Camp Week 2

I got to share a cabin with Olivia, another team member and we had an awesome week with our girls!

Not gonna lie, after last week I was left wondering if I am really cut out to be a camp counselor. Did the kids really deserve to have me serving for them? Was I even good enough? I don't know, but after this week I feel much better about this job. I had an amazing week with kids that I was definitely not ready to send them home. I didn't feel like I wanted to be done sharing God's love with them, but every week comes to an end and every Monday new kids will pour into camp with open minds and open hearts.

I was assigned to be on high school camp and after this past week ended I can confidently say that I work best with the older campers. As I said in my last post, I just do not seem to be gifted with the gift of working with young children and I have come to terms with that fact. Of course working with high schoolers has its own set of challenges that working with elementary school aged kids does not have; However, these challenges I feel more excited to explore and take on.

I definitely had to rely on other counselors to help me out sometimes. I am still figuring things out as I am new to team and have not had every camp yet (obviously, it is only week 2). In addition to the help of team members I had an adult volunteer, named Josh, that I co-lead a small group with. Josh is a past team member who I had known already and really helped me out teaching my first real small group. Shoutout to Josh for being an awesome A.V.! I am so thankful to have all of the help and am excited to see what week three has in store for me.

xoxo, tay

Camp Week 1

I survived my first week as a camp counselor. It was both awesome and stressful in so many ways and the support from the rest of the leadership team here and my faith is the only thing that got me through it.  

For week one, I was assigned day camp. I got many mixed responses from my fellow counselors. Some loved it, some warned me to be ready for the craziness. I have come to the conclusion that day camp isn't my thing. I tried, I really did. I just don't think I have the gift of patience with small children. Don't get me wrong, the kids were definitely cute and there was some really awesome moments with them. However, in between all of the cuteness there was a lot of chaos. I wanted to like day camp so bad, but I just can't deny that I did not enjoy the experience as much as other team members did. 

Week one was a challenge but I was so happy to be there to serve and help kids learn about there faith at such a young age. I hope that I was able to touch their lives in any little or small way. 

xoxo, tay

It's a Beautiful Day to Save Lives

Lady guards of Warren W. Willis UM Camp

I have been SO busy the last week! My guard class has been on the go every day since we got here trying to finish our lifeguard certification before orientation week. We finished the certification yesterday and today we were just hanging out, learning how to canoe and sail. I think I can speak for my entire class when I say that we are happy to have survived our certification.

I was personally pretty nervous to get through this week. I was worried that I would not be a strong enough swimmer and get sent home. So to make sure that that did not happen I did what I had to do in order to properly prepare myself and was able to successfully complete the entire course without any issues. Of course, that doesn't mean that it was easy. I had to get through prerequisite tests in order to even continue the course. Checked those off. Next up we had to pass 4 multiple choice exams in the classroom and 3 "final scenarios" in the water. It sounded scary at first but our instructors prepared us extremely well for all of us to pass all of our exams.

The final scenario's are what freaked me out the most. They were basically a physical exam of us demonstrating how we would save victims in different situations. The first two were a breeze. The last one was a different story. But I felt very prepared and knew I could do it as long as I didn't rush to much stayed calm (the way I would have too in an actual emergency). I passed without any major issues but it was not easy. My victim was a 180 lb dude that I rescued from the bottom of an 8 ft pool and was my largest, heaviest victims yet.

Becoming a certified lifeguard is a goal I have had for awhile but it was definitely a "background" goal. To clarify what I mean by that is that it is a goal that I wanted to achieve but I didn't think that I would be able too. I have grown up on the water but I was NOT in shape AT ALL any more. So that was my goal: get back in shape and become a certified lifeguard. I set my mind to it, kept my faith that God would lead me along the way, and achieved my goal. Thanks to this experience, I think I am more comfortable in the water than I have ever been before, and I loved the water before this as well. I can't wait to continue to grow this summer and not only serve on the leadership team here at camp. but watch over the campers as a guard.

"It's a beautiful day to save lives." -Dr. Derek Shepherd

xoxo, tay

A Summer Spent Serving Others

For those of you who did not know, I will be spending the rest of my summer serving on the Warren Willis UM Camp's Leadership Team as a camp counselor! I feel so blessed to be given an opportunity to serve on this team, it is something that I have known that I wanted to do ever since my first summer attending this camp at the start of middle school. The camp changed my life, so this time its my turn to give back.

I am leaving for camp tomorrow and should be arriving there at some point in the evening. I am going a week early to complete a lifeguard certification course. I am beyond excited and nervous knowing that tomorrow I will meet some of the people I will spend the rest of my summer with.

While I am away at camp, unfortunately I will not be able to post as often as I have been. Throwback Thursdays have also been put on hold until the end of the summer. I will try to keep you guys updated at least once a week! While I won't be posting, I will be spending my time trying to help children grow closer in their relationship with God.

This camp has such a special place in my heart. I never thought I would be able to make it on team, but now here I am, writing to you all the night before I make my 5-6 hour journey north up to camp. I still don't think it will really sink in that I am on the Summer 2016 Leadership Team until I get there and start to get into the swing of things. I feel like I have tried to do so many things with my life, in the past, and failed so many times, even when I swore that I was meant to complete that task from what I felt in my prayers. I started to really get negative with myself and never knew when I was making a decision about if I should be doing something or not. Of course, in the application process I was worried that this would again be something that I failed at. Why did I keep trying if I was always disappointed in the end? I am so happy that I did not let my negative thoughts stop me, because I finally feel like I am heading in the right direction. Like I said before, I still don't even feel like this is really going to be happening!

Sometimes I let my nerves get the best of me, but this summer I have really been working on changing my mindset and so far it has proven to be one of the best decisions I have made.

Wish me luck at camp!

xoxo, tay

Outfit of Last Night: SFTR Banquet

Black Crop Top: DailyLook 

White Skirt: Marshall's

Necklace, Bracelet, and Belt: Chico's 

Boots: NRS

I wore this outfit to the South Florida Trail Riders banquet last night. It's a horseback riding group my family has been involved with since I was just starting middle school. I do not usually wear skirts a lot but I have a ton of them and I still think they are cute I just don't gravitate toward them for some reason. I have all these cute skirts that I never wear so I have resolved that I need to either start wearing them or get rid of them. You can tell by this post that I have decided to give skirts a try before I decide to just chuck them. 

I thought of this outfit because I have been trying to wear the necklace for awhile but I couldn't put together an outfit where I felt like it looked okay. I grew up in the rodeo world and the more involved my family got the more my mom and I realized that there was indeed a "style" that the women tended to sport. This always includes a few key components: boots and a statement necklace. If we were to attend an actual rodeo bootcut Miss Me jeans would also be included. I love how the black crop top I wore last night really makes the silver necklace pop. I paired the necklace with a pair of silver stud earrings, black and silver belt, and silver bracelet. Shout out to my mom for letting me borrow her bracelet and belt, hold on tight to those so I don't try to sneak them into my suitcase to come to school with me in fall! 

I have a weakness for white bottoms of any kind. Anyone who knows me knows that I live in my white shorts, and skirts are no exception to the obsession. I have had this skirt awhile and have always thought it was cute but like I said before I just don't seem to wear skirts very often so I never really wore it. I love the lace detail along the bottom half, it gives an otherwise plain white skirt a small touch that really works well. Of course, I had to pair it with my black crop top for my boots. 

Some of you are probably wondering about the boots. These are one of my favorite pair of cowboy boots! As you can tell, mine are a bit worn. I had originally bought these to wear in rodeos, as I did and still do, as well as out when I want. They are made of beautiful black leather and have silver and gold details. On the front and back are details of a cross with wings. I knew I had to buy these because they had beautiful designs without actually looking terribly busy. I wear these with all kinds of outfits, from being tucked under bootcut jeans at a rodeo to a skirt or dress like I did last night!

Another reason I put together this outfit was so that I could wear bold makeup, something I do not do very often so when I get the chance I jump at it! Before applying my makeup I put on my Smashbox Photo Finish Foundation Primer all over my face and Urban Decay Eyeshadow Original Primer Potion on my eyelids. I like to put all of my primer on at the same time so that my face is completely ready to go. For my foundation I used my Urban Decay Naked Skin Foundation then concealed using the Covergirl Ready Set Gorgeous concealer. I do not care for this concealer and I do not usually use it, but I haven't had time to go out and buy another Naked Skin concealer, so I have been using the Covergirl one for now. I set all of my makeup with ELF high definition powder. I like this powder for going out at night, but I do not wear it on an everyday basis because it does have shimmer in it. Before setting my foundation with powder, I did spray my face with the L'Oreal Infallible Setting Spray just for a little something extra to keep my makeup in place. 

Once my base was finished I filled in my eyebrows with the shade Buck from the Urban Decay Naked Palette then used a Mary Kay eyebrow gel on top. For this smokey look I used the Naked Palette again and used the shadows Gunmetal all over my lid, Creep in the crease, and Virgin to highlight my brow bone and the inner corners of my eye. I lined the top with Stila stay all day waterproof liquid eyeliner in intense black and lined the bottom with two different pencil liners. For the outer corner of my waterline I used the Urban Decay glide-on eye pencil in black then I used a Prestice Professional white eyeliner starting in the inner corner of my waterline and blending it into the black in almost an ombre effect. I finished off the eyes with my favorite Benefit Roller Lash mascara. 

My absolute number one makeup staple of all time is bronzer. Usually I am not huge on drugstore brand makeup because I just never seem to have the best luck with it. However, one of my favorite bronzers is the NYC Smooth Skin Bronzing Face Powder in the shade Sunny. I am about to finish my third compact of this and I always recommend it to people looking for a more affordable bronzer. I used this to slightly contour around my face enough to give my skin a bit of a glow. Then I used my Milani Baked Blush, also a surprising drugstore favorite, in Rose D'Oro. To give a final highlight I used my Naked Illuminated highlighter from Urban Decay.

For my lips I used one of my favorite red lipsticks. Again, this one is from the drugstore. Out of all the makeup in drugstores I always do best with the lip products. This one is from the Covergirl nature luxe line that is no longer available. I was so sad because right when I discovered it I fell in love with this lipstick, went back for more, and it was all gone! This is technically a gloss balm, but it is completely opaque like a lipstick, so that is how I wear it, and the picture shows the shade 220 Peony.

xoxo, tay

Throwback Thursday: Journal #1

"This is from my ballet recital! It was an Irish theme. We got tambourines and pretty green and black costumes and wore flowers on my head. I felt like a princess! I was really good and did just ballet and tap. My tap costume is red and silver. That one is kind of embarrassing."

Oh those were the days. I remember always enjoying my dance classes a lot. I love the modesty I had as a child (note my sarcasm). That dance had always been one of my favorites because it seemed to be a bit more unique compared to other ballet classes, plus we had cool tambourines that we got to dance with. That same year was my first year taking tap class. I distinctly remember hating that costume and the theme of the dance. I mean the actual dancing was fun, but I remember not quite being fond of the theme. My other friends all had such cute tap costumes and I was in a red and silver mess of sequins. I figured that was my first year and it could only get better from there. Oh was I wrong. My second year of tap class I was in a dance themed "The Ugly Bug Ball" and of course the costumes were once again pretty bad. Neon green with black and white polka dots. You can imagine the way a costume for a dance with a name like that would look...

Stay tuned for next weeks Throwback Thursday! Expect the entries to become longer and more detailed as I get older. I was so young in these first few so they are pretty short a lot of the time.

xoxo, tay

Book Review: Miracles Happen by Mary Kay Ash

God created the world, and he said, "That's good." Then He created man, and He said, "That's pretty good, but I can do better." So He created woman. -Mary Kay Ash

I was not sure about this book when I picked it up, it has been on my bookshelf for over a year. I have  always been iffy about autobiography's, sometimes they are amazing and other times I do not care for them. This book was a great read. A while ago my mom became a Mary Kay Consultant and I was her helper, but we both did not really get into it. This book came with the new consultant kit that we had purchased. 

As I read the book it is exactly what the front cover says. It is a mix between an autobiography of Mary Kay Ash and a business manual of sorts that shows the values of the Mary Kay Cosmetics company. The book is filled with all kinds of crazy and amazing stories told by Ash. God was truly on her side as she grew her business. She beat all the odds against her and proved to everyone who doubted her that she could do anything she set her mind too. This makes it easily relatable to many aspects of life. If you work hard and have faith, you can achieve whatever you set out to do. This is what all of Ash's practices encompass. There is a strong sense of power of the woman throughout the book without degrading men in any sort of way and I found that very enlightening. 

I would give this book a 4 out of 5 stars. The story is amazing and the book is full of wonderful advice for entrepreneurs. However I did take away one star because some of the practices discussed in the book seem to be a bit outdated. That is understandable considering the time frame of the life and business of Mary Kay Ash. Even with a few practices discussed that I may not totally agree with, I still think this book is well worth reading! I am an entrepreneurship minor and have only taken one class for it so far, a basic introductory course, so many of the language used on the business end of the book was very relatable to my studies. However, if you have never taken any sort of business or entrepreneurship class you would still be able to understand the book no problem. 

xoxo, tay