My First Christmas

Christmas!

I’ve had a lot of firsts in the last seven months: my first apartment, my first real night alone, paying my first electricity bill, first time melting an extension cord into the socket. Lots of stuff. But this Christmas was mine. I had complete control over the entire holiday. I could make my own traditions, decorate however I wanted, watch and listen to Christmas music all day long.

I normally get pretty melancholy around Christmas. Not because of the holiday itself, but because of the weather. It’s always dreary and cloudy and it’s hard to feel festive when you come home to an empty apartment every night. But I made it work. I figured out ways to be cheerful! I made myself listen to Christmas music on the way to and from work, I decorated my tree, I made Christmas cookies for my neighbors, I even bought myself an ornament to document my first Christmas (a gold ‘M’. Fitting, as I have been recently called ‘basic’. A term I wholeheartedly disagree with.) I began my own traditions.

And that’s really what it’s about, right? We spend the majority of our early years Christmasing with our families and adopting their traditions. But what happens when we move out? When we have our own families? We have to make our own! I’m already thinking about things I can do this Christmas. (Too soon?)

Treei like foodThanks, Urban OutfittersPepperLove!

Christmases have kind of notoriously been hard for me. Lot of breakups tend to happen around this holiday for me. Just me? No one else? Cool. No matter who you are, if you’re lonely or not, just surround yourself with people. Shine those twinkle lights all night until you run your electricity bill through the roof. Make your neighbors cookies and then get anxiety knocking on their doors in the dark and then when the one neighbor you’ve deemed ‘Hot Neighbor’ doesn’t answer his door when you knock, make yourself crazy wondering why you heard his floor creak then leave the cookies outside his door. (This is so incredibly incriminating.)

 

Happy Christmas in March, folks.

 

 

xx

Experiencing Hot Springs

Farmhouse

My mom’s side of the family has started a two year long tradition of renting a house in Arkansas for Thanksgiving. A bulk of our family lives in Springdale, AR and staying up there for a time allows our actual entire family to be together. This Thanksgiving we rented an enormous farmhouse on gobs of land. It was so refreshing to spend time (with wi-fi, hallelujah) with family just walking around the grounds, breaking into buildings we probably shouldn’t have and eating our weight in food for four days.

CuzAndrewLadybugWeeds

If you’re like me and have never been to Hot Springs, the downtown there is full of non-working old bathhouses, old bathhouses that still operate, hot water fountains outside of every building, and dozens of spigots flowing hot spring water where residents come and fill up crates of old milk jugs with the stuff. The spring water is supposed to have healing powers. All I know is that soaking in that hot water would’ve really warmed me up after walking around downtown in the cold all night.

SistersOzarkHot SpringsDowntown

Thanksgiving day was glorious. A storm started rolling in so we gathered on the front porch for a family portrait. Our stomachs were growling, but the wait was so worth it. Smoked turkey, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, stuffing, bread. All the good things.

FoodMom and Aunt StephShelLauraPawPawAunt StephUncle Brad

(Now, look. I don’t want to hear any complaining about there being a terrible picture of you on here. You saw me with the camera, thus mentally signing a waiver releasing you of looking ridiculous.)

Moral of the story is rent yourself a house in the woods, the mountains, anywhere. Bring your family along. Force yourselves to spend time together. You’ll thank yourself 15 years from now when things look a lot different. I know we will.

 

 

xx

Experiencing Austin

Remember when we went to an adult promGood times.

The next morning, four of us trekked out into Austin for some pizza. All the while gandering at the rocks and hills and creeks. Okay, Austin, you’re gorgeous. Pizza

Most of us were feeling great. Can you guess who wasn’t? After tons of pizza, we drove to the City-Wide Garage Sale. It was as great as you can imagine. Booths as far as the eye can see with real vintage and antique and $14 chenille blankets and $3 women’s vintage scarves. I could’ve spent the entire day there. Everything I saw was absolutely gorgeous. Those rugs in the intro image? Yeah. All there.

I actually didn’t take any photos inside the sale. But trust me. If you get a chance, go! They have them all throughout the year and I plan on going back.

After the sale, we drove around Austin. The sun was shining, the sun was setting, it was a beautiful 75 degrees. 

As we drove around, we drank our delicious juices from a very Austiny type juice bar. We parked above the place basically on a cliff, which was insanity.

 

This was the perfect end to a great weekend. I enjoy those trips to Austin, mostly because I spend it with these people. I love this adult life. It’s pretty great. I get to drive wherever I want and spend time with whoever I want in different cities! How cool is that?! Okay, mush over.

 

Happy weekend!

 

xx

A Night to Remember

THE HIGHBALL

Seven years ago I attended my senior prom. I know. My friends and I all went together and had the best night ever. We goofy danced the night away laughing and being ridiculous.

HOLLEY CHANEY AND SHELholley and gavinCHANEY AND MICHAELME DANCING

LOOK AT THOSE BABY FACES. And s/o to myself for going hard putting that blue and green eyeshadow allllll the way up to my brow.

Did I mention I won Prom Queen that year? Much to my complete surprise. They gave balloons that year for some reason.

PROM QUEEN 09

Fast forward seven years and not much has changed. Some of us are married, all of us have moved out of tiny Liberty City (PRAISE HANDS), some of us are in grad school, all of us are still trying to figure everything out. But we’re all still friends. We’d always joked about wouldn’t it be so funny if we got dressed up in our old prom dresses and went to Outback and then went dancing hahaha we’re so funny, but we never actually did it.

But thank god for millennials and their incessant need to recreate the past for nostalgia’s sake. My friend Chaney sent us all a link that The Highball in Austin was throwing it’s very own prom! FINALLY. My dreams had come true. Nevermind that not a single dress I wore to all four proms still fits me. IT’S FINE.

I live in Dallas, my sister lives in Waco, and our four friends all live in Austin. (Stop trying to make me move there because I won’t.) So Friday afternoon I drove down to Waco and we made the horrific trek to Austin. If you didn’t know, the stretch of I-35 between Waco and Austin is currently only two lanes for MILES because they’re widening it. What should only take an hour and a half takes nearly twice that. Rap music + good company makes the drive bearable.

We get to Austin and we all look amazing.

I can’t even believe we’re going to an adult prom. I was entirely too excited. Instead of a cheesy steakhouse, we strolled casually into Shake Shack in suits and gowns like real ballers do.

Shake ShackShake Shack

We then walked around the corner to The Highball. Everyone looked amazing and carnation corsages abounded. There was an enormous stretch limo and the driver was sitting in the front, engine running, watching Netflix. Amazing. I don’t think I’d actually ever been in a limo until this night. The photographer loved us and climbed in the limo and took all kinds of insane pictures.

LIMOLIMO NICELIMO 2

PHOTO CREDIT THE HIGHBALL AUSTIN

Everything was absolutely perfect. With our ticket we each got a corsage and a very cheesy moment of pinning them on our dates. They weren’t letting anyone in that wasn’t wearing prom attire. Hil.Arious. We got all of our couple photos taken to update the ones from seven years ago.

CHANEY AND MICHAEL HIGHBALL HOLLEY AND GAVIN HIGHBALL SISTER DATE

PHOTO CREDIT THE HIGHBALL AUSTIN

We wrote our names down to be submitted for King and Queen, crossing my fingers my sister and I would get called up. We passed the giant punch bowl, grabbed a drink and heard the ‘principal’ call our name to the stage. MY SISTER AND I WERE NOMINATED PROM KING AND QUEEN. It was the greatest moment of my life. After a few, ahem, embarrassing challenges against the two other couples, we came in second. They had pity on us and gave us a crown anyway.

PROM KING ME

PHOTO CREDIT THE HIGHBALL AUSTIN

We spent the first half of the night listening to the coolest band and the second half reliving our early 2000s. The club starting lightening up at about 12:30 but we were determined to stay the whole night. We danced our way silly and took over the empty stage rethrowing the confetti they used to congratulate the King and Queen.

I couldn’t have asked for a better night. It was truly A Night To Remember. (OHHHHHH THAT WAS OUR 2009 PROM THEME! Full circle.)

THUGGIN TWERK

PHOTO CREDIT THE HIGHBALL AUSTIN

I love these idiots so much.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we ran with our original idea and got dressed up like this to go out on a regular night. Outback this time.

xx

I Wore One Brand Accidentally

WHAAAAAAAAAT! How about a #whatmelwears for your Monday? SNAP how’d you like that brand spankin’ new hashtag I came up with? (Too many ALL CAPS?)

For Thanksgiving last year, my mom’s family rented a house in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The house backed up to this enormous hill and some pretty expansive woods. Obvi we had to go into the woods and take pictures. It just so happened I was also wearing clothes. Put two and two together and you get this post. (Also, 4.)

cardigan/dress/pants/booties: Gaudy Me

I’m just realizing that everything I wore that day was all from the same place. *high five me* *or scold me for buying my entire outfit at one place even though I worked there and got a killer discount*
Why does it seem like the only outfit posts I’ve done lately have been from Thanksgivings in Arkansas? Don’t worry! I’ll show you my trendy new haircut soon! I got it cut on Friday so if you follow me on Snapchat (hinthint) you’ve already seen it. Think of all the shampoo I’ll save…

So what’s been up with you guys? How’s it going? I’ve got a lot of fun things coming up that’ll obviously turn into a blog post. Like, some Dallas Bucket List things and whatnot. I can’t wait!

 

Happy Monday!

xx

Dallas Bucket List: Texas State Fair

corndog

 

Early last fall I made a Dallas Bucket List! I mentioned on that list that I had a trip planned for the Texas State Fair, a place I had never visited. I’ve never really been a fair or amusement park person, but our work team was taking October 1 off and riding the train down so I was a fair person that day. I know, my life is so hard.

My favorite part of all fairs and amusement parks is, duh, the food. Also all of those CRAZY AMAZING neon lights make for some pretty great photos. Alas, neon doesn’t show up in the bald face sun so I settled for taking selfies with Big Tex and cotton candy the size of my torso.

Big Tex!Big Tex butt

Would you believe me if I told you I took this and sent it to everyone with the caption “Big Tex butt”? Because I did.

By the way, Big Tex, like, MOVES and TALKS. And thank god the people I was with warned me. But I still got scared.

Who’s Big Tex? Big Tex is the Texas State Fair mascot that wears giant Dickey’s clothes and boots with the Texas state flag on them. And a giant with the derpiest voice that tells you the time. He caught on fire a while ago and I wish I’d have lived here then. To look out my balcony and see a giant cowboy on fire would’ve had me checking for the rapture.

corndogcotton candy headcorndawg

THE FOOD OMG. This is the best corn dog I’ve ever had.

umbrellas

We didn’t ride any rides, because that’s not what the fair is about. We strolled around checking out the car shows, seeing a cheesy dog trick show, and eating our weight in sugar and carbs.

 

Long live state fairs and cotton candy the size of your torso.

 

 

xx