long time...

So, I forget to make time for things like keeping up with my own life, but I worked uber hard today so I guess I deserve it...

I'll have to just post a few days at a time.

I was pretty excited to finish this project. It turned out way cool. I didn't stay up late or anything to finish it...

My little brother got his call for the mish! I was so excited to drive home and listen to him open it, but the weather was pretty grim. My dad un-invited everyone because it would have taken us days to get there. He gave me the news on the phone that he's headed to Brazil!


I spent love day working...and actually, it was probably the most I have ever loved work. It was a really fun night and I walked away with happy pockets.


Not to worry, though I got to work last night, I got to work tonight today too. Sometimes I can't get enough of the place... Wa-ha-ha.

13 Feb

It's a bit out of order but I just finished this art project late last night. I was pretty excited to turn it in. It took me back to lots of memories from this last summer.

Crazy Days

So this is my fish "Puppy." He's such a good dog! Today when I came home from church, he was so excited to see me. Just like any ordinary dog, he was wagging his tail and could only think about food. This is us just bonding a little bit.


I went home to celebrate Mikey's 11th birthday and it was so good to see everyone! As Craig and Kelley were leaving, Craig had his case of cold cereal that mom bought and slipped on the ice. We all gasped and wondered out loud to see if he was ok...all except for McKay - as he saw the crushed cereal boxes, he couldn't help but blurt out, "My cereal!! Mom, what about my cereal??" Craig jumped right back with, "Poor nana...poor nana!? What about poor father?"

I drove back home and as I was climbing out into my icy parking lot, thought about Craig...just as I took my first step with this fat bag of clean laundry, I slipped and just about fell; however, the laundry caught my fall before it could happen. Sweet!



I took Jana to school this morning and as I was driving home, there was an exceptionally good song on the radio. I couldn't just go home and leave the song dangling... so I went to the store. It's surprising how many people are not at the store on an early Friday morning. I got these Pistachios. The box was so funny and jump started my day for lots of good laughs.
This was also on Friday I was taking some pictures but my camera is on the fritz. Thanks to my good morning, I only thought it was so funny.



I had a work meeting (at 10 pm...) and won a contest I didn't know I was in. They gave me this awesome prize of laffy taffy. It was probably the best work meeting we've ever had. We played pictionary -boys against girls- my sketch was less than easy to interpret but luckily there are two other interior designers that work there and could easily tell what it was.



So, it's really cold in Logan. I've been craving a good pair of solid, comfy sweatpants. (high ambitions!) I tried on every pair at the bookstore and found just the pair. I couldn't justify buying them, so walked away. The next day, after I talked myself into it, I went back to buy them - but they were gone! I went back for the next week or two until more arrived. The moral of the story...it's worth it to be warm.
P.S. That's my homemade ottoman I'm sitting on. Plenty of blood and sweat (and a few tears) went in to it. (I staple gunned through my finger tip while I was stapling almost the last part) It's worth it though. I'm a fan.



So, did I mention? It's really cold in Logan... My hair was only a smidge wet when I left the house but soon after, It was frozen...



I dropped off my computer to get formatted and re-worked. This is me with the empty case, and do I look worried? I've never had that done before so I didn't know what to expect, but I sure learned a lot at the computer help desk. (They give out fortune cookies. Mine said - "Mac users swear by their computers, PC users swear at their computers"...)(Not that I usually do, but I sure felt like swearing at mine when I opened it up and the desktop was all out of order. Eeek.)

Tag, I'm it!

Hey ya’ll, I have been tagged by my Sister-in-law.

A: The rules of the game are posted at the beginning. B: Each player answers the questions about themselves. C: At the end of the post, the player then tags 3 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

10 years ago today...

I was 12 years old and thought I was twenty. I was living in Pleasant View and had just gotten into young womens'. I was so excited! I was in 6th grade, rockin' it with my two teachers, Mr. Moore and Mrs. Kelley. I loved art and math and loved being a lefty. My favorite were the guy friends I had in school. (it's always been that way) We all thought we were so funny. That year, we went to girls' camp at Lake Powell. That's my first (and only) time I went there; I learned to water ski and wake board. Life was probably ultra-awkward back then

5 things on my to-do list today:

- Re-install all the programs back onto my computer
- Hit up some classes at Uni
- Go to the gym
- Work meeting at 10 pm
- Get hopping designing my 90,000 sq/ft building

I enjoy:

Traveling! I didn't know it till I started going places. I actually don't mind the plane ride much anymore. I started small by going to Chicago with a group of kids from my major. I moved to Arizona for a summer and the next summer, I moved to England. While there, I got to visit Paris, Venice, Rome, Sienna and Florence. It was amazing and now I have the bug. I also love graduating (wa-ha) and will be going somewhere sweet as soon as I graduate for the last time.

I also love interior design and architecture. Put me inside an awesome building and I don't know whether to catch my breath, take a picture or start sketching first. I love pouring through books of fabulous buildings and well-planned interiors.

What would I do if I were suddenly a billionaire?

Get rid of my student loans. Help out M&D, C&K, K&B... Buy a canon elph, a sweet new laptop and a little toyota matrix. I'd take my mom (and family) to Nauvoo, my dad to Germany, Jana to Qatar, London and Oz, plan a fab trip for the rest of the family, see what Alaska's like. Put dollars in peoples' mailboxes, tip waiters/waitresses with Benjamins. I'd start working somewhere sweet in the US and fly home lots. I'd invest the rest but not forget to take lots of time to see the world.

3 of my bad habits:

- Procrastinating my projects. They are so hefty that I usually don't have the drive, initially, to start them.

- Forgetting peoples' names. I think I trust too much in myself and my remembering skills and don't pay enough attention when I first someone. It drives me crazy when I run into them and even think I might know their name but am not 100% so I usually just give them a, "hey you!" with lots of gusto.

- Setting down one thing. I can be over-the-top about cleaning and organizing but if I so much as set an envelope on my desk, all hope is soon lost.

5 places I have lived:

- London, England
- Tempe, Arizona
- Logan, Utah
- Pleasant View, Utah
- Roy, Utah

5 jobs I have had:

- Waitress at Cafe Sabor

- Intern position at Kelly Hoppen Interiors

- T.A. for AutoCad/Architectural Desktop and Viz

- Jones Shirts & Signs - I worked there for 5 or 6 years and learned tons about graphic design, screen printing, embroidery and so much more. I also got absorbed as another daughter of my boss.

-In-home health care assistant. I watched an awesome lady named Lula. She had Alzheimer's and dementia but was such a blast. She was always in a good mood and cracking jokes to me. She had this trademark laugh that my brothers still try to replicate.

5 things people don't know about me:

- There's a lot more to me than you'd know. I love to dress up as well as chill in my scrubs. I actually enjoy running and working out. Lots of people don't... I guess I do. And I really like vegetables. I'm training myself to like fish lately. I used to gag even from just thinking about eating fish, but it's growing on me.

- I actually know a few things about computers. I can draft a floor plan like a champ. I can also build up the spaces in 3D without trying very hard and then paint up all kinds of views of what the space would look like in real life. I guess I'm fluent (as Steve would put it) in AutoCad as well as Photoshop, Illustrator...

- I love making up recipes. Pretend I actually had time to cook very often, I'd love to craft some things up. Though it sounds like I'm throwing random ingredients in, I also have a method my madness.

- I'm always on a 'kick' of something. Sometimes it's a word, "golden" - "sweet city" - "basically" (in my favorite Vietnamese accent.) Accents; Jana and I are always stuck in either a Mexican or British accent. I guess it keeps life on the light side. Lately I've been on a green kick, a chocolate molten-lava muffin kick, and hoodie kick.

- I love to stay up late and talk. Some of my favorite memories are with my family, all just sitting around the living room or kitchen (someone on the counter, on a flour bucket, barstool, on the tile, standing...) and just spending time together.

Well, that's all about me. Who knows if you learned anything.

I tag - Jana, Carly and Daniel.

winter time

...this is one of my new good friends. We all call it the silver bible. I've been spending a lot of time with it lately - working on my 90k sq/ft project. My other pal - the tape measurer.



The newest of fashions in my neck of the woods is what I like to call the blanket skirt. Jana and I always wear one. Mostly because our desks are right next to the windows and we try to work without going numb.


Don't worry, I only probably took this while I was driving. This shot is to commemorate that despite rain/snow, etc. we all still go to work, school, church no matter what. Only in Utah.


We went to our ward ski night and didn't even ski. eek! It was a pretty cold and snowy night so we opted out. One guy told us, "you can't ski without snow pants." That's when I told him, "that's why we didn't bring any." That's Kyle, Jana, Jack and me.


We ventured out to the basketball game! (This is a once-in-a-semester type event.) As you can tell, we had a good time. (That's a USU towel around my head...wa-hoo.)



Sometimes Sunday's hit pretty hard and all you can do is...sleep. Though we had 6 or 8 inches of new snow from the night before and about 5 new inches between the beginning and end of church, we still went to church. My parents' church was canceled due to the fact that they live at the top of a crazy hill and were working on 2 feet of fresh snow before the meetings were to start.

Here we go again

So it looks like I was being really tough by donating blood but it was a pretty crazy experience this time around. I had run 6 miles earlier that day and was most likely pretty dehydrated because my body didn't like the fact that I was taking away 11% of its blood. I nearly passed out a couple of times and it made me sick. Oh well, I get tougher each time I donate.




The most exciting part of this day was that it was so-o-o cold. You couldn't hardly talk to anyone because all the steam would get in the way. (Not that you can see it in the picture, but it was there.) My whole face was always frozen.



The best part of today was that I stumbled upon ten lucky days! Other than that, it was just cold.



So the second I got to school, I realized that I had forgotten the one thing I needed in order to work on my fat floor plan. It was all ok though because I had on my killer boots, I avoided the sidewalk and took the alternate route home through the snow.



These flowers are from my grandma's funeral. They lasted almost a month and were really pretty. The daisies she 'gave' me are still kickin' it.




I had to buy this killer-huge roll of brown paper for a package I sent to ol' London. Conveniently, I also had some gift wrapping to do so I made the most of both worlds and wrapped up my sister's b-day gift like so --


Yes, that's a lei! It was our friend's birthday and she's not the type to particularly enjoy winter - so we threw her a luau. We hung up all kinds of streamers, sea horses, shells, a palm tree and pineapple... Ate some smoothies and Hawaiian haystacks.




So this was a pretty eventful day. It was all kinds of crazy at work but then I got home and took my clean laundry out of the car to fold and stash. Come to find out, those jeans I had put in the dryer...weren't quite as dry as everything else. They were pretty solid.




I got to go out with some of my favorite buddies from high school. It's a once a month thing that we've been trying to keep up on and have actually been pretty good about it. We went to Callaways - really good, authentic Italian food.



The snow is cold! Yikes for living in Logan. If you can't tell I have on my reg. rags but I also have on a hoodie, scarf, coat, etc.



Jana and I took a field trip to Salt Lake, mostly for a birthday bash for my friend Jonathan, but also to hit up the shops. We made it to the Gateway and stumbled upon C.G. Sparks. (It's an awesome furniture store (which was closed) whose owner (who was on his way home from India (which is where they get a fat chunk of their inventory)) we met at one of our design seminars) (The other owner was there and was so happy to see us!) We also stopped for some quick grub after the party and ran into Elase Medical Center (which is the real version of a project we worked on at school.) I left my camera at home, so the best I could do was my camera phone.



Jana and I were livin' up the luau theme (which is still up in our kitchen) with a couple of fruit smoothies (yes, in mason jars) (they're gonna be famous one day.)



Sometimes I practice my guitar. I'm going to be good at it one day -- maybe not while I'm still in school but when I graduate, maybe I'll have time for some lessons.



Sometimes, in Logan... it snows!
(this was far less than the remains of a snow storm from about a 3-minute walk)

winter

...at least photoshop heals a few of the winter blues

Outside our design studio. Despite the chill in the air, the snow was beautiful.


I got some new pumps for my grandma's funeral. As a tribute, I decided to go for a 50's look.


Sportin' the polka dots and hot lipstick of the 50's. It was neat to dress like my grandma would have. I felt really connected to her during the funeral.


Also from my grandma's era were...koolats! I realized that my cut off scrubs highly resembled them.

The pearly whites got some attention at the dentist. I love the dentist!