The long and short of it

Everyone has that one haircut they look back on and regret. Maybe you rocked a mullet too far into the Nineties or maybe you went for the side-swept, overly straightened layers in the mid-00s. No judgement here if either of those is the case. I have an embarrassing hair story as well.

No trims for a year and this is the result...this, and an embarrassing amount
of split ends. I'm reluctant to snip yet because I've missed my long hair!

I've had super long hair for most of my life. My dad always preferred it, so that is how I wore it until the end of last summer. But last summer was a trying time for my family. In July my mom was suddenly and quite unexpectedly diagnosed with a type of colon cancer and underwent an emergency surgery to remove part of her large intestine and spleen. She spent the next three weeks in the hospital recovering.

We were told she would nave to undergo chemotherapy and radiation treatments for good measure. Hair loss was a possibility.

I'd had my hair long for years and I was bored. It was a hot summer in NorCal, and I was about to head back to school in an even hotter Phoenix. And the guy I was seeing at the time had been urging me to try a pixie cut (partly because he liked pixie cuts, and partly because he couldn't stand my hair touching him). So when the doctors said it might be a good idea to look into wigs for my other, that was it. I chopped. I donated a ponytail of snipped hair to my mother's hairdresser—who just so happened to specialize in treating cancer patients and had a thriving wig business!

Thankfully, my mother didn't lose her hair. The heartbreaker is that I got rid of this:

Sure, it had split ends a foot deep,
but was the chop really necessary?

Now my hair finally hits a good six inches below my collar bone. And now that it's safely back into the "long" range, I think I've learned my lesson. It's still kind of annoying when my hair catches on earrings or sunglasses or my boyfriend's stubble, but it's worth it to finally feel like I look like myself again.

Which do you prefer, long or short? Have you ever regretted a haircut? Tell me about it in the comments below!

Confessions of a cheapskate

Let me share a secret with you: Thirty dollars does not go far when it comes to buying furniture. Shocking, I know. But such is the lesson I rather unpleasantly learned today.

I'm a cheapskate. I freely admit it. I think a sandwich should cost no more than three dollars, and you should be able to buy a decent couch for twenty. I switch browsers when I reach my monthly online reading limit for The New York Times just so I don't have to buy a subscription, and my favorite coffee place is my favorite mostly because their regular coffee is fifty cents all day. I'm not a picky eater and I frequently buy clothing from Goodwill. But when it comes to furniture, I have fairly expensive tastes. And because I'm a cheapskate, I don't want to pay for what expensive tastes demand.

I blame Pinterest in part for my tastes. Populated in large part by successful interior designers, my Pinterest feed is constantly piping West Elm and Joss and Main into my inbox. The products are beautiful: glossy white parsons desks that seem to show up in every. home. office. photo; slim, taut, sofas that are a complete 180 from the slouchy, overstuffed microsuede affairs of man caves and frat houses; and cool, ropy "poufs" that would be perfect as an ottoman, seat or side table.

Is it too much to ask that my office look like this?
Image via Live Creating Yourself.

My problem is that I want SixThreeNine to look like a page out of The Everygirl, and the best I can do right now is one worn Target futon and two Walmart bookshelves. No yellow chevron area rug, no burlap throw pillows, and no industrial pipe and reclaimed wood dining table. 

Even my beloved thrift stores can't help me with this one. Today I spent two hours at Ultimate Consignment only to discover that the only thing I could afford there today was this beautiful carved purple armchair — which I WILL own eventually — and that even the cheapest desks were going to be about twenty dollars more than I could afford. Forget finding a dresser or a kitchen table for under one-fifty, and don't even think about bargaining for anything with the word "vintage" on its label. College students furnishing their first house don't buy vintage.

O, beautiful square white sofa, I pine for thee.
Image via The Everygirl.

So for now it's back to daily scouring of Craigslist for anything with even the slightest of DIY potential. Ikea desks, dressers from the Seventies and mattresses still in their original plastic are all fair game at this point.

New House Tour

Behold, the much-anticipated photos of the inside of the new house! This week starts the whole packing and moving process for me. So far the only major furniture I have to move are a couple bookshelves and my college futon ... which will be my bed until I can buy a mattress set! The poor bare living room has no sofa and the dining room has no table or chairs. But things will start to come together here and there, little pieces at a time. It's going to be so exciting to watch this home take shape!

Home Sweet Home

As you all know, I'm a junior at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. My major is based on the smaller, more professional Downtown Phoenix campus — NOT the rowdy, fratty main campus in Tempe! — and for the past two years, that's where I've lived: In the two-towered, fourteen-storied building that is ASU's single downtown dormitory.

But that changes next week. You see, Thursday I was given the keys to my very first apartment!

My friend Annika and I started looking for a place a few months ago, but most of the larger apartment complexes nearby were either too expensive or were too far away — though still along the light rail, they were decidedly midtown, not downtown. So we started looking for small houses to rent instead of focusing on apartment complexes.

And then we found this place. It's a cute little bungalow built in the 1920s. It was originally a duplex, but the upper floor has been sealed off and turned into a third unit. So now Annika and I have 900 glorious square feet to call our own.

I told Annika after touring it the first time that I don't believe in love at first sight except for this house (I refuse to call it an apartment). I've dubbed it SixThreeNine, and it's my baby.

Excited to see the inside? Check back later this week for more photos!