Alex is a missionary!

My little brother Alex went to the MTC today.  He is going to be a missionary in the Mexico Veracruz mission.  I know he'll do a great job.

We love you Alley!

(The pictures were taken by one of his friends, McKay Bailey)

November in a nutshell

What a month!  

I defended my Plan B report, all 106 pages of it

The green square is my defense on the seminar room schedule

My printed report (for some reason the picture looks like it was at night)

 Later that day I narrated the Relief Society Thanksgiving dinner.  The cultural hall looked amazing!

I was grateful that when the needle shattered after hitting the pin that it didn't hit me in the eye.

The (almost deadly) pin

 Over the Thanksgiving weekend my brother Alex gave his farewell address.  He did a wonderful job.  We had a bunch of people over afterwards:

 After the crowd left we took some pictures as a family.  It will probably look different in two years!

The soon to be missionary:

 After that Hil and her family got ready to head back to Vegas.  We had some fun before they left though.

Ave with her grammy

 James and I helped my parents get the house ready for Christmas.  We figure that since we don't have a tree at our place, helping someone else put up a tree fills our quota.  Right?

And one last, random, picture.  This is prop storage at Utah State.  It looks like the room of requirements...

Did I mention that I have three sets of renderings to finish and then I'll be done?  I can't believe I'm so close to being done.  I'm very excited!

Phew!

It has been a busy semester.  We went to a wedding on Friday.  James's old roommate, Lonnie, married his girlfriend, Amber.  It was really sweet.  Here is a picture that James took from before the ceremony. 

I SWEAR I was wearing make-up...

I finished the dress I mentioned earlier.  While I worked on the dress, James made this:

 It's a pot holder.  My husband has skills

The finished dress, front:

 and back:

Oh, and I defended my Plan B Report on Wednesday.  I totally passed.  Now I need to finish my re-writes. But not right now.  It's waaaaay too late for that.

Do you ever feel like...

I'm halfway through my revisions of my Plan B Report in preparation for my defense on Wednesday.  So far it is 103 pages long.  As I have been working on the monster I've been thinking about next semester.  It's going to be a weird semester because for the first time since I was 5, I'm not going to be in school.  (I realize that I wasn't in school on my mission but it was kind of like school.)  I'm trying not to freak out.  It's a big deal to graduate and be DONE.  I'm planning on working next semester so I don't go crazy and so we can live comfortably.  As I have been casually job searching I feel like I have
  no skills.

I realize that's not totally true, I can make stuff.  Lots of stuff.  I know how to take a drawing of a costume and make it real: pattern and all.

But I don't have the skills to fulfill the jobs readily available.  It's kind of freaking me out.

That could also be the fact that it's 1 AM and I started working on my Plan B Report at...7?  I'm not sure.

Bedtime.  I'm sure about that one.

It's been a long day but another quick month

 The semester is drawing to a close at a frightening rate.  I am going to defend my Plan B report in less than a week and there are only four more weeks of the semester left.  What have I been up to?

I have been re-vamping my porfolio:

My renderings for The Nutcracker, I would LOVE to design it!

 Exploring new parts of campus as I get paperwork signed:

Some pretty leaves by one of the Engineering buildings

Working hard on projects in the shop.  This dressing gown is for 20th Century, opening December 1st.

I also put a dress together for one of my Mom's co-workers.  Her son is getting married and this is the dress she picked out from the pattern book at the fabric store.  It looks a lot better than I was expecting. Phew.

It's not done yet, I have a fitting with her on Saturday

 And, in a first for me:

Yep, a parking ticket.  Technically James got it but it was my car so... I'm glad it's only a $12 ticket.  I swear it was $25 or so at Weber.  Awesome.

Where did October go?

I am seriously confused about how fast October passed us by.  I remember General Conference and I remember handing in my Plan B draft...how is it already November?

I defend my Plan B Report in a week and a half.  I still haven't received any feedback from my committee.  Does that mean I don't have to do any re-writes?

I still do?  I thought so.

Happy Halloween!

I decided to dress up for my last Halloween in school.  I decided to be Margot Tenenbaum (from the movie The Royal Tenenbaums) because I had all of the elements I needed.  It would have been even better if the striped dress was a polo dress instead of a v-neck.  It's Halloween, not rocket science.

 Margot is the surley looking one in the fur coat.

And me:

I was just really glad that I inherited my great grandma's fur coat, it was the PERFECT color.

Fun fact: the striped dress was also from my great-grandma.  I have a picture of me as a baby and she's wearing the dress.

Margot has a fake finger and I wanted to pay homage to it:

I covered my finger in make-up primer then waterproof eye-liner followed by a dusting of eye shadow.  I washed it off after I took this picture during design studies.  It was smearing on things, I was just nervous.  And distracted.

I learned something this Halloween:
You should be something readily recognizable because otherwise you're just the weird girl wearing too much eyeliner, over heating in a fur coat.

James didn't dress up but next year he wants to go as a one armed guy riding a velociraptor.  The only problem is that the character in Jurassic Park that fits that description was played by Samuel L. Jackson.  Maybe we can figure out another, less questionable option.

I turned in my paperwork for my defense on the 16th.  I can't believe it's in two weeks!  I have just a few more tables and things to add in addition to the re-writes.  It's almost ready!