While going through my Pinterest clean-up routine, I stumbled upon a forgotten pin. If you are an avid Pinterest user like I am, you probably have a million pins that you meant to read into, but never got around to it. This was one of those pins. It was an article on an app called Charity Miles. How I had ever let this gem slip through my fingers is a mystery to me, because as soon as I read the description, I was at the app store hitting 'download'. 

Needless to say, it is an app that's worth your time. 

Charity Miles offers a different incentive to exercise. Whether you walk, run, or bike (or variations of these), you will be donating money to a charity of your choice! 

The best part: IT'S FREE!

To make things clear, this post isn't a way for me to make money by sucking you guys into a new app (I am not sponsored to write this). I genuinely love and use this app whenever I can. 

Now that we have that cleared up... Let's learn more!!

Once you have downloaded the app, it is easy to use. Charity Miles offers two different ways to create a profile: by using your email or through Facebook. Once you are all set up, you can scroll through a list of charities and pick your favorite. The list includes the World Wildlife Fund, the Wounded Warrior Project, Habitat for Humanity, and many more. I personally choose Pencils of Promise whenever I go walking, because they help build schools worldwide (I think that education is one of the most important things to offer. Sometime, I will write a post about why).

If you are thinking of becoming a camp counselor, there are probably some things that you are excited about and others that you are worried about. Being a camp counselor was one of the best decisions I have made in a long time, but there are some things I wish I had known before I hopped into the topsy turvy world of camp life.

None of these are reasons not to be a camp counselor. That is not the intention of this post. These are simply facts that I've noticed and learned to laugh at. They're bonding points for my coworkers and myself and things that are allowing me to grow this summer.

1. Showering is not a priority.
Prepare to stink, people. Don’t worry though, nobody cares anymore. This past week, I went three days without showering. During this time, I lifeguarded, ran around, sat in the dirt, and played in a mud pit. Filth is a part of camp! Embrace it!

2. Brushing your hair is not a priority.
Just throw that mess into a ponytail! If you can’t find your hairbrush as soon as you get up, don’t waste anymore energy on it. It is not worth the effort!

3. Sleeping IS a priority.
Always sleep during your free time! You're going to be exhausted.  Most of the time, you will be out as soon as your head touches your pillow. Camp life and kids are draining. You're not going to have much energy at times. Solution: sleep it off and fake the rest! You got this!

4. There is always at LEAST one problem child.
You will probably sound like a broken record trying to keep this kid from doing stupid things or hurting the other children’s feelings. Just be prepared and keep calm! You will make it through! Remember that those kids are just as loved and important as the others. It just takes more work!

5. Camp food gets old.
At first, the camp food is delicious! Then you realize that you are eating the same thing week after week. The best way to deal with the monotony is to always thank the cooks for their hard work and go out to eat on the weekends, just to break it up.

6. There is sand. EVERYWHERE.
This is more specific to my camp, but I thought that I would mention it anyways. The soil here is sandy, so whether you are on the beach or walking in the woods, there is going to be sand. Basically, sand is the glitter of camp. You will find it in the weirdest of places…

7. This job is both serious and absolutely silly at the same time.
As a camp counselor, you are in charge of keeping these children whole and alive. It can be scary and there is a lot of rules to remember, but on the flip side, there is so many ways to have fun! You can wear anything and not be judged. You can waddle around like a penguin and the kids will think you are amazing. You can just be you: silly and serious.

8. Water is LIFE!
Anything can be fixed with water. Headache? Water. Stomachache? Water. Crabbiness? Water. Feeling like you might pass out? Water. It's the answer to everything!

9. There is always something to learn.
Kids come here to learn new things. What you don’t expect is how much you are going to learn as well. Whether you learn a new skill or a different way to think of something, you are learning every day.

10. These kids will change your life.
Children have an interesting perspective on life. They can renew you and teach you different ways to think and love. They need you more than you thought you would ever be needed. All these kids become a part of you in some way. They can change your faith, your opinions, and give you a reason to keep moving forward. Cherish every minute you have with these kids. You are only here for the summer, so don’t let any of it go to waste.

Have you been a counselor before? Did any of these facts of camp make you laugh? Tell me about it!

It is now well into May and it finally feels like spring! I am surrounded by green leaves and bright flowers. Unfortunately, these months are home to the dreaded Spring Cleaning! By this point you have probably pinned a million ways to clean out your house and maybe even applied those clever ideas to your home. But what about your Pinterest boards? Think about it. How many times have you accidentally pinned a pin to the wrong board and left it out of pure laziness? Or created a new board that separates your shoes from your clothes board, but forgot to transfer all those pins from the old board to the new? Well, it's now time to clean up that Pinterest board. 

I have only been using my Pinterest for a few years, but I already have 48 boards and over 3,000 pins. It's a lot to take care of, and I have found myself cleaning up my Pinterest boards many times over the years. This week, I decided to purge my business account and only use it for my blogging pins. This meant hours of switching over my personal pins to my old account. Now I am in the middle of a huge organizing session and thought that maybe others would find some use for my technique.

I would like to point out that this takes a long time to do. If your have an account that is around the size of mine or bigger, think about doing a step a day. 

If you have multiple pins that don't quite fit anywhere, but relate to one another, make another board. It makes things a lot easier. For example: for a long time, I had a board titled "Clothes" that I put all my fashion pieces in. I eventually branched out, but I still had shoes in my "Clothes" board. This week, I made a "Shoes" board and transferred those over. It's more fun to browse through your saved pins this way anyways! 

At this stage, you can also delete out any duplicates that you notice. 

2. Edit captions
This step takes the longest, especially if you have as many pins as I do. If you are like me, you often pin without editing the captions. I have pins that refer to people I have never even met. Now is the time to get your voice into your Pinterest boards. Go through and recaption the pins that you didn't change. You should do this even if you agree with what the pin says. A clean Pinterest board is a board that shows your voice and your style of writing. It may take a while, but then your friends will know for sure what you think about each pin. 

On the computer, you can edit a caption by hovering over the pin and selecting the pencil icon in the right corner. Then Click on the description and type what you wish. 

On your Smartphone, edit a caption by clicking the pencil icon in the top left corner. Select the caption and write what you want. 

3. Change cover photos
The automatic cover photo for your boards is the first pin that you pinned to that board. A lot of the time, this is not your favorite or most relevant picture in you board. The most successful boards are those that have cover photos that are representative of their content. 

Computer: Click the "Edit" button below the picture. It will bring up a lot of options. Go to where it says "Cover" and click the "Change" button. Using the arrows, find the picture that best suits your board. Arrange it within the square so that it looks right by clicking and dragging the photo into place. Click "Save Changes" at the bottom right. This will bring you back to the original editing options. Hit "Save".  

Smartphone: Click the "Edit" button. Select "Board cover". Pick your favorite photo and adjust it by dragging your finger. Hit "Done" and then click "Save" (both buttons are in the top right corner). 

4. Optional: Delete boards
This step is optional because I can't bring myself to do it, but I have a theory: if a board has over 150 pins you should either split it up into smaller boards or delete it. If it is much over that, you will not want to go and look through it, so what is the point of saving it? 

What are some good Pinterest tricks that you know? 

Never underestimate the power of an iPhone! The iPhone's camera makes it super easy to take gorgeous pictures! Not everybody has the money to buy a nice camera on top of the already expensive smartphone payments. So instead of taking pictures with a fancy and expensive camera, just whip out your smartphone! So easy and convenient! (Who doesn't have their phone on them?)

Taking pictures with a smart phone is super easy, so today I just wanted to focus on how to take amazing pictures of flowers. I have a huge love of nature. I grew up in the country, taking walks in our horse field just to get my mind straight. There is nothing more calming than emerging yourself in the natural world and reflecting on its simplicity. It is humbling to say the least! Such an experience cannot be captured on film, but its aesthetic beauty can be!

Here is how to capture the beauty of flowers! 

1. Perspective
The most important part of taking pictures of flowers is perspective. Anyone can take a random picture of a flower, but the angle of such a picture is what displays the beauty of the plant. I have a few different ways that I like to approach a flower. First, you need to decide what aspect of the flower that you want the focus to be on. 

If it is the pollen, approach the flower from the side and a little under (so you are looking slightly up at the flower). This works best with pollen because you are showing a majority of the inside of the flower (Pistil, Anther, Filament, etc), instead of blocking it off by taking the picture head on. 

If you are focusing on the petals (my favorite), you can start from head on and then move down a little so you are looking up at the flower. If the petals are particularly patterned or extravagent, you can also use the pollen method. Below are examples. 

As you can see, you do not want to go too far in one direction. Angles should be subtle enough that you cannot tell immediately from where the picture was taken. 

This technique also puts a lot of emphasis on the symmetry of the flower. 

In This case, the petal's design was better exhibited using the pollen technique. 

2. Subject
This may seem like a no brainer, but you want the flower to be the main focus of your photo. This is easier said than done. The easiest way to do this is to center the flower in the middle of the frame. In some cases though, you may want the flower to be at the top of the picture or the bottom. This is an artistic choice. No matter how where you want your flower to be, make sure that the flower is bigger and more focused than its background. Some examples: 

3. Focus 
Focusing a picture on an iPhone takes patience. If you want beautiful pictures, you might be standing in front of the same flower for a while. You can focus the image by tapping the screen on your iPhone where you want the focus to be (in our case, aim for the center of the flower). This also adjusts the lighting, which is another benefit of iPhone photography. 

After you have tapped the screen, wait until the flower has the amount of detail that you like and snap the picture. Be careful with this, because the zoom has a tendency to go in and out for a bit until it decides to settle. Here is an example of the flowers on a tree before it completely blossomed. 

Here is the flower in full blossom (not as in focus as I would like. I guess I wasn't patient enough...).

Now you know how to take beautiful pictures of flowers on your iPhone!  For more smartphone photography tips, click here. 

All the flowers pictured are at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I took the pictures myself. My mother and I went there today! It is full of beautiful flowers, mesmerizing landscaping, and facts about the plants and the garden itself. Click here to visit the Garden's website. It costs $25 for parking and the admission is free! I would definitely recommend visiting this wonderful collection of flowers! 

Do you like to take pictures of flowers? Feel free to send me some of your best and tell me some tricks that you use! (Don't worry, I won't use them without your permission! I just want to see your talent!)

Thank you, everyone! 

I am finally done with finals! Does that make me a sophomore??? I am so relieved! All I have to do is perform tomorrow and go to a sleepover for SAI, then I get to go home! It will be a fun weekend! I probably won't sleep much though! 

So, I had three finals and a callback these past two days. One was for Religion, which consisted of two short essays and one long one. My hand was a bit sore by the end of it, but it all turned out okay! I got out of it over 30 minutes early! Hopefully that is a good thing... My second test was German. I studied really hard for it, but I still struggled. It was 5 chapters of material. There was a section for grammar, reading, listening, stuff from the book, and a map. I wish I could have studied more for it, especially since it is one of my majors! Despite my time crunch though, I was able to review all of that material, so at least it was loosely rattling around in my noggin. Those two finals were both on Thursday. 

Thursday night was my callback! I had a great time! I messed up a bit on the singing, but my acting was pretty good (at least for not having prepared it). My callback was for Poppea, which is the lead in the baroque opera we are doing next fall. From what I have been told, she is a pretty sexual and manipulative person, so I played that up a lot in my callback! (Had to think back on some movies and TV shows for that one... Not personally experienced in that field...) It was great! I will hear back on Tuesday about who got what part. I can't wait! At this point, I would be glad to be in it! (But let's be real, I want to be Poppea... Too bad I'm a wee little freshman! We'll see...)

Today, I only had one final! It was for theory. I understood the concepts for this one pretty well, but the examples were pretty difficult in the test. It may also have been because I was tired... I went through it slow and checked over it first before turning it in, so hopefully it all turned out okay! 

I didn't feel that confident on any of my finals (I didn't have much time to study hard chore)... but that is how I felt last time and I still got a 4.0. Hopefully, it will all turn out alright! 

When is your finals week? What do you do to prepare?