The perfect way to start every October

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Isn't the Salt Lake City temple beautiful in the fall? (Okay, let's face it... the temple is beautiful year-round!)

Doug and I are spending 8 hours of our weekend (starting today at 10:00 MST) watching General Conference together. Conference weekend is something I look forward to at the beginning of every April and October. The messages shared during this semi-annual meeting are always uplifting and inspiring. I'll probably share my favorite highlights from the conference at some point next week.

But for now, we're going to sit in our sweatpants and have a spiritual feast... and probably a physical feast as well, if we're going to be honest. I'm thinking waffles drenched in strawberries and nutella for brunch, and then something pumpkin flavored later on... I'll make chocolate chip pumpkin bread between sessions! There's an idea!

Happy weekend, everyone! And feel free to watch along! I love how modern technology makes it so easy for us to listen to conference not matter where we are.

The BEST month ever // October Goals

photo source

In my opinion, October is the greatest. It is the pinnacle month in my favorite season. There are so many things to look forward to. Halloween parties. Football games. Corn mazes and pumpkin patches. Blankets. Warm drinks. Fall decorations. And the weather! The smells! The colors! The tastes! October, you can stay as long as you'd like!

A new month also means a fresh to-do list. Here are my top priority items:

• Spend much more time outdoors (This shouldn't be hard. Fall weather = gorgeous!)
• Try a minimum of 5 new recipes
• Paint the crib (the plan is start sanding it this weekend between Conference sessions!)
• Finish decorating the nursery

It's going to be a wonderful month, I just know it! Happy October, everyone! And as one of my favorite bloggers quoted in her post today: "I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers." (Anne of Green Gables)

I completely agree, Anne. I completely agree.

On a not-so-summer day

Today has been a glorious summer day
Where the house is clean
Fresh cookies are calling out to be eaten
Candles are burning
The windows are open
Outside the sky is grey
Wind is blowing
Every now and then some rain comes down
And it's taking all my restraint not to break out the fall decorations right here and now


This is my kind of not-so-summer day

happy yellow flowers

I'm sticking with my goal to figure out how to use my phone's camera better.
Here are some of my favorite (albeit low-quality) shots as I walked along the BYU River Trail today.

Those mountains. Gorgeous.

I'm still amazed at how beautiful this campus is. And have any of you BYU peeps been by the new Life Sciences building? The grounds are not done yet, but there will be waterfalls flowing right down the hill by that building. It is going to be so pretty.

Sometimes, all I need are some happy yellow flowers, a beautiful college campus (which I really miss sometimes) and the perfect, sunny, slightly warm and windy summer day to remind me that I have a very good life. I really enjoyed my walk to campus today (even though it was crawling with high-school-aged EFY kids) and it was just good for my soul.

I truly am blessed. I need to be sure to remember that more often.

Because Gene Kelly is that awesome

You guys. I'm done with the month of March. You don't even know how happy I am about that.

I've had a nice, long, hard month full of ballroom competitions and performances, plenty of homework, and a one-month rehearsal process for the production Jimmy Stewart Goes to Hollywood. We just had our performances this weekend, so the amount of things I have to do in April is half of what I was doing in March. Are there still projects and papers? Yes. Is there still a big, fancy ballroom concert to prepare for that I'm having three 6:30 AM rehearsals for this week? Yes. But there are only two weeks of classes left in my college career - then finals - then graduation!

Meanwhile, let me show off these bright, happy yellow dresses that we used for one of our most recent performances. We did a quickstep to the song "Good Morning" and so I had Gene Kelly constantly echoing in my head, while simultaneously doing a play where the all the characters are from the golden age of Hollywood. Lots of classics in my life. Because people like Jimmy Stewart, Gene Kelly, and Ginger Rogers are all so great.

Happy yellow dresses. I think they're my favorite costume we've had (although I have not seen what costumes we'll be wearing for the concert yet).

Needless to say, every time I'm around my team members in the morning this song is bound to come up. Who can't spend a month working on a quickstep to "Good Morning" and not start singing it every morning?!

Happy end of March, everyone. The green buds that are appearing on the trees are telling me it's going to be a good month.

Come to me!

Spring! I swear, it's just right there! It's so close! I feel like I mention it in every post, but I just want spring!

Alright. Now that I've written 4 sentences with exclamation marks in a row, I'm good. I'm all good.

Normally, March and I are pretty good friends. It's such a long month because there are no holidays or anything, and BYU does not do spring break... so I don't even have that to look forward to. However, there's a light at the end of the March tunnel. In two weeks I'll be wrapping up my current theatre project, and I have promised myself to take a break from theatre while I finish my last month of school and get through graduation. There, now it's public and I have to stick to it! Ha! I'm such a yes-women, I don't know how to say no to projects.

Anyways, April will be a great month. I'm calling it now. Meanwhile, I'm working through my stress.

Meanwhile, yay for winning European chocolate in my class because I came up with a stinkin' good thesis statement in our thesis statement bracket contest. Yay for having fun at my very last DanceSport competitions. Yay for pizza and sparkling cider. Yay for sunshine and wind storms. Yay for cute black and white pictures (Collette, you're too cute!)

Yay for...... life. Yeah. Yay for life.

Just barely

Hey you guys, look at this! It's the last day of February and I just barely managed to get one more post in so I can say that I posted more than once during the month. Because 1 is such a sad, lonely number.

It's been half a month since Valentine's Day, but late is better than never, so I'll just give the update now: flowers, food, ballroom performance (yep, on V-Day...) cute stuffed pigs, and chocolate. Can I get an amen?!?!

Other than that, Little Women is done with and I'm starting on a new production called Jimmy Stewart Goes to Hollywood. Stage Manager, whoot whoot. Over at the Covey Center. Legit.

We've just finished learning a Quickstep routine for team and are starting a Jive/Swing in preparation for the Ballroom Dance Concert in April. So pumped! And our quickstep is the cutest thing ever!

My nails are painted.

I have a giant box of Russell Stover chocolates.

There are even more flowers on my table right now. Flowers for 2 weeks straight. Yes.

There is also left-over Cafe Rio in the fridge. Nuff said.

I'd say life is pretty good, between the rain, the food, the perfect score on my Dramatic Literary Theory concept assessment, and having less than two months until I graduate.

Now I'm going to enjoy a well-needed weekend.

Meanwhile, enjoy pictures of this cute little place called Shirley's Bakery. Turkey pesto sandwiches... need I say more?

It makes me think a little bit of Kneaders.

And... this picture is just cute, I can't help it. I'm excited to be performing some of my teams' routines again really soon, as well as competing in DanceSport this coming weekend. I have a really good feeling about my Gold Standard competition... let me just say that I have grown to love tango.

What DOES the fox say...?

One time, I had a blog. And I forgot about it. Okay, not really. But life gets busy!

Okay, let me move on before this becomes an all-too-typical post about how I'm "too busy to blog" and "I'm going to do better" and all that jazz.

Ballroom has been keeping me busy busy busy! In fact, my entire evening on Halloween was devoted to ballroom dance. There was a social ballroom dance lab that evening (they play a bunch of songs for 3 hours and you can waltz/foxtrot/cha cha/swing/etc. to your hearts content!) and I was performing two different numbers at it. One of the routines was a little more casual and super fun: a cha-cha routine to that crazy Youtube hit "What Does the Fox Say" or whatever it's called. We put the routine together in my 380 Social Dance class, so it's nothing too fancy, but boy was it fun!

And yes, we were dressed up in fox ears and ties just like the backup dancers in the music video. And yes, we had a guy dressed up in a fox suit. We were the hit class routine of the night.

^^^Some poor guy lost his ears mid-routine! Oh well!

I really enjoyed wearing fox ears. I may or may not have worn them across campus during the day just for kicks and giggles.

And this hott ginger got it all on video! I love you, Doug! (The videos are on facebook, but I don't know if they would work for you to see if I post them on here and you're not on my friends list...)

After "foxing it up" I joined my Ballroom Team and got ready to perform our samba routine. We did really well, if I do say so myself! Here's a nice, blurry shot of us in action. I'm in the front, second from the right :)

I love my samba ladies! I can't wait to perform the Viennese Waltz we're working on right now, it's a gorgeous song with fun choreography. And the dresses we get to wear are blue! BLUE!!!!

Right now, I'm trying to focus on the Dancesport competitions this coming weekend. I'll be doing a bit of waltz for my Social Dance class, but my main concern is Paso Doble and Cha Cha for my gold Latin class. Mainly Paso, since it's the dance that my class is specifically assigned to compete in. My partner and I have had basically no time to practice together so far, so I'm a little worried, but that's what happens when I'm involved with theatre and am taking 9 classes. Yeah.

I think I'm ready as an individual, though. Here's a couple little shots of my work in Paso during class. Meh, what do you think? Do I look aggressive and intimidating? Because that's how I'm supposed to look in Paso Doble... meh. I need to use my core more.

Oh, how I wish I could have started ballroom dancing at a younger age. I look at the high school students who are competing in events and are even better than me... and I think... if only. But I enjoy it, and that's all that matters!

Really, though, can I just say that I have the most awesome husband ever?! Supporting me in all of my dancing and being happy for me because I enjoy it so much... AND he even joined in dancing with me at the dance lab on Halloween after my performances were over. He's getting pretty good at 180-level cha cha and he picked up on polka & night club two-step really quickly! That made my night, it really did. Thank you so much, Douglas. You are too good to me! A girl couldn't ask for more!

20 Fall Dates

The weather was cold enough yesterday that I had to turn on the heater, and there was even a light dusting of snow on the highest mountaintops. I take this as a sign that fall is officially here! Now the trees need to hurry up and turn colors. Some of them have started, but not enough of them!

While I'm waiting for the leaves to start lookin' like fall leaves should, here are a list of things my hubby and I want to do together this season as the days get crisper and the season swings into full motion.

We hope to be able to get to most of these before the snow sets in (which hopefully won't be until November).

• Go to a pumpkin patch. I haven't been to one of these in ages, and it's always fun to pick out your own pumpkin!
• Carve pumpkins. We still haven't carved pumpkins together. What a shame.
• Make bucket-loads of pumpkin foods. We're talking bread, cookies, soups, donuts... yes, donuts! Keep those foods coming, baby! Okay now, no more pumpkin dates on this list, 3 is enough.
• Make a leaf pile and play in it. We had a spontaneous leaf war last autumn and it was so fun. Playing in leaves brings out my inner child and makes me feel super young again.
• Go on a scenic drive. There's nothing like a winding road, fall foliage, and some fun tunes playing in the background.
• Do a nearby hike or for a walk through a pretty part of town. We live right by a canyon that has some simple hiking trails, and if we drive North about 15 minutes there are some even better ones (Stewart Falls!)
• Visit an apple orchard. I don't know if there are any good apple orchards in the Provo area, but it's something I would love to do.
• Go on a "thermos picnic". For this one, all you need is several thermoses, your favorite soup, some nice, hot apple cider, and some warm blankets. Go sit in a scenic area and enjoy the fall weather.
• Go through a corn maze. The thing about me and corn mazes is that I cannot go through one without a flashlight in hand so I can sit there going "lumos" and "nox" as I pretend I'm in the 3rd task of the Triwizard Tournament at Hogwarts. Nerdy much? Ever since Katie Church and I did this years ago, it's been my go-to corn maze attitude.
• Make a graham cracker haunted house. You can make graham cracker gingerbread houses, so why not haunted houses? I think it's a super cute idea.
• Have a bonfire... or at least a miniature bonfire. In other words, a campfire. The great thing about living next to mountains is that there are plenty of little fire pits to go find. We'll make a party out of it. S'mores, anyone? And more hot apple cider, of course!
• "Boo" a family. Have you guys heard of this Halloween tradition? You print out an outline of a ghost and drop it off on someone's doorstep along with some treats. They have to put the ghost on their door so that others know that they've been "boo'd" and then they have to go "boo" a family... and it goes on and on until you see ghosts on doors all over the place. How fun!
• Go to a farmers market.  We have one right down the street from us, it would take less than 10 minutes to walk there. They have some great stuff over there, from what I hear.
• Have a fall photo shoot. We're still up in the air about how to go about doing this one. I want legit "professional" pictures because we haven't had a photo shoot since we got married, but Doug doesn't want to pay for it. Does anyone in the Provo area know of a good photographer with very reasonable pricing???
• Watch a sunset. This could go hand-in-hand with the thermos picnic date.
• Go stargazing. Last year, we drove up into Provo Canyon and cuddled up in a bunch of blankets out on a big open stretch of grass and gazed up at the stars. We did that the year before too... only we weren't dating yet, there were other people with us, and we weren't exactly cuddling, just lying side-by-side. Third time's a charm! Tradition!
• Have a spa night. Complete with massages, face masks, etc. It's gonna be good.
• Make a blanket fort and watch a movie. This could be particularly fun once it gets close to Halloween - you can put on your favorite scary movie (Haunting in Connecticut, anyone?) or a Halloween classic like Ghostbusters or Hocus Pocus! Turn the lights off, start feeling claustrophobic in your little blanket fort, and let yourself get scared!
• Go dancing. Sure, this is not exactly an "autumn-themed date" but it's something we want to do this fall. I'm really involved with ballroom and Doug is not, and so I've taught him some basics. We want to keep going!
• Visit a Haunted House. Classic, you guys. Classic. They just tend to be rather pricey... but I want to go to the Haunted Forrest in American Fork. I went there a couple years ago and enjoyed it, but we'll see if we actually end up doing this. As long as we go to that corn maze, then I'm okay with missing the haunted house!

Well, that's what we've got so far. There's more where that came from I'm sure, but 20 is enough for now and it will keep us busy for the next month!

Rainy days are here to stay. I get to wear my boots and sweaters. Next week my favorite month will start and I will finally feel justified in putting up my Halloween decorations. I am so very happy! I love you, autumn!

Small Things on a Friday

I found myself with a free hour right around lunchtime today, and so I went over to my college campus's art museum to eat at the Cafe they have on the second floor of the building. I had never eaten there before, and it was a wonderfully, simplistically classy place. In my opinion, that is. I suppose I have not been to many classy cafes.

I felt really cool eating my chilled raspberry soup and herbal bread while writing in my journal. Like... it was hipster status, guys, really. I will definitely be heading back there for tomato basil soup when the weather gets cooler. I'm sure it tastes heavenly.

That MOA Cafe visit was a great mid-way point for my school day.
This cute little origami elephant was another thing that made me happy today...

And I was able to go to a baby shower and make this onesie using fabric paint. You must admit... it's awesome.

I love it when my attempts to be "artsy" actually work out. And believe me, that only happens part of the time. Try as I might, my artistic expression does not come through paint and sculpture and crafts as much as it comes through dance, music, literature, and theatre. I try though, people. I try.

Happy Friday to everyone!
And can I just say... I love ballroom dance so much. Expect to hear more about my auditions in my weekly wishes post on Monday!

A love affair with ballroom dance

My first love is, of course, my husband. Then comes ballroom dance. And I guess I love other things too, such as the gospel and the season of autumn and chocolate-covered strawberries...

But ballroom is high on my list. Very high. In fact, almost scandalously high. You might go so far to say that I am in the middle of an affair with ballroom dance. I just can't stay away from it and find any excuse to break out into a smooth dance or move some Latin hips.

We had a dance lab for all of the ballroom classes offered during summer term here at BYU. I'm in 3 different classes right now, and so I was very busy all night long rocking out to dances such as rumba, samba, paso doble, waltz, tango, foxtrot, cha-cha, west coast swing, and mambo. One of my favorite parts about dance labs is having an excuse to dress up. Bring on the red lipstick and flowing skirts! It makes me feel so elegant, especially when swinging across the floor doing a classy foxtrot routine.

^^^ And you've got to have that awkward moment where your TA comes over and photo-bombs your selfie pictures, claiming that you need to have a cute guy in at least some of your photos. I didn't know how to respond to that without being awkward, since I'm married (I'm just naturally an awkward person anyways), so I just made some funny faces in the mirror and this is the result. Well, I agree that cute guys are great to have in pictures, but I'd rather have it be the cute guy pictured below. I am married to him, after all. Even if I am having an affair with ballroom dance, this ginger boy remains my priority.

Doug is such a sport, letting me do all of this ballroom stuff without him. We're going to do some dancing this Friday though, and that makes me excited! Doug, I'll make a dancer out of you yet!

In other news, I'll be certifying in medals exams this Friday and next Wednesday... and then I have a competition next Friday! I'll be competing in rumba and waltz, and possibly west coast swing if I can teach my dance partner the steps in time, since he hasn't learned the summer term gold-level curriculum. Perhaps we'll just improvise! Or do the spring curriculum because he knows those steps.

Speaking of dance partners, my partner for rumba/waltz was wearing this tie today. The nerd inside me died.

And I unintentionally matched him today. Which is fine because we were doing video recordings and it made us look shnazzy. Yes, I said shnazzy. It IS a word. Deal with it.

Oh, how I love my new Latin sandals. Even though they gave me horrific blisters that my feet are still recovering from. But it is so worth it! Ballroom dance is worth sacrificing my heels for...

Are there any other ballroom fans out there?
Don't you just LOVE it?!?!!!