The big fat nothing

My mom asked me to take pictures of the "historic blizzard" we're supposed to have had on Wednesday, so as a good daughter I diligently did so... But there's not really much to see.

We prepared like good little Mormons, got out the emergency candles and hot chocolate... Bought some ice in case we lost power and our fridge stopped working...

We peeked out the window every once in a while to see the progress of this "historic blizzard..." But it wasn't terribly spectacular.

BYU's emergency service kept sending mass text messages about the hazardous conditions (three times actually, within the course of the day, and each message was 6-7 texts long with a few words in each text...), so by night time I looked out the door:

Not that convincing. BYU even cancelled classes after 3 p.m. so all the BYU students could get a head start on their travelling, but, well... I wish they had cancelled classes today instead, because our trip home, now that was a real blizzard, complete with traffic at a crawl and plenty of accidents and a 6 hour trip that turned into 10 and a half. Ugh.

So there you have it, the blizzard that wasn't!

Happy Thanksgiving

Soon to come... our great American Adventure on the Greyhound bus...

But in the meantime, thank goodness for family and good food!

Ruffle top

Pretty sure nobody needs a tutorial for this, but I'm doing it anyway. Na! (In French, this is what kids say when they are being contradictory, sort of like "so there" or thumbing your chin at someone).

So I just took an old tank that I never wear anymore and cut up another old white shirt into strips, about three inches wide, maybe less (still having trouble with non-metric system...)

and ruffle them (see here for how-to). Just sew a 1/4 inch from the edge. If your strips are about 1 1/2 times as long as your shirt is wide, you're good. Make sure to leave plenty of string on both ends of the strips to adjust the ruffles if the strips are now too short/long.

Don't forget to put your machine's tension back to normal after making all your ruffles!
Now tack on and start sewing from the bottom up.

Your top ruffle will probably need to be smaller depending on the neckline, etc.

There you go! I like it best with a cardigan to give it some structure.

Linking over here:

Cross your fingers for me

Please :)

Books!

I totally just stole this from the Laitinens :) And yes, now you shall see what little culture I really have...

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolken

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (What the heck? Has ANYONE seriously read every single thing ever written by Shakespeare? I seriously doubt it.)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Mine

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Why so much freaking Jane Austen?!)

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Isn't this one very, very scandalous?)

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (Amazing!)

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola (My people is ashamed of me...)

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (Again... I'm ashamed...)

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

22 out of 100. This is pathetic.

I tag anyone who wants to. So there.

Edit: wait! I forgot one! it's actually 23. Memoirs of a Geisha was awesome.

Poêlée Champêtre

You know you want some.

This was one of my favorite dishes back home, and you just buy it frozen premixed for dirt cheap. However here, it doesn't really exist. Lucky for me, it's super simple to make. I'll even share the recipe with you :)

- Diced potatoes (make it simple and just get the frozen kind, or here all I had on hand were some seasoned French fries that I chopped up; it worked very nicely)
- Sautéed mushrooms (in butter of course! Oh ok, if you really want to be healthy go for the olive oil)
- You can also put in diced ham (that would make it a poêlée campagnarde)
- Sauté it all in olive oil, season with salt and pepper and herbes de provence (a blend of savory, fennel, basil and thyme--lots of thyme)
- Right at the end, throw in some diced swiss cheese or provolone.

Mmmmmmmmmmm


Edit: wow that was my 200th post! Happy 200th post day!

Big, fat, fluffy snowflakes

They make me happy.

Those are real images. If you still don't think science is cool, you are cold and heartless.

Also, the fact that my husband started playing Christmas music one week early due to my obvious lack of holiday spirit is pretty awesome.

Oh, and sewing and playing Santa's helper.

Incidentally, I would like to have you know I didn't just whine; I did something about it! Andrew has three good-as-new shirts now, that actually fit him. I'd have a picture up but he is incapable of keeping clothes on for very long if he isn't leaving the house, so you'll just have to wait to see his awesomely fitted shirts. I'll post a quick tutorial soon--I'm amazed at how quick of a fix it is!

And nothing says Christmas like Norman Rockwell. Enjoy.

Oh boy!

Tall and not big?

Why is it we can't find a single shirt that has long enough sleeves and that isn't a tent? We just went to do some pre-Christmas shopping for Andrew (yes, I'm afraid I'm one of those boring wives that gets their husband clothes.. it's that or video games) and shirts his size simply don't exist!

I just don't understand it. I know plenty of guys that are tall and thin. So why do stores simply not make clothes for them? Are they trying to encourage people to get fat so they'll fit? We asked the sales lady about it and she said we could special order, but if we got them long enough we'd have to go up a neck size...come on people!

My husband is not a freak of nature. And I know he is not the only guy out there in this situation. At least he has a wife that can fix his shirts up somewhat...

Little bonnet

I made this for a friend who's having a little girl soon-- I can't wait for her to send me a picture of her wearing it!

Linking here:

From my sweet, non-gossiping husband

"He has had two partners in the last four months and is trying for a third. He is almost as widespread as aids"

The book list

It keeps growing. But this is a book I've been wanting to read for quite some time: Women in Eternity, Women in Zion, by Valerie Hudson and Alma Don Sorenson.
First because, well it discusses gender roles from a Gospel perspective, and that in and of itself is a good enough reason to me. But second, Valerie Hudson was one of my professors and she is completely inspiring. She is brilliant and smart and passionate and I can only imagine how good of a writer she is. Have any of you read it? Any other good suggestions?

I just discovered

That NYU has an online masters degree in translation. For an incredibly good price too. I'm pretty sure I've already made up my mind :)

It's turbo time

Oh yes.

Best Christmas movie EVER.

Bread cornucopia? Yes please!

This is just too awesome...

Go check it out!

Christmas table-topper quilt...

Done!

My attempts at free-hand quilting

I love these pom-poms

Star atop the tree :)

I did not design this: it's by "Ashby's Attic." 
I'm really enjoying quilts in a kit though, since I've never quilted before it feels like a good place to start. 
And it's so much fun!
I'm linking up here:

Also, this is my new favorite cardigan.

That is all.

We should make a rule...

Mark and Danielle always laugh at me because anytime Andrew and I play board/card games with them, I inevitably come out with this phrase: "we should make up a rule that..."

And yes, I'm a bit silly like that, but it just struck me: this is why I'm in the major I chose. There are plenty of things that aren't ethical, but they're also not illegal. Reporters can dig up the nasty truth and expose it for all to see. And that's our way of saying "We should make a rule that nursing homes have to do criminal background checks on potential employees so that caretakers can't abuse the elderly."
"We should make a rule that the international community needs to put stronger peer pressure on african governments to stop people from practicing excision."


As a reporter, you don't make the rules, but you can say "We should make a rule" just by pointing out the abuse, injustice and ugly of the world.

Memories

I was just reading my earlier posts on this blog... The first one was in September 2008, and I said this:

"And now I begin a new project that will probably be forgotten in a month's time, due to my short attention span, but I promise I will try."



Well, so far so good, and I wrote more on here this year than ever before. This is fun :)

Favorite part of Dancesport

Aside from Kim Acerson's dress...

Wow is all I can say. It's a dream. Designed by Jaime Gines... And I still can't get over it.

Anyway, my favorite part was making the Amateur Ballroom semi-final! Gah!

I squealed like a schoolgirl when I saw our number up there, and Andrew and I are still giddy today just thinking about it. It was amazing. And I'm very happy with how we danced last night, it felt great. According to the marks from the semifinal, we were couple # 10, out of 13 couples. Which means we didn't just squeeze in by the skin of our teeth, we were there fair and square! And we actually got a few marks from the semi too. (Ok, just five... but hey, I thought we wouldn't get a single one!)

Here are just a few pictures of the momentous occasion :)

Tango face

I put up way too many pictures on Facebook if you care to see more... Andrew's dad took all of these--aren't they great!? Thanks for coming to support us, we love having our cheering squad :)

Also, I said we haven't practiced nearly enough lately, but I though of something. Andrew's been training really hard for Smooth (which he did very well in) and I've been doing team and working in technique classes, so I think in a sense all of that came together and helped our partnership out a lot. It helps to diversify.

Andrew in Smooth with Jen

Also, doing five dances in a row is death. I need to really start running...

More videos on my Youtube channel if you're interested.

Lessons learned this weekend at Dancesport

Competition always has a little element of random.

Lots of people have terrible taste in dresses... I'm sorry, but heavy fabrics like velour do not belong on a standard dress (although the exception I've seen to that rule is Ashley's latin dress--it looks really nice. But that's also a very lightweight velour) Also, lime green looks good on almost nobody, so let's just ban that right now. I could understand having a bad dress because you can't afford a nice one or something like that (I have been in that sort of situation), but we're talking about girls that ship them in and spend hundreds of dollars to get theses dresses specially made for them... yikes.

It's never impossible to make it.

Andrew and I make a good dancing couple :) Three different coaches told us this week we looked together, which really makes me feel good. When we first got married I thought we could never dance together because of the height difference. So yay for us :)

Black seems to really be back in full force right now.

It's not a good idea to start practicing two weeks before a major comp. We danced below our potential, and is was evident in the results. It gives me courage too though, because if we made a pre-champ semi-final like that, I think we could do really well if we put in more time and effort. And I plan on putting more work into it now.

People get really anal if you dare stand to take pictures in the corner designated for photographers.

The high bun is in. Although I still hate the pointy unicorn bun, there are some nice softer ones that look very elegant. I almost did that myself this year, but my hair's a bit short in the back, it would've been kind of tricky. Plus I really like what Becky did--I'm a bit of classical person myself.

Hard work pays off. Most of the time. The couples that worked hard got good results that matched their input.

It's easier to lose to people that are friends/that you know a little about. If I talk to people in the warm-up/line-up area/dressing room, it feels more friendly than if you go into it with a very competitive attitude. I'm getting much better at having a positive attitude in competition too--I've worked very hard on not being bitter, and so far so good. It's OK to get disappointed, but I feel more calm about it and I get over it much faster now.

I'm still struggling with calling Standard dance "Ballroom". It's gonna take a while...

Dancesport...

Nails: check
Tan: check
Dress:

 
check.

And just wait till I show you my awesome hair! (That I had to wake up at 5:30 am to get done...)

Tadaam!

Hair by Becky Lindstone--she did a great job in case you're interested ladies!

Jackpot!

Turns out you can watch full episodes of Gilmore Girls online!

You're welcome :)

I'm thinking Gilmore girls sounds really good right now.

Bye bye yucky dishes

Have you gotten your dishes out of the dishwasher looking chalky/filmy/overall yucky? Well you're not going crazy: the Utah legislature passed a law recently prohibiting the use of phosphates in large quantities--that was essentially the main ingredient to make your dishes look nice and shiny...

But there are solutions! Read more here:
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=172&sid=12598586
http://www.freshnestdesign.com/2010/10/20/sick-of-filmy-dishes/
http://melissaesplin.com/home/2010/11/farewell-phosphates-hello-citric-acid/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/science/earth/19clean.html

I'll try some of these out and let you know how it goes.

The great battle

Every year, I have this dilemma:

When may I start listening to Christmas music?

It's not like there's a Christmas-music enforcement task force out there or something, but... I don't know, I feel slightly guilty, or maybe silly, listening to Christmas music too early. Maybe I'm worried I'll ruin it and get sick of it by actual Christmas day, but then again... do you ever get tired of Christmas music?

I know Andrew lives a stringent "no-Christmas-music-before-Thanksgiving" rule, so I've obliged as far as playing it in the apartment until then. But isn't forbidding Christmas music such a Scrooge-esque thing to do?And in my mind, Thanksgiving is kind of a preparation to Christmas anyway--it's all in the spirit of the holidays!

Besides, pretty much half (if not more) of the music on my i-pod is Christmas music... it's not my fault it just pops up every time I put it on shuffle... I guess I'll just have to stop skipping the tracks from now on :)

UPDATE: it just started snowing. I'll take that as a sign.

HILARIOUS

More sunshine

I got to catch up with a close friend yesterday, a friend I hadn't seen in a while. Her family was going through some pretty crazy times, but it was still a great reunion. We chatted about different things, remembered our crazy fun FLSR lives together, and she said among other things she knew we would always be friends. And of course we will! You know how I know that? We hadn't really seen each other in months, but it was like we had never been apart. We just picked back up right where we had started.
That's the way I remember friendship being as a kid. You both knew that it was pretty much outside of your control how often you saw each other anyway--after all, your parents controlled your sole method of transportation--so when you met again, there was never a sense of guilt for not having met up earlier, no reproaches for not writing or calling up. (Kids don't really talk on the phone, unless you were my little sister who strapped the phone to her head with a headband so she could talk and walk for hours).
When you grow up though (since I'm an expert on being grown up), it's your fault when you don't see people as much as you like, even if you are terribly busy. You can only blame yourself for not calling, or writing, or texting.... and so you feel like you have no real excuse even if life is insane.
But a real friend doesn't bother to make you feel bad about it. A real friend doesn't guilt trip you or try to put any sort of blame on you: they just know, you know? And boy, is it good to have a friend that isn't judging you, 'cause let me tell you we all spend enough time judging ourselves already.

Sunshine

It was raining at our home and there was a small break through the clouds:

Oh, and I put some sunshine in my hair too :)

a.k.a. highlights and some lowlights

Ha ignore my face. I like the color though :)

Molinos de viento criminales!

He he he he.... So many high school Spanish memories...

This is where I got it

Hello there

I'm beginning to think it's silly for a girl to have two blogs... :)

So I'm combining this one, in which I've been posting only about crafts, sewing and other creative endeavors, with my original one. If you're still around and reading this, I'd love it if you'd follow me over there! (hint hint)

Thanks for reading, I love getting your comments.

Changes

I'm beginning to think it's a bit silly to have two blogs... who needs two blogs? I'd been keeping the one for just crafting/sewing/other creative ventures, but it's a part of my "normal" life too so I think from now on I'll just post it all over here as well. Voilà.

Sometimes

Sometimes God speaks loudest by not saying anything at all.

Sometimes He doesn't need to say a thing because you already know the answer.

Sometimes He lets others do the talking. Most of the time actually.

And sometimes, we're too busy blabbering to hear.

Thank you Pottery Barn

For giving me this fantastic idea :)

I really hope I am pregnant on halloween one year...

So that I can make this...

 

How adorable is that?!