Downtown at Dusk

It's been so long since I came out with my last blog post! Who knew that grade 12 would be so hectic from the start? Everything was just thrown right at me as soon as I walked into school on the first day! It's only been 3 weeks of school and I've already been to and back from a leadership camp which I had to organize. Needless to say, it's been a little crazy for me.

After arriving home from my school's leadership camp, however, I found that the two days in the middle of a forest had really relieved my stress and refueled me to take on the rest of the school year. This weekend, though I was frantically trying to catch up on school work, I was still pretty calm. My family and I even had the time to go out for a walk downtown and have a little dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, Arirang.

The whole walk reminded me so much of why autumn is my favourite season. It definitely helped take away my sadness over the fact that summer has truly come to an end. I love early autumn, when the leaves are only just starting to change colour, so you can still see a mixture of the fresh greens of summer along with the ambers of fall time. The best thing about autumn, however, is definitely the breath of fresh air. There's nothing better than being outside where the air is cooling down around you, but the sun is still warm on your skin. 

This mini little adventure really made me appreciate living in Ottawa and notice the quirks of this little city. Parliament Hill, for example, has an incredible view of the bridge that links two provinces together. The locks and the murky waters reflecting the autumn leaves give off such a beautiful and classy small town feel in the midst of downtown Ottawa. It's incredible how much I was able to discover from this short walk, even though I've lived here all my life!

So here's just a little short post! I'll really try to keep updating frequently, but please be patient with me, haha!

What I wore:

Arrow T-Shirt from Zara

M Skirt from H&M

Burgundy Knee Socks from Forever XXI

Denim Shirt from American Eagle

Black Chunky Shoes from Globo Shoes

What do you love about your city?

What's In My Backpack | Back To School

School is starting in less than 12 hours! I did some pretty last minute packing tonight, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to share with all of you what I keep in my school bag all year round.

1. A Binder

I keep 8 dividers in this binder and a big zip up pocket for the handouts teachers give out without holes punched in. I arrange the dividers in the order of my 6 classes. The two last dividers are always for miscellanious pieces of paper and lined paper.

2. Pencil Case

All my stationary is from Muji other than my eraser, white out, USB and pencil led.

3. Hand Saitizer

4. Hand Lotion

5. Tissues

6. Sunglasses

7. Glasses Case

8. Keys

9. Baby Lips (with SPF)

10. EOS Lip Balm

11. Comb

12. Wallet

13. Graphing Calculator

14. Scientific Calculator

14. Little Notebook

15. Phone

16. Earphones

17. Laptop

I also have a few bonus items especially for the last day of school, which I will be leaving in my locker. The first, of course, is a lock so know one steals any of my things. The second is labelled as my "Shtuff". In here, I keep some emergency items that I might need. These include hair elastics, bobby pins, gum and band aids.

So that's what I travel around with on a normal school day. I'm so excited to see what this year has in store! Senior year, it hasn't really sunken in yet... To all the students who are reading this blog post, I hope you all have an amazing school year! xx

What are your backpack essentials?

P.S. Since grade 12 is such a critical year in high school, I will be trying my best to constantly come out with posts, but unfortunately, I can't promise to have a consistent schedule, and random hiatuses will come and go...

My School Day Morning Routine | Back To School

The alarm sounds and you crawl out of bed, sleep deprived and getting ready to head out for another day of school. Don't we all love the sound of that? Nonetheless, there's no use in preventing the inevitable, so you go about with your morning routine mechanically and half asleep. So, I thought I would share my school day morning routine with all of you!

During the beginning of the school year, I take the bus to school. Not a yellow school bus or anything, no, I take the public transportation kind. Not to mention that my school is completely across the city from me (about a 1 to 1 1/2 hour bus ride). So, my morning starts at 7:15 when my dad wakes me up. 

I usually drag myself directly to the bathroom from my bed. The reason I do this is because I hate when I'm washing my face and the water gets onto my outfit of the day, so it's much easier to risk getting my pajamas wet instead. I usually start off with brushing my teeth. The specific toothpaste I use changes all the time, but my family and I usually stick to using Crest toothpastes. After brushing my teeth, I use THEFACESHOP's pore brush to apply the Cetaphil face wash all over my face, using a circular scrubbing motion. I then wash it off and apply my Aveeno SPF 30 moisturizer, and if I'm especially tired and have very prominent dark circles, I'll follow up with applying the Maybelline concealer in my under eye area.

That's usually all I do in the washroom. I then return to my room and find the clothes I'll be wearing. Sometimes this takes a very short amount of time if I was feeling very efficient the night before, and already laid out the clothes. Otherwise, being indecisive, it takes me forever to pick out my outfit. Side note: Here are some outfits I picked out for the first week of school.

Hopefully, after getting dressed, I can just pick up my bag and head downstairs, but most of the time, I haven't packed my bag the night before. Even if I have, I tend to pull my agenda out every morning to double check that I have everything I need for the day in my bag.

All that's left before heading out the door is to eat breakfast. I'm a pretty lucky person in the sense that my dad always wakes up earlier than me, so breakfast is usually on the table by the time I get downstairs, but I'd love to try and make some of the breakfasts I posted on this post myself this year. Breakfast is usually pretty rushed for me, and then I'm out the door by 7:50.

So there's my morning routine during the school year! Once again, apologies for missing a day again, I completely forgot that my entire Saturday was booked full with events, leaving me with no time to write out a blog post. Only two more to go, and one day left before school starts!

What's your school day morning routine?

2 Quick & Healthy Breakfasts | Back To School

 There's nothing more important than having a good breakfast to start off your school day. You've all probably heard this many times already, but your brain and body really do need some good nutrition to maximize its performance during the day. So here are two breakfast items that I have been eating a lot during the summer, and probably will continue eating for breakfast as school reenters my life.

Fruit Smoothie

My family recently bought ourselves a magic bullet and have been making smoothies like crazy. The one in the photos above is probably my favourite smoothie so far. It's simply a mixture of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries with a banana and some yogurt. In this case, I used vanilla-flavoured yogurt, but we have recently purchased plain yogurt to make the smoothie even healthier.

The best part about this smoothie is that you end up eating an incredible amount of fruits. Though I love fruits and all, I usually tell myself that I'm too busy to prepare fruits when I get home from school. Since I'm one to never skip breakfast, adding some fruits into my breakfast has brought the fruit consumption in my house to its ultimate high.

Oatmeal & Berries

One downside to having a smoothie for breakfast is that there is no wheat products. Of course, you could easily add flax seeds or something, but not all of us have those at home. Oatmeal is also super easy to make. Just pop the pot of oatmeal on the stove to cook and wash and cut your fruits while waiting for it to be ready. Another perk to having oatmeal is that it should definitely keep you full until lunch time. There's nothing worse than starving yourself in a class where the teacher doesn't let you eat.

So this is a pretty short post, but these two items are what I have been genuinely eating for the past two months at home. However, I tend to go for bigger breakfasts and eat less during the other two meals of the day so that's why I have a slice of homemade bread with my oatmeal in the last photo (which definitely isn't quick to make). So that brings me to suggest that if you happen to find a little extra time on the weekends, it definitely helps to do a little baking ahead of time so you have essentially prepared enough breakfast to last you through the week. Of course, full credit goes to my parents for all the baked goods, seeing as the baking I like to do is far too sweet for breakfast...

What's your go-to breakfast on school days?

Organising My Desk | Back To School

I'd like to say that I'm pretty good at keeping my desk organised. Of course, this might have to do with the fact that I have a very short attention span so any amount of clutter can distract me from doing work. Oh, and pay attention to the 'pretty' part in pretty organised. To get seriously organised, I've noticed that it usually requires loads of space and essentially, I would have to remodel my entire room. So this is the best I can do with what I have. :P

So starting off on the right side of my desk, the very first thing you'll probably notice is my desk lamp. It's actually super cool and you can find it at Costco. It has a really sleek and modern design to it, and the stand is very flexible, you can literally bend it front to back or side to side. Near the base of the lamp, I have two pretty quirky little green items (don't know if you've noticed, but my room is very green lol). One is a little googly-eyed guy that I can put my glasses on and the other is a (very magical) no staple stapler. Though I wouldn't recommend using it to hand in assignments since the papers fall apart pretty easily...

Right next to my lamp, I have a little 2 rack black shelf. I like to use the top shelf for notebooks so they are easy to grab if I happen to be going to a meeting or a school trip where notes need to be taken. I also keep a week-long schedule note pad in the pile where I make a little to-do list for each day of the week. That's usually how I keep up with blogging during the school year. On the bottom shelf, it's pretty much just the basic lined paper with some miscellaneous pieces of paper tucked underneath that I use for rough jot notes or for rough work when doing math homework (fun...).

This is the point where I admit to my obsession with notebooks. My house is probably about to collapse from the sheer weight of the notebooks we own, but I always want to buy more. I find that they're just super handing in organising your work, writing, or just your thoughts in general. That's why my two little special notebooks get a special place upright, next to my mini shelf. Those to notebooks are my Quotes Book and my Blogging Book.

Right next to those, I have a little box that secretly has a bit of a mess inside it. I'm just going to say that I am a strong believer in, what I like to call, 'organised clutter'. I like to keep little squares of paper to use when jotting down notes. They'd probably be pretty useful for creating shopping lists as well. My box is looking a little more put together recently, however, since I recently bought two new stacks of flashcards for school and three tiny little composition notebooks to carry around in my bags. (See? More notebooks...)

Skipping the tissue box... I also love pens. As you can probably see. Yes, I have two full pencil holders and I am not ashamed. Okay, maybe just a little ashamed... But I find that keeping most of my stationary at home and taking less with me in my pencil case really helped me keep my pencil case clean and organised. I actually didn't lose anything last year!

Finally, there's the little corner that I just finished today. With the way classrooms work today, we all spend waay too much time in front of our laptops. I found near the end of the last school year that my neck had been becoming more and more tense. I thought that resting my neck for a while during the summer would help loosen my muscles a little, but so far, it's just been getting worse. So, I finally decided to lug up this monitor from our basement and give it a shot. Not to mention that I think it adds a very nice touch to my desk, and room as a whole, and I'm really loving the big screen.

So there's my desk as it is! I hope it'll be staying like this for the rest of the year... or at least until December when I'll have a chance to clean it during winter break, haha... Also, side note. I'm sorry for skipping out on the post yesterday! I was planning to post it at night after spending the day outside enjoying the last few days of summer, but I ended up covering for someone at work for a last minute emergency. Finally! I have a legitimate excuse, haha. Anyways, I'll see you all tomorrow! xx

(Another note: I woke up at 7 today and it's almost 12 here, so I haven't read this over and I apologize for any typos :( )

Five Outfit Ideas | Back To School

For me (and probably many, many others out there), summer is the season of shopping. Whether it be full out shopping sprees or little purchases here and there, I'm sure all of us somehow end up with a pile of new purchases by the end of summer vacation. And what could be more exciting than finally being able to wear all your new clothes to school? It definitely tends to be one of the more positive things to look forward to during the back to school season. Now on to the outfits!

Outfit A: Modern-Boho

Floral Bralette from Garage

Skater Skirt from H&M

Brown Sandals from Sketchers

Floral Heart Sunglasses from Aldo

Outfit B: Monochrome with Pop of Floral

Black T-Shirt from H&M

Acid-Washed High-Waisted Denim Shorts from Garage

Floral & Black Platform Flip Flops from Aldo

Floral Baseball Cap from American Eagle

Outfit C: Sweet & Girly

Cream Lace Dress from Forever XXI (China)

Pink Flip Flops from Old Navy

Pink and Black Polka-dot Scrunchie from Ardene

Bow & Small Heart Mid Finger Ring from Aldo

Outfit D: Girly & (a little) Sporty

Floral Tank from Garage

Denim Lace Shorts from American Eagle (China)

Coral and White Polka-dot Sneakers from Vans

XOXO Snapback from Taobao

Outfit E: European Chic

Wink Crop Top from Garage

Grey Maxi Skirt from Zara

Black Flip Flops from Adidas

I tried my best to find links to these items so you could find them online. Unfortunately, most of them don't have a link since I either bought the items quite a while ago or because all my items were purchased in stores, so I'm sorry for that! I hope I was able to achieve what I was aiming for by providing a different outfit idea for all sorts of different styles out there. However, you'll probably notice that I still struggle with getting a little colour into my outfits, but monochrome clothing seems to be winning me over so far...

Which outfit was your favourite?