Pumpkins!

Michelle & Brian invited us over for dinner and pumpkin carving this past Sunday. Or course Michelle made her annual apple pie which everyone loved as usual. Here are our masterpeices from the night.

My pumpkin took forever and I was totally making it up as I went along. I think it turned out pretty cool. My mom says it's evil because it's scary. I guess my pumpkin is going to Hell.


Here is Steven's pumpkin. It's Sonic!!! He's such an engineer. He drew out a plan, copied it to the pumpkin, and then maticulously scraped & carved it to perfection. I guess that's why he's going into Electrical Engineering.


I wish I got a better phot of MIchelle's. Hers had freckles, and her lid was covered in dots. Very cool.


Brian's as a spooky bat. I'd say that's pretty dang good for free hand and no pattern.


Mine & Steven's pumpkins. We are two cups of coolness.

Photoshoot Preview & Zombieland

Last week I did my first ever photoshoot with Megan & her family. I've been dying (literally, but I'll get to that) to finsih editing them, but managed to do a few the day of. These two were my favorites, so I thought I'd share.

Cute family huh? I'll post the rest of the shoot sometime this week. What do ya'll think?


For the past six days I've had a virus of sorts. A very painful lump on the outside of my neck, neck & back muscles killing me, dizzy, nauseated, and tired beyond belief. I think I've slept a good 72 hours the past four days. I went to my doc, he said it was a virus, and sent me home. Lot of good that did.

So, since Tuesday I've been a zombie in bed. Only moving to drink water & take pain pills. I've memorized my walls & ceiling, found every lump on mattress & named each of them, and made a list of everything I wish I could be doing. Bored a little? YES. Though Steven brought over his gameboy advance for me for some entertainment. That's been keeping me occupied. Yet manifesting once again how terrible I am at EVERY game he introduces me to. I seem to be able to handle mario kart though. I don't feel like a complete idiot when I play it, so I guess that means I'm somewhat good?

Today I woke up feeling 80% better with the lingering headache finally gone. I'm dying of thirst though. Kinda weird. And still tired, even after 12 hours of sleep.

In other news, my mom is going to put up the Christmas tree. TODAY. Insane much?
I'm trying to convince her to wait at least a couple days before thanksgiving, but I don't think I'm getting the message across. She says she can put fall leaves on it for thanksgiving. A "thanksgiving tree" is what she called it.

If she can put the tree up in October, I can hibernate in bed until Thanksgiving. See you then...

Life = Good

Life as of late has been great. Maddening at times, but the good outweighs the bad, I think. The bad being life's general problems of money, family, PARENTS(should have stuck that one in first place), school stress, migraines(surprise, surprise), and more, but I won't bore you with a list. (ha, too late)

Now, the GOOD has been GOOD. (You know it's good with me when it's my favorite color & bolded :) )

Orchestra has started up again at school and I'm loving being able to play decent music again. We had our first concert last week and it went pretty dang good. For the violas anyway :) The Magna orchestra started as well. Ms. Eyre (Yes, the one from Granite youth people!)is the director, and although the music is a tad (ok, a TON) easy, I love her conducting. She makes it fun and is superb at interpreting music.

And now to the real reason life has been good.

I'm not one of those people who flaunts their joy to the world. For example, facebook people going mushy/disgusting for the general public to endure:

"I have the best husband/wife/sister/dog (etc.) in the world!!! They are amazing and every human in the universe should be jealous of me!!!!"

I can see someone posting this, maybe once. But on a daily frickin' basis?!?
WE GET THE POINT!! We know you love them, we know you are utterly and disgustingly happy, WE KNOW!! You've posted it 10 times today!

Sheesh. Ok, now to the point of my rant..............ah yes, the reason life has been good. (Sorry, when I get going on a rant, I get going)

His name is Steven. Yes, I'm going against everything I believe in the posting of my joy flaunting, but I reason:

1. This is MY blog, I blog about whatever the heck I want
2. You all come here and read it voluntarily, so you can leave if it's too much for ya (but you won't because you love me)
3. This will not be forcibly posted on the feeds of 200 of my facebook friends. Just my little ol' blog

So yes, I have an (here goes) amazing, generous, genius, gorgeous, hilarious, awesome, loving, boyfriend named Steven. And THAT is why life is good. And yes, you should all be jealous :D We've been together closer to 2 months, and I've loved every minute of it. Why did no one tell me having a boyfriend is so worth while? I would have gone man huntin' a lot earlier in life.

There, I've flaunted my joy, you can all go back to your normal lives now.

Speaking of normal lives. Mine is becoming a procrastination train. For example, take photo #1. These are the quizzes I need to take for my A + certification class. Yes, the BOLDED ones. Behind? yes I am, thank you. Thank heavens it's an online class!

Why I took an actual picture of my screen, I'm still trying to figure out. Print screen would have been 100 times faster in this situation. That's what I get for blogging at 5am I suppose.

Photo #2 We have edible pearl dust with accompanying food specific paint brush. I originally bought these little glories to make cookies for a friend's anniversary & another friend's birthday. But I hopped on the train once again and fell behind. I'm still going to make them though. How cool is edible pearl dust?

Photo #3 Here is the steering wheel for the procrastination train. This beauty is on lend from Steven in attemps to have me learned in the ways of the video game, his favorite hobby (which I couldn't possibly be worse at). This has a USB connection, so I can play the games on an emulator on my computer. If you ever want to know what an addiction feels like without going the way of drugs, just pick up this sucker, play for an hour and you'll find out.


This is my attempt at drinking more water to be healthier and lower my blood pressure (Oh, I have high blood pressure by the way) And I've read in several places that I don't have to give up the salt(my one true love) entirely if I am drinking more water to keep my body from retaining it. I chose an insulated mug because I love water, but I really love COLD water. So no, I'm not switching to coffee all day long, it's water people. And it's pink. Need I say more.


These two were my dinner dilema. (I take random pictures, I know) I thought upon grabbing the bag, that these were english muffins, which I love. Turns out, they are blueberry bagels. Much sweeter than an english muffin. Bleh. But I hadn't eaten for about 9 hours and needed something. I grabbed the cream cheese from the fridge, opened it, and there was a fuzzy little animal inside. *chucks in garbage*. I was stuck with overly sweet strawberry cream cheese. Upon returning to the fridge, I found a second unopened plain cream cheese and couldn't just leave it, so I spread it on the top part of the bagel. After eating the plain, I couldn't bring myself to eat the strawberry. You just can't have sweet after salty. It breaks all the rules. So, the puppies got a treat tonight.


You see the salt problem.

Swiss Days & Farmer's Market

I always forget to put pictures on here after I've posted them on facebook. I wish I could upload to both with the click of a button. But alas, no one has created such a convenient thing.

A couple weeks ago My mom, Michelle, Miles, Rachel and I went to the farmers market downtown. Miles got lots of exercise and we saw lots of cool things at each booth.



We stopped by Waffles & Frites, a belgium waffle & fries shop, and afterwards walked around downtown. Miles liked the pig :)



Tony Caputo's was conveniently across the street so we made a quick stop there as well. It's very similar to Granato's (our favorite italian sandwhich/deli shop) but on a larger (and more expensive) scale.



They had some interesting finds I thought worthy of posting.



Can you say aye carumba? Look at that price folks. Truffles better taste AMAZING for that price.



Later in the month we went to Swiss Days. We mostly go for the "craft" ideas, so I didn't take many pictures. On the drive home we spotted this house and stopped for a picture. It's nestled on a beautiful country road, out in the middle of nowhere. And check out the roof shingles!



I LOVED the gate in front. It was like a painting I tell you. I wish I knew a good mason who could build this for me. LOVE LOVE LVOE it. It would be perfect for my garden.



The one "idea" from swiss days I thought I'd post. So naughty, yet hilarious!



Toby exemplifying how I felt after both of these outings. This is one of his sleeping spots. Pillow and all. So spoiled.

Utah State Fair 2009

This year Mom, me, Rachel, Michelle & Miles went to the state fair together. It was a stinking hot day, but we enjoyed it anyway :)

The first attraction of the day welcomed us no later than the moment we parked the car. What kind of twisted person gives the handicapped people a giant puddle for their parking? Are they trying to make them MORE handicapped by having them slip and slide around in the mud? We just thought it was a funny.


Next stop, HORTICULTURE! My favorite! I love seeing the perfect flowers and vegetables.


Rachel and her cynical smile. This is what I get when I tell her to say cheese.


Dahlia's! So perfect!


A rose is a rose..


We saw the alligator show, if you can call it that. The handler did more moving around than the gator. Plus it was a dinky gator. Fight a full grown one, and I'll be impressed :)


"Mmm, I smell man flesh!!"


I call this one, "E.T. phone home"


We brought our lunch in with us, and this guy could smell it. Miles kept watch though.




And what trip to the fair would be complete without seeing the butter sculptures! mmm, butter....

The last of the garden

My garden has seen better days. With freezing temps the past weeks, the garden is on it's way out. I got a couple more pictures of flowers and one of the garden.


Here is the garden in full bloom. The morning glories(the good ones) kind of exploded this year and took over the whole fence. We had countless bowls of cherry tomatoes, beets, cucumbers and flowers like crazy.


This was a hybrid cosmo that mutated with some white stripes. Thought it was cool.


Until next year, my gardening days are done! Now, who will help me pull it all out...........

Along came a spider, and sat down beside her.

We found this spider outside our house building a very large round web from the house to a tree.


And I mean large as in, trying-to-catch-a-toddler-for-lunch, large. It was about the size of a quarter.


I found out it is a Jewel Spider, sometimes called a cat spider because it's belly looks like a cat's face. Seeing how I didn't pick it up and examine the belly (ha, right.) I just thought it looked like a crab. It's technical name is "Araneus Gemmoides" an orb weaving spider. If you really want the creeps, go to the identifying website for some freaky spider pictures.


You can kind of see it's web in this one. It was quite large and went from the house to a tree with a distance of about 2 feet. Probably the largest web I've eve seen.

Hope the pictures weren't too gross, I hate spiders myself, but these were just too cool not to share :)