One Year Blogiversary!

-
Can you believe that I've been blogging at Pieces of Anna for an entire year now? In honor of this momentous occasion, let's recap what happened in the past year.

I started this blog to figure out what it is that I like to do in my spare time, after I realized that most of my hobbies had slowly disappeared from my life. Well, I'm happy to report that some hobbies have made a (re)appearance! But more than that, the blog has slowly evolved beyond this singular purpose into an outlet that allows me to record fragments of my life in writing.

My life, in a nutshell.

So what have I been up to lately? Let's see.

  • Despite my aspirations for a career change, science will always be my first love. Chemistry never ceases to fascinate me, and if I could choose to stay in any scientific career, I would definitely become a chemist. For an amazing marriage of photography and chemistry, check out The Elements by Theodore Gray. Trust me, you will not be disappointed.
  • And yet, I'm still gunning for that career change. More than a year of research and soul searching has not resulted in any definitive conclusions, but I can positively say that I would like writing to be a major part of my new career. It may be in the form of science writing, but I'm certainly not limiting myself to that one category. Meanwhile, I actually have some news on that front - my research into science writing is no longer purely theoretical. Surprise! In my infinite wisdom, I decided to take on the opportunity of a lifetime and start a three-month long internship as a science communicator... three months before the wedding. And no, I did not quit my day job. I'm actually now working TWO jobs at the same time! And planning a wedding! No one ever said career change would be easy.
  • Science writing is one option for the new career, but I could be just as happy writing about decorating and DIY projects. Sometime in the past several years, I discovered the world of decorating blogs, and I fell in love. If you had told me five years ago that I would get crazy excited about rearranging the living room or refinishing furniture, I would have looked at you as if you had three heads. It's a side of me I never knew existed, but now that it's here, there is no going back. I have a growing collection of decorating books and actually making things by hand brings me much happiness (and instant gratification). To be able to say, "Look! I made that!" is priceless. Even if you don't have a decorating bone in your body, but would still like to live in a cozy, inviting home, check out The Perfectly Imperfect Home by Deborah Needleman. It's worth it just for the illustrations alone.
  • But there is more to my life than just science, writing, and decorating. As part of our wedding preparations, we started taking salsa lessons! See those old, beat-up dance shoes in the photo? Well, those are not actually my salsa shoes (I just bought those last week, and they are still nice and shiny and new). Those are my old ballroom dancing shoes. Dancing has been a huge part of my life since I was in grade school, and as my hobbies slowly dissipated out of my busy "adult" life, I had forgotten how much joy dancing brings me. In my life, I've done ballet, ballroom, swing, tango, and even a little bit of tap and belly dancing. Our salsa lessons give me something to look forward to on Monday nights, and I am hoping to keep on dancing even after the wedding is over.
  • And yes, of course the other big thing that happened last year is that D and I got engaged! (Bonus points if you can find the engagement ring in the above photo.) So the craziness of wedding planning has been part of our lives for over half a year now, and with three months to go, I can't wait to be married already. Meanwhile, I have to say that despite being super annoying at times, wedding planning has given me ample opportunity to work out that DIY muscle, and I am grateful for that. And for the whole getting married part, of course.
It has been quite an eventful year for this little blog! I can't wait to see what the upcoming year brings. Whatever it is, you know I'll be writing all about it right here.

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 21, 2012 at 12:26 PM

    It's on your shoe!!

    And hey, congrats on the internship. I'm interested to hear what that entails. I too sometimes wonder what else I might like to do. There are days I love my work but also a lot of days when it feels very monotonous. You know, all the parts between doing actual exciting science, which it turns out, is most of it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnnaMarch 21, 2012 at 2:26 PM

      Yay! Bonus points go to greyandshiny :)

      And thanks! I'm planning to do a post at some point about the internship, but I'm holding off on that for now because a) the internship only started recently and it's difficult to coherently describe what it entails at this point, and b) I'm trying to figure out how much I can and am willing to put on the internet. But I will write about it one day.

      Delete
  2. AmandaMarch 21, 2012 at 3:25 PM

    Hey congratulations. For all of those achievements. And that writing internship sounds super exciting.
    I also love chemistry (a little secret or not so secret, in high school I went to the chemistry olympics and was champion of my state ). I wanted to study pharmacology, then went in a more medical direction(.
    Oh and I also found the ring I swear, before I saw the comment above by greyandshiny.
    And wedding to come, how exciting.
    All the best ! And glad I found you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnnaMarch 21, 2012 at 5:39 PM

      Thanks, Amanda! And you get bonus points, too!

      Chemistry olympics is tough, that's really impressive that you were the state champion.

      Delete
    2. AmandaMarch 22, 2012 at 3:53 AM

      Thanks ;) Then I went to nationals' and I wasn't prepared enough, but it was a nice experience.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bentwood Chair Makeover

-
Image
For my first real DIY (Do-it-yourself) project, I decided to start slow and simple. Oh wait, slow and simple is not my style. Well then, I decided to jump right in and make over a bentwood chair. At this point, I had zero experience with sanding, priming, or painting any piece of furniture. I've also never reupholstered anything before. And I had absolutely no supplies. What could possibly go wrong? It's like Beauty and the Beast, right? The end result doesn't look so bad after all. What you don't see in this picture are the many days months that this project of mine occupied our balcony, living room, and second bedroom. Also not pictured is D's cursing of the day I bought this chair loving support for my first adventure into the land of DIY. And now, for the gory details. The first thing I did was remove the chair seat. Which turned out to be a total pain in the a**. See, I was under the impression that most chair seats are attached to the base by means of s
Read more

DIY Wine and Beer Bottle Vases

-
Image
As I mentioned earlier , I decided to get a little crafty with Christmas presents this year. While browsing Pinterest, I stumbled upon this image that inspired me to try my hand at making vases out of wine and beer bottles. Found here . Originally from here . A little bit of googling turned up handy tutorials on how to wrap bottles with jute. Some tutorials called for using a hot glue gun, which I don't own (and quite frankly, I can't imagine that getting hot glue on your fingers is all that pleasant). Luckily, I found some tutorials, like this one , which claimed that you could achieve the same results using plain old Elmer's glue. The first step was to obtain some empty wine and beer bottles. I asked D to help me out with this step. I literally told him, "I need you to drink beer for my project." He was happy to oblige! Once I had a few bottles collected, I needed to remove the labels. Soaking the bottles in hot water makes this step much easier than tr
Read more

Baby Gear

-
Image
Before our baby was born, we started getting ready for her arrival by spending tons of money on baby gear. We managed to get the basics before her early arrival, and caught up on the rest later. Though it's misleading to say that we "caught up" as we are still hemorrhaging money on baby stuff on a regular basis (my credit card statements look like this: Target, Amazon, Amazon, Target, Target, Netflix, Amazon, Amazon, Target, Amazon, etc). Here is my review of some of the "essential" baby items that we've purchased: Baby gear 1. One of the first items that we purchased was a crib. Keeping in mind our color scheme for the baby room (white/gray/turquoise/yellow), we decided that we wanted a white crib with a modern look to it. I searched for a crib that was made of solid wood (to avoid potential fumes from glue used in MDF) and had extra storage (as we live in a small place and always lack storage space). After much research, we decided to go with Bab
Read more