Time Out to Write

I've been going just about a million miles an hour the past couple weeks, so I'm just going to take a minute to write. My 9:30 class was cancelled again today, so it's the perfect time to do it. My class getting cancelled was kind of a blessing. This morning I could not get out of bed. It seriously took 45 minutes from the time my alarm went off. I thought I'd be struggling harder than ever to stay awake in my second class of the day (because for some reason, no matter how much I enjoy the content of my second class of the day, I always struggle in the second class.) It started in high school. Second period was always, always the worst. Unless I had my journalism class, and then it was easy to stay awake because Haley would never let me sleep and every other day we got Gandolfo's. lol.

This weekend, Jeffrey lost his wedding ring. Sigh. I'm not very happy about it. We know that it has to be in the house somewhere, but we've turned the house upside down (or downside up in some cases) and still haven't found it. If he can't find it in the next couple weeks, I'm going to buy him a new one in a smaller size so he can't get it off. His current one is slightly too loose, so it comes off easily and he takes it off whenever he does things with water so he doesn't lose it down the drain.

I really hope we find it soon, though. It's not safe to be married at BYU without your ring. I have my ring on and I still get guys trying to flirt with me. Mostly that's in dance class, though, and....well, for some reason in dance class guys aren't as observant. In my dance class last semester, one guy didn't realize I had a ring on until half way through the semester, even though I danced with him quite often. One day he said, "Hey! Did you get engaged this weekend?" to which I responded that I'd actually been married since August. He was a little embarrassed after that... He was nice, though. So I forgive him. Not overly trying to be flirty.

Tennis has pretty much taken over my life. lol. I'm pretty sure that's all I do on the weekends now. I either watch Daily News reporters at the tennis matches to make sure they don't do stupid things, or I sit at my computer waiting for SIDs to send results to me. This weekend, I could not get results for the men's tennis match in San Francisco. The media relations person wasn't there, they didn't have an SID... I had to text the BYU assistant coach to get the results and it took him a while because I think he had to call each player to get their scores and their opponent's name. And I had to work on Sunday and make him work on Sunday, which is never fun.

I've recently had the urge to get back into art. And to make crafts for my home. And to bake more. And write more. And a billion other things. Unfortunately school takes priority. :P I have all of these ideas that I want to experiment on, but I don't have any time to do them. It kind of makes me sad. This weekend I had a chance to do something, though. :) I made profile silhouettes of us for Jeff for Valentine's. I doubt it was something he really wanted, but he usually appreciates when I make things for him and he never wants anything anyway, so I decided to test one of my ideas for his present.

I think they actually turned out really cool! And they weren't too expensive. I went to Hobby Lobby for all my supplies and remembered how much I love that store. All its ceramics are 50 percent off right now! I almost bought so many beautiful things, then realized that I don't have room for all of them. And all the glass and frames were 50 percent off too! I bought a glass vase (only cost $2) and some fake flowers (which were 50 percent off too!) for my family room table to add a little more color to the room and pull in the pillow colors. Our room is mostly dark brown and black (I still need something to pull those two colors together) and I have cream and light green pillows on the couch. I definitely needed something else that's colorful to go in it. I bought green and purple hydrangeas for the vase with some leaves and berries. I think it actually looks pretty good. :)

Anyway, back to the silhouettes, I bought two silver, oval, 8x10 frames ($8 each). They looked kind of old fashioned, which I liked. I also bought a set of four paintbrushes ($4), some black acrylic paint ($1.17) and some acrylic paper, which was probably the most expensive part at $9 for a notepad of 10 sheets. I want to start paint with acrylics, though, so I figured it was worth it because I'd use the sheets.

I found two pictures of us where we are facing left. I had a couple from my bridals, so it wasn't too hard to find one for me, but finding one for Jeff was difficult! And in all of his pictures, he was smiling. I didn't really want that because it sometimes looks funny, but I had to make do with the one where he's least smiling. Then I manipulated them on Picnik.com to make the outlines of our heads as stark as possible and printed them out. I then colored a section of paper about as big as the papers with a dark pencil. I shaded it all the way, so there weren't very many white lines. I then positioned that paper, shaded side down, on top of the acrylic paper, then put a photo on top of the shaded paper (photo side up). I then traced around the outline of our heads. Guess what! The outline showed up on the acrylic paper because of the shaded page! Isn't that an awesome trick? lol. I learned it in a ninth-grade art class.

After I drew around the outlines again on the acrylic paper, just to get a darker line, I started painting. (Well, I had to make a few corrections on my face, because for some reason my nose didn't really show up when I drew it. And for some reason the silhouette doesn't look exactly like me, even though I cut out my head from the photo and fit it against the drawn outline. Weird. I guess I can't recognize my own profile.) Painting wasn't too hard, except sometimes when you paint lightly with an acrylic brush it doesn't get in all the little cracks in the paper, and you have to be really careful not to add an extra nose on the person when you're filling in the while cracks. I had a little round brush and a bigger filler brush, so it didn't take very long at all. Acrylic is nice, because it dries really fast. You don't have to wait forever to put it in the frame.

So...I let the paintings dry, cut them into the right shape for the oval frames, put them in the frames and put them in a gift box from Bed Bath & Beyond leftover from wedding presents. The end! It took me all of an hour and a half to finish both. Cool, huh? And they look so old fashioned. :) I love it. Right now they're positioned above our TV....which doesn't really work because it adds silver to our black, brown and green thing. But we'll worry about that later, I guess...

Jeff and I did our Valentine's dinner on Sunday, because Monday we have dance class until 7 p.m. Jeff was in  charge of dinner this year, because last year I made him dinner for Valentine's and I also made him a surprise romantic dinner right before Christmas. I'll never say Jeff can't make a good meal ever again! It was so yummy. :) We had steak that was so, so tender it practically melted in your mouth. He also bought ravioli-ish noodles (I made an Alfredo sauce to go with them) and cheesy bread and shrimp with cocktail sauce. He made salad with carrots and bacon bits and Texas Toast (the best croutons EVER!) and we blended strawberries, milk and yogurt for a drink. To be a little more healthy, we cooked some carrots to go with the meal. It was so good! I couldn't stop eating. We were both glad he didn't get anything for dessert, because we were way too full. It was one of the best meals I've ever had. :)

That morning he gave me a box of Dove truffles, which are so yummy. And he actually likes them too. He doesn't even like Lindt truffles, which is fine by me because I get to eat them! He also bought me a plate. It wasn't anything spectacular. Just an ordinary white dinner plate. Why? Because he broke one of our red everyday plates a couple months ago. And I was really sad, because then we only had four everyday plates. He also told me he owed me a small red plate, because apparently he broke one of our small plates too. (That was kind of a funny thing, because I heard him drop it and it sounded like it broke, but he assured me it wasn't broken and really believed it wasn't. After I'd left the kitchen, he realized it really was broken, so he hid it and was going to buy me a new plate so I wouldn't even notice, but Saturday night he couldn't find a little red plate. That's because he was looking at WalMart instead of Target, which is where I bought the plates. lol. How like a little boy to try to buy a new plate so I wouldn't notice!)

Then Monday morning, the real Valentine's day, I woke up to a mini rose bush in a pot on my bed. :) It's so cute! I adore it. :) And I'm trying really hard to not let it die. I've admired them at Smith's for a long time. Jeff didn't realize that I've told him about the little rose plants for a long time, so he gets credit for a good guess. :) And tons of credit for a well pulled-off Valentine's Day.

I've decided that the most annoying thing about my Comms 480 class is that we get a lot of case studies about journalism (because apparently journalism has the most ethics questions come up or something) and not very many people in the class are journalists. Certainly the most outspoken people in the class are not the journalists. So when issues come up about journalism, weird ideas always get thrown in. It's kind of frustrating. I really want to stand up and say, "Look, guys. This is how it goes in journalism because you have to think of this and this and this. We're not PR reps meant to make people feel good. We're supposed to aim at truth." But....there are a lot of people in that class who like to hear themselves talk, so I let them talk and just vent a little after and forget about it until the next class period. :) Nobody listens to journalists anyway, because according to one of my friends "all journalists=biggest liars ever" or something along those lines, and I wouldn't want to further harm our reputation. :)

We're going to Moab over the weekend. I'm kind of excited, I guess. I'd prefer to just spend the free days catching up on projects and hanging out with Jeff and doing something of the things that I've wanted to do for a long time, but oh well. It will at least be warm down there, and we might invite some of our friends to come down with us. That should be fun. And relaxing. Probably just what I need.

Well....I should probably get back to work. I still have some homework that needs doing. :) Joy. lol.