Kodachrome

When my mom, Kellie and Hannah came up last week we had fun trying on beautiful dresses. In all the pictures Kellie posed so cute. I, on the other hand, do not have her gift of posing and being photogenic. Here are some shots of the wedding dresses I did NOT buy (not that Adam reads my blog, but I have to be very protective of the pictures of my real dress!) Needless to say, Shillawna, you have your work cut out for you!! :) On a side note: I had no idea there were this many beautiful modest wedding dresses!! Way to go dress designers!!


Okay, so this one would have needed sleeves added, but its beautiful. I was having a hard time figuring out what to do with my hands. . .




Apparently at my wedding I might need to direct a choir. Here I am practicing I think.




I LOVED this dress. I think it would be my dress except it cost 3 times more than I wanted to pay. Sad day.




Oh my gosh, what is with this smile. Its more scary than it is friendly.




I think the best way to show off a wedding dress is with your hands on your hips. At least, I did before I saw all these pictures!




This is one of my other favorite poses, though not quite as popular as hands on hips.




I will not be wearing a veil on my wedding day, but they stuck one on me anyway. Its just sitting there on top of my head, its not connected to anything. I'd like to think this is why I'm making that face.




Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep. . .




Hands on hips.




Half smile. Awful really.




And the final hands on hips pose (that I posted. There are lots more)




This looks like a confused person.

Band of Gold

We recently had the chance to go up to Idaho and see our great friends Tiffanie and James get married in the Idaho Falls Temple. I guess we just waited outside, but it was still really awesome to get to share this day with them. This may be strange, but for me it was a day filled with many different smells, so I will document the day with all the different scents we experienced.

1. The shower in the Pinecrest Inn smelled very strongly of sulfur. I almost couldn't finish shaving my legs, but I held my breath and made it through!

2. Next for us was a stop to Reed's Dairy for some famous chocolate milk (made with potato flakes!) The smell there was the farm-ish smell of cows. Would this day be full of insulting smells??

3. Armed with our milk and some cheap doughnuts we headed to the temple to wait out side to see the beautiful bride and groom. As Adam walked in front of me I could smell his wonderful cologne. MMMMmmmmmm.

4. Soon it was off to Blackfoot to finish setting up for the luncheon. We walked into the Stake Center and I realized it doesn't matter where you are, an LDS Stake Center is always going to smell like an LDS Stake Center. Why is that?

5. In between the luncheon and reception we had 3 hours to kill. One of the activities we decided to do was bowling at the alley right next to the church. Just like the Stake Center, the bowling alley had the same smell you get in almost all bowling alleys! We had a fun time and I was totally oblivious to the truckers checking me out. Adam wasn't. :)

6. After staying at the reception for almost an hour we were headed back home. The last distinguishable smell of the evening was the smell of cut grass as we drove through farm after farm making our way back to Utah and Salt Lake.

Thanks to Tiffanie and James and their family for a wonderful day and so many great ideas for my own wedding!

I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight

Probably you all wonder what I've been doing this past couple of months. . . Who am I kidding? Probably not! But here it is anyway:

1. Zion's Canyon with the Thomas family for four days. This included some walks, hikes and a 20 mile bike ride that kicked my trash.

2. A couple days of rest which I should have used to pack my apartment.

3. A three day conference at BYU where I learned the latest about Fashion and Interior Design requirements in the state of Utah and took a full day cooking course from Chef John Johnson (who said I had amazing eyes but criticized my choice in footwear)

4. Left straight from that conference (picked Adam up in a Wal Mart parking lot first) and drove all the way to Palm Desert. Arrived at about 2am California time. We had a great time in Palm Desert with my family. We hiked, we went to the temple, we went to a water park and of course we golfed!

5. Leaving Palm Desert we drove to my home town of Lancaster. We went bowling on Saturday, church on Sunday and Six Flags Magic Mountain on Monday. We drove back to Salt Lake with Kellie on Tuesday.

6. Adam and I drove to Rexburg and back in one day to take Kellie back to her apartment.

7. I moved in four days from my apartment to my friend Jacquelynn's basement.

8. I picked out my ring! Its so awesome.

And that about brings us up to date on my summer so far. Why do I feel like its going WAY TO FAST???

Could it be I'm Falling in Love

I am falling in love!!! With my basil plants! :) For my birthday my friend Sam bought me 4 new potted herbs. Two types of basil, oregano and chives. So I trimmed my plants yesterday because I hear this helps them grow. Really I'm just happy I haven't killed them! So I had some chives (which are growing beautifully since I trimmed them a week ago) and my sweet basil and Thai basil that I needed to use or store. I froze my chives but wanted to use the basil. So I made a little pasta that was SO good. So here it is if you are feeling like some yummy basil goodness.

(Serves 2-3)

4 cloves garlic, chopped fine
Olive oil, enough to coat garlic in the pan but not so much you have oily pasta
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Red pepper flakes, to taste (or leave out if you prefer)
Fresh basil, about 10 leaves
Fresh feta, to taste

So fry up chopped garlic in olive oil in a small or medium sauce pan. Add tomatoes, salt, pepper and pepper flakes. Let simmer for about 5 minutes. Toss on penne or your favorite pasta. Add chopped fresh basil and feta.

When I made this last night, I added quite a bit of the feta. I love it. But it kind of detracted from the flavor of the basil, so next time I would use less. If you don't like feta you can use parmesan.

Now that I think about it, why didn't I also add some of the fresh oregano??? :)

Kind of a Drag

I felt bad for just breaking down last night. I just felt I was to a point where I couldn't live like this any more. My house was a mess, my car was dirty, my bedroom was filled with dirty clothes, my classroom was trashed and I felt so sleep deprived. I felt like I was working all day long and never finding time to get my chores done (it doesn't help that I've had full Saturdays with no time to clean for the past three weeks now) With no clean serene area to escape to its easy to have an emotional break down. So today I just took some time to clean off my desk here at work. It was so cluttered it was almost imaginable. Just that small thing has made all the difference! Now I have a clean workspace, I can get my work done quickly, I can be back at home sooner and I can get started on my disaster of a living area. Life is really not that bad. :)

Hair

Sometimes I feel like its two steps forward, one step back with my hair. An awesome hair cut can grow out to be annoying and a sub-par hair cut can grow out to be awesome. Now I don't mean to imply that any of my wonderful hair dressers have ever given me a bad hair cut. From California to Las Vegas, from Draper to Sugar House, all of the well trained hair dressers I have entrusted with my tresses have done a wonderful job giving me what I wanted. But maybe what thought I wanted wasn't so great after all. Confused?

I just saw an old picture of me. I want my long hair back!!

Solitary Man

So about a month ago, probably around General Conference, we had quite a bit of rain. I noticed that some ducks from the pond at my apartment complex had taken to swimming in the puddle behind my car. Even after the rain stopped these two ducks were always near my apartment. One day I realized that they were in love. One was a beautiful male and one was a plain smaller female. (Side note: How glad I am to be human where the woman gets to be the pretty one!!) My theory is that they were so in love they just wanted to spend some time alone from the rest of the group. Every day we would see them and so Adam named them, Harry and Sue, two ducks in love. One day I was driving and I saw that a duck had been hit by a car and was on the side of the road. There are so many ducks that live in the pond by my apartment. I didn't even think that it could have been one of my ducks. The next day I saw Harry. Without Sue. Ever since I saw that duck on the side of the road Harry has been alone. So now I know it was Sue. Harry still hangs around my place and Adam and I say hi when we see him. Its just such a heart break to see him lose his true love.

This is not actually a picture of Harry, but it looks a lot like him.