back to school

around this time of year, when i see everyone else getting ready for school, i really start to feel like 1) i'm old, and 2) i wish i was in school, too.

school is the best! you're learning new things all the time, you're surrounded by fun people, you're doing productive things (this is debatable, i know. we've all done our fair share of busy work :)), you're working toward a larger goal. and you get to buy and use school supplies for their actual purpose (school...). and you get to buy new back-to-school clothes and nobody questions it because, yeah, you're going back to school.

this longing probably just means that i need to be in a school setting in some way. what is fall without school? not as fun, that's what.

thoughts on thursday

attending a dance party  the other night really reminded me how much i love dance parties. it has been way too long since i've danced with such abandon :) one of the downsides to my sugarhouse life is that there aren't nearly enough dance parties. like, zero, that i know of. dance parties are great, people.

attending a dance party the other night also reminded me why i love provo. so many of my good friends are there, people that i don't see all the time but that really know me. it was good to be back adn have one of those classic provo nights, where you are surrounded by fun people and just living the twentysomething life.

i'm getting worried that being at work is actually making me sick. i feel fine when i'm at home and the first hour or two at work, but then i just start feeling gross--feverish, headachy, weak, dizzy. what the heck? probably what this means is that i just need to go to the doctor and get a real diagnosis for a real problem, but that's a little scarier than thinking that my job is slowly killing me :) so maybe one of these days i'll make it to a qualified physician's office and find out what's really wrong with me.

i started getting birchbox last month, and it's pretty cool so far. each month they send you samples of various beauty and health products to try. then if you want to buy the full-size version, you can find it on the website. i don't plan on buying a ton of the full-size products, because some of them are definitely higher end than i need, but it's fun trying out new products. this month i got a mini nail polish, black eyeliner, and a delish granola bar with maple syrup and pumpkin seeds. awesome, right?


a couple weeks ago, i bought if you wait, london grammar's debut album. i'm OBSESSED with it. wikipedia describes it as "trip-hop", which is kind of amazing, and it is that type of hard-to-define music that is also really beautiful and catchy. give it a listen, if you are so inclined.

and there you have it! thoughts that mean mostly nothing :)

i lead a simple life

i interrupt our normally scheduled programming to tell you about one of those beloved simple pleasures that sometimes take you by such enormous surprise that you just can't help but inform everyone.

i've been meaning to wash my car for seriously weeks. things that have preventing me from completing this task: 1) utah springs are unpredictable--it could be totally sunny and then raining five minutes later; 2) murphy's law is a very really thing; and 3) i'm lazy. but today, the stars aligned and i headed to the carwash. i decided to go to the self-wash to really get all that grime off. best decision ever! i literally giggled with glee when i was wielding the power washer.

in short, it was awesome. if you had told my ten year old self that i would one day love washing the car, i would have laughed in your face and then quickly gone back to my baby-sitters club super special.

but i guess this is another sign that i'm growing up. what's next--i'll want to start weeding the yard regularly?

oh hey

every day when i get to work, i open a browser and go to my blog. i open a post i've been working on, or i start a new one, intending to fill the blogosphere with my latest profound thoughts. but lately, everything i start to write seems stale, leading to a bunch of half-written, half-formed posts that i feel no enthusiasm for. does anyone really care about the music i've been listening to lately? am i bringing anything original to the table, and if not, why don't i just save all these musings for my journal (which is pretty much what ended up happening this month)? how do the bloggers do it, come up with interesting original content each day?

but i guess the answer is that i don't care too much about all that. i'm never going to be one of those huge lifestyle bloggers with my humble little blog. and if i don't feel like writing something here, i just won't. and if i do, i just will. and maybe i was in a slump, because people, it wasn't like i wasn't trying to post stuff for the past few weeks of my life.

but i also sometimes feel like maybe i'm trying to record things in too many places. does that make sense? i have my journal, which i write in pretty faithfully, and i have my blog, and i have my other notebooks, and i have my phone, and i want to take this art journaling class, which would just make one more place to record my life and my thoughts. and is it just too much?

i don't really know. i don't feel like thinking too deeply about it right now (bowling took up a lot of my concentration cells today). but, best case scenario, i'm prepping to be an awesome over-sharing mom, am i right??

reason #97 why i'm not meant to be single

i didn't really plan for this to be my valentine's post, but i guess it only makes sense :)

so, the reason: i hate driving. i feel okay about it when i'm out on the open road and no one is really around and you don't have to think so much, but otherwise, i really hate it. every time i think about driving myself somewhere, i have to think about how tricky it will be to get there or if the parking situation is difficult or if there will be a lot of cars on the road. it causes me a lot of anxiety--sometimes i won't go to a place because i know i will be too anxious. pretty much my biggest fear about moving to salt lake was that i would have to drive myself all over, and there are way more people in salt lake than there are in provo, which means way more cars i can crash into. it's probably a miracle that i've never been in a car accident, not because i'm a bad driver (although i don't think i'm great), but because i get so tense.

i'm not meant to be single because i probably won't be long for this life if i'm going to be left driving myself everywhere for the remainder of it.

or i guess maybe i just need a chauffeur? ;)

resolution for the new year {2014}: be moneywise

this is pretty straightforward--it's important when you get older and have more things to pay for and buy and more bills and more of a future to plan for to be pretty good with your money. i'm okay with my money, but i could definitely do better. 

i'm making a conscious effort to 1) not spend money on clothes and shoes (this is a process...) 2) save save save (one of my roommates is amazing and has something like four savings accounts--one for emergencies, one for travel, one regular one, and one for her wedding. yeah, she's a catch.) and 3) not eat out so much. it's a little thing that can end up eating a big chunk of my funds, and eating in more often will also help me with my first resolution, so win-win.

so there you have it--my main resolutions for the year. it's going to be a great one!

thoughts on thursday

today we bought tickets for the katy perry concert in salt lake on september 29th. i logged on for the facebook presale kind of on a whim, and i lucked out and found fairly good seats at a fairly good price. i literally could barely contain my excitement at work (yes, i took ten minutes at work to buy katy perry tickets. time theft? hopefully not.), so when somebody eventually asked me how i was doing, i blurted out that i'm going to the concert, just two weeks after we see one direction in los angeles. and my coworker said, you're really living the teenage dream, huh? and i was like you have no idea.

i went to institute with abby at the u on tuesday. i felt like a traitor. it was still pretty good though.

my room is pretty much done, for reals. look out for a room tour post soon. i'm pretty happy about it all, especially since there was so much that i ended up doing myself/with the help of others. i found this quote that has been inspiring me through this process:

if you wait until you have enough money to decorate and make your home your own it will never happen. if you wait until you can afford to buy everything new you are missing the point. it is the old, the new, the made, the hand-me-down, the collected, the worn (but loved) things in your home that make it your own. {stacy risenmay}

i am really proud of the made pieces in my room, from the embroidery to the headboard to the ikea nightstand that i am taking full credit for (i spent three hours building it--it was made by me). i also love the new things i got, like my bedding and my salty bison sign that i loooooove. and i revamped some of the old things i had. i'm in the market for more awesome hand-me-downs, though. i just saw one of my friends who inherited a sweet wingback chair from her grandma--i could really use a chair, people. and our house is in need of a couch. help a sister out.

and, in conclusion: i had no idea how much i missed sherlock until i was finally watching sherlock again tonight. seriously. but i'm still unsure how benedict cumberbatch could be both so sexy and also weirdly weird-looking at the same time. ah well. people probably say the same about me.

kinda weird, right? a little alien-esque.

but here? super sexy. it's also his voice, though, too. i guess he needs to be experienced with multiple senses. not in a weird way.

resolution for the new year {2014}: overview

i always try to use the first few weeks of a new year to plan out some ways i think i can improve my quality of life, which become my "new year's resolutions", but i think i'm a pretty self-reflective person in general. so, most of these goals are iterations of thoughts i've had for a long time and that i maybe haven't articulated in quite the same way, or ever.

as i was thinking about how i wanted to pattern my life this coming year, i thought about the roots of the word 'resolution'. 'resolve' means, for one thing, to be firm and determined. in music, a resolve is a progression from dissonance to consonance. both of these are key to new year's resolutions, in my mind. as with any goal, you have to be determined and disciplined in order to accomplish anything. this has always been a weakness of mine, one that i am constantly working on. but one of the purposes of resolutions is to create a happier life for yourself, to resolve some of the dissonance to make way for harmony. cheesy? probably. still true? yesiree bob.

my overarching goal for the year is to choose happy. sometimes it is very easy to choose unhappy, or even to just choose complacency. i want to be actively happy this year. i hope my formal resolutions and my loosely ideated resolutions help me with that. let the self-improvement begin (or continue, as the case may be :))

things that are making me happy right now

in the spirit of choosing happy:

slowly putting together my room. it's kind of amazing, actually, how closely it's coming to what i envisioned. and it's almost done, i promise.

having catered lunches at work. it's pretty great, you guys.

getting to know people around these parts.

new perfume. it's nice to have a new scent once in a while.

frozen. loved it!

do-it-yourself and crafting projects. this is related to getting my room all gussied up, but for other reasons, too. and it's really fun.

family time, which includes going home mid-week for dinner and just dance. i'm pretty lucky.

roommates who are involved and want me to be involved, too.

sisters.

two days off this week :)

finishing the old testament!!!

extra time thinking about the savior, his birth, life, death, and rebirth.

i really can't complain ;)

i'm lame.

i know, i know. you're all thinking it. you're all whispering it behind closed doors: wasn't courtney going to post everyday in december? well, things have been really busy, i'll have you know. but busy is good. remember how a few months ago my life basically had no purpose and i had nothing to wake up for ever and all i did all day was read and watch netflix? oh, how the times have changed!!

i know i'm repeating myself here, but i have a million posts i've been thinking about, but i always feel like i need to catch up on the here and now first, you know? like i should have written my christmas playlist post weeks ago, like back when i started listening to christmas music after halloween. but i didn't. listen people, i'm not a professional blogger, if you didn't already know. i've got a life to live. your expectations are too high! :)

but really, it's like every day my fingers itch to write and it just doesn't happen. and i know not many people are waiting with bated breath to see what i'm going to say about some random subject, but this dumb blogging thing does mean something to me, i guess. wow, this turned weirdly existential all of a sudden.

i guess i just wanted to check in with my blog and let it (and whoever's out there. probably only dad.) know that i still love it and will be better about  not neglecting it in weeks to come. i mean, it's almost resolution time!

okay, i'm back

so...i guess i took a three-day hiatus from that whole post-everyday thing, yeah? it has been a crazy crazy week! i feel like i've been running around pretty much non-stop. news from this week so far:

i went to my new ward on sunday and it was good. this was me:

except without any daddy warbucks-type character. though that would have been kind of cool.

my bed came on monday, which meant that mom came early to help me put up my pictures and such. this was me:

i actually really do love it though. i'll have to have a room tour post when it all gets done. i was excited to learn last week that the unparalleled tyler walke has volunteered his services in building me furniture for my new room. ladies, revisit this as soon as possible, please. how is this guy still single?

last night, i went to the foxhill ward christmas party at my old stomping grounds, the joseph smith memorial building. it has been seven years since that first summer i worked as a banquet server. crazy! how did i get to be so old?? anyway, the food was lovely, the program was lovely (if i do say so myself, since i had a role...)--it was a good time. it really has been fun to be at home and back in the home ward, even if i am still in that "i'm not a girl, not yet a woman" phase (so many multi-word/phrasal adjectives happening today!)

most exciting news of today: i got my salt lake county library card. it feels good to be a library-goer again. i feel like i've been doing barely any reading these days, and i was starting to question my own identity. who am i if i'm not reading. it's been something of an existential crisis. but now that's all solved, because i once again have a stack of books waiting for me, most of which i probably won't read but that's just that.

i have about a million posts planned that i just haven't gotten to yet. aren't you all just dying to read about my christmas list and my thoughts about one direction? well, be patient, my dears--there are still twenty more days in the month.

things i like about winter*

*since winter is sometimes such a hard season to like

freshly fallen snow that glitters in the sunlight

christmas everything

family time

fires in the fireplace

hot chocolate

snuggling under warm blankets

winter church outfits that include hosiery

thinking about new beginnings/resolutions

my birthday is coming up

not as much sweating going on

crisp mornings (though i do prefer temperatures above 10 degrees...)

sweaters & socks

holiday meals

spending more time with the ones you love because staying in the house together is infinitely more appealing than the alternative.

i think winter sometimes gets a bad rep, and i'm at fault as much as anyone else. winter can be warm if i want it to be :)

thoughts on thursday

too many things swirling around in this brain of mine today to try to pare it down into one coherent post, so you get my disconnected thoughts today.

this week, i found the match to two different pairs of earrings. in both cases, i was overjoyed. there is almost nothing worse than losing just one earring--worse, even, than losing one sock--nobody cares, really, whether your socks match or not. and in some cases you can just buy another pair of the same socks and no one's the wiser. it's pretty weird, unless you're some alt-rebel-hipster type, to wear two different earrings. needless to say, i am glad my earrings are all back together.

driving in the snow=the worst. i'm glad i came out of the mess on tuesday with my body and my car in one piece. and my sanity, after it took me hours to get home.

i missed my post last night because i began the packing process, and because we made an exciting trip to hobby lobby to gather materials for my room. it's weird--for all of my college life i've had a lot of stuff to move around with me. tons of books, school notebooks that i save because i might need some random piece of paper or information again, that odd assortment of furniture that i collected as each new bedroom or apartment lacked some essential item of storage or decor. now, i'm obviously getting some different stuff, since this will be my own room and it doesn't come with any furniture, but i'm also trying to pare everything way, way down because 1) this is a time of reinvention, you know? and 2) i don't want to keep lugging it all around.

two movies i watch last night while packing and throwing junk away: monsters university and the way, way back. both were great. i've been waiting to see the way, way back for months and was never in the right place at the right time--it didn't disappoint, even though steve carell (spoiler alert) was kind of the villain. and you can never go wrong with pixar :)

i think i'm going to get this comforter set. i am insanely excited about it. things are happening!

tonight is my late night at work, so i'll probably get in another amazing, life-changing post today. in the meantime, more moving-day preparations!! (for some reason, i'm feeling an "insert-evil-laugh-here" kind of comment. insert as you wish.)

a new bedroom

today i bought a bed. buying a bed is not exactly what you'd think it would be. all the parts come separately. so what i really bought today was a mattress and a box spring, with a frame thrown in for good measure. what i'm left without, though, are the cute parts of the bed: a headboard, comforter, and pillows. i feel like i need to have a more sophisticated bed now, whatever that means. i guess i really want a sophisticated room, though, one that feels like me. a brand new bedroom is one chance to reinvent yourself, to create a sanctuary.

so now i'm thinking about what i can do to make my room awesome without breaking the bank. diy headboard? simple bedding with cheery accent pillows? vintage-y dresser? it all seems a little out of reach, especially when compared to the lofty goals and ideals of the pinterest monster:

need a cute antique dresser? do it yourself, it's easy! no practice or training required! just pick up some sandpaper, spray paint, and some of those one-of-a-kind drawer knobs from anthropologie and you're done! but that's not all: now you're an expert, too! 

somehow i think there's more to it :) we'll see how it all turns out. i have visions of collecting cool pieces over time, but the thing is, i'm going to need that furniture sooner rather than later. and i also don't have tons of time to go hunting all over creation for a dresser, for pete's sake. anybody know of any upcoming estate or garage sales that could be a possible gold mine for attractive and perhaps vintage yet affordable bedroom furniture? if so, let me know. in the meantime, i'll be adding to my new room board and trying my hand at furniture restoration and headboard assembly.

mixed feelings

tomorrow, i start my new job. i haven't really been in denial about my nervousness--it just makes sense that, when you start something new, there will be a learning curve. i'm not nervous about that, the actual job part, because i know i'm a capable person and i can do hard things. but i am a little nervous about how much my life is going to change. don't get me wrong--i want to be working and doing fulfilling things with my time. but this is a pretty big change. i'll be meeting a lot of new people, working in a new field, spending the majority of my waking hours in a new and foreign place, adjusting to a new schedule and new rules (like, remember how now i can't have spontaneous vacations? not that i ever really do anyway, but...it was nice having the option, i guess). it's a lot to figure out.

i hope this doesn't sound whiny. i'm excited to be moving on to this new phase, excited to be meeting these new people, working in a new field, getting to know this new place and new schedule and new rules. but it's also scary to leave that old phase behind, you know? i'll see pictures on instagram of people who are in provo and that feels like a different world. it was only two months ago that i was there, my home of seven years! but now i'm like, why are they still in provo? nothing against provo, obviously, but it seems like everyone else should be moving along with me, but then i realize that, no, i'm kind of on my own here. maybe that's why it's scary. even though i'm at home, with my family, this new job is something that is just mine, just for me to navigate.

but i guess that's all a part of growing up, right?

thoughts on thursday

for the past few weeks, i've been going to water aerobics a couple times a week with mom. i am, by far, the youngest person there, since probably most people my age are either at work or school or getting ready for one of those at 8 in the morning. just another aspect of this funny time in my life. but water aerobics is pretty cool. it's exercising without really realizing that you are. probably the best moment, though, was last week when we warmed up to a version of "mmmbop"--i'm fairly certain i was the only one who knew the song. rec center water aerobics: always a good time.

now that i have a job, i'm all of a sudden in the market for a car. it feels weird. so many things are happening! pretty soon, i'll have my own medical insurance and my own car payment and i'll be living in a place where i probably won't know anyone. life is crazy. but back to the car: i really wish i could get a little suv, but i don't know if that will happen. so yeah, that's going on. i'm looking to become a car owner.

i'm listening to the new avett brothers album on npr's first listen as i type. can i just say that it is one of the greatest saddnesses in my life right now that i most likely won't be able to see them anytime soon? so good.

i got this book/kit from amazon last week. i like to doodle, and i would love to be able to do some hand lettered, hand doodled art projects. since i had just gotten the kit the day before, my notes from conference are the most artistic they've ever been.

i downloaded the app duolingo earlier this week and now i'm learning how to speak french. on my phone. so far it's pretty cool, and the lessons get pretty advanced as you go along. i'm kind of excited about it. anybody want to speak french with me when i can actually hold a conversation? maybe next i'll try to master german.

last week the last season of the office went up on netflix, and, naturally, i watched it in about three days. and i cried in probably a third of the episodes. it's still really bittersweet that it's over, even though the ending was perfect.

why haven't i made this my cover photo yet??

i'm still deep into the old testament. i'm hoping things spice up a little bit soon, because numbers and deuteronomy and joshua, while informative, were pretty dry. but i will be vigilant!

i also need to recap conference, which was amazing. coming soon! in the meantime, life is still good. happy thursday!

bring on the fall

as much fun as summer is, i'm always ready for fall by the end of august. i'm tired of the heat, i'm kind of tired of wearing sandals, and i'm especially tired of being sweaty all the time.

fall has so many great things, so many things i love. cooler weather, changing colors, football season, new tv. writing that last one made me think that i've written a post of this sort before, but i'm going to keep going anyway.

this fall is a little different than every other fall before in that, for the first time in twenty years, i'm not starting school. this is the first september i can remember that won't include a first day of school, new supplies, fresh syllabi, interesting classmates. instead, it will include (hopefully soon) a new neighborhood, fresh roommates, and interesting coworkers.

spring is supposed to be the season of renewal and rebirth, but fall has always been that for me.

thoughts on monday

this post actually started out as "thoughts on tuesday"...and it has gotten pushed back like three times. 

some people think it would be nice to have a whole bunch of free time to do whatever you want all day. it's really not that fun. it gets really old really fast. of course, i do have things i can be doing--it just always seems like the day goes by without me accomplishing much of anything. i need to fix this. i am starting anew.

i've been watching new girl over the past couple weeks. i think one of the main purposes of that show is for zooey deschanel to wear adorable dresses and to make me covet them.

i love netflix, but i'm really not on board with the whole "netflix original series" thing. netflix basically has no rules, which means that these new original shows can pretty much have whatever content they want. i will never understand why "artistry" for some reason means portraying promiscuity, profanity, and "mature themes." there's my rant for the day.

i've somehow gotten into this pattern of staying up really really late. this, of course, causes me to sleep in a lot later than i would like. and it's also to the point where i feel like i can't get to sleep until those wee hours of the night/morning. it is not good.

saturday, we were driving home from salt lake, and we saw this huge rainbow. i love rainbows. and i kind of love this wacky weather, almost the reverse of england weather, where it is sunny all morning and early afternoon and then suddenly starts pouring, complete with thunder and lightning, late afternoon. it did make for a weird end to our day at the waterpark last week, though.

that's it for me for now :)

some things i've been thinking about

i've been on a nonfiction kick lately, drawn to the biography and essay sections when i head over to
the provo library. the other day, though, a novel caught my eye as i was on my way to check out. it had a metallic cover, which always helps.

i just finished it: my name is memory by ann brashares, the author of the sisterhood of the traveling pants series. the main premise of the story is that every person has lived before, perhaps hundreds of years' worth of lives, dozens of births and deaths. the main character, daniel, is special (of course--he's the main character of a somewhat supernatural novel); he can remember all of his past lives, which makes each of his existences interesting in that he knows that this life is not his only one--he has lived, loved, and died before, and he will again. this is interesting to me mainly because this, in part, is what the gospel is all about. not that we have lived many times before in various reincarnations and milieus, but that this mortal life isn't all we have. we have lived before, and we will live again after we die.

the other really interesting idea that brashares introduces is that your soul, the thing that you do carry with you through all these lives, in some way or another, makes an impression on each body and life that you inhabit. the female protagonist, lucy, has a scar on her left arm from an injury she received in a past life. some of her likes and dislikes, fears and insecurities, inherent qualities, stem from things that happened to her before she was lucy. i know that's true in reality, too. our personalities stay with us. there is something holy and eternal about each of us that transcends mortality and ties us to divinity. we are incredibly unique, but we are known.

i listened to an episode of this american life last week called "switched at birth." like every episode, this one featured a fascinating story about two women who were switched in a hospital as newborns, the mother who knew as soon as she got home, and what happened to their lives when she finally broke the news 43 years later. this is obviously a crazy thing to contemplate, but something, related to the ideas in this book, really struck me. each of the girls, when they met their biological families, realized how much they were like those people and not the family they were raised with. one of the women, marty, was outgoing and funny and popular, just like her birth family, the mcdonalds, and vice versa with the other family. this is such a weird thing to me. isn't a lot of your personality formed by your environment? why didn't marty become more like the family she was raised with, the millers? this suggests that much of our personality is actually genetic rather than socially constructed. crazy!

just some random thoughts for your tuesday.

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?