God so loved the world...

Hope your Easter is wonderful.

March Mix: Your Garden

heh heh heh. Sorry guys. No computer, remember?

1. Budding - Broke For Free

2. Weekend - Smith Westerns

3. Holy Roller - Thao & The Get Down Stay Down

4. Default - Atoms For Peace

5. Baby's Romance - Chris Garneau

6. Ghost Boy - Sanders Bohlke

7. Pelican - The Maccabees

8. Cut Your Hair - Pavement

9. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat - Beck

10. Don't Haunt This Place (The Rural Alberta Advantage cover) - Yellow Ostrich

11. ’81 - Joanna Newsom

12. Falling - Haim

13. Wait So Long - Trampled By Turtles

14. Ballad of Restored Confidence - Cadillac Sky

NOTES:

3. The best.

4. So excited.

5. This guy is super weird and great.

8. My brother's band is super 90's influenced and I guess they listen to a lot of this sort of stuff.

9. So hot.

10. When I got back from this mission, I listend to this song A LOT. I was very angsty. The lyrics are just like one's I would have loved in high school. Anyway. This is a nice cover. But the video is awful. Don't watch it.

11. wow I need to listen to more Joanna Newsom.

12. My mom bought tickets for us to see Vampire Weekend at Red Butte this summer. Isn't that adorable? She really likes them. Good thing cause I've been needing an excuse to wear my neon pink pants, sperry topsiders, and lacoste shirt. HAIM will be opening for them, so that will by great.

A Poem for Thursday: "May today there be peace within" - St. Teresa of Avila

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilites that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that
has been given to you...
May you be content knowing you are a child of God...
Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to
sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

Music for your Midweek: Mason Jennings

On Saturday, Mason Jennings stopped by BYU(?!) and put on a little show. His was the second concert I went to after I got back from my mission, so it made me a little nostalgic.

Oh man. This one gets me every time.
"I don't want no victory, I just want you back" 

So sassy.

This is a video I found from his performance at BYU! It's a new song, and I quite like it.

"Perfume is Spirit"

Perfume keeps getting cooler and cooler.

First this video with Julian Casablancas.

(Yes, I know I've posted it before, but I'm looking for excuses to post it all the time)

Also, the New York Times just did a book review on Denyse Beaulieu's book, "The Perfume Lover". I can't wait to read. Sounds like she's lived quite the life. A quote from her:

“You have this work of art sitting on your skin for hours,” she said of the substance that fascinates her. “You are walking in a bubble of beauty: a mini atmosphere, an invisible country in which you’re the capital.”

“Perfume is spirit,” Ms. Beaulieu said. “When you distill flowers, you literally distill their soul. Perfume is the only form of adornment that doesn’t need a mirror.”

And then a teaser by Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola for the new flanker to Prada's Candy:

I don't even care how the perfume smells. I want those bottles.

The original. So hot.

And the new flanker L'eau. So so hot.

They'll be releasing the "film" sometime next week. Can't wait to see it. 

And look at this cool thing this European former basketball player is doing. You can read about his perfume line here. Tight.

I've been super weird about perfume lately. Wearing a bunch of stuff I used to really dislike. For example yesterday, I could not get enough of Clean's Shower Fresh perfume. 

I kept putting it on all day. So strange. It made me want to try all of Clean's other perfumes. We'll see. 

A Poem for Thursday: "Come to the Orchard in Spring" - Rumi

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
     in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter
If you do come, these do not matter.

Music for your Midweek: Masha Qrella

About a month or so ago, I checked out this movie from the library:

Paint Your Wagon

Doesn't it look great/awful? More specifically, Clint Eastwood's hair?!?! What is going on there?
I was inspired to pick it up, remembering a medley that the BYU Men's Chorus and Brian Stoke Mitchell did the a couple years ago at Homecoming Spectacular. I really liked it.

oh dear.

Anyway. 

After I watched the movie, (which felt like the longest in the history of the world), I looked up some of the music. It's pretty great. I found a super cute cover of "I Talk To The Trees" by Masha Qrella. I know nothing about this band, but found an adorable live version of the song. Hope you enjoy!  

Click here for the original if you want to compare.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???

When I logged in the morning, I noticed that my blog has had 322222 views. 

It's "Welcome" page has 32 views.

Coincidence? 

I think not.

OH my gosh here is something really funny thanks to Katilda and this website.

That's all that's important right now.

B E S T S U M M E R E V E R

I know some of you think spring hasn't even arrived yet, but I'm already gearing up for summer. Last night we picked up our Pass-of-All-Passes. So. Summer has begun!!!

I'm going to do EVERYTHING on that pass. 

Even bowling. 

Which I hate. 

Doesn't matter.

I JUST WANT IT ALLLLLLLLL.

Tomorrow is the first Real Salt Lake home game, and P.O.A.P holders get in free. So come! 

I feel like I have everything I need in my life right now. 

Except for one thing. 

I want to learn Tai Chi! 

This could be meeeeeeee

But I can't find any place in Provo to learn/practice. Help?

I'm sure you can guess my interest in tai chi...

No regrets.

So just help me find a class, and I'm on my way to the best summer ever!

A Poem for Thursday: "A Minor Bird" - Robert Frost

I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more,

The fault must partly have been in me,
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.

Music for your Midweek: Chet Baker

For today, I'm going to give you some music from my boyfriend Chet Baker. Like all of my loves, he lived a troubled life.

But he's such a dreamboat.

I'll give you a minute to recover from that.

Now.

Here he is in some low-budget Italian movie he did. So romantic and silly. I'll have to see it sometime. 

And finally, a heartbreak of a video. He died soon after this was filmed. 

What a heartbreak.

More ways to live small

My minimalist quest continues! This NYT article inspired me to go farther, and re-examine the things I have in my life. Give it a read!

"Our fondness for stuff affects almost every aspect of our lives. Housing size, for example, has ballooned in the last 60 years. The average size of a new American home in 1950 was 983 square feet; by 2011, the average new home was 2,480 square feet. And those figures don’t provide a full picture. In 1950, an average of 3.37 people lived in each American home; in 2011, that number had shrunk to 2.6 people. This means that we take up more than three times the amount of space per capita than we did 60 years ago." 

We used to live with less. It is possible. I'm far from minimalist, but the more things I find I can get rid of, the happier I am. In his article, Graham Hill mentions that all those things take up mental space as well. And what do we do when we have too many things? We pay people to hold it in a box for us. A " 22 billion dollar" industry. So this weekend I'll be sending boxes of books, cds, and clothes to new homes.

Living small can be really stylish too. This site has collected a bunch of examples for small living. Check out JoAnn's apartment:

Darling. A lot of the discussion on small living as been about how to incorporate these principles in families. Here's a great NYT article about how one family downsized. I may have shared this article before, but it's worth sharing again. I love everything about this home, especially how they include the outside as part of their living space. It's beautiful:

This family of four downsized from a 3,000 sq. foot home, to one less than half that size. They dramatically reduced their belongings, and now spend more time together

Here's a video from a furniture company that illustrates their solutions to small living. If you are creative with your space, you can do much more with it.

Small is the new Big everybodyyyyyyyy.

Dream, Dare, Do

Some food for thought to start out your week.

You can read a bit about Whitney here:

I also recently read this article from Cracked, and I've been thinking about it ever since. The articles from this website can be a little crass, but I really liked this one: 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You A Better Person. Here's an example he shared. It probably resonated with me, because in the type of work we do, we have to fight against some sort of apathy (in other people, and in ourselves):

Inside, you have great compassion for poor people. Great. Does that result in you doing anything about it? Do you hear about some terrible tragedy in your community and say, "Oh, those poor children. Let them know that they are in my thoughts"? Because **** you if so -- find out what they need and help provide it. A hundred million people watched that Kony video, virtually all of whom kept those poor African children "in their thoughts." What did the collective power of those good thoughts provide? J***********. Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing. It's an internal mechanism controlled by the lazy part of your brain to keep you from actually doing work.

Getty
"I just wanted to tell you that you're in my thoughts. Good luck -- let me know if that cured you."

How many of you are walking around right now saying, "She/he would love me if she/he only knew what an interesting person I am!" Really? How do all of your interesting thoughts and ideas manifest themselves in the world? What do they cause you to do? If your dream girl or guy had a hidden camera that followed you around for a month, would they be impressed with what they saw? Remember, they can't read your mind -- they can only observe. Would they want to be a part of that life?

Because all I'm asking you to do is apply the same standard to yourself that you apply to everyone else. Don't you have that annoying Christian friend whose only offer to help anyone ever is to "pray for them"? Doesn't it drive you nuts? I'm not even commenting on whether or not prayer works; it doesn't change the fact that they chose the one type of help that doesn't require them to get off the sofa. They abstain from every vice, they think clean thoughts, their internal dirt is as pure as can be, but what fruit grows from it? And they should know this better than anybody -- I stole the fruit metaphor from the Bible. Jesus said something to the effect of "a tree is judged by its fruit" over and over and over. Granted, Jesus never said, "If you want to work here, close." No, he said, "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person_p2/#ixzz2NCT1UARy

Yeah. Sometimes the truth is hard. I really needed this message. It is encouraging at the end, so give it a read!

"A Mother There"

It's Mothering Sunday in the UK! To celebrate, I read this article about our Heavenly Mother. She is a heavenly wife and parent, a divine person, a co-creator with the father. She is a coframer of the plan of salvation, an involved parent in our mortality. Here are some of my favorite parts:

"It doesn't take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal Mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers, to include our earthly mothers in our affections...we honor woman we we acknowledge Godhood in her eternal prototype." - President Rudger Clawson

"'What,' says one, 'do you mean we should understand that Deity consists of man and woman?' Most certainly I do. If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself...I must believe that deity consists of man and woman...There can ve no God except he is composted of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, or ver will be a God in any other way. We may never hope to attain unto the eternal power and the Godhead upon any other principle ..this Godhead composing two parts, male and female." - Elder Erastus Snow

"Sisters, I testify that when you stand in front of your heavenly parents in those royal courts on high and you look into Her eyes and behold Her countenance, any question you ever had about the role of women in the kingdom will evaporate into the rich celestial ari, because at that moment you will see standing directly in front of you, your divine nature and destiny." - Elder Glenn L. Pace

Spring is here, and I'm feeling good.

People be telling me that it's going to start raining and snowing again.
Nope.
I'm in denial.

I feel like The Polyphonic Spree when it's sunnyyyyyyyyy!!!!!

I wrote a blog post this week for United Way about the spring weather. Click here to read it.

Sequestration and You (Me)

First off, what is "sequestration"? Here's a good feature on it from Planet Money on NPR. It gives a good context for why we're in the position we are now:

"It is designed to be stupid. 

It is designed to be uncomfortable. 

It is designed to be a Doomsday machine"

And the threat of sequestration didn't work.

Again.

This time, the cuts will be bigger.

It used to be that news stories like this didn't really affect me much. I was relatively insulated in my life as a student. I had family connected to work in the federal government, but not in a way that would be too drastically altered by budget cuts. But las Tuesday morning, I received an e-mail that made the sequester a little more real to me:

My year of service won't be affected. But what about the person who replaces me? How will this affect the community center, and the people we serve? What does this mean for anti-poverty initiatives across the country? It will slow down; some projects may stop. I was hoping to do another year of service, possibly as a VISTA leader. Now I'm hedging my bets, and trying to find other job opportunities in case that falls through. It's so sad, because this is a time that we need AmeriCorps now more than ever.

Besides the cuts to AmeriCorps, the sequester is going to affect a lot of us. According to the Deseret News, you could feel affects if you:

• are a Defense Department Employee
• ride Airlines
• receive assistance through the Women, Infants, and Children program
• are a service member
• are a teacher
• love the outdoors
• have a job and spend money on things

Um, I think all of us are included in at least one of these categories.  Just something to think about.

A Poem for Thursday: "Bluebird" - Charles Bukowski

Have a listen:

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him, 

I say, stay in there, I'm not going

to let anybody see 

you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that 

wants to get out

but I pour whiskey on him and inhale

cigarette smoke

and the whores and the bartenders

and the grocery clerks

never know that

he's 

in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that

wants to get out

but I'm too tough for him,

I say,

stay down, do you want to mess

me up?

you want to screw up the 

works

you want to blow my book sales in

Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that 

wants to get out

but I'm too clever, I only let him out 

at night sometimes

when everybody's asleep.

I say, I know that you're there,

so don't be

sad.

then I put him back,

but he's singing a little

in there, I haven't quite let him

die

and we sleep together like

that

with our

secret pact

and it's nice enough to

make a man

weep, but I don't

weep, do

you?

- Charles Bukowski

My story's infinite
like the Longines Symphonette
it doesn't rest

Music for your Midweek: Nous Non Plus

Here is something that you didn't even know you wanted. A french cover of the The Unicorns' Tuff Ghost.

hahahahahahahahahah

I don't know much about this band, but I like their style.

please make me a classy old lady

I'm becoming re-obsessedwith perfume. I just love it. 

It feels like I've been sick for half of forever, which means all of my senses have been on hiatus. I'm finally starting to feel better, and have made all sorts of resolutions to NEVER GET SICK AGAIN and to ONLY EAT ORGANIC FOODS and to WASH MY HANDS 500 TIMES A DAY. Being sick is the worst. Especially when you can't smell or taste or breathe... 

But now I'm finally getting better! 

Last week I stopped by Nordstrom and and the perfume consultant was so cool and friendly and loaded us up with samples. I couldn't wait to be able to smell again and try them out. Talking with the consultant helped me pinpoint what I really like, and she led me to some cool perfumes by Bond No. 9 and Dyptyque. 

And look what I found! These guys did a performance piece by creating an "Everything" perfume. Supercool.

I want to own all the smells in the world!

Anyway.

Most days, I want to smell like a classy lady. And when I say "lady," I mean Dowager Countess.

Honestly. A lot of the scents I've been drawn to lately have been sort of old-fashioned, a little powdery. Here are a few of them. Try them out and let me know what you think:

I got this as a deluxe sample from Sephora, and I am very pleased! I didn't like the initial notes, but they dry down was just lovely and delicious and warm. It's hard to get scents to smell "warm" on my skin, they always seem to go a little "sour" or something. This made me feel grown up, and it might be too mature smelling for me, but I like it. I also really want to try the rose one, but I'm already betting I may not like it. I prefer my rose scents to be fresh, paired with something green and earthy. Sometimes modern. I used to wear Stella after all. L'Essence sounds nice too... I just want all of them!

I got this in rollerball form, purely by chance, and I really like it. It's actually not old-ladyish at all. It's more fruity, also has amber. More mainstream? I don't know. Isn't its name so silly? And the bottle super silly? But I would LOVE how it would look on my makeup table. It's so great.

I love this bottlllllllleeeeee. I just wish I loved the perfume more. Every time I looked through Vogue, I was always drawn to the Bottega adverts. So classy, but still interesting. Some of those pages I'd kept for years. So I'm more drawn to the image and idea of this perfume than the actual juice. Unlike Balenciaga, I actually prefer the first notes to the lingering scent. The dry-down is just inoffensive. Plain and pleasant. Nice, but sort of BORING. I'm wearing it now, and it's fine enough, but not enough to invest in. hmmmmmm

I'm just going to switch between these three for the next few days, and see how I feel. Isn't perfume just so fun?

YOU ARE:

I've been really into myself lately.

hahahahahahahaha

But really. 

It all started when I found this:

Then I started reading into personality tests. I've taken quite a few. We needed to take this colors test as part of work (I'm a majority green, secondary gold). I even paid 10 bucks to take the "official" version of the enneagram personality test. This is what I got: 

free enneagram test

Yeah. The results were pretty accurate, and it made me kind of sad.

"The overall direction of their personalities therefore is inward, toward increasing self-absorption, because Fours feel that they are different from other people, and they want to know why they feel this way. Ironically, however, they try to find their place in life by withdrawing from it so they can trace the labyrinth of their emotions. But the result of their withdrawal is that even average Fours have noticeable difficulties coping with life, while unhealthy Fours have some of the most severe emotional difficulties of all the personality types."

Yikes. 

Later on in the description, it talks about healthy and unhealthy fours. Hopefully I'm one of the "healthy" fours? I better be, because apparently people with my personality type often fall victim to addiction, depressive thoughts, and suicide... not so great. But it also provides advice about how you can work through your personality to reach your full potential. I like that.

It reminded me of this scripture in D&C 46: 

11 For all have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.

12 To some is given one, and to some is given another, that all may be profited thereby.

13 To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world. 

14 To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful.

15 And again, to some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know the differences of administration, as it will be pleasing unto the same Lord, according as the Lord will, suiting his mercies according to the conditions of the children of men. 

16 And again, to some it is given by the Holy ghost to know the differences of the administration, as it will be pleasing unto the same Lord, according as the Lord will, suiting his mercies according to the conditions fo the children of men. 

17 And again, verily I say unto you, to some is given, by the Spirit of God, the word of wisdom. 

18. To another is given the word of knowledge, that all may be taught to be wise and to have knowledge. 

19 And again, to some it is given to have faith to be healed;

20 And to others it is given to have faith to heal.

21 And again, to some is given the working of miracles;

22 And to others it is given to prophesy;

23 And to others the discerning of spirits.

24 And again, it is given to some to speak with tongues;

25 And to another is given the interpretation of tongues.

26 And all these gifts come from God, for the benefit of the children of God.

Instead of thinking of my personality as lacking or flawed, I'm trying to understand my personality traits as gifts. It's the way I utilize them that can make them "good" or "bad". I can choose to develop my talents, gifts and personality by recognizing my inclinations, and tuning them to the Lord.

That makes it all seem much more hopeful.

"Where faith operates..."

This week, (being prompted after reading this blog post) I finally got around to listening to Doug Fabrizio's interview with the authors of The God Who Weeps. You can listen to the interview yourself here. I gave it to my mom for her birthday. If I'm lucky, maybe she'll let me borrow it sometime :)

"The call to faith, in this light, is not some test of a coy god, waiting to see if we “get it right.” It is the only summons, issued under the only conditions, which can allow us fully to reveal who we are, what we most love, and what we most devoutly desire. Without constraint, without any form of mental compulsion, the act of belief becomes the freest possible projection of what resides in our hearts. Like the poet’s image of a church bell that only reveals its latent music when struck, or a dragonfly that only flames forth its beauty in flight, so does the content of a human heart lie buried until action calls it forth. The greatest act of self-revelation occurs when we choose what we will believe, in that space of freedom that exists between knowing that a thing is, and knowing that a thing is not.

This is the realm where faith operates, and when faith is a freely chosen gesture, it expresses something essential about the self. For we do indeed create gods after our own image—or potential image. And that is an activity endowed with incalculable moral meaning. If we linger in indecision...we will not perish. We will simply miss an opportunity to act decisively in the absence of certainty, and show that our fear of error is greater than our love of truth."

I hope I get to read it soon! I've been needing some spiritual lifting. It's good to have a fast sunday to help me get started. 

What's happening to me???

holding back tears...

OMG WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME 

I'M A SOBBING MESS

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Golly guys. In this past year, I've really gained a soft spot for some of our more "senior" citizens. They get so little respect, and are often counted out. But they are usually among the first to offer service and concern. And I'm sure all y'all have seen this video already. Gets me every time.

WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSEEEEELLLFFF?????? gotta stop.