Love Always, Carrie: Everything New

My sister nephew came up to visit Monday and Tuesday. Collin is 16-months of pure loving. He takes in the world like a sponge and loves checking out everything.

Whenever he's around he reminds me of the feeling of seeing something for the first time. Can you imagine what a child experiences everyday when they see something or do something they have never done before? Their excitement and enthusiasm. That's what I love.

Like his new enthusiasm for a woman's magazine.

"Qack, Qack"

He loves reading the articles on women's weight loss secrets

Or his enthusiasm for his new hairdo.

Collin. This will come out at your wedding.

Or his love for anything Wiggles.

"arrrrrrrrrrrrgh"

OR his *old* love for his aunt, aka "Aunt A-E" or sometimes "baby"

Or his new love for fashionable hats.

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On the topic of new, notice anything? I changed the title. I changed the background. And I added new smaller pages on my blog. It's getting closer to where I want it to be, but it's still a work in progress. I understand the excitement of living and blogging in New York is gone, but I'm about to start something new. This "new" blog is my journal of new experiences, but keeps track of everything old.

So why did I choose this title of "Ferris Wheel Reflections"? This summer when I visited Coney Island, I was so impressed by the Ferris Wheel. I fell in love with it mostly because of its size taking over the park. On that little island, its the center of their universe.

I also rode the Ferris Wheel despite my incredible fear of heights. I am very proud I stood up to my fear and rode it. It was that mentality that provoked me to name my blog this because it will be a reminder to try new things, to make new bucket lists, and to never get too comfortable in life.


I'm so proud of this picture I took at Coney Island

A Ferris Wheel is often metaphorically put together with "life" and well, I'm going to be writing about my life's happenings. Cheesy, yes. But does it have a special meaning to me? Yes. So, there's the title.

In case you have not read up on your Ferris Wheel facts, here are a few:

George Ferris, an engineer with a love of innovative ideas and safety, created the Ferris Wheel.
The London Eye is the tallest Ferris Wheel in the Western Hemisphere.
They were originally called "pleasure wheels".
The first one was built in 1893.
The one on Coney Island was built in 1920.

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The last few days have been filled with packing and anticipation about moving into my house for senior year on Saturday in Chapel Hill. The new part of the experience? My own room. That's right. I will not have a roommate, but will instead have my own space. That's refreshing.

Decorating a room is really fun, but hard when you don't have the room here to place things as you get them. I wanted to create a room that was "older" looking. I wanted something that I could use in an apartment in the future and I think I will really enjoy my room. Can't wait to show pictures.

In the midst of making old things seem new, I took a table that I originally bought at Michael's and had modge podged with green and pink tissue paper (I know, some teenage creative feeling I had) and painted it red. I worked hard in the summer heat scraping that modge podge off and sanding the table. Dad helped me paint it to use as an accent table beside my brown futon in my room. And to add more accent, we painted two 16X20 frames the same "Cherry Red".

Eventually the frames will hold two photos: one of the Brooklyn Bridge and one of Central Park.
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Tomorrow's a day to get a lot of tasks completed. Tomorrow's a new day.

Here's to a new toy train for Collin (and one that took 1 Appalachain grad, 1 state grad, and 1 almost-unc grad one hour to figure out how to put batteries in-- the state grad even put the batteries in the wrong way):