Twenty-one years of awesome.

Today I turned twenty-one.

And if you didn't notice, today is also 12-12-12. I would say the date alone is the perfect excuse to get completely wasted since it is my 21st birthday and all, but I think I'll just sip on some Mormon cider instead.

Sadly, I'm approaching this birthday with a less than positive attitude. I happen to blog stalk a number of people. Mostly women that were married at the ripe age of eighteen and now have a little one before they even hit their twenties. I was going to be one of those girls. I planned on getting married right out of high school and my only goal at this point is to have my own little hooligans. At twenty-one, I'm feeling rather old in the Mormon timeline of getting hitched and repopulating the earth. And to add to that, I feel like I'm accomplishing nothing productive in the mean time. I'm not going to school, I'm not building a career, I'm not "finding myself" (whatever that means), I'm not traveling or doing anything remotely exciting. Rather, I'm getting by on a part-time job that barely pays the bills.

So I may or may not be a bit of a downer today. In all seriousness though, I know that this is what's best for me. I may not be able to understand why that is at the present moment, but I'm sure God has other plans in store for me. Hopefully I can figure those plans out sooner rather than later so I can stop wasting my precious time here on earth with tom foolery. Other than that little issue, I'm in rather a good mood. Today is going to be fantastic... once I stop my whining.

In other words, happy twenty-one years of life to me.

(And yes, I did eat ice cream cake for breakfast this morning. It's my birthday. I can do what I want.)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas?

I love Christmas.

Unfortunately when you live in the valley of the sun, the freakishly warm weather makes it hard to remember that it's the holiday season. Also, my lack of funds for a Christmas tree. I need snow and Christmas music and hot chocolate. Not swimsuit weather and a barren studio apartment.

So to create the illusion of the holidays for myself, I found my Justin Bieber Christmas CD and pulled out my meager craft supplies. Time to channel my inner Martha Stewart to deck out my apartment. Maybe I'll even bake something festive?... better not push it. I most definitely need to find some mistletoe to hang, can't pass up that ingenious tradition (seriously, who invented that?).

And to help you get in the Christmas spirit, here's a fabulous video:

Kid in the lovely holiday sweater, can we be best friends?

According to Instagram

As you can see, Harley is the star of my Instagram with an occasional appearance of my tortoise Pancho Villa. I may need to work on having a more interesting life. Feel free to follow me @aliciareneesnow if you like to see pictures of dogs.