Monthly Archives

May 2017

How To

How To: Maintain a Busy Life

May 30, 2017

Hi everyone!  Welcome back to my blog!  Today, I’m going to be sharing my tips for how to balance your busy lifestyle.  Whether you’re in high school, college, or a young professional, we all have so much to do and I’m here to give you some tips on how to keep it all together!

My first tip is to utilize your planner.  I’ve used a planner ever since my senior year of high school and it’s helped me immensely!  In college, you have a lot more free time than in high school, so my planner use really picked up once I got to JMU.  A planner is really helpful for remembering class assignments and lunch dates that might slip your mind if they’re scheduled a few weeks out.  I have an entire post dedicated to setting up and using a planner, so check out that post here to read all about it!

My next tip is to take things one step at a time.  I’m the kind of person who will get very overwhelmed if assignments and responsibilities start piling up and, over the past few years, I’ve had to constantly remind myself that everything will get done if I just focus and take my time.  When you rush through things, you run the risk of having to do it all over again, so it’s better to just do it to the best of your ability the first time around.

My final tip is to take time to do the things that make you happy.  When you’re insanely busy with school work or your job or other responsibilities, it might seem really immature to set those things aside and take a walk on the beach or go to the mall for an hour or two but your mind needs that.  At the company I intern with, the creative director is always telling me to take a break and give my mind a rest.  It’s important to let your body relax so your creative energy can build back up again.  Taking time for yourself will make everything you do after have more pep!

Those are all my tips for maintaining a busy lifestyle!  If you use any of my advice, post a photo on Instagram and tag me @allisantmyer!  See you next week!

Things I'm Loving Right Now

Q & A

May 23, 2017

Hey everyone and thanks for visiting Allison in Wonderland!  Today’s post is going to be a fun one to mark the start of summer!  Woohoo!  Keep reading for an awesome Q & A sesh.

What are your three favorite movies?

This is such a hard one!  I think my top three, all-time favorite movies are the Sound of Music, the Breakfast Club, and the Princess Diaries but I’ve seen a few movies recently that I really loved as well!  The live-action Cinderella was amazing and I also really enjoyed La La Land and Priceless.

What book have you been dying to read?

One book I’ve been wanting to read ever since I first heard it was coming out was the book Chip and Jo from the show Fixer Upper wrote.  I finally got my hands on it a couple weeks ago and it was incredible!  I love them so much and reading their book just made me even more obsessed with them than I already was.  It was neat to hear their side of how their lives changed because of their HGTV show and see a little insight as to what they’re hoping comes of the future!

What’s something that amazes you?

I’m constantly amazed by how much creativity there is in the world.  In college, I’m in a major and minor where there’s no short of creative, inspirational people so I think that makes me a little bit biased, but I’m just so in awe every time I think about it!

What’s your all-time favorite town or city?

My all-time favorite city is Brooklyn, New York.  I didn’t think I could ever live in a city, but when I visited Brooklyn this past summer, it was the first place I’d ever been that I could really see myself living in.  I don’t think I could permanently live there, but a couple years would be so fun!  Brooklyn is so interesting and quirky and it has so many beautiful views – I don’t think you could ever get tired of it!

If you won the lottery, what would you do?

Cry.

Would you like to design your own home?

I would LOVE to design my own home!  This has actually been a dream of mine for a while.  I really love interior design and patterns and fabrics – I could design and re-design my home forever!  I think that’s why I love HGTV so much; they have so many house flipping and interior design shows, I could sit in front of the TV for hours and just watch and watch!

Have you ever met any celebrities?

Unfortunately, I haven’t met any celebrities but I was mistaken for Shailene Woodley in the airport once!  A few years ago, my mom and I were on vacation in San Francisco, CA and I was in line to get Starbucks before our flight home.  This was right around the time that Divergent came out, so I think she was on a lot of teen’s minds because all of a sudden I heard a girl behind me frantically whisper to her mom that Shailene Woodley was in front of them!  Once I figured out what was happening, I turned and looked at her so she would know I wasn’t actually Shailene Woodley, but it was kinda fun to be mistaken for her for a second.

In tic-tac-toe, do you pick the x’s or the o’s?

This is a funny question.  I always used to go for the o’s but now I’d say I lean more towards the x’s!

What is your favorite thing about the beach?

I really, really love the sound of the waves.  The beach is a very safe place for me – I think that’s because I grew up near the beach and now my Mommom and Poppop live right at the beach so I get to spend a lot of time there.  It’s so calm and I always go to the beach when I’m on vacation or not in school, so I don’t associate it with any stress or responsibilities!

Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest?

Instagram, for sure.  Follow me at @allisantmyer!

What’s one thing most people don’t know about you?

I’m obsessed with learning about the five love languages!  Mine love language is touch!  What’s yours?

That’s all for today’s post, thanks for reading!  If you’re in the mood, have a girls night and ask yourself and your best friends these questions.  You never know what you might learn!  See ya next week!

 

Travel

Being a Tourist In: Alexandria, Virginia

May 16, 2017

Hi everyone!  Welcome to another “Being a Tourist In:…” post on Allison in Wonderland!  These are some of my favorite posts to spend time writing and I’m so excited to share my latest travel adventures with you.  Let’s get into it!

I went to Alexandria, Virginia with one of my good friends from college last weekend and it was my very first time there!  It was only about an hour and a half from my house in Maryland so not a bad drive at all to see somewhere so adorable.  We also were visiting on a week day so traffic wasn’t horrible and I got there in a good amount of time!  Even before I got out of the car in the parking garage, I could already tell it was going to be a place I’d want to come back to!  The townhouses reminded me of the townhouses I’ve seen in Brooklyn and Georgetown and it was so fun to walk up and down the brick and cobblestone streets.  They have a really developed main street in Alexandria where most of the shops and restaurants are and that’s where we spent most of our time!  There were a ton of cute, little boutiques that are unique to Alexandria but they also had some normal, mall-type stores like Anthropolgie and H&M.

 

Alexandria is also really nice because it’s located on the water – it’s actually right across the river from the National Harbor in Washington, D.C.!  At the end of the main street where all the shops are is a super cute dock area where they have some seafood restaurants and beautiful places to take photos!  We spent a good amount of time there, walking up and down the waterfront streets, looking at all the picture-perfect houses.  They were so cute!  Another thing that was cool was that they have a trolley in this city!  We didn’t have a chance to ride it, but it goes all around and stops about every two blocks so you can hop on and off when you’re shopping or walking around.

I really, really loved Alexandria – I couldn’t believe I’d never been there before!  I’ll definitely be going back in the future so be on the look out for another blog post about this beautiful place.  Check back next week for a post all about first date ideas!  Thanks for reading!

College

How To: Land An Internship

May 9, 2017

Hi everyone!  Thanks for coming back to my blog for this week’s post!  As you can tell from the title, today’s post is all about how to land your first internship.  Since the summer is quickly approaching and we’re starting to think about summer jobs, I thought it would be a perfect topic to tackle this month!

I got my first internship the summer after my sophomore year of college.  I’d say that’s relatively early, but I jumped at the chance to gain experience working in my career industry as soon as I could!  At James Madison University, my major is Media Arts & Design and my concentration is in Integrated Advertising & Corporate Communication so I was looking for positions either at an advertising agency or a marketing firm and, luckily, that’s exactly what I ended up doing.  After the summer was over, I was fortunate enough to intern again over my winter break and I’m so excited to be going back this summer as well.  It was one of the best experiences of my life and I have an entire post devoted to talking about my time at the firm linked here, if you’re interested in reading about it!

I’d say the hardest part about getting an internship is knowing where to apply.  Search engines like Google aren’t great for putting in random key words like “summer internship.”  You’ll get a lot of internship opportunities, but probably not in your field.  One of my biggest sources for internships has actually been my professors.  In my major, they’re awesome about letting students know what opportunities are out there and giving us the links to apply.  I’m also a fan of websites like themuse.com, especially if you’re in the market for a full-time job.  The Muse is full of employers looking for young, newly graduated candidates and they give you a nice little snippet of what it would be like to work in each company!

I got my internship through networking.  My dad is friends with a man who is in the c-suite of the marketing firm I talked about before and my dad mentioned my major to him and he offered me an internship right away!  It was so incredibly nice of him to offer that, and this won’t happen all the time, but the doors just opened for me because my family knew him.  Networking is so, so important so if you can just shake hands with important people and make some kind of connection, it will do wonders!

Another tip for getting an internship is making sure your resume is eye-catching and up-to-date.  I was taught in high school that a resume needs to be mature and clean and in only black and white.  This might be true for other industries, but it’s not for advertising.  I’m in a very creative major where graphic design skills are expected and if your resume doesn’t show your eye for design, then you’re off to a bad start.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly fine to have it in all black and white, but add something – like a personalized logo – that will make your resume stand out to the HR department.

Those are all the tips I have today for landing your first internship; I hope it helped you and your search for a job!  If you have any other tips, please leave them in the comments below for other readers to benefit from.  See you next week for another post!

Travel

Road Trip to Lake Norman, North Carolina

May 2, 2017

Hi guys, welcome back to my blog!  If you’ve never visited my site before, hi!  I’m Alli!  I hope you’re having a wonderful first week of May!  I took a weekend road trip to North Carolina a few weeks ago and I’m here to tell you all about our adventures!  I hope you enjoy!

I went with one of my best friends, Elyse, to her family’s lake house at Lake Norman and it was so much fun!  We got to the house on Thursday night, so we had the whole weekend ahead of us to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather.  We spent most of our time laying out on the dock and exploring the shopping area that’s right around the lake.  I was surprised at how much of a small town feel Lake Norman has considering there’s so much to do right around where the house is!

 

The weather was gorgeous on Friday and we got a good amount of sun to start the summer off right.  It was so nice to lay out on the dock and watch all the people who were boating and jet-skiing to kick off the warm weather!  Since it was so early in the season, there weren’t too many people around so that made it nice and peaceful to be able to spend the weekend away from the stress of school.  Later that day, we headed to a little shopping area and grabbed dinner at a little hibachi place.  We rented the movie Sully from Redbox and it was really good!  I’d definitely recommend watching it if you’re having a night in.

On Saturday, we started off the day by heading to Davidson, a little town that’s only about twenty minutes from where we were staying.  There was a little festival/farmer’s market going on when we got there so we couldn’t of visited at a better time!  There were so many cute little stands with art and fruit and jewelry!  The shops along the main street in Davidson were so cute too, we loved walking through them and looking at all the lake souvenirs.  While we were walking through the market, we came across a flower stand and they were selling the biggest, most beautiful bouquets for only $20!  It’s the best money I’ve ever spent – they are still standing tall in my apartment now!

 

Unfortunately, Sunday was the day we had to head home and get back to our responsibilities.  I loved visiting Lake Norman – I hope I’ll get to go again in the future!  Have you ever been?  Let me know in the comments below!  See you next week!