Biting in the middle of the night

My room mate, Cami, recently pulled me into our room in order to show me some creepy crawlies on her bed. I have never had bed bugs before and I'm not sure if they have infested my half of the room yet, but I know that once upon a time Juan had them. Poor Juan. He had little red buggies crawling all over the place and they didn't even pay their half the of the rent. His landlords changed the mattresses, but since they didn't actually spray everything then there were still creepies crawling inconspicuously all over the place.

This reoccurring event makes me think on the topic of cohabitation in general. The art of living with others. I am in a microbiology class right now and we talk endless of microorganisms which are everywhere, but we can't see them. I once had a friend like that, his name was Carlos and he would sleep on everyone's couch, except he was quit visible and audible.

Generally speaking, I enjoy living with others. I come from a family of nine children (there have since been additions, but I haven't ever lived with them, so for the purposes of emphasizing my point, we won't discuss them). I remember growing up and never being alone. Even if there weren't any siblings around (a rare occurrence) there were neighborhood children or friends roaming about. I never ran out of playmates and I never avoided being constantly teased. I had a friend who was an only child and I never understood what that would be like. If you didn't have siblings you would actually have to make an effort to make friends.

We were also a very touchy lot, which is good, because I think that is how I feel love. According to the "Languages of Love" I receive love through touch and time. So my family was perfect for me, we gave massages, we slept together, even just sitting around on the couch we were usually touching. This is why I one day want to have children and lots of them. I miss having my family around and having people to hold all the time.

Cohabitation, count me in.

Edible Flowers

While I was in my floral design class, I watched my teacher put together an arrangement with flowers, floral foam, and food. I was really excited to try this on my own, however, I don't have many occasions that would really call for it. So as soon as I saw veggie tray sign ups for my work party, I jumped on the idea and began planning. And the result was:

This piece of art required very little work and only:

• one head of red cabbage
• serving platter (I borrowed a nice porcelain one from my sister, chances are you wont be seeing it, so you don't have to worry too much about appearance)
  
• dip dish (I used a neat brown glass bowl I found in my house)
  
• various chopped vegetables/fruit of your choosing
• flowers (I cut some from the BYU gardens and after washing them in warm water I refrigerated them up until I arranged them. This helps for freshness and to kill any small bugs)

Once you have everything, tear off cabbage leaves and try to keep them intact as much as possible as these will be the basis of your veggie holders and to help separate flowers from the food itself. Next place your dip bowl, leaves, and vegetables onto the tray in whatever arrangement you like. Finally, cut the stems on your flowers and arrange them between cabbage and plate. Voila, you have a masterpiece.

Garden Fresh

In my floral design class we talked a little bit about preparing flowers fresh from your garden. Using these principles, I went out early yesterday morning and picked some fresh roses for a simple cube design. To kill the aphids, I filled a sink with warm soapy water and immersed the flower heads. I then cut the stems and placed them in flower food:

Flower food is important because it contains sugar, citric acid, and a biocide which all help to feed the plant and keep the water clean from harmful bacteria. In case you don't have any pre-made flower food, you can always use a little bit of listerine or lemon lime soda as a substitute.

Once you have all your roses, you can arrange and enjoy. One great thing about home grown roses is that they are much more fragrant than the roses you purchase from a store. I was absolutely intoxicated by this arrangement, even though it didn't last near as long.

Ears are ringing

I have always had an avid love of earrings and I was reminded of this the other day when looking through my earring cemetery. What, you ask, is an earring cemetery? Throughout the course of my life I have gone through a lot of earrings, which usually get lost. Except, like socks, you rarely lose a pair, instead you will lose one earring and just have to find a new match. It is a graveyard of the missing, mismatched, and broken:

I also have an interesting philosophy on matching, I have never been too observant on the rule that in order to match you need to have two identical items. Instead, in socks and earrings, I have always held the belief that you match things with the most similar item you have. I.e. if you have two socks that are similar material and design (they are both solid colored) and sometimes even if they are the same cut, then they obviously match. Others feel this is a little off, but in the end, I have more character in my socks and their socks go completely unnoticed.

With earrings I have a similar matching technique and I have no qualms modifying my earrings, removing backs, re-attaching backs or switching backs from earring to earring. This is another reason why I keep all of my old earrings.

I also like my earrings because all of them have a story. I have a green pair from Croatia, a yellow pair from San Jose California, a mismatched white pair that I found on the side walk, a pair from DI that are constantly debated as being either eggplants, aliens, or weird Christmas decorations and many more. Some of my more favorite earrings recently have been:

Daejeon, South Korea

While in class this afternoon I called my mom to have her check her mail (where my call was being sent) and found out that I am going to.

Drum roll please.

Daejeon, South Korea!

I thought it was a very random assignment, I have no connection with anywhere in Asia. And then I started thinking about something someone told me how the first presidency matches up missionaries with the mission presidents more than the location. So I googled it and found out the the mission president's wife actually keeps a blog. Serves me right I suppose for putting blogging on my hobby list.

If you have any words of advice on how I am supposed to learn Korean, they would be greatly appreciated. I enter the MTC on September 23, 2009 so anytime before then would be great.

I'm going, going, GONE

This morning after thinking about things, I got really excited. I am going on a mission. A Mission.
My papers are in. My call has been assigned and should arrive some time this week, hopefully on Wednesday. So currently I am taking bets on where people think I will go. Since I think facebook groups are obnoxious, I just asked all my co-workers and a couple of friends for guesses and received the following answers:

• Venezuela
  
• Great Britain
• Armenia
• State side, south west, possibly Texas
  
• Iberian peninsula
• Norway
• Guatemala
• Brazil
• Colorado Denver South
• Canada
• Portland, OR
• Argentina, Buenos Aires South
• Czech Republic
• Eastern Europe
• Germany
• Japan
• Ireland
  

If you'd like to make a guess, feel free.

Birthdays and Things

In order to practice for Cami's wedding cake, as well as to celebrate my roommate's boyfriend's birthday, their 5 month-a-versary, my Relief Society President's birthday, and the end of Spring term, I decided to make a cake. As you can tell, it was very multi-purpose and allowed me to try out making marshmallow fondant which I have used before, but never actually created myself.

Here you see the fondant being placed on top.

Smoothing out the fondant covering.

Anna "decorating"

the finished product, isn't it beautiful?!

I wont let it rain on my parade

I love rain, I think that growing up in Kentucky made me somewhat aquatic (even though I am also deathly afraid of fish). Rain in Kentucky is much different from rain in Utah. I used to love playing in the rain in Kentucky and would frequently go for romps through my neighborhood, splashing in puddles, becoming thoroughly drenched, and sometimes just laying down in the grass and mud. It was warm, familiar, and refreshing. It brings flowers, daffodils, tornadoes, and all sorts of pleasant things.


Utah rain is different.

I realized this from the first rain storm that occurred when I got to Utah. Unlike the bi-weekly rain storms that occur in Kentucky, Utah does not receive much rain. However, I still had my hopes up for the first rain storm and they were quickly dashed. In fact, I went running outside as I hadn't seen rain in weeks and I was immediately pelted with large globular water pellets. In fact, this rain wasn't just being hurled from the sky at insanely high speeds, it was COLD and quite unpleasant. I stayed outside for approximately half a minute before I couldn't take it any longer and I went back inside, letting my high hopes get washed away in the rain.

But I still love Utah. And the rain still brings beautiful things, I just don't go out in it.

Great day for a white wedding

Cami decided that she wanted me to do her flowers and since she wanted fake flowers for their longevity and inexpensiveness, it was easy to do and we have them already done even though her wedding isn't for another month. Although they don't smell as fresh as real flowers, they don't look half bad either, you probably can't even tell, can you?

Floral fun

For my floral design class we created these neat bridesmaid bouquets using the Dutch spiral method. Mine ended up more one sided than round, mostly because of the fact that I didn't really have time to spend on it (I had ten minutes before I had to run to work). I also had some random wax flower that I didn't know what to do with. 

Once I got home I converted it into a small arrangement in a glass  vase which made me want to take my cube design from last week and rearrange it. 

Mostly all the roses had died so I needed to take out all of those and just keeep the daisymum. As you can see here, it actually turned out alright and Kevin and I gave it to his family. I really just didn't know what I was going to do with all these flowers and I thought they might like them.  In the end, I probably just ended up looking creepy.

Vegetarian Junkies

My lovely sister is moving in with me tomorrow. I have been anticipating this for a very long time and I have been planning my summer activities around having this little bundle of joy in it. Needless to say, I have been very anxious for her to get here.


Only now I want to show her the ways of the world, to be there for her to show her budgeting, taxes, grocery shopping, setting up a schedule, getting a job, learning to live on your own, paying rent and utilities. All of this wisdom that I basically had to learn on my own, I want to be able to show her so she can get a head start and not feel abandoned when I leave her for my mission.

So I thought we could start it off right by buying groceries together this summer. Except Anna is a vegetarian and a lot of the things I cook include meat. So I suppose this summer I will be spending a lot of time learning fun vegetarian meals! How exciting, I love to cook.

And then the rain came tumbling down

Alternate blog entry titles could include:

*Just when we thought it couldn't get worse

*What's the point in trying any more?

*Reasons to carry an umbrella

*When it rains, it pours

*Singing in the rain

*You know the rain wont stop, stop complaining about it

*Being wet isn't as bad as it looks
*Part of the reason I changed my shirt three times today
*I'm not crying

*And it didn't stop until I got home
*How my golf class was canceled
*Good thing I wasn't carrying anything important in that backpack

Conlalutions

While looking at wrecked cakes, failed conversations, and other random failures, I remembered that they have awards for these kinds of things. I am glad that people do these things so I can laugh so frequently.

Favorite Darwin Award of the day

Adelir Antonio, 51, was a Catholic priest attempting to pay homage to Lawn Chair Larry’s aerial adventure.

His audacious attempt to set a world record for clustered balloon flight was intended to publicize his plan to build a spiritual rest stop for truckers. But, as truckers know, sitting for 19 hours in a lawn chair is not a trivial matter even in the comfort of your own backyard. The priest took numerous safety precautions, including wearing a survival suit, selecting a buoyant chair, and packing a satellite phone and a GPS. However, the late Adelir Antonio made a fatal mistake.

He did not know how to use the GPS.

The winds changed, as winds do, and he was blown inexorably toward open sea. He could have parachuted to safety while over land, but chose not to. When the voyager was perilously lost at sea, he prudently phoned for help--but rescuers were unable to determine his location, since he could not use his GPS. He struggled with the unit as the charge on the satellite phone dwindled.

Instead of a GPS, the priest let God be his guide, and God guided him straight to heaven. Bits of balloons began appearing on mountains and beaches. Ultimately the priest's body surfaced, confirming that he, like Elvis, had left the building.

The kicker? It's a Double Darwin. Catholic priests take vows of celibacy. Since they voluntarily remove themselves from the gene pool, the entire group earns a mass Darwin Award. Adelir Antonio wins twice over!

Failures

Last night I failed to go to bed when I had hoped. In fact, I failed at a few things and then this morning my cognitive skills have been severely lacking. Sometimes things happen and they just aren't what you had planned in your head. Thankfully, there is an entire blog dedicated to this kind of thing.

...And Zombies

While standing in line at Smith's, my room mate discovered a new version of Pride & Prejudice. Always eager to embrace anything Jane Austen, she examined it closer and saw this:

Pride & Prejudice AND ZOMBIES

Disturbing, yes, but it gets better. During our Sunday family time, we went online to read book reviews since the New York Times had apparently raved over it, one of my favorite reviews includes:

"I've always said the problem with Jane Austen's novels is that there simply aren't enough zombies."


We also stumbled upon a hilarious rendition of the plot summary on Wikipedia. Although I don't think I could stomach the slaughtering of one of my favorite masterpieces, I did laugh uproariously while reading the Wiki version and this was probably one of my favorite paragraphs:

"Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters live on a countryside estate with their parents. Mr. Bennet trains his daughters in martial arts and weapons, molding them into a fearsome zombie-fighting army. On the other hand, Mrs. Bennet plans to marry the girls off to wealthy suitors. When the wealthy Mr. Bingley purchases a nearby county house, Mrs. Bennet spies an opportunity and sends the girls to the first ball where Bingley is expected to appear. The girls defend the party from a zombie attack, and Mr. Bingley and eldest daughter Jane begin a relationship. Elizabeth, meanwhile, spars with the haughty monster-hunter Fitzwilliam Darcy, a friend of Bingley. Although Elizabeth and Darcy strongly dislike each other at first, their common interest of zombie-killing draws them closer together."

In the end, you really just can't go wrong by adding zombies to a literary masterpiece. If anyone reads this trashter-piece, you will have to give me further reviews.

Passive Aggressive

I was planning on sharing a website that has caused much laughter lately, passiveaggressivenotes.com, and then I came home last night and found a passive aggressive note from my landlady. To lead up to this note, it may be mentioned that this is NOT the first time that she has had problems (although in the past it is usually watering the grass, parking our bikes on the sidewalk as it is the only place that there was room) and instead of just addressing it with us, has left us a note. They are always very similar, very accusatory without being specific so that we all feel to blame, even though none of us really know what she is talking about and yet without any previous notice that there was any problem. This particular note she left all of my room mates were confused as to who it could possibly refer to and instead we just felt accused as if we were being called "unvirtuous women" and practically thought to live in Sodom and Gommorah.

I would take a picture, but my camera is not working so instead I will copy it, as it was originally typed up, printed off and posted in 5 different locations around our house anyway:

Tenant Notice

I have had complaints about a tenant in this apartment who is leaving the window open and making a display of herself in the nude. This is not okay and you will have your contract cancelled and be asked to leave if you continue to do so. BYU will also be notified if the behavior continues. Draperies serve a purpose and we expect you to behave according to the standards of the church and BYU as a moral woman. I do not want to be called this again and I will remind you all there are to be no boys in the bedrooms at all.

The Cube

Here we have the classic 4" cube in which you lace flower stems in order to create a neat globular, flower filled effect which works great for centerpieces at weddings or other events that need that sort of thing. Fun and easy to make.

Bake a Cake for Baby and Me

My recent love in cake decorating has led me to looking up cakes more than usual. In my cake journeys I discovered a blog set up entirely to discuss cakes.




Again, how did I live without this? Take a look.

Cha Cha Cha

Since I came to college I haven't listened to music as much as I used to, for some reason I had all sorts of time in High School that I don't really have any more. Or maybe it was desire, however, while perusing imeem the other day I discovered a few songs that I really enjoy, I have embedded them for your listening pleasure.

Cha Cha Cha - The Little Ones
When I was little I would always listen to music on the drive to and from seminary. Since it was a half hour trip to seminary and then a one hour drive to school, there was plenty of time for Jonny to pop in his newly burned discs of Magnetic Fields, Modest Mouse, Nuetral Milk Hotel, Death Cab for Cutie, and many other bands that became the staple for my music diet. I still love all of these bands, but there is just so much music in the world, how do you listen to it all?

Dream catch me - Newton Faulkner

I remember when I realized that Jonny was going to be gone. It was one morning on the way from seminary to school and in the early morning there was fog surrounding the car and something soothing was playing, maybe Magnetic Fields, and suddenly it hit me. Jonny would be gone soon. He was going to college and then on a mission and nothing would ever be the same. I wouldn't have him begging me for back massages, I wouldn't have to push the car to start every morning. Late night conversations about life would have to happen with someone else. My idol would be leaving and I wouldn't. I watched him drive and I cried. The silent type of crying when you feel so overwhelmed that you don't have the strength to sob. To console myself I rolled down the window, closed my eyes, and tried to focus on the music.

A Thousand Wishes in less than 1,000 Words

Shooting stars
dandelions
yellow lights, tunnels, birthday candles,
water fountains, spare change

Let there always be time to
smell the roses
Because in the end all I could give her were roses

Swing sets, strollers, diaper bags
Were the dreams of Caroline.
And she’d give them names, watch them grow and even get sad to watch them go
She never got angry or upset or dreary
Instead she pursed her lips then smiled quite sadly and said,
“What do I care, I already have plenty of children.”

All I could give her were the roses.