Choosing a Prom Dress!

One of the exciting events that take place your senior year of high school is your high school prom! I have been anticipating this event since I was a freshman. Some people believe that prom is not all what it is advertised to be and others believe (mainly girls) that it would be one of the best days of their high school journey. I happen to be tremendously excited, however, I wonder what it would actually turn out to be.

Although prom is still months away, I think that it's never too early to find and start saving up for a dress. The color that I want to wear is a champagne/light gold shade that I hope to stand out in. I want my dress to be conservative and pretty enough to compete with everyone else's dresses. These are a couple of dresses I loved, but neither one of these is THE dress I will be wearing.

The color of both of these dresses is perfect. However, the first one looks more like a dress of my style. I do not have to make a choice yet, but once I do I know it'll be great. I am still looking for the dress that I absolutely cannot refuse. Yet, the journey to finding the perfect prom outfit will still not be over because well...I have not even started looking for the perfect pair of shoes. That will be probably be a harder decision then the dress!

What's your ideal prom dress? 

I LOVE My Nokia Lumia 1020!

Last weekend on Saturday, January 18, 2014. I said goodbye to my old iPhone 4 and made a new home for the phone that has been on my wishlist for months! I finally bought the Nokia Lumia 1020! 

 

Here are my favorite key features on this Windows 8 Phone so far:

Camera

41 mega-pixels and incredible high-definition zoom. Awesome!

Camera Apps 

I can create animated photos, shoot high-definition videos, create panoramas, and edit my photos while I am taking the photos so I can get the best shot, every time!

Uncluttered

Another one of my favorite features on this phone is the fact that it is easy to organize. I can organize all my photos and contacts the way I want to without having the iPhone forcing me to create separate albums and still store all my photos on my camera roll.

Oodles of Space

32 GB of Storage. Take that 16 GB iPhone 4!

Total Personalization 

I love being able to create the start menu the way I want to. I also love how easy it is to do so. The iPhone 4 made it impossible to save your contacts on your home screen or hide your apps. With this phone, I have no limits.

Better Blog Photos

I am now saying goodbye to my average to decent iPhone photos on my blog and finally moving on to good and great! 

I have so much more tech specifics to discuss, but I will save that for my technology blog. Read the detailed review of the Nokia Lumia 1020 on It's Technologic. 

Design: Gold & Pink

I have been posting my new blog design all over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google + and it has been live on my blog for about a month now. As part of a new feature series I would like to start on my blog, I want to share my inspiration for this design and a few basic elements that allowed me to make this new Gold and Pink blog design possible.

This is my blog design's color palette. Finding the perfect palette is hard to do. There's color theory that comes into play and you have to pick a strong enough color basis so you can play around with the accent colors. For example, I could have made my accent color gold instead of pink and my whole blog would look completely different.

Using my color palette and a little creativity, this is the end result! 

Boys Behind the Blog: My Best Friend

I love what I do: that's blogging, writing, designing, and running my business. Often times, while I am doing what I do best, I do not really mention the people that make it possible for me to do so. So I decided to follow the Boys Behind the Blog linkup by Mallory from Mal Smiles and Stephanie from Never the Same Spice Twice. Basically once a month, all I do is have the "boy behind the blog" answer a set of questions and showcase who he is. I thought it was an adorably sweet idea and I will be sure to do a few of these posts this year.

One of the people who have helped me and guided me through all my endeavors is my best friend. Although, I will not disclose his name at this moment (will do so sometime in the future), I will just introduce him as my best friend. He's a great person who loves reading comic books, watching shows like Doctor Who and Arrow, playing video games, and has a very intelligent mind with the curious need to understand the world and the people who make it what it is today.

Photo Credit

Q: What was your favorite movie of 2013?
A: My favorite movie of 2013 would definitely have to be Man of Steel. Even though many people would disagree, I liked it because it put Superman into a situation he has not been put in before and it is fantastic to see him pull through.

Q: What is your all time favorite movie quote?
A: "There is no one I would rather be than me". - From the movie Wreck It Ralph

Q: What is your favorite type of movie?
A: Action, adventure, and the occasional comedy.

Q: What is your New Year's resolution? 
A: My New Year's resolution is to try to get things done such as school work, any goals I have, and if I start something I am definitely going to try and see it through.

Q: This year I will...
A: Be a better person.

I loved being able to get my best friend involved with my blog and I hope it was enjoyable to get a feel for the people in my life who inspire me to do my very best.

Public and Private Social Media Accounts

Photo Credit

Since, we all try to connect with others online whether it would be to network, to make friends while blogging, or engaging in various forms of public relations to grow your business, you need to find a balance. A balance between what you what to share publicly among all the people that you connect with online and the things you want to share among your close friends and family only.

I have learned that keeping separate private and personal social media accounts can be overwhelming, but perhaps worth it. You'll be able to set boundaries even if it requires a bit more effort. 

I keep my Facebook profile private, but I have a public Facebook page for this blog as well as my technology blog It's Technologic, my novel, and my business Fragrance Essence.

I have separate Twitter accounts too. I have one public personal account, an account for my technology blog, an account for my business, and a personal private twitter account with less than thirty followers just to keep things personal between the people I usually interact with in real life.

Then there's the private Instagram account where I decided to approve all those who follow me. This account may become public later on, but for right now...if you want to follow me, don't be afraid to submit a request. 

Then my Pinterest and YouTube are public accounts because I like to share my pins and soon hope to share Vlogs on YouTube (Look out for some YouTube videos soon)! 

I also am active on Path, Vine, Tumblr, Google +, FourSquare, MySpace, LinkedIn and Chime.in, however since most people seem to not use these social networks, I usually have most of these accounts set to private. However, feel free to request a follow on any of these networks. 

Making College Decisions...

At this time as I am preparing for yet another SAT test and applying to colleges. I am having various thoughts and feelings about the decisions I have to make in order to keep going along with the college process. Truth is, the college process is told to be quite simple...you research, you visit these colleges, find out what majors they have, apply while complying with their general requirements (SAT scores, recommendation letters, transcripts, and college essays), then wait for a response. Then why do high school seniors make out the college process to be a little overwhelming? The answer is the requirements that you cannot find by simply researching the school itself.

All colleges generally tell you what is required, but different things are required as per major and sometimes you'll have to do things you aren't prepared to in order to even be eligible to apply for the college of your choice. As of right now, for one particular college that I consider my dream school (Steven's Institute of Technology), I have to take the SATs for a slightly higher score, and take a Pre-Calculus class either during the Spring or Summer semester and do my very best in all the college level classes I am taking right now in order to transfer my credits successfully. Yes, this is the overwhelming part of the college application process.

More than anything, this is the college I would love to go to. The institute is known for innovation and technology, both of the major things I am looking for. I know it might have been a bad thing to put all my marbles on one college, but I did and therefore, I aim to go to school there. 

#7ThingsProject: Getting Started

Sometime in July of 2013 while I was working on launching my Kickstarter campaign for my novel, I mentioned another project I was working on called the #7ThingsProject. This project is sort of like a bucket list. You list 7 things you want to do. Then, whenever you complete anything on your list, you write a blog post on it. Once you're all done with all the 7 things you set out to do, celebrate with another blog post and link up all your achievements! This project has no set time frame, start whenever you want and end once you achieve all 7 things! I'll be curating a list of all the blogs participating in the project on the 7 Things Project page and constantly sharing all your achievements through social media! This project is all about doing the things that make you happy, so I'm starting this project today!

#7Things

1. Score at least a 1600 on my SATs. 

2. Host a little imaginary party with my little sister that makes her happy. 

3. Upload a video on my YouTube channel and start doing some V-logging.

4. Create Open When... letters for people with significant meaning in my life.

 5. Spend a whole weekend with my family without using the internet once.

6. Save up enough money to buy my sister her own laptop or tablet.

7. Speak confidently in front of a large group of people. 

Join me and do the things that make you happy, sign up for the #7ThingsProject!

Why my Photo 365 Project Last Year Failed...

Last year, my New Year's resolution was to complete a Photo 365 Project. I saw several pretty Photo 365 Projects done on photography and lifestyle blogs and was convinced that I should try it. It started out going pretty well, all I had to do was take one photo each day to accumulate a collage of 365 photos in total. However, after life started becoming hard to manage, I started to skip days of photos and kept track of the days I missed so I can take extra pictures and pretend I never skipped. That was wrong and sort of defeated the purpose of this project because once the day was I gone, I could not get that picture I was missing. So instead of Photo 365 Project it became a collection of photos from each month (while missing some days) and so I created the "Catching Up on Photo 365" series. It was a fun project, however, I was able to take photos that I was really proud of.

1. My birthday dinner outfit. First outfit post of the year.

2. My little sister's birthday!

3. Designing mugs together!

4. Focusing on my blog with an Iced Coffee. This was the year I registered TheEternityJournal.com.

5. I also took to baking last year and my favorite thing to bake were cinnamon buns.

6. Decorating our home was fun. Putting family photos together in this frame made me happy.

7. Last year, I was obsessed with frozen yogurt and here's the first cup.

8. Can you say "20 items or less?" 

9. I also liked curling my hair to look like beachy waves and this was my photo showcasing it. 

This year, I decided no Photo 365 and so far I have caught myself taking random pictures. Although, I am not doing this project this year, I will probably still take lots of random photos from day to day or pull together photos from my Instagram every month and create a special monthly post.

Happy New Year! + New Ideas for 2014

Happy New Year! Hope you have all been keeping your new year's resolutions so far! Lately, I have been wondering about starting a YouTube channel as a new project in 2014. I have had a YouTube channel for years, I have a video or two of my little sister and a few music videos I created and that's about it. I have more than hundred subscribers and I would like to finally contribute something.I am thinking of creating how-to tutorials, product reviews/unboxing, funny and random videos, and I have always wanted to start an advice column! Does that sound like something I should do or something you would like to watch?



Beyond that, I had a great New Year's Eve! My family and I just started the day off our usual way and we decided to get dressed up after ordering Pizza Hut for dinner. We took lots of pictures and watched the ball dropped on television. I even put together a video of all our accumulated photos through 2013 and shared it with my family minutes before 2014! My family and I have a tradition of sipping Coca-Cola in wine glasses the second the ball drops, but this year we also decided to throw confetti (A mess that took hours to clean afterwards and yet, there's still confetti in the living room today).



My idea of an active YouTube channel is still in the making, but one thing I have been doing is using this awesome blog planner, created by Erica from Confessions of a Home-Schooler. I downloaded and printed her free blog planner, then took it to Staples to get it spiral-bound. I love this planner and I am hoping to use it to guide my blog into the direction I would like it to go!