I chose one of the preset designs and configured it to meet my needs. The front of the card states my name and my tagline. Words make for a cleaner tagline than phrases or sentences about your abilities. Keeping the number of words in your tagline low allows it to be more impactful.  I chose the following:

• Engineer - I am an advocate for women + minorities in STEM and proud of my engineering degree. 
• Volunteer - I volunteer for various social causes and would love to get involved in more.
• Learner - I love to learn and connect with people who are willing to teach me something new.

My personal card has three things on the back:

• my website to demonstrate some of my work outside of my profession
• my email which is a link to me in a more formal way
• my cell phone number which is a link to me in an informal way

While some experts say that you should add a picture, I felt that linking my website allows someone to see my face again if they find that necessary.  Social media handles can be included if that is more applicable to your work but in general, my volunteer work contacts need a phone number to call for help and an email to send confirmation details after the conversation. Whatever choices you add to your design, make sure you spellcheck before saving the final design and paying for the cards!

Every Thursday, East Town Association puts on Jazz in the Park. A jazz band plays from 6 - 9 pm and you can come with blankets and food - no alcohol! - to listen to the band play. I go pretty much every Thursday. As the summer has progressed, the meals I bring to the park have also gotten more advanced. I usually bring some kind of salad, some dessert, and something healthy to snack on while jamming to the jazz. My friends come with lots of snacks, laughs, and sometimes cards to make a Thursday night super relaxing yet fun.


There was blood drive at my job on August 20th and I scheduled a slot to give blood that day! I was super excited and surprisingly, I did not pass out or have any issues at all. The only downside for me is that exercising was a little rough the week after but that side effect eventually went away!


I've had this dress for years - the bottom has long fringe while the top is a low cut wrap style top. I've always wanted to wear it for  a special evening or a night out. I finally wore it out during Labor Day celebrations in Chicago this past year and again during a night out in Las Vegas the next month! It was super comfortable and I cannot wait to wear it for a salsa dancing class or for a special night out in Milwaukee.


I am home about once a year and while I am there, it seems like everyone wants to do something.  My sister and I are both super busy during the holidays and she lives about 45 minutes north of my parents which makes seeing her while home a little difficult. This year, my sister and I made a new tradition of having dinner together without our parents. It was really nice to have time to connect, discuss life philosophy, and see what she has been up to lately. We also had our yearly Ladies Brunch with our mother in the city where my sister lives which was also a super special couple of hours for me.


This year, my mom made some ugly sweater cookies for us to decorate on Christmas Day. We had a little bit of a competition going while making our sweaters to see which sweater would come out the best. I went with a Christmas tree style sweater and highlighted with snowflake polka dots. My whole family had a lot of fun decorating and making a mess with all of the sprinkles and colored icing. In the end, we did not pick a winner as they were all awesome and the cookies tasted as good as they looked!

Source Take A Self Defense Class  I took a free self defense class and it was really helpful to me. When I was in Europe, there was an incident with a racist man that really scared me. I wanted to take some self defense classes to make sure that I could always defend myself. This free class taught us a lot on how to get out of wrist grabs and how to use your body weight to get free of an attacker. I booked 3 jiu-jitsu classes in the upcoming months to keep working on these skills and get them to be as second nature to me as fighting can be to a pacifist.  Attend a fashion show or walk in one! Once a year in Milwaukee, there is a Beauty in Bloom Fashion show, where all of the outfits are made from flowers. The tickets sell out very quickly but with a little bit of luck and lot of checking the site, I snagged a standing room only ticket and got to watch the show. It was amazing to see what the floral arrangers were able to do with flowers. The woman in the picture not only had a fabulous walk, but an awesome outfit. She has dress with a train, all made of flowers. I cannot wait to go next year if I get a chance.  Create a cute bar cart area in my new apartment! When I first moved got permission to move in to my apartment, I bought this cart to use as a bar cart. I love to display all the interesting alcohols that I have collected in my travels or new finds at the local grocery stores here. Every time I have friends over, it provides us libations, liberation, and lots of laughs as I can pretty much bake a cake with anything on here to enhance the flavors.

In the past two months, I've slowly but surely been crossing things off my 101 in 1001 list. With a year of the 2.75 down, I have crossed off 36 things or about a third of the list! I cannot wait to share what I have been up to below as learning is the greatest thing for the soul.
I have been slowly framing all of the postcards I have collected, maps I've saved and odd things from my travels. It is finally come together and while I love what I have up, I cannot wait to keep growing this montage of my past on the wall. I sometimes forget all of the the interesting things that I've gotten to do so far in my life and it makes me so grateful when I see all of these items on my wall each day when I come home from work.

I recently got into the habit of buying some flowers for my "coffee" table or my bedroom and I love how festive it makes the apartment feel. When I see the orange gerber daisies I got last week, it instantly puts a smile on my face and that makes the cost of them worthwhile for me.

I have been working out a lot recently with a fitness groupon that I love. I pretty much always keep a workout set of clothing in the car but I found that my favorite sports bra I own is an old one from Old Navy. What I love about it is that it hooks like a normal bra in the back but really supports you in intense movements or during a gentle yoga class. This one linked is pretty similar.

I never thought that I would actually go skydiving but my coworker J invited me to go as that is his hobby. I was a little nervous but with some reassurance from other coworkers that had already went, I drove to the site and did the darn thing. I was really calm the whole plane ride up (thank you yoga breathing!) but got super nervous when I put my feet on the strut of the plane to jump. My tandem instructor just pushed me after the count of three and we went flying! It was such a rush! It was super cold in March to go but honestly, it was one of my top 5 things I have ever done in my life. I am totally going again when it is warm!!

I wanted to do something low-key for my birthday because I went skydiving earlier in the month. In every city I lived in America, Sur La Table has a knife skills class. I never took it because it didn't fit with my schedule. This year, it just so happened that it fell on my actual birthday! I booked the class immediately and went to learn more about cutting my food and why technique is so important. Chef Michael taught me that my current knife skills leave a lot to be desired but my main takeaways were not to be afraid of the knife, curl your fingertips underneath your hand to keep them safe, and trust your cutting instincts to increase your speed. I already signed up for two more classes at the store - Cast Iron Cooking and Homemade Gluten Free Pasta. I am so excited!

I saw a flier for this class at the museum during the monthly yoga class and I figured it would be an interesting way to learn how to cook something new. The Spring Cooking Class at the museum was more of an instructional class than a hands on class but I loved it anyway! Chef Zack, the executive chef of the museum, made us a full spring dinner party menu complete from appetizer to dessert. Compound pea butter on crostini with cardamom, watermelon radish and spring veggie salad, lamb with salsa verde and a berry poke cake rounded out the menu. It was all delicious and I cannot wait to make this for my friends and family. They will have another one in the fall so be on the lookout!

As part of my intentions for this year, I wanted to work on healthy eating habits. I have a ton of them but I would say other than reading French Women Don't Get Fat, my time in Italy did a really good job of getting me to eat better and recognize some more mindful eating habits. Here are the 5 main things that I have noticed that have changed in me from a year ago to now.
1.  Drinking a coffee or a tea after lunch is a part of my daily routine. The daily crash that we all experience in the afternoon after a good lunch is part of life. What I did not know is that ingesting caffeine after a large meal slows that absorption of the caffeine so that you will not crash later in the evening. In the US, I do not have the perks of an in office espresso machine but a cup of tea or a run to Starbucks on a stressful day makes the afternoon a whole lot better. I do stop ingesting caffeine after 3 or 4 pm so that I can sleep better at night.

2. Cooking and grocery shopping with the season's produce has become a norm to me. First, it is cheaper and tastes way better than anything grown in a hotbox or shipped 1000s of miles. Right now it is winter, so most of the veggies that I would use to make salads are expensive or taste way less flavorful. I've been cooking a lot of stews that incorporate beans and heartier veggies like onions, sweet potatoes and squashes. Above is the start of a veggie based "meat" sauce that had lentils, onions, tomato sauce, and squash - all things that you would have in the kitchen in the winter :)

3. Adding meat to a dish as an accessory and not the main meal. I was fully vegetarian for 5 years and starting eating meat  again about a year ago. I am very used to eating food without meat so reincorporating meat back into my diet has been a challenge. A lot of dishes have meat as the main focus and while they are good, plants still make me feel better. While in Italy, a lot of things I ate had a hint of meat like bacon or beef but still used a lot of plants to make them filling and delicious. Above, I cooked up some veggies, black beans and turkey to stuffed into a bell pepper. The turkey was a nice addition to the veggies but did not overpower the dish.

4.  Good quality carbs are not the enemy! I used to think that eating bread or pasta was really bad for you and that using my daily calorie allowance on simple carbs was a waste. In Italy, you can eat a lot of really delicious pasta and bread or desserts, but I find that eating them regularly helped me remember that while delicious, they are not terrible for you. Dessert has always been a weakness of mine but by incorporating it regularly into my diet, I find that I can eat it in moderation and not crave them all the time.

5. The simplest things are the best - 4 or less ingredient meals are my favorites. One of the easiest ways for me to eat a healthy dinner is to keep a couple of things around that I know I love together and throw them into a quick meal. Above, I tossed the bok choy in cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper and then roasted it in the oven for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees along with the sausage on a sheet pan. For a quick dinner, it was filling and nutritious while fast and easy to clean up!

Theriz is a joy to learn from and the owner of Zen Zen Yoga Arts. I found out about her studio from Groupon, where I bought a two pack of the playshops the space hosts. In first playshop I attended, I was super nervous about all of the inversions but it was such a good workout and quite invigorating to be inverted. The second playshop was more of a blast as I started to feel much more comfortable in my inversions and my practice within the aerial hammock. As a girl who practices yoga and pilates pretty regularly, this type of class took me out of my comfort zone in a way that I can't help but to be addicted to now. I pretty much go every other week now and while I am sore after each class, I am amazed at what my body can do.

If you are ever in Milwaukee, check these two places out! I promise you won't regret it.