I Like These Things

1. Smoothies.
I believe smoothies may be my favorite treat ever. They are so yummy and so easy to make!! My mom gave me a little purple smoothie maker last year that I use at least twice a week, usually more. I usually buy some fruit and freeze it (because then you don't need to use ice) add some yogurt (any fruity flavor will do, but I do love Yoplait's "white chocolate strawberry" and "raspberry cheesecake") and add some juice! I was lucky to find some Sunny Delight for $0.75 at Smith's the other day so I bought that and it adds a nice citrus punch to my smoothies. Then I mix it all up and enjoy. They are pretty healthy (Sunny D is packed with sugar though, I know. Probably one of the best things to use would be V-8 Splash to get some vegetables in there) and pretty delicious. The nice thing is that all fruits really taste good together, so you can't go wrong making a smoothie!

2. Painting my nails.
Ever since I stopped biting my nails five and a half weeks ago (what?!?) this has become my new love in life. I paint my nails a new color 1-2 times a week and I keep the color that my nails are on my nightstand so that if they ever chip at any time, I'm ready to paint over it. I've found that my favorite colors to paint my nails have been a mint green (the first color I painted my nails and the very one that got me to stop biting them), a sparkly black, and a dark maroon (current). I think I gravitate towards the darker colors more. My favorite thing to do with painted nails is look in the mirror, hold my hand up and smile at myself. It's still surreal to have long painted nails! Gah! I love it.

3. Nutella.
Need I say more?

4. Homemade granola bars.
Haha most of this list is becoming food...that's funny. But hey, food is good, yes? But homemade granola bars are the BEST. Once you've had these you can't go back to the real thing. I make them with these friends a lot and my personal favorite is peanut butter chocolate chip. My friend Sarah has a recipe here on her fabulous cooking blog if you want to try making them! They are very easy to make and well worth it!

5. Art Markers
Is that even the official name for them? I should probably know that, but oh well. The point is that these things are great! I have been using them for my fashion illustrations and they have helped a lot and make them look ten times better! I like using these markers so much that I've been practicing illustrating every night. Maybe I will post some illustrations soon, but first I just need to get my method down!

6. T-shirts.
My favorite summer outfit was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts. No joke. I wore my Demi Lovato concert tee daily as well as several other shirts. I just got this tee from Stylemint that I am wearing right as I type these words and I love it! Now that school has started I'm actually dressing cute again though and that's been fun too. I can't wear shorts or jeans at work so that's forced me to dress a little nicer than normal. But on Saturdays and Mondays? Shorts and a t-shirt. :)

7. My Harvard pen.
I got this pen at a store in Harvard for $2.99 and it's such a great pen! The ink is dark and it writes super smoothly. I keep it in my purse at all times and I love pulling it out just because it says Harvard. Anything that says Harvard is cool. At least in my book it is. Plus it reminds me of the east coast and that makes me happy.

8. Curly hair.
As many of you know (maybe?), I have stick straight hair. It has no curl to it whatsoever. Some days I can just blow dry my hair or let it hair dry and it looks good enough to go out on the town because it is that straight! I would also like to say that I adore my straight hair. When I was younger, I was vain and would look in the mirror and tell myself that my hair was "my most prized possession." Who says that? Well, I definitely did and maybe still do. But the thing is that I think curly hair is beautiful too, and one of the reasons I'm growing my hair long is so that I can have long, gorgeous, curly locks. When I was 14 and loved going to stake dances, I would spend literally two hours curling my hair with a curling iron only to have it stay in for probably two hours max. Now I curl it with the straightener and it stays in way better, but by the end of the day the curls are mostly dead. This week I was determined to make it through a whole day with curls that were fairly curly, so I curled my hair every day this week (except yesterday)! I used mousse, took longer, and then finally today I started spraying every curl I did with hairspray and they stayed in! I am now happy, and you'd think I'd be sick of curling my hair, but it looks really pretty this way so I'll probably do it more. Straight hair will be making an appearance back into my life though. Ok...goodbye long novel about hair.

9. Friendship bracelets.
I got this one for $1 on Saturday at the Latin American Festival here in Provo and I am loving it! These bracelets tend to go with the t-shirt/shorts vibe. I have my trusty watch that I wear most of the time, but sometimes it's a little too hot to wear it. But then my wrist feels bare so a friendship bracelet does the trick of filling the void.

I suppose that's all for now. Annnnd if I sound tired or blunt, I am. Ta-ta.

4th of July 2012

Spending the 4th of July this year in Boston was one of the best Independence Days I ever could have had! The East Coast is especially patriotic with all the history that happened here during the Revolutionary War. I brought over the tradition of spray-painting shirts, so we taped them up the night before and then we spray painted the next morning (we realized we had no red paint). The morning of the 4th was spent at a parade in the town of Sudbury. It was perfect because it was a little later (we slept in) and it was short so we didn't have to spend a long time in the heat.

After we went to that we headed off into Boston where we parked and rode the train to the Esplanade. It's right by the Charles River with the most gorgeous view of the Boston skyline. Some friends from our ward saved spots all day so we got to sit with them. We played cards and ate food while waiting and just hung out. I love the atmosphere on the 4th of July because it's so happy and exciting! Everyone is spirited wearing their red, white, and blue so it's just a lot of fun.

The fireworks actually got delayed for about a half-hour to forty-five minutes because they thought a thunderstorm was coming. There was a huge mess of people coming and telling us to move so we'd stay dry, but we didn't want to leave, because we knew our spot would be gone if we left. We ended up staying because no storm came and then it actually poured during the fireworks. It was kind of surreal, watching the fireworks in the rain. I mean, how often does that happen?

Let me just tell you something about the Boston fireworks. You know how there is usually a grand finale in fireworks shows? Well this show is like a grand finale the whole way through, it's amazing! The fireworks are so sweet and there are sooo many. Best fireworks show, I have ever seen for sure! I was pretty happy with my picture taking skills to have gotten this shot.

We were all soaked to the bone from the rain (that only lasted about 15 minutes) but packed up our stuff after the fireworks to go. It took a little while to get through the crowds and we were able to catch one of the last trains to get to our car.

In short, it was a wonderful 4th of July. Just what it should have been. I am so grateful for this country and for the freedom we have. I'm grateful that we can vote for our leaders and I admire the way we unite as a nation when good and bad things happen, such as simple things like celebrating Independence Day every year, or really awful stuff like 9/11. For me, there is no better place to live. I'm happy that this summer I've been able to get to know another part of this nation. I can only love it more. :) Happy Independence Day!

DIY Spray Paint Tee

My roommates and I love making spray paint shirts whether it be for fun or as a lucky testing center shirt to wear for finals.

This was a year ago during finals

For the Hunger Games midnight showing we decided we wanted to make cool shirts. We could have dressed up, but we already did for the party, and it would have been really uncomfortable waiting in line in costumes, so we opted for the shirt making idea instead.

If you want to make a spray paint shirt yourself, here's how we did it (super easy):

We went to Walmart Wednesday night to pick up gold spray paint and black v-neck tees (we thought the v-neck looked cooler). We bought some $5 Danskin black t-shirts and just some normal gold spray paint. There were lots of different kinds but we just bought the kind that looked the coolest/shiniest ha. I made some templates for the shirts using this picture for the front and this picture for the back. I glued the pictures on some posterboard and then cut out the negative space to make a template. These were our templates (although they weren't gold when we started out and we did add the arrow to the mockingjay afterwards, realizing it didn't have one):

Then after you cut out the templates comes the easy part! All you have to do is place them where you want them on your shirt and then spray.

I'd recommend spray painting your shirts outside and/or probably on newspaper too. We did it outside in the parking lot across the street from us. If you want to make different designs like we did above, we used masking tape and just ripped it up and taped it on the shirts to make whatever designs we wanted.

My roommate Talya (below) put some masking tape on her shirt to make it look like flames. That's the best thing about spray painting shirts, is that the possibilities are endless!

If you are spraying both sides, do one side of the shirt, wait about five minutes and then turn it over and spray the other side. Then you can let them dry inside or outside, wherever you want, for about fifteen minutes to half-an-hour at the most and they'll definitely be dry by then. The shirts kind of smell like spray paint a little too, so we washed ours that night so they smelled nice and clean for the premiere. They faded a tiny bit in the washer (we washed them in cold water) but it worked out fine.

Once your shirt is done, you can wear it anywhere and everywhere! Obviously we wore them to the midnight showing, and they looked super cool and everyone was jealous. ;)

Front...

...and the back!

And of course a Hunger Games fighting/jumping pose! These shirts pretty much made us automatically cool :)

Have fun making your shirts!

Hunger Games Midnight Showing

Let me just say, that this was probably one of the most, if not the most anticipated midnight showing I have ever been to. I think it was the most anticipated for me, even more so than Harry Potter, because I wanted to see how everything was done and portrayed. I had no idea what it would look like!

My roommates and I decided to make shirts instead of dress up to the premiere, just because we'd already dressed up for the party and it wouldn't have been super comfortable to wait in line all dressed up, especially me wearing my Effie costume. So Wednesday night we went to Walmart and got black shirts and gold spray paint. I cut out a mockingjay stencil to put on the front of the shirts and then a District 12 one to put on the back. We live in Apt. 12, so we decided it would be appropriate to represent! haha. You can see the pictures we used here and here. The district 12 one was cropped from a photo like this. We went to the parking lot across the street from where we live and spray painted the shirts there. Don't worry, we've done it many times. ;)

The shirts turned out SWEET! We washed them that night so that they wouldn't smell when we wore them the next day.

Thursday night was the night of the big movie release! Oh man was I SO excited. I was seriously crazy at work and everywhere else because I couldn't focus on anything else. I was just was too excited for the movie. We went to wait in line at around 7 and since I had some free Chick-Fil-A combo meal coupons, Heidi and I went and got dinner for everyone while Talya and Stuart waited in line and the others got there. Once we ate all our food, we had some time to wait in line so we played poker (Texas Hold Em' style)! You probably don't know this about me, but I LOVE playing poker and the times I've played I've done pretty well (I just play with chips) and I totally wiped everyone out! Oh ya!

Heidi and me

We played poker for a while and were about to play Skip-Bo, until they opened up the theater at about 10:15-10:30 ish to let us go inside. We sat in the theater for a little while and took pictures...

Haha I just looked at this picture and realized the guys are on either end and all of us roommates (minus Olivia who didn't come) are in the middle. Cute. :)

Stuart and Talya had taken some pictures inside a photobooth so we decided we wanted to do and went out of the theater to take some pictures and also get some photos of our shirts. Man, I love my roommates. We had so much fun taking a gajillion pictures being crazy.

Then we went to the photobooth and got crazier...he he

We did two filmstrips and then we went online later to see the video it took of us in between pictures. Here's one of them, we were laughing so hard when we watched this later. We think we're pretty funny :)

You can see the other video here haha. After we did all that fun and crazy stuff, we had to go back to the theater because the movie was starting in less than half-an-hour. You can imagine our excitement! The movie started and basically....

I LOVED IT.

But that's for another post later. I have so many thoughts on the movie that I don't want to make this longer than it already is! But I am dying to get them out, so the post will come soon, like tomorrow or Tuesday (when I'm seeing it again!). Stay tuned! Did you see the movie? How did you like it/did you dress up or do something fun for it? Tell me! My mind is still in such a Hunger Games mindset it's all I can think about right now. So tell me all you want about it and I'll love you forever!

Seriously though, one of the funnest and best nights of my life. :)

Potter Fashion: a Bleached Pen Tee

My sister Carina made me this shirt with a bleach pen! Isn't it sweet?!?!!

Yes. Yes, it is pretty sweet. What is not so sweet is the fact that I have messy hair, am wearing no makeup, and pajama pants (because I was getting ready for bed when i remembered to take pictures). So just ignore that fact. Oh and also, you can see a bracelet on my right wrist in the above picture that Carina also made for me! It has my name on it. :)

Isn't Harry Potter awesome? And also do-it-yourself projects? Even better are the two combined! I would strongly recommend making a shirt as cool as this one with something as simple as a bleach pen! I am most happy and grateful for this shirt, so thanks Carina!

Oh and happy Wizard Wednesday!!! Say hello to the biggest Harry Potter fan in the world...he is pretty sweet too :)

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I wore this outfit a while ago and it's a pretty simple one..which brings me to another reason for why I didn't blog for a month. It sounds weird, but I kind of needed a break from trying to dress cute every day. Don't get me wrong, I still dressed very cute, but I didn't let myself care nearly as much. And summer's hard because it can get SO hot outside and who wants to try and dress fashionably when its so much easier to wear a t-shirt and shorts? Sometimes Utah just kills me!

On another completely random note, I seriously have such a problem biting my nails. It took me 19 years to admit it..but its true. :( Ok, well in truth I've always known I've had this problem but my nails are so gross sometimes! It really isn't always awful but lately I have to keep putting a band-aid on my right hang index finger because its way too short and yet I keep trying to bite it and it hurts. Putting a band-aid on is the only thing to stop me! Any advice so that I can at least minimize nail biting without band-aids on all of my fingers. Goodness gracious that would be awful. Worse than short, gross nails! Unfortunately, nail polish doesn't work and even if I put it on, I think my nails would just look worse. Do me a favor and next time you see me just don't look at my nails? hehe thanks. Now we know the real reason there are no close ups in these pictures.

Oh and hey, guess what? It's FRIDAY! Do a little dance, sing this song, and have a wonderful day and weekend! You deserve it! What are your weekend plans? I'm going home tonight to go to my aunt's wedding in Idaho tomorrow and then finally going to my Provo ward on Sunday! About time, considering I haven't been there for like 3 weeks. Oops..inactive anyone? (just kidding! promise!)

One more thing..this hairstyle has saved my life. Pull it up high into a messy bun after a day with curly hair. Messy, but cute! (and quick!)

What Love Is

I love taking pictures outside and I love doing it with my sister. That's all. :)

An Outfit A Day...
Cardigan? Thrifted
Tee? Forever 21
Belt? Thrifted
Jeggings? Charlotte Russe
Boots? Ross, gifted
Bag? Target

Keeps the Fashion Police Away...
Comfort? 10
Original? 6
Did I Like It? 9 (the red belt just gets me every time ha)
Overall? 8