New arrivals

... unfortunately, it wasn't me who got a puppy. 

I sure do love my sister-in-law, and even more so now that she went behind my brother's back and got a brand new puppy. Now, you have to understand, we are not traditionally dog people in my family (minus one sister), but PUPPIES are a whole different story. 

I mean, look at that face!! I don't know whose is cuter–Cohen's or the puppy's (whose name, by the way, is Scooby. He doesn't look like a Scooby to me, but I think I can just get away with calling him "puppy" for a while).

Hours of entertainment, right here:

The only thing we worry about is the kids' enthusiasm. Hopefully such a tiny puppy can make it in a house full of four rambunctious kiddos!

Trying to eat Gavin's hand:

Puppy didn't know to look at the camera. But the profile is just as cute, so it doesn't even matter!

And then after a solid 20 minutes of playing, he just fell asleep. In like two seconds. And my heart broke a little bit for how adorable it was. 

Gahhhh!!! My heart! 

Despite our best-laid plans, Megan and I decided against stealing the puppy... for now. We'll see what happens in the future, though. We also threw around the idea of one of us quitting our job so that we can get a puppy and have someone there to play with it all the time. Again, not really feasible. Alas...

Don't worry, though. I'm did not come out of this week completely empty-handed! This is why I have to limit my trips to the DI, because I end up spending $30 on a bunch of stuff that I don't actually need but can make a fairly good argument for. 

Hence:

Got this baby for $5! And after convincing myself that I actually did have enough scrapbook paper (not to mention room enough in my closet), I came home and found out that I actually do have enough paper to justify it. So, hooray! I love feeling like I organized something that I didn't even know needed organizing. 

Editorializing the everyday

You had to have expected this. That my blog would somehow start incorporating grammar ditties (not that they're going to be set to music or anything, but maybe one day...). With the new year, I thought I ought to revamp the blog a bit. And I also decided that I needed an outlet where I could vent all my grammar usage (and misuse) frustrations. With all that in mind, I came up with [created, if you will] a new blog title:

Editorializing the Everyday. 

The inspiration mostly came from my latest pet peeve: the improper use of everyday vs. every day. So first thing's first. Let's go over this real quick.

everyday is an adjective. As in, it describes things–things that are just run-of-the-mill, boring ol' things that have some sort of regularity to them. Everyday chores. Everyday shoes. Whatever.

everyday can also be a noun, as in, the everyday. The daily grind would be pretty synonymous with that, as much as I hate that expression.

every day. This expression is composed of every, which is an adjective by itself, and day, which is a noun. Every is describing day, as in every day, the sun rises. And every day, I brush my teeth. I need to exercise every day. Which day? every day. If you can substitute each into the phrase, then pick this one.

Phew. Okay. Glad to have that off my chest. Back to the new blog title. Editorializing? I don't consider myself to be a very opinionated person (perhaps because I don't make myself informed enough about certain topics to be able to intelligently claim an opinion), but I do love editing, and it's close, right? I also do have my own point of view on things (read: life), and I plan on continuing to share them, along with my random happenings, periodic epiphanies and insights, and yes, a few grammar-themed posts mixed in there.

So, enjoy. Or not. Either way, there it is.

To start off this newly titled blog right, here are a few pictures of some of my favorite everyday objects:

My hand sanitizer. I'd probably die without this. Like, literally. Who knows how many times it's saved my life already. Also I'm sick right now, so it's probably saving some other people, too.

My lip gloss. I don't really have a special-occasions lip gloss, so this is not only my everyday lip gloss, it's my only lip gloss ever. I use it every day. Multiple times a day. Okay, multiple times an hour.

The happy jar

For Christmas, I made these jars for my family. They're all in different colors and so cute that I wish I'd taken a picture of them all before I gave them away. Oh well. 

Anyway, so naturally I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought it was brilliant. It's been a really rough year for my family, and I thought we could all do with some reminders of the many, many good things that happen in our lives. So here's to remembering all the good and happy things this year! 

I can already tell that this week is going to have at least 2 new entries into the Happy Jar! :)

New Year's new word

I'll be honest, I'm a little bit sad to see 2013 end. It was such a great year for me (minus a few key events, but whatev). Saying goodbye to my college days also feels like saying goodbye to my traveling days and my fun summers, so I'm having this pessimistic attitude toward 2014 (not to mention the rest of my life in general). I realize how silly that is, but it's there nonetheless. I also recognize this weird phobia I have that my awesome life is going to all of a sudden stop being awesome and that Heavenly Father is going to stop blessing and guiding me, but knowing that doesn't rid me of my irrational fears so easily. 

Luckily, I was recently introduced to this talk by Elder Holland called "An High Priest of Good Things to Come." I'm sure you've seen the Mormon Message that derives from the talk--I think I've seen that one more than any other, but I was shocked to find that I'd never read the original talk. Fail. Elder Holland always knows how to put us in our place, doesn't he? In response to my pessimistic outlook: "Even as the Lord avoids sugary rhetoric, He rebukes faithlessness and He deplores pessimism." Yep. His main point was about looking to the future with faith and having hope in good things yet to come. "Every one of us has times when we need to know things will get better. Moroni spoke of it in the Book of Mormon as 'hope for a better world' (I'm calling it my "hope for a better year"). For emotional health and spiritual stamina, everyone needs to be able to look forward to some respite, to something pleasant and renewing and hopeful." 

I think the bulk of my hesitancy-to-move-into-the-next-year attitude stems from the fact that I have nothing solid to look forward to anymore. My future is wide open. No upcoming events or trips or special occasions or anything. But the point that Elder Holland makes here is that because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can always have that hope of good things to come. So even if I don't see what's on the horizon of my life, I can confidently trust that there are indeed good things ahead.  

As always, Christ is the perfect example of faith in the future: "Nothing could break His faith in His Father's plan or His Father's promises. Even in those darkest hours at Gethsemane and Calvary, He pressed on, continuing to trust in the very God whom He momentarily feared had forsaken Him. . . . Because Christ's eyes were unfailingly fixed on the future, He could endure all that was required of Him."

So I guess the lesson here is that I need to fix my eyes on the future, and trust that Heavenly Father has promised me lots of things that are yet to happen but will still really happen. I need to remember that "there is help and happiness ahead--a lot of it," and like Elder Holland, I need to remember to "thank my Father in Heaven for His goodness past, present, and future." He has been SO good to me. He is so good to me. And I know He'll continue to be good to me. 

Alright. Faith in 2014. Ready, go. With that in mind, I was thinking about how one of my friends chooses one word at the end of each year to describes that year. As I was thinking about assigning words to years retroactively, I decided that this year I'd assign 2014 a word just as it was getting started, in part to help overcome my pessimism. 

So I was reading through this scrapbooking magazine at work (gotta keep up-to-date with the competition, you know), and one of the pages was all about New Year's resolutions, but every resolution started with "I intend." I loved this little phrase she had written at the end: "Continuing the intention to live the length and width." I just love that. Maybe because it sounds so scriptural, I don't know. I really want to want to live my life, and to have it have a length and a width large enough to make it worthwhile. I want a life that I love. Don't get me wrong--I love my life already, but I just want to ensure that it stays that way. So with that as my inspiration, I sat down to think about the word that would help me have that kind of life. 

In my brainstorming, I threw around words and phrases like "live it up" (obviously I got really creative here--not), "enough," "do it," "own it," "active," "abundantly" (I had to throw an adverb in there)... None of them seemed quite right. I thought more about it, tried to visualize what I wanted this year to be like, and finally settled on one that fit: create. 

Now I'm not sure if I just chose that because I work for a scrapbook company and creating things is basically what that industry is all about, but I just love every connotation of it. I don't think awesome opportunities are going to fall in my lap anymore--at least not as often as they did in college. I'm going to have to create the life I want instead of waiting around for it to just happen. So this year, that's what I'm going to do:

Create friendships; create lasting relationships. 

Create travel opportunities, even if they don't take me very far from home. 

Create a more healthy body. 

Create more interesting thoughts by reading more, writing more, and spending less time wasting time. 

Create a budget. Yeah.

Create a more spiritual climate in my life, in my room, in my soul.

Create a life worth living. A life I'd choose to live.

After I chose my new word for 2014, I remembered this talk that President Uchtdorf gave a few years ago called "Happiness, Your Heritage." He talks about how the greatest happiness is God's happiness. Understanding God's happiness isn't exactly the most straightforward concept to grasp, however, since His ways are not our ways. But, as Pres. Uchtdorf points out, He is able to accomplish His goals of bringing to pass man's immortality and eternal life because of two things: He is a God of creation and compassion. "Creating and being compassionate are two objectives that contribute to our Heavenly Father's perfect happiness. Creating and being compassionate are two activities that we as His spirit children can and should emulate." So, I guess I need to add "be compassionate" to my list of goals. Seriously something I always need to work on. 

He also gave some encouraging words on what exactly it means to create: "The bounds of creativity extend far beyond the limits of a canvas or a sheet of paper and do not require a brush, a pen, or the keys of a piano (which is good because I'm not really all that artistic). Creation means bringing into existence something that did not exist before--colorful gardens, harmonious homes, family memories, flowing laughter." 

To go along with that, and not to get all P.S. I Love You on you or anything, but I love this idea about what it means to create something: "Just create something... new, and there it is, and it's you, out in the world, outside of you, and you can look at it, or hear it, or read it, or feel it, and you know a little more about you. A little bit more than anyone else does."  

And of course, "The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create. That is your opportunity in this life and your destiny in the life to come."

So here's to creating a life I'd choose to live, even if it weren't my own. Here's to creating a belief that I can make my life just as fulfilling as I'd like it to be! Here's to creating 2014. 

I hope it's a good one for you, too :)

Ode to my house

Today I said goodbye to a very dear friend who has been with me for almost 23 years and has seen me through, well, everything. Playing Nintendo with my older brother, my sister and I asking each other if we were still awake while going to sleep in our bunk beds, having sock-throwing battles in my older sisters' room, hiding on top of the fridge during hide-and-seek, counting down til we could wake our parents on Christmas morning, playing in the out-of-control weeds in the backyard, jumping on the tramp and breaking my finger, leaving and returning from various adventures near and far, sneaking out my window to go hang out with *cough* (boy) friends, crying from growing pains and heartbreaks, laughing hysterically, tripping up and down the stairs almost every time, painting the walls, growing up and moving out. You get the idea.

I love that because we took the shelf that my grandpa built for my room, there remains the record of the evolution of my room: from my purple, butterfly-bordered middle school days to now.

Mindy lived here.

My mom left the heart-shaped wreath on the door, "as a symbol that we love this house."

So, dear friend, I will miss you. I'm trying to focus on all the wonderful, happy memories I have with you and not think about how sad I am to not be able to create new ones. I'm so grateful to have been able to call you home for so long. Farewell.

2013: year in review

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope your 2013 was as awesome as mine was. Here's to an amazing 2014! It's gonna take a lot to live up to last year though.

Voilà my year in review:

Pick me!

Last night I had a dream that I was sending out my résumé to guys on this online dating site... Troubling? A little bit. 

Obviously I've been doing too much of both of those. But this morning I realized that it's basically the same thing, and here's why:

Trying to convince potential husbands that I'd make a good wife. Uh... I'm cute? Strong testimony! So fun! And I'm out. (Is the lack of "I love cooking" tidbit on there that glaringly obvious?)

vs. 

Trying to convince potential employers that I'd make a good employee. Uh... I'm a hard worker? I can edit like nobody's business. And yeah... pick me? My résumé is pretty cute; I'm pretty much banking on that. (Although, again, it's lacking, in the HTML/marketing experience. Oh well.)

Both with subtle undertones of...

So, yeah. I'm to that exact point in my life where I need either a job or a husband. Preferably both. So if you have any leads on either front, let me know!