Thursday, September 29, 2011

Mini album, curtains, and quilt, oh my!

I don't know why I feel the need to put pictures of my projects on my blog, but these crafty projects are becoming a hobby and I just like sharing them with someone, even if it's just the blogging universe. So, here we go again!

For my dad's birthday, I made a mini album of our yearly trips to Snowbird for the Survivors at the Summit hike. I cut up my yellow volunteer shirt from last August's event to make little mini flags for the inside pages and I kinda love how they turned out. Next step, making one for myself!






Then I decided to make curtains for our bedroom, not because we didn't already have some, but because they were the same color as the walls and they didn't do a very good job of blocking out the sunlight in the mornings. We had/have a ton of leftover green material from the back of our ginormous quilt (pictures below) so I just trimmed, hemmed, made loops for the tops, and hung them up. I'm so proud that they turned out to be the right size! (And no, they don't match our current bedspread at all, but they'll match our winter quilt just fine.)




And now, introducing the biggest quilt anyone should ever attempt to make...


Ta-da! All the squares come from old shirts, shorts, pajamas, and pants. Tim and I started cutting the squares for this quilt not too long after we got married, I'm pretty sure, and we had so many that Tim suggested we make a huge picnic quilt. Thus began the loooong adventure! It took both of us plus three friends two days to tie the whole thing and it took me about four hours to bind it (between pinning some of the fabric, rolling it up, pinning the rest, and sewing). When we first laid out the squares, we had to remove all the furniture from our living room - it literally took up the entire room!


To give you a sense of its size, there are over 800 six inch squares and it is roughly the same square footage as five twin size quilts. It's approximately 12 feet wide and 16 feet long, and we had to purchase 11 yards of batting and 17 yards of material for the back. I think we decided it's about 30 or 40 pounds when it's all rolled up. I have no idea how many collective hours it took - a lot!


Everyone keeps asking what we're going to do with it (and how we're going to wash it) and the simple answer is, we just thought it would be cool to have a quilt that big, especially one we made. Next time we have a picnic, we can fit everyone on just one blanket. If we fold it up, it makes an excellent sleeping pad. It'll just be our family's special occasion quilt. (And we'll wash it in a kiddie pool in the backyard. Don't worry, we've thought this through.)

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Community

Sometimes I look up quotes from the TV show Community and I just laugh. For example...

Jeff: You know what makes humans different from other animals?
Troy: Feet.
Pierce: No, bears have feet.
Jeff: We're the only species on Earth that observes Shark Week. Sharks don't even observe Shark Week, but we do, for the same reason that I can pick up this pencil, tell you its name is Steve, and go like this -- *Breaks pencil in half; everyone gasps/cries out.* -- and part of you dies, just a little bit on the inside. Because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we can give Ben Affleck an Academy Award for screenwriting.

Pierce: Abed, your social skills aren't exactly "streets ahead." Know what I mean?
Abed: I don't.
Jeff: You're not alone in this case.

Abed: Jeff, I think you should play the role of my father.
Jeff: I don't wanna be your father.
Abed: That's perfect. You already know your lines.

Troy: That's one of my biggest fears.
Abed: What is?
Troy: If I ever, like, woke up as a doughnut...
Abed: You would eat yourself.
Troy: I wouldn't even question it.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Go see The Drowsy Chaperone


I just have one thing to say: go see The Drowsy Chaperone at the Hale Center Theater in Orem. That's the whole message: go see it. Now. It only has a week before it closes and there aren't very many tickets left, but go. Drop whatever you're doing next week to make it happen. Even if you have to sit in a single seat and your husband/wife/best friend/significant other/parent/sibling has to sit on the other side of the theater in a far away single seat, go. It's worth it.

Okay really, all exaggeration aside, I'm completely serious. Tim surprised me with tickets tonight and I've really wanted to see the show because I've heard good things about it, but it completely surpassed all my expectations. It was the best musical comedy I've seen in...possibly ever. Perfectly performed, brilliantly scripted, and absolutely hilarious. I wish that we had seen it much earlier so that we could have told people about it sooner, because it's the kind of hilarity that you just have to share with everyone you know.

And I'm also serious about there not being many seats left. Tim and I had to buy single seats that were near each other (a very nice lady and her daughter offered to switch us so we could sit together) but even if we'd been far apart, we still would have enjoyed it as much as we did. And we may or may not be considering buying tickets again for next week, so you should too. The Drowsy Chaperone is amazing - go see it!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Valley of the Goblins

On Labor Day, we went to a barbecue with my mom's extended family and had a conversation that went something like this:

Rachel: When are we going to Goblin Valley? Jase has never been there before.
Me: Tim's never been there either! Can we come?
Mom: When can you guys go? Let's pick a weekend right now.
Everyone else: That sounds like fun! Let's all go!

Twenty seconds later, everyone had their phone/iPod/iPhone/etc. out and were checking their calendars. We went back and forth trying to decide which weekend would work best, finally deciding to just go two weekends later. We reserved the group site that night and that was that!

When I was growing up, my family went camping with my mom's extended family every year, usually over Spring Break and sometimes during the summer, too. Together we explored many of the National Parks within driving distance in Southern Utah, Wyoming, and Nevada (if I remember correctly). We went to Goblin Valley two, maybe three times and we always had so much fun. I remember exploring the cliffs behind the campground with my cousins Mike and Quinn and being completely enthralled by the actual Valley of the Goblins with their strange shapes and features. And I remember learning to play Kick the Can in one particular corner and thinking it was the best game ever.

So last weekend was our semi-impromtu (throwback to the good ol' days) camping trip to Goblin Valley. Tim and I had to leave a little early so I could make it back for our ward's Primary Presentation on Sunday, but it was super fun while we were there! It rain for the first eighteen hours we were there, but luckily the group site came with a huge pavilion so we just pitched out tents on the cement and stayed dry. Once the sun came out on Saturday, it was beautiful! We had a corner of the campgrounds to ourselves so we played kickball, dodge ball, four square, and of course, we played Kick the Can in the Valley of the Goblins! Everything was still muddy from the rain so we all got pretty dirty but that was definitely part of the fun. And then we took our flashlights to the Valley of the Goblins when it got dark and played flashlight tag (aka sardines but in the dark), which was fun but a little freaky, I'm not going to lie. It was a fun-filled, action-packed, very short vacation but I loved it.

Camping under the pavilion





Bundled up against the cold and rain


Playing kickball behind the pavilion as soon as the rain stopped


Goblin Valley!


Love these cool formations


Kick the can!


Playing four square in the dirt


It was an incredibly fun trip - I hope we get to go back soon!

Monday, September 12, 2011

September 11, 2001: A decade later

Ten years ago, I wrote this in my journal:

"Today, at about 8:50 am Eastern time, a plane crashed into one of the Twin towers of the World Trade Center. 18 minutes later, another plane crashed into the other Twin tower. Not too much later, a plane crashed into the Pentagon. At about 10:00, almost an hour after the 2nd plane, the tower that was hit second collapsed. Shortly after, the other half of the WTC collapsed, leaving a huge clouds of dust, dirt, debris, a huge hole in the NY skyline, and thousands of people dead or severely wounded. Soon after this, another plane crashed in Pittsburgh. All four planes had been hijacked by terrorists, and were all big Boeing planes traveling long distances so they had lots of fuel (which made them blow up more easily) and lots of passengers. The total death toll for the planes is supposed to be about 250 or so people. We have no idea what the total death toll is now."

That night, I cried and cried but not for myself - for everyone who died, for their families, and for the sheer possibility of such terrible actions. It was a horrifying day, but I'm really grateful that I wrote so much in my journal about it (ten full pages). There were so many details that I forgot and even though it was not something I ever want to re-live, it changed who we are and the people who lost their lives that day and the people who have been killed since then deserve to be remembered. I'm glad that we could take time today to do just that.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Happy Northridge Anniversary

One year ago this week, I started working for Northridge Publishing. I realize that remembering the exact date I started working is a little odd, and celebrating a work anniversary is perhaps a bit much (I'm really into milestones, okay?) but it was nothing short of a miracle that I got this job. Literally. I blogged about it last year when everything fell into place, but I wasn't really able to articulate the full experience. Now that I have a little perspective, I'm even more grateful for everything that happened.

Right before Tim and I got married, I moved back to Utah from Pittsburgh and got a job as an assistant at a real estate office pretty quickly. While I was just grateful to have a job, it was a fairly terrible experience. It took a year of being miserable for me to really consider looking for a new job. But jobs were (and are) so scarce that I just couldn't find a way to justify quitting a job that was our main source of income until I had another one lined up. Tim and I went to the temple around this time and, without giving too many details, I came away very clearly knowing that I needed to find a different employment situation.

I ended up working at the real estate office for six more weeks before being officially done, and in that time, I sent out a lot of resumes. I had a couple of interviews but nothing that took. When my job ended, I still didn't have anything lined up. I was not very calm, at that point. Some days I was okay, and other days I was a basket case wondering what in the world we were going to do come September when our money ran out. The other part of this (rather long, sorry) story is that Tim quit his part time job at the same time (it was an incredibly terrible work environment that was damaging to his emotional, mental, and spiritual well being, to put it simply), so we were really running out of time and money. Tim was always confident that we'd be okay, but wavered in my faith that we would be provided for.

Then, wanting to make sure I covered all my bases, I emailed again about one of the jobs I found on Craigslist that had sounded great -- writing and editing for a scrapbooking magazine -- but hadn't heard back from. This time, I got an enthusiastic response and the instructions for the writing exercises that were the next part of the process. I went through the exercises carefully and actually called my dad to get a little help ("So what's a die cut again? And what do you think a Scor-Pal is?") and a few weeks later, I had an interview with Pam, the editor-in-chief of the magazines. It was a great interview and by the end of it, I felt really, really good about the job.

Pam called to offer me the job a short time later, but I didn't accept it then. I was waiting to hear back about another job that offered a larger salary and benefits, and I didn't want to risk taking the sure job and missing out on what I thought was the better opportunity. I debated and worried and prayed very fervently, let me tell you.

The day that I needed to give Pam an answer, Tim had an interview for an IT intern position. He came home feeling great about the job -- it was perfect for what he was looking for -- and sure enough, thirty minutes after the interview had ended, they called to offer him the position, starting immediately. The more we talked about our situation, the more I realized that as great as the salary and benefits would be, I didn't really want that other job and there was no guarantee I'd get it. I felt much more comfortable and excited about working for Northridge, it was everything I needed/wanted/was looking for, and the more I thought about it, more the I felt right about it. I called Pam that night and gave her the good news, and everything she said during that conversation confirmed to me that yes indeed, this was where I was supposed to be.

Here's the part of this that always gets me: that very eventful day was the last day of August. As of September 1st, Tim and I were both employed. The income we had carefully planned and budgeted for the summer lasted us through August, but how we were going to eat or pay rent in September, we didn't know. And then just like that, we were completely taken care of.

It was one of those rare moments when I could see so clearly the hand of the Lord in our lives. We had been blessed with so much more than we had expected, and a year later, the blessings still keep coming. I know that if I'd gotten that other job, it would have been another stressful, unhappy experience that I would eventually look forward to quitting. As it is, I love my job and I look forward to coming to work. I love the flexibility I have, I love the people I work with, and I love the new crafting talents I am developing. Most of all, I love being good at what I do, and even though it's not a position I ever expected to be in (Me? Scrapbooking?), I'm so grateful to be here. And I'm even grateful to know all about die cuts, too.

So happy anniversary, Northridge! I am looking forward to a lot more of these!