A B i t G r a c e f u l.

Hi. Here are photos from some really good days I have had so far this summer! Enjoy! I made smoothies with my friend Ron at our meeting to discuss the plans we have for the club we are on the board for at our university.  We had a picnic in Central Park.  These are two of my best friends Tyler and Ron. On 4th of July we went to visit friends in Scarsdale and roamed around a gorgeous park before meeting up with them.  Walking down the High Line for our friend's birthday.  At my friend Ana's going away party on the Upper East Side. We explored her apartment and found this gem of a photo. My friend Zoe and I posed alongside it. Ana and Zoe both intern (well Ana is gone now studying abroad in Australia) at the same off-Broadway theatre I do, The Play Company.  These are my friends Tyler, Michelle, and Ron snuggling in the one bedroom apartment they are sharing for the summer.  I hope you enjoyed checking ou...

A New View  is a new installation on my blog where I photograph life and the things around me. I love photography. One of my dream careers is to be a photographer for National Geographic , but since I am not in the Amazon photographing spider monkeys or in Burkina Faso photographing the fashion in their marketplace, I will instead photograph my experiences and the things I see around me. I am now living in New York City for the summer so I am sure I will see some pretty interesting things. For the first installation, here are some random photos I took over the past several months. My iPhoto continues to surprise me with photos I forgot I had ever taken, or ones people have taken of me.  So, all photos below were taken by me except the three with me in them of course. Enjoy! August 2014. Balleycroy, Ireland. (Photo cred: my grandma). October 2014. Galway, Ireland.  November 2014. Cardiff, Wales.  November 2014. Cardiff, Wales. Novembe...

That is the question.  Hello anyone who reads this. I have been on a blog hiatus for about 2 and a half months now, mostly because of my crazy schedule. However, I don't like calling that an excuse because I have always been crazy busy and I have always found time to blog in the past two years. What I fear is that I am not sure if my heart is in it anymore.  I have been thinking about my blog a lot in the past two weeks since starting an internship at an off-Broadway theatre in NYC. One of my main projects is that I am part of the team redesigning and redoing their website and blog. I have so many exciting ideas that I want to bring to the table there and it has made me reflect back on my own blog and website design.  I remember first starting my blog and feeling a combination of excitement and bashfulness. I was very insecure that what I wrote, posted, or talked about would be pointless or weird. I thought my quality would be so far behind the gazillion blogs tha...

Hello! So first of all, this is not a sponsored ad or anything like that.  I just wanted to talk about the three products I have from Søciety6 , an online medium that sells the artwork of hundreds of thousands of artists from around the world in the form of merchandise. Søciety6 uses the highest quality materials and ships it to the purchaser on behalf of the artist. My iPhone 4 case is: Vintage Camera I am convinced this case is made of steel. It held up so much potential destruction from the amount of times I had dropped it. It is a very sturdy case and I love the design. I still use this phone as my iPod, but because of water damage, the middle button and LED light are broken, so I got a new phone with my update.  My current iPhone 5s case is: Bill Murray / Steve Zissou This is my current phone case and I am OBSESSED. I watched the Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou over winter break and really loved it. I thought getting this case wou...

Source Source Source I'm so busy! Enjoy these photos until I have time to breathe aka write a proper blog post :) 

You know how everyone is always like, "Oh my gosh you studied abroad? Did you travel? Did you have fun? Did you discover yourself? Did you mature in ways you never thought possible? Did you go to Paris? Did you see Big Ben? Did you get lost? Did you meet new people? Did you make amazing friendships that will last forever? Did you eat a lot? Did you even have time to study anything?", and you're just like, "Um yes", and then you scurry away before you are forced to give any details because if you mention ANY memory you might burst into tears because it is just a fading memory and you cannot handle that?  Yeah.  So the title of this post, "TIPS FOR WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN YOUR OWN BED IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY AND FEEL LIKE YOU'RE HAVING AN IDENTITY CRISIS" is supposed to sort of let you into my mind right now. I basically have come home from having many adventures "prancing", as my mom likes to call it, around Europe. (I prefer the word ...

Alright so these are the songs defining my January right now. " Sloppy Seconds " - Watsky " I'll Be Good " - Jaymes Young  " Long Way Down "- Robert DeLong " Don't You Find " - Jamie T Honorable mentions from late December: Vance Joy's "Mess is Mine" and Dan Black + Kid Cudi's "Symphonies"   (which has an incredible music video in my opinion) ALSO, I unashamedly am obsessed with J.R.R. Tolkien now. I am not only in love with The Lord of the Rings, but The Hobbit as well. These two songs, Ed Sheeran's "I See Fire" and Billy Boyd's "The Last Goodbye" are constantly on repeat when I am in a chill mood, or just feeling extra emotional over my LOTR/Hobbit obsession. These songs are not only beautifully relevant  and made for the movies, but they are actually incredible songs that I would love even if I did not understand the context behind them.  What have you...

So since my family went on a Christmas vacation, we did not exchange any gifts this year. I did however get one gift from my Godfather and aunt - the perfume I have been craving: Roses de Chloé :) It was practically perfect timing since I just finished off my Burberry Brit Sheer Perfume and really wanted a fresh change for the new year.  I am already completely obsessed with this scent. I had tried it before with a sample size sent to me by Sephora when I had ordered several items that warranted five free samples of my choice. I immediately fell in love and the three or four times I got out of the sample, I had been complimented from the people around me saying I smelled really good! It was a sign that this was the perfume for me. So every time from that point on that I was in Sephora (probably for the next 6 months), I would spray myself with the perfume, knowing I would need to wait to be gifted it because I could not spend that much money on it myself. And now I finally ...

Review of bareMinerals Eyecolors : These beautiful shimmering shades highlight the eyes; however, I have found the application of them to be quite difficult. I have never really been a fan of loose powders or loose eyeshadows because I always seem to make a mess. I much prefer a pressed powder and a pressed eyeshadow. But nevertheless, my personal taste in texture has not prevented me from liking these, particularly because of the colors. These five are gorgeous!  I used Snowflake and Drama on New Year's Eve and it turned out pretty well. All in all, I would not recommend buying these, but since I was gifted them, I am definitely going to use them, most likely paired with my all time favorite Naked 3 Palette. I have used the Naked 3 every day that I have worn makeup this past year. The palette colors just look so good with my skin tone that I have found no need for alternatives. But, I am going to try and incorporate all five of these colors into my daily or going out...

I cannot lie, 2014 was one of the best years of my life. Looking back, I realize I have accomplished a lot of my goals, matured in many ways, and experienced things I will never forget. I think it is good to look back on mistakes to learn something from them. I also make sure to look back on the best moments and be proud! So this post may be mostly for my own sake, but I will share it with you! A couple lows and the lessons I learned from them: - My computer crashed and I lost thousands of photos on iPhoto and tons of videos on iMovie. I also lost some documents but luckily I had most documents backed up on my Google drive.  Lesson learned:  Keep an external hard drive and back up at least once a week. Also, utilize Google drive more. Also don't delete photos off of memory card until computer is backed up.  - I lost 23 lbs. over the summer.... and gained it all back this past fall semester. Lesson learned: Stick to healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle. Now I a...

So one of my blog goals for this new year is to write more. I remember when I first started A Bit Graceful and realizing quickly that it would have a more photo story-telling base than anything. I believe I have improved my photography immensely in the past two years but I would love to now focus on my writing through this blog.  My writing experience comes down to the fact that I am good at academic essays, research papers, and any short format of creative writing. I am a playwright in actuality, but a novelist in my dreams. When I was younger, especially in high school when I had a lot of lows from pressure, stress, and death in my life, I would write ideas in a binder. These ideas would formulate the structure for a novel I would presumably write if I ever had the determination and time, however, I never actually wrote one. I have a binder FILLED with at least ten different ideas for a novel, one of which I have been developing since and have never ceased to think about as ...