Nutritious, Delicious

This morning for breakfast we ate whole wheat crepes (we're all out of regular flour) with strawberry yogurt, frozen banana chunks and microwaved frozen strawberries. It was great.

America's Cure

There are two large problems that face the US. (well, lots, but I'm just going to talk about 2) There are too many overweight people and we rely too much on gasoline for energy.
So a few weeks ago I decided these problems should work together. Lots of the weight comes from eating too many calories (a.k.a. energy), so the solution: take energy from people when we eat too much and use it to fuel the country. Healthier people, with transportation- yeah! I have no idea how you transfer that energy, but it's got to be possible.
The funniest thing about it, I was just watching the news and they were talking about some cattle place that uses excess fat they cut off the meat they produce to fuel the factory. They're more than half way there! Now they just have to figure out how to use that excess fat without cutting someone open. I don't know about you, but I'm willing to eat more ice cream to fuel my car.

Top o the mountain

For Memorial Day we went mountain biking with some friends in Bountiful. It was so pretty, and really challenging. I wasn't very good at the uphill part. Or the downhill part. I only fell once though and it wasn't too bad. I fell into some large bushes and then hit a tree stump that kept me from continuing my roll down the mountain.
And check out my hair, I guess that's what a helmet does for you. I think that's the best whispy hair fro picture I've ever taken.

No bears...

...just bugs. Our beehive camp out on Friday did not include any bear sightings, however we did have piles of little silk worms falling from the trees everywhere. On us, on the food, the tents, just covered with them. A few managed to make their way home with us because, like I said, they were everywhere. And the black bugs and huge beetles were a little gross too. I guess they were spraying for bugs right after we left. Lucky us, we made it just in time to have a bug covered camp out. The campsite was really pretty though, so was the hike. And overall it was still fun, and it will definitely be memorable for the girls.

Cheers

Today I went to my mother-in-law's 2nd grade class in Salt Lake to talk to them about being an illustrator. I brought some of the books I've done and a few other little visual aids, like a pile of sketches and a grasshopper. But the best visual aid was the large drawing paper I pulled out and asked for requests of what to draw. I didn't do any masterpieces, but I'm not going to lie, I can draw fast. The kids were so excited and cheering and frantically trying to get me to pick them to decide what I would draw next. It was really fun. When I'm not doing very well on my art I should just invite some 2nd graders over so I can be motivated by their cheering.

Hazel & the toaster

I help take care of Hazel, a sweet 90 year old that my friend April used to work with. For mother's day her granddaughter sent her a new toaster oven. It was really nice and looked like it would work great. However it was digital and the most complicated toaster oven I've ever seen. Too much for a 90 year old, so we're going to exchange it for a normal old school one.
She has a great sense of humor and sometimes she says funny things. Like when she can't get the lid off jars because her hands don't function very well, she'll ask me to do it for her. And as I quickly twist it off, she says, make it look hard.

Mmmmm Dinner

Crock pots are the best dinners ever. You dump a bunch of stuff into a pot, and then it sits there and becomes nutritious and delicious and you only have to wash one pot. It's perfect.

Too close for comfort

So it was a beautiful Friday in Provo and Brandon was kind enough to not worry about watching the Jazz game, so we grabbed all kinds of supplies to go to a nice secluded area in a park to play chess and watch a movie on our laptop. It was dusk and getting pretty dark in the shadows of the trees as we were walking through the park. We got a camping lantern for Christmas that we had just rummaged to find batteries for. Even though we didn't really need it yet, I had turned it on and was carrying it out of excitement for having the new toy.
We were staring to the left while we walked so we could look at a large burrow in the bushes, when we heard a rattling noise and a hiss. We glanced forward and stopped suddenly as we looked down at the ground in front of us and the lantern lit up a large rattle snake coiled up ready to strike, right in our path. We were just a few steps from walking right onto it.
We were spooked. We froze, then I slowly backed away while Brandon tried to find something to throw at it until it slithered away into the bushes. Even though the snake left, we couldn't manage to lay our stuff down. If we hadn't had the lantern, I don't know if we would have paid much attention to the noise, we were in the woods after all, and the snake would have been hard to see because of the shadows and the long grass around it.We usually enjoy camping, but yesterday we couldn't even handle relaxing on a blanket in the woods. We had to go home to watch the movie.

Audible Commercial

As I have mentioned before, I love audible.com. I used to never read books. I enjoy reading, but I usually feel like I'm not being productive just sitting there moving my eyeballs- almost like TV but not nearly as bad. When I discovered that for $15 (or $7.50 if they're having a deal) I could get any book I want on my ipod, I thought it was a perfect solution. Hopefully now I won't be an idiot my whole life. I listen to books while I drive, paint, run, do the dishes, clean or whatever. I've gone from reading maybe one book since high school to having read 13 books in the past year including:
Freakonomics, A Short History of Nearly Everything, Mere Christianity, The World is Flat, Guns Germs and Steel, Collapse, Blink, Angels and Demons, 1776, A Walk in the Woods, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Screwtape letters, and I'm in the middle of 60 hours of Les Miserable, and I have Wicked waiting for me when I finish that.
I am a big fan of C.S. Lewis and Bill Bryson. So if anyone has some good book recommendations, I'm always looking for new books to check out.

Joy of Camping

I'm helping plan a Beehive campout that's coming up. It made me think about my beehive campout in the mountains in California. When it was really late there was a tent of girls still laughing and being crazy when they heard bears walking around our campsite. They heard the bears scratching on the big metal food boxes that each campsite has to prevent bears from getting into it. One of the girls in the tent felt like she was going to vomit, but there was no way she wanted to go outside with the bears. So she threw up ... in the tent. Then they all huddled close together away from the vomit and eventually went to sleep. D i i i s g u s t i n g. Glad I wasn't in that tent.

the solution is...

I usually keep a pretty good reign on my email inbox and archive daily to keep a nice organized 15-20 emails in my inbox. However, it has gotten out of control lately and I am thinking the best solution is to get a new email address. Wouldn't that be easier? Kind of like when your house is such a mess it would be easier to move. Or so many clothes are dirty you just want to buy new ones instead of washing the old ones? It's like that.

Boise is fun, believe it or not

We went up to Boise for the weekend for our friends' wedding. On Friday we had time to do whatever, so we went to the lake. It hasn't been warm that long, so even though it was pretty nice outside, the lake was still 54 degrees. I sat on the boat for hours watching my friends brave the cold (we at least had wet suits) so they could ski & wakeboard. Finally, after much indecisiveness, I too accepted the physical challenge and jumped in. Besides my fingers going numb, it really wasn't too bad. I couldn't do any great tricks or anything, I was happy just to stay above the water. Overall, it was a blast.

Pringles perfect match up

Brandon has such long arms he can reach a can of Pringles from sitting in the drivers seat, that are all the way in the back window of our Honda. And I can slide my hands all the way to the bottom of the can to get out the last hard-to-reach chips. What better way is there to compliment each other?

My husband is so funny

I was taking engagement pictures for some friends and I think Brandon was getting a little bored so he slid himself into the picture. It was my favorite one.

Ode to the perfect brown bag

For my birthday a few years ago, April and Marissa gave me the greatest gift ever. A brown bag they bought in NY. I loved it immediately. It was the perfect style, the perfect size, the perfect color, it was just meant to be. So years have gone by and I have dragged that bag everywhere. I always throw in my phone, my wallet, and a clipboard of paper (a.k.a. my sketchbook) and I am set for anything. It is getting holes and needs repair, which just gives it more character. I think I have been given more compliments on that bag than any other item I have ever owned. What excellent taste Ape & Maris have.

The all new illustration site

Thanks to some great help and support the layout was finalized and my website is complete. Here it is: rebeccamillerillustration.com
Tell all the art directors you know!

Costco Churros

They are delicious. Whenever we need to go to Costco that is the first thing that comes to Brandon's mind. One time when discussing with a friend how great Costco churros are, she mentioned that they really enjoyed them but they just didn't have enough sugar on them. I thought it was a little strange since usually you get sugar everywhere with each bite because it is so caked with sugar. Then I realized it was a joke. So if you haven't had one, you should try it.

First ER trip (picture included)

Here's the summary:
Saturday I went running while Brandon was at work and I locked myself out. I thought I could just slide the window open from the outside and climb in, but our windows are thin and old so when I pushed on it the glass broke and fell on my hands and gashed my wrist pretty good. I ran to my neighbors and banged on her door and she took me to the ER and Brandon met us over there. I've never seen someone look so pale. He had to step outside so he didn't vomit, which really isn't like him. We both survived the experience and now I will have a scar that looks like I want suicide attention, but really I just did something stupid.

Honda Accords aplenty

Honda Accords have got to be the most common car there is. We have one that Brandon has owned for a few years. When we were dating I never knew which car we were walking towards because his car looked like half the cars in the parking lot. So I memorized the first 3 letters of the license plate so I wouldn't look dumb walking to the wrong car all the time. And I still use that technique to this day as I try to find our car in parking lots.
Last night when we were leaving a friends house late in the evening we were walking towards our car from the side and there were two cars right next to each other that both looked like our car, but I couldn't see the license plate so I waited for Brandon to stop at one of them. He couldn't get the key in to unlock the door for me, but then it didn't matter because it was already unlocked so I just got in. As he walked around the car to the drivers side I noticed there was something different about the car. As he sat down we both realized it was not our car. We felt pretty funny as we laughed and jumped out of the random car and found ours about 6 cars away. So if that was your car we sat in, uh... sorry about that. We really weren't trying to steal it.

Deserted Island

Brandon and I just finished watching Cast Away. It brought up a discussion about which 3 items we would choose to have if we were going to be left alone on a deserted island. I chose fairly practical things like a really large swiss army knife, box of seeds for planting vegetables, and some kind of fire starting device. He chose a generator powered by pedaling, a TV, and a satellite dish. That way he can watch BYU games, and general conference. (that is exactly what he said) He is pretty certain those are the best possible choices.