Cupcakes with Your Tea, Mate?

I've thought of one way I could make money while in WALES.

I could perfect cupcake making and sell them to my peers. 

I am going to have loads of time on my hands in between studying novels,

writing mine, and staring out of my window.

What do you think, Cupcakes for 1 pound each?

Dreaming my way to a Profit

{weheartit}

My mother posed a challenge to me today. It's actually a perfect way to start the new year, but an equally daunting task. In her self assured voice she asked: "Suppose that you're in Wales, and the chocolate store you work in provides enough money for you to eat, and for transportation, but still not enough to handle other necessities. How would you work your gift?"

How would I work my gift? "I obviously don't know, Mom, that's why I am in this situation," I replied, words laced with sarcasm and self doubt. Self doubt is what's kept me from leaping out there, and writing for print, or sending out short stories. So I launched into blogging three months ago, desiring to do it in a way which would seriously help me get noticed, and form a portfolio of sorts. It's still my desire! But, I've always tried so hard to stay away from competition and in reality, the kind of hunger and persistence that makes you move. Why: because if I fail, then what?

But, what if I don't fail?

Over the past year, I have met cool people, and followed some awesome bloggers out there who take the cake when it comes to persistence:

Wish Wish Wish

Carrie

Carrie started her blog to create a portfolio of all of her photographs, fashion inspirations, and personal musings. I've watched it over the last year, and it's become a voice for style and photography. Carrie's been featured in fashion magazines, blogs, and shops such as Modcloth.com, for her keen fashion sense, whimsical musings, and awesome photographs.  She's even branched out by making small videos of her shopping excursions through Brick Lane, and other parts of London. It all started with her making a small blog just for herself, and now she's well on her way to achieving her dreams.

Charade Style

Megan

Megan started Charade Style to show college students how to efficiently save money, move forward academically/professionally, and how to be a fashionista on a budget. I've peeped in to her website off and on throughout the year, and it's pretty brilliant. Her articles 'Making Your Dreams Come True,' and the latest 'Make Your Life Amazing' series, cause you to stop, sit, and think about becoming the very best 'you' you can be! She's also a creative writing major, as I am, and she wanted to write about things she loves, while building a well written portfolio for prospective opportunities. So far, she has several hundred subscribers waiting to read her how-to's!

Bella Amour

Gabrielle

My GREAT friend Gabrielle, started her website, after creating an amazing graphics community on livejournal. She learned that people actually wanted to pay for her blinkies, icons, and web layouts, and then branched out to start Bella Amour! She creates beautiful, whimsical work that will bring out the Princess in all of us, or the elegant Audrey Hepburn that all of us wish to be! She's really just started it, but its only the beginning of success. All it took was stepping out there, and learning that she was worth her hire.

These women really illuminate me, because all it took for them was the drive to create something with their gifts. Oh the journey! Two Thousand Ten will be my year to do just that. I just have to find a niche some how.  If you know what it is, feel free to let me in on it!

.04

"You block your dream when you allow fear to grow bigger than your faith"

- Mary Manin Morrissey

{forever 21 $10.50}

I bought this shirt to remind me of something.

After coming down from the high of my recent offer, I threw myself into research about my new town, university, people, and student loans. In the midst of this, I happened upon some quite unsavory comments about the school, the town, its people, its reputation...and I felt shame. For two whole nights, I felt myself quite gullible. I berated myself, believing in that instant that I was perpetually prone to making nonsensical decisions about my life. How could I possibly go from the frantic, pulsing pace of New York City, to the calm, seeming dullness of a miniature town in Wales?

My mind must have flipped everyday of this week, my decisions changing with the seconds and changes of the colors in the sky from night to day. But, then my other fellow English Soulmate, reminded me not to let the dream go. This English dream I've had from my first glimpse of union jack, or the time I could dress up like Baby Spice singing "Spice Up Your Life," or the time I fell for Rachel Weisz as Evy Carnahan in The Mummy, and now Rob and his friends.  Maybe Bangor is my Cambridge, or Oxford, and Oxford is for another time.  Maybe trading express busses and traffic jams for cobblestones, seafoam lakes, and mountain carved vistas are my open door to what I've always dreamed.

People will say a lot of things. They will attempt to dictate your life moment by moment. Maybe your picket fence is a flashy condominium, or your condo a small farm surrounded by faces you've seen and will see until God calls you back. But its yours. It's your dream, your reality: your soul place.

Don't let fear replace faith.

I have no idea how I am going to get the money for grad school. But I know a God Who has every resource.  He'll see me through, after all, He opened the door in the first place.

{forever 21 $5.50}

I bought this to add to my cameo collection!

Cheers

"Eang yw'r byd i bawb."

{the world is wide to everyone}

ecember, the month of miracles. With Jesus heralding in every possible miracle, its impossible for wonders to cease.

All I've heard today from people I love are screams, and this repetition of dreams coming true. They all keep holding me up as a trailblazer, a woman who stuck through for a dream. Do you know why?

It all started this morning at seven a.m., when I received a serendipitous email from Bangor University. I've been accepted to Bangor. A top school in the UK. God saw fit to bless me with this. It's been the craziest day I've ever experienced. How is this even possible?

I spent the entire morning deafened by screams of joy and awe, all the while thinking: is this even happening? It's been a year and a half journey to this waterspout that was drying in thoughts of quarter-life crises and other excuses why I am not succeeding. I'm still spellbound by the whole thing. I'm not sure if I've ever had so many people backing me so assuredly.  The best part of it is that it isn't just my dream coming true. I remember when I tweeted the news to my little cousin, and she responded, thanking God, and believing that dreams do come true. This is a huge step, and I believe I am one of the first (in my family) to trailblaze out of America, and forge a life spontaneously in a foreign land. I've been through such a long undergraduate journey, that for this to be the reward... its a miracle. My family have come to me saying how much this has inspired them to dream big, and to continue fighting for the things they want. Meanwhile I hardly see where its worth heralding, but I thank God that this can inspire someone to speak their dreams into existence, and make it happen, by His Grace.

This is a huge step for Britta kind because I am used to being scared. I would never have thought three years ago that I would be seriously about to transition in the United Kingdom. A part of me fears newness, to the point of rejecting it on first try. My first try as an undergraduate was a bit of a failure because I couldn't even last fifteen minutes away from my house, and I transfered, so that I could live at home. But thank God, He gives second chances. I'm sure I could've chosen any school out of state, but I've always dreamed England. And so I need to do this: something extraordinary. I need to travel to Narnia, and through Middle Earth, to discover myself, and God.

Sometimes you need to get out of your complacent house, establish home wherever you are, and trail blaze.

Cara Moleskine

{I love Moleskine}


was a huge journalizer when I was younger. All of my books were more like journal's moonlighting as scrapbooks, and visual collages. Lately I've been getting back into it.

Nothing makes me feel more artistic, and more like a writer than a fresh moleskine. Any moleskine, size or shape. I just purchased this small unlined notebook a couple of weeks ago, and I'm already going crazy pasting photographs from urban outfitters catalogs, and drawing instead of finding the photo equivalent.

I feel like the allure behind these Moleskine's that so many artists have used, fuses present artists together. I often look at Moleskinerie, a website dedicated to showcasing moleskine artists, diarists, and slapstick journalizers like myself. It's such an inspiration, and just shows you never have to write on lined sheets, or compose paragraphs, or even write anything. But its about imprinting yourself in the page. These notebooks leave room for you to draft your stories, and imprint it with who you are. Sometimes it makes me think that someone else might read it, and maybe be inspired by it, so why not treat your regular day like its special because you're breathing and you didn't have to be.

Also, you might notice that my title is in welsh. I think I might have a reason to learn this beautiful language because I found out yesterday at seven a.m. that I've been accepted to Bangor University in Wales to complete my Master's Degree. I feel like I am on a cloud, or even intoxicated with jaded green absinthe. I thank God for this victory, really. But an entire entry on this is coming up soon!

Can you point me the way to Bibliophilia?

{google images}

{Hye-On-Wye}

As I consider what life will be like when I go to graduate school in Bangor, Wales next year, I'd like to think that I will be able to visit some cool places hidden behind the United Kingdom's great landmarks and cities. Hye-On-Wye is literally the land of books. There are books strewn across its sidewalks. Secondhand books, new, ancient, poetic, a library around every turn. Barnes and Noble is my second home. If I got a chance to visit this place, I don't know what kind of literary seizure I would have! Not to mention, there's always something special about quaint little towns, with beautiful landscapes. Although, I am quite sure billions have visited this place, it almost seems like I've chanced upon a secret place to get away from it all!

{google images}

{Volterra}

(No throwing stones, people!) Yes, its the infamous Volterra from the Twlight Series! It's a beautiful town, hidden in the splendor of Tuscany. It's possibly over two-thousand years old! Aside from walking down its cobbled streets, dreaming up Edward about to step out into the light of the sun, in the square for the first time, there's something about ancient towns. I often wonder what it would be like to live there. Would I see life differently than I do, seeing as I am a New York City chick, used to fast paces and even faster people with sharp tongues? Either way, this would make an excellent destination getaway!

"Own your reality..."

{photographs from weheartit.com. If you are the photographer of one of these beautiful photographs, contact me, and I will give credit. if you would like for me to take it down, I will do so}

ometimes I feel like a little brown girl with little pink wildflower barrettes swinging with my pony tails.There are so many things I want to be.

A Novelist

A Photographer

A Bible Scholar

An Etymologist

A Free verse artist

Graphic Designer

There are tons more compiled to my personal dream cartographie.  Nevertheless, the enemies, 'safety,' and 'conventionality,' meet me on a long dirt road before I even start. Once you graduate from higher education you are met with two choices, a boring cubicle filled with stale air, or, a thrilling life of creation and purpose. The cubicle comes with health benefits and what seems like a steady paycheck, but how much is it worth if you lose all of the colours that makes you...you?

So I choose fun, because life is short enough as it is.

I choose dreams because they are all I have.

I choose to trust in the Lord, and the miracles He has in store for me.

I choose to do it all, without regret, unabashedly.

And when my whimsical epic has been written, others will see blue, and wildflowers, love for God, lines, upon lines of words, sunshine, funky style, a wide smile. A life lived!

I Heart DIANA

These photos were all taken via my lovely Diana Dreamer. My second set, and I couldn't be more pleased. My first set were characterized by wraiths materializing out of black and white smokey cloud cover. Really, not too pretty but I give myself the benefit of the doubt. 
One day, I just decided to drag Ash {my sister for all intents and purposes. Cousin is too light a word}, around her neighborhood. Like the trailblazer she is, she was all for it, helping me to find places with the best light, or intrigue. I have more, but I loved these the most.
I can't wait to get better at it, because as mind numbing as it can be sometimes to have to wait for pictures to develop, in an age where art can appear in blinks, the surprises you get when you finally pick up your prints are wonderful. I encourage everyone to get at least one camera that forces you to have pictures to develop.