so tricky . . .

When you go running it is hard to breathe without keeping your mouth open. But if your mouth is open then bugs can easily fly in.

Healthy Steps

I'm always trying to motivate myself to be healthier. I think it mostly comes down to my fear of pain from health problems that could come up in the future.
My latest plan is to take steps to gradually improve what I eat. The first step is writing down what I eat for awhile. It's pretty simple. I eat fairly healthy anyways, but it's no big deal if I eat some junk food. I just write it down. This is a great step. I think after I decide to analyze what I eat and start changing things, then it will be harder. One thing at a time.
So far I have noticed I really like hot chocolate, I don't eat enough vegetables, and I need to eat more whole wheat stuff. bleh
And just as a side note, when I came home from aerobics today I realized my pants had been on backwards the whole time.

teenage spazzes

YW basketball last night. I had no idea the YW are so crazy. And they don't stop talking for anything.
Their basic strategy was to run like 6 year olds after a soccer ball and then when the crowd is too intense they lob it into the air (without even looking) so everyone has to go running after it again- and hopefully their team runs after it faster.
And this cute little 14 year old told me how excited she was because this cute boy walked in right when she made a really great play. I'm not sure if she really knows what a great play is, but I'm glad she was excited about it. And then she informed me that she already knows he likes her. And she likes him. I had never met this girl before, but I guess she doesn't have any problem with shyness.

Fun?

I go and watch Brandon's basketball games all the time. He has some good friends he has played with since high school and they all play really well. So it's common for them to have games when they win by 20 points or more. It's really fun to see them win all the time.
Last Tuesday I played with a combined ward team at regionals. This was our first real game because when we played with the stake we never kept score and the teams didn't really matter since we were lucky to get 8 or 10 women out from the whole stake to play. So on Tuesday we had a good time but we were the ones that lost by 20 or more points. not as fun.

Vote for my website

I have been trying to come up with a design for a new front page of my website. These are the ideas I have so far. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Some of them might be hard to see because they are really small, just click on them to enlarge.

Juvenille

I don't remember the last time I checked a book out of the library that wasn't from the children's section.

More on bananas

I eat a lot of bananas. My mom used to buy a whole grocery cart of bananas when they were on sale because our family ate them so much (and froze them). And every time she did, people at the grocery store thought it was funny to ask her if she was raising monkeys. My goal is to someday buy enough bananas that someone asks me that too.


Here are some great ways to eat bananas:
And before you say ew, that is disgusting, you have to try it. (ie:#5)

1. chopped bananas with a little yogurt and a crunchy cereal like rice crispies, chex, or corn flakes. additional fruit like apples are good too.

2. peel the bananas, break them into chunks and freeze tons of them in ziplock bags. frozen bananas are delicious plain, or dumped into smoothies because they make the smoothies really thick.

3. Bananas are essential for any good smoothie: just add bananas, a cup or 2 of milk and maybe sugar or honey (and ice if they are not frozen). Or add to that a spoonful of orange juice concentrate and/or yogurt, preferably vanilla, but any kind works. Frozen strawberries and bananas are great combination also. And if you want to be really adventurous with your smoothie add a handful or so of fresh spinach. You get more vitamins and it doesn't really change the flavor of the smoothie but it will look green and gross but taste great!

4. toasted bread, peanut butter, sliced bananas

5. bread, ham, sliced bananas, grated cheese, cook it in the oven or toaster oven until the cheese is brown and it tastes SO good! (Some people prefer a ring of pineapple instead of the sliced bananas- weird, huh?)

6. lay the banana on its side and cut a v shaped trench and pour in chocolate chips and marshmellows in between the cut open banana. Cook in the oven until the banana peel is black and the middle stuff is melted.

7. mix bananas with canned pineapple, apples, pears, or whatever fresh fruit is on sale, with some strawberry yogurt. optional: add cool whip.

8. chop up bananas and put them in waffle batter, then make waffles. (I learned that from Ape)

9. banana crepes: eggs, flour, milk, sugar for the crepes, fill with bananas and either yogurt, cool whip, ice cream or frozen strawberries that you microwaved and chopped so they are more liquidish.

10. banana muffins or banana bread or bananas in jell-o.

Happy banana eating! I just decided I'm going to eat a #5 with maybe a #3 for lunch. And one more tip: don't leave bananas in a warm car. gross.

Borders: for people without real jobs

I went to Borders to hang out and draw the other day because when I'm at my apartment all day long I just want to fall asleep or write blogs. There were a few other freelancers there and I realized that it is a great place to work. And some random old guy came in and just sat in a chair for awhile too. I don't think he was a freelancer, but I don't think he has a real job either. So anyone out there without a real job, you should really join in.

Turnip Day

Tonight we're eating a tax deduction. I bought a turnip because I need to paint The Giant Turnip. It's great how you can buy anything and paint a picture of it so it's a tax right off. I should paint my dinner everyday.
I used to love eating turnip in Canada. I read on a random site though, that what people eat in Canada and call turnip we call rutabaga in the states. And the turnip I ate in Canada wasn't purple like that stuff I just bought at the store. So maybe I don't actually like turnip... I'm a little nervous. And I don't think Brandon is very excited about it because when I told him we were eating a tax deduction for dinner and he figured out it was turnip and not steak he said, "ew, gross."

My husband, the artist

Who knew that Brandon could paint? Last night I pulled out an old sketch from "The Monkey Story" that was printed on watercolor paper, gave him a couple of pointers, then let him go for it. Look at the natural talent. He's better at watercolors than I was when I first got into them as a 3rd year art student. Although, I did have to help him out when he wanted to give the kid red hair and used all red paint. I had to inform him that red hair is actually orange. So he fixed it up and it looks great.

Question:

I think one of the funniest questions I have ever been asked was when this self publisher asked if I knew anyone with a private jet going to China that could bring her books back for her so she doesn't have to wait on the slow normal shipping. And she was serious. I had to tell her no, no I don't know anyone with a private jet. sorry. Maybe I should have told her that sometimes my friends buy airplane tickets to fly places, sometimes even to China. I don't know if that makes a difference, but it's the closest thing I could think of to owning a private jet.

sports apologies

I think I apologize too much when I play sports. I make a lot of mistakes. I'm not too bad at defense and being aggressive in general, but I have no aim for shooting in basketball or passing or kicking goals in soccer. So then I have to apologize to my team for missing. Even when I do things right, like setting a good screen in basketball, I feel bad when the opponent runs into me. Or when they set a screen on me and I run into them, I apologize again. It's just an instant reaction I have for colliding with people. Do I sound pathetic?

congratulations to me

Today I have made some big accomplishments. First of all, this is my 101st blog. Congratulations to me, thank you. And.... I did my taxes! What a relief. I love BYU's free help. Thank you to Nate for being my free accountant. We do have to pay a little, but I'm just relieved because I knew it had the potential to be a lot worse. And I have to congratulate myself for being incredibly honest by claiming a lot of freelance money that no one even knows about.

Funny funny childhood

I think everyone has funny memories from when they were kids and they thought their family was normal until they got older and looked back. (my sister recently wrote a blog about our funny rules of remind me of all this) So to anyone who reads my blogs, let's hear a few of your own:

rules: TV dollars, we had only so many TV dollars per week and we had to pay a dollar for every show we watched.
I think my bed time was 7:30 until I was 10.
We had to stay in our church clothes all day on Sunday to try and keep us from being rowdy.
We had to check out exactly 10 books at the library so we would know if we were missing one when we returned them. (I still use this technique)

family foods: we ate (and still eat) delicious open face sandwiches that are made of a layer of ham, then slices bananas, and cheese, then cooked in the oven. REALLY good. But not normal according to everyone I have ever lived with since I moved away from home.
Also: I thought waffles and pancakes were a dinner food until I was in high school or something because we always had those for dinner, never for breakfast- that would have been weird.

fhe: there apparently was a shopping cart problem in our area, the carts were all over the city, so we spent a monday evening loading shopping carts into our suburban and returning them to the correct stores.

things I wore: Punky Brewster bold red, green and blue tennis shoes, maroon corduroys, and a pink blouse with frills all up and down the front and on the sleeves. And what Brandon refers to as our matching "valentine" outfits that we always wore, as seen in a picture of me on Santa's lap in that outfit.

favorite activities: sitting in buckets full of water in the summertime. making mazes out of moving boxes. Throwing Heather in the shower with her clothes on. Running around our kitchen in Spokane that had 2 doorways, one person would start at each door and we ran in circles until one person caught the other. Dressing up our little brothers like girls. Pico-Fumi.

What a blessing: the hair straightener

Wow. Scary, I know. frizzy, wavy, huge. This was the best of the non-straightened hair pictures. Brandon said I looked like I was on drugs or something. I responded, good thing for hair straighteners or you wouldn't have married me. He assured me that he still would have married me but he would have wondered how I got a job at the MTC.

And so, I just want to say how thankful I am that we have straighteners, because 99% of the time I am really glad that I don't look like I am on drugs.

Tip of the day: Don't rub sandpaper on your face

Sometimes boys don't shave and then their faces get scruffy. When I try to get Brandon to shave I tell him, in the nicest way I can, that his face feels like sandpaper. I tried to demonstrate how rough it is yesterday by pulling out some sandpaper and rubbing it on both of our faces and told him the sandpaper was even softer than his scruff. But a few minutes later we realized it really wasn't that soft and we both had sandpaper burns on our faces.

When does water expire?

Sometimes I have water bottles that sit out overnight and sometimes I wonder if it's still okay to drink. It's just water, right? Can it ever go bad? What if I put it back in the fridge, then is it okay to drink? What about a water bottle that sits out for a month, or a year? Is it okay? What about water in a glass? A few hours? A few days? At some point there is at least some dust collecting going on, if not more. What are your water drinking strategies? Do you have a reason behind them, or just habits?

I'll know I'm successful when...

There are a few things, besides money and power, that I look forward to as ways that will signal to me that I have become a super successful illustrator:

A. Bethanne will call and ask me if I will take an intern.
B. I get paid to travel to cool places just to write my name for people.
C. I have to get mad at people because they are copying my style.
D. I learn about copy rights and actually care a lot about it because people keep stealing my images. Maybe I even hire a lawyer, or just talk to Aaron a lot. (I don't know if Ronnie still exists, otherwise I might have mentioned him in there also)
E. My work environment has significantly upgraded to include my own computer, an art desk not in the living room, paints that cost more than $40 and maybe even a couple of ipods.
F. I no longer frame my artwork in frames from the dollar store or Michael's clearance rack. (I probably shouldn't do that anyways, maybe that's partly why I'm not super successful yet.)

I don't believe in ironing

It just seems so unnecessary. It takes an extreme case for me to think ironing is required. My mom told me she didn't realize how strongly I believed in not ironing until I transported my wedding dress in the car from Provo to Seattle and still didn't see much of a need to iron. I think clean clothes are important though, to an extent. Sometimes clothes with artistic stains are just inevitable and that doesn't usually stop me from wearing favorite articles of clothing. Clean smelling, that is what really matters. (Unless you are going to an athletic activity in which case it's okay to put on clothes that smell from the last athletic activity because there are just going to smell again anyways. And then you shower right afterwards.... right afterwards.) Let's hear it for wrinkled clothes everyone! Maybe if we get rid of our ironing board we will have room in the closet for our Christmas tree.

Special Skills

As many of my friends and family know I have a love of soap carving. I don't do it all the time, but I still really enjoy it. When I was in NY and saw people all over the streets by the Met selling art stuff I thought it would be fun to set up a little table and try to sell soap carvings. I only had time to go for an hour or so and no one bought any. However, I did have a lot of people admiring my carvings and people seemed really excited about it, especially the family from France who asked to take a picture with me. I have never lost hope that someday, somehow, this could be more than a hobby.
Well, every now and then I search the internet for people looking for illustrators. In the process I found someone starting a gallery in Salt Lake that is planning on exhibiting a variety of mediums from local artists. I emailed her about my soap carvings and she said she is interested in seeing my portfolio! I don't actually have my soap carving portfolio put together yet, but I guess I better get to work on it. I've heard they have professional soap carvers in Asia. I think it's time America branches out the art industry to include this great professional as well.