Day 9 - Fruit

I was so glad that we were going to get our bountiful basket the day before I had to shoot fruit because we always get a tonnnn of produce in them! This week we even got an eggplant, which should be interesting...I am thinking that maybe this week will be the time when I shall attempt to make ratatouille--mostly because I love that movie and because we got a summer squash and zucchini from Owen's family yesterday. I'm thinking I will use this recipe, and pray that it is pretty enough to take pictures of. And pretty enough that it will convince Owen that we should buy that movie. 

So we got about a million plums between last time and this week, so I tried my hand at arranging some fruit.

Clearly it was not that successful, so I switched over to shots of single fruits instead.

Pretty sweet, eh? Thank you to my laundry machine + a piece of paper for serving as my makeshift "light box" for today's work, plus a little bit of help from our dear friend photoshop.

Hope you have a lovely and marvelous Sunday and I can't wait to show you tomorrow's shots! 

Day 8- Sunset

sorry for the tardy post, busy day today

reminds me of the lion king. 

Day 7 - High Angle

So for today's photo challenge, I decided to leave my house (a very big step) and venture out to BYU campus, where there are lots of high and low things. 

Turns out the actually close off most of the awesome places that would be great for taking sweet high angle shots (i.e. on top of the SWKT) but that didn't stop me from trying anyway.

I used to stare at this alllllll the time while trying to grasp my physics assignments

And since the SWKT is the tallest building on campus, I decided to go to the very top of it (they locked the doors to the roof sadly). This is what thirteen floors of stairs looks like from the top. Looooong way down...

Of course, I took the elevator.

Happy Friday! I got a sweet one-on-two gamelan session today with some guy from Korea which was pretty fun. Now that the PCAT is over, I'm maybe sort of looking forward to school starting again? Can't decide. 

Day 6- Books

Books I never want to have to open again:

Book on my summer to-read list:

Some favorite books:

Now that the PCAT is finally over with, I can actually read...for FUN! YAY! That is one of my favorite things about summer and I have felt guilty for doing any pleasure reading so far this summer because I should have been studying instead. But now all the study business is over, and I can relax. I am so happy.

And in case you are wondering, the PCAT went pretty well. I did surprisingly well considering I totally guessed on the last ten questions of the exam, and even though I got lost twice on the way there and once on the way back, I managed to get it all done with not too many tears shed. Hallelujah!

day 5- breakfast today

Now this is not my normal everyday breakfast, but since today is test day, I needed the breakfast of champions to get me going! On the menu for today is: strawberry Greek yogurt, 1 toasted whole wheat English muffin, 1 fried egg, 1 slice of Canadian bacon, and 1 slice of pepperjack cheese. Mmmm. Hopefully this will provide the fuel I need to take my test this afternoon! I am so nervous and couldn't sleep last night. Who needs sleep, right? The only good news is that after today, I will be done. Thankkkk goodness!

day 4- Clouds

 I was so worried about getting good shots for today's assignment because for the past week, we've had nothing but heat and clear skies. BUT, all the stars aligned yesterday and I was blessed to have clouds all day long! So I took some shots in the morning, afternoon, and evening--yay!

morning: sun coming up over the mountains

afternoon: picturesque summer clouds

evening: perfect clouds leading to a delicious summer evening thunderstorm

very transcendental

Now enough chitchat--gotta get back to my LAST DAY of studying before the PCAT--yikes! Pray for me tomorrow please!!!

True Winner

sorry the picture's not that great, I was in a hurry and also wanted to show off our cookie jar we painted at Color Me Mine :)

Oh my goodness, I just made the most delicious cookies ever. I wasn't going to blog about it because I don't want you guys to judge me for making cookies...again...but these are just too heavenly to not share! We all know that I am a huge lemon/citrus freak, so when I saw that these won the Best Cookie Award on LDSliving, I had to try them. BEST. CHOICE. EVER!!!!!!

Here's the source, and here's the recipe!

Lemon Crinkle Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen

Ingredients:
½ cups butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoons baking soda
1-½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cups powdered sugar


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte {not melty or shiny}. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

*If using a non-stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

Day 3- Hands

I definitely think that Owen should go into hand modeling. Lovely.

And today's picture is brought to you by....

Me, Owen, and Sammy's :)

Hitting up Sammy's has been one of the goals on my summer To-Do list, so we decided to venture there on Saturday night. I was a little worried, but it was much less busy than I was expecting (probably thanks to Pioneer Day) which was good. They still took forever with our food, and brought out each item we ordered individually, which was annoying. But in any case, it gave me plenty of time to take pictures of our food!

First we got our milkshake. Dessert first I guess. I was expecting a LOT because apparently their fame is due in great part to their ultimate PIE SHAKES. So we got a raspberry cheesecake shake, and here it is:

Yes, it looks like a regular milkshake, and well, sadly tasted like one too. I was really expecting to be blown away by its deliciousness (especially at its absurd price), but no such luck. It was a little too runny (maybe from the heat) and you could hardly tell there was an actual slice of pie in there. I was looking for big chunks of pie crust, and even some cheesecake chunks would have been nice too. But nothing.

After inhaling our milkshake in 0.2 seconds, we waited around for another 15 minutes for our food. Seriously, I have no idea how this place would pass a health inspection. The floor was totally grimy and gross, it was a million degrees in there with no ventilation, and we had the pleasurable company of some buzzing flies since the only seat left was next to the trash cans.

Finally the rest of our food came...

First up, the sweet potato fries. These were my personal favorite part of the meal, but apparently Owen isn't a huge fan of them. They could have been a little thicker, but overall pretty good. And their fry sauce was actually decent and not too mayonnaise-y, which was a nice surprise.

Owen ordered "The Promo" burger, which was pretty much you basic bacon cheeseburger. It was good, nothing outstanding, and was served very hot! Overall, a decent burger with fresh ingredients...still overpriced in my mind.

And then I ordered the El Paso. Like a dummy. Because I totally didn't realize that this was a CHICKEN burger--lame! It was quite disappointed when it came out, but what can you do. I don't think it was entirely my fault, because their menu is very confusing due to the fact that they have regular and chicken burgers all mixed up together on there. Who would have known? Anyway, it was okay. Basically all I could taste was the avocado, which is a good flavor but I really would have liked to been able to notice the pepperjack cheese. Owen and I have been pepperjack cheese fanatics lately.

Overall, I don't think we'll be going there again. At least we can feel like true BYU students now I guess, but I'd rather save money and get a Jumble Berry Pie Shake at the the Malt Shoppe and make my own turkey burger at home.

day 2- Your Favorite Shoes

Well, I hope they didn't mean to pick just one pairs of shoes...

I think we can definitely sense a color scheme here.

These are my new favorite summer shoes--they are lightweight, comfortable, and match everything! I'm definitely bringing them on all our summer trips!

These are my favorite church shoes--I love how nude heels make your legs look so long!

These are my go-to shoes in the winter. I love how I feel like Sherlock Holmes when I am wearing them.

These are the coolest shoes ever. They are so comfortable and my favorite brand AND my favorite color. Plus I don't have to tie any shoelaces. It doesn't really get any better. 

 These are certainly the most impractical shoes that I own, and I have nothing that matches them. But they were the shoes I wore on the best day of my life so I had to include them of course.

Day 1- Self Portrait

It is official--photographing self portraits is awkward! I figured self portrait meant that I couldn't just get Owen to take a million pictures of me and hope that one was good. So I set out to take one on my own, which means awkward arrangements since I don't have a tripod yet. Also Owen is home right now, and I didn't really want him to see me taking pictures of myself and wonder what the heck was going on, so guess where I ended up--yes, the bathroom. With the door locked. The lighting isn't too bad in there, I could set my camera on the cabinet shelf, and the sound of the fan in the living room means that Owen has remained completely clueless while I set out on this photo adventure! And hey, I got the hardest one done, so the rest should be easy peasy, right?

Photo Challenge...A Bit Late

So, I saw this photo challenge way back in June when it was actually happening and thought it was a fabulous idea to blog about. Buuuuut, I kind of sort of maybe thought that Owen was going to get a camera for my birthday, so I didn't want to start any cool photography endeavor until I had a nice new lovely and wonderful camera.

And now I do! Yay! And since I just found out that I'm not going to be teaching next session because they had too many teachers and I already have to take a day off work for the PCAT, I figured that I deserved some sort of fun project to work on. I am hoping to practice some of my photography skillzzz (since they haven't really been worked on much since high school) and also have some fun!

Please just ignore the fact that this was supposed to be done in June. I was still taking classes, didn't have a cool camera, and just want to do it now, okay? Sweet!

Look forward to the first image later today! Of course the first one is the hardest, but hey, that's what a challenge is all about, right?

October is So Far Away

I really don't know if I can wait that long.

This May Be the Most Exciting Thing All Week

I think this may be a dream come true.

Unfortunately, it is a dream come true with a $10.73 shipping cost, but still...it might be worth it.

I'm not saying I'll order from here every week, but if they get the dried green mangoes in stock, I may just have to make one giganto purchase of all my favorites--their olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dried fruits, crackers, and more!

Ahh to live in the Northwest, what I would give...

Nice Guys Finish Last

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

I am so sad that in the past two weeks, two of my favorites have been kicked off the Bachelorette! What is this crazy Ashley girl thinking? No offense, but I think these two guys may be a little too good for our little miss Ashley. After that crazy Bentley drama and the fact that two of the top three finalists look exactly the same (aka need a serious haircut), I'm seriously starting to doubt this girl's judgment. Not only did she get rid of the two nicest guys on the show, but also one is a solar power company executive and the other is a portfolio manager! Hello brains & money! I think Ryan was probably way too happy and awesomely positive for her, and Ames is just far too eloquent. Right now these two guys are in the lead on the Bachelorette blog vote for who should be the next Bachelor--and I would love to watch either of them! They are both so unique, successful, and positive guys. They deserve to find happiness with someone who is concerned about more than HAIR!

Speaking of Ames, I was reading the fashion blog about the Bachelorette and found this quote that was included in a discussion of Ames pretty great:

A man should look as if he has bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care and then forgotten all about them. -Hardy Amies

Sorry for this completely random and sincerely pointless ranting post about people who I don't even know. It's the PCAT studying that is really getting to me, I swear.

Illustrator

So, you may have noticed a new header for our blog. Yes I made it, and yes I used Adobe Illustrator. This is a very exciting fact because up until recently I was very opposed to this program and believed the Pen Tool to be of the devil. But, Owen convinced me that Illustrator is actually super cool and that I could make our header look way better and less pixelated if I used Illustrator instead, sooooo I decided to sign up for one of the awesome free classes BYU offers on computer programs and faced my fear. If you haven't heard about these classes, then listen up! They are taught at the library through OIT, and you can sign up by going to their website, train.byu.edu. You can even "pre-register" for a class which means that they sign you emails when the class is going to be offered so you can sign up on time! They are super helpful, and I have already taken 2 photoshop classes, 2 inDesign ones, and now an illustrator class as well. PLUS they teach classes on Qualtrics, which must mean that they are cool. Anyway, I thought that I would share some of my beginning drawings in Illustrator with you as a form of humorous entertainment for your Tuesday evening. I hope you enjoy, and feel free to laugh!

A weird genie thing I made from Mickey Mouse's head, and a variation of the saturn (?) logo

my harry potter drawing using the pen tool

a pig sketch. my very first illustrator animal

some stars

another car logo (no idea which) that I thought looked cooler with a swirl

Hopefully my banner is a little more awesome than these beginning works of "art," and I can't wait to practice (after the PCAT) with this program and make some totally awesome stuff!