Week in Pictures: Blackberry Tarts and Free Audiobooks on iTunes!

I swore off writing, but I just can't help myself. There are literally 200 free audio books on iTunesU. All the classics and so many of my favorites! My sister in-law turned me on to them and now I'm filling up my hard drive with them.

Week in Pictures: Holi Festival

I am going to try to go all week without writing, just posting pictures. These words, of course, don't count. And since today is Sunday, the beginning of the week, I figured I'd start today by showing you what I did yesterday.

For more pictures see Lana or Paige's blog.

Squinting at the sunlight. Oops, those are words. Maybe I'm allowed to caption some pictures...

"Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,"

he said wisely one day, "but people don't know what it's like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment."


On that subject:
I like to sleep in late.
And by that I mean, stay in my white bed, curled up in my white room, while sun streams in through the white shades.
Everything is bright and pretty and quiet and I lie in bed -half asleep- and think-dream.

This morning, I think-dreamed this story:

17 years from now Travis and I are living in a big farm-type house. It's pretty and white inside and out. Because its run all by solar panel power, a student from the University Travis works at comes out to make a mini-documentary about how we live.
He says, "describe to me your daily routine"
I say, "I get up at 5:00 with my two oldest kids because they have to leave for early morning seminary in the next hour. They start getting ready while I go out and milk Rosie."
Rosie is the only cow we have but we use her milk instead of store bought. She is sweet and pretty. White and red. We only have about an acre of land, but that's enough for Rosie and us.
"Then I take her out to graze."

I continue, "Then I come in and shower quick, then Travis and the little kids get up and we read scriptures while the big kids and I eat breakfast. I boil water and have tea. Some of the kids have tea or hot cocoa too, Travis and the baby have juice."
In my morning dream we usually have five or six kids. For a while we had a baby who was one or two, but usually we had five kids and the littlest was four. Sometimes in my morning dream I was pregnant. Don't get confused if the number of children jumps around.
(It's hard to stay consistent in your think-dreams because you're only partially awake, but you get to think of things that you want to, because you're only half asleep.)

"Then the big kids leave for school and the little kids get dressed while Travis showers and I blow-dry my hair, etc." I say.
"Then the little kids eat breakfast, but it's only about 7:00 when they're done, and they have a half hour before school. The child who is in middle school, (usually there was just one and his name with Matt) goes out and feeds the dog and our chickens, while the littler two kids (ages 8 and 6) go pick up all the eggs from our few little chickens. We don't keep the chickens in a box, and sometimes the hens try to hide the eggs, so they kids have to search through the long grass to find all the eggs. It's just enough for our family." (We don't eat these chickens. They're just for eggs.)
"Then the kids run to the school bus and leave for school, and I go inside with my youngest child, who is usually four, and she plays while I clean up a little. We go bug her daddy, who works primarily from home, or sometimes campus."
"I'm surprised there's not a big tv in here," says the man making a doc about our life. Our living room is big and white with wide windows on two walls, and a tall bookcase on the third. There is no fourth wall, the living room just stretches until it becomes the kitchen.
"There is!" says little Carrie (usually that was the littlest one's name. Sometimes it was Grace, though.) She shows how to lower the screen from the ceiling, where we watch movies as a family from a projector.
The man looks at the bookshelf behind it. Half is full of books, and half is full of movies.
"What's your system here?" he asks.
"Well, the higher the shelves are more grown-up movies," I say. "The bottom shelf is all Christmas movies, then a shelf of documentaries, skateboarding and snowboarding movies, things like that. Here at Carrie's eye level are all the little kids movies, Disney movies, ect. Up higher is the shelf of slightly more grown-up kid movies, like Goonies, or Pirates of the Caribbean. Above that is a shelf of movies for our teenagers, chick flicks, comedies, you know. Then this shelf of International movies, and above that is movies are kids aren't allowed to watch without us, if at all."
"What great organizational skills!" exclaims the documentary film maker.
This morning dream (or think-dream as it can also be called) goes on for a long time, since Travis and I sort of awoke at like 6 and didn't get up until about 10.
But I'll spare you the rest of the details. Let me merely say that the rest includes descriptions of a very well organized mud-room, office, and the giving away of pretty kittens, since the cat we keep out with Rosie and the puppy in the barn/shed to catch mice had kittens, a description of the very big garden and everything we grow, and how each kids has their own little plot and an elaborate description of how often and when my book club meets.
It was a very nice morning.

Travis told me to be sure and write a blog post about it so we wouldn't forget, and someday we'll remember that our baby is named Carol (called Carrie) and our cow is named Rosie, and I have an ideal morning routine already planned out.

p.s. Do you know what that quote is from? If you know then you are surely my best friend of all!

Pretty Things

I have a folder on my desktop titled Pretty Things in which daily I add pictures of spring dresses, wildflower bouquets, bedspreads, bookcases (A LOT of bookcases), bedrooms, swimsuits, fanciful weddings, flower wreaths in curly hair, little girls in tutus, sun flares, people kissing, fabric, J. Crew models, buttons, bicycles, fruit, envelopes, fancy handwriting, graffiti, tattoos, books, banners, games and lots more. Really, LOTS more.
Did you stop reading and just skip to this line? Its a long list. I accidently started to repeat myself, but went through and took those things out.
Its a very full folder. It is my favorite folder.
Because I love perfectly girly things.
Not like lipstick, or hairspray (although I know I have a few pictures of the former) but really wonderful girly things like fresh herbs in the kitchen and baby feet and flowery, light, sunshiney wonderfulness.
Before I was married (before I was even engaged or seriously dating) the Pretty Things folder was eighty per cent wedding-related.
I had my dress and style decided on before I knew I would need a dress and style anytime soon.
Now its full of living rooms, gardens, babies, and (like I said before) about a million bookcases. I have a perfect little study already planned and painted in my mind.
But where do I get such pretty pictures, you ask?
The sidebar headed Lovely Links is home to all of my favorite blogs. Blogs of design, fashion, cooking, happiness, and so many are devoted wholly to pretty things.
So here are some of the pretty things I've seen this week and added to my folder. They make me happy to look at.

Umm, Helvetica cookie cutters anyone? LOVE it.

I'm sorry to those who I stole these from, I was going to link back to each picture but my blogger is having a fit.

Spring Cleaning

We don't really need Spring Cleaning in our house, but something about Spring is making me feel really good.
I want to make.

Create. Sew. Patch. Cut out pictures and paste them on the walls.

Today we rode our bikes to school, per MY suggestion, not Travis'.
That's a big deal.
Spring is crawling into my soul.
It makes me NOT want to bake. It makes me need juicy, red, drippy fruit.

I feel the need to fill my house up with color and flowers and a general explosion of spring time.

We've been looking a little at new apartments (dog-friendly, less-tiny) and I almost want to move just so I have the chance to repaint, redecorate, reexplore a new space.

Have any of you seen any Do-It-Yourselfs lately that I should tackle?

Last spring I made a few funky stuffed animals for my friends, and made myself a few skirts.
Even a dress I've never seen, it's somewhere at my grandmas house!

But this spring... I need to make something.
Need.

Come on. Help a sista out.

Springtime Cookies

Mmmm. I have had many many cookies today.
If I cared about the size of my belly then I would be foolish to eat so many cookies.
But if I care about my happiness then I am wise to eat so many cookies.
How wise!
They were so festively colored that I took their pictures.


I wanted a picture of me enjoying this delicious treat, and yet no matter how I try I looked disgusted by them.
I assure you, this colorful treat was not disgusting.


The bowls kind of made me think of that scene in Hook...

She came in through the bathroom window

Naturally we took her picture before we put her outside.

February is not fun.

Springtime.
I miss you.
I wish you were here.

These are the things I would do if you were here:



Wear pretty little clothes and shoes. Eat pretty little foods.




Smell pretty little flowers. Play pretty little games.



Ride a pretty little bike.
And kiss my pretty little husband.

Be pretty happy, and little nostalgic for winter. (isn't that how it goes?)
(And, all this bike riding and fruit eating would make me pretty and little)

Other things to do it the spring:
Not have to scrape my sucky windshields.
Not have to be in sucky school.
Not have to eat sucky heavy winter foods.

As you probably figured out, my current feelings towards
Winter are: you are sucky and endless.
and towards Spring: you are pretty and little.

Aaand, Travis is neither pretty or little. He is a strong manly man, who is big and handsome.
I'm sorry I said that he is little and pretty above. It just fit best with my theme.
I still kiss him now too even though its winter time.

*Click on each photo above to see who I stole it from!

a pathetic monday

Poor Travis.

Poor Lauren, Lana, and Sophie.

I am a weepy, blotchy-faced friend if ever they had one.

Today I felt sad. I started getting teary-eyed in Shakespeare while writing homesick poetry. (Stop judging me now, I know how pathetic I am, and that’s the first step.)

Then I walked to Travis’s work.

Midway through my first sentence I lost it.

I sat in his office and sniffled and wiped my eyes for the first half hour I was there.

For the last half-hour I broke down and sobbed.

Then we went to Travis’s house, where I was somewhat more composed.

But I ate a lot of food.

Then to my home, where Lana, Lauren, and Sophie snuggled me, and hugged me, and didn’t make me feel bad for crying at all.

We watched Finding Neverland, and all sobbed together. We went to Macaroni Grille and found that getting a 3 dollar cup of soup, and eating free bread is MORE than filling.

Then home for chocolate.

Home to see Paige.

And the reading aloud of Walt Whitman.

The playing of the guitar and the cursing of finals.

I haven’t been home in well over a year. I probably won’t be home any time soon.

That’s what made me cry today.

For apparently the first time, I realized that when I left home after my senior year of high school, I was signing myself away to maybe a life time elsewhere.

It never occurred to me that I might be leaving forever.

I always assumed that I’d return to raise my babies after a few years around the country or abroad.

But the more I think about it, the less I can believe that I’ll go home again.

This post may seem familiar.

That’s because every time the seasons change, I wish I were in Minnesota.

Spring in Utah means that it’s still winter mixed with summer with weird temperature everyday. There is grey, drizzly rain, and all the trees are blossoming.

Spring in Minnesota means the snow is dirty and melting. There are heavy thunderstorms, and the lakes are melting. The fields are green, and so is everything else, and there are birds making babies in the field behind my house.

The differences are slight, but it’s enough to make me sob all day.

I want to be home.

That’s all.

What would I do without the friends who keep me happy?

Hare Krishna Festival of Colors

Every year the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork has a Festival of Colors, to welcome in the spring. It is the most widely attended event at the temple.
(Yeah, it was way bigger than Llama Fest, and a million times bigger than India Fest.)
I've been dying to go for ages, since I saw pictures from Brooke, Kaylie, Katie, Kendra, and Claire last year. This year was a blast!
You pay a few dollars for a bag or two of colored powder, and at the end of the count down, you go crazy.

Before


During


Travis took all the rad pictures that are off the whole event.
I took the pictures of people. Sweet no?


Emily
Paige

Lauren
Becky

Travis

Addie
David

A lot of these pictures are of my friends, but more are not.
We took over 400 photos, and most were of random people for a project that Travis is working on.
He would stop them and be like, "Excuse me, I'm trying to take portraits of people at Color Fest" and they'd walk away before he'd finished.
Apparently, I have found my calling in life. "Can I take your picture?" I'd ask, holding up a camera.
People don't want an explanation.
"Yeah, tag me on facebook!" they'd yell.
Okay. Because I know who you are.




Romy


Good thing that stuff was edible. I had so much in my mouth and nose, all our tongues were pink.


Sarah
Henry
Sean

Sophie
Maude


Kathryn
Ryan
Towards the end the powder had gotten so sparse that people were rolling on the ground, trying to pick up color.
These are Lauren's brothers.

After