Small Clothing Haul

Awhile ago I went to our local outlet mall mainly to buy a pair of Nike Free 5.0 and ended up coming home with more than a new pair of shoes. The first store I went to when we arrived at the mall was the Nike Factory store. I originally wanted to get the plain black and white Nike Free 5.0, but they ended up not having that color in stock so I decided to just get the black, blue and pink ones (picture down below). I didn't want to order them or get them anywhere else because they were cheaper at the Nike Factory store than anywhere else. Since I bought new shoes I needed a new work out outfit to go with them right? I looked around at the Nike store, but everything still seemed so expensive for an outlet/factory store. So we went around to the other athletic stores and I finally came across a good deal at Reebok. I ended up getting an outfit there for the same price as a pair of shorts back at the Nike store. I ended up getting a pink tank top that I paired with blue camo-type shorts with some pink lettering on it. Since we were already at the mall my mom and I decided to walk around to other stores and see what kind of deals we could get. One of the stores we went to was Banana Republic where I saw a beautiful sun dress. I was instantly saddened when I saw it was a size to big for me, but I insisted on trying it on once I saw the stretchy elastic at the top. The dress ended up running small and fitting which made me happy. The pattern is spectacular and great for summer. Another store we went into was American Eagle. They were having a huge sale and I end up buying four different items from there. I of course had to get another pair of "stretchy" pants or jeggings. This time I decided to go with plain black high waisted pants that were cropped at the the bottom. I also got three dresses from there. I didn't take pictures of them and they are in the dirty clothes pile so..... I will just explain them. They are kinda modeled after the Brandy Melville dress that has the cut out in the back. The dress from American Eagles was a bit longer, which I like a lot more because I don't like walking around worrying about weather or not my dress is covering my butt. I got 3 different patterns: floral, solid fuchsia, and a tropical-ish pattern. My favorite was the floral one but after I washed it once it shrunk to the size of a long shirt, which was quite depressing. I now know I have to wash them by hand. I know I will still wear it will just be more difficult to pair things with. 

*Also as promised I posted pictures of me in each pair of glasses I picked out from Warby Parker on my Google+: Makenna Kupgisch , Instagram: @Makenna_Kupgisch, and Twitter: @MakennaKupgisch or you can find the links at the top of the web page, but the links won't show up if you are on the mobile sit. I would love it if you could comment which one you think looks best to help me pick a pair!! 

Change

This past week has been one of the busiest for me. Some of you might have read in one of my last post, not sure which one, that I was in summer school and I didn't relaize that it would take up this much time. I am taking not one or two, but three different classes this summer: government, history, and an online PE class which is a new form or lazy. This past week has been full of test, quizzes, and stress. In my last post I mentioned I joined a gym and loved going to work out, and I still do. I go everyday of the week except Thursdays because it is my rest day. This past week I have been spending almost two hours a day at the gym mostly because when I'm at the gym all I have to worry about is working out and not all the other million things I need to do. For instance one thing I just learned this week was that the Swedish Embassy has extended the time  it takes to get a residence card from 6-8 months to 11-16 months, so instead of applying in a few months I needed to apply like a month or two ago. That is one of my biggest worries at the moment. I have read the websit where you apply about a thousand times, but I still don't feel like I 100% know what I am doing so I am going next Wednesday to talk to the consultant we have in Houston to ask my millions of questions. This has also been a week of change and still is. Thursday I cut my hair, but this time I didn't just cut off one inch but around 5 or 6 inches. I was extremely nervous since this will be the first time I will have short hair in years. This is how long my hair was before : (please excuse the bad selfie, this was apparently the one of many habits I never picked up as a teen)

My head feels so much lighter than it did before and I even find myself becoming cold more often now when I am inside. Over all I am happy I cut all my hair off, as it was time for a little change. Now the only thing left to do is master the short pony tail. As for another change that is happening this week is I will be ordering a pair of glasses for the first time in almost 10 years. When I was in 3rd grade (thats about 8 years old) I was told I need glasses to see, so I got a pair and wore them for about a year and half. After that time I decided I looked horrible in glasses, which I did, so I got contacts. I have been wearing contacts for the past ten years, and have never had a pair of glasses since. Now that I am traveling a lot more and have less time to remove my contact lenses, I am finding the need for glasses a lot stronger. I have decided to get a new pair of glasses, ones that will actually look good on me this time, instead of constantly fighting with dry, itchy, and tired eyes. I am using the company Warby Parker (who I am not sponsoring in any way, just telling my opinion) instead of my eye doctors simply because of price and style. I was drawn to the company after hearing friends and many people on YouTube explain about the free try on home kit. They will send you 5 pairs of frames that you pick off there website for free to try on at home, and when your done you send them back and order the pair you would like. Not only is this a great idea, but there prices can't be beat. The price the glasses are listed as on the website is the price they stay even after you add in the prescription lenses. They range about $95 to $150 compared to about $300. To me this sounds like an awesome deal so I decided to try them out and ordered my 5 pair of frame a few days ago and will be receiving them in the mail today. So far I am impressed with the companies shipping speed since I only just ordered them on Wednesday and they will be arriving on Friday. I will give more updates as I go through the process of picking a pair to the quality of the glasses I receive. I might even put pictures of me in the glass up on my Instagram, Twitter, and Google+ to get other peoples advice on which pair looks the best. Another good thing that is happening this week is Daniel is coming to visit on Saturday! I am excited of course! I know it has only been a month since I last saw him, but it feels like forever to me. This time though I will try to up my photo skills and try to take more photos if we go somewhere or do anything fun with our lives. Most likely we will end up just watching Netflix and movies the whole time he is here, and thats ok with me! Also I would like to try to get better at posting more. It is hard with the amount of school and work I do during the week, but I will try to post as much as I can. I am going to try to post a small clothing haul maybe on Saturday or Sunday as well this week so keep your eyes open for that! 

Obsessions

Lately I have had a lot of obsessions that have recently just formed. One of them just started last Saturday, and it is Twitter. When they say Twitter is addicting they are not kidding. I recently joined the rest of the world on Twitter and I am already checking it ALL the time! I am still fairly new to the whole concept and have never really posted on social media as much as I have on there. I've only posted like 10 times and still don't even know what to post half the time. I mostly got it to try to connect more with all of you!

 I have never really said it in a blog before, but one of my goals with this blog was to get to know more people around the world and create a little community were everyone is welcome. It would be awesome if y'all could follow me on twitter so I can get to know some of you who are reading. You can follow me by clicking on the Twitter button at the top of the page or you can just use my Twitter name: @MakennaKupgisch or you can even leave your Twitter names in the comments below! Also another side note I have been wanting to say is it would be great if you could also leave a comment on any blog post giving me feedback on my blog. You can be as harsh or as nice as you want. I only want to get better and I can't really do that on my friends and families feed back. Alright back to the blog! My next obsession this month has been tea. More precisely Lipton "American's Favorite Tea" is what it is called here, but I know it is called Lipton "Yellow Label Tea" in Sweden, but I am pretty sure its the same tea. I have also been adding a half table spoon of organic honey to it. I have been drinking at least one cup a day, and it would be more if I had a tea pot then I would drink the whole thing. I have always love tea and drank it as much as a normal person would drink water, but I have just started adding honey. I always thought I didn't like honey until I tried unfiltered organic honey, and now I can't have my tea any other way.

 

Another thing I have been constantly doing this month is going to the gym. Earlier this month I joined a gym for the first time and it was nerve-racking. I wasn't sure if I was actually going to go or really workout in front of other people. Well I went to give it a try after all I got a good deal about $20 for 2 months. I loved it! I actually want to go to the gym everyday and always want to stay for more than at least an hour. I also don't just go there and play around on the machines. I leave there every time drenched in sweat, actually feel satisfied with my workout, and even become swore later on in the day. I have only just started about a week ago but am happy with what I have done so far. The last thing I have been doing everyday is watching "Murder, She Wrote" on Netflix. It is an old mystery show from the 80's and is as cheesy as ever, but I love it. There are 12 seasons and I am on season 6, but don't worry I haven't watch them all recently. I have been watching since around December or January and go through periods of just constant watching and then I get tired of seeing the same characters over and over so I will watch other shows. Right now I am in a period of just wanting to constantly watch it. If you love old cheesy shows where they always laugh at the end than this is a great show for you. 

Since it is summer one of my favorite TV shows is about to start, Big Brother!!! (by the way this: ! is an exclamation mark in the font I chose it just looks like a line ) I got into the show about two summers ago and I love it. I can't wait to see who is all playing in this season and who will become my favorite. It starts in about a week and even better it comes on multiple times a week. I hope they add in some new twist and also some new competitions. I am sure I will become engulfed into the show once it begins. 

 

Don't forget to leave a comment and follow me on: Twitter, Instagram, or even Google+ to help form our community and make it stronger! I would love to hear from you!

Tattoo Story

About two months ago I got my first tattoo and I don't regret it for a second. I went about two weeks after my 18th birthday, I would have went the day of, but I really wanted Daniel to be there to hold my hand. I hate needles and had no idea what my pain tolerance was, but we will get to that later. Some people might think I just jumped right into it an never gave it a second thought, but don't worry I have been thinking about get a tattoo since I was 13. I have been waiting for a long time and even almost talked my mom into letting me get one on my 17th birthday, but I chose to go to Europe instead. I had also been looking at the same tattoo shop for years. One thing that has changed over the years was how many tattoos I was going to get and which ones I wanted. Before I started dating Daniel I wanted to get around 10 or 11 tattoos, they would all have been fairly small the biggest one would have right under my collar bone. Even thought I would still love to have many tattoos, being in a relationship means compromising. Daniel hates tattoos and in fact I spent months trying to even get him to go with me, but in the end we agreed that I was to get at the most two (even though now he is saying one is enough, but we will see about that). I thought about what I was going to get for a few months and I had it narrowed down to two things I knew in the future I would not regret. I originally want to start out small so I would know how it feels and what to expect by getting my first tattoo on the top of my right pointer finger on the part closest to the back of the hand. As some of you may know most tattoo shops will decline finger tattoos if it will be your first, because of the after care that is required. Knowing this I went into the shop a week before to check it out and make sure it was clean, but I also wanted to ask if they did finger tattoos. Sadly they said no. I was at a stand still, I wasn't sure if I wanted to get my second choice because it would be so much bigger and was said to be extremely pain full. I ended up going with my second choice which was a quote on the outside of my foot. I spent a lot of my time researching the placement and from what I was reading the side of your foot was supposed to be one of the most painful places to put a tattoo because it is filled with nerves and not a lot of muscle. I collected my courage and and drove 40 mins down to the shop scared out of my mind, but I wasn't going to back out. When we arrived I talked to the artist about the quote I wanted: "Lights on building and everything that makes you wonder". It is from the book "Perks of Being a Wallflower", which was later made into a movie in 2012. The quote was to long to fit on the side of my foot so I decide to just go with the first 3 words since I know the whole quote by heart, so I will always know the rest. This quote stuck to me and has a few different meanings to me. The first is quite literal, I love walking/driving thought a big city at night with all the different color lights shining. This is also one reason why Christmas is my favorite holiday, because of all the lights. Seeing all the lights just makes me happy and feel like anything is possible. It also is a symbol for this time in my life that I want to remember for as long as I can. Now on to the needle in the skin part. While he was setting up and putting the stencil on my foot I was quite nervous. It wasn't about if I was making the right choice, but about how bad it was going to hurt. As he turned on the machine and guided the needle towards my foot I prepared for the worse. In all honesty it was nothing how I thought it was going to be. It didn't really hurt as much as people had said, but there were parts that hurt more than others. The best way I can describe it is a cat constantly scratching you over and over again. I did find it true that if you talk to somebody during the process it does lower the pain, however it also caused me to twitch because I was not paying attention to what was being done so I would focus on the pain when it would hurt the worse and I wouldn't twitch (which was always on curves). It took about 2-2 and half hours to do the whole thing, and let me say I give a lot of props to the people that can sit there for 6 or so hours, the longer it took the more I could start to feel the pain. Over all I was pretty proud of myself for going through with it and am so happy I did.

After we were done the artist covered the tattoo and gave me instructions on how to take care of it. I will say the after care was way worse than the actual pain. Since the tattoo was on my foot I was not allowed to take a shower longer than 5 minutes with cold/semi-warm water. I am a girl, the shortest shower you can get out of me is maybe 20 minutes, so I had to resort to baths with my foot hanging over the side. I had to do this for 3 weeks, but I gave up in the middle of week 2 and just stuck my foot on the rim of the tub were the water coming from the shower head wouldn't hit my foot. I also had to put unscented lotion on my foot 3 times a day for 4 weeks. Another problem I had was shoes, I spent days looking for sandals that wouldn't touch any part of my tattoo, but I did finally find a pair. The worst part about the healing process was waiting. I really just wanted to see what it looked liked under the scabs and having dreams that half of your tattoo falls off really doesn't help. It was about exactly 3 weeks when the first scabs started to fall off and took about another week and half to completely heal. There was only one things I would like to fix about the tattoo and it is my fault. The L in lights, the ink did not take to my skin at the bottom curve of the L and the artist did warn me that the sides might not accept the ink due to the different skin type on the sides of the foot, and it could have also been when it was healing I didn't do something right on that spot and it took the ink out. You can see where there was ink, but it just looks faded. This can be easily fixed and I'm sure if I went back to the same guy he would just go over that small part for free since it is just a little curve. The reasons why I haven't gotten it done yet was mainly because I haven't had time to drive into the city, I had just finished the healing process, and I really didn't want to restart it again. Also it is a flaw and I kinda like it because nothing is perfect. I may get it fixed when and if I get my second one.

Everything Must Come To An End

Over the past week I have done quit a lot. Let's just start with last Saturday shall we. My boyfriend, Daniel, and I woke up early (way to early) to catch a boat through Stockholms's archipelago to reach a certain island I don't remember the name of. Once we were there we went to a friends beach house were we ate lunch and had afternoon coffee out in a beautiful field in the woods. I really wish I had a taken pictures, but I just thought "Oh we're just going to drink coffee I don't need my phone or camera". Well I was wrong, we went to a beautiful field covered in bright yellow flowers surrounded by lush green forest. Do you ever have those moments were your life feels like a movie? Well that's what this felt like, the 3 of us just laying under the sun talking about life. After coffee we went back to the house and shot some arrows, and lets just say I wouldn't have been casted as Katniss in the Hunger Games. After that we took the 2 hour trip back home. Once we were home we decided to go out for dinner and drinks with some friends. We went to a bar called Harry B. James were we ate, had a few beers, and then went back home. Sunday was just a stay in your pajamas all day and watch Netflix kind of day. Monday I stayed home and watched Downton Abby while Daniel was at school, but when he came home we went to Urban Outtfiters. There I bought a high waisted floral skirt and a light cream sweater with a lace collar to pair with it. Tuesday I got to witness a Swedish high school graduation party first hand and I also learned I am not that fond of clubs. I really didn't take any photos of my trip, but I am working on improving for next time. Here is one photo a friend took of Daniel and I at the party. Please excuse the bad lighting I felt like I need to at least post one picture and this was the one I liked the most, even with the bad lighting. 

Wednesday was my last day in Sweden, so I spent the day just watching TV with Daniel. Thursday I flew home and was sucked back into the real world again. I've spent the past few days back at work and even started summer school. Oh what a fun summer, but it will be the last time I don't give myself a summer break. Just one more year. It can't be that long right?