If Only....Casually Feeling Cute

Alright, so I happened to stumble upon an online boutique called Mura, and instantly have fallen in love with several of their pieces!! They are at an affordable price...if you live in Australia, which I, sadly, do not :( So, these dresses serve as great examples on my "If Only" theme for these posts!
Mura is a trendy place to buy clothing that is beautiful and not too expensive. Granted, it is again only for women and the dresses tend to be shorter than my father would let me out of the house in, I do find that I like some of these pieces. As they say "make your fairytale come true", and I believe that is part of the fashion of dresses! Here are a few of my very favorite dresses that I would definitely buy if I 1- had the money and 2- was in the same country...damn international shipping!

This first dress is called the Bower Bird dress, and I love both the front and the back. The bright blue color of the dress paired with something simple like a pair of sunglasses, headband or a silver bracelet and light shoes makes for a simple outfit that can still make a statement at the same time. On the other hand, you could also add a brown belt, a hat and head out barefoot (or maybe it's only me who enjoys being barefoot more than wearing shoes :P). It also comes in black if you want a less bright, but still classy and fashionable look!

The second dress is called the Elly Ponti Dress. I prefer the red dress (I must have something with bright colors today!), but it also comes in a very pretty black. If I were to buy this dress I would get the black just because it would be used for more formal events. This dress is again one that would be easy to dress up, and it wouldn't take much if you didn't want it to; a simple necklace and/or bracelet and earrings would work just find, along with heels or flats.

This third dress is one that normally I wouldn't pick out, yet I'm not sure if it's because of the model or the name or what but I really like it here! It's called the Strawberry Milkshake Dress (gotta love that name, I got a dress from modcloth a while back that was called something about Chocolate Milk!), and I think it is adorable! The reason why I wouldn't normally go for it is because it has quite a bit of lace and I'm not normally a lacy-type girl. I still can't explain but this dress would be one that I would seriously consider purchasing! Adding a belt (like the photo...), and some brown shoes and this is a great summertime dress!

Alright, that's what I have time for today! What are some other places you guys have heard of that are over seas? Would you travel to another country for a dress you fell in love with? Solutions? Help? :P
I hope you have a wonderful week! I'm almost done with finals, so I know that after Tuesday my life will become a thousand times less stressful, at least for a few weeks!
Happy Sunday (at 2 am!)!
Love,
Sara :)

Sending Out My Thoughts!

Alright, so I admit that I'm not exactly one who keeps regularly updated with current events, but there are some that I think really deserve attention! This is one of those posts where I will express my opinion and if you don't want to hear it, then don't read it. But I hope that you do read it because I think that everyone is entitled to their opinion and it should be heard.
I'm sure most of you in the United States have heard about the tragedy of the Connecticut shooting. For those of you who haven't, there was a shooting this past Friday at an elementary school in Connecticut, killing 28 people total, 20 were children under the age of 10. I see no reason why this would be acceptable and am shocked that something like this would actually happen! Anyways, I wanted to send out my thoughts and any prayers they would accept from me!
Love,
Sara :)

Ergogenic Aids, What Are They?

An ergogenic aid is any substance, food, chemical, equipment, or training methodology that helps the body work harder, including restorative methods, or perform better.

There are 5 ways to go about improving performance:
1. Pharmacological
        such as anabolic steroids, HGH, amphetamines
2. Mechanical
        such as improving materials for safety improvement like lighter equipment, competition suits, and gloves for ball games; also physical techniques that improve performance such as dunking in basketball and shot put techniques
3. Psychological
       such as visualization and motivational speeches that can help performance
4. Physiological
      such as attitude running, achieving a low percentage of body fat
      increased muscle mass which leads to increased force, which can allow a person to work harder
5. Nutritional
      such as dietary aids, not including eating disorders

These are ways that people can improve their own performance, in either direct or indirect ways. Yet these ways are also very controversial and there are many arguments against using such aids in sports. Some of these arguments include:
~these changes being unnatural, since it changes the athlete itself
~these changes being an unfair advantage meaning it threatens equality or concept of fair play, this objection is more towards the way in which the athlete gained the advantage, making it a form of cheating
~these changes can also threaten the safety and threaten to harm the athlete, especially if something goes wrong
~there are also ideas concerning paternalism, which is viewed by many as a restriction on human liberty, it's more of a worry that people had been coerced into something they didn't want to do
~there are also the thought of violation of ideals and norms and the ethics of competition as well as a possible violation of human rights, meaning again that possible people didn't have the right to change how they were born
~advantage over sports, meaning the notion of sport as a measure of human performance is violated, sort of like creating your own luck

The difficulty is drawing the line of where things become controversial verses being alright and acceptable.

I should say that this post is actually part of my notes for a class I'm taking, called Sport Ethics in Society. I have my final in that class tomorrow afternoon, and for me it's easier to understand things if I go over it out loud or explain it to someone, so that's kinda what I'm doing right now. Thanks for reading! Don't take offense if there is any way for you too with this post, I do apologize if so!

Love,
Sara :)

Beginning of Finals Week/Last Day of First Semester

Well, today is the last day of first semester classes! There is snow on the ground, the Minnesota air is cold (turns my nose pink!), everyone on campus is stressed and starting to get sick. This usually happens only once a semester: finals. I make it sound so dramatic, but as many of you know it is a stressful and dramatic time in college. I have one paper and four finals between this Thursday and next Tuesday. So, I may be a bit distracted from posting and from many things in general with my life. Luckily it's just this semester and next semester for me at least. I'm not doing graduate school, at least not now. I'm not exactly sure what I wanna do yet, so I don't wanna go and get a degree in something that I'm not even positive I'm going to want to do in 5, 10, or 20 years. I'll figure it out eventually!
Anyways, that's my little update about what's going on this week. Good luck to any of you who have finals or any other test coming up! The holidays are right around the corner (well, some are here already but you get my drift I hope), so just finish everything strong and work hard, then you can enjoy life even more after :P
Love,
Sara :)

Monday Musica from the Library

Alright, so due to the fact that I have a research paper, a project, and two final exams this week I am pretty much living in the library for a while. Tonight is an example of one of those nights. As one person commented about an hour ago, "weren't you here four hours ago?" Then winced when I said I hadn't moved and proceeded to give me a cookie :D. Sorry funny little story I wanted to share! anyways, instead of putting up just a single song for you by a single group, for this musica Monday, I will send you to my Pandora profile and invite you at see what I listen to :) I highly recommend the Piano Men station for studying, it works super well for me!
My name is: samodahl. Go check it out!
Wish me luck on finals :D any of you taking them, I wish you luck as well!
Happy Monday!
Love,
Sara :)

Snow!!!

It's snowing very nicely and we put penguins and snowflakes on our window!! :) I enjoy the snow lots! It is probably one of my favorite times of the year!
What is your favorite season? What about your favorite thing during the holiday season?
Love,
Sara :)

Family Visits

I have had a busy last few days and have so fallen slightly behind on school work (not to mention blogging!). However, I wanted to give a quick update oh how the week has gone :) Every year, St Olaf College puts on a Christmas Festival that lasts 4 days. This is a world-renouned Christmas celebration that features 5 St Olaf choirs, including the Chapel Choir, Cantori, Viking Choir (all male freshmen), Manitou Singers (all female freshmen), and of corse the St Olaf Choir. It has sort of become a family tradition to go to this concert all four years that I've been in school year. I do enjoy cause this is one time that I do get to spend lots of time with my family! I am also in the St Olaf Handbell Choir, and we have a concert every year during Christmas Fest. This year it went quite well! Unfortunately, I don't think that we have a recording of the playing. There are 3 different bell choirs at St Olaf: Manitou Handbell Choir, Chapel Handbell Choir, and St Olaf Handbell Choir, and each one plays several times each semester in the chapel and at outside concerts. I'm excited for next semester when the St Olaf Handbell Choir goes on tour. I'm not positive where yet, but I do look forward to it.
Anyways, this weekend was really a lot of fun and it was great to see my family and gives me the little push that I needed to go through and finish up the semester as strong as I can.
I'm sorry for being so slow at blogging and putting up posts, but hopefully it will get better. I know there wasn't any musica yesterday but it was a busy day and I was having trouble keeping up. I'm working on getting back and into the flow of things. I will try and keep blogging during the rest of the week, but we will see!
Happy Tuesday!
Love,
Sara :)