What a week....

I'm taking a break from the massive tornado of a day to blog about the things I'm grateful for.  In my head I initially thought, with all this craziness WHAT IS there to be grateful for?! (I didn't know which word I was supposed to emphasize so I emphasized both...)   However I know, deep down, that there are more than enough things to be grateful for, even during a week like this one.

• My job - especially during a time when some people around me surprisingly didn't have one anymore
• My co-workers - I couldn't have created better people to work with
• My realizations of my frustrations - It's one thing to be frustrated, but it's another to be able to realize you're frustrated and that you're being slightly ridiculous.  (whether or not that realization causes me to stop being ridiculous is my next step in my human development )
• My voice - My ranting, raving, complaining, moaning, pouting would be a lot different if I were to be using sign language to express myself.  (No disrespect, I've observed some heated conversations between two people signing) 
• Eye smiles - the smiles that you can see in someone's eyes.  I can always tell if someone is genuinely smiling if it reaches their eyes.  Those smiles, are good smiles. (Also I may have practiced in front of a mirror once to see if I could make eye smiles.  It was hard.)
• Visits from friends that live abroad - Yes, Idaho definitely counts as abroad.  So glad I got to hang out with you guys at the Nickel Mania and happy to just chill with all my besties! 
• Organization - that refreshing feeling when you've torn everything apart and now it's all put back nice and neat and pretty. :)
• Being one of the two offers considered on a sweet pad! Fingers still crossed....
• Finally bowling a decent game and having awesome friends to bowl with. 
• Carpool lane on I-15
• Quotes like this one:

All Time Favorite

Speaking of awesome videos, this happens to be my ALL TIME favorite music video.  I am obsessed with this song, and the music video is equally as great.  WATCH IT. :)



This song always makes me want to play the drums and dance like a crazy person.

Pep Talk

Found this lovely from this magnificent lady!  WATCH IT!


I swear this kid belongs in the Little Rascals. So there you go, come on people!  Let's dance! :)

Happy Weekend.

Slacker

Sheesh, a day late yet again..... my bad. This past week has been awesome!  I'm grateful for the following things that Dominated my week and can't wait for next week!

Best Birthday Card I read this week.... :)

Helping Habitat for Humanity!

Perfect.

BYU Mens Volleyball game

Coasting into the gas station with ZERO miles remaining!

Counting down until this guy comes home! 

 Jordan comes home from his mission in less than 2 months!  I cannot wait!! Just under 8 weeks left!
P.S. Mens Volleyball is now my new favorite sport to watch.  WOW they are so good!  Plus, ridiculously tall and a lot of them were certainly good looking!  Now I just need to figure out where their after parties are at....
P.P.S Habitat for Humanity is such an awesome organization!! Check it out and go volunteer!
P.P.P.S instaawesome is happening over here @haystack04, care to join me?

Organization Intentions

So I was reading another blog post over HERE about grocery shopping and meal planning dilemmas.  This is a constant mystery to me, and I am always interested to hear how people survive so I was browsing through the comments to the post.  That's when I came across THIS.

Oh. My. Gosh.  Color-coded, organized AND adorable?!  It's a magnetic calendar with little magnets for recipes with side dishes, night out days, leftover days, etc. so you can plan your meals in advance and grocery shop accordingly.  You print out the cute little magnets so they can say whatever you want them to!  The original idea came from HERE and hers looks like this:

These women are good. I wish I could just become them because I'm sure they are great cooks and great mothers if they have their monthly meal plans looking like this!  I want to make my own, especially because in each of the posts they give fool proof instructions on how do so but then I realized I don't have very many recipes. Oh, and I'm cooking for 1. :) So maybe I'll tuck this away and save it for when I've got a family I'm cooking for?   Either way, I had to post this so that I could remember it forever, and because maybe someone else will want to do this for their house!!  Anyone else think this is awesome?! Buhler....?

Rounding up the gang once more

Guess what's going down tonight?!

Yup, that's right, we're braving another season of bowling league :)  Am I excited?  Acca-believe it! I've been practicing all weekend so I'm hoping I won't embarrass myself tonight. Plus, they now have CHAMPION t-shirts and what's cooler than a bowling league champion t-shirt.... alright probably a lot of things haha. It's been a few years since I've been in a bowling league so we'll have to see if I've still got what it takes to hold the name DOMINATION.

Let's hope yesterday's game wasn't just a fluke...

Blind date wanted to go bowling.....little did he know....

Woops

So today is Friday.... and yesterday was Thursday.... which means I missed my Weekly Domination post because I was too lazy to do anything.... fail. I'm already re-thinking my frail commitment of doing this post every week, but I'll give it another go for now.

So without further ado... Here's a list of a few awesome things that dominated my week!

• Mom & Me time on Saturday
• I love my mom. :)  Plus I bought myself my first infinity scarf!!
• Holli and I researching my new singles ward.  
• Conclusion: sexy men, they don't discriminate against us "old folk," really friendly and welcoming, great vibe and fantastic bishopric! Score!
• Jazz v. Heat game with a super cool date! 
• Finally met baby Jensen!
• Katie and Dave sure do know how to make one cute kid
• Bailed on my soccer game so that I could go out to eat with my parentals and PK.  
• Worth it! 
• Had a minor breakdown about my living situation/options. 
• Thank heavens I have the smartest parents on the planet.  My dad listened to me and helped me think logically about the situation.  My mom pegged me real good.  She observed that I was stressing out just like I am now when I was trying to decide if I wanted to go back to school or not. I tend to get caught up in what the 'smart' or 'right' thing to do is, but those things are what everyone else thinks or says is the 'smart' or the 'right' thing to do.  I'm wired a little differently, and I know when I'm not ready for something.  Unfortunately I try to fight it and convince myself to follow what is 'smart' and 'right' and it ends up stressing me out of my mind.  Thankfully I have great friends and family to help me wallow in my indecisiveness.  I'm not ready yet, but one day I will be, and I'm finally content with that. :)

Looking forward to this weekend and next week, but also learning to be happy where I'm at (sitting in my office and happily working).  

P.S. I did research the saying "without further ado" just to make sure I was saying it right.  Look at this golden nugget I found: 

Now you know! 

Little Miss Crafty Pants

Well I do have to say, the sewing machine and I are becoming really great friends.  Lately I've made a bunch of things and they were so easy!! I'm posting them so I can save them and they'll eventually go into my blog book I'm making :)

Rice hand warmers for co-worker gifts
(Put in the microwave for 30 seconds then stuff them in your coat pockets. They're awesome!)

Kaylyn's make-up brush holder

Pattern adapted from HERE

Zen garden I made for Dad's Christmas present for his office
(obviously didn't come from the sewing machine, but it was still crafty so that counts right?!)

 My next project is to make a quilt!! I'm thinking this pattern, and using this fabric somewhere.... :)  I'm so excited!

Street Names and Blonde Hair

Street Names.

I've always envied people who live on these fancy street names like Paradise Lane, Friendship Circle, Daisy Drive, etc.  Alright most street names aren't that cheesy, but I did see the Friendship Circle one this week.  True story.  I'm not entirely sure where this desire came from, but nevertheless, eventually I will live on Wallaby Way!  I should start taking pictures of awesome street names..... yup I'm now going to start doing that!  So, if any of you see an awesome street name take a picture and send it to me!  Maybe I'll make a sweet collage out of all of them.  Now the wheels are turning....oh the possibilities! 

Blonde Hair.

Yeah, I have that.  I also act like a blonde sometimes.  Shocking?  Not really.  Well yesterday I had the awesome opportunity to go to the Jazz v. Miami Heat game!!  It was a freaking awesome game and so cool to see Lebron and D-Wade (even if they looked like little ants from our seats).  In order to score the sweet tickets, we had to attend a little IT presentation about "Big Data" before the game.   What is Big Data you ask?  I couldn't tell you, I was able to follow along for about, oh, ..................that long.  The information I did understand was fairly interesting, but for the most part I felt pretty stupid sitting there with a bunch of IT guys.

Well one guy on our table was being polite and asked us where we were from.  Of course I have no manners and pipped right up and said, "I'm from Mapleton!" with a big grin on my face.  The guy looked at me for a second, raised his eyebrows then turned to my date and said, "Oh, I meant what company are you from."

Duh.

Wow I felt like such an idiot.  Of course he didn't care where I was residing, he wanted to know why we were there at an IT presentation and what company we were representing.  Oh yeah and did I mention I was on a blind date with someone I met on LDS singles?  Yeah.... That was a big golden start for me.  Thankfully  the presentation started shortly thereafter and I was able to occupy myself with the delicious potatoes, asparagus and steak.  I should be 500 pounds for how often I have to use food as my awkward out in embarrassing situations.

Sheesh, sometimes...... I tell ya, I don't know whether my brain randomly short circuits or if deep down I'm just a bubbling idiot just waiting to surface.  Hopefully it's not the latter. Still crossing my fingers on that one.

What a week! Wasn't it a good one? And to have this awesome snow fall tonight.... love it. :)
A few things that Dominated this week which I'm grateful for are:

• Wool socks
• Modern Family
• Terrible first dates
• Finally being able to cut all ties
• Random ward hopping with Holli
• Starting up some soccer leagues
• Signing up for Spanish class
• New music for free!
• At least one windshield wiper working

Any big weekend plans anyone? I'm going to get my face microdermabrasion-ed, go shopping with my mom and go support my friend tying the knot!

To Be... Me

Do you ever feel like if you were raised in a different area, or with different friends that were involved in different things that you would be... different?  I was thinking about this yesterday for some reason.  Probably because with this online dating stuff you have a chance to tell people you like whatever the heck you want.  I'd like to think that I could have been super into art, maybe hiking/rock climbing, maybe in a band, maybe I'd even like dance?  I was in gymnastics when I was younger and did pretty well...what if I would have kept doing that?  While in high school we get sucked into groups and labels - I was apart of the 'soccer girls' and proud of it.  I wouldn't trade my experiences in high school for anything.  What if I decided to play soccer in college? Not saying that I had offers, but maybe I could have found scouts. 

What if....

THEN, I thought, that's what I have my whole life to experience.  I can do whatever I want. I can try out snowshoeing and maybe I'll even love it.  I've never been skiing or snowboarding in my entire life, maybe I should try it out?!  Why not??   Karlie and I went through a time where all we wanted to do was longboard down the canyon.  It was something different, and my mom didn't entirely understand its appeal but I LOVED every second of it. We met a lot of guys and made a lot of friends.

I think the reason why it's a little hard to 'appear' as someone other than what we have previously been known for is that we don't want to give that part of us up.  I love being considered a 'soccer girl,' but I'm also more than that.  I'm a bowling nerd, a warped tour junkie, obsessed with sewing, crafting and scrapbooking and can't get enough of playing board/card games.  Plus, there's even more to me that I haven't even discovered yet.

So guess what this year's theme is going to be?

Discovery:

Definition:  To stretch my capacities and boundaries.  The act of trying new things.  

To expand  likes and dislikes. To discover the awesome that's inside of me. 

Yeah, I think it's going to be a good year. :)

Oh hey there 2013!

I am loving all the New Years resolution blog posts.  Can I hop on the bandwagon??  I love that everyone is feeling motivated, reflective and excited about all the possibilities this year could have for each of us.  For me, this year is going to be the bomb.com.  I can just feel it.  Also maybe because I can't stop finding reasons to use 'the bomb.com' to describe things in my life.... can't be a bad sign. 

I too made some New Years resolutions that I'm particularly stoked about:

1. Learn Spanish....again.
2. Complete my Vans collection (only 3 more to go!)
3. Read 12 books
4. Go on a road trip
5. Buy my own place

I have a few others, but those will be kept to my journal only. :)  For the past few years I've tried to have a theme for the year.  One year it was "Weightless."  Originally it stemmed from the All Time Low song entitled, Weightless, and it seemed so fitting. 

"Maybe it's not my weekend, but it's gonna be my year.  

I'm so sick of watching all the minutes pass as I go nowhere." 

I even typed out my resolutions along with what I felt my definition of Weightless meant to me. 

P.S. If you haven't heard of All Time Low.....

palm smacking forehead 

Try them out! They are one of the best live performers I've seen.

 Plus it's a great song to run too. 

This year I've been struggling with what my theme should be... Quotes, Songs, a single Word, anything can qualify. Maybe I'll just go back to my roots and have DOMINATION be my theme for this year.  (Not Dominatrix.... don't worry Mom)  Who knows, but I'll figure it out. I'll probably be blowing up Pinterest searching for some adorable and inspiring quotes.

Well, here's to a fantastic new year that I'm soo excited for! 

Where to start.... I can't believe it's already Thursday.  Partying on Monday and not working Tuesday has thrown the week off for me, but I'm certainly not complaining! :)

• Just Dance 4 - so embarrassing but soo fun! 
• Real Estate Agents with an adorable baby
• Jean Friday
• Family
• Good health (knock on wood)
• Homemade soup
• Cute cousins 
• Traditions
• Ticket to Ride
• Hanging out and Pitch Perfect with my besties
• Grown up dreams and possibilities

I'm so excited for some big changes I'm working on right now!! Patience is definitely something I continually have to re-learn..... Hopefully I'll have something good to share soon! 

How was your New Years??  One day I want to go watch the ball drop in person, amongst all the crazy. One day.... Thank heavens for a bucket list right?!