End of the Year Review

I stole this little questionnaire from Miss Summer and you should fill it out too

The Past Year

1. How have you spent your time?

Mari: Working, learning, loving, getting into trouble, being happy and blessed, living up my youth, being free, falling in love

2. What were you grateful for?

Mari: I am grateful for Ross, for my job and my education. Our apartment and the kitties. My mom and my family and that I have an imagination and a capable body that lets me do what I can dream.

3. What were your sorrows and disappointments, and how did they change you?

Mari: not having a license but I moved to Tempe and fell in love so that I feel blessed to have happen. It stinks sometimes how tight money can be or the fact that I have some debt but it's taught me to pay attention to the love and great friends in your life and just make sure you can pay rent and buy food and that buying things other than that won't make you happy. I much rather be poor and living where I live than have money to buy things and not be a quarter as happy as I am now.

4. What books, films, etc., moved you?

Eating Animals, Inception, Ishmael, I can't remember...

Now you!!

If I ever marry

I was never really one to plan out my wedding. Heck half the time I keep thinking about reasons to never get married but when I do plan out things it's always the music. I always think of what would be the perfect song for walking down the isle or a first dance and I think they are the most perfect song for the me I am at that most perfect moment. Of course things change but right now I would love to start dancing the night away with Queen's The Millionaire Waltz.

You can read about how much I love Queen here.

I think the song is TOTALLy appropriate and after years of playing in orchestra and listening to good old rock and roll what is better than a rock waltz? and puhh-leaze there is nothing dreamier than Freddie on the piano (excpet maybe Ross on the guitar)

Imagine us like this + Queen

Happy Monday Folks!

Friday I'm In Love: The List

My Birthday and Christmas are exactly one week apart. I'm usually not that much into getting presents and would much rather have people come and enjoy themselves sans gift or give that money to a good cause I am making a list of gifts that would be nice. Wait? I thought you JUST said you didn't like gifts?? That's right I'd be fine without them BUT I really want to get Ross something nice for Christmas and this is me posting this list hoping it will inspire him to post a list for me so that I can have some sort of idea where to go for his gift.

(I ask him now what he wants for Christmas and all he says is "You") =)

Any who these are all items I was looking to grab for myself at some point or another so here they are.

#1 Cross-body Bag

I'm hoping this will make riding a bike and life easier not having to balance a bag on my shoulder and instead have it secured with a strap across my body.

From Target

From Target

#2 Anything Hello Kitty

These bags aren't cross body but they are Hello Kitty!

From Sanrio

From Sanrio

From Sanrio

#3 Hello Kitty Sweater

I've been on the lookout for a Hello Kitty sweater for weeks now and I just can't find anything cute like this =/

From Tumbler

#4 Yarn

I just realized that there was a yarn store around the corner and they have the most incredible selection of fancy yarns there. I would love to take a class there or try out some of their neat wool blends. If I also was gifted any yarn I would be a happy camper.

#5 My Charger or New Camera

We can't find the charger to my little black friday deal of a Nikon from last year so right now the only camera I have is my phone. I would love to be able to just get a charger and keep my camera that still looks fantastic but one day (my savings are still nowhere close right now) I would love to have a beautiful Nikon D70 =) (or any fancy camera)

From Nikon

#6 Disneyland

Now I'm not asking for a trip to Disneyland (though that would be amazing) I'm down with someone to go with me! The last time I went was almost four years ago and I've been dying to put on my Mickey ears and go have a blast.

From We♥it

From We♥it

What is on your wishlist for Christmas?

One Day We Went Hiking

I'm behind on like 3 papers and have a project to work on and all I want to do is lie in bed and suck my thumb.

On Veterans day we went hiking

and going down into South Mountain was way fun

and we found rangers who took us off the trail and showed us drawings done on the mountain walls by the Hohokams from about 1400 B.C. which was really fun

and then we had to go up the mountain to go back to our car

and that was not fun at all (read: I whined and had to stop- a lot)

but I conned Ross into getting Chipotle after and thus the world was okay again.

Now I'm off to try and get this shizz done.

Senioritis why are you bitting me in the behind??

Holiday Well Wishes

My family has never done Christmas cards or holiday family pictures.

We've never gone caroling or made gingerbread houses.

Growing up we hung up stocking but our shoes would be the ones getting filled up on Three Kings day way after Christmas (think January 6th)

So when I stumped upon the famed dollar section at Michael's and found the most adorable Christmas cards I knew I would have to find more people to send them to other than my family.

So I want to send them to you.

If you are sad at the thought of holiday e-cards and not part of a big community of holiday card senders and want a card sent to you then this is the thing for you.

Even if you do send and receive a bunch of holiday cards and want one more this is perfect for you too.

All you have to do is send an email with your address to

Marisela (dot) Cabrera (dot) 2011 (at) gmail (dot) com

and you'll get an email from me back with my address in case you want to spread the love and send a card back.

I think the holidays are a great time to reach out and get to know people better and make some real connections even if it's just through a thoughtful holiday card.

Also if you like the idea and want to do this yourself fell free to take this picture and the button I have on the side (I'm gonna be lazy and make you copy and paste it off my blog) and write your own post.

If you write a post make sure come back and link it up so I can participate too.

Grand Opening!

What I've always wanted to do I've done.

I finally got my courage and strength up to work my nimble fingers and opened up

"Cat and Mouse- crochet by Mari"

I am sooo excited for this new adventure. I want to thank the best blog friends a girl could have, who a year ago told me that my stuff was good enough to sell and gave me confidence to keep crocheting and making new things.

The store has a couple designs and well loved hats but expect to see more and more pop up everyday. I just couldn't wait any longer to open up shop since I was too excited!

The lovely Miss Rasha Marie is being so kind to host a giveaway for me

So stop on over at her blog to ch-ch-check it out.

Peace on love to all on this sunny Friday =)

Growing Pains

Yesterday was just a bad day.

I've always been a really positive person or someone with an extra amount of resilience and I don't see there being any time for moping when you are looking to the future for opportunity.

Yesterday it got to me and it was just a bad day.

My camera died. No big problem, right? Not really until we couldn't find the charger anywhere

Ross might have left it the hotel well he was last on vacation

I was taking pictures of all the items that are going to be the opening line of my shop so that really bummed me out.

Then I slammed my thumb in the car door on my way to work and not only did it make me cry then, it throbbed all day and kept me from sleeping.

I'm sure the nail is gonna fall off and that puts my total nail count down to 18. damn.

Then work was sloooooow and filled with some difficult costumers,

but the cherry on top was an argument with Ross.

Yes I just posted about how happy I am but this was one of those arguments that I like to think of as a growing pain. You know when you have to tear down a wall to build a bigger room or when you were a kid and your legs would ache all summer but that was the year you grew three inches?? Those are growing pains and this argument was one of those that you have to take three steps back to take two forward, then another step back and then at the end three steps forward.

It was draining, and there was crying and pain and hurt going on but that's reality.

You love someone, you grow, you love, you have some growing pains, you love and you grow some more.

I almost wasn't going to post about it but I don't want to make it look like life is 100% amazing all the time- it isn't and I'm almost a little weary of blogs that are super positive all the time every post. My blog friends are like blog family and this is something I want to be genuine and that means telling you about the love, and the cute boots, and fun crafts but it also means posting about stress from school, relationship woes and tifs with friends.

Thank you for letting me be able to post about all this though- I've "met" the most amazing people here

On another note I do believe we may have found a substitute camera to take pictures with so I'm hoping tomorrow may be the day when I finally open up shop!