May 31: making banana pancakes...

My two little cousins Summer and Leigha spent the night last night, and since I somehow woke up before noon this morning in a cooking mood, I made us all a huge batch of chocolate chip banana pancakes.  Ironically, I’m not the hugest fan of bananas and I’d probably rather have strawberries on top of my chocolate chip pancakes, but because of the Jack Johnson song that I adore, I always want to add some banana slices to my pancakes.  Worth it just to be able to sing the song while I’m cooking.  

Can’t you see that it’s just raining. There ain’t no need to go outside (:

May 30: Cousins

The cousins are in town this week!  We don’t get to see CJ, Leigha, Summer, and Bennett too often, so it’s always a treat when they come over from Newberry to spend a couple of days with Poppop and Norma.  Hopefully they’ve been entertained in Augusta with watching swim meets, hanging out at the pool, and going to movies - it’s not like Augusta is the most entertaining place in the world, especially in the already hot summertime.  The girls are spending the night with us tonight, and we’ll have a nice little Pruitt sleepover with pancakes in the morning. It’s been so good to hang out with them as they are getting way too old way too fast!  We love our sweet cousins!

May 29: Kid at Heart

Julia and I have had quite a few fun ice cream excursions after dinner so far this summer.  Tonight we are at Bruster’s, and I am way happier than I should be with my regular:  Cotton Candy Explosion.  This is probably right up there with other “kid flavors” like Purple Dinosaur and Superman, but I don’t care.  No matter how many different, creative, yummy flavors Bruster’s has, I am always happiest with this one.  The girl scooping my ice cream may have given me a funny look, but this is worth it for sure.

May 28: The Bow Necklace

At a loss for what to take a picture of today, I’m capturing an essential part of my everyday wardrobe.  I wear this bow necklace literally everyday.  It actually started our silver when I bought it in Charleston on my senior trip last year, but I’ve worn it down to a bronzy color that looks like it could be intentional.  I love it and when it breaks one day, I’ll be hunting for a replacement as close to the original as possible.  #simplepleasures

May 27: Boll Weevil Cake

Tonight, my old friend Christian and I had our semi-annual dinner and a movie date night like we do every time he’s back in town from Texas.  For dinner, we went downtown to The Boll Weevil, what I consider a classic Augusta restaurant, which is famous for (can you guess?) its monstrous and delicious cakes.  After dinner, we shared a rich slice of some sort of sinfully chocolate cake, which is probably the reason why we chose to go there in the first place.  Completely wonderful.  And an insider’s tip:  their cake is half-priced on Sundays (: YUM!

May 26: Dream Yard

Most girls my age have huge dreams of what they want their house to look like one day.  But the thought of a whole house left for me to decorate and design is overwhelming to me.  As much as I like shopping for home decor and making decorative crafts, right now I'm looking out at my backyard and dreaming about what I want my yard to look like one day! 

Lit up trees, exotic flower beds, a greenhouse full of vegetables, fruit trees, hammocks, a pool, lounging areas, a grown up tree house, patios and fire pits. So many options and so many ways to transform a yard into a magical get away!

  Of course this means that I’ll have to live somewhere north of Augusta as right now it is literally dangerous to be outside for more than 30 minutes at a time. 

But regardless, one day my yard will blow your mind!

May 25: DQ

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It’s getting to be a little too often that Julia and I make eye contact as we’re finishing up dinner and mouth to each other “Dairy Queen?”  But these little ice cream runs are so much fun.  Blizzards for the whole family while watching So You Think You Can Dance is exactly the right way to wrap up a long day!  

Count your blessings, not your calories!

May 24: Empty Again

Gas prices are high, and so is the mileage I’m wracking up right now as I’m driving across town everyday to tutor a middle schooler for finals coming up.  I’ve started only filling up my tank half-way, because I cannot stand to watch that $40-$60 tick up for a measly 14 gallons.  But the downside of that method is that I’m filling up twice as often. So here I am once again on empty.  I can’t wait to be back at school walking everywhere instead of burning up my paycheck on my way to my job.  This is getting out of hand!

May 23: Back at WSA

This is a bizarre flashback.  

Today is Honors/Awards Day at Westminster and instead of sitting down with the students and going up to receive awards like I did for so many years, I'm sitting up in the bleachers with the parents watching Ned and Julia hopefully carry on my legacy (:  I don't feel old enough to have this behind me already.  Even though it's been two years since I was in Ned's place as a junior, it feels like a lifetime and two minutes at the same time.  After being in the parent audience today, I officially feel like I've passed on the torch to Ned (for one more year) and Julia (for 5 more years after that).  No more high school for me!

May 22: Melo-blog-matic

This is PA-THE-TIC!!

 I can’t figure out this mental block, but once again, keeping up with my blog has flown way out of my reach..Once I get this far behind, it gets super daunting and I just don’t have the motivation to write.  

Goal for the summer:  Be caught up before I go back to school!! That’s attainable right? We’ll see!

May 21: Workin' at the Car Wash

All little kids love going through the automatic car wash.  It’s something about feeling like your car is being attacked by a giant soap monster but you are safe and cozy inside.

  Today, I had a little time to kill after tutoring and my car was nasty dirty, so I decided to run through a car wash and see if it was as fun as it used to be when I was little.  And yes, it was! Going through was fun, but the realization that my car was not actually clean afterwards was more than a but disappointing.  I really had no idea that there was even a chance that Toby wouldn’t come out completely spotless. The dirt is scrubbed shiny now, and a real car was will be happening later this week. 

Live & learn.

May 20: Girls' Night In

How domestic.  

Friends united for a night of cooking at home and a movie out.  On the menu was taco salad with Ms. Thayer’s famous and delicious mexican layer dip and virgin margaritas on the rocks. 

Lyss + Fran + Cam = So much fun tonight!!

May 19: Rocket

Meet Rocket! 

He is a paper mache duck that Mary Frances made for art during sophomore year.  After he got off display, I couldn’t bear to see him thrown away, so Mary Frances gave him to me and he’s lived in my room ever since.  He’s become this bizarre room decoration that doesn’t ever phase me as out of place until someone sees him for the first time and is like ‘What in the world is that thing?’  

I don’t know how well Rocket would be received at Auburn or if I would even have room for him, but I really did kind of miss him in my room this year.  Just watch - one day he will be in the corner of my living room, just chilling, and still getting weird looks from guests.  Some things just can’t be thrown away.

May 18: Perpetually Messy

So I’ve officially been home for almost two weeks, and my most impostant lesson of summer so far:  Unpacking is not my forte.  If it’s even possible, I have made negative progress  and somehow the mess is growing instead of shrinking.  This is pitiful.  I can’t even imagine unpacking a whole house  after a move. I’m going to need a lot more practice before anything on that scale! And for now, I’ll keep whittling away on this mess so that maybe I’ll be unpacked by the time I have to start packing to go back to Auburn.  

As of right now, it’s not looking too good.

May 17: Something Borrowed

I’m a big advocate of the opinion that books are always better than movies based off them.  So, when a major movie like Something Borrowed is coming out, I definitely want to read the book before I see the movie, because doing it the other way around just never seems to work for me.  After hearing rave reviews at Auburn about the book by Emily Griffin, I chose to hold off seeing the movie until I finished this book.  However, in the end, I was very disappointed.

  It is definitely a light, easy, summery read, but the overall message I got from it was simply justified infidelity as the protagonist cheats with her best friend’s fiance.  She justifies it of course with the fact that her best friend is generally just a horrible person who has never treated her right and would do the same thing to her, and Griffin tries to overlook the moral dilemma to highlight the theme of self discovery and confidence in the meek and mousy protagonist.  But personally I don’t care.  You do not cheat, no matter what. And especially not with your best friend’s boyfriend.  So as I’m finishing up this book, I’m disappointed. See the movie, don’t waste your time with the book.

May 16: Piquing My Pinterest

What happens when I don’t go to sleep until 3am every night (even when I actually want to go to sleep)?  Link to link to link of crafting (: Tonight I pretty much planned out my whole apartment for the fall, plus random crafts for my future little and much more.  I plan (key word there being plan ) to make all sorts of things from tissue paper wall flowers to giant murals made out of paper towel rolls to chalk board picture frames.  The crafty gene in my family has skipped me for many years (Julia is the artist) but maybe it’s finally kicking in!  Summer goal: My room will look like an Anthropologie store in the fall!

May 15: Skype-A-Lype

I miss this girl right here!  It is so sad not to be able to walk through the bathroom into her room and sit on the bed.  Instead we are stuck with texting and phone calls and the all to infrequent, yet still great Skype dates.  We talked until my computer died and beyond tonight catching up, and getting to pretend that she didn’t live 6 hours away made my night! I wish Huntsville and Augusta were closer!! #kloveyoubye

May 14: Here Comes the Bride

After Westminster's graduation this morning, today revolved around the first paying job of the summer:  A wedding harp gig.  I generally love playing for parties because people enjoy the background music without the pressure of a silent audience listening to every note and mis-note I play.  But weddings are a different story - I am the soundtrack as the guests are being seated, the bridal party processes, and of course as the bride walks down the aisle.  Not that I wasn’t prepared for this, but the pressure of making a bride’s special day absolutely perfect is enough to make any performer nervous (at least any female performer who realizes the importance of this music being perfect)!

But today, all in all, after we waited out an hour of rain which ended up giving this couple a perfect, cool sunset ceremony, I didn’t blow it at all (: and I even got asked to play another wedding in September for one of the guests.  I definitely could not make a career out of playing weddings and other big, important occasions, but an occasional wedding to make some extra money is something that I definitely want to keep up for as long as I can!

May 13: Sharing the summer love

One of my favorite (although shallow) things about summer so far has been the fact that even though I'm done, Ned and Julia are still getting up at 7:00am every morning to go to school.  I know that this will come back and bite me when I'm getting up early for work every morning not long from now. But today, I'm using the fact that I don't have to be on campus from 8 to 3:30 to Ned and Julia's advantage and I brought them both lunch at school, because I always wished I had someone to bring me lunch when I was in middle and high school, and because Moes is always infinitely better than anything in the cafeteria (even though Ned actually prefers Taco Bell for whatever reason). 

 Happy lunch Ned and Julia! It's almost summer for you, too!

May 12: soccer under the lights

It really is feeling like I never left.  Our little group of alumni are hanging out at Westminster watching girls and guys soccer playoffs just like we have for years.  And the fact it, I love it! I've been watching soccer on this field for almost the past 10 years, and I've missed WSA soccer this year.  So it's so nice to be back tonight with the whole summer stretched out in front of me enjoying this place and these people that I love so much!

May 11: Summer Brunch

Sleeping in has equalled a combo a breakfast and lunch, and eggs always sound good to me first thing in the morning!  I'm not a wonderful omelet maker, but they always taste much better than they look.  Cheese, tomato, and avocado omelet with salsa on top (: yumm

May 10: XOXO

With my newly reacquired summer sleeping schedule, there have been many nights of staying up later than a should and playing around on my computer (which unfortunately has not included keeping up on this blog) but I have finally gotten up to date on the last season of Gossip Girl which is unashamedly my guilty pleasure when it comes to trashy tv.  I get lots of grief from some people when I admit this obsession, but that’s ok.  I’ll continue to indulge and embrace it for the (probably few) seasons it has left. 

#blairandchuckforever!!

May 9: tweet tweet

I finally did it and caved!  Under pressure from Erin and a hidden but growing desire for Twitter, during exam week I made an account.  And since then, no regrets (: I’m completely hooked and even haven’t been checking Facebook regularly.  I’m a tweeter! 

 Follow me @McCamyPruitt

May 8: Sunday Nights

Everyone is home and it's our first Sunday night back in Augusta! This means the Augusta usual - night church at 6:30, dinner afterwards, and then finding something to do (which is not easy at all in this town).  Tonight we chose the chill route - hanging out at my friend Levy's and watching The King's Speech.  Awesome Levy even made us brownies himself!! It was a great night hanging out with great friends just like we used to in high school. We're baaaack!

May 7: Summer: Day One.

Barely home for 24 hours, and already I'm fully re-immersed in Augusta culture.  Observe: Spring Formal, the year end finale of Augusta's Social, Inc. Dance classes/club/studio.  From 7th to 10th grade, most of my friends and I took these bi-monthly ballroom dance classes, and I even stayed through the normal classes for my 10th grade year to do Cotillion Club where I got to teach classes and wear the white dress like the girls in the center circle on the floor tonight.  

This is Ned's second year of Cotillion Club, and while I'm watching his dancing tonight, I miss being out there so much! I absolutely loved Social, especially Spring Formal with the big dresses, dance cards, and the after parties.  It was like a PG prom for 7th graders, and it thankfully has made me love dance in a way that I know will last.  I even told my mom that I'll get Ned do the Cotillion Special Waltz with me at my wedding one day - we already special waltz around the kitchen pretty frequently just because we both love it so much.  So tonight, I feel like a has-been, wishing I could be dressed up and dancing out on the floor, but thankfully I will always have Ned as a built in Social dance partner (:

May 6: Goodbye, 419!

What a sad sight.  I actually had never even seen my room like this because by the time I got here on move in day, Muffy's family had already rolled out the carpet and put up most of her stuff.  So, this morning as I'm turning in the key for this room, I feel like it's just some gross dorm room like we used to stay in for cheer camp.  Thank goodness for carpeting, shelves, and decorations, because I cannot imagine surviving in a little dungeon cell like the room here.

And now I'm heading back to Augusta with pretty much everything I own crammed into every crevice of poor little Toby.  Definitely going to miss Auburn, but here we go summer!!

May 5: No more Leischuck sunsets

I finished my exams this afternoon, and along with the relief came a lot of reminiscing, packing, and cleaning.  Just as the sun was setting, I realized that this was the last gorgeous Auburn sunset that I'll get to watch from our perfect Leischuck view.  Next year, my window won't even face West to watch the sunset, so Erin and I will have to go hunt for some new perfect sunset location on campus.  Or maybe I'll even go visit the new freshman living in my suite and point out the them the perfect view that they have.  But for tonight, I enjoyed the little break from packing and my last Leischuck sunset and I felt so thankful for all of the blessings God has given me this year.  And that's all I have to say about that except, War Eagle!

May 4: The Auburn Bucket List

Tomorrow is my very critical Chem2 final, and much to my annoyance, I have spent literally all day in the Student Center plowing through way too much material that I still can't seem to wrap my head around.  But in a study break around 10 tonight, I picked up this week's Plainsman and found this Auburn bucket list compiled by a group of graduating seniors.  It made me very, very happy to see that I have done all but two things on this list within my freshman year (: So, in response to this, I'll be making my own slightly loftier, less conventional and more challenging Auburn Bucket List, hopefully including things like climb a handful of buildings on campus, deliver warm chocolate chip cookies to strangers studying in the library, or have a picnic date on Samford Lawn.  I'm so glad that I've got a whole three more years to fill with more exciting new Auburn memories!