niagara falls

Yesterday started out pretty terrible. Just a bunch of things went wrong and it was an awful start to the trip. Things improved immensely though, when we finally ended up in Canada at Niagara Falls and got to see one of the prettiest locations on earth in beautiful weather with rainbows all over the place! It was really breathtaking.

Today we're heading over to Buffalo (shuffling off, if you will) and I get to see one of my best friends so I'm pretty excited about that!! :) After New York we're supposed to go to Vermont but honestly I'm having second thoughts about continuing on the trip. I always want to be really adventurous and do fun spontaneous things, but when it gets down to it I'm really just a terrible homebody and get so homesick SO fast. I hate that this is such an ingrained character trait -- that I make life changing plans and then always end up backing out of them. This trip should be SO awesome. I really, really want to see all 50 states and the idea of working on the road seemed so thrilling to me when I was planning it! But now that I'm living my plans, I just want to be home.

I'll give it another couple of days before I decide if I want to head back to NJ. Who knows, maybe the travel bug will finally hit me and I'll have to be dragged back home kicking and screaming...

dress- forever 21 | shoes - asos | shirt - target | bag - c/o wet seal

jumping hurdles

dress - swap with Amber Rose

belt - old navy

cardigan - forever 21

shoes - blowfish

There's been a little hitch in the proceedings with my move to Toronto... it turns out that to get a student visa you need to prove you have one year of living expenses in your bank account prior to your move -- which, by their estimates, should be a minimum of $10,000! :-O I think it's safe to say, as a 24 year old freelance artist who scrambles just to pay her netflix bill each month, I don't even have anywhere close to that amount.

Normally I would have been incredibly discouraged and probably spent the weekend in bed sobbing, but with my new positive attitude, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make this happen. I'm doing 200 paintings and selling them at $50 each, to try to raise the funds to get my student visa. So far this weekend I managed to get 16 done (it's tiny but it's a start!) and I hope to finish at least 100 this week. My only problem will be actually selling them lol ;-D

Once I have them up, if anyone would help me spread the word I'd appreciate it so much!! Someone would need to invent a virtual hug delivery service to properly express my gratitude. My whole entire future depends on me getting this visa.. so if you can help you'll be like my fairy godmothers!


Do you want to comment, but have no idea what to say? Trust me, I've been there! So to make things a little easier, here is a question you can answer if you can't think of anything else to say! :)

What is the secret to getting away with a bank robbery? lol j/k ;-D

exciting news!!

(image via LolasRoom on etsy)

It's official -- I'm moving to Toronto! ahh! I just found out yesterday that I was accepted to the University of Toronto to study art history in the fall. We're planning on making a trip to scout out apartments in late July, and then I'll make the move in early August! It's happening!!!

I am going to miss my family SO much though. I was so excited when I saw the acceptance message, and hurried down stairs to tell my parents, my brother and my grandmother. As soon as I said it, my brother gave me a hug and while I was hugging him I saw my mom crying, so I started crying and before I knew it, me and my mom were both having a sob-fest. My dad just sat in the kitchen with this look on his face like "I'm so happy for you but I'm going to miss you so much." He's really stoic and I know he was just as upset as my mom but couldn't show it.

As you can probably tell from what I've written in the past, I'm really, really close to my parents so this is going to be hard as heck. I'm teaching them skype so we can chat face to face, and my mom is changing our verizon plan to cover all of North America, so I can talk to them on my phone all the time too. My grandmom is going to stay with me for a month to help me get settled in (she gets my grandfather's pension, and social security so she can manage to leave work for a little while) and then my mom is taking all of her vacation days in November to spend my birthday month with me. Also, my parents are letting me take BOTH of the cats -- Hypatia and Chloe! Hypatia is technically my cat, so she'd naturally go wherever I go, but Chloe is actually the family cat, so it's really nice of them to let me have her, too!

My dad is applying to U of T next year for his Masters degree, and my mom might apply to finish her Bachelor's degree, so hopefully I'll only be this far away from them for a year. They wanted to stay here until Kyle turns 18. He doesn't want to move to Canada, so this way once he's 18 he can live wherever he wants to, and they can follow me up north. People have always kind of made fun of me for being so close to my parents, saying I should grow up and move on... but I think you can do both. I'm going to have my own apartment now, but I still want to be able to see them all the time. It doesn't matter that we're related -- they are my closest friends, and I don't think you should have to part ways with your friends just because you get older. Hopefully next year we'll all be together in Toronto, and this experience will have lost the "bitter" and only be "sweet" :)

So... I'll definitely be sharing more with you as I get more information. Oh, and in case you're wondering, Flapper Doodle will not be affected at all. I'll probably need to close the shop the week I move, but I will be running it out of my apartment in Toronto once I get there. Same goes for this blog... there might be some filler posts in July & August (and I would love some guest posts, too!) but I'm planning on continuing to blog daily even after I move :) As long as I have my laptop I'm set ;)

Oh, Canada!

That's me during our trip to Canada in 2005, in a Toronto H&M pretending I was Stacy from What Not to Wear... I don't know why, but I never seem to take real vacation photos that prove where I was, they always look like I could have taken them in New Jersey :-p

Anyway, I do have a reason for posting a photo from Toronto... we have news on the moving front! As much as I had my heart set on moving to Cardiff, it's looking to be just too complicated. The super difficult visa process, the fact that our cats would have to be microchipped & wait 6 months before being able to go, as well as the idea of getting rid of all of our furniture & most of our belongings, were just too overwhelming. So, we've re-focused our house hunt to Toronto. We've been there and we LOVE it! It also doesn't hurt that the exchange rate is MUCH better than the pound/dollar.

I still plan on moving to Europe when I'm a bit older, preferably when I'm married or committed to a guy who would be willing to make the move with me. I'm terribly dependent, and don't think I could live without someone around to kill my bugs, zip my zippers and watch scary movies with me! ;-D

So, that's my little bit of news! Since it's a lot closer (and easier) than moving to Cardiff, we'll hopefully be moving sooner than we planned, provided our house sells in this so-so market. I'm really looking forward to making Toronto my home!

ps. TOTALLY off subject, but this was bothering me so much I made a gif about it .. anyone else have this pet peeve or is it just me?