I can't WAIT to go HOME!

I am SOOOOOO excited to go home and see my family and can I just say I have the cutest family in the world!!!

Reason #1: my dad had to call me to ask "permission" to move the piano and get a smaller tree for our house this year

Reason #2: my mom left me a message singing like Buddy the Elf while watching Elf and making cinnamon suckers and missing me :)

Reason #3: my brother Link couldn't contain himself when expressing his excitement about the Christmas present he bought me

Reason #4:my little sister is just cute!

Reason #5: my little brother Bentley started crying when he found out I wasn't coming home before the 23rd!

Cute huh?! I LOVE them!

It's beginning to look a lot like CHRISTMAS!

So for those of you who know me you know that the Christmas tree is pretty high up there on my favorite things about Christmas and I really like really big Christmas trees!
Seeing as I live in Utah now and trees are quite a bit more expensive here then they are in Oregon having a Christmas tree is a slight dilema. Allie's (my roommate) parents have Christmas trees on their property so we went and cut one down off of their property. Little did we know this was going to be true Christmas Vacation event as we hiked up a snowy mountain, chopped down our tree, and then dragged it down snowy mountain! By the time we got to the bottom I had too much snow in my boots to even pull them off! Although we were all freezing it was so much fun and we have a tree!

We didn't get any pictures on the trip but here are a few at home.

All decorated!

New York (minus the pictures...)

Life has been so busy that I haven't had a chance to get my New York trip up here! I do have all my pictures on facebook so check out my facebook for pictures. Here's the short version of our trip...

Thurs: we arrived in New York, the beautiful city! and can I just say contrary to popular belief people in New York are soooo nice! Everywhere we went people were always willing to help with direction, or if we looked lost they would just offer to help, we even had people helping with our suitcases up and down stairs or into the subway. It was amazing! That night we went to Serendipity and had frozen hot chocolate, so delicious! I love how alive the city is! We went around 11 but even being that late you would have thought it was dinner time!

Fri: It was Allie's birthday and unfortunately when we went to have her birthday breakfast it was closed! so we settled for 2nd best. We went to Community Food and Juice, it was delicious! I have a BLET (bacon-lettuce-egg-tomato) so simple yet a brilliant idea! Then Allie and I did a lot of shopping! We were stopped in Saks and had our make-up done at the Lancome' counter, that was so fun! That night we met Mindy in Times Square which was just as fabulous and just as bright and alive and it is in the movies! I loved Times Square! We also went to Junior's Cheesecake and I had a delicious pumpkin pie cheesecake!

Sat: We went to Chinatown which was very interesting! and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the day. Then at night we went to a broadway play. Allie and Mindy went to Wicked while I went and saw Lion King! It was such a fun production and was so well done! I loved it and would reccommend it to anyone!

Sun: We attempted to go to church but we had some malfunctions in the morning that prevented that from happeneing :( However we still had a great day. We went to ground zero and walked through a memorial showing the plans for the site and it also had videos and pictures it was really touching. Unfortunatly Mindy had to leave to get back to school. Allie and I then took a ferry ride to Statten Island (by accident haha) but it was fun because we got to see the Statue of Liberty and hang out at Central Park and do some people watching! New York is so fun! We also went to this incredible chocolate resturant Max Brenner's! Amazing fondue! That night we had some extra time so we jumped on the subway and went to Coney Island and walked on the boardwalk and had famous Frank's hotdogs!

Mon: We went to breakfast at the place that was closed for Allie's birthday and it was worth the wait, so good! Allie headed for the airport and I went and hung out in Central Park and did a little window shopping before making my way to the airport to head home.

It was an amazing trip and I'm so glad that we went! We had so much fun! it was the perfect amount of adventure and a break from life that I needed!

Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving I didn't get to go home but I've been so grateful for family! I was able to spend Thanksgiving at Dale and Sasha's and I was able to be with the Cook's for the whole weekend! Thanksgiving was great! Then Friday morning Sasha and I got up way way too early to hit up the Black Friday sales! Although it was very early in the morning and we were wiped out by the end of the day we had a lot of fun and it was good to have a shopping buddy! We also went to a couple of Mason's basketball games. Then Saturday I spent the day with Nana and Grandpa and Shane and Linda. It was Linda's birthday and we went and saw New Moon, had In N Out Burger for lunch, and hung out all day. To finish off the great weekend Nana made chili and scones for all of us on Sunday! and I even got to bring some home with me!

While they were putting up the Christmas lights Dallas came into the house dressed as a snowman! Too cute to pass up a photo opp!

Me and my favorite little cousin! Morgan has become like another little sister since I've moved to Utah. I love her!

Life is Beautiful!

Lately I've been so happy and so grateful for so many things! I thought I would take a minute and list some of the things that have been making me happy:

the Gospel, the temple, institute, amazing friends! an incredible family immediate and extended, an opportunity to go to New York, blessings from tithing, blessings from a missionary, mail, packages, school, weekends! it's almost November! a great home (away from home), sunday school, pictures, journal writing, writing letters, pumpkin carving, BYU football games especially with family! late nights with my roomie! phone calls, my fish Buzz, and blogs :)

my first dramatic change! what do you think?

Monday:

Thursday:

Aaron's Birthday party!

Kayti and all of her creativity (and Aaron :) decided to throw Aaron an Alice in Wonderland Birthday Party! It was so fun! They decorated the backyard so cute with random teacups and teapots, there were twinkle lights, and lots of fun food! Great Party!

Sarah's Visit

This weekend I was surprised with a much missed visitor! Sarah Taylor (my friend from hair school who graduated a few months ago) came to stay with me for the weekend and we had so much fun and stayed up way too late! Here's just a couple of pics from the weekend.

It was so fun to have a girls weekend full of girly things and wedding planning! haha We also made these really cute shirts! Sarah's creativity inspires me!   

Thanks for coming Sarah!

ANTS ANTS ANTS!!!

On Saturday afternoon Sarah Taylor and I were working on making some t-shirts and I decided I wanted some cookies, I went into my room, grabbed the Ziploc bag of cookies sitting on my nightstand and started to eat a chips ahoy chocolate chip cookie. I then handed the bag to Sarah and as she looked inside to grab a cookie she started to freak out! "ANTS! EWWW!" I looked down and ants were swarming the bag of cookies...now let me just remind you that one of those cookies was in my MOUTH! We were both freaking out! I was just holding my mouth open cause I froze up and didn't know what to do. Sarah had to remind me to spit out the cookie that was in my mouth so who knows if I ate one of those ants or not?! All I know is that it was disgusting and that wasn't the worst of it...

(*just to note, my carpet has black specks in it so the carpet looks worse then it really is)

Because there were so many ants all over the bag I went to my room to check the spot that cookies were sitting and literally thousands of ants were crawling all over the carpet and all over the bottom of my nightstand, and the freaking out and screaming continued! Especially when we thought of how we were sitting on the ground in my room right next to that very spot for hours the night before! I immediately took my nightstand outside, sprayed Windex EVERYWHERE! Called the landlord and set out ant poison. Thankfully the ants are all gone now but I'm still grossed out to think that I ate half of an ANT COOKIE! Yuck!

NEW YORK CITY!

So here's my big news of the week...

I'm going to New York City!!!

I can't believe it! My roommate Allie and I are taking a trip to visit our old roommate Mindy and we're meeting her in New York for a weekend get away during Allie's birthday weekend! We found really cheap flights and a good deal on a hotel just outside of Manhatten and we're going to go play!

Modge Podge gone crazy!

It still feels like we are kind of moving in, putting up decorations and such. Allie and I have gone modge podge crazy! We covered frames with the insides of comics for the basement and we covered our kitchen table with old vintage food ads. Everything has turned out so good I figured they were blog worthy! :)

Fishy Fishy!

I've been wanting a fish for a long time and since I have now moved into a place where I can have one, I bought a new little friend! He's pretty spazzy for a beta fish and provides some good entertainment, I'm in the porcess of training him because YES beta fish can be trained!

and this is Buzz the Blue Beta fish!

Just a week after I got Buzz my roommate Allie decided that she needed a ball of fur, so now we have Buzz the Beta fish and Harley the Hamster! Hopefully nothing else is moving in!

Just another day in hair school...

This month at school I have to do 3 perms and we all hate perms so I asked my friend Kelsey if I could do a perm (which was really just a wet set so it would go away when she got it wet) on her. And this is her sitting under the dryer looking like a grandma reading! haha

Later that day I had one of my clients come in, now this guy is a little weird... He has a funny sense of humor and I have to be quick to keep up with him. While I was cutting his hair he asked if I liked dates and nuts which turned into a joke about me going on dates and I did tell him I didn't like nuts. Well I had forgotten about that until as I went to make a ticket at the front desk he went running out the front door and called out that he had something for me... Pretty soon he came walking in with an extremely large zuchini and a large container of nuts and although he was only showing me the zuchini he left the nuts with me! Yes like I said this guy is weird! So conclusion of the story ends with the rest of the students enjoying the nuts in the lunchroom while I got questioned the rest of the night about what he came running in with. Weird! Just another day at hair school!

and this is Kelsey with her perm and my nuts!

Going HOME!

I got to go home this past week for a visit and also for Elder Cameron Jackson's homecoming! It was so fun to be with my family and to see relatives and friends! I miss Oregon! but it's interesting because being back home it's like I can feel that I don't belong there anymore, so it was bitter sweet to come back - home.
While I was home we went to the coast, the pool, did some shopping (thanks mom!), played lots of games with the family. It was so fun! I love being HOME!

I've joined the blogging world!

I've joined the blogging world and after many requests to see pictures of my new place I'm posting them here! I recently moved into a townhouse in Orem. I live here with 3 other girls, Allie who I lived with at my last apartment, Tara Allie's co-worker, and Tara's sister who hasn't moved in yet. It is a 3 story house with a deck and backyard, 2 family rooms, a kitchen, laundry closet, 4 bedrooms, and 3 1/2 baths. It's really cute and after quite the adventure of searching for our new ward today we are starting to feel more settled. We still don't have our lovesacs or TV's that are coming and we're in the process of decorating so there are a few unfinished things buts it's so fun! So here they are! Oh and take note of the gorgeous view with the temple and the stadium!!!