin spice-flavored black coffee from a café at Notre Dame called Waddick’s. It wasn’t quite as good as the legendary Starbucks pumpkin spice latte, but it it was half the price of  Starbucks, so it worked for me.

You know what else works for me? White backgrounds for photos. Seriously, I love them, so much so that I walked a whole extra 10 minutes after I got my coffee to the library so I could sit at a white table and take pictures of it. On the way, I picked some flower petals to add some color to my photos, and I had a nice little photoshoot right there in the library foyer. Call me extra.

Anyway, it’s probably time for me to get back to work now. We’ve got a home game tonight at five, which means that my entire evening is basically going to be consumed by football. You’d think my professors would let up on homework for football weekends, considering that this is a huge football school…but no.

Two weeks to fall break. I can do this.

Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com.

Saturday Musings and Coffee – Second Day of Fall

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Look how beautiful and fall-like this whole scene looks. Too bad it doesn’t actually feel beautiful or fall- like.

It’s been ridiculously hot here in South Bend these last few days – like, hotter than it usually gets even in mid-July in Kentucky. And of course, my room lacks air conditioning, so I’ve spent a lot of my time trying as best as I can to hang out in buildings with AC.

I’ve also been drinking a lot of iced coffee – a tall vanilla iced coffee with one pump vanilla and skim milk, to be exact. I find I usually need something caffeinated in the afternoon to pick me up, and it’s been too miserably hot recently to get a hot drink. Though I’m typically more of a black coffee person, I’ve found I actually like the subtly sweet taste of my concoction – who knew?

Today, to commemorate the start of fall, my section within my dorm is going apple-picking at a local orchard. Though I usually hesitate to use these three words, I have to say – I’m pretty excited. I love picking apples, and I’ve been dying to get off campus, so this should be a well-needed trip.

It is a little too bad about the heat though…hopefully we’ll be done before the real afternoon heat comes in.

Anyway, I probably ought to go. I still need to workout and get dressed, and I leave in an hour. Thanks for reading!

Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com.

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Homework Day

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Sadly, unlike last week, when I was able to chill on the 7th floor of the library by myself, I have found that neither “chilling” nor “having the library to myself” is possible today.

Why? Because it’s my first weekend here in two weeks without a home football game, and while I am not stressed out about trying to carve a whole 4 hours (for real, football games are time-consuming) out of my day to go stand in a stadium all smushed up next to students I don’t know, I am stressed about homework. Plus, since there’s no game, the usually empty library is now…well, busy‘s not the word, but it’s got a little more bustle to it than I would like.

If I’m going to be honest, though, the lack of a football game is kind of a relief. I was looking forward to it all week – I thought it was going to be so nice and relaxing without all the commotion of a thousand visitors who all come to tailgate and end up waking you up at 9 in the morning by blasting “Wagon Wheel” from their portable speaker that they’ve set up on the lawn below your window.

And I was right. It is relaxing…in a way. At least, it would be relaxing if I didn’t have so much homework to do. These last few nights, I’ve been working on projects that I’ve been putting off since the start of school – which has been a very good thing – but it means I’ve fallen a bit behind in my reading. It also doesn’t help that I took a nap Friday afternoon.

Luckily, though, it’s a very nice day, so I took the opportunity to sit outside at one of the café tables near Au Bon Pain in the library. It’s not quite as quiet, but it’s also not nearly as stuffy. And I don’t feel badly about myself when I have to sneeze and all the hardcore studiers look at me like they want me excommunicated from the Catholic church.

(Little do they know…they cannot excommunicate me if I’m not even Catholic in the first place…mwahahahaha)

Anyway, I’ve probably already taken more time than I should have to write up this blog post, so I’ll let you go. Enjoy these photos of my Starbucks cup.

Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com.

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Gooooo Irish! Beat Georgia!

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How to get the 8th floor of the library for yourself: go the morning of a football game.

In fact, I got the gym to myself this morning too. Seems like Notre Dame kids like their football game days so much, they don’t really do anything else those days. No homework, no working out – not even eating in the dining hall.  Tailgate –> game –> candlelight dinner –> party.

Do the students still party even if we lose? I’ve only been here for one game, so I don’t actually know. I wouldn’t be surprised though; people seem to like to party, regardless of the occasion.

St. Patrick’s Day ought to be interesting to spend here.

I don’t mind though. It gives me some time to myself, and that’s rather scarce here. My dorm room is a quad, so there’s pretty much always someone there, the dining halls are always crowded, and even the upper floors of the library tend to have one or two nerds studying there late into the night.

I’ll head to the game later this evening (maybe even drop by a tailgate or two if one of my friends has family there), but for now, I’m just happy to hang out up here on the 8th floor by myself. I haven’t even done much work or been productive…something I’ll probably regret tomorrow when I have to spend all Sunday doing homework.

Anyway, that’s it for today! Still gotta go back to my dorm and change into my gameday attire. Never did wash the Shirt…guess that means I ought to spray it with some perfume or something. Whoops.

Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com.

Saturday Musings + Coffee – First ND Home Game

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Yeah, I know it’s not Saturday at the time of publication – calm down.

Usually, when I do a Saturday Musings post, I like to publish it on Saturday – otherwise, the name kind of loses its relevance, you feel? But for this post, it unfortunately just has to be that way. I feel like my excuse is pretty decent though.

Saturday, the day I drank my coffee and took my photos of it, was my first home football game at Notre Dame. Football, of course, is a huge deal at Notre Dame, so when my parents told me that they had purchased season tickets for me, I was more than grateful.

But here’s the thing – I’m not a football connoisseur. I like football, don’t get me wrong – I grew up cheering for the Philadelphia Eagles – but I know nothing about the culture and the I’ve only ever been to one college game in my life, and that was for the University of Kentucky – not exactly a very good team. I went to a lot of high school football games, but then, that was for the social aspect of attending, not actually to watch the game. No offense to my high school, but we kind of sucked.

At Notre Dame though, it seems that football games are huge both for the socialization aspect and the actual game. People tailgate for hours beforehand and then party afterwards….it’s insane.

It was a lot of fun though! I’m definitely glad I had the coffee before the day started though, because the day didn’t end until way too late for my taste. I’ll have to tell you more about it later though when I do a full blog about Saturday’s OOTD – have to save some details for that post!

Anyway, I think that’s about it for the day for me. I have an obscene amount of homework I’m in denial about their due dates, and I probably ought to do some of it. Whoops.