Christmas is Coming!

Well I made it home despite the terrible weather that was approaching in Virginia. My whole family came and got me at the airport and then we went straight into D.C. to eat crepes and see the national christmas tree. It was rather large tree, basically just like the one in our house. Here's the whole fam in front of it:

And here's just the kids with the White House in the background (which you can barely see in the picture).

We stopped in to visit Santa and the elves there took this lovely picture of the family.

Santa asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I said I wasn't sure, so Greg chimed in that I wanted a boyfriend. Santa responded "I'm a toy maker," so I guess that means I won't be getting a boyfriend for Christmas after all.

Here's the cutest person in the world with Santa. Notice Santa's socks.

Speaking of socks, here are some socks that Rachelle got me for Christmas. Yes, that is Santa's face on my feet. And yes they have jingle bells on them so everyone knows where I am in the house when I wear them.

The family lovingly waited for me to arrive before decorating the tree. I even got to put the angel on top. They must like me a lot.

A shout out to Twilight with a Christmas ornament.

Here's me and Max before we went out in the snow. It turns out that Max can't handle being in 2 feet of snow, so I had to carry him back (but he does have a styling coat).

Here I am just lounging around in the large amount of snow we got.

Sheer bliss.

Me and my favorite baby girl (who is actually almost as old as me now) playing in the snow.

Mom, Megan, and I making cookies that we had to roll into balls with our hands. They were rather chocolaty.

The finished product:


P.S. only 5 days till Christmas!!!!!

Thoroughly Modern Jessie

Awhile back some friends invited me to their ward's live action clue game. Obviously not wanting to deny myself the opportunity to wear my flapper (it was 20's themed) I went. Not to brag, but I think my outfit turned out pretty well. I could maybe give Julie Andrews a run for her money for the part of Millie (except I can't sing). Here's Alison, Steph, and me all dressed up to go:

The best part of the whole look is the hat, which was inherited by my lovely mother from my grandma.

I can only hope that some other opportunity will unveil itself soon for me to whip out this number again.

Finals are not awesome. But some other things are.

As finals are looming ever nearer I feel it is appropriate to reflect on all things awesome. Well, not all things, but a select few awesome things.

1. This is the cover of my Spanish book. Every time I look at it I am literally blown away by how awesome it is. Just try to not stare at it for several hours.

2. Every night as I fall asleep the Jonas Brothers look down on me in these protective poses:

3. My Physical Science professor is Professor Moody. Yes, he actually has a crazy magical eye with which he can see through anything (ok, that's a lie, but his last name really is Moody, so it's still awesome).

4. Sure it's freezing outside (and inside my house), but at least it's an excuse to legitimately whip out my spandex for everyday wear. Awesome.

5. This picture of Daniel Radcliffe that I have saved on my computer so it comes up randomly as my screen saver is obviously awesome (talk about a dramatic pose and awesome facial hair).

6. The fact that I will be home in 11 days.

7. Christmas is in 17 days.

8. That I have monster cheese

oh, I mean MUNSTER cheese, in my fridge right now, which is the promise of an awesome sandwich tomorrow (teehehe, that one was for my siblings).

9. As of Thursday night at 7:20 pm Mountain Standard Time I will officially be finished with classes this semester.

10. My family. Beyond awesome.

Twilight Saga: New Moon

This weekend Kristin, Kelsey, Steph, and I went to see New Moon. We bought our tickets a little late and couldn't get them for the actual midnight showing, so we just went to the 11:55 pm showing on Friday. This proved just as well because it still seemed to only attract serious tween fans. Perfect.

I must say that I enjoyed this movie more than I did the book (which is a rare occurrence for me), but with the book being so horribly whiny and lacking Edward for most of it, it was nice to have it condensed into only about 2 hours. Oh, and Jacob's abs were way hot (I can't say the same about Edward's, he was just too horribly pale).

But like I said, we saw the movie at midnight, so we were rather tired waiting in line because being true college students we had stayed up late the night before (of course not doing homework, we were re-living our favorite moments from Eclipse, the next book in the series).

Here's me and Kristin before we saw the movie, but I think the picture applies to our feelings after the movie too. We really enjoyed it.

The International Cinema Strikes Again

I generally go and see the Spanish films that play in the international cinema, and I must say that this one was a real hit for me. It's about a woman who writes flowery romance novels under an alias name, but her life has become a mess. Her husband is having an affair with her best friend (though she doesn't know about it for awhile), and she is struggling to come up with new books that meet the happy requirements her contract calls for.

That summary in no way makes the movie sound enjoyable, but it was. Partially just because Spanish people can be so funny in their conversations together. My favorite part though definitely was when the woman attended a flamenco show put on by her housekeeper's son. It was a very over the top and sensual dance done between the mother and son. I was practically falling out of my chair with laughter.

The Importance of Reading Ernest

Ok, so as of late I have become a huge fan of Ernest Hemingway.

It all started when I read For Whom the Bell Tolls while I was in Spain. Then wandering the streets of Pamplona and San Sebastian as I read The Sun Also Rises somehow just made it the best book ever. I used to pass this off as probably mostly because I was in Spain and everything was a thousand times more awesome, but when I read A Farewell to Arms for my American Heritage class I realized that it's actually just the shear brilliance of Hemingway that makes his books so worthwhile. Theres just something about that plain and simple style of Hemingway that I find so beautiful and captivating.

I do realize that for some reason a lot of people don't like Hemingway's writing. So I guess that I will merely suggest that everyone go out and give him one more honest chance before dismissing him entirely. Who knows, you may find yourself near tears in the library as you read it. I sure did.


Oh, and the title of this post is a semi-shout out to my father, who played Algernon in a production of the play The Importance of Being Earnest. Plus I just thought it was too clever a title to pass up.

Food for Megan

I don't want there to be any confusion on this matter: I made sure that Megan ate well while she was visiting me. This included baking the cupcakes that my lovely mother had sent me in my Halloween package along with this little guy:

A witch nightlight that blows bubbles. Before you get too excited, the bubbles are just in that little tube of orange liquid. I thought it was going to blow bubbles out into the room, which would have been awesome. I'm not sure if this is the kind of nightlight that should be given to small children who are afraid of the dark though, because if you woke up and saw it glowing at you it might give you more nightmares than just the darkness. But I still love it because it's from my mom.

But back to the cupcakes. Here we are making them:



And here we are eating them:

Then on Sunday morning I made sausages and German pancakes.

Megan was a pretty big fan of my breakfast cooking skills.

Halloween

For Halloween this year Megan happened to be visiting me out here at school. We had a jolly good time hopping from party to party as Megan experienced the true college life. I had been planning on being a flapper for Halloween, but it seemed to cold a night for a dress, plus Greg's ward party involved ice skating, so I threw together this little number at the last minute:

Yeah, I'm a Cheetah Girl. As in the girl group from Disney channel. Basically it was awesome (because I got to wear my cheetah pants...despite what you may think, that doesn't happen everyday).

The lovely Anna accompanied us to Greg's ward party as Waldo (like Where's Waldo?) and Megan was a Native American (Tiger Lily perhaps?).

There may have been some dancing.

The family unites! Greg was the black kid from captain planet.

After Greg's shindig, Megan and I headed to a random barn somewhere down Provo canyon where we met up with some gal pals of mine for their ward party. It was pretty much awesome because we just danced the night away. Here we are:
Me (obviously the Cheetah Girl), Camille (Minnie Mouse), Heather (Swine Flew), Steph (a genie), and Alison (a flapper).

And here we are near the end of the night feeling overall content that they played both "Down" and the "Tally-ho" song.

The next night (actual Halloween) we went to my stake party and then concluded the evening with a pizza from Little Caesars eaten while we watched the movie Coraline, which I had wanted to see for forever (it arrived on the Netflix queue shortly after I left home for the semester, but Megan brought it out). It was the perfect movie for Halloween because it was just creepy enough to feel halloweeny without giving me any sort of nightmare.

All in all it was an awesome night.

A Tea Party For Heather

For Heather's birthday some friends and I teamed up to throw her a surprise tea party. Here I am with the lovely birthday girl (and some rather attractive tea pots I managed to find at D.I.):

For the menu we had a variety of sandwiches (egg salad, chicken salad, and cucumber with cream cheese), deviled eggs, no bake cookies (shaped like hearts), cheesecake squares, scones, and a variety of juices (served in the tea pots).

In the last hour before the party I found myself peeling 18 hard boiled eggs as fast as I could, then smashing the yokes for deviled eggs and smashing the rest of the eggs for the egg salad sandwiches. Then I was running around putting together all the sandwiches as fast as I could while Stephanie was frying scones and Rachelle was bringing over Heather. But it all worked out in the end, and if I may say so myself, everything was delicious.

Here are most of our lovely attendees, with the birthday girl front and center of course:

Where the Wild Things Are

I, along with everyone else who wants to relive their childhood, went to see Where the Wild Things Are the night it opened. Unlike many of the people who I have since discussed it with, I actually enjoyed it. Sure it was a little more sad than one might expect coming from a children book, but the cinematography was beautiful and the music was wonderful. It reminded me that children view the world differently from adults, which is something that is important to remember as we interact with kids.

My two favorite things in the whole movie are pictured below:

1. Max. (who ironically enough was played by a little boy named Max)
Max happens to be the cutest little boy ever and is moving in and may take the place of Freddie Highmore for most adorable child (possibly only because Freddie is growing up). But basically, Max is precious, and so perfect for the role (not to mention his adorable wolf suit, which I want in my size).
2. The font. Can you say perfect? The credits open with kid's drawings around the different logos signed in that adorable hand by Max. So awesome.

Basically I loved the movie, though I wouldn't watch it a thousand times over because it is a little sad and harsh. The graphics are amazing. The filming is beautiful. The characterization of the relationships is really well done in a short amount of time. Go see it, but don't expect a happy go lucky escapist child's film.

Deliciousness

So the other day I was asked to bring the salad to a dinner with some friends. At the store I was pondering what to put in the salad in addition to strawberries when Kristin suggested I use mangoes. There could not have proved to be a better combination. I topped it off with some cranberry vinaigrette dressing and if I do say so myself it turned out rather well.


Next up in the list of delicious foods I've recently discovered I can make myself was split pea soup. When I came home from classes today I had every intention of reliving the german pancakes of last week, but when I opened the cookbook my mother made me, the first page was split pea soup. I read the ingredients and discovered that I had them all, so I set out trying to make it. Several phone calls to my mother later I found that I had a decent soup simmering on the stove. The only problem was that it was much more runny than the soup my mom makes at home. I called her again and discovered that I should have left the top off of the pot while it simmered for 2 hours so that the water could evaporate. I simply let the soup continue to simmer for another hour with the top off and the soup turned into a marvelous consistensy. The photo obviously does not do the taste justice.

I promise it was good. Plus, it made enough for me to eat for just about the rest of the semester.

German Pancakes

So today I decided to make german pancakes for lunch, only I couldn't find a glass pie pan anywhere. Once again this meant that I reverted to using my beautiful casserole dish. I was a little worried that it wouldn't turn out well, but as you can see from the picture, it turned out just fine.


In fact, I would venture to say that it turned out better than fine, as the sides somehow rose about 3 times as high as they usually do. Probably the best part about the whole situation was that I got to eat the whole thing all by myself.

Bigotes

Here's a rather humorous video we watched in my Spanish class:

Adam

On Saturday I headed up to Salt Lake City with my mom and watched the movie Adam with her and my Aunt, Uncle and cousin. It's a film from the Sundance Film Festival, so it's not playing in mainstream theaters, but was definitely worth our effort to see.

It's the story of a man, Adam, with asberger's syndrome, and his relationship with a girl who moves into his building just after his father's death. The movie is an emotional roller coaster, but it is beautifully filmed and acted. Hugh Dancy does an excellent job with his character (plus he's not so bad to look at).

One particularly fantastic part of the movie parallels Adam's fear of a job interview with the easily understood fear of a court trial. This is beautifully done and helps the audience understand a little better what he is going through everyday in social interractions.

I loved it. My mom loved it. What more do you need? Go see it.

Pan's Labyrinth

This week Pan's Labyrinth was shown in the International Cinema at BYU. It had a huge response and Kristin and I found ourselves sitting on the floor in the aisle at first. (That is until we stole some people's chairs after they left due to some technical issues in the beginning) This frightening and gruesome tale is something I would only recommend seeing edited, as the edited version contained a sufficient amount of horrifyingness to get its point across.

The movie follows the story of a girl who, in coping with a very traumatizing experience in post civil war Spain, encounters a fantastic world of magical and gruesome creatures. As her reality becomes more and more cruel the fantasy world becomes more real and intertwined in her reality.

She experiences a series of tasks that become more horrifying as they go on. She remains the epitome of innocence throughout the story though. As her step father's (a fascist captain) cruelty is further revealed, her innocence becomes more apparent.

Though this movie is not one for the average escapist seeking pure enjoyment, it definitely is thought provoking and revealing about the nature of cruelty vs. innocence. I would rate it high on a scale of intriguingness - thus landing it a place on my blog. I'm glad I saw it, but will probably never need to watch it again.