Randomness

Also known as a phone dump.

I've had a few pictures on my phone that I have meant to write about.  I also recently learned how to take a picture of the screen, it only took eight months to learn how to use my iPhone.  Oh well.

First up, this gem.

What: A slightly threatening text

When: Memorial Day Weekend (refer to my recently acquired photo taking skill)

Who: It's a mystery

We were out visiting graves for Memorial Day when I received this weird text.  I opted not to respond because I didn't know the number nor do I owe anyone money.  I finally figured out how to take a picture of the screen when Lauren wanted to see what my texts looked like (phone update issues) so James showed me.  He's nice like that.

Picture #2

What: A self portrait by James

When: Last weekend? Sometime he hadn't shaved?  Basically, it wasn't Sunday, he shaves that day.

Who: James

This is what I find when I leave my phone unattended.  Nice.

Picture #3

What: Our "living" butter lettuce

When: Last week or the week before

Who: I took this because I thought it was funny in a science experiment kind of way

We get Bountiful Baskets once or twice a month, depending on when we remember to order.  I thought this was slightly disturbing for the "Absolutely Fresh Because It's Still Alive!" label.  I half expected the lettuce to scream when I cut it apart.  Despite that creepiness, it was a very good head of lettuce and it DID taste very fresh.

Picture #4

What: My quilting sampler

When: A couple of weeks ago, packing up some boxes

Who: Another picture by me

I made this sampler when I took a quilting class with my Mom and ladies from our ward.  I can't remember when exactly theses classes took place but I know it was at least 15 years ago.  I should finish it but I don't know what I would do with it once it's done.  

I plan on blogging about our 2nd anniversary.  We went to dinner at Cafe Sabor, visited the Willow Park Zoo (my first time) and we went on two walks.  I would blog about it now but I actually used my camera to take some pictures and my camera cord is at my parent's house.  I had left my phone at home.

Names, names, names

While in the costume shop today we had a lengthy conversation about baby names. None of us are pregnant but our shop manager just had a baby (her name is Pearl) and several of the other girls have recently attended baby showers. The main core of our conversation was the following question:

Is it worse to have a made up name or an old fashioned name?

If my boss's daughter's name is any indication, our answer was in favor of old fashioned names. Our collective thought was that it's easier in the long run with an old fashioned name. My friend Jared likes to use the example of "Grandma Tiffany" because it just sounds kind of off.

Anyway, this led me to mention a cutest baby contest held by the Standard Examiner back in 2009. The thing that stuck out to me was the amount of crazy names. Crazy names made weird by their spelling:

Deyn

Mattison

Keatyn

Nevaeh (yeah, it's 'heaven' spelled backwards)

Krew/Kru/Crew (anyway you spell it, it's still not a great name choice)

Others were mixture names, as if the parents couldn't decide:

Tylynn

Treytan

Braylon

Andriana

Ayzlee (okay, I don't know WHAT Ayz could be a diminutive of...)

And another group was...just confusing.

Taegan

Donoran Ray

Zaidyn

Jae (Her picture looks like she realized she was not only given a boy name but one with weird spelling)

Akayla

Atreyu (just to prove it, because I wouldn't believe it)

Kaebrie

Jorey Joy

Keola

Kynleigh

Lyric

Roston

Navy

T'Maea

Haggen

My lovely sister, Hil, blogged about stuff like this a while ago on her blog.

Well, with all that said, I hope that when the time comes that we have kids that we don't fall prey to any of these rules. Although, if we DO decide to go nuts and name our kids names that are bizarre hybrids of our own names I can rest easy because my friend Caroline has already thought of some for us: Jansay, Limes and Saymes. It's pretty awful.

And what do YOU think about all of this?

One more week (and a month) to go...

This past week has been awesome, in varying levels of awesome-ness. Of course, that means that with the good there was bad. Here is a photo montage of cool stuff and random-ness.

Photo #1: Amanda with a mask. She was using toxic smelling glue and doesn't want her unborn baby to have two heads.

Photo#2: A $3.00 CD in a $5.00 bin. Awesome. I did find a really great CD of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson on VH1 Storytellers. Only five bucks!
Photo #3: A costume idea that represents Utah for the upcoming Mrs. America pageant.
Hopefully it works out. We talked about her ideas and I sketched this out. It's for an former neighbor of my parents who is heading to the pageant this week. Vote for her here!

Photo #4: My set for Aristophanes' The Birds, for design studies. It's due tomorrow!

Photo#5 Eeep!

Nah, I'm just kidding. It's totally a joke.

Photo #6 Our new computer.
Our old one bit the dust so we gave in and bought a new one. It's so tiny!

And, with that, I'm going to sleep. It's been a long, productive weekend!

Oh! This is for Jenny:

Banana Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks)

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs at room temperature

2 large very ripe bananas, pureed

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Line muffin tins with cupcake liners (I wound up with about 40 cupcakes finished.)

Combine flours in a small bowl, set aside for later use. Add vanilla to the milk, set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter until smooth with an electric mixer. Gradually add the sugar and beat until fluffy. Add the eggs, one a time and beat well after each addition. Add banana puree, blend well. Add the dry ingredients in parts, alternating with the milk/vanilla mixture. Beat well but don't over beat. Fill the muffin tins 2/3 full, bake for 15-20 minutes until a cake tester is inserted into the center of the cupcakes comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes in the tins for 15 minutes and then finish cooling on a wire rack before icing.

Hey Jenny, I fixed it! Now the banana cupcakes actually contain banana!

Wow. Seriously, wow.

My friend Courtney and I are totally fascinated by this lady in our ward. She is really stylish AND ridiculously creative. Her inspiring blog can be found here.

As much as I love my life (and totally hate the stress) sometimes I find myself fantasizing about how it will be when James and I are both NOT in school.

Hopefully James will have a good job that he loves and I'll be a stay at home Mom.

Theoretically we'll have some cute kids, maybe two boys and two girls.

Sometimes I think about how cool it would be to ride around on one of those cute cruiser bikes (despite the fact I'm really clumsy.)

Sigh.

Instead, I'm going to be grateful for the wonderful things that I do have:

• My husband James

• A really awesome opportunity to go to grad school (I mean, seriously, who else gets to the stuff we do in the shop?)

• Great friends in the costume shop

• Also, Midsummer is OPEN! That is definitely something to be grateful for!

Christmas is just around the corner and that means FAMILY! I'm so excited to spend the holidays with both of our families.

Jet lag without the jet

Is it possible experience the effects of jet lag without traveling? Is it possible to have your sleep schedule thrown totally off by one all nighter? Let me explain...

On Monday I stayed up until 4:00 AM, working on my final project for design studies. (Design studies is a class that is mandatory for all design grad students to help them refine their rendering skills and to bulk up their portfolios. We complete "paper projects" which can be anything from costume design renderings to a model of a set or lighting designs complete on Photoshop. ) Anywho, I slept until after 10:00 AM on Tuesday and I went to bed at 6:45 PM on
.
.
.
Wednesday night.

I know! I know! I shouldn't do things like that to myself! Staying up for over thirty hours in the middle of the week has really screwed up my sleeping schedule. REALLY screwed it up.

But, I finished my project AND it looked really great if I don't say so myself. It was nice way to finish up my first year of grad school. I'm going to post pictures when I scan my renderings. Pictures don't quite capture the colors or the shading.

I Hate Hidden Valley Ranch

Today had all of the potential to be a really great day. It started out well enough, I woke up early and went for a run and found a really cool path by a stream. After a shower and breakfast, I decided to have a Harry Potter movie marathon in preparation for the "Half Blood Prince" on Saturday. Sometime during the movie I decided to start eating some of the chocolate chip cookies I made yesterday. That was probably when it started to go down hill. Combine the cookie overdose with dribbling raspberry Crystal Light down my front and possibly staining my "Live United" tee shirt, and I wasn't feeling (or looking) too hot. I tried to remedy the situation by drinking more water and eating healthier food for the rest of the day. I also changed my shirt before I headed out to Wal-Mart to buy more allergy medicine.

Speaking of which, why is that whenever you go somewhere looking like crap you see someone you know? Some how I have managed to avoid this twice so far this year. The first time I went out with a coat over my pajama shirt (don't worry, I was wearing jeans, my first name is Lindsay but my last name isn't Lohan.) I was sure I would see someone as I tried to pass my pajama top off as a plaid shirt, apparently they were hot this past winter. But, I didn't see anyone. The cashier didn't even give me a weird look. It probably has something to do with the following facts:

1. I live in Logan, land of flannel shirts, jeans, and hiking boots.
2. It's a college town, there are some pretty sloppy dressers.
3. It's Wal-Mart.

Anyway, this time I went out wearing a tee-shirt (not the raspberry splattered shirt from before) with track pants and my graffiti KangaRoos. I didn't see anyone I knew. I was actually a tensey bit disappointed because I haven't been really social today. Oh well.

Back to the day's events...I decided to take advantage of the fact that NBC.com has a ba-jillion full episodes of "30 Rock" on their web side. Little did I know the price I would pay by watching several episodes (including my favorite one, guest starring, Oprah.) Rather than replay all of the commericals, the folks at NBC designate one sponsor per episode and play ONE COMMERICAL OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Unfortunately for me, I chose episodes that were mostly sponsored by Hidden Valley Ranch. That commercial makes me sick. You know the one I mean; it starts out with a carnival scene and everyone is eating vegetables dipped in Ranch dressing and having a great old time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKwT6eVDJ64

Not so.

1. Cauliflower masquerading as popcorn just looks gross. The sick factor is upped by the shot of the girl dispensing ranch over the bucket of cauliflower like a soda jerk would dispense fudge sauce on an ice cream sundae (or a movie theatre attendant would dispense fake butter over a bucket of popcorn...I wanted to choose a less obvious comparison.)
2. The tag line: "It makes vegetables delectable." It's probably the repetition alone but it makes me feel sick.
3. The copious amounts of ranch dressing poured over the salad at the end? Disgusting.
4. Did I mention that I don't think I can eat ranch dressing any more? It's far from my favorite dressing anyway but I think I'm going to abstain for a while

I just needed to get that off my chest.

I have a "condition"

Ever since 9th grade I have struggled with a condition that has brought frustration and some teasing by my sisters. Okay, a lot of teasing. I can't walk in shoes that do not have backs. Once I tried to walk to school in my Mom's clogs but it didn't work. I'm sure Hilary would love to tell you about how funny I looked as I struggled to walk. I know what you are thinking, "Didn't you used to dance? Didn't you dance on your toes?" Yes, I did dance on my toes at one point but dancing on one's toes is totally different than walking in shoes that have no backs.

This ailment usually doesn't bother me 3/4 of the time, it's just in the summer time. Do you know how hard it is to find sandals that have back straps? How about sandals with back straps that are cute? Luckily I found a pair at Ross for $10! They look sort of like this (only lighter brown, with silver studs dotting the straps)

Here is my question: Where can I find inexpensive sandals that are comfortable AND have back straps?






While I'm discussing sandals I'm going to reveal my severe dislike for flip flops. They aren't real shoes, people. They are fantastic for the beach. They are ideal for going to the pool. They are dead useful for wearing while showering in a dodgey bathroom. They are not real shoes. They should not be worn in the winter time. They should not be worn to church. They should not be worn by people who can't manage to walk in shoes without backs. Own up to it and stop the slack slapping that goes on when you shuffle along in your foam and plastic "footwear."

Thank you, and have a nice day.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

This past week was extra exciting. I had a day off of work (horray for veterans), my niece reached an important milestone, a package from Sephora arrived, I got my hair cut, AND my acceptance papers from Utah State arrived!

I tried to get a better picture of the envelope but it was harder than I anticipated. I'm going to start on January 5th and I'll finish in December 2011. It seems like a long way off but I'm sure it will go by quickly. I'm so grateful to the many people who have made this possible. I am so unbelievably fortunate! I'm really looking forward to moving and finally experiencing the whole college away from home experience.

My sister called and said that her daughter had a bowel movement last night. This is so exciting! Hopefully Avery will continue to improve and then she'll be able to go home. For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about check out my sister's blog. My niece is so stinkin' cute.

I got my hair cut last Saturday and the jury is still out on the cut. Youngest sister thinks it looks stupid while a lot of other people have paid compliments. It's tough to figure it out sometimes.

On a good day I think it's cute, ala, Agent Fields in Quantum of Solace.

However, on other days it's like a mix Mary Alice from Ace of Cakes and that girl from Madmen. Nothing against those two, I just wasn't going for that kind of look. Although, they all sort of have a retro edge to them. I think I was a little too vague when I talked to the girl who cut my hair. She was really nice, but I forgot that your hair sort of shrinks when it dries. I should have been more specific, maybe.

Before:

After:

Oh dear... Hair grows, right?