Things I Love Right Now

here are a few things i love right this minute in no particular order:
 (first I love the new blogger photo uploader!)

Orbits pina colada gum, it's like a party in my mouth. d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s.

my new scripture goodies i got in Utah (and the new scriptures) i got a color coding book to make sense out of all my scribbles, the BIG pack of eagle scripture crayons and the young women ribbon bookmark holder

our mission wall where we have Ty's countdown calendar, wednesday was his 2nd week in the MTC holla! and the It's Russia Time! clock we've had on our wall for a year for my aunt and uncle who are serving in russia. soon we will have another clock with It's Santiago Time! on it. i also love that Shelley just came up and pointed out that the clock on the wall is wrong...haha

homemade cauliflower soup in my favorite big red mug. it has like 54 calories a serving and it too is d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s. i also love that i adorned it with a few bacon bits. don't judge.

my new ROMY lace undershirt that i got for a whopping 5 bucks, originally 18. booya

i love the fact that these gummy bears and single york peppermint candy have been sitting on the counter mocking me and i don't have one desire to eat them. (well maybe one desire way back there covered in dust and spiders) 

i love that i get to teach a lesson to the YW on sunday. i usually teach once a month but since i've been gone i haven't taught since the beginning of August. i made little "first aid kits" to give to each of the girls and i'm going to make some Zopf (Züpfe) bread for them to eat that goes along with a poem. too bad i can't eat any. it's my favorite bread EVER.

i LOVE the Dove go fresh body mists i have two scents but this is my favorite so far. 

i love that i've been drinking all the water i'm supposed to (even though what's in there now is sugar free strawberry lemonaid). i keep half a lemon in the bottle so all my water is easier to get down. i love water but after so many glasses i get sick of it. (something i DON'T love...peeing every 5 minutes)

i love that we got our complete LOST series on blu-ray. i love the hidden compartments and the game it comes with. can't wait to watch it, i'm going to wait until Ty gets home from his mission in two years and have a marathon.

i love these stars that we made yesterday for YW activity. they are three dimensional. i have some big plans for these babies.

i also love that i will be getting the new ipod touch 64G  as soon as SOMEONE gets it in stock again. grrrrr i went on a hunt today but nobody had them in stock. 

i love that it's windy and rain-y outside and that the trees are starting to change colors. and the fact that bellwood farms is open and i can have my fill of honeycrisp apples that are the size of my head. no joke. one apple probably has half my daily calories. 

i love that i've lost six pounds since restarting my diet last monday. probably could be better if i would go to the gym buuuuut that's not always how i roll, though i should start rolling that way.

i'm sure there's more but that's just what i could come up with real quick-like. now i want more soup :(. i love the fact that i made lots extra last time and froze them in baggies and can have cauliflower soup whenever i please.

well actually i have one or two more, i LOVE the show the colony and i love that Survivor is back on and amazing Race starts sunday...i love me some good shows OK?!  oh and community is almost back on!

i love that i made indian curry last night and it still smells like it, BUT i don't like that there was no leftovers dangit!

i love this youtube video you gotta watch the original too she's CRAZY.


i love the song king of anything by sara barellis and i just discovered this girl called Lenka whom i enjoy also. thanks pandora

New blog in town

I have been gone. in utah. for what seems like a long time. we were dropping my brother off at the MTC which is where he will train for his mission for our church. i haven't had much of a desire to blog as of late blogger's been really weird and won't let me access my page on our main computer. it has been so hectic i haven't even thought/cared about it. here are a few pictures from our trip, i'll post more on faceboo.

ty pointing to CHILE where he will head off to in early november. i think this was in the conference center

we had to do a "dry run" of dropping ty off b/c my parents left on sunday and he didn't check in until wednesday. so we trekked to the MTC and stood in front of a building since they took down the MTC sign. we looked pretty suspicious but whatever.
here's the family minus me (it's great being the photographer!) in front of the salt lake temple just as the fountain started coming up.
here's the conference center. we had a great tour guide who gave us the DL about this building. it's pretty cool/inspired.
and last photo is of our whole family and my aunt and uncles family at the mt. timp. temple. we stayed with them in spanish fork...by the harry kirschna temple...SO COOL.

anyways so we are adjusting to life without ty around, it isn't too different b/c we hardly saw him anyways he was always at a friends house. oh maybe i should explain about the title of this post...i made ty a mission blog that can be found here there is information on how to contact him and we will post letters/emails as we get them so everyone can be updated.

SURVIVOR STARTS WEDNESDAY! whhho's excited?! amanda's excited. just an FYI.

oh ya i also started my prism diet again today. i still have about 80 more calories until 1,000 the options are endless. i'm thinking a nice honeycrisp apple will hit the spot. here's to loosing 25 lbs in 5 weeks and peeing every 4.5 minutes! huzzah!

Blogging? What's that?

Wow slackkker much? well i have a semi good excuse, the main computer where i usually blog from capooted and is in the shop, never mind that it just happened 3 days ago. oh well. all the pics i have are from my P&S which i don't have a card reader for- there is a card reader connected to the main computer-so maybe i'll find some pics from my laptop to post?
this has been a busy month just like july. we are getting ready to fly out to Utahrrr to drop my brother ty off at the MTC for his mission to Santiago, Chile (NOT chili:)). he reports on the 8th we will be there about ten days early. UGh i just spilled crystal lite almost on my computer. gosh dangit i hate blogger right now. why the heck did everything just underline and pretend to be a link right now?! OH MY GOSH i'm soooo annoyed. good thing i can't fix it. whatever!!!!! i'm looking into making my own website pretty soon, one that DOES NOT involve blogger. one that would be a site for a blog, my photography and the like. wait for it. it will be awesome. also blogger won't let me change my dumb layout that i've had forever and am sick of. i'm just batting 100 today.


Well...oh that worked....weird. well now that we are not typing like a link now i can get onto the rest of this post which is going to be about...BOOKS. i love to read. loooove loooove looove it. here are 3 books i'm currently reading and one book i will get in the mail Aug. 24th(!!!!!)


if you haven't read the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, please go get it right this minute and read it. i read it right after it came out and couldn't put it down. then i had to wait FOREVER for the next one, Catching Fire now I've waited FOREVER for the last book in the series, Mockingjay. It will be brilliant! it will also be a movie in the year 2011. i just have one thing to say, Kristen Stewart better not be Katniss Everdeen otherwise i won't see it...and i really want to see it.
this is another book i just got from the libaray and started a few days ago. it's about these "aliens" that come from another planet to earth to protect their planet from the bad guys. the only way they can die is if they are killed in order. they don't know where the others are and have to keep moving to stay hidden. every time one is killed they get a circle burned into their ankle so it's about this boy who is #4 and gets the 3rd burn on his ankle. i'm not too far in it yet but i'm enjoying it quite a bit. this will also be a movie in the year 2011 and they have already starting filming.
this book is a different pace than the others. it's about a girl who finds out her dad is a serial killer when she is 15. it's her trying to keep it a secret and finally coming out about it. i will probably have to return this before i finish since i leave soon and i have so many other books but maybe i will get it on CD so i can listen to the rest of it.
this book is almost 800 pages long which isn't a big deal i love long books, especially if they are good but it's taking a while to get into it. the author is really wordy but my dad said it was good. i do have this one on CD so i'll probably stick it on my ipod before i leave so i can return the book to the library. it's about an outbreak of a virus the government was trying to contain and everyone turns into these creatures that they describe as vampires but nothing like the vampires we are used to reading about. it's an end of the world type of book and it follows a young girl who survives and has to learn to keep herself alive. this is the first book out of 3. i'm sure this will be a movie too, it has a lot of followers already and it's only been out a month or two.

Operation: Potential

sometimes i tend to focus on the negative so i came up with an exercise, if you will, to help me see the potential in all things. i went to value village today and bought a few, shall we say, homely dresses and my goal over the next few days is to make them completely different, well maybe not this first one, i think it's perfect just the way it is...

uhhh maybe not so we'll see what i can come up with.

this one isn't quite so, pioneerish but it's still pretty blah. so watch out for some sweeeeet new clothes.

i haven't blogged in awhile because we had family here from utah:

this is what we do with family, paint their toenails...then laugh every time they take their socks off. and laugh even harder when they forget and wear flipflops.

went to a mariner game with nicole. we had an adventure getting there but we made it in one piece....barely ;). we didn't even get really lost!!

this last weekend we went tubing for activity WAY fun. i've only been tubing a few times but i'll have to make friends with someone who has a boat b/c it was a blast. it was raining and freeeezing cold but so worth it. we'd just get in the water when we got too cold since it was a lot warmer. i tried my knees as knee boarding (get it? instead of tried my hand, tried my knees...hahahaha) i could get up on the board just find i couldn't grab the rope though, i was too chicken after being plummeted head first the first 3 tries.
so random post about nothing really. i'm super duper tired.
24 days until I go to UTAH!!

Birthday Wrap-Up

This post is really just an elaborate ruse to NOT unpack my camping stuff or clean my room. it's tooooo daunting ahhhhh. my room looks like a bomb exploded in it, NO good at all. maybe i'll just start throwing stuff away and see what happens.

anyways as the title of this post suggests this is a birthday wrap-up, kind of. my dad said there's still one thing coming in the mail and then we will have the family party at some point after my aunts wedding. i got spoiled this year, i got lots of good stuff i guess when you get older and spend lots of money on others' gifts you get extra good gifts back ;) jk jk. so here is a picture post with little interruptions for my silly captions:

i actually bought this for myself at a street market in snohomish. it's a little funky and not something i would normally wear but i enjoy it. i enjoyed the price tag too ;)
this is a little camera keychain that flashes. preeeeeeety cool

a BAZINGA! shirt from one of my favorite shows, Big Bang Theory.

when in rome is pretty funny to me.

triple combo scriptures with a snap front. super excited. i'm a little sad to leave my seminary scriptures behind but i'll still keep them around.

since i never read it online my mom got me this book

some scrapbook supplies, i just combined them they are from tracy, anita and my mom. there were a few other things too but they are buried right now :\. my mom sewed that grey and yellow bag i can never have too many bags.

another non-bday gift but oh well. this is the dress i got for my aunts wedding. the pic. doesn't do it justice, it has a small bubble bottom and a flower middle. all for $19, thanks Kohls.com clearance! i got the last one.

this was a dress my mom got me but it was too short to be a dress and too long to be a shirt so i cut off the 2 bottom tiers and made it into a shirt. i reallllly like it but i felt guilty cutting it.

at girls camp the night i left the girls and doneva gave me the SOFTEST blanket EVER with a really cute reusable shopping bag.

i love dan brown books and i have all his books in hardback but for some reason i only had davinci code in paperback so i got a hard copy. a set of denise interchangeable knitting needles!!!! pink ones! i also got a set of skull candy ear buds but skull candy does not stay in my ears so i exchanged them for sony's.

my package from RUSSIA came last night while i was at a mariner game so when i got home it was waiting for me. i just love nesting dolls!! i wonder how they knew? thanks aunt jeanie and uncle joe!

sam and my mom picked this scale out for me at an antique shop. i might try to make some sort of photo prop out of it. my parents also got me this cuisinart immersion blender with a whisk attachment and a chopper attachment LOVE it. time to make some soup or meringue or something.

not pictured: ty got me a gift card to Old Navy, my favorite store! a 12x24 paper pack with cool decoration papers.

and last but NOT least, my birthday present to myself. a blendtec blender. ya man i'm so excited to use it. i was gone for the week after i got it so i haven't used it much yet but it makes hot soup and cold ice cream. AMAZING machine. thanks costco!

i defiantly got spoiled. next week i'm going to dinner with a few friends since i've been so busy i haven't seen them for awhile, it will be pretty nice. michelle gets home this week. my cousins from utah are leaving today and will be here tomorrow for my aunts wedding this weekend. busy busy busy busy. so no more procrastinating i need to clean my room in a bad way!

Gurrrrls Camp 2010!

I just got back from girls camp last night. i had to leave a day early because i'm supposed to be packing right now for my retreat that i leave for in an hour...woops. i have never ever been a camper. tents are not my friend, sleeping bags make me claustrophobic, bugs use me as their buffet, campfire smoke burns my lungs...the list could go on about why i am not a camper. but i'll tell you what, this week has been wonderful! i wasn't concerned with my own well being and i didn't care if i got too cold or hot or if i got bit by bugs. my focus was on the girls in our camp and i think that made my camp experience so great. i was able to forget about my uncomfortable-ness and make sure they were warm, drinking their water, well fed and having fun. all the things that are usually an issue for me and camping didn't seem to make an appearance. sure i got a few bug bites and got a little sunburned but that didn't bother me at all.

our theme for camp this year was "I Believe" i love disney movies and this theme made me happy. our wards theme happened to be Cinderella...ummm ask my parents i would watch that movie ALL day long if they'd let me when i was a kid. they would get up Saturay mornings (5am cough) and put it on for me then rewind it and play it again ;). so that was a wonderful theme for our ward. our color was purple which is in my top 5 favorite color list.

we had some amazing girls which always makes it better/easier. we only had 5 girls from our ward come and 2 of them were youth leaders who didn't even need to hang out with our ward but since they are good/nice girls they spent a lot of time with us which was way fun. heidi even slept with our ward which was an added bonus!
i wanted them to have a fun and memorable time at camp so each day i had a little gift for them. the first day i gave them each a journal with their initial on it and a letter from their parents. the 2nd day was the big hike day so i set up a little spa for them. i bought a few cheap pools, filled them with water and scented beads, gave them each a mini manicure set and towel and let them do pedicures/manicures. i gave them their gift for the 3rd day also on the 2nd day at night since i had to leave a day early, i just bought a package of glow bracelets and a quote. then last night before i left i gave them all a glass slipper and a quote to remind them that they are princesses no matter what the world tells them.

our tent was kind of the meeting place for girls who wanted to come hang out. we had the most food and a huge bag of crafts which made us kind of popular. all the girls really enjoyed our nutella...don't ask me why. nasty stuff.

our skit was the BEST in my opinion ;). of course it was cinderella that we made a little more modern (with unmodern clothes). our prince charming was taylor launter which made the audience very happy. we had a full sized cutout of him and he was our "mascot" during camp.

they were great at going with the flow and acting goofy and the did a great job.

this was the first day of camp right after unpacking. it was so nice and organized. we had 4 air mattresses lined up for maximum comfort/body heat....note: the tent didn't stay this organized the whole time but the did do a pretty good job keeping it clean.

this was on our way to the park, still clean and smell free!

overall camp was great and i was so glad to go. packing stressed me out and planning stressed me out but once we got there it was so perfect and relaxing. i'm glad for the chance i had to participate, i hope they all had fun!