Reason 896 Why I Love Being An Adult.....

I get to buy my own furniture!

When I was a kid I used to hate buying things like that. But I'm really actually starting to like it! Buying furniture makes me feel more grown up! Last summer, right before school started I bought my own desk and chair and put them together all by myself. It was a pretty big day in my opinion. I'm not really a handy girl, so just the fact that I managed to pick out a desk was a pretty big feat, much less put it together without anyone's help. ;) And now, I'm even more pleased, because the desk and the bookcase match!

So, here is the new addition to my bedroom:

It will be here in two to three weeks. I'm completely jazzed! 

I Went To See Brave At The Dollar Theater Last Night..... and it was adorable

I honestly just laughed the whole time

I'm So Glad That I'm Paying Thousands Of Dollars For My Dance Education

"The body was designed to move and movement is the great elixir of life. Where there is lack of movement life becomes stagnant and stale. Human life is a mind/body event. Simply put, what you think affects your body and what you do with your body affects your thinking. So if you wish to improve or change the output of this continuum you are best served by addressing both."




Last week, the new Ballroom Dance department director ( hows that for a job title!? ) came and paid us a surprise visit during practice last week. We were in the middle of practicing our foxtrot to Michael Buble when he came. His visit was to watch and critique, and at first I thought that I might just have a dramatic breakdown, right there. There would be nothing more scary to me than having the Ballroom single me out and address everything wrong that I was doing.

But to my genuine and very happy surprise, it was nothing like that at all! He critiqued as a group, and even though he was very picky about the little details ( that, lets face us, make a dance great ) I learned so much, and came to love the piece even more.

The one thing, that I walked away from the class with was something that he said in the middle of his critique. He had just stopped us, after we did a turn to face the audience, and he said there is no life in your movement! I want to see life and energy in your movements! That is something that I especially love about dance. There is always a lesson to be learned that can be applied to both life and dancing. Life is always going to be more fun when you put some energy in your movements. Paul explained to us that when we dance, our movements must emanate from your core ( the torso of your body - a modern dance method ) and that from the core the energy must flow through your body. Thus creating the vision that the dance and the dance is fuller and more effective to the eye. I must say, it's an attractive idea.


ps.... our first performance is on Monday night. Wish us luck, wont you!?


pss.... I desperately want this:

its called a Brooklyn cowl. I'm in love with it

psss.... I bought this today:

I'm sooo thankful stripes are back in style

Ok, THIS Is Soooo Much Fun

I've never been a very big fan of the xylophone. But THIS totally made my day! It's adorable.

This Is The Most Adorable Adaption of What My Daughter and I Will Be Doing Someday.....

Seriously, how cute is she!?

originally found here

So.....

This is what happens when you go into Victoria Secret with your friends...

I love my new lipstick......

Today...

So you know when this happens.....

I'm starting to wonder if my face is permanently etched to that particular look right now.....

originally found here

I Dunno About You - But I Was Desperately In Need Of Some Wisdom

And I happened to find it here . ( incidentally enough while browsing through pinterest )

Not gonna lie... I feel a little bit lost being 22 sometimes...

1. Never looking at your budget and never making a budget is the exact same thing.

2.  The possibility for greatness and embarrassment both exist in the same space. If you’re not willing to be embarrassed, you’re probably not willing to be great.

3.  Feel no shame in seeking help from a counselor or therapist. We all have crap we try to wrap and hide under the Christmas tree. Get rid of it before it smells up your entire holiday.

4.  All job listings on Craigslist lead you to a warehouse in downtown LA “wearing something nice with shoes you can walk in”.

5.  Don’t ever, ever check Facebook when you’re:

A. Depressed

B.  Drinking.

C.  Depressed and Drinking.

D.  Unemployed.

E.  Anytime after 9:17 pm.

F.  Struggling with being blessed with singleness while all your friends seem to be blessed with 2.4 kids and that blazing white-picket-fence shining with the glory of Jesus Christ himself.

6.  All those amazing college friends you swore you’d never lose contact with after college yeah, well, you might loose contact. Moving all over the country, getting married, having kids, all make that forty-five minute conversation with your sophomore roommate a little more complicated than it used to be over a game of Mario Kart. Making and keeping friends in our twenties takes intentionality.

7.  Your twenties will produce more failures than you’ll choose to remember. The key is when you fail, don’t begin calling yourself a failure.

8.  Every break up has two break ups. I’m no physicist, but this is a law of physics, of this I am certain. Yes you’ll have the first tearful “It’s over” sitting in the front seat of your Honda or on a park swing. Then 1-2 months later after there’s “been talk”, you’ll have the “real breakup” because she forgets to call like she used to or he checks out the waitress like he’s a judge for Miss USA. And gird those loins because in the second breakup there will be a lot more breaking.

9.  The Freshman-Fifteen is nothing compared to the Cubicle-Cincuenta. Don’t sit at your computer perched like a Roman gargoyle. Don’t let office birthday cake be forced on you like a cigarette behind your middle school. Bust out before your butt does.

10.  And yes, cubicles don’t make sense to anybody other than upper-management. I would be willing to bet that only 3% of all “Cubicle Americans” actually have a positive outlook on life. And half of that 3% is stealing from their company.

11.  If at some point between 22 – 27 you feel like you’re six years old again, lost at the San Diego Zoo (it’s a big-frickin-zoo), frantically searching for a familiar face – hold tight, you’re experiencing a bit of a Quarter-Life Crisis. Stay put. Pray a lot. And in no time someone will call your name across the loud speaker to tell you where you can be found.

12.  Reckless drinking and reckless flirting have a direct correlation. Friends don’t let friends drive, or flirt, drunk.

13.  If you grew up going to church, at some point in your 20′s you’ll probably stop going to church. If you grew up with faith as a central part of your life, at some point in your twenties faith might move to the outskirts of town next to the trailer park and three-legged squirrel refuge. Your twenties are a process of making faith your own apart from your parents and childhood. Sometimes that means staggering away so you know what you’re coming back to.

14.  Don’t ever begin dating someone you first met whilst in swimsuits. Doubly-don’t if you’re both in swimsuits whilst holding an alcoholic beverage.

15.  Obsessive Comparision Disorder is the smallpox of our generation. 9 out of 10 doctor’s agree this disorder is the leading cause to eating a whole sleeve of Oreo’s while watching Real Housewives of OC. Say no to obsessive comparison disorder before it starts. Remember everyone’s too busy putting a PR spin on their Facebook profile to care much about yours.

16.  Life will never feel like it’s “supposed to”. Being twentysomething can feel like death by unmet expectations. However, let me be so brash to say that you are right now, at this moment, exactly where you need to be. But you’ll only be able to see that five years and thirty-eight days from today.

17.  You might have your first kid and realize what it’s like to be young, a parent, and have no freaking clue what you’re doing. And for the first time in your life, you also might actually understand your parents for the first time.

18. Marriage WILL NOT fix any of your problems. No, instead marriage will put a magnifying glass on how many problems you really have. We grow up carrying bags with our insecurities, fears, bad relationships, problems with our parents — you name it. Begin to ditch these bags now. Newly married and living in a small apartment is no place to store a luggage set full of shiz.

19.  An assortment of crappy jobs are a twentysomething rite of passage. Figure out what you need to learn there and learn it. If you don’t, an assortment of crappy jobs might be your thirty, forty and fiftysomething rite of passage as well.

20.  Great ideas alone mean nothing. Your ability to persevere through 16 major setbacks, a lack of passion, forgetting why you started this great idea in the first place, and all the people who allude that your great idea is actually quite terrible — well, that means everything.

21.  The grass is always greener on the other side, until you get there and realize it’s because of all the manure.

This Is Not By Any Means, A Food Blog

However, if it was a food blog, I would probably spend my entire time writing about brussel sprouts. Because I am in love with them. Especially the ones that we had for dinner last night.

And, despite the displeasure of the other diners eating the brussel sprouts, I had to take a picture with the new Instagram app on my phone, which, I am also in love with. So much, in fact, that I spent the better part of my Sunday uploading older pictures to my phone and tweaking them with the Instagram!

And that photo above with the cake? This still isn't a food blog. It's just a picture from my twenty-first birthday. ;) But I still totally am in love with Instagram.

about being a mom

I've been thinking a lot about mom's as of late. And I've been especially thinking about what kind of mom I want to be when I grow up. It will be a really long time before I even take into consideration being a mother. But, this is something I've been thinking about a lot.

I've known some really wonderful mothers through out my life. I think of my best friends mother, who is practically my biological mother, except, she didn't birth me or raise me, but she still treats me like a daughter. And I still treat her like a mom. I call her when I need advice ( or lets be honest - to cry ) I've been guilty more than once of sleeping on her couch, and eating the food in her fridge, without actually asking for permission. She gives great hugs, and she's fun to laugh with. And I love her just like a daughter would love her mother.

I'm one of those wanna be sociologists, who takes a social situation and dissects it down to the very last detail. I want to know it all, so I observe, I produce theories. And from there I observe more and create more theories.

There is a theory that I have. A theory that is all my own. I've never done official research on it. I haven't read a book, that states that this fact is true. But I have a theory.

When I read about, or see many successful people ( and I'm lucky to know so many successful people ) I wonder how their parents raised them. What did their parents to while raising them to produce a confident, hard working, happy adult?

My theory, is that these confident adults were raised in a house hold, where their parents were confident. Their parents weren't afraid to use big words, and make their kids look them up in a dictionary when they were confused. Their parents were the kind of parents that sat down with their kids to help them with their homework, instead of leaving them to do it themselves. Their parents supported, encouraged, and lifted up without fail. They raised their children with such a flair that their child saw the stability in their life style and ran with it. Their parents loved each other, and themselves, and passed that legacy on to their children. They believed in family pictures and eating dinner together. They taught their children how to be healthy, and how to create a functional life style.

And with all of this - the child took all that love and knowledge and stability and they ran with it. They knew that they would make a beautiful life on their own, and so they went for it.

I hope that I'm the kind of mother that reads to their child on a regular basis, and becomes their study buddy when they are needing a little extra help the night before the test. I hope that I'm the kind of mom that knows when to give her child cookies and when to give carrot sticks when they get home from school. I'm hoping that I'm the kind of mom that my kids can come to for hope and advice. The kind of mom that makes a beautiful home, not just by cleaning it, but my putting up sweet family photos and creating an atmosphere that makes my kids want to come home. I hope I'm the kind of mother that lets her child know that they can do whatever they set their minds to do, because lifes possibilities are endless. I hope I teach my sons how to get the car door on a date, and I hope I teach my daughters to love their bodies instead of hate their mirror image, like I, and the rest of society tend to do. I hope I raise confident and happy kids, because I hope that I learn to be happy and confident as well.

My New Shoes

i ended up going to the mall yesterday... and spending about three times as much money as i planned.

and among all of the new school clothes i bought, i decided to get new shoes! except... they were ugly, white grandmas shoes.... don't worry though... i fixed them.....

this is what they looked like when i finally brought them home from the store... boring, white... see what i mean about old lady shoes?

well, i sat down to watch the donna reed show with a cup of sharpies... ( i know... the donna reed show? rory and lorelai gilmore watch the donna reed show, so i should be able to do so as well... )  and then this is what magically happened three hours later...

and really..... they wouldn't be my shoes if they didn't have fall out boy lyrics written on the side of 'em.

Meaning

I started doing this funny thing.....

I started going to choir at my Singles Ward. They meet forty minutes before church starts every Sunday. And  with a little encouragement, I've stuck it out for two whole weeks.

There's something funny about singing in a choir. Really, there's something funny about doing any sort of performance-type thing. Something that has to do with the need to stand in front of a crowd and perform at your best. I remember, I tried out for Jazz Choir when I was a Sophmore in high school. I remember try outs, I remember waiting for the list taped to the door of the choir room announcing who made the choir and who didn't. I remember the day that I found out that I had made the cut, and would be spending my mornings during "zero period" singing. I remember that glorious glorious feeling. That feeling that told me that I had done something right during an audition and that I was going to excel at Jazz Choir. I loved every moment of that Jazz Choir - even the moments when I hated it and I wanted to quit, I still loved every aching moment.

After Charlie set in, I stopped singing. I stopped doing everything that I loved. I stopped playing the piano, singing, dancing, biking, writing.... the list could go on for such a long time. Charlie was like a vacuum, and over the years he managed to suck everything good out of me. I stopped singing in choir. I gave music a fond farewell. I told myself that I was done with performing.

Slowly, that wish has unfolded itself against me, and I've started doing things I love again. Performing included. But today, during choir practice, my choir director said "think about what you are singing. think about what the meaning behind the words are". And suddenly, a light bulb turned on in my head. Meaning. That thing... just meaning. The meaning behind the words. The meaning why I was willing to stand in front of an audience and sing.

And I've decided.. that I want to give my life, more meaning. Have a reason and a purpose for the things that I do. A silly thought yes, but a thought none the less. A thought that says that I want to love my life and I want to find meaning, even in the littlest things that I do.

I Love My Singles Ward

thanks kenz, for letting me steal your picture

; )

Reason #802 Why I Love Modern Dance

I Should Be Studying, Cause Its Finals Week At School.... But I Cant Help It - Im Obsessed!

Spring Break Day 2

My beautiful mama and I went out for Frozen Yoghart and Chinese food today. Mom mentioned that the cashiers are always much more friendly when Im around... especially if the cashiers are single young men. I love my mom.



ps....... I wish there were more hours in the day, so much to do and so little time

Its Finally Spring Break!

Its finally Spring Break! And I get a week off from school! Quite a nice thing of UVU to just do.....

So to celebrate, Sheree and I went and saw Sherlock Holmes at the dollar movie, and had our

pictures taken in a photo booth!

So Im Definently A Copy Cat.

Meg posted about Sugar this week. And I love Sugar. Desperately, I love her. Im hoping that, even when Im older and have my whole life figured out ( not that likely ) that I will still love Sugars advice column. So I took bits and pieces from the article that I feel like apply to me right now:

Dear Sugar,


I read your column religiously. I’m 22. From what I can tell by your writing, you’re in your early 40s. My question is short and sweet: what would you tell your 20-something self if you could talk to her now?

Love,


Seeking Wisdom




Dear Seeking Wisdom,


Stop worrying about whether you’re fat. You’re not fat. Or rather, you’re sometimes a little bit fat, but who gives a shit? There is nothing more boring and fruitless than a woman lamenting the fact that her stomach is round. Feed yourself. Literally. The sort of people worthy of your love will love you more for this, sweet pea.


You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.

There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness.

 Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

One hot afternoon during the era in which you’ve gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She’ll offer you one of the balloons, but you won’t take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You’re wrong. You do.




Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.


The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.


One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.




Say thank you.










Yours,


Sugar

I really am at a loss of words sometimes. Ive been wracking away at my brain, hopeful to find something to share. To no avial of course....

No. I dont really want to tell the story of last Thursday when I had a break down in the cafeteria at school.

No. I dont want to talk about how I spent my four day weekend doing homework and going grocery shopping.

No. I dont want to talk about Charlie, the movies Ive seen lately ( far too few, if you ask me ) or the book im reading ( brave girl eating... the cover of this book, my co worker pointed out looks just like the book cover for the book Twilight ) And I feel like the adventures Ive been on lately are far too few and slighly ragged in their own way. ( its obviously winter time )

But for now, I will say this:

1) This is what I will be working on this week:

( I printed out a copy of it and taped it to my school binder. )

And 2)

Have you seen anything more brilliant for Valentines Day? I havent.....

My Mom Is Smart....

I had a moment yesterday.

It was one of those moments that had to come eventually.

And come it did.

It was one of those moments where I stood in the cafeteria at school crying and stomping my foot.

Not a good moment if you ask me....

But later my mom called.

And it took her all of about five seconds to ask me why I had been crying.

( And I thought I had hidden the tears in my voice so well.... )

So I made up a silly excuse why Id been crying.

I told her that I was crying because that morning in Beginning Modern Dance class

my professor told me that my tail bone was aligned incorrectly.

It wasnt that something was out of place in my spine. The problem is that when I move my body,

I have a horrid habit of moving my tail bone back.

And apparently thats not what a tail bone is supposed to do.

My poor tail bone.

To that, my mom said:

Its gonna be ok Shannon. Nobodies body is perfect. And your tail bone moving back and forth

while you dance is just something that it does. But its gonna be ok, you'll learn how to fix that.

Nobodies body is perfect.

Gosh, my mom really does know a thing or two doesnt she?

Im Feeling Very Dramatic and Intelligent Today

It might be because I am starting school on Monday, after a very long Holiday break.....

But I was thinking today, while I was at work, about how sometimes I seem to lose my ability to use my words. Words shouldnt fail me, but more often then not, they do. I like to blame it on the years and years of bottling up my feelings and feeding them to my nasty little eating disorder, Charlie. And living with Charlie for years and years has obviously grievened me with a serious case of writers block. However, I work at a library, and I read so many books. Ive surrounded myself with talented authors that share their words, and that I shouldnt have an excuse to not write, when Im drowning in pages of examples.

So, were going to try something new - writing genuine thoughts, and writing for an audience. Give it a go with me, wont you?

And just to share, because I love - and think that its genuinely adorable ( plus, it pretty much descirbes me, and a large population of friends that Im so blessed to have in my life ) :

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.


Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.


She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.


Buy her another cup of coffee.


Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.


It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.


She has to give it a shot somehow.


Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.


Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.


Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.


If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.


You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.


You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.


Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.


Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

found at una bella vita way back when....

and image also una bella vita...... ( im in love with roses )

I Love Emma Watson In All Of Her Brilliance And Splendor

via Pinterest

Farewell 2011!!

Hello 2011. You had some very special moments. And some big learning experiences. And I shall always remember you as the year where I started living my life again and realizing that it really can be fun to be an adult. Some of my favorite highlights from 2011 were:

In February when I took a road trip all on my own to Idaho where

I visited all of my friends at ISU and all of my friends at BYU-I -

In April I drove up with my family for a weekend in Boise

and spent some time with Breanne, where we wondered around

her beautiful college campus and went to Barns and Noble -

In June I had my big twenty first birthday, where

my mom bought me a gigantic chocolate cake and made me a pink

tu tu ( which I loved )

( my cake was actually very good, and I decided it was my one and

only chance to stick my face into it. and so i did... very unlady like though ... )

In January to celebrate the 4th of July I went to Stadium of Fire

with a ShaNez and listened to David Archuletta and Brad Paisley sing live -

In October I went and saw the movie Footloose on opening night with

Sheree. We also celebrated Halloween this year by dressing up and taking

our little brother trick-or-treating -

In November I had a lot of great things happen. My family and I spent

Thanksgiving in Boise. One of my best friends got married in the Mt. Timpanogas

Temple, and another friend got home from an LDS mission in San Antonio Texas!

Some other lovely things that happened in 2011 were:

• I bough a pair of red boots, which I love with all of my heart
• I started going to school again after a year long leave of absense
• I discovered that I actually do look good with blue eyeliner on
• I started working at a city library, which is the most wonderful job in the ENTIRE world
• I discovered a love for Joshua Bell's violin music
• I bought a touch screen cell phone
• I bought up and set up a desk and swivel chair all by myself
• I figured out that I love eating sea salt and vinegar chips
• I attended my best friends little sisters wedding, in which she looks *so* beautiful
• I saw the final Harry Potter movie at the dollar theater with Jordan

Im extreamely excided for 2012 because:

• Ive set a goal to journal and blog a lot more
• I will celebrate my 22nd birthday
• I will continue with college
• I will try new things
• I will let my bangs grow out and stop insisting that I need to cut them all the time
• I will be better at visiting teaching and keeping my bedroom clean
• I bought a 2012 calendar and Im determined to use it this year
• I will read through the back log of books Ive been meaning to read and see the movies Im been meaning to see
• I will continue in my endevors to buy clothes that 1) flatter my body and 2) make me feel good about myself
• I will try new things
• I get to go see the 1997 version of Titanic when it is re-released in theaters in April for a 3d version

Ok, 2012.... I think Im ready for ya!