Thanksgiving

Sorry for the lack of posts, I'll be better. I have lots of exciting things to post too!
Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Birthday!

For some reason going off to college, I didn't really think much about my birthday. I just felt for some weird reason no one would do anything about it but I had a fabulous day! The night before I slept horribly, you would have thought it was Christmas day the next morning or something! I woke up to me door all decorated by my floor!

I went to my Book of Mormon class and ended up getting out early because the Prophet was coming to speak at devotional! I wasn't planning on going to the Marriott Center because my class is fairly far away and I knew it would be crazy crowded. But since we got out early, I decided to head over there and I was so glad I did! I ended up sitting fairly close the the floor a little to the right behind President Monson. Devotional was awesome, he talked about all the presidents of the church that he knew and for each he said their favorite food, hynm and a way in which they lived their life. I loved sitting behind the teleprompter because then I could see when he went off the teleprompter and just started telling his own stories! You should definitely watch it online, it was very, very funny!

Another exciting thing about devotional was that I got to meet my Board reader friend/blogger/photographer extraordinair Chillygator! I knew she would be there, and I thought I had spotted her, when President Monson came she whipped out her big beautiful camera and I was sure it was her! After devotional was over I went down and talked to her, which was way fun, I felt like I was meeting a celebrity, ;) My first real life Board friend! Hopefully if she ever stops traveling the world for a weekend, we'll go on a photo adventure! ;) And Dough Rey Mi can come too, because I called her right after and she was jealous. :]

(taken with Chilly's beautiful Nikon D700)

I went back to my place for lunch, and back to my last class which also got out early! My sister Elaine surprised me with a pedicure which was so great, because I've never had one before! It was way fun, and I love showing off my pretty pink toenails! I don't have a picture of that because who really needs to see a picture of my feet? ;) We went and got Tucker and Sheldon and went to Legends for dinner! It was really good, and I was definitely full afterword. I got to open up presents and I got lots of awesome gifts!

My friend Andria visited me monday to give me a bag that is perfect for my sunday stuff and a blank notebook! Yay! My friend Liv gave me and iTunes gift for the first Rooney cd, which I've been wanting for a long time and yesterday in the mail she sent me a way cute Wilderness Explorers Scrapbook from UP! It's super cute, I can't wait to fill it up, and it came with a magnifying glass which I'm really excited to use sometime. :) My brother sent me an iTunes giftcard (still deciding what to use it for, Pushing Daisies soundtrack maybe?) and a super awesome bike camera mount that he made! My mom sent me a big package of some movies and stuff I'd been asking for. She aslo sent me some food, some cute Disney artwork and a new Shannon Hale book. I finished it in a few days, and I liked it! My mom on the other hand would definitely not like it, it is definitely very different from the other books she's written. I also got a cute package from my friend Ginger, with a ton of glowsticks and a burned cd that had music that we danced to at Disneyland, so that was way cute and nostalgic.

When I got back from Legends, I found my door even more decorated than before! Alyssa had put a cool Hatter drawing on my door, and her roomate made awesome newspaper snowflakes!

My floor came and sang to me and brought me cupcakes! They were so yummy, and I probably had 3 or 4 every day until they were gone! :) Probably not the healthiest thing ever, but it's my last year as a teenager, I have to live it up somehow!

And a random picture, I finished putting up all my pictures on my wall! I really don't like how they are organized though, I want more of a collage look, [like these] but that's hard to do when the pictures are all the same size, I don't have frames, and I don't have a budget. If you guys have any ideas let me know!

I'll end this extremely long post now. My birthday ended up really great! Things are going well here. My first midterms are next week, but I'm not too worried, I think if I put in the effort to study things will go well. Hope all is well in Cali!

Freshman Life

Hi everybody! Sorry I'm so late but I thought I'd give you an update from college! My Mac is weird to blog on so I've been trying to figure that out so here are some recent pictures! We picked up my sister to have her help me move in. Tucker helped carry stuff too!


I thought I had soo much stuff but I have definitely already have a list a stuff I should have brought! I wish I had more movies and books, and also my scrapbooking stuff! I brought my scrapbook but not any of my stuff. Silly. Tucker also helped by drooling on my stuffed animals :)

Here's the view from my window! I don't see it too often because I don't have the bed by the window but it is still nice to look at sometimes!

Here's my bed and stuffed animals, I wish I would have brought more of them too!

Here's my desk and all my stuff!

Here's a typical meal...just kidding! I've only had a Hot Pocket for dinner a couple of times so far, and I took a picture because I was so excited because I've never had one before! :) I really like the Cannon Center, it's so nice and I love having a bunch of choices. I love having Dining Plus in general, it's so nice to have a little magic money card that I can swipe almost anywhere and get almost anything whenever I want. If you guys come visit me I will definitely take you out to lunch, because I love sharing and taking people to lunch!

Here's my little clothesline of pictures! It's small but it turned out cute. It fell down one night but I've got it pinned really good now. The walls are pretty plain otherwise but when I get some more prints I am going to stick those up on the wall too.
So those are all my pictures things are going pretty good! My classes are all good, I don't hate any of them. Choir is probably my favorite, it is so amazing. I'm excited about the music we are singing, how good we already sound and having a class with my cousin!

College is definitely awesome because it doesn't feel like school. It's like a warped version of summer, I have so much free time. It's been so fun to hang out with my family. I LOVE having my sister close and being able to do stuff with her every week. It's really awesome and I think it's helped me not be homesick. I love seeing my cousins and hanging out with them!

Dorm life is good. I like having my own place and being able to do whatever I want. My roommate and I get along really well. We are not buddy-buddy we but still do stuff together and get along fine. I know quite a few people on the floor, but I'm not really friends with anyone yet. That's definitely not complaining though, because I know it will happen eventually and I'm just biding my time, and besides, college is pretty awesome!

Hope life is treating you guys good wherever you are. I'll try and keep more updated on the happenings here in Provo! :)

New Blogging Machine

Here's my computer for school! My older brother was super nice and shared his old Macbook Pro with me! It's mine for as long as I need it! My transition to Mac has not been bad at all, in fact I've already caught myself trying to pull Mac shortcuts on PCs. :) Transferring my music and files is still a work in progress, it definitely takes some time. I'm enjoying my own laptop with my own backgrounds and carrying it wherever I need to, or emailing from my bed! I don't think I'll mind doing homework on this too much!

Wallpaper Part II

I started this post before I left so I'm finishing it now so I can get you all caught up on BYU stuff!
* * *
I conquered a little more wallpaper this week! I got all behind the kitchen sink done, which took a long time because of all the little areas. I also started the last big wall in the corner.The edges are hard because they varnished over the wallpaper. They decided to torment me by randomly painting sections in the middle of the wall! In the end, I got a large portion of that wall done, but I'm not going to try and put a picture in here because it's a little harder to arrange the pictures on my mac than on my home computer. As some parting words on my last post about wallpaper, here are Rachel's Rules on Wallpaper.
1. DON'T EVER PUT UP WALLPAPER!
If you really must put up wallpaper for some unexplainable reason then the rest of these rules are for you.
2. Please, only one layer of wallpaper at a time. If you already have a layer up, take it down before you put another one up. Multiple layers of wallpaper is recipe for disaster.
3. Similar to #2 is: Take your wallpaper down before it is hundreds of years old! Then it just becomes glued to the wall, a pain to take down for whomever is currently living in your house.
4. Do NOT paint, or varnish or anything of the sort over wallpaper. Anywhere. You think it might not really be a big deal if you get some on the edges while painting something else, but that just adds an hour of work for someone else later!

So ends the Summer of 2009 Wallpaper Saga! :)

Summer Projects

A couple weeks ago I was wandering around my house looking for something to do. I started picking at the only wallpaper that is left in our house, by the computer. Pretty soon, killing that wallpaper become my mission for the day. It sounds a little crazy, but when you're busy scraping wallpaper there's not a lot to think about except how much you hate that wallpaper!

This is a little after I started, these were the two layers I was taking down.

Yay! I figured near the end I could rip one layer off in big pieces!

Here is the one section of the wall I finished! There is still lots more left, but the computer and desk are in the way so that will have to wait a bit! It makes me so happy to look over and see a clean wall!

Help!

Hey all you cratfy types out there! I'm trying to think of ways to decorate my dorm room. It needs to be cheap, colorful, easy to take with me or get in Utah, and not labor intensive! Any ideas?

Classes

All registered! My current schedule:

American Heritage

Book of Mormon

HEPE

Geology

Choir

Intro to Interior Design

I'm thinking about changing the last one. I had such a hard time picking that last class. Everything was full, nothing fit my schedule...it's not like I dislike the class but I'm hoping to find something better. Thinking about taking Psychology. I have a feeling I'm going to have a hard time picking a major when all (the few) majors I am thinking about don't have any classes you can take without being accepted into the major!