summer is...

sitting on the balcony. any time of day.

lugging a two-person tube up a million flights of rickety old stairs only to throw yourself down a treacherous slide.

strawberries+cream.

hearing and smelling the sprinklers every night at 12:36am.

walking everywhere.

the smell of sunscreen.

keeping doors and windows open all day and all night.

reading whenever i want to.

barbecues and campouts.

here.

this american life

i subscribed to the this american life podcast a couple years ago, mainly because i knew it was the cool thing to do.

well, the episodes mostly sat in my library, unheard and unloved.

this all changed when i took up late-night embroidery. i couldn't get enough of it during the day, so i started burning the midnight oil. and hey, i thought, i've got to do something to fill the silence. why not listen to that devotional elder and sister holland gave that i downloaded months ago that i till haven't heard.

turned out this talk wasn't on my ipod like i thought, but what was? six episodes of this american life that i had randomly decided one day that my ipod could not live without. and so it began.

i listened to three episodes that night. i didn't want to turn it off. even after i finished the piece i was working on, i lay on my bed in the dark, listening to ira glass and company tell stories about the most ordinary things.

last night i listened to an old episode called "middle school." it was amazing. emily knows about this from her first year teaching middle school, but hearing the voices of these sweet kids made me fall in love with them, all going through hard times and figuring out who they are supposed to be, all actually really smart and insightful.

so i guess it just took me a couple years to be cool enough for this american life. maybe this is a sign that i'm almost ready for a subscription to TIME?

shop hop all your troubles away

every year, a group of quilt shops across the wasatch front hosts a "shop hop." thirteen shops
participate each year, decorating to fit a theme. last year, i somehow completely missed it and was really bummed. so this time, we were prepared.

mom, berg and i planned to hit up a few of the shops, this year coordinating around a game theme. berg and i drove home on thursday afternoon, and as we were getting in the car to head back down lehi way for the first shop, mom said, should we just try to go to all the shops? if you go to all 13, stamping your passport at each, you are entered to win some awesome prizes. since i don't technically know how to sew, i was hoping to win the grand prize, a sewing machine. because i know that if i had a sewing machine to call my own, i would actually learn to sew :)

so we embarked on a two day journey toward shop hop domination. even though i don't actually know how to quilt, i decided to buy fabric to make a quilt anyway.

you can't tell super well from the picture, but the color palette started as navy with some accents (orange, coral, green, teal). i noticed early on that i was picking up a lot of floral prints. story of my life! (one of my friends always points out when i am wearing something floral...which turned out to be almost every day. i'm wearing floral jeans as i type this. i just really like flowers, okay?!) anyway, i love all these fabrics, but there are some that i am obsessed with.

and there was one fat quarter that berg picked up early on that i was kicking myself for not getting. luckily, i found it at quilter's haven in bountiful, our last shop hop stop.

i can never resist a good rainbow.

the first day, we went to 10 quilt shops in about 6 hours. it was amazing. we drove from salt lake to lehi all the way down to springville and back again, stopping in orem, draper, midvale, cottonwood heights, sandy, and sugarhouse. favorite shops (meaning most dedicated to theme and/or best food): quilts, quilts, quilts (where's waldo), elaine's quilt block (ticket to ride), corn wagon quilts (monopoly), and pine needles (twister, but mostly just because i really like pine needles). 

the next morning, we met up with connie, dad's aunt, who is a major quilter, and headed up to brigham city. connie was talking to us about the day before, and when we said that we had been collecting fabrics for quilts we wanted to make, she asked how much we sewed. berg and i were both like, um, never now. but we are determined to learn. we played go fish in brigham, had fun at my girlfriend's quilt shoppe in logan, ate some lunch at the historic bluebird cafe, and then headed back down the mountain. after dropping connie off, we finished back home in bountiful. 

it was a very busy two days, but it was a ton of fun. we saw a million cute things that made me want to be the cute crafty homemaker that my mom is. 

and, best thing! i got a call last week saying i had won a prize. sadly, it wasn't the sewing machine. guess i'll have to shell out for that at some point, especially if i want this awesome quilt to get made.

my prize bag: a couple quilt books, some patterns, a bundle of fabric comprised mostly of doctor/nurse prints, some other squares that are kinda cute, and some kleenex. 

plus, the shop hop got me back into embroidery. 

that little flower one in the top right is my own design :) and please pardon the wrinkliness. now i just need to finish these babies with some fabric. anybody willing to teach me how to sew/buy me a sewing machine?

dream...or something else? i never know.

it's always a little disconcerting when you have a dream about a guy you like or someone you are crushing on. being a devout mormon girl, i have to ask myself a question right when i wake up, still in a breathless fog from the lovely dream i just left:

was that JUST a dream (probably brought on by late nights and possibly the light facebook stalking i did earlier in the day)...or was it...a...prophecy?

i hope this doesn't sound blasphemous--i know that most, if not all, of the dreams i have are not "from God", that most of them are meaningless. but what if THAT dream, the one that left me smiling and excited, was supposed to tell me more than just "quit staying up until 4am"?

i mean, now do i try to make something happen with this person for real? if the dream is any indication, he is kind, thoughtful, funny, and also into me. or was that all just my crazy subconscious making something out of completely nothing?

obviously it's most likely that.

but i still feel like you can't count out the whole "revelatory dream" thing. i mean, right? so maybe i should go add him on facebook, see what happens?

love letters

i like to call myself a writer sometimes. mostly this is because i have been an english major for so long and have written a lot, academically, but it's also because i just...like to write. i like to write in my journal, i like to write on my blog, i like to write the family christmas letter. i like to write people notes because i feel like i can say it better on paper than i could in person.

i've noticed that i also like to write letters to the guys i like at any given time of life, the really big crushes that took over my life. i've been reading through some of my old journals, and there are several instances where i wrote letters to my crushes instead of actually saying anything. for the most part, i didn't say anything to them because i was pretty sure they didn't like me back and, therefore, it would have been incredibly embarrassing for me to confess my undying love in any fashion. sometimes i wrote the letter just as an outlet for me, to clear up my own feelings and figure out what exactly i was thinking.

But I'm starting to come to a realization: you haven't forgotten about me, and I don't think you will anytime soon, not that I'll let you, though I did try that...and it didn't feel right. But I'm pretty sure you talk to me more than you talk to almost anyone else...

i guess i need to write it all out because my feelings/relationships/prospective relationships are almost always confusing. is that me, or is it just life? i don't know.

If you had any inkling that I was feeling like this, you'd probably run in the other direction. Believe me, I wish I wasn't.

i remember, in elementary school, all through my days at cesar chavez, i loved david apana. i knew his address, i knew his phone number (549-6785), i convinced my friends to three-way call him--i loved him. one day, i wrote him a letter expressing all of my most intense grade-school emotions, and before i could talk myself out of it, i put it in the mail (because i had his address memorized, of course.). almost immediately after the postman picked up our mail, i wished i had that revealing letter back. i mean, obviously it was an awesome letter with different colored pens and probably stickers and maybe some of my mom's perfume spritzed on. but, even though we are talking about snail mail here, i was putting myself in a vulnerable position.

i needn't have worried--nothing was ever said about the letter, so i have no idea if he ever even received it. of course, nothing ever happened between me and david, either, but that was probably for the best. since then, though, i've been more careful about wo i share my love letters with.

i like the written word. it's a way to be both personal and distanced at the same time. and that comes in handy when you are a girl with a lot of feelings and not a lot of guts.

five senses: provo walk

smell: laundry+roses
feel: cooling evening breeze mixed with the last of the afternoon sun, bumpy bark at my back
taste: tepid drinking fountain water
hear: star-spangled banner, kid giggles, sprinklers, remix to ignition, linkin park-esque music played by an old man in an old red chevy truck
see: bounce house at joaquin park, red and pink and orange roses, garden rows, long lost pirate ship, old friends white picket fence and clothesline dryer

thoughts on friday

yesterday i read two books in the space of 12 hours. welcome back, summer.

happy national doughnut day and chocolate ice cream day! best day of the year? it's possible.

why is it that the cold water from the bathroom sink is always colder than the cold water from the kitchen sink? i've always wondered.

this article about an apartment in new york city with built-in puzzles and codes is awesome. somebody please do this for me.

this week i've been reading a bunch of my old journals and i've had some thoughts. so those will be coming soon.

i did some major cleaning this week, with more to come. it feels good, you know? if only things didn't get messy again so quickly. i'm jumping on this urge to purge--time to simplify and get rid of all this stuff!

remember this guy? well, he's home now, and it's been pretty fun. sometimes it's weird to think about all those weekly letters to and from mexico, and now he's here and i'm still here. but i'm just going with it. he can still make me laugh like no one else.

have a great weekend!

friends and Christianity

 i found this quote yesterday and i think it's pretty cool.

"In Friendship…we think we have chosen our peer. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances.

A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly say to every group of Christian friends “You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.” The Friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of others."

--C.S. Lewis

 interesting thought, right? i've often felt like certain people come into my life at a certain point for a certain reason, partly so that i can learn from their goodness. happy wednesday :)

it feels like a perfect night to hang out with taylor aka the coolest thing to ever happen to us

when we first heard that taylor was coming to salt lake again, we knew that, as with her two previous tours, we needed to go. we got online at the appointed time...and could not get tickets. it was pretty devastating. the concert sold out in like less than a minute, so it felt like we didn't even have a chance. and we said, well, it will be fine if we don't get to go.

after christmas, nana gave each of us a generous gift and told us to spend it on something meaningful, not just food or clothes or something temporary. cut to one of my greatest ideas: we could put that money toward tickets for the concert, which were on sale for outrageous prices online. so eventually we found three tickets together and we were going.

fast forward five months. for the past few weeks, we've been diligently looking up ways to meet taylor, watching videos, listening to the set list, planning our outfits, making posters, and reading all about her and this tour.

finally, the day came. june 1st. we got to the arena way early, in an attempt to catch the attention of someone who might see how awesome we are and let us go to club red, where you get to meet taylor after the concert.

us in front of one of the probably 30 semis/buses lining the block next to the arena.

nothing happened while we walked around for 2 and a half hours before the doors opened except that we saw other fans, though none who were quite as cute as we were. when we finally got in, we went straight to the t-shirt counter--the biggest mistake we made at the fearless tour concert was not getting a sweet tour shirt, and we will never make that error again. then we went up to our seats, which ended up being even deeper in the nosebleeds than we originally thought. but, we were happy to be there, so we settled in, singing and dancing and waving our posters anyway.

a little before 7, the first opener, joel crouse, started his set. he was pretty good, even though we didn't know any of his music. next was ed sheeran, which i was excited about. for whatever reason, we were the only ones in our section standing up and dancing and just basically looking like we were having fun. after ed played "lego house," we were waiting for the next song, and meredith said, look, there's taylor's mom! i looked, and, yeah, there she was a the bottom of our section inside the portal. (we knew all about mama swift from all of our research--she walks around the venue looking for people to bring down to the floor. so it was a big deal to see her.) i yelled, ANDREA! to get her attention, but at the same moment we realized that there was a woman at the end of our row telling us to grab our stuff and come with her.

it happened just the way we had heard it would--we ran down the stairs and there was taylor swift's mom, asking if we wanted to get a little closer. so we were in shock for the next ten minutes as she gathered a few more devoted fans with stinky seats to take down to the pit.

apparently i didn't get the memo that we were doing cute faces, not excited faces.

i still can't believe this happened. and don't we look like we could be part of the family?

 the whole thing was so surreal. we got our wristbands, took a picture with mama swift, and went backstage to get to the pit. ed sheeran was finishing his set, and we were so close to him--i might have shed my first tears at that point.

the rest of the concert passed by in a blur. we were within arm's reach of taylor herself for much of the concert, which was amazing in its own right. but it was made even better by the fact the we had been chosen out of the audience, out of the nosebleeds, by taylor swift's mom. not a ton of people can say that. and it was all because we were dancing and having fun. and maybe also because of a lot of prayer. and also because of nana.

in the pit

that bright white spot behind us is taylor, and once again i ruined the cuteness of the picture.

yeah, she was that close.

bah, looking at these brings it all back again. it was so amazing! sadly, we didn't get to touch her or meet her, but our experience was the next best thing. some things about the pit, though:

1. we were still pretty much the only ones dancing, and some people didn't even know all the words, which was really weird to me. 
2. being so close, you want to document it. but having the camera or the phone in front of your face kind of takes away from the actual lived experience. so we decided fairly early on that we weren't going to try to document everything. 
3. down in the pit we often had a really great view of her back. and often, if we were looking at taylor upstage, we were missing what was happening downstage with the band and dancers and stage. so we weren't always getting the full effect. but, small price to pay for some of the best seats in the house.
4. we were standing the whole time, and it was blazing hot down there. but that probably would have been pretty much the same whether we were sitting up in the rafters or not.

all in all, even with some drawbacks, the show was incredible and we had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. we were up close and personal with taylor, her band, and her dancers, and we met her mom. it was a perfect night!