summer flicks...

since it is miserably hot in arizona in the summer, a popular activity is going to the movies.

and I'll tell you, I've been to lots of movies lately.

my thoughts on the many movies I've seen lately...

fast five-the first movie I saw in theaters since being home. I went with my family as the rock [oops, I mean dwayne johnson] and vin diesel are my dad's favorite actors. it was cool to see brazil, but it wasn't too different than the other ones. it was rather odd, on the drive home it felt as though we were driving ridiculously slow.

kung fu panda 2- I felt it was a good sequel. I got a little sad, but at the end they throw you a surprise to make you happy again! I especially loved seeing the baozi :)

x-men ___-I put the blank because I don't know which number it was in the x-men movie phenomenon. I thought it was cool to kinda see what made certain things happen; for example, why dr.x was in a wheelchair. I don't think I'd see it again, but I'm glad I saw it once.

rio-I honestly thought that I would have seen this movie sooner than I did, as my brother served his mission in rio de janerio. eitherway, I did see it and I loved it! the music was very good and I now have the travel bug to go to brazil.

midnight in paris-this movie was so dang good, and not just because it was made in the best city in the world. I enjoyed the storyline and the moral of it, something that I have been working on myself. ofcourse it was great to see my city, but what was cool to me was that it would show a random street corner or metro stop that would just make me smile.

so there we have it folks, the movies of the summer. I'm sure there will be more coming, so stay tuned!

enjoi! [and go see some movies]

in my france, there'd be peanut butter

I think my favorite candy of all-time is reese's, which made living in france kinda sad.

apparently france doesn't believe in peanut butter. 

however, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

alors, when you live in france, find african peanut butter and make some reese's peanut butter cups.

aww...how cute.

recently I have been introduced to dark chocolate reese's peanut butter cups, and they pretty much rocked my world.

oh france, if only you knew what you were missing.

enjoi!

stow-a-way

once upon a time, I went to a high school baseball game...and I got bored.

ok, so that's not a "once upon a time" occurrence, more like an all the time occurrence, so I usually bring a book and a fountain drink and work on my tan. right after I learned how to make cranes I was at a game and asked my mom's friend if she had a piece of paper I could use. she had a small piece of lined paper and I made a small crane. probably the second crane I ever made...and I thought I lost it. then I went to work and I found the crane.

there he was, hiding in life of pi, just waiting to be found :)

still reading life of pi...review to come.

enjoi!
p.s. this means I'm 1/40th of the way to 1,000...

what's that little bird?

on sunday, two little cranes told me something great...

this weekend is stake conference, a special meeting for church, and we are having a special guest by the name of elder d. todd christofferson.

can I just say that I'm super excited?

I'm very excited :)

enjoi! 

it's ok, you can just take the cookies

today I went to work like I do everyday. one of my co-workers started talking about paradise bakery and how much she loves their salads...so I start thinking about paradise. pretty much the only thing I think of when I think of paradise is their cookies and naturally I start thinking about how I want to eat their cookies...and I think about this for the next four hours that I'm at work. you better believe when I finished the first place I went was paradise.

I walked in while chatting on my phone and ordered 2 coconut chocolate chip cookies. the girl bagged up my cookies and I reached in my sac and pulled out a handful of change; last I checked it was still a form of currency. I started to separate out the quarters when the girl said "it's ok, you can just take the cookies."

I was a bit confused at first for a couple reasons; one, I was talking on the phone and in a conversation, two, I was counting out money and trying to figure out how much the tax would be since it wasn't already figured into the price, and three because my blood sugar was pretty low and I get spacey when I haven't eaten in a while. I finally came around and thanked her, thinking "oh man, this is so great!"

I love when people are just randomly nice and do nice things!

I would have photographed the cranes with the cookies, but you better believe I scarfed those things the second I got in my car. they were delicious.

enjoi!

nostalgia...what a way to hold up saturday cleaning

so I am many things and one of them is a pack-rat. I seriously hold on to like everything. however, I am also a pretty organized person, so I try to keep all of my things in a very organized manner. I think I pretty much have every letter, card, or note I have been given since the age of 13. I would just throw them into the bottom drawer of my jewelry box. one day I came across this and knew something needed to be done. I didn't want to throw away these messages of encouragement, but I couldn't just have them taking over valuable jewelry box space. I found a scrapbook that just had blank pages on it without page covers, so I bought it and started pasting in the cards and envelopes to hold my letters. today while cleaning my room, I kept finding random notes or cards from either before my mission or after, so I thought it was time to update the book...which lead to my reading the book. probably the greatest note I found was one I had written to myself, probably in young women's around the age of 13. it reads:
dear me,
hey self. yeah, right. just do better with school. and boys. goodness they're hard to figure out.  remember when everything was so clear? screw it all just READ YOUR SCRIPTURES!!!
<3 me
gotta love how really...nothing has changed :)

ofcourse I had to make a little crane for this photo shoot. he's made out of an envelope from a letter I recently received. I realize there are lots of habits I have that some might think I got from my mission, but I had them long before. one being a love of writing letters. so, you want to write me letters, I guarantee you something cool in return.

enjoi!

recent fails

I used to read  fail blog from time to time because let's face it, some of those fails are pretty funny. however, this last week I did quite a bit of failing myself...

exhibit a.

one might say that taking a picture of yourself at the end of the day is a failure in itself, but that my friends is not the fail. the fail comes in the form of the harry potter glasses that I so eagerly awaited. voila. they finally arrived and I tried them on to discover they were poorly made and are a bit lopsided...it is rather unfortunate. I'll probably keep them anyway.

exhibit b.

the only crane I made while in boston...and basically the only picture I took in boston. as I was packing my sister mentioned this fail and how I could have found cool maps of the places I'd been in boston and made cranes out of them. what can I say, my vacationing skills are not what they used to be.

exhibit c.

every sunday i sit down and make goals for my week. [just so everyone is aware, I did that before my mission. thanks] neanmoins, this week for some reason I decided to make the goal of no sugar. why I was possessed to make that goal the week after easter is beyond me...especially with reese's bunnies and coconut hershey kisses! I didn't even know they made coconut hershey kisses, or that I was such a fan of coconut.

so there we have it folks, my weekly acts that can be called "fails."

enjoi! [and don't mimic this behavior.]

my cranes like to fly!

this week I went on a trip to boston.

on the way there I mainly read harry potter and the sorcerer's stone.

but I did manage to make a crane!

and I learned that napkins are not the best material for cranes...

on the way back I saw a pamphlet for a southwest credit card and decided to make cranes with it.

after all, this trip was made possible by southwest rapid reward points :)

so I made the cranes and was taking their picture when a lady across the aisle leaned over and said "excuse me, did you just make those?"

I replied yes, because I had.

then she said "well those are really beautiful."

how lovely :)

enjoi!

sabbath cranes

I don't know if this is just me...but sometimes I feel my mind going in so many directions at once that I need to do something to focus it...and that happens most at church. I know, that is like the worst place, but sometimes it happens and I just need to do a little origami to focus my mind on something and I can listen :)

these are the two from last week.  how precious!

this little guy is not because my mind was going all over, but because I was taking notes on a post-it and I kept messing up so I started a new one and made a crane out of the old one. he's posing with my new scripture case, an old clinique free gift give away. I saw a sister in the mtc doing that and thought she was quite clever, so I used it yesterday and so many people asked about it.

enjoi!

ma chère macclaine

I've already given this girlie, macclaine a shout out before, but I'm going to give her another one.

check us out in the tuileries gardens! anyway, my birthday is in january and for my last birthday I had a joint p-day celebration complete with hot chocolate and cakes at angelina's! soeur macclaine surprised me with a present, origami paper! I was so excited!!!!! when I first learned how to make the cranes, I decided to make a crane out of each of the colors of the colorful pack! et voila!

how precious?! all just chillin' in the cup! the blue crane was my VERY first crane EVER! so I don't know why I didn't start with this post...oh well, it's all good! 

enjoi!

my love of moleskine

I don't know if there is a brand that I love more than moleskine. they are just so classy and quality. while I was living in france I went through a moleskine journal [a red one] and had to get a new one [peanuts limited edition :)] and obviously had to buy the paris travel journal...and when I saw that the 2011 planners were half-off right before coming home, that was a necessity...and the beautiful moleskine cahiers for my studies...very much needed :) the point of all of this, is that I love moleskines. inside each moleskine is a little pamphlet that tells you of the history of the company. I found an extra one I had and decided to use it to make a mamma crane and a baby crane. how cute!

enjoi!

galler chocolate

one day on my mission, I was with my very good friend sister macclaine. she asked me if I had ever tried galler chocolate, and I responded that I had not. her eyes got big and she told me that I had to try it, that it was the greatest chocolate in the world. she offered me a bar, I don't know which flavor, but that is not important. what is important, is that she was right. it is the best chocolate in the world.

that's 59 bars of galler chocolate goodness that I bought on an exchange in brussels right before I came home. my favorite is noix de coco [coconut]. I was telling my sister how I didn't know how I could go on with life knowing that this chocolate was only sold in belgium and I didn't live in belgium when she informed me that nowadays you can find just about anything on amazon.com. I decided this morning to check it out, and sure enough galler chocolate is most certainly on amazon.com. 

enjoi! [and order some galler]

my favorite dinner :)

my mother makes the greatest stuffed shells on the planet. the thoughts of eating these often occupied my dreams while I was away and I'm so grateful that she made them for me tonight :)

aren't they beautiful!? don't you wish you had a wonderful mother that would make them for you?! I decided to take the label off of one of the spaghetti sauce bottles and use it to make a crane!

labels from bottles or cans are easy to use UNLESS they have a sticky back. this label did, so I stuck it to a piece of paper and cut the edges. very simple :)

[notice how the plates are different colors...they are so good that I had to go back for seconds!]

enjoi!