"That Summer"- Summer Concerts Anyone?

Beyond being one of my absolute FAVORITE songs, Garth Brooks has one of the best summer songs! I am leaving to go home Saturday morning and my room is all packed up for the most part. It looks very very weird, and I honestly wish that I had about 2 more weeks with my friends to decompress after exams. My mom and I were talking about how abruptly school comes to an end for students who live on campus. It is weird to think that next Monday, I won't be waking up at 8:30 to go to my 9:05 psychology class and then to my 11:15 anatomy lab. I'm not excited about saying my goodbyes but I am excited to see my family. I felt a little bad when my sister picked up the phone and said, "Oh hi! Long time no talk!" so I owe her a lot of catch up time. (She just won an award for graphic design at school--you go girl! It just goes to show I picked a wonderful blog artist!)

Anyway, that whole entire preface was to talk about summer concerts I'm excited about! I'm a big fan of country during the summer and there are great outdoor venues close to home.

May 22: Darius Rucker
GO GAMECOCKS! I am a major Darius fan. He is a great singer and a Gamecock! I know his concert would be good and he'd be a wonderful live singer too! There he is singing the National Anthem in USC's opening ceremony for the new baseball stadium!

June 5: Toby Keith
Huge TK fan and have been since about 7th grade when country music hit its peak (circa 2004-2005-2006) or so I like to think. It seems like a lot of the good songs came out right around then, and still stand as some of my faves!

June 6: WMZQFest
Montgomery Gentry, Jamey Johnson, Little Big Town, Jack Ingram, Eric Church, Heidi Newfield, The Eli Young Band, Jonathan Singleton and The Grove, Lost Trailers, Ryan Bingham, Emily West are all playing! I only recognize about half of them, however I love music festivals. This one is on a Sunday and starts at 2:15. The last time I went to something like this, it was called Sunday in the Country and started around the same time and ended around 10. I was a sophomore in high school and it was SUCH a fun day!

June 19: Brooks and Dunn
This is their last tour-oh no! I would love to grab tickets to this concert just because you know it will be good. They sang on the CMA's (or whatever the last country music award show was...) and did such a good job. Plus they'd be singing all the good songs that everyone will know the lyrics to.

July 30: Jason Aldean
Jason Aldean singing "Big Green Tractor" would just about make me melt. David Nail is also opening up for him, so that would be the double whammy for a concert! This would be a very fun one to go to as well with a big group of people!

August 7: Corey Smith
Corey Smith is another one of my favorites! This concert would be back when I'm moving in to my apartment at school, but would make a very fun roadtrip for sure!! I have to find someone who's willing to go with me to this one, I'm dying to see him in concert soon! He's coming close to me at home, but isn't as well known in MD as he is here, so I definitely want to catch him at least once!

What are some of your summer concert faves? Any great memories?

xxKatie

Care-Package

The other day my mom tried to send me a care package, but since all the snow came, it was TOTALLY delayed. Typically packages from home take about 3 days to get here, 4 days maximum through UPS, so she was not expecting it to take that long. It was chock full of Valentine's goodies and snacks that were very much appreciated! I love getting packages from home and I especially love the cards that everyone includes. My Aunt Patricia always sends me little seasonal presents and I love the cards she sends me. I actually cut up one of the first cards that my mom sent me when I was still having a tough time at school and she signed it "I love you! xoxo Mom" and it's now framed up on my wall and you can see that she drew a heart around the little note and the outline of that is at the top of the frame. It's just a little bit of home that I like to see on my wall.

Included in the most recent package was this fabulous pair of yellow and plaid boat shoes! How much fun are they? I can't wait to wear them with my J. Crew 5'' chino shorts!! I absolutely love these little gems! They're just making me WAY too excited about warm weather and it getting sunny. Today I gave a campus tour and I was freezing in black pants with leggings underneath, tall black Ugg boots, and 3 different shirts on underneath my big North Face Denali fleece. I am SO over all this cold weather crud.

On a completely different note, I want to wish my sister a GIGANTIC "Break a Leg" for her show tomorrow. She's in the musical Good News at her high school (my alma mater!) and I couldn't be more excited for her! Thursday night is the opening performance and I am dying to hear how it goes!! Here's my card to you:

I miss you so much and I wish that I could be at your show!!

xxKatie

"Mama I'm a Big Girl Now!"

I just love that song from Hairspray (and the whole soundtrack for that matter!) but today I did something that made me feel like an adult. I entered into my first real binding contract...a lease for an apartment! For next year I'm moving off campus into a townhouse apartment with a good friend of mine that I met this year, Megan and a super sweet friend of hers that I met a few days ago, Catherine. We have a few friends who live in the area of apartment already so we're so excited and the complex has a great reputation! Megan doesn't love the housing situation she's in right now for a few reasons, but mostly the price. Where she lives now seems to "nickel and dime" her as she said.


I had to share with everyone here because I feel like it's a pretty big milestone!! It makes me very excited for next year because I'll have a place of my own, and I'm most excited about--having a kitchen!!! I can't wait to be able to bake whenever I want with my own utensils and then go sit in my very own bedroom...not having to share a 250 sq. ft. dorm room WITH a roommate! I'm sure this is an experience everyone has had in the past, but I'm SO excited about it!! Yay!


xxKatie

Old Navy Finds!!

 Hey everyone, my apologies for not being a good blogger recently. I've been working on a campaign for a very good friend of mine who is running for the student body president! If any of you Twitter, you'll know my twitters are all about helping out this friend of mine! I'm the manager of his schedule so I have been emailing and contacting 24/7 (literally). I get back to my dorm and fall asleep rather quickly these days, which isn't behavior conducive to blogging! My dad is visiting me too this weekend which I am SO HAPPY about! The last time he was here was for MOVE-IN! Tonight he took me and 3 of my favorite people here at school out to dinner which was a great time! He finally got to meet all the people I talk about and my fabulous roommate for next year (oh hey Megan!)!! We all had a great time goofing off and eating more pizza than I'd like to think about!

But, recently however, I've ordered a few things from Old Navy that look like they could be from J. Crew which I was thrilled about! I'm really beginning to think that they use the same color palates or very similar ones and have very similar--but much more inexpensive--designs! I got a gift card to Banana Republic which can be redeemed at any of the 5 stores in the Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic group for Christmas so I found some items that I couldn't pass up!! Here are a few of the things I've purchased for my spring wardrobe:

This color is so very J. Crew! With all their neutral colors, I couldn't help but snag one for myself!

                                  

I feel like this poppy color is very Crew too! They always have a vibrant orange, especially for spring. I also love the ruffle detail along the collar. I have some great 5'' chino shorts that this sweater will be perfect with! I also have this in the "Cream of Artichoke" color, a super pale green that will look great too!

                                  

I love this sweater! Of all of the ones posted here, this one is great! You have to touch it though to get the full package. Aside from my cashmere argyle sweater, hands down this is the softest sweater that I own! Not to mention, I'm ecstatic that the Gap/Old Navy/Banana Republic online shopping has a "TALL" option, because the cuts are great for me. The shoulders are wider, the arm holes are lower and the sleeves are longer. The sleeve problem is the worst problem I seem to face when trying to buy sweaters and cardi's because I end up having to buy a large or XL just so the arms are long enough!

I also grabbed two shirts from Gap. I rarely shop at Gap because I think their prices are too high for the quality sometimes (I think in the recent years their quality has gone down from what it used to be). I also have a very hard time finding my size in the store in my local mall at home, but I've been searching for a nice ruffled tank. I think they look SO pretty layered with sweaters. I found a great one at Gap.com and I found an online coupon code that got me 20% off full priced items online at Gap, so I decided to get this tank in the Oak color and in white:

                               

It was just what I was looking for, not to mention the length is SO perfect for me. A medium tall is great for a girl with my build!! I am so excited to bring this stuff with me for spring break...as far away as that is. It is fun though to think about what I can wear all these things with!! I hope that you are all dreaming of spring!

I promise that I'll be back and commenting away as soon as I find the time!!

xxKatie

Parents' Weekend!

I'm blogging on the tail end of USC's Parents' Weekend! I had SUCH a good time! My mom and her sister Patricia (my godmother) came down to visit! My dad stayed home for a big Navy football game--oh how I miss it--and his brother and a friend were houseguests. PW had so many activities for parents and their baby gamecocks. My guests were introduced to their first SEC football game, a real treat! They sampled southern foods and and heard many "y'all"'s.

My mom and Aunt Patricia arrived Friday afternoon. It was the first time I saw my family in person since I moved it! As one of my friends put it "I'd be about to pee my pants if I hadn't seen my parents since move-in!" and she was right. I was SO incredibly excited to see them that the more I thought about it, I found myself getting choked up. They came here Friday and we all went to a fab place for dinner called California Dreamin'. They have these croissants with honey drizzled over them and I can't get enough! Then we went shopping. I haven't been to a mall since I before I had moved in, so I picked up a cute "Carolina Girl" T-shirt and browsed.

I fell in love with these little puppies! I found them while we were in the mall and I'm going to snag a pair when I go home! After shopping, we went back to the hotel to get ready for a parents' weekend welcome pool party and I stayed with them at the hotel. The pool party was so much fun! My aunt won't say the name of the mascot (GO GAMECOCKS!) so our mission was to get a photo of her with Cocky! Mission accomplished! It was so nice to stay in a real bed, not a dorm room. The hotel room must have been twice the size of our room.

Here she is with the man of the hour, himself--Cocky the Carolina gamecock!

Here I am with Cocky again, in my fabulous Lilly Florida Shift and Odin Cardigan! Representing LP on campus!

Saturday came around and we got up early. During the morning we hit of Mickey Dee's for breakfast since I love their pancakes. After that we scooted up to the Target close to USC and got a few necessities that I needed to restock from the time I moved in. Not having a car is problematic for trips like that but we had a rental so it was easy! We then headed on over to Devine Street which is an eclectic gathering of stores, including Pink Sorbet, a Lilly store! They were having an ADORABLE print giveaway. If you spent $200 you got a hand painted watercolor print. We went to a few more stores and then came back to the room to drop things off. Then we went back to the hotel to get dressed for the game and then went over to the Parents' tailgate. This was one of the parents' programs they had going on! The food was delish and my mom even tried a gross disgusting boiled peanut. I don't get that southern tradition! We then made the trek over to the stadium and we were in hugely high seats. I gave up my student section to sit in section 502, but I had such a good time with my guests!

At first I didn't love this photo, because I thought I looked like a deer in headlights, but I decided that its great since its all of us on a very fun weekend! I think that both my mom and Aunt Patricia had a great time with me (or hopefully they did...) seeing Columbia and experiencing the South!

xxKatie