Since you've been gone...

So we broke up around six months ago, me and this blog. We had a great couple of years, but I thought we were beginning to grow apart.
After I started working until 10pm every night, becoming a full-time dog mom, nearly flunking out of college and attempting to help renovate my new house (and by that I mean let me parents do all the labor while I shop for decor)....I just could not seem to find the time to go out and take photos, have them edited, and then write a post to go along with them. So I decided to take an indefinite hiatus. I initially assumed I'd never make time for the blog again, but the past month or so I've really started to miss this ol' thang and all of the wonderful people I've met because of it and all of the incredible opportunities I've been given through it.

So here I am, asking to give this relationship another try. Promising to work harder to make time for it and do better than I did the first time. We'll see how it goes.

But before I get back to my regular posts, I wanted to play catch up!
Here are a couple of major things you may have missed if you don't follow my Instagram (@susiegibson).

#1. I adopted the most beautiful shelter pup there ever was.

 Meet Lillian. I adopted her 3 days after my birthday when I found out I was going to move into a house by myself. She was a year and a half old when I got her. She's quite possibly the cutest husky-mix there ever was. She keeps me on my toes at all times because she has more energy and love than any dog I know. Mostly just energy, though. She also broke my new iPhone 6 the day after I got it. And I didn't try and strangle her. I think that's what a mother's love feels like, no?

2. I almost flunked out of college.

Here's a picture I posted saying I was "studying" or something like that. And I was...only it was because there was a week left in the semester and I had attended maybe 3 classes (syllabus day...whoops) and I actually tried to study for my finals. Even though I had not attended any of the classes. And I did not know what to study.
I was a terrible student this past semester. Worse than usual. I'm not going to make it a New Year's Resolution to do better this semester, because I never actually keep up with those anyway. I'm going to try and take almost solely online classes that way I can't keep giving myself the excuse of "I don't want to drive half an hour up to school and half an hour back before I have to work an 8-hour shift." I'm trying to compromise with my lazy self. I'll keep you updated on how it goes.

 3. Welcome to my crib.

On my 20th birthday my parents told me they had bought me a house. Imagine the excitement, right? So they took me to go see it. When we pulled up there was nothing to see but a "yard" completely covered half a foot high in dead leaves, with a rotting fence wrapped around the house so that you couldn't see in. (PS- you can see the gate from the kitchen window in the second photo. That's the front of the house.) When you walked in, there was a vomit-inducing stench. Junk everywhere. The previous owners must have left on a dime, because there were colored pencils sitting on the "kitchen table" they left (if you could call it that), broken kids toys littering various rooms, and more dog hair than you could possibly imagine. The inside of the refrigerator was covered in a sticky brown substance...dog hair inside there, too. Half of the floorboards were rotting. There were rats.
I wanted to run out screaming and never look back.
But my extreme-DIY parents got to work and started revamping the whole place. And it's not quite there yet, but they have outdone themselves. It looks (and smells!) like an entirely new place. Pictured above is the kitchen- the only room they've let me set up furniture and put a little bit of decor into. This is only one little sliver of it, and once the house is finally done and I'm ready to move in I'll most likely do a house tour post! Wish me luck!