life advice with maya.

call your mom and tell her you love her.

reach out to an old friend to reconnect. 

smile at a stranger on the street because you can.

thank your boss for their example of leadership (even if it's just an example of what not to do).

send a note in the mail to a loved one, it shows you were thinking about them. 

remember details about the acquaintances in your daily life (barista, mailman, bus driver, etc) because they see you more than some of your friends.

compliment a coworker on their outfit or new haircut, it will make their day. 

pray with/for someone. 

be the person that makes others feel valuable because it's too easy to remember the people who make you feel awful. 

xo

a dare to you if you read this blog.

i LOVE it when people ask me for music recommendations.
it makes me feel like they trust me.
like they would allow me to watch their newborn or drive their car across state lines or have a conversation with their mom and not spill any of their secrets kind of trust.
it also makes me feel like they think i have good taste in music and, let's be honest, i do.

i'm running into a bit of a problem, however...i'm getting slim on bands/artists to recommend! i have a couple people at work who ask often and i only like to recommend bands that i actually like and listen to.

so i'm asking you to help a girl out. comment with some of your favorite bands or artists you've recently gotten into! let's call this a dare. i dare you to tell me your favorites (because few people can resist a dare). i'll spotify the crap out of them and then pass them along to my coworkers and friends who ask what they should be listening to!

bonus points if it's an on-the-rise artist so we can all say we listened to them before they were famous.

xo

throwback thursday: favorite men edition

in the spirit of thursday, okay it's wednesday here but it's thursday somewhere in the world and by the time majority of you read it it will be thursday, we're going on a trip down memory lane.

we're gonna take a look at some of my favorite men; what they looked like the year i fell in love with them and what they look like now. i don't know about you, but i'm excited about this.

phil joel. my 12 year old self couldn't get enough of that hair.

1998 phil joel

2016 phil joel 

bear rinehart. saw them live before i knew their stuff and was done for.

2009 bear rinehart

2016 bear rinehart

mat kearney. took me a decade to see him live but it was love from the first album.

2004 mat kearney

2016 mat kearney

jon foreman. yeah, like he wouldn't be on this list.

1998 jon foreman

2016 jon foreman

will anderson. everyone loved she is love. 

2009 will anderson

2016 will anderson

and just for funsies: my choice concert attire

2006 sara

2016 sara

i think time has been kind to all of us. 

happy st.paddy's day friends!

xo

without you.

as far as records go 2016 is shaping up to be a banger year.

there have already been multiple releases that i'm listening to on the reg (if you hate that turn of phrase you can blame my roommate, i hated it too until she said it all the time and it somehow worked its way into my vernacular) and there's another album coming out this friday that i am stoked on.

there's something about the way will anderson writes that just hits me in all the feels. he's a champ at writing pop songs and there's always at least one song on every record that i can seriously relate to. from the singles they've released off wide awake so far that song has already shown it's little head. 

without you is basically about how you can instantly fall in love with someone you don't even know. I DO THIS ALL THE TIME. i'm not sure about you but i can see a guy that i find attractive and immediately have our entire life planned...right down to our tour bus color and the names of our adopted children. and if i had any balls at all, i would at least walk up to one of them and say hello. but i don't, i just plan our fake communal existence from afar. 

so all of that to say, i can't wait to hear the rest of the album and i've got my tickets to their show next month because maybe i'll grow a pair before then and screw up the courage to find a fella at the show (we all know i'm talking about will here). 

xo

a lesson hard learned. twice.

tonight i sit on my couch one very sad girl.

see, i was supposed to be at a show. the show was kaleo (an icelandic band) and firekid (a band i've gotten into within the last few months and the one i was really stoked on).

why am i not there?

because the show frickin' sold out and i didn't have tickets.

why didn't i have tickets? because i assumed i would be able to get tickets at the door. to be fair (to myself and show that i'm not completely lazy) i did try to get tickets at the box office like a month ago but when i stopped they said they were only doing pre-sale tickets online.

i figured everyone hates ticketmaster and their ridiculous fees as much as i do and we would all just know to buy tickets at the door to avoid being charged double and have all that extra cash going into the pockets of a ticketing company instead of into the pockets of the band or venue.

well no one else went along with my plan and everyone else got their tickets online and when i showed up at the venue tonight there was a sign on the door that said "sold out. seriously." and i had to walk away all sad and dejected.

the worst part is that this is not the first time this has happened to me. even worse, that's not the first time this has happened to me this year. as in 2016. as in the past two months.

so i made a pact with my roommate (who goes to virtually every show i go to) that i am never buying tickets at the door again. we will get tickets at the box office for any show we want to go to and if we can't get them at the box office we will bite the bullet and pay the absurd fees and actually get to see the show...because if 2016 doesn't start turning around i won't need a costume come halloween, i will have turned into an actual crab. because i'll be super crabby. get it? give it to me, i'm sad.

xo

graffiti dreams

judah & the lion are releasing a new album this week. on friday. it's their sophomore LP and it's called folk hop n roll and i have big expectations for these fellas. i've been a fan since the first time i heard their sweet tennessee EP. like fan to the point where i leveraged a way to interview them when they came to town and managed to get one of their numbers. like we were almost actual friends. almost.

just yesterday they released a preview of a song of their new album, graffiti dreams, on a website called consequence of sound. it's different than anything they've done before and i'm as hooked as the fish on their album cover. okay, that fish isn't actually hooked but i'm guessing it was at one point to end up in that halved predicament. 

my roommate didn't like it. we actually had words about. we agreed to disagree and just focus on the fact that we both love them as a band. our apartment is small, it can't handle that sort of tension. 

listen to it and tell me what you think! 

xo