Favorite Book

The Sun is a Star Also

     This book converges two schools of thought that I so often battle with, the practical and the wondrous. While tackling the possibility of their existences, circumstances of love, and whether or not fate is the cause of the entropy that makes up their lives, the dreamy David and rooted Natasha bring the reader on a journey that makes them contemplate the weight a single day can have. This book had me enraptured, enamored, and scrambling to the end where I would eventually sob uncontrollably, but for why, you don't know.

Favorite Movie

Stuck in Love

     This movie is everything I could have ever asked for in a movie. It's my definitive writer's block cure. It's a sweet, witty, sad, and well-rounded story of a family of writers and their happenstances with love and life and never fails to fill me up with whatever my head needs.

Favorite Place

my bed

     Pretty generic, but I love my bed. For my introverts out there, or my ambiverts, which I think I am, having alone time, or time where you don't have to be around other people, or socializing or being charming or cool or funny or just plain existing outside of your shell can be simply exhausting. My bed and further my room is the one place I have where only I can exist in and I have time to recharge and be my best self whether that be by watching Netflix for hours, or reading, or sleeping.

Favorite TV Show

Jane the Virgin

     Jane the Virgin has so much appraisal because it is everything a tv show has the potential to be shoved into one entity that everyone can love. It tackles hard issues like sexuality, religion, and abortion while still managing to be out-of-breath-laughing hilarious. I love the telenovela or soap opera drama with the weight of still being a seriously good tv show that can undoubtedly put me in a good mood.

Favorite Belonging
my journals

     One of my favorite things to do is to reflect on myself and my growth as a person and how different I have become and changed (hopefully for the better). Journals are my mode of doing that. Through the things I've written, my ideas, my midnight rambles, my angst-ridden scribbles, my fake deep poems, and my hopes for the future I am able to see a preserved image of Maryam X-years ago and reconcile her with present Maryam in a healthy way. #NoRagrets

Favorite Song

Arizona by Common Souls

     A real random one. It sounds nothing like what I usually listen to, but it gives off the perfect vibes. It's just chill quiet song that puts me in a trance every single time I listen to it. Before I know it my head is bobbing to the baseline or simple drum rhythms. It's just everything I need and I can't wait to learn more about Common Souls and see what they come out with. This song was one of the very few hits on my Discover Weekly Spotify Playlist.

     It's always good to find an article of clothing that goes with virtually everything and these are my summer go to's. My past few Instagrams were actually in those jeans (they were taken a while apart, I swear). They're pretty much a staple at this point. There are a few things everyone should have in their closet and some distressed mom jeans are on that short-list for me.

     Shoes like these are edging on overdone, but they're still a pretty versatile pair of shoes that I really wanted in my closet. It also didn't help that I got the look I wanted, for much cheaper than the usual cost. I haven't had much time to figure out styling them yet, but this fall will be full of these shoes for busy walking days and chill casual days.

     This encompasses my life goal. I want to live, not merely be alive. To spend my days doing something useful and to have made a difference by the end of my time. Here's my pact to be white-hot and passionate about everything I commit myself to.

     It's rare for me to listen to an entire album, end to end and be as enthralled with every song to the next, but this one did it. In the four years the albums been out, I can still listen to it and love it as much as the first time. Every song has a message, every song hits deep, and there's a perfect mix of songs to make you want to cry or dance around or somehow do both at the same time. A word to describe the entire piece is: cinematic.

I have a soft spot for room decor, which my Pinterest boards show for, and I also have a soft spot for DIYing literally everything in my life which this blog shows for, so when I saw pictures of these gorgeous grid wall art installations nothing in my head clicked towards buying this in a store. They seemed like the easiest DIY in the world.

I’m sure you can imagine the look on my face when I looked them up and found them retailing on Urban Outfitters for $60.
Needless to say, I was not footing the bill for that and nobody else should, so here’s how I DIY’d my own dupe for 10 dollars. If you don’t want to spend the (well spent) time doing it yourself the Urban Outfitters link is here!

The beginning of this DIY will have to be a little story-esque because I did not document the grubbier part of this DIY, but here’s my description. This story started in a thrift shop like all good DIYs do. While spending a rainy, mucky day aimlessly pouring through a thrift store with my mom and I came across this little bin with these grids and I had my lightbulb moment. I had been thinking of the DIY only a few days prior so this felt pretty fated. The box had 30 grids, all or nothing, so we got the entire box and I split them with my best friend. The cost of all 30 grids? 5$
Then began the task of de-mucking these grids. I’m assuming they were some old shelving unit that had spent some time (a lot) in someone’s garage. I’ll save you the half hour spent with scalding water scrubbing these things off. I was going for was the rose-gold look so the next step was painting these grids. The easiest option would have been to spray-paint the grids, but since I cannot legally obtain spray paint (I’m only 17) I settled for painstakingly painting half of them rose-gold.
Now I had 15 grids to place up on my wall. There are several routes for how these can be hung. If you are ok with holes, pushpins are a fairly competent way of hanging them, especially when you get cute ones like this from Target. If you don’t want to put holes in your wall, clear mini command hooks do the job as well, which is what Julia did.

15 Grids - $2.50 

+ Target Rose-Gold Paint 2.49 

+Target Wood Push Pins 5.00

$10.00

Now, for the fun part: decorating. You can put literally anything up on these, but here are some of my suggestions. The cutest option for hanging things with would be binder clips like these, but you could use anything to hang things up such as paperclips or washi tape.

Things to Hang:

- photos/ polaroids

- sunglasses

- keys

-dried flowers

-notes

-jewelry

In total, I made 15 wall grids for the beautiful price of $10 which was much better than spending $900 at Urban Outfitters.