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With school starting off so fiercely I have been extremely bogged down by the weight of endless homework...
Thus, I haven't had much free time to focus on *~*the list*~* aside from keeping my weekly cleaning chart, daily planner, daily photographs and daily journaling!

This weekend I've been focusing on taking down the nearly impossible task of COMPLETELY cleaning this apartment of mine. It's been a tough battle so far but I can see the golden horizon from where I stand! (How cheesy...)
I've decided that my next conscious move towards one of the items off my list will be to organize my closet, which constitutes going through each and every piece of clothing I have- trying it on and determining whether or not I should keep it. I've tried my hand at it a little bit today while putting away clothes and it's going to be a lot harder than I thought... It's so difficult deciding what to get rid of when everything you come across you think to yourself "When I loose weight, this will look better on me! So I better not get rid of it yet!"
I have hardly any dresser or closet space (albeit I have hardly any dresser or closet space to begin with) and really want to free up some of it for any possible incoming pieces. However, I really don't want to buy any new clothes until I lose weight and when I lose enough I should need to get rid of the majority of my clothes anyways so I can buy new, better fitting rags!

Now since I haven't anything else off the list to discuss, I say it's time to share pictures I've been taking! I took about seventy photographs with my recently purchased for class Canon EOS Rebel GII but I won't be sharing those until I've printed all the ones I want and scan them. Until then, here's some of my favorite digital images I've been shooting!

Valentines Domo-kun, brought to you by thoughtful Will way before Valentines Day. We just had to have a pink domo.

This is what my artist models do when I'm not using them...

Ah yes, our garish 70s speckled yellow kitchen sink. I love the near symmetry. You can see a bottle of dried bleach to the right... I don't know why it's been sitting there for months. I should throw that away... eventually...

A beautiful, painted stone elephant purchased from an Ann Arbor antique shop and given to me by Doris. He looks lovely against the glass lamp, yes?


On the 22nd we had a friend from school visit us here at the apartment and after driving him back to his apartment and upon returning I discovered that someone took my spot at 3 in the morning... so I was forced to park out in the front of the building a parking meter. Of course, when I woke up the next day past noon (it's a bad habit of mine) I found two parking tickets on the windshield of my car for $15 each! I still can't believe that the asshole ticketed me twice in a four hour period...

Studying from my Photography book and keeping tabs on my never-ending daily To-Do list (yes, MORE LISTS!)

A graphite 18" x 24" piece of mine, you can view a larger picture here with details as to what's behind it.

Will's Spock Primsacolor drawing!!

My Thom Yorke piece in progress... These projects were for our shared Illustration II class where we had to create a distorted image of a celebrity using Prismacolor pencils. I hardly had to distort Thom to make him look like this. Seriously. His teeth are just that jangled.

Sleepy Wills are my favorite subject to shoot because they're just so cute.

I made meatloaf cupcakes last night with buttercream potatoes... mmm!! They were seriously SO GOOD! I need to make them again very very soon.


Last, but not least, Will chillaxing with Yak on his laptop during my manic period of cleaning! D'aww.

That's all I have for now, I really need to get some sleep if I'm going to continue my madness of endless cleaning and homework tomorrow!

Ciao~

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Classes have already started! This week went by so fast due to that. I was surprised, but all my professors assigned homework on the first day of class so I've been busy already!

First off, I'd like to talk about #4. Work out 5 times a week. (0/50 weeks), something I should have already started by now. Once I got back home in Grand Rapids I searched everywhere for my only pair of work out pants, an amazingly comfortable and CUTE pair of Victoria Secret PINK lounge pants, so I could lay around in them but they were gone! Will helped me continue to search the place but it soon became apparent that they were long gone. Two days before Will and his mom went to Mr. Stadium to do all the laundry, mine included, and some guy threw one of our loads into a dryer with all his clothes. When they found out what happened to the laundry they went through it all with the man to try and get back all our clothes but they must have overlooked the lounge pants! :(
Tomorrow, Will and I are going to the mall to try and find me a similar pair... however I can't find them on the website so I have a feeling I won't be able to find them in store. Since I need something to work out in, however, I'll just have to buy something normal just so I can start working out! I feel like a complete blob and I'm really think my face has chubbed up. I also need to start eating healthier again, it's so hard staying away from all those devilish comfort foods!
I've decided to start a reward program for myself- for every 10 pounds I lose and keep off I'm going to buy myself something relatively nice. I figure if I manage to lose 50 pounds I'll buy myself something really nice like that custom corset!
I also should buy myself a cheap, comfortable T-shirt to work out in.

On to actual progress...

I have completed #11 Record everyone's who is important birthday in daily planner, which was mentioned in my last post, on January 09, 2009! Fairly simple but I feel a lot better having people's birthdays recorded somewhere to remind me. I recorded it down in the monthly calender in my daily planner so it was fun to see whose birthday's fell on bizarre holidays.

As for #19. Take a photo every day of the year. Project 365 I've been doing fairly well! I need to start remembering to bring my camera around everywhere with me because there's been quite a few moments where I really wanted to photograph something but I had no camera on me! On other days I had a really hard time taking a picture of anything because I was in the house all day or didn't do anything really interesting.
Here's a picture of everyday of the year so far in chronological order starting with New Years!

Pooped out will from all the New Years excitement.

The Wunderlich black Christmas tree with kitschy German ornaments.


Craig's, Will's dad, desk. The index-type card with the black bat is something I made! You can also see a very cool picture of Doris before she met Craig. The seventies, groovy!

Gorilla figure on top of Will's shelf in his home in Ann Arbor. You can see his assemblage piece in the background.

Crinkle cookies! Mmm~

A unintentionally dramatic composition with our favorite black pig!

Sleepy Wilhelm.

Will being the ultimate white person. Note the thick framed glasses, scarf, coffee consumption, Moleskin sketchbook, being in a local Greasy Spoon diner, and the Obama sticker (this one is like Where's Waldo).

❤ Ann Arbor. ❤

This picture pretty much sums up that day.

After being away from the apartment in Grand Rapids for a month, this is what we walked into! The radiator bulb exploded and now is leaking a ton of rusty water, thankfully we have it under control now and another one of these won't happen.

The view from outside of my apartment door.

The Ledesma family is everywhere and with spelling variations!!
This was in the parking lot of Hobby Lobby.

Will's Dr. Kevorkian "Jack in the Box".

View from outside of Kendall.
Two days ago we discovered a tiny mouse had found it's way into our apartment (through what we discovered to be a tiny man-made hole in our wall. Why it's there? We'll never know.) and have been trying all sorts of ways to get it out. We tried chasing it around for 2 hours with a broom trying to chase it out the front door, we tried smacking it with the broom (but could not even swing), peanut butter, spring traps... and it wasn't until about two hours ago that Will and I were just relaxing on the couch and saw our little buddy peeking out from under the lounge chair and slowly walking towards an almost empty cereal box on the ground. We watched in awe hoping that he would, indeed, go inside the cereal box and lo and behold he did! Will immdediatly snatched up the box and taped the box shut, then commencing to poke air holes in it. We decided to take the mouse outside and down a few blocks by a church in a nice patch of trees and released him! I feel worried about how he'll fare in the weather but he has a better chance out here than the fate he had in this apartment!

# 21. Buy an art print. Accomplished January 10, 2009.
On the 10th Will surprised me by saying that he'd like to decorate the kitchen so I suggested that we buy some art prints and he went for it! After picking out over twenty candidates we narrowed it down to our favorite two and I hurridly purchased them (they happened to be on clearance!)

24 x 36 inch Absinthe Robette by Alphonse Mucha for the kitchen! Only $4.98!

And a 12 x 16 inch Rocky Horror Picture Show poster for the living room! This was a little bonus for only $3.98!

The prints should be arriving in the mail any day now and I'm super excited! I'm going to go to the Goodwill and Salvation Army to look for cheap frames that I can paint and use for these. I plan for a very sleek, simple black frame for the RHPS poster and either a shiny green frame like:

or a mottled gold frame like:

Either way, I'm sure it will look great in the apartment.

Last but not least, I'm really excited about #78. Find a pen pal I can really connect with. Start with email or IM contact before committing to snail mail. which I have accomplished today!
I posted to numerous livejouranl penpal communities with a profile about my interets, what I would like from a penpal, etc. and wasn't having a lot of luck with getting responses from people that I thought were very interesting... until the other day when I received an email from a girl named Jenn from Arizona! She sounds simply fantastic and is into all the same things I am and more. Her email was long and seemed to have a lot of effort put into it as well as good vibes so I emailed her back accepting her request. She emailed me again today happy to see that I have accepted her as my penpal and we'll begin sending out letters shortly! I'm super excited and will update on this as it progresses! I'm feeling really good about this and I think I might just have a new best friend!

Ciao~

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#11: Record everyone's who is important birthday in daily planner.

I've always been extremely bad with birthdays, even with my own two parents. So I've decided to just forgo bothering to memorize such trivial information and simply keep it written down somewhere. This way I don't have to actually remember but when the time comes around I can send out a birthday card and everyone will think I'm so awesome because I remember their birthday. Since I have to wait until I'm back in Grand Rapids to get a hold of my 2009 daily planner, I have started with just making a digital list of all the birthdays I intended on finding out.
So, in a way this task is done but I can't really call it completed until I write it into that daily planner.

#43: Read all the books on my bookshelf

I've started this one off already by reading the entire American Virgin graphic novel series last night. The series is wonderfully illustrated and well-written. It's funny, it's cute, it has action, romance, drama, strap-on's and men in leather. What more could one ask for? It also deals with a lot of heavy religious debate (on a very obvious left-wing perspective though starring the uber-conservative Evangelical protagonist) and explores sexuality throughout individuals and cultures. I will admit that I wasn't entirely pleased with the ending because I felt like after a lot of building-up and sense making it unraveled very quickly at the end leaving me saying to myself "What just happened?"
I'm in the process of reading Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander (which anyone with a sense of humor should check out) and Mountain of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft.
I'm starting to think I should compile a list of all the books on my shelf currently so that I can keep better track of my progress.

#80: Go to the DIA. January 03, 2009

Today Will, Doris, my mom and I all took a trip to Detroit's Institute of Art to view the Monet to Dali. It was an incredibly fun time and I especially enjoyed being able to spend some quality time with my mother. The special exhibit was packed with people to my surprise and we actually had to wait in a huge line to get into the exhibit. People moved very slowly through but thankfully, I actually wanted to stand and stare at each painting for a good 5 minutes at least. It was amazing, to say the least, to see all these paintings by such renowned artists. I could really appreciate some of the pieces in person more than when I just saw a slide of them during a Western Art History lecture. It's like there's some spiritual connection with the artist while standing in front of their painting, being so close that you can see the texture of the brush strokes against the canvas. You can almost feel the energy and emotion the artist put into the paintings. My favorite by far was seeing The Dream by Salvador Dalí.

We also explored quite a bit of the rest of the museum. Will and I looked through the Ancient Greek and Roman, European (Inspired by Italy) and a little of the Medieval and Renaissance art. We were far more interested in seeing the African art on the first floor so after we had looked through the entire Monet to Dali exhibit we ventured through it in awe and amazement. One of our favorite pieces to see was the Nail Figure (Nkonde) from the Kongo culture. We had studied it in World Art History this past semester and were fascinated by it in class so when we saw it in person it was exhilarating! It was much larger than we had expected and we actually ended up learning more about it from the information provided by the museum than we did during lecture (terrible professor...).
We also got a nice, thorough look through the Asian and Egyptian exhibits which we just loved. Lastly, we saw a strange but fun exhibit on chess through the ages.
Sadly, we missed the opportunity to have lunch at the CaféDIA due to it closing after 2pm apparently though did get to have a bite to eat from the Kresge Court. Pastries, lots of pastries.

The Beginning

Happy New Year!

Today marks the beginning of my journey towards accomplishing 101 preset goals. It is a day of a new year, fresh starts, new hopes, new people and experiences! I am brimming with excitement to be starting this list and happy to see myself progressing already! I can only try my hardest and work hard in hopes of completing The List.

I would like to start off by saying to anyone who happens to read this blog, whether you mysteriously stumbled upon it or I directed it your way, "¡Bienvendio!". Welcome to my first blog ever. To be honest, I'm only writing this for myself to help keep track of my list and my progress. However, I am not shy to the idea of readers.

Things I have started today:

#5: Don't eat fast food for a year. (1/365)
There is no better time than now to start something like this. I do not actually eat from fast food restaurants often to begin with, but I would like to completely cut them out of my life. It will be hard to resist the temptations of such tragically delicious concoctions such as the Baconator and McFlurries but I believe my life will be much better without it. However, I have two concerns: 1) does pizza delivery count as fast food? 2) does Jimmy John's count as fast food? This is where semantics come in. I need to cut down on eating out all together, but do I have to give up Pizza Hut and Jimmy John subs? I never considered them to be on the same scale as Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, Arby's, or the likes. How can something be fast food if it takes a half an hour to make and even more time to deliver? Jimmy John's is a sandwich shop that caters. How can it be fast food if it caters? This will be a topic I will have to give a great deal of thought to.

#12: Journal every day. (0/365)
The explanation of this goal can go without much saying. I want to keep myself always creating and always channeling my thoughts so journaling every day is a good practice even if it's just writing, pasting pictures from a magazine together or doodling.
To me, a new day has not started until I go to bed and wake up so completing a journal entry at 3 in the morning still counts as the technical day before! It's cheating just a little, but there will still be at least 365 journal entries regardless! Pictures of my journal will be posted over time.
As soon as I finish blogging I'm off to my journal.

#18: Complete the 100 Journal Ideas by Keri Smith. (0/100)
I'm always looking for new ideas for journaling and this is one of the best exercises I have found!
As an illustrator I find it important to be able to illustrate virtually any aspect of my life and this will certainly train me and give me practice for devloping that particular skill. I have decided that I will begin this list today and over time try to complete every one.

#19: Take a photo every day of the year. Project 365. (1/365 days)
In an effort to get full use out of my digital camera and soon to obtain SLR film camera as well as to document my life, I have decided to take up the challenge of Project 365. I will try to take photos worth my time that say something about my day. I will also post these photographs occassionaly.

#28: Complete my "Mad Scientist" costume for Halloween. (Pieces to completion: 1/11)
It's never too early to begin planning your Halloween costume when you love Halloween as much as I do! I actually devised this costume idea back in October near Halloween. It started out as a contest entry for another blog I read and ended up being my desire for this year's Halloween. I already own the vintage, glass syringe I bought off of Ebay one lucky day.

14" of awesome. Stated anywhere else out of context that would sound dreadfully wrong.
All of which I have yet to obtain will be a painful process seeing as how picky I am and how broke I am. I still need:

• The most important element of the costume, a ladies lab coat. Hopefully, this will not be hard to come by cheap. I will be splattering it with blood (as the trend of my costumes seem to be going) and do not want to spend a exuberant amount of money on something I will inevitably destroy and not be able to reuse practically.
• A black pencil skirt. I will want to avoid online shopping for this one because I will need to find a well-fitting, flaterring skirt for myself. I would also like to make sure that I can wear it after Halloween, as I am in good need of a nice skirt for formal or business-related occassions.
• A crazy, red wig. A staple of the mad scientist is always the Einstein-electrified do, so I would like to put a cuter and color scheme-fitting twist on the classic.
  
• Hair accessory. My polyvore set includes two cute plastic barettes that I may or may not try to replicate. I think it would be a fun addition to have a very small, but ironically cute element to the costume.
• Reproduction WWII leggings. After finding this gem of a find online I thought it would work great as spats reminisent of a straight jacket over some killer boots. And for only $19.97 who can resist?!
• Skull earrings. Another element to the costume I may omit in the end. It would be super cute though.
• A pair of goggles fit for a mad scientist! I admit, just plain saftey goggles won't do it for me. I want the whole steampunk inspired, metal deal. Now my only problem is where to find them.
• Mad Scientist gloves.
  
• I've always wanted one of the anatomical necklaces from Paraphernalia so what would be a better time to get the Anatomica Red Heart Necklace than for this?
• And last but not least, a pair of killer goth stompers. Not only have I always wanted to own my very own pair of over the top black boots, but it would be the crème de la crème of the costume.

This year I would also love to get some very good pictures of myself in costume as the past two years I ended up with very little photographgs of all my hard work to look back on.

#35: Get my panda backpack fixed and clean.
My beloved panda backpack (whom I lovingly named Kyoko) had become broken due to overstress of the zipper and has been out of service for quite some time now. However, thanks to the lovely Doris, my boyfriend's mother, Kyoko is on her way to being returned to her former glory. Will and I have been downstate running between Ann Arbor and Allen Park to visit our parents. So after we left Ann Arbor for a short time and while we were in Allen Park, Doris fixed up Kyoko as a surprise! I was delighted upon return to the Ann Arbor home. Now I just have to get the damn panda washed.

Kyoko in all her glory.

#51. Grow out hair to breast length.
Well, this is pretty simple. I'm working on it right now! Oh yeah!
I've been missing my longer hair for awhile now and long for the days where I could actually put my hair in a ponytail/pigtails/bun. Once I get my hair to the desired length I plan on dying it a fiery red. I'm thinking Herbal Esscences's #44 Paint the Town- Deep Red.

That's it for now. Until next time!

The List

The Mission (edited from the original Day Zero one.):

Complete 101 preset tasks by the end of 2009.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

Why only 365 days as opposed to the original 1001?
For some reason creating a list of goals for the next 2.75 years is awkward and difficult for me. I can't wrap my mind around what would be conceivable in the next 1001 days. I'm old fashioned and like to take these kind of things one year at a time, using the New Year holiday as a checkpoint. I figure if somewhere down the line I find that 1001 days would, in fact, be easier/better I'll just edit my list to fit those requirements better.

Some common goal setting tips:
1. Be decisive. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how you plan to achieve it.
2. Stay focused. Any goal requires sustained focus from beginning to end. Constantly evaluate your progress.
3. Welcome failure. Frequently, very little is learned from a venture that did not experience failure in some form. Failure presents the opportunity to learn and makes the success more worthy.
5. Keep your goals in sight. Review them frequently, an densure that they are always at the forefront of your thinking.

Start Date:
January 1 of 2009

Legend:
Italics- In process w/ progress.
Bold- Finished (with date accomplished, and blurb about result, how it happened).

THE LIST:

Health/Fitness:
1. Be vegetarian for 3 months. Debrief and decide whether or not to continue. (0/3 months)
2. Lose 50 pounds. (0/50 pounds) Ideally I would like to lose 90, but I think that's an unrealistic expectation from this year.
3. Go see a therapist.
4. Work out 5 times a week.

5. Don't eat fast food for a year. (31/365)

Family/Friends:
6. Design dad's tattoo and present it to him.
7. Make a mix CD for the parents.
8. Make and send Christmas cards to everyone I know at least 2 weeks before Christmas.
9. Draw dad his fireman pin-up girl on illustration board with Prismacolor pencil.
10. Make mom something nice.
11. Record everyone's who is important birthday in daily planner. January 09, 2009.

Art/Projects:
12. Journal every day. (31/365 days)
13. Collect cardboard from cardboard boxes and use them as canvases for art.
14. Complete at least 5 well done, finished pieces of art for myself and outside of classes. (0/5)
15. Sew something.
16. Paint/Illustrate a piece of art to frame and hang on wall in house.
17. Take photographs to frame and hang on wall in house.
18. Complete the 100 Journal Ideas by Keri Smith. (0/100)
19. Take a photo every day of the year. Project 365. (31/365 days)
20. Make gloomy bear backpack and shoulder bag.
21. Buy an art print. January 10, 2009.
22. Make a Super Sculpey doll.
23. Make a Super Sculpey ball-jointed doll.
24. Create 10 pieces of jewelry not counting any specified on this list. (0/10)
25. Get something with my art on it from Zazzle.
26. Make pillow covers from some of my old graphic T-shirts.
27. Alter old, oversized T-shirts into cute shirts.
28. Come up with an awesome costume and assemble it before Halloweeen.
29. Paint a set of Russian nesting dolls.
30. Make a record bowl or an art piece using this technique.
31. Make a dried/pressed flower necklace.
32. Make Kanzashi flowers.
33. Bind a book.
34. Take portraits of all my close friends.
35. Get my panda backpack fixed and clean.
36. Leave 10 pieces of guerilla artwork in public. (0/10)
37. Finish shoe commission, send to girl and only charge for price of actual shoes and not service. Write long apology letter. Learn from this.
38. Finish painting my Nuclear Girl converse shoes.

School/Work/Education:
39. Get all A's in Spring 09, Summer Classes and Fall 09
40. Get part-time job.
41. Get caught back up with Spanish. Practice frequently.
42. Learn Finnish
43. Read all the books on my bookshelf
44. Declare minor.
45. Build portfolio for/apply for Kendall Merit Scholarship.

Community:
46.Volunteer
47. Donate 1 million grains of rice through FreeRice.com (5480/1 mil)
48. Donate blood.
49. Sign up to be an organ donor.

Enjoyment of life:
50. Dye hair: red and orange, natural red, pink, blue, mint green, and lavender. (0/6)
51. Grow out hair to breast length.
52. Chop it all off.
53. Tattoo.
54. Get 3-4 more ear piercings on left ear.
55. Henna tattoo myself.
56. Knit an article of clothing or an accessory.
57. Go to a concert.
58. Visit Meijer Gardens.
59. Fondue it up with friends.
60. Find a neat, little comfortable place where I can reguarly go there to chill, study, casually make art, meet people, and think. Preferably somewhere with drinks.
61. Have a custom corset made for me.
62. Go on a road trip.
63. Go on a picnic.
64. Paint living room a gorgeous, deep red.
65. Learn how to style hair and do make up.
66. See a play or musical.
67. Find/buy a storage unit for art supplies, a standing lamp with good lighting for study, a surface to keep my record player on and my sewing machine and supplies stored under/in. (0/3)
68. Visit an apple orchard.
69. Host a dinner party.
70. Maintain daily/weekly cleaning for a year.
71. Keep a daily planner for a year.
72. Buy an Intuos tablet.
73. Buy a deck of Tarot cards and learn to read them. bought January 05, 2009
74. Organize my wardrobe.
75. Get over my fear of Arabic food.
76. Buy wall decals for living room.
77. Beat all my video games.
78. Find a pen pal I can really connect with. Start with email or IM contact before committing to snail mail. January 16, 2009!
79. Visit the zoo.
80. Go to the DIA. January 03, 2009
81. Go to the GRAM.
82. Go to a haunted house.
83. Buy a Batman T-shirt. January 16, 2009
84. Complete my Pokedex.
85. Find/Buy a vintage Chinese ad/poster.
86. Eat Blue Moon ice cream in an ice cream parlour.
87. Phase paper napkins out of the home life.
88. Catch fireflies.
89. Try a new recipie every month. (1/12)
90. Watch all the movies on my to-see list.
91. Return Tideland to Netflix.
92. Have a fantastic conversation with a complete stranger.
93. Go ice skating.
94. Clean out entire room and storage at home in Allen Park. Donate, give away, throw away. Just get rid of it all.
95. Bake macrons.

Romance:
96. Buy something naughty from an adult novelty store in person.
97. Make a collaborative piece of artwork with Will.
98. Skinny dip.
99. Get pictures taken in a photo-booth at the mall.
100. Write a love letter to Will and put it in our mailbox for him to find.

101. Blog at least once a week with updates and progress. (4/52)