today’s my last day in houston for 3 weeks. as you may have heard, if you’re my friend in real life: tomorrow at noon i head out to london for 14ish days and then scotland for another 7. makenzie is already in london (her immediate family moved there at the beginning of summer and are staying for 4 years – its a dad-work-thing) and she will be there until the beginning of august. i on the other hand will only be sharing their inner city fulham apartment for 2 weeks and then taking at train or bus (who knew they have freakin’ megabus in europe) to edinburgh, scotland to stay with a french friend, aurilie.

a little background on aurilie: my family has had french exchange students almost every summer that i can remember. we’ll have a teenager girl stay with us for a month or two as part of a “cultural exchange” program. i have been to paris once to stay with Genevieve, a friend who stayed with us a few years back and now i’m headed to scotland to stay with another student who recently moved their from the south of france.

as for this post, i thought i’d be fun to share some of the outfits i’ve planned for the trip. i have never actually “planned” outfits before in my life, but am tired of packing random seperates and then trying to mix and max in my hotel room, or in this case makenzie’s families house. so i thought i’d try and and OH MY GOSH i got really into it. like, if you know me well you know i can get quite obsessive and this is no exception!

i’m only taking 4 pairs of pants:  jeans, pink jeans, khakis and navy blue cropped “audrey hepburn” sort of pants and a few pairs of leggings that i can wear under my jeans if it gets THAT cold or on their own with a sweater. i hope thats enough pants for 20 days, i honestly don’t have any more so these 4 will have to do. and if all else fails i guess i’ll just have to buy some more while i’m there. yessssss

shoe wise i’m taking: a brand new pair of target sandals, my TEVAS (don’t expect to wear them around the city but might be good for mud trudging in scotland) and my other brand new pair of … CLARK’S BOOTS. i got them on sale at whole earth provisions and can’t wait to wear them out – btw, makenzie is going to be so jealous, good thing we both wear size 9 1/2 so we can share.

i am taking a few cardigans and scrts along with my thick knit button up the front sweater and new stripped jacket because makenzie has informed me that it’s not quite the “summer” weather we’re used to. like she said she sat down in a park the other day and although she was wearing a coat and pants got too cold and had to leave. wow.

i am also taking ALL of my target/GAP boyfriend t-shirts. if i ever where t-shirts here at home its most likely a solid color, as you can see i have quite the collection. (thanks sand dollar and buffalo exchange)

so as you can see i’ve thought of everything – NOT. i havn’t even began looking for old shampoo samples in the bathroom cabnet to pack or socks or underwear or electronic chargers or anything like that. but whatever, who doesn’t finish packing the night before.

also i was just thinking that perhaps a goal i might take on for this trip is to try to be as “green” as possible. the past two weeks i’ve been carrying around this super sweet little blue enamel camp cup and using it everywehre (i’m holding 2 in this post if you’re not following me ) – you know so i don’t have to waste a disposable one. anyway i also picked up a cute set of reusable silverware and have been meaning to crochet a little case for them (this post servers as a good reminder) and so … the point is that i think i’ll take ALL of these little thing with me, along with cloth shopping bags, and try to leave the smallest disposable foot print i possibly can. sound good? i think so.

so seeing that makenzie and i will be out of the country the next few weeks on “vacation” we’ll see how regular posting goes. i would like to keep up an every other day photo-overloaded-blogging-routine while traveling but we’ll just have to see how that pans out. we do have a few netflix and blue bell (bringing ‘um back) reviews scheduled to keep everyone back home occupied while we’re gone – so with that i’m going to finish my chai late here at black hole and get to planning out some last minute trip things. ok bye.

.dena.