As promised, photos of my models! Quick recap - the project fits within a site and is a subtractive exercise where I "stabbed" the site with rectangular prisms in the direction of the 4 view rooms - no viewing, ground viewing, horizon viewing, and sky viewing.

Architecture is pretty well known to be a universally time-consuming and difficult major - I remember when I was still looking at colleges, my friends and family and even college tour guides would ask me if I was sure I wanted to do Architecture because I would most definitely not have a life outside of it.

I think one of the most satisfying feelings I've ever had so far in my life is seeing something that I worked on come to life. And no, I don't mean come to life in a model - I mean legitimately, in real life, usable, workable structures.

So the first week of the new school year has passed, and while I do not have anywhere near the amount of work I will end up having when the semester really begins to pick up (thank you, studio) it seems like the rush and stress is already coming back.

For those who don't know, I lived in Shanghai from 7 - 13 years old, and when I was 13 I moved to the US to go to boarding school in rural Connecticut. Most of my formative childhood years and memories are based on China, but because I left at 13, I left with the naive associations a young girl tends to have, and my stubbornness to believe in those rose-colored memories kept me from seeing what was really in front of me.

I've mentioned before that I have a ridiculous amount of yarn collected and need to use up, so here's another crochet project that I just recently finished for my apartment!

My friends and I had a pretty great weekend last week, filled with laughter and chopping and slicing vegetables (and in Veronica's case, herself).

Originally this post was going to be about the World Cup finale and Peel Play Olé Olé (my body is still fighting off the sodium bloat, embarrassingly enough), but a very one-sided conversation about cherishing opportunity (and not being money-driven) with my very Asian parents will be taking the limelight today.

I've started numerous crochet and knitting projects recently (Catherine and I have been crochet buddies as we binge watch Once Upon A Time), in an effort to use up the ridiculous amount of yarn I've somehow accumulated these past two years. A lot of these projects are for the home, since my friends Caitlin and Emma and I will be moving to an apartment next year and I thought this especially could be a cute addition.

This past weekend was pretty calm and uneventful, especially for being Fourth of July - my friend, Andrei, invited me to have dinner with his host family (bison burgers!), I had a picnic with Julie, Stephen, and Elaine on the Commons on Saturday, and I grabbed lunch with Andrei on Sunday (Cinderella's!) - and when the week started, I got switched to the Audi Project at work.

As I mentioned in the last Coffee Buzz, I went to New York last weekend and took a bunch of photos of the tourist destinations we went to, so for this week's Whim of the Week I thought I could focus on my photo editing!

I left off last week's Coffee Buzz saying that I was in the Big Apple, so obviously this week I'm focusing on that vacation!

Since it's the end of the month (or the beginning of the next, since these posts go up on Tuesdays), I thought it would be fitting to begin a sub-series within the Whims: Monthly Favorites! So here goes nothing....

This past week has really, truly felt like studio all over again!

A couple weeks ago, I was watching a video by Draw with Jazza on Youtube and I got inspired to create a quick Flash animation that introduces myself. I wanted it to be simple, cute, and characteristic of my personality.

So I have a confession to make: I have really, really terrible body image - probably the aftermath of a combination of living in China, where since a young age I was turned away at small boutiques because I was too "big" and couldn't fit in the one-size-fits-all clothes, and being around people who made fun of me for not being a typically-tiny Asian girl.

I've always really wanted a jewelry tree, but I always thought they were ridiculously overpriced (20 dollars+? Really?). I decided that since it was the summer, it was the perfect opportunity to make my own tree!

Two of my favorite clothing pieces are my convertible dresses that I bought off of Ideeli, despite the fact that neither of those pieces are currently in the same country as me (I travel and leave things when they don't fit in my suitcase, and unfortunately those get left behind at my parents' house). I think that the dress is ingenious - one clothing piece, infinite ways of wearing? Sign me up!

The weekend began well - On Saturday I didn't wake up until noon and after I finally dragged myself out of bed I went over to EC to ship Julie's books for her and to play Assassin's Creed on her Xbox 360. Came home, hung out with Max and Libi for a while, went to bed....

Originally my first whim of the week was going to be about a romper that I made, but over the weekend my wallet got stolen (read about it in the next Coffee Buzz!) so I decided to write about a quick pouch/wallet hybrid that I whipped up to put my replacement cards and cash in. I needed it because I didn't have time to go shopping for a new wallet, and because I didn't want to fork over the money for a new one (I usually buy my replacement wallets in little flea markets in Shanghai when I go home, where each wallet is usually less than $10).

After a stressful last two weeks of school - which included a double all-nighter, stacking chipboard, a massive meltdown, and everything ending up pretty okay - life finally slowed down a little bit. The weather turned beautiful, I allowed myself to sleep all day, and sophomore year was over.