COLLECTIVE!!!! (and some other stuff)

 

 

Hi there!

 

Sorry about my absence the past few weeks. I've been meaning to blog, but I've been so busy!!

 

 

Last year, my beloved friends and I didn't have time to celebrate each others birthdays. We've got Jen's September birthday (right in the middle of marching band craziness), Kirsten's December birthday (Christmas prep and such), Nikki's January birthday (during All-State and All-County, and my birthday in April (during musical season). So we don't have time to celebrate our birthdays.

 

Enter the concept of Collective.

 

Collective is this grand concept we came up with where we all get together over the summer and have a giant collective birthday party!! We all get each other gifts and eat pizza and watch movies and it's wonderful.

 

 

 

Here we see Nikki, Kirsten, and Jen being their beautiful selves.

Yep. I have good taste in best friends :)

 

 

We had an Avengers movie marathon. I found this really cute idea on Pinterest and tried to

 recreate it!

 

 

Here's the original from Pinterest:

And here's mine!!

 (Personally, I think mine is awesomer!)

 

Behold, here's a lovely shot I took of Nikki when she fell asleep during The Avengers.

(She doesn't know I took this so shhhhhhhh)

The Sunday after Collective, the Parents and I took a trip to the Magic Kingdom!

We found a brass band!

We also encountered some lovely rainstorms.

It's Florida. It's summer.

I expected nothing less.

 

OH and here's a picture of how Kirsten wrapped this giant awesome poster she gave me. So you know, it's a wonderful subtle reference to Olan Rogers' video Ghost In The Stalls.

And this is why we're best friends. Packaging references to some of our favorite videos :)

 

I was home all by my lonesome the other day, and there's not much in the fridge right now.
However, we did have a head of iceberg lettucs and some frozen teryaki chickens, so I made lettuce teryaki wraps. They were amaaaazing!

And all I had to do was use the microwave. :)

 

Ah, but my craziness never stops!!
I got to go hang with my dearly graduated Emily the other night! I took my guitar and she has a piano at her house, so we sang lovely duets from Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis!
Oh and we made cupcakes :)

 

We've decided that we're going to open a bakery and we shall call it "Music Ed Majors Baking Things" (it's a working title).

On a totally random note, did you know that Starbucks has a bunch of "secret" drinks?
I've heard of the Starbucks secret menu, but I've never tried anything on it before.
However, Kirsten has been raving about the cotton candy frappucino for months. I was at Starbucks yesterday and decided to give it a try.

It's not a favorite (I love my caramel frap too much!), but I definitely recommend trying it! Order a Vanilla Bean Frapp with one pump of raspberry in it. (Kirsten says to get it without whip.)

 

After enjoying my Starbucks deliciousness, I got to go see Emily leading a bunch of small children in a musical! She's been assisting with their musical camp and was excited to be the student director!

You did great, Ems!!

I have to get back to packing, since I LEAVE FOR BAND CAMP TOMORROW!!!

I'm excited but sad, as this is my last band camp. :(

 

BUT I'm thrilled to see our show start to come together! It's going to be awesome!!

 

So, see you all again in a week!!!

 

                                                          -SarahCate:D

 

 

Question of the Post: If you were to open a bakery with a friend, what would you call it and why?

 

 

Adventuring!!

Well Happy Thursday to you all!!
I hope you're all having a lovely week this week. Mine's been pretty fabulous.

My week started with a Sunday Funday trip downtown with Kirsten. We had no goals, other than hanging out and making mischief. We were successful in both ventures. As it was Sunday, however, most local stores were closed. :( But Party City wasn't, so we found some awesome Star Wars masks...

 

When we were walking back from one of the stores to Kirsten's car, we found a duck. He was cute, and he started quacking at us. We, of course, had to quack back!!

 

Monday found me slightly sunburnt from walking around in the blazing sun the previous day, but Mom and I decided to head up to the northern part of the county. Our main goal here was to go take some cool pictures with my guitar (I'll post about those later), but we also got some shopping done :)

 

The wonderful sponge docks at Tarpon Springs!

 

For lunch, our only option was the wonderful Skyline Chili! It's Cincinatti style chili, and it is amazing.

 

 

And they put a TON of cheese on it, however you order it! I got the Four-Way, which is spaghetti, chili, cheese, and onions. How good is it?

Good enough that Dad made up bring him some.

 

After lunch, Mom and I stopped by Guitar Center, since it was in the area. I entered the danger zone for me: the Martin and Taylor acoustic room.

 

Yep. I found a beautiful Taylor acoustic for $1,700. It's fun to play expensive guitars. :)

 

Tuesday was a day off for me, but yesterday it started back up.

 

With a visit to the doctor's office.

 

Wahoo. This is so much fun.

Thrilled to be here.

And EVIDENTLY it was time for me to get a shot.

Yeah, my arm kinda hurts right now.

But it's okay, I'm managing.

The final awesomeness of my day yesterday was recording. It had been six weeks since I'd last done anything with Tim, so this time we tracked the cello and percussion.



                                                          Meet my cello and drumset.

Yeeeeeah MIDI tracks!!

 

Are we done with my first song yet? Oh no.

Are we closer to being done? Oh yes.

 

It's just so exciting!!!!

 

 

I hope to see you all again soon! Until then, continue being wonderful!!

 

                    -SarahCate:D

 

 

 

Question of the Post: Guitar players, here's a question for you: Taylor or Martin?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Girls State!

I have now run a government.

Wait, what?
Oh yes.
Through the wonderful program known as Girls State, I got to go to Tallahassee with 299 other girls my age. Once there, we established and ran our own government.

I was assigned to the great city (read: hallway) of Ocoee on the fifth floor. Now this wouldn't be awful, but we weren't allowed to use the elevators. So we found ourselves climbing up and down five flights of stairs every morning, every night, and any time we wanted to go get a Diet Coke.

It truly was the hard-knock life for us. But at least we weren't on the seventh floor. Poor dears.

Meet my roommates, Mincy and Melissa. These two are crazy- crazy awesome, that is! They also decided that it would be a fun idea to steal my camera at lunch one day and take selfies. Well, here ya go girls!

Aren't we fabulous?

 

And the wonderful Ocoee flag!

 

One of the requirements for Girls State was that we had to write a bill that our Senate and House of Representatives would later vote on. I wrote mine on human trafficking, and while it didn't pass, awareness was raised! I got many of the girls to represent the End It movement with red Xs.

 

Another wonderful picture of the coolest roommates ever!

 

BEHOLD, the Supreme Court of Florida.

 

Because I was part of the judicial branch (I was a Supreme Court Marshal :D) I got to run around with 21 other lovely ladies!

 

And by running around... I mean sitting around.

Perks of the judicial branch: lots of down time!

(at least in Girls State terms!)

 

 

We got to tour the old Capitol building and I got a picture in the restored House of Representatives!

 

Me and Melissa taking late night selfies :)

 

Saloni, myself, and Alexis!

Mincy, Melissa and myself on the last night.

 

 

 

Ocoee Nationalists! Go Nats!!

When we got our room assignments, we also got assigned to a political party: Federalists or Nationalists. I was a Nationalist, and we were awesome. That is all.

 

 

 

To be honest, I didn't expect much out of Girls State. I'm a musician, not a politician (there's a reason for that), so I really wasn't expecting to have a great time.

Wow. I was wrong.

By the end of the week, I had gotten to meet dozens of the smartest girls in Florida. And I'm now deeply missing 25 of them. We're all crazy, we're all unique, we're all amazing,

and we're all going places.

 

 

Who knows? One of these girls may be the next president of the United States.

 

I'd say it's highly possible.

 

So that was the short version of my experience at Girls State. Now, it you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go miss my girls some more.

 

Shoutout to Ocoee, the best group of girls in the state!

 

             - SarahCate:D

 

 

Question of the Post: Got any Girls Staters out there???