Real Housewives of D.C.

Again, I have to apologize for being so silent these past few days (so it has been a week, eek!), but I’ve been rather busy moving into my new dorm room! It is sooooo cute, I can not even emphasize how seriously charming the building is – if one were to watch a movie in which a Woman’s College Dormitory was depicted, it would totally look like the place I’m living! The room has gabled dormers; the cute little structural elements that stick out from roofs and have windows in them! Loooove it!

This is an example of super cute dormers!

Sloped roofs are a little difficult to deal with, but I’ll survive. In case any one was wondering, I moved back to school way early (on August 9th) for Student Government Association Training and a Leadership Summit. I serve as the President of the Class of 2013 here at Little College – I have NEVER been in student government before! If only the SGA knew what they were doing when they appointed me (funny story about my election… there wasn’t one; nobody ran for Prez so I applied)!

I must now be referred to Madame Presidente, thank you very much!

Let us switch gears. Sorry, I won’t be posting pictures of my super cute dorm setup until I finally finish unpacking (and hang my totally cute mirror), but I promise it will be alllll over the internet soon!


Anyone like the Real Housewives series on Bravo? I do, but I don’t at the same time. The shows always begin nicely, with little fighting and beautiful shots of their nice houses and the areas they live. Until the housewives are in any scenes together, the cameras just follow their wonderfully lavish lives and the ridiculous things they do (case and point all of the Jersey Housewives). Then they start fighting, and my attention span shrinks to just about nothing – I can take about fifteen minutes of the fighting before I go crazy and change the channel!


As much as I dislike the Real Housewives, I am obsessed with the new RH of DC! So much so that Sigma Sister and I had a little party with cupcakes, cookies and vino (for her and my mother, not for me!) to celebrate the first episode last week! It was so wonderful – the women were a touch less dramatic than the Jersey girls (though I’ll give that some time), and the scenery was absolutely to die for! I lovelovelove DC!

I didn’t get to catch the most recent episode, so do not give it away for me! I have a lot of hope for this version of Real Housewives; perhaps I’ll actually be able to tolerate it!

Happy Birthday to Me, I bought a Lilly!

So the other day, my friend Sigma Sister and I went shopping at our local Lilly store - the Palm Beach store on St. Armand's Circle. So chic, love St. Armand's, it is such a big tourist destination during season, but in summertime it is nearly empty and it's delightfully easy to parallel park when there are no cars there!

Part of St. Armand's Circle. It's a huge roundabout, and all the parking spots are parallel parking!

We spent nearly an hour in the store just browsing and trying on all of the sale dresses (NOT and exaggeration!), and then another hour talking to the adorable ladies who run the place about vintage Lilly and how Sigma Sister would commit a felony to intern for them! Poor Sigma Sister, she graduated Summa Cum Laude this year and is having trouble finding employment! I so can't believe it, she's super talented.

Anyhow, my birthday is coming up, and as an "adult" (Honestly, am I an adult if I still depend on my parents? Barely.) I was charged with finding my own gifts this year. I thought it was only suiting that I buy my first LP dress. That's right, FIRST, as in I don't own any Lilly! I've always coveted and drooled on the website (and occasionally on the dresses in the store, shhh), but I've never owned a Lilly of my own! Blasphemy!

It arrived today, and this is what it looks like!

It’s super tight in the hips and sooo lose in the chest, is this normal? Of course, because I have "child bearin' hips," to quote Volleyball Sister.

Also for myself for my birthday, I bought a Mini Agenda in the White Zin print! It fits in my purse, love it; I'm about as close to you get to obsessive compulsive without an actual diagnosis, the agenda is perfect for me. So many places for me to write my life down so I can obsessively manage each and every waking (and sleeping!) moment of my life! I also got a luggage tag in Later Gator, which is my absolute fav Lilly Print.

I considered getting The Dry Erase Board, but it would totally get stolen off of my dorm room door. So instead, I made my own "dry erase board" for the door of my room - a white picture frame with a cute pattern and my initials monogrammed in it, because glass is totally dry-erase! And waaaay cheaper than a $16 dry erase board for a poor college student!

P.S., My birthday is not until the Eleventh, but shipping (aka, Ebay) is a beautiful thing. :)

Shark Week Stinks!

As someone who lives three houses away from the Gulf of Mexico and spent her summer religiously tanning there, I am not usually that phased by sea creatures. I mean, I’ve stepped on a sting ray before, didn’t get stung, no big deal – I just always do the “stingray shuffle” now. But sharks? Totally freaked! We have bull sharks in my area, and my hometown is the “Shark’s Tooth Capital of the World” (which has nothing to do with a living shark population, as the teeth are fossilized); we’ve had shark attacks occur in the area before.

Shark Attacks Woman in Sarasota Bay. - 2007
Records of 2005 attack on Jane Lynch
“Large Sharks are the only known natural predators of dolphins in the Sarasota Bay area.”

(Note the words LARGE and SHARKS)

Of course, as a seasoned Floridian, I know that Shark attacks are really rare (like, every couple of years rare, as seen in the dates on these sources), but I have the worst luck in the world. Let me outline a little of my most recent bad luck for ya’all, my freshman year of college went a little like this; Day One – I step on a wasp, my foot swells up so much I have to play the cello at Commencement barefoot. Thanksgiving Break – US Airways sends me a broken plane, delayed in Roanoke until the next morning. Winter Break – Snowmageddon hits, and I am stranded in Washington D.C. for four days because of a Saturday final that I was trying to argue my way out of for months and ended up being cancelled anyway; return home to find that my Christmas gift is to get on another plane. January – I return to school to re-take the final, and miss it (long story; who holds an exam at 7AM anyway?). March-ish – Play in Orchestra for Thoroughly Modern Millie, my cello is kicked in the Orchestra pit and irreparably damaged. Spring Break – I fly home, and must drive back because flying is not working out for me; I get new tires on the car and one of them blows out in Orlando. Yesterday – I bought a Lilly Pulitzer dress off ebay for my birthday; I wait 5-6 business days for it to get here, and on day 6 (yesterday) I am finally presented with a tracking number from the woman who says she ships within 1-2 business days – this is a problem because the dress is going to arrive in FL the day I move in to my dorm in VA.

That’s not even the extent of it, but I’ll not bore any readers with petty details. The point is, I have the worst luck in the world, non-negotiable. I would be the person swimming out to the sandbar at noon on a Wednesday, minding my own business when suddenly – BAM! JAWS re-enactment ensues.


Needless to say, this is why Shark Week scares the living bejeezus out of me! Life and limb is at risk here! Everyone is so hyped up about watching a huge animal with razor-sharp teeth slicing through hunks of cow on a hook, but nobody stops to think about the poor sods like me whose leg probably highly resembles that hunk of cow whilst swimming!

It’s too much!

Summer's Almost Over!

This picture isn't quite up-to-date, this building just got a new copper dome!

On the 8th, I am packing up my little Jetta and making the 14-hour adventure up the east coast to my Little College in Virginia. School doesn’t start until the 26th, but I have to be there early for Student Government Training and a Leadership Summit, which run from the 9th to the 13th, and then “Orchestra Camp,” which starts on the 17th and continues until the commencement ceremony for incoming freshmen on the 22nd. I can’t complain, though, I’m excited to move back in to my new dorm (in the cutest building on campus – my mom lived there when she went to LC back in the day!), and get to do some arranging before my roomie arrives.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my little college in Virginia so much, and I hate being away from it; but sometimes, I wish I had gone to a larger school – one with actual traditions and school spirit. While my little college (LC) is so quaint and a great little community to live in, it is just that. Little. Like 2,500 students little. We have six sororities on campus (two that I can’t join because I am Caucasian, riddle me that?), and three fraternities that I know of, but I don’t define LC by its Greek Life. We also have sports, like Baseball, Basketball, Lacrosse, Soccer… et cetera. However, we don’t have football, and our club sports are limited, and it’s difficult for someone who’s not very athletically inclined (like myself) to pluck up the courage to join them.

As often as I wish I had gone to a bigger school with more people, sports teams, and bustling Greek life, I see all the little things that drew me to Little College. The class sizes, the close-knit community (if I really made an effort, I bet I could learn everyone’s names – at least, everyone in my class!), the beauty of the campus, my family legacy there… Once, I made like I was going to skip class and went down to our little café; lo and behold, I ran into my professor! While they are not about to track me down every day I miss class, my professors are actually concerned with my well being, and recognize me when I see them around campus.

Other things I love about LC; the awesome housing options (though we need another residence hall), the cleaning staff (who are always happy), the southern charm of the people (like the cleaning staff, who call me honey and wish me a good day when I leave the building in the morning), and the fact that there is always something to do. People who claim that my little college is boring don’t leave their dorm rooms very often.

My little college is part of the community, too. People walk their dogs around the track – which I love, because I get a little dog-deprived during the year without Aging Puppy. Community service is big at LC; if I have a slow weekend ahead, I can always find sorority philanthropy or a club that needs a helping hand with a service project.

I suppose pessimism would be my “fatal flaw” (if I were an ancient Greek hero); I know that if I were to be anywhere else, I would be complaining about how big a school I went to, how I had to join a sorority to make friends (as I have observed my friends do at many big state colleges), or that the dorms suck.

I love my Little College! I mean, where else can you play cello in the orchestra with both your lesson instructor and your Philosophy Professor, who also happens to be your Old Testament Teacher?

Boring Old Lilly.

I have not had a very eventful couple of days, thus the textual silence on my behalf. Today I went to the Lilly Pulitzer store on St. Armand’s Circle with my friend, Sigma sister, we stopped at Marshall’s as well because I was hoping to find some Lilly-inspired stationary/binders for school. While that didn’t happen, we at least found out that our store is having a huge sale! Lots of cute shifts for very little dinero, which is good for a poor college student like myself. Anyone in the area would profit from a stop at this location!

Other than that, the only exciting things I have done in the past two days are a) bring my dad lunch at work with my dog (oh-so-southern), b) wonder about how fashionably correct wearing a headband with sunglasses is, and c) start work on another pillow for my dorm – with pockets! Letter “b” has caused me the most trouble though.

Example of headband-and-sunglasses phenomena!

I can not figure it out. While I love my headbands, I can’t really see without sunglasses on, as I live in Florida, where the sun is freakin’ blinding! Thus the necessity for both at once – if I don’t wear a headband, my hair gets all in my face, and if I don’t wear sunglasses the sun burns my retinas. In both cases, I end up blind! Oh, well. It is a dilemma worth pondering, I suppose.

In other news, my birthday is coming up! Well, not my actual birthday, but the one I’m going to be able to celebrate with my family and home friends. I will be at school in VA by the time my actual birthday – August eleventh, if one was wondering – rolls around, so my mom is having me start rounding up my presents now. I don’t quite understand this whole “buy your own presents, because you’re an adult now” deal, because Santa still puts presents under the tree, damnit! Why should I procure my own presents!

Oh, I am so tortured. Happily, I don’t have to think about it much, because a trip to Goodwill this week yielded me all of these lovely little Ralph Laurens. Take a peek!

Many people are squeamish about buying clothes from places like Goodwill, and for good reason – I have visited Goodwill’s that have made me nauseous from the sheer volume of crapola and disorganization. This is not the case with my local Goodwill, we just built a new one, and boy is it nice and clean! Also, secondhand in my little resort town is not the same as secondhand elsewhere; I mean, where else to petite old ladies donate last season’s Lacoste and Ralph Lauren because they have to get new ones? After a few washes for sanitation’s sake, I no longer care that my polo was probably worn by some old bitty, because I just bought a $30+ shirt for $4!

Enjoy the little things. :)

What did I do with my life today? Well, aside from a lot of house-wifery - even though I'm not a housewife, how strange is that - that included stuff like laundry, vacuuming, ironing said laundry and dusting (which I loathe), I made cupcakes! In green and what was supposed to be pink, but the box of dyes lied and told me that dusty rose was the same thing as pink. It's totally not, and I want my money back. Cream cheese icing is expensive.

Aren't they adorable on their little fish plate?

Just kidding about that last, but they were quite delicious. I incinerated one batch of the smaller ones, because I decided to multi-task while baking which never ends well.

In other news, I spent Saturday night at the beach - it only rained a little, as there is currently some sort of nasty tropical storm bit making it's way through FL and ruining my chances of returning to College with a tan. Sad day. But here's what the gorgeous sunset looked like!

It was so beautiful and purple through the storm clouds!

I apologize for the sorry state of the pictures on this blog, by the way. My camera's memory card took a holiday for the summer and the camera itself only stores a weak (as Lax Bro would say) twenty-one pictures! How awful! I spent four days in D.C. with Lax Bro a few weeks ago, and I only have twenty-one pictures to show for it! Depressing, really.

Another thing I've been working on this week is recommendations for sororities - I'm going to rush Kappa Delta and Alpha Chi Omega when I return to school; the problem is, all of my mother's friends ate Tri Deltas and my Alumni friends are mostly... not from either of those sororities! It puts me in a quandary, really, I even had to go so far as to ask my grandmother to ask her friends what sororities they were in! Oh, well.

One last thing; as a shout-out to my one follower, Gator Nation all the way! I considered going to the Swamp for college, too! Kudos, my friend!

Operation Cutest Dorm Room Ever!

I have been working on it for a while, but yesterday I finally made some strides in my summer project (aside from Councilwoman Mom’s campaign, of course!) – Operation Cutest Dorm Room Ever! Officially, I suppose this all started last year when I moved into my freshman dorm; I am set on improving the sorry show I brought to school last year! Last year, my room’s colors were light blue and light green, with touches of pink. This year, I bought a comforter which is mostly pink, and my accents will be blue and green.

Kimberly Comforter by Tommy Hilfiger

I dig damask, especially pink damask! Anyway, there’s a bright green stripe at the top and bottom of the comforter, and I’ve been matching my accessories to that (plus light blue, of course). I went to Jo-Ann’s Fabric and bought two bundles of 18” x 21” quilting squares, two yards of white muslin, and some poly-fil.

This is what happened when I got home – craft supplies everywhere!
Meet my beloved craft box, lovingly dubbed the “Sorority Sister Start-up Kit.”

Needless to say, I tried to contain my mess and stay out of my family’s way, but I ended up in the center of the house in our “media room,” where all of the computers are. But I managed to get some work done – my projects for yesterday included covering cork boards with fabric, and making pillows to match.

These are the covered cork boards; please ignore the pile of white muslin in the corner!

The pillows, on top of most of my other dorm stuff! Note my beloved Georgetown Cupcakes box!

I had to hand-sew the pillows, because no matter how many times I kick myself for not owning a sewing machine, I still don’t have one of my own! Some day, I suppose. Mod-podge is the greatest invention known to woman kind, as my new cork boards are as sturdy as can be. Last year, I bought the same cork boards and left them uncovered and without any sort of backing – big mistake! We had to leave the heat on during the Snowmageddon that was Winter Break, and everything peeled off the walls. Everything, that is, except the corners of the cork boards! This year, I pasted them right onto pieces of cardboard, and they seem to be quite solid and peel-proof.

I haven’t figured out if this will all fit into my trusty Jetta, but I assume that since I had extra room bringing most of this stuff (plus a cello and a guitar!) home with me this year that I’ll be able to make due!

Five Things About Lillian!

Well, here we go again! I’ve tried this blogging thing before, but it usually never goes anywhere as I tend become bored and abandon the thing. This blog is kind of a dare to myself to actually complete something – like Amy Adam’s character in Julie & Julia, I too have difficulty with my attention span in relation to finishing just about anything.

Before I get neck deep in posting about my life and my “projects” (oh, anyone who knows me will tell you I always have a project), I thought I would start with a few interesting tidbits about my neurotic self. So here are five things about Lillian!

1. The nickname Lilly;

When I was born, my mother gave me the good, strong Irish name Jillian; she used to hate it when I went by Jill instead, so when I left for college, I resolved to go by Jillian. Well, the first party I ever went to was at our “Lacrosse House,” which is always quite boisterous and almost dangerous (hence why I no longer attend Varsity Lax parties), and aside from my friends, the first person I met there was a lacrosse player. I introduced myself over the “pumpin’” music, and instead of hearing Jillian, he heard Lillian and introduced me as such for the rest of the night. Needless to say, the next day was spent remedying the situation, but the nickname stuck, and was subsequently shortened to Lilly by my current boyfriend, Lax Bro (not the one from the party, though).

2. Clothes.

As a much younger person, I went through a lot of phases clothing wise – the strange alternative phase that I try to forget about, the really nerdy phase I try to forget about and the phase where I didn’t know what to wear outside of my school uniform that I try to forget about… Anyway, lots of clothing woes that are well documented by my parents and their infernal cameras. But about my senior year in high school, when I began to get my proverbial act together, I also began to dress nicely! I am obsessed with all things preppy – Lacoste, Le Tigre, Lilly Pulitzer, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, it all lives in my closet. While I will never give up my fondness for thrift stores (where else can you buy a Lacoste polo from this season for $3?), I am an avid Target shopper, too. My footwear consists almost solely of Sperry’s – I even have Sperry flip flops!

3. College.

My dream for college had always been to study abroad – and then the market crashed, and General Contractor Dad pulled the plug on that dream. However, I still maintained that I wanted to go to school as far away from Florida as possible, even considering upstate New York until City Councilwoman Mom brought me to see her Alma Mater in Virginia. From the moment I walked on campus, I was completely and utterly hooked, I knew there was nowhere else I would rather go than L-College! CC Mom practically had to drag me off the campus!

This year, I am rather excited to go back to school, as I am running for the currently vacant position of President of my Graduating Class, able to rush a sorority (we aren’t allowed to until our second semester, and I decided to wait last semester), and living in my dream dorm – Hundley!

4. Crafts.

I am absolutely obsessed with crafts. Last semester, my friends Indiana Cowgirl, California Fashionista and I began our “sorority start-up” kits, which consisted of as many art and craft items as we could stuff into a basket, a drawer, and a cute box. My Craft Box currently lives up on top of my “chiffarobe” at home, and I end up taking it down two or three times daily. I always have come sort of project I’m working on – most recently, I made a card for my friend’s birthday with her initials monogrammed on the front and the most beautiful citrus ribbon bow, which I put in a white picture frame to double as dorm room décor!

5. Condiments.

Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely hate ketchup, with a purple passion, and that the only condiment I put on my food is (occasionally) barbecue sauce – well, that and a heck of a lot of salt, but I think that’s a southern thing. I. Hate! Condiments! Mustard, Ketchup, Mayonnaise, Relish… it’s all so icky! I think of myself as a pretty talented cook, and to me the necessity of a condiment signifies that I did not do my job well enough!

That’s it about me, for now. I’m sure more strange details about my life will out later this week. Welcome, all, to my humble little blog! Tomorrow is when the real fun begins!