"I'm grateful for Macaroni and Cheese."

I have so much to be grateful for. I have a great family and amazing friends. I am a member of a church that makes me feel full and whole. I have a Savior who knows what I'm feeling and a Father in Heaven who knows me completely and loves me and shows me that by giving me so much. It has become so easy for me to forget all of the good things in my life as I have spent much of my time dwelling on the negative things. It is unlike me and has left me feeling like a different person. I'm aware of it though and I'm working on it. I was told recently that I've been running on empty. I gave everything that I had and hadn't been filled up in return. I learned that I was looking for that feeling of fullness in the wrong places. I was reminded that, although I have little energy to put into doing things for others, it needs to happen because for me helping people makes me happy. People in general make me happy and my avoidance of people has made me very very unhappy. And so I have embraced the mindset of "If it seems too hard, do it because it will only get harder if you don't".

I love this video you should watch it. What are you grateful for?

I'm grateful...
*to be an auntie because when nothing in this world can make me happy those two little people fill my heart with joy, simply by existing.
*for a family that loves me even if I don't deserve it.
*for a friendship that makes me feel whole and connected and accepted in moments when I can barely feel anything at all.
*for rekindled friendships and long lasting friendships.
*my new little "group" of friends at church and also for visiting teaching because if it weren't for that I'm pretty sure these friendships wouldn't have happened.
*when I walk outside early in the morning and all I can hear is the sound of cars on the freeway.
*for rice, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread, and FlipSides crackers (brilliant invention).
*that my roommate leaves her hairdryer out everyday. I feel it gives me permission to use it and that makes me happy because mine sucks.
*covergirl foundation.
*the words of prophets.
*jeans.
*difficult times in life that make me a stronger, better and more empathetic person.
*that I was raised with SO much love in my life. It taught me not to hold back when I love people.
*Gilmore Girls episodes that bring me comfort and familiarity when all I need is 45 minutes of nothingness.

There is much more but those are a few things. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas (I'll cover that now in case my lack of desire to blog continues.)

Baby Shower!

Okay, this post is mostly for Carrie! Pictures from Lora's baby shower! Keep in mind that I ran out of time so there weren't any ballons or many decorations in the living room...but it worked. :)

It was a lot of fun and great to be with some wonderful friends celebrating our dear friend Lora! Enjoy!

The decorations & food


And the people!

Pity Party, Table for one.

I just had a pity party. An all out, feel sorry for myself, lay on my bed and cry while listening to a playlist full of sad songs, pity party. I even posted a facebook status that gave my 385 friends too much information about my emotional state (and then quickly deleted it). And sometimes I think that's okay. I had a hard week. I'm tired all the time, whether I get enough sleep or not. I spend almost every minute that I'm not at work alone and after awhile that gets to a person. I spent yesterday eating toast and sleeping because I felt sick.

I keep a smile on my face most of the time but sometimes everything falls apart and luckily when that happened for me I was in a position that I could stop everything and feel sorry for myself.

It's okay to break down sometimes. It's okay to cry and throw a little pity party once in awhile, just as long as you get back up and return to normal life when you're done.

Now, please excuse me, I'm going to go back to normal life now.


Image: Carolita Johnson

I have this friend...

Her name is Joan and she is incredibly talented. She's one of my dear EFY friends that I talked about in my last blog. She is one of my favorite people and I hope that someday this crazy life will give us the chance to live close by each other. (If you keep offering to let me live in your basement/spare room etc I might just show up someday...be careful. ;)

So back to Joan being incredibly talented. I have some buttons on the side of my blog that I wanted to bring to your attention. The first one is BitsyCreations. That is Joans business. She can pretty much do anything where creativity is concerned. Check it out! If I ever figure out how to block out the address and names on Lora's baby shower announcement I will post it here for you all to see. We told her what Lora wanted and in no time at all we had an email with the perfect invitation. Really, check it out. She does graphic design (need a new blog header?), Christmas cards (order them early so her life doesn't get insane!), baby announcements, wedding annoucements, birthday invitations...and the list goes on. www.bitsycreations.com

She is also doing a new blog with a friend called Gifted Giveaways. There is a button on the right for that too. You should check it out and become a follower! You can win stuff from really talented people!

I've always thought Joan was amazing but after working with her and seeing the invitations and baby announcement that she designed for Lora I realized I really needed to tell you guys about her and make you aware of the buttons. (Because if you're like me, you always ignore them...comes with ignoring advertisements on facebook I think.)

I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend! I need to go get to work on cleaning before the shower!

Bethie Crocker?

So I've just been baking away this week. Brenae and I have throwing a baby shower for my dear friend Lora on Saturday and she requested cookies & cupcakes as the treats for her shower. How can I say no to that?! Thus the baking. Last night I went to my friend Carrie's house and we made funfetti cupcakes from scratch. It was a first for me, the from scratch and funfetti parts. We had some interesting results but all in all everything tastes really good (of course we had to test them!!) and they are happily living in my freezer until it is time to frost them on Saturday. I am having a blast hanging out with Carrie again and she is teaching me everything she knows.

For those of you that don't know, Carrie is a friend that I met at EFY when I was 14. We clicked (along with Joanie and Chelley) and became the best of friends. We've always kept in touch although better at some times then others but after I moved back to Utah this summer we committed to being better and hanging out often. We have been doing a very good job and I love it. I love Care, I love being with someone that has known me for such a long time and that I can be myself with, I love her cute girls and I love that we can talk for hours and get to know each other better as adults. Anyway, that was a tangent, but Carrie is amazing and I am so grateful to have that close friendship back and I wanted you all to know it! :)

Some pictures of the cupcake baking fun:

Carrie with one of the good cupcakes! (sorry for the eyes closed pic Care! The other one was really dark.)

I'm getting quite good at taking pictures while still getting both heads in them. And yes we are laughing, I'd explain but it probably wouldn't be funny anyone else and it would give away one of my greatest secrets. :)

Tonight I made cookies. I'm going to put some cookies in little chinese food containers (provided by Carrie along with all of the decorations THANK YOU CARE!!!!) so I made mini cookies. At first I was baffled as to how I would do it. I even googled "bite-sized cookie receipes". Nothing fit what I was looking for and then I realized that, doi, I could just make my favorite cookie recipes and make them smaller. I'm a thinker, I know. Anyway, the sweet little bite sized morsels make me want to cry. They're so cute. Why do mini things make me so happy!? I have never eaten a mini hamburger (or a slider I guess...) but I love to look at them. I used a melon baller to scoop the cookies. The chocolate peanut butter ones turned out perfect. They are the perfect size. The choc chip caramel ones are a little bigger then I was hoping but they still taste good and will fit into the containers fine. Tomorrow I will probably make one more batch of a different variety. I know what you all are thinking. "Uh, Beth, how many people are coming to this shower? You're going to have way too many cookies." Yeah..I know, but I want a variety and I work in an office with 60 men. The leftovers will be eaten, that isn't a concern. I'm babbling about nothing, the point of this post is the pictures. And here they are!

Caramel chocolate chip cookies. Yummy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter chip cookies. Aren't they cute?!?!

And sooo little! True love...that's what I feel for these cookies.

And the lovely machine that made the process so much easier. Thank you to my favorite neighbors for lending this beauty to me.

Happy in my ness.

Life is good. Things are going really well, even so, sometimes after work a girl just needs a good laugh. So what is it that is doing that for me these days? This video:



I don't know if you guys saw the first episode of Glee on TV a few months ago, but I did, and I can't wait for the season to begin. It just feeds my love of musicals, while being short enough that I don't fall asleep half way through, and incorporating songs that I can sing right along with. I can't wait for the season premiere and a weekly dose of a TV musical. Until then, I'll keep watching the above Gold Digger video that I downloaded for free from iTunes last week. Hope you guys enjoy it too!

Two updates in one day?!

This one will pretty much just be pictures for those that have asked to see what my new place looks like. These are only of my bedroom because I'm not thrilled with the way the front room looks at the moment. Oh and a huuuge thanks to Carrie for coming down with her trusty tiny hammer and level and helping me decorate! If it weren't for her I would probably still have empty walls. Also, huge thanks to Chris, Ben and Jerr for helping move all of my stuff in and for helping me figure out where to put my furniture.

My lovely new bed and wall art designed by Care. (Ignore the non matching comforter, I still haven't found "the one" yet.)

The lighting is weird in this one but it's my favorite part of my room. I finally bought my favorite picture of Christ.

I'm using my necklaces as decoration...smart eh?

I did this wall by myself...can't you tell?

My $25 desk & chair. True love.

Again with the lighting...my closet doors.

Inside my closet. It's huge.

The bottom of my closet with my great grandma's hope chest. I love it and wish it could fit somehwhere outside of the closet but I think it looks nice inside too.

My second favorite wall. Love everything about it. See the picture to the right of the mirror? That's the one I blogged about awhile ago called "I miss the idea of you..."