UAF (continued)

No real pictures from this trip, but it was a blast none the less.

Mom, dad, me and Nik took the journey down town for the Utah Arts Festival on Saturday. It was so much fun!! I love going to this every year, and I could totally go every day and just keep looking at all the fun stuff. I would probably talk myself out of a lot of money if I did though, so I limit it to one visit a year. I always want to buy something. And I feel a little jipped if I don't come away with a souvenir, so, thank you to the kids Art Garden where we made free 'birds on a steeek' so I could feel like I got something. Nik even made me a pipe cleaner butterfly that I love. It is in my purse.

Dad bought this great air brushed picture set of the famous jazz musician Miles Davis. He loves Miles. The artist was amazing. If you are familiar with masking (using a barrier like a stencil to make clean edges), he made 3 or 4 color pictures of celebrities using spray paint. We spent the longest time looking at those. I would have loved to have at least 3 of them. Nik found Frank Sinatra with the Rat Pack, Dave Matthews, and Bruce Lee. They were really amazing.

I saw lots of stained glass too. I always look at that stuff and think "I could totally do that if I had the space!!" And I could! But right now, space is not the only problem. I have been offered the use of several spaces if I wanted too, but with working full time, and feeling like crap half the time, it just isn't working out. I need to come up with a project I am passionate about, something that will seem worth it to get off the couch and do, even if I am not feeling my best. That would be great.

Has anyone else been to the Festival?

Utah Arts Festival

I have a few pictures from the Relay for Life last night, but I have not downloaded them, so it will be a little while still before I get to that post. But I will say a big THANK YOU to Vivian and family, and Mya and Abigail for coming out to support me. It was really great to have friends there.

This is really just a short post to tell everyone how excited I am to be going to the Utah Arts Festival today. Next to the State Fair, it is my favorite part about summer. I never have enough money to buy any of the stuff I really want, but it is so much fun to go and look. You know, being an artist and all ;) Tonight is also the Taylorsville Dayzz Parade and fireworks. The parade is going on as we speak, about 2 blocks away from where I am at work, and it is killing me!! But the best part is by far the fireworks, and I will for sure be there tonight at 10pm. Anyone in the area is more than welcome to join me and my family there. In fact, I encourage it! We will have glow sticks too.


**edited to add: Mom bought me a pretty princess crown at the parade!! It's like I was there!!

Farewell Farrah

Farrah Fawcett died today at the age of 62 after battling cancer. I will admit that she was before my time, but I feel bad for the next generation that will not know about her famous hair-do.

New Car Woes

We have been in the market for a new car for little while now. Not really searching, but keeping an eye out for a good deal. Several weeks ago I found a 2006 Suzuki Forenza on KSL for $6250. That was a really good price compared to the almost $8000 others were asking for the same year. Nik loved the color, and I love my current Suzuki, so I was down too. After looking at it for weeks we finally decided to take it for a test drive yesterday.

It was great. It looked spectacular, drove perfectly, and all the electronic stuff worked. We were sold! We had the papers drawn up and decided that Nik could meet me at work the next day (today) and we could do the loan and get the car on Monday. When we did the loan we found out that the price it was asking would put us at 100% loan-to-value (meaning that if we got in a car accident we could possibly owe more than the car is worth, so we would still have to pay for it). That didn't sit well with me. We talked it over and Nik is going to try and get him to go lower. We don't have high hopes since it is a dealership (a small one, but one nonetheless).

If he can even go down like, $500, it would be worth it. We want to add the remainder of the Mustang loan to this one as well, and we don't qualify for that with the price as is.

Cross your fingers!!

One of the amazing craft blogs I read, Homemade By Jill, is doing one of the coolest giveaways in history! Well, its pretty cool anyway. This company, the Original Scrapbox, has some of the coolest scrap book supplies I have seen anywhere. They specialize in making the most of your space and keeping everything organized. The give away is for the EZ View Desktop (pictured above) and I can think of so many more ways to use it than just scrap booking, I have to have it! If you are interested in entering the give away as well, head on over to Homemade By Jill and check out how to do it.

You weren't forgotten

If you did not receive an invitation, don't despair! You are still invited to my lia sophia party on Thursday June 18th (this Thursday) at 7:00pm at my moms house! If you can't make the party, but still want to see all the cool stuff, please go to the web site, here, and look around. I think it is beautiful stuff. I would love to see everyone there, and bring a friend if you want. Even if you don't plan to get anything, I love friends!

Here we are again!

It is officially Burn Notice season again! Technically it started last Thursday, but I was not on the ball, so here it is now.

I just can't get over this show! So great! I love Jeffrey Donavan so much. I had a dream last week after watching the season premier that Nik was a mix of Michael Westen and James Bond (the good Daniel Craig one). It was an interesting dream. Nik is my hero.

We have a sorta-tradition of watching this show with Lou and Ten and family. I hope we can work it out to do it every week. (Oh, and just so you know, it is on Hulu, so you don't have to come over to watch it if you don't want to. I won't hold it against you.)

Yard Sales!!!

Ok, I am going yard saleing tomorrow, and I am looking for a companion. There are some HUGE ones that I want to hit, and then just what ever is in between them. I won't be leaving super early, maybe like 9:30am. Let me know if you want to come with!

Shoot me

I currently have this song stuck in my head.

Finally!!!

Years ago Jergens lotion had a Shave Minimizing lotion that I used on my legs to make the hair softer in between shaving. It was awesome. Shortly after I started using it stores stopped carrying it, but I could find it at Big Lots for about another year...then they stopped carrying it. Oh well. I was bummed, but what do you do.

As soon as I figured out that the lotion did what it said it was going to do, I thought, they should put this in deodorant, that would be way more useful than in a lotion. And it never happened.

Then, this morning I saw a commercial for this:

FINALLY!!! I am so excited for this! I use Dove deodorant anyway, so this is great!

Why didn't they listen to me earlier?

If you loved Twlight

You may want to stay away from this post. This is from the always entertaining Apples at the Chapel. He had some thought provoking views on the underlying purpose of the first Stephanie Meyer book.

Susan G. Komen: Race for the Cure

Saturday May 9th was the Race for the Cure (breast cancer) down at the Gateway. My sister-in-law Audrey has been preparing for this race for months, and I told her right at the beginning that I would be there with her. I am so glad I did! It was such a good time.

Keep in mind that I signed up and everything before my diagnosis, so it seemed all the more important that I complete this race. It ended up being me, Audrey, Emilee, and Audrey's friend Kristin (is that right Aub?). We had a grand old time and completed the race in a modest 2 hours, if I remember right. My little pedometer on my phone informed me that I took approx. 8500 steps during the race. In a normal, busy day at work I take about 4000, usually less. So that was good. We already made plans to do the race next year, but Audrey says we are running it. That may take more training than I put in for this one. But I am down. Count me in for next year. Here are some pictures:

All the people in front of us. I even zoomed in a little, so you can get a good idea of how many were there. It think it was more than 18,000.
Here are my walking buddies. Kristin on the far end, Audrey in the middle and Emilee at the end.
I felt left out, so I took a picture with Em. Check out our sweet glasses!

Amy and Nik made this cool sign and, along with them, my parents (which was a surprise) and my mother-in-law, Jeanne were waiting for us at the finish line. It was an emotional moment.

Here are the champions! We all had such a great time and I am so glad I decided to do this with Audrey. Thanks for letting me tag along!

Anniversary pics

No, not those ones!!

Aren't we cute!
This is Adam Pavkovich, he is my favorite player, but he sucked it up every time at bat. Nik pointed out that at least we don't have to worry that he will be called up! These are our Rally Caps, cause we were loosing big time. It didn't work.

(can you see the Port line in my neck on the right side. I think its pretty noticeable)

Happy Anniversary Baby!!

(look how hot he is! Can you blame me?)

Yesterday was our 3rd wedding anniversary! There was a lot going on so I didn't get to a post, but I hear that my mom managed one. Anyway, I just wanted to say a quick 'I love you' to my wonderful husband and let him know that I am more and more glad to be with him everyday. He has been extra good to me in the past weeks and months, and I only see good things ahead. Thanks for risking getting kicked out of the HHC for me baby! Love you always.

Lena

Tilt Shift Photography

A little while back I was introduced to a photography style called Tilt Shift. It is the ability to make a real life photo look like a photo of a miniature setting. I LOVE IT!! I desperately want to figure out how to do it, but I think you need a different type of camera than I have. Reading the directions it tells you to do things you can't do on my digital camera. Oh well. In the mean time How About Orange found a great website that will create the effect for you, with an existing photo! Here is one I made from a picture of the San Diego Zoo. I love it!!

Tilt Shift:

Original:

Angels and Demons

Before you read this, if you are excited to see this movie, like I was, just go see it. Read this later.

Ok, it was good. Not great. Good. I went with a couple friends who had recently re-read the book in anticipation of the movie. Apparently that was a bad idea. It was a couple summers ago when I read it last, so I was not as familiar with the intricacies of the plot. They changed a lot to keep the flow in 2.5 hours, which is understandable. But they changed the ending. I won't say what they did, but it worked. Just not like you wanted it too.

This was a typical Dan Brown movie as well (it saddens me to think that that term means anything but "stellar"), with the predictable twists and hidden bad guys. Is that confusing? Nik, having not read the book before, felt like he knew what each turn would bring. Plus, its Dan Brown, so you know that the way it looks like it is going to end is not how it really ends.

There was more gore in the movie that I was expecting. I always forget that this book was graphic. I seem to be able to glaze over it more when I am reading it. I will say that with all the gore, they did not re-visit it. They would show it once for shock value, then just imply the rest. But there were several scenes of "oh, gross!!". Also there is a lot of 'shaky cam' employed. Nik and I tend to get a little motion sickness when there is a lot of this, and it was border line. Don't know what I am talking about? Think 'The Island', or 'Quantum of Solace'.

I can't decide how this compared to Davinci Code. Some said it was not even close to as good, some said it was at least as good, and others said it was marginally better. I would like to say it was better, just because I liked the book so much more. But I just can't bring myself to do it.

Grade: B-

Thanks

To Tom and Liz for a great night in. It is always a pleasure to see them and their adorable little boy. Liz had a great dinner of left overs for us and we had a good time talking and watching tv. It was good to get out of the house, but not really have to do anything!

Real Quick!

Pigtails and Snails is having another quilt giveaway! I love her stuff. I am hoping to get some extra entries by blogging here, and to spread the word! Check it out and enter if you are interested!

More pictures

Here is the next installment of my pictures taken at my sister in law's house. These are of the landscape...so to speak.

More pictures!

I am doing my next group of photos in different installments. Here is the first:

My step-brother-in-law just got a cool old/new boat that I thought was so cool! I took a bunch of pictures of it, but none of them turned out as good as I thought. But here are a couple anyway. Also, Allie was so darned cute "driving" the boat, I could not resist!