Remodeling

School ended nearly a month ago and I still haven't willed myself to update my blog. So, I'm thinking in order to ignite some inspiration I'm going to need to give life lessons a make-over. Wish me luck! 

Update of a lifetime!

Since my birthday, I have started 3 blog posts and ended up getting bored half way through writing them and didn't post them, one of those being a review of my 19th year and my 20 before 20 challenge (don't worry, I'll post everything once the craziness dies down). The past couple of weeks have been insane-in-the-membrane for some strange reason, but I have fabulous news that I just couldn't hold in!.....

I'm going to EUROPE!!

I won't be leaving until June 2012, but hopefully the long wait will make it even more worth while! I'll be heading abroad for a month in a place I have ALWAYS wanted to go with a college tour group and my bestie RayCray! Words can't even describe how excited I am! 

Here are some of the places I'll be going...

London, UK

Paris, France

Amsterdam, Holland

Heidelberg, Germany

Lucerne, Switzerland

Verona, Italy

Venice, Italy

Rome, Italy

Florence, Italy

The French Riviera

Barcelona, Spain

Madrid, Spain

AHHH SO EXCITED!!

Have you ever been to any of these places? What do I need to see, eat, do and buy while there? Any tips or advice? THANKS!

Giveaway Winner!!

True Random Number GeneratorMin: 1Max: 8

Result:

4

Congrats to Catherine!!! You won the giveaway! I'll get your prize to you as soon as I can! 

Thanks so much to everyone who entered! I wish I could give a prize to all of you, but I'm sadly lacking a bit in the wallet department. But there will be another giveaway soon so keep posted! Love you all!

Febuary '11 Obsessions & GiVeAWaY!!

For those of us located on the Northern Hemisphere, February can be quite possibly one of the most dreary and depressing months of the year. I know it can sometimes be that way for me because I tend to catch Spring Fever the day after Christmas. But alas, February is here to stay for a while, so finding things that make you happy is a great way to beat the February Blues. Here are some things I love right now.

1. Bath and Body Works' Fiji Passionfruit Body Lotion

I like to call this "Summer Candy in a Lime Green Bottle" and all I can say is YUM! Seriously, you want a break from the cold and snow? Just take a whiff of this stuff and you'll practically transport yourself to a picture perfect beach in Fiji. According to the people at B&BW, Fiji Passionfruit is a "tropical escape of passionfruit, mandarin orange, apricot nectar and lime zest." And it honestly smells just like you'd imagine. 

But wait! There's more! All Signature B&BW Body Care products are buy 2 get 1 free, or buy 3 get 2 free right now, online and in-store! So just take my word for it and buy some of this stuff! You won't regret it.

2. OPI Nail Polish

Before I found OPI, I hated painting my nails. Every time I did I felt like I couldn't do anything with them because I was afraid they would chip prematurely and then I'd have to either fix them, or just take it off. What's so amazing about this brand is that it lasts FOREVER. I have a job that demands a lot out of my hands, so I bet they would last even longer if I didn't abuse them so much. 

I've been obsessed with this stuff for a few months now, I honestly can't get enough. Every time I'm near a salon or at the mall I always stop to buy a new color. They have every color you could ever imagine, all sorts of sparkles, mattes and suede's. 

I use Chip Skip (which dries your nail and gets rid of any oils or lotions hiding in the creases around your nail so that your polish doesn't chip for a long while), then the base coat, 2 coats of color, and then a top coat. 

Right now I am wearing 'Ate Berries in the Canneries' and I'm loving it.

3. Burt's Bees Replenishing Lip Balm with Pomegranate Oil

I'm just loving beauty products lately I suppose, but this stuff is really great. 

My lips are very temperamental, and before I found this lip balm I could only use Carmex because it was the only product that kept my lips from getting dry! Carmex is great, but to be completely honest, it stinks and doesn't taste too good. I had used Burt's Bees regular peppermint lip balm before, but I felt like it kind of just sat on top of my lips and didn't do any good. One day, during my pomegranate obsession last winter, I was at the grocery store and I stumbled upon this kind and thought I'd give it a try. It's all I've been using ever since. It tastes really yummy and has a light... the only word coming to mind is "comfy"... scent. 

4. 'TRON Legacy', 'The King's Speech' and 'Beauty and the Beast'

If you haven't seen this movie yet, please do. It will change your life. Okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic, but it definitely gets your mind going! I would highly recommend seeing it in IMAX 3D. 

If you can't do that, then try seeing it in just regular 3D. The soundtrack to TRON is also amazing. Try listening to it while doing homework, exercising, or driving and you will feel like a machine. 

I saw 'The King's Speech' tonight with RayCray and I now know why it is nominated for the Academy Awards Best Motion Picture of the year. Who ever knew a movie revolving around someone with a stutter could be so completely captivating and intense. I'd dare to say it was more intense than the majority of action movies out there. Now I just need to figure out why 'The Fighter' would even be considered to be in the same category as 'The King's Speech'. That movie was dreadful, please don't go see it. 

Oh dear, I became a little teary eyed while watching that. 

As all of you know, I love Disney. Love love love love love love love!!!! And I own nearly every Disney animated movie ever made because I'm a nerd like that. The only problem is that the only VCR in the house broke a couple of months ago, and all my Disney movies are on VHS :'[ I was actually watching 'Aladdin' when it broke and it ate my tape :[ But I suppose this is not a bad thing, because I need to buy them all on DVD/BluRay to keep up with the times. 'Beauty and the Beast' (my second favorite right behind 'Aladdin') came out in the DVD/BluRay combo pack a few months ago so I decided it would be a good start to my new DVD/BluRay collection. Now I just have to wait for the next movie to be released from the Disney Vault... which might take a while, but I'll just keep watching 'Beauty and the Beast' in the meantime. I've already gotten quite a bit of use out of it already.

5. Paper Beads

I had to go to a "Staff Development Day" this past week and in one of the classes I took, I learned how to make paper beads! It was taught by refugees who fled from some pretty scary situations in their homeland's and are now living here in Utah for a fresh start on life. The woman who taught me was a very sweet lady from Iraq who came to the US about two years ago. 

Making paper beads is very relaxing and a lot of fun. I love using paper from magazines or newsprint because you never know what the bead will end up looking like! For instructions, go here.

*GiVeAWaY!*

In honor of my turning 20 in a few days, I am giving away a few of my favorite things from this month to give to one of my readers! This month's prize will include Burt's Bees Pomegranate Lip Balm, a bottle of OPI nail lacquer, and a paper bead bracelet made by yours truly! 

* The only requirement is that you must be a follower of my blog to win. *

* To enter, leave me a comment on this post telling me what your favorite color is, something you are really loving this month, and your email address (if I don't know you in person) so that I can let you know you've won! *

The winner will be chosen randomly and announced on 

February 13th.

GOOD LUCK!! 

My Princess Jasmine Costume

I'm a little late on finally posting this, but better late than never, right? 

Last summer I decided that I wanted to be Princess Jasmine for Halloween. So I went online to find a costume to buy. Problem was, all the Jasmine costumes online didn't look anything like her actual outfit!

   That... doesn't look like... This.

So I decided that if I really wanted to look like Jasmine, I need to make my own outfit! 

Here's what happened...

(Oh look! Brody found his way into my picture!)

It took me a while, mainly because I had no pattern, but I think it turned out pretty well!

I went to Joann's fabric store and found a variety of different Jasmine-blue fabrics, I liked a shiny fabric best, so I bought 2 yards of it, elastic, some thread, and then I went to work!

Like I said before, I didn't use a pattern, so I just used an old pair of pajama bottoms as a reference and just went from there. The fabric I chose was a bit sheer, so I lined the inside with some white cotton fabric that I had lying around. For the waistband, I cut out a thick rectangle about 8 inches thick and about 6 inches longer than my actual waist-measurement. To give it that tapered look near the belly-button, I just cut out the rectangle with a triangular taper in the middle on both sides. Then I folded that in half, making sure the triangular tapered parts met perfectly, and sewed it shut. To attach it to the bottoms, I first sewed an elastic band (that I measured to fit around my hips) into the top so that it would have a nice, uniformed gathering all the way around. Then I just pinned the waistband on, and sewed it onto the pants (making sure not to sew into the elastic). Once I finished, I cut out the elastic and got rid of any extra fabric. I added velcro strips to the back of the waistband and placed them where I needed to in order to make it snug around my hips. To finish, I sewed elastics that fit around my ankles into the bottom of each leg to give it that pouffy look. (Brody somehow found his way into this shot too, lol!)

Then came the top...

The top was a nightmare to make. And I can honestly say that I have no idea how I managed to figure out how to make it without a pattern. It's a miracle I suppose. The easy part was making the band that goes beneath the bust. It was very similar to the way I made the waistband for the pants, but without the tapered point. For the bust part, I also cut out a rectangular shape (a few inches wider than I needed it to be so that I could gather it like the picture above), and then figured out where to start tapering it so that it went down into the band under the armpits. Before sewing the bust part to the band part, I cut out a small strip of fabric (pictured above) and used it to gather the fabric so that it came together in the middle. Then I sewed the bust to the band, attached a skin colored bra underneath, and then added velcro in the back. For the sleeve-things, I figured the easiest way to do it was to just make them separate from the top itself so that I could move my arms around. To make them, I just cut out strips of fabric, sewed them into circles, pinched the part where I sewed them into circles and hand-sewed them pinched so that it made a gathered look around the arm. Then I added some elastic to the inside, only sewing it to the pinched part and not to the entire armband! I did this so that it made the sleeves appear like they were hanging loosely on my arms, but actually they were on snug and fit because of the elastic.

The Accessories!

It took me FOREVER to find these shoes! And when I say forever, I mean a month or two. But I ended up finding these "genie shoes" on this website. The dance company I bought them through only had my size in silver, so I just bought a can of gold spray paint and sprayed them gold.

I found the necklace and earrings at Kohl's. The earrings were more of a bronze color, so I spray painted them gold and then rubbed gold glitter glue all over them to make them sparkly. The best advice I can give for you is to just shop around and try to find jewelry that resembles Jasmine's. Even if it's not the right color, you can always spray paint it to make it work.

For the headband, I used a strip of left over fabric and wrapped it around an old headband and then hot glued it into place. I found the big jewel at a craft store, and then used the same gold glitter glue that I put on the earrings around the edge of the jewel.

I bought the wig on ebay, and then I styled it to look like Jasmine's hair. For the pony tail, I ratted the hair into two balls and then wrapped some ribbon that matched the color of my outfit in-between them.

This costume is NOT for sale, so please don't email asking me to sell it. Thanks!

*Clicking on each picture sends you to a separate window where you can enlarge it in order to get a better look at the details.*

Greetings from soggy California...

Instead of having a white Christmas in Utah, I'm having a wet one in California. Right now it is 55 degrees with 94% humidity. Needless to say, I have poodle hair. We're staying at a cute little inn right on the beach. What a week to be on the West Coast! The weather man says this is the worst storm California has seen for 10 years. And it's only going to get worse before letting up Thursday. We went to Disneyland this morning with cloudy skies and hardly any crowds, it was every Disney lover's dream. And then after riding Pirates of the Caribbean the rain started pouring, and pouring, and pouring. I honestly haven't EVER seen rain like this before. Normally back home it will rain for a few minutes and then stops, and then it rains again for a little while before going away. Not here, it rains CONSTANTLY. Even in our rain coats and ponchos we were soaked to the bone in no time at all. I have never been so miserable at my favorite place on earth. The next two days are going to be just as rainy but with gail force winds, so we are going to hang out in the hotel and maybe go see 'Tron' or 'True Grit' at Fashion Island. Let's just pray that the weather man was right about the rain going away Thursday because I am SO excited to have a normal experience at Disneyland and a totally rain free Christmas :]

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for each one of you and your support of my blog! It means a lot to me :]

Now go play some football before you eat so much turkey and stuffing that you explode!

Halloween

*UPDATE* 
I have pictures and instructions for how I made my costume on this link!  

Halloween is by far one of my favorite holidays. It's the one day a of the year that you get to be whoever (or whatever) you want and go crazy! The over abundance of candy is also a big bonus.

I have been playing this year's Halloween for a few months now. And guess who I'm going to be?....

Princess Jasmine of course!! 

I spent hours online trying to find the perfect costume, but nothing looked exactly like her outfit in Aladdin. So I decided to make my own! So far I have the curly toe shoes, the wig, the jeweled headband, the earrings and necklace, and I finished sewing the pants a couple days ago. All I need to do now is sew the top, which I'm pretty nervous about since I'm not using a pattern so I can tell you right now it's definitely going to be tricky. I'll post the finished product in a few days once I have everything done. So excited!!! This Halloween is going to be the best ever!

To view my costume and get the links for the websites where I bought some of the accessories, please click the link below. Thanks!
My Princess Jasmine Costume

Pardon My Dust...

I am currently trying to redesign the page and make it a bit more video friendly. So if you're wondering what the heck is going on... now you know! Hopefully I can figure out all these mumbo-jumbo html code things and get everything rolling pretty soon.

Givaways!

I have been wanting to do giveaways for a while now, but I also want to wait until I reach  

50 followers!

So help a sister out and spread the word my friends! Once I hit 50 I'll start giving out some of my favorite books, jewelry, and other awesomnesses (new word, woohoo!)!

Thanks buds! I love you all!

PS- If you have an etsy shop, or any other kind of crafty business, we can pull a switcheroo and swap! Provide something to giveaway and I'll give you free adverting for your shop! Just let me know if you would be interested, I'm sure we could work something out :] julia.pearce@utah.edu

PSS- If you could re-post this picture on your blog, that would be GREAT! Thanks!

I know where you live...

You know times are tough when you can't muster the willpower to make a new blog post. This has been me for the past few weeks. They have been a weird few weeks, let me just say that. I think it's due to the fact that 1) I now have a job that leaves me pretty worn out every day 2) The weather is starting to warm up and I'm inside on the laptop less and less, or 3) I have come the the realization that "Holy *expletive*, I've been out of high school for a year now and I'm half way done with college!" I'm practically a legit adult now... how the crap did that happen?

Despite the lack of blogger contact, a lot has happened since I last posted...

So I met this guy from school in January and we started hanging out and going on dates quite a bit. This went on for a couple of months until one day in March he gave me a call to tell me that he had met another girl and they were together so "we could only be friends now". This news kind of shocked me because 1) we had spent a lot of time together, and 2) he was always talking about how he didn't like commitment and liked to take things slow. Luckily the shock wore off after a day or two when I realized he really wasn't worth my time. The reason I'm bringing this up now is because I found out last Sunday that, drumroll please... him and his girlfriend are now engaged. Yeah I said it, engaged! After knowing each other for less than 2 months. GAG! Can I just say that I dodged the freakin' bullet on this one?? It's just weird to think that two months ago this guy was my cuddle buddy and now he's practically a married man. Gross.

Speaking of crazy people, on Monday I had some random dude I've never met in my entire life show up at my work with a bouquet of flowers and a box of candy with a note that read, and I quote,


"Hi Jay-
I was passing through and thought that you could use a pick me up! So enjoy the treats and have a great evening at work. It was nice to meet you :)
-Gary*
P.S. Yes, I did just go through all of this just to meet you :) Cheers!"


*Name has been changed so this dude doesn't find me and kill me in my sleep.


Umm... talk about CREEPER!!!! Luckily he just gave them to one of the librarians and I didn't have to see this weirdo face to face. I was thoroughly creeped out the entire day. I was looking over my shoulder every two seconds just waiting for someone's face to appear between the rows of books.

Now that school is out, it's time for finals... aka "Freak, I Never Actually Learned this Shiz" (I was going to use the real words but remembered that family reads this, hehe.) Not that I've studied much... it's just a wonderful excuse to attribute my mood to. My last final is Thursday... have I studied for it yet? Nope! Will I study anytime between now and then? Maybe... if I'm lucky.

FINALLY!

My WiFi here at home has been down for a few days. Naturally, me being the internet addict that I am, have been checking every chance I get to see if it would kick back up again. And hurray! It finally works! I have been wanting to do my April Obsessions, but now that it's up I'm so excited that I completely forgot all of the things I was going to talk about! Woops! I'll start working on it now and hopefully get that up later tonight or tomorrow morning. Love you all! :] Happy Easter!

#14 Get a decent job.

Guess what? Starting tomorrow I will be doing ^this^ for a living. I got a job as a shelver at a local library! It's the perfect job for me, wouldn't you think? 

I have been trying to get this job for a few years. I was offered a job my junior year of high school but it was at a library an hour away so that didn't work out. Then after a one year hiring freeze, two shelver tests, three interviews, and a whole lot of waiting, I finally got one! Party!!

It couldn't have worked out more perfectly. It's at a library right down the street from my grandmother's house and the hours they gave me allow me to still take her to get her hair done every Friday! My main concern with getting a job was not being able to spend time with her every week but that won't be a problem now!

So anyways, that is my good news of the week! Hopefully I will like this job because I've worked so hard for so long trying to get it. We'll see!

*Sigh of Relief*

Test numero uno is done! Whew! I seriously studied from the moment I got home from school on Tuesday, until today at 5pm when I left to take my test.

I watched 6 lecture videos, read 159 pages of text book, sat through 9 1/2 of those super cheesy "educational videos" (I got through half of the last one, then gave up), took several pages of notes, and basically covered the entire time span of 10,000-300 BC in two days.

I think I even over studied a bit because my test seriously wasn't that hard. I could have very easily BS'd the essay portion.

But it feels great knowing I actually KNEW what I was talking about. I was throwing out all sorts of random crap like who Alexander the Great's father was, and how Egyptian religion dictated how they formed their government, and crazy dates that no normal person knows.

Maybe my professor will give me extra points for being extra prepared?? I don't know, maybe?

Or there is always the possibility that I only thought I knew what I was talking about, when in reality I made myself look like a total idiot...

Oh well! I guess we'll find out soon! Now I get to study for my American Indian Experiences class that I need to take by Sunday. Wish me luck!

PS- When the craziness that is this week is finally over, I will resume posting regularly. I'm planning on crossing off another item on my list very soon so stay tuned! 

Comment Issues? (Plus a duck!)

A lot of people have told me that they weren't able to post any comments on my posts. I think it's because I changed my template and for some reason it messed with my settings. I tried to fix it but somehow the link to post a comment is ^up top^ right beneath the title of each post instead of at the bottom of the entire post itself. I will keep trying to figure out how to move it back down to it's normal place but until then you now know where the comment button is :]

Thanks everybody!

PS- I just had to include this duck... isn't it the cutest darn thing you have ever seen in your entire life?? I thought so.