She was saying the other day that she thought she might have a good chance of winning the giveaway, so it is funny that she did. Guess I won't have to ship anything! Congratulations Emily! And thanks everyone else for entering!
29 November 2009
27 November 2009
20 November 2009
My Favorite Things
I was using my sea salt glow...stuff, and thinking how it is one of my favorite things, and it then made me think of those episodes of Oprah where she showcases her favorite things and everyone finds stuff under their seats or whatever getting the favorite things she offered. Then I decided to make a post of some of my favorite things, as a few of them have been swirling around my mind especially in the last few days. And just to make this in true Oprah fashion, I think I'll do a giveaway, and the person who wins can choose which of my favorite things they would like me to give them. The giveaway will end on Saturday the 28th, so get your comment on sometime before then. So without further ado! My favorite things:
Since I already extolled all the virtues of this wonderful chocolate earlier today, I won't say much, except I love loving a product where the people who make it love it and are proud of it. They pay 3-4 times the fair trade price for cocoa beans, and because of that they get better quality, but also they care about the people who grow their beans. And it is the best chocolate I have ever tasted.
I am not a big shopper. I don't like to go out much, and I like to avoid spending money. I especially don't like to spend money on lotions and soaps and perfumes, and all sorts of things that seem frivolous and totally unnecessary to me. But when I get in certain moods, sometimes I just like to frivolously spend to kind of get me out of a funk. One such time is when I bought this. This bottle is huge, and will probably last me the rest of my life, since I use it only a few times a year, but it makes my skin feel -amazing-, so it is totally worth it. Though really I would highly recommend getting the salt thingy that goes along with my next favorite thing, as going through those people's sales pitch is so totally worth it. They are very good.
So...looking at this online, I am thinking I really did get a steal on this. Like the sales guy said he was giving me a steal, but you know, you never can tell, but I got this stuff for $25, and the places online all have it for around $50. This may have to have a star next to it for the giveaway, if I can't find it for cheaper somewhere.** Anyway, this stuff is -amazing- though. This again will probably last me the rest of my life, but put that together with that salt stuff, and it is a beautiful thing. Hands so soft, legs feeling so nice. I used a fair bit today on my arms and legs, and my skin feels lovely. I am not a big fan of lotion as it has the uncomfortable oily side effect, but this stuff to me does what lotion never can, but always should have. It's amazing. Really. (Also for this one and the last one, anyone who ever shows up at house is free to use some of mine. I have a ton that I will seriously never deplete my supply for a long time.)
I sold Cutco a few years ago, and the reason I sold so much of it ($15,000 worth), is because I love it. The double D edge is heavenly, and having had mine for about 4 years now, I can say that it certainly lasts. I love the lifetime guarantee (though that is not helping me with figuring out where I have lost some things!! :P ). Going through the Amano factory today reminded me of going through the Cutco factory, and just seeing the pride the workers had for their product. Man I really have misplaced a lot of knives, and most of that being since I have moved into this house. ...Yeah ok, I had to go check, because I was like, I can't have lost like 5 knives since moving into this house, and apparently they are just put away. So yay, mystery solved! They are in the long-term, not short-term storage area. I have been wanting my slicer lately, so I am very happy to have found it. So I have all the knives in that picture, except only the petite chef knife, and not the french chef. But man oh man I do love my knives. I really want to get a block to keep them in. (Also if anyone actually decides to buy some knives, I could probably temporarily get back into selling them, so try buying through me, and I could get you a really good deal -- emails to writecrazy@gmail.com for anyone who doesn't know that).
I know I did a post on my DivaCup when I first bought it like a year and a half ago, but I still love it, and it is definitely one of my favoite things. Periods used to be an annoying time of the month when I had to be concerned about having tampons, where it seemed like I was always worried about things leaking or causing me more issues. And my period would last like a week. I hadn't really noticed, but I read on someone else's blog about a shorter period, and then I started to notice that my period is shorter, but what was more relevant to me is that I barely notice my period. Like the first day, I notice it, because I have to empty my cup a number of times because it fills quite rapidly, but then it's just a couple days of a little bit more, and then it's done. And I'm never freaked out about Toxic Shock Syndrome. I remember the hours I took at first to figure out how to learn to use it, how frustrating it was, and I have no reservations at all in saying it was completely worth it. I love my divacup, and I would never never never go back.
Some guy came by our house one day selling this stuff. He sold me on the product, but he was kind of annoying to me since I didn't want to buy right away. But Emily and I ended up going in together for this. I love using it, and it's supposed to be fairly safe and stuff, and it works so amazingly well. (The guy licked the tube that the solution was spraying out of, so that was pretty compelling). I don't really know what else to say but that this stuff cleans pretty awesomely, and I know my chemicals from being a janitor.
When I was running, I loved my nike plus. It was so fun to hook up to my computer and see things accruing over time. It was fun to make challenges with my sister, or join up other random challenges, and have it contribute to something. I really wish they had something like this for a bike. I mean, my bike computer is okay, and keeps track of some things, but I want to be able to keep track over time how much I do, how fast I go, and hook into a website like the whole nike plus thing is set up. If I hadn't been totally destroying my joints on the concrete in Texas, I would still be running to my heart's content, adding another mile to my nike plus. But now I do love my bike too. But nike plus is great for running. (And they really need to make something I can put on my bike.
I can't find an image that does the food and the atmosphere justice. To me, there is only one place in the Provo/Orem area (ok this is excluding Communal the restaurant made by the same people as P712) that can compete with Pizzeria 712 as far as quality of food (and especially dessert), and that is Chef's Table, which costs about 3 times as much. The food is amazing, and I love how they have a seasonal menu using as much local food as possible. The food is great, the idea is great. It is a wonderful place.
For anyone who knows me, you might have noticed that I am not the girliest girl, and do not put that much time into my appearance. There is the occasion where I do want to put some time into my appearance. For all the curly-haired ladies out there, Ouidad products are amazing. I like the shampoo and conditioner because my hair can turn out decent without me doing anything with it after getting out of the shower, and if I'm in a really girly mood, I can spend 10 minutes putting stuff in my hair to get my curls to really shine. They also have a great product for using after swimming. It is so delicious smelling, and makes my hair feel so yummy, after being so yucked by chlorinated water.
This book is amazing. I don't buy bread anymore. And like, sure I've had that goal for pretty much...long before I got married, but never was I actually keeping that goal until I got this book. And it is not just crap bread, this is delicious bread that I am eating pretty much every day. To me, the success of their method and recipe was clear to me when I was talking with a girl I knew in Australia who had never baked bread before and was sure that she would mess it up, and she came out of it with beautiful lovely loaves. The method works, it is easy, and it is highly delicious. This book has begun my love affair with sandwiches.
I do not really know how to describe the awesomeness of this cheese. My favorite cheese used to be a tie between brie and havarti, which are both great cheeses, but once I had a bit of this cheese, there was no going back. It is amazing cheese. There is no way to understand except to have some...or talk to someone who can describe cheeses. So delicious.
I can't believe I forgot about balsamic vinegar! Meaning I did remember it, and then forgot it two times before I actually posted this. But then I remembered and had to add it to my list! I also love Colavita specifically, because I have tried a few different brands, and this one is one of my favorites, and even better that it is relatively inexpensive compared to other brands. Really, I love vinegar in general, but balsamic is my favorite, and of balsamic, colavita is my favorite. It is unsurprising that many of my favorite things I have blogged about before. Of course I would want to blog about them! :D
I wanted to put a book on here too, but I cannot think of any one book that qualifies as my quintissential favorite book. So perhaps I will just have to do another post on my favorite books. Thus ends my favorite things post. But check back in the next couple days, I may think of a couple things to add.
So, go ahead and comment away to enter into the give away. Comment telling me one or lots of your favorite things!
**I have checked and I think I can find something with a reasonable price for the body butter, so that is still in the running, but keep in mind that if I'm not able to at the time, you may have to use a second choice if that is your choice.
19 November 2009
Amano Chocolate
At Pizzeria 712, they had a dessert with a chocolate that was labeled amano. I remember having this dessert, and the chocolate was not overly sweet, and it made me think, that perhaps this amano type of chocolate was one where I could take it not being completely milk chocolate.
It made me curious, so I wanted to look up and see what it was. I found this. I went through their website and read everything, and it made me like them even more. They pay a premium for their beans, which means that the people who are growing these delicious cocoa beans are being given a decent wage, and not forced to remain in poverty, which is something I am definitely a fan of supporting.
So I have been planning to buy from them for a while, and they had mentioned that you could call before to stop by their factory to buy directly there, and since it is right in Orem, I figured that would be a better option than paying a whole lot to ship it over to Provo. Then the other day I was reading on their blog that they are opening the factory for the holidays, and that people could stop by between the hours of 10 and 4pm. So for about a week, I have been planning on going over there, but never had gotten around to it. So I decided that today I was going to go.
I went over to see if Prairie wanted to go, and she did. She took a long time to get ready, and by that time, Autumn was ready to be picked up from school, so we picked her up on the way there. I expected that we would just get to go there and buy some chocolate, but I was very surprised by the great treatment we got.
We went there, and an employee came and let us in, and started showing us around the factory, explaining to us how the chocolate is made and what all the different machines do. They had just finished a bit of white chocolate, and it was in the cooling room, ready to be cooled down, so he got us some spoons and dipped them in and gave us each a bit of the slightly warm white chocolate. It was very good. Then he took us over to the place where they had lots of different bits of chocolate, and gave us bits of 4 kinds to try. He asked the girls which chocolate they liked the best, then handed them a bag of 1/4 kg of the jembrana milk chocolate they liked. I couldn't believe he just handed it to them. It was a big bag, and this is high quality chocolate.
Then I told him I wanted to buy a pack of 10, which retails for $62 on their website (which is a good deal as it is), and so he put me together a specialized pack with one of each of the kinds. So then I asked him what I owed him, figuring I'd need to add on tax, and he said, "How about like $50?" So I was really surprised. I handed him $60 anyway, because I really want to support such a good company.
The chocolate is amazing, and I have decided that dark chocolate is the same experience as with orange juice. It is not that I don't like it, it's that I only like really good stuff. It is amazing to taste all the amazing flavors in the chocolate, and I can't wait to try all of my different flavors.
15 November 2009
Moving by Standing Still
I was at the pool yesterday for my niece's birthday, and I was talking with my mom while we were in a mini-whirlpool type thing. I just started standing there, while the current wanted to pull me along around the pool, and it took a bit of effort just to stay where I was. It reminded me of something one of Carolyn's harp teachers had said, that it is when you feel like you are going nowhere with your practicing that you are really making the most progress.
I've been slightly mulling these different ideas in my head, and the realization that sometimes we are making the most progress by standing still, because even though we can't see ourselves moving forward, we are keeping ourselves from moving backward, and we are getting stronger and more ready to move forward when the current is not pushing us so hard. We are gaining strength.
On a completely unrelated note, but since I have this compose mode up and feel like writing, I have figured out that I want to be more ambitious at work. I was talking to my friend at work, Raman, the other day, about how my boss seems like he has no idea what he wants to do with me, if he wants me to be a supervisor next summer or what. Apparently he and a couple others had talked to him about how I should say something to my boss about it. It is not really something I feel comfortable doing, but I am considering it. But I first started to consider what I would really like to do there. And I started to figure out that what I want to do is a little bit of everything. I want to supervise, I want to do home owner verification, I want to take calls, I want to sort out techinical problems, I want to listen to QC calls, I want to help on the manifest, I want to interface with the reps, I want to work on building Vision to be a better place to work for, a better place to sell for. And that is just some things, really I don't know everything I want to do. I have pretty much perfected the small part of the process I do, and honed it down to its most efficient method, and so I want to take more on, and not just be there to robotically do my job and pick up a paycheck. I want to do it not because I really care about Vision all that much, but because I want to be that kind of employee to a company, and that kind of person in life.
So I am still trying to figure out exactly what to ask for, and I have already started just doing more of my own will, and so when I figure out what I need my boss to give me responsibility or training over to do, then I may talk to him.
I'm trying to make an effort right now to really listen to that advice others give to me, and not just gloss over it and do whatever I think is best without even considering what someone else says. And I'm glad I listened to Raman, because even though I may not end up doing exactly what he advised me to do, by considering it, I have figured out more what would make me happier with my job.
04 November 2009
Being Adult and Imagination
As a child, it seemed like there were so many uses for imagination, and there was such encouragement from lots of different areas, and also opportunities to use imagination. I remember spending all day long at the pool, inventing all sorts of things, and having fun really feeling like a part of those things, being shipwrecked at sea, then being a mermaid saving people, then other things. I had a different idea when I started this post of where this was going, and I may get around to that eventually, but now I am thinking more about what I miss from my childhood. I miss that, the other worlds, but I think also sharing them with someone else, having someone there who believed in it just as much as I did, and our belief spurred each other on, even though we knew it wasn't real, we took it seriously. My best friend and I were having a conversation about this a couple years ago, and we were at a pool, and so we decided we would try. After a few minutes, it just felt awkward, and we went back to resting in the hot tub.
I think it takes more tangible things now for me to step into that world. But then there is also the double-edged sword of responsibility. My sister and I were playing with Prairie the other night with a Little Tykes house, and I got more into that than I have anything in a while. But I feel held back from completely indulging in such a world, because of the things that need to get done, people need to be fed, kids need to go to bed. I think I want to learn to let go more, to let go sometimes of all the responsibility, of all the things that need to get done, and just live for that little small figurine I am holding, in whose world you can bungee-jump off a house. The other thing my sister and I did when we were younger was play with our animals, I had bears and she had a family of pigs. The bears had a huge house with a pool in it, and all sorts of neat things in it. And they would go and visit the pig family. I think that is something I could get into again, and I have thought about that, and I really want to make a little village of felt animals, and a beautiful town for them to live in. It is a magical world of plenty, the land of imagination.
Sometimes it seems like as an adult, there is not as much use for imagination. There is use for innovation, in changing things, and that is valued, but I think imagination is undervalued. My thoughts on first starting this were to do with the transformed uses of imagination in the adult world, and how it can be helpful in new ways, but I got lost in reverie, and the desire to recapture some of the old uses as well. But I think the biggest use of imagination in the adult world is to be able to imagine what someone else is going through. It is to look at them, and see how they are acting, and imagine a reason for it, and not just a bs reason that makes it so you can be annoyed with them, but a real genuine reason that gives you compassion for them. It can calm annoyance, and rise us to a higher plan of love and kindness to others.
And I think there is a lot of value in imagining reality, in thinking about what facts we may know really mean. I have started thinking a lot more about people worldwide, and about all the hungry people in the world. Some things are so tragic, and so far out of my experience that I can't even really imagine what they must be like. I have read a story about a woman and her husband having to choose which of their children they would have to let starve, so the whole family did not perish. That is something I would never imagine. But I can imagine children whining and crying because they are hungry, and the anguish of a parent who has to tell them there is no food to eat. 36 million people year die because of diseases related to starvation or starvation itself. That is 60% of all the people who die on the earth. I can't fathom those numbers. They are too big, but I can think of villages starving, and villages in Africa, in Asia.
But I can't hear these people's voices. When is the last time I saw a person who looked even anything nearing malnourished? But just because I do not see it does not mean it is not so. And so I remind myself, by imagining what it must be like, and letting these numbers remind me that it is not just in my imagination, but that is really happening on this earth I live on, and that even though I may not be able to help all of them that I can at least start by helping one.
I want to tell their stories, but they are only in my imagination right now. I want to talk to them, I want to care for them. In some ways I think imagination is even more important as an adult, to remember how many desires can be met by simply imagining they are so, and to try to understand what it is like to walk in someone else's shoes. We can't switch bodies or lives with someone else, but we can imagine what it would be like, and I think that is a good first step.
01 November 2009
My Testimony
I bore my testimony in church today, but the couple minutes I was on the stand did not give me the time, nor could I convey everything that I feel and had thought of leading up to that moment.
I know that God lives, that He is our Heavenly Father, and that we were reared by him in the life before this one. I know that he knows each and every individual person on this earth, he knows them by name, and he loves them. How expansive is his love for each individual on this earth. I know that He sent his son to this earth, to live and preach, and then to suffer, to bleed and die for all of us. That atonement is infinite and eternal. It lasts forever, and it covers all the ways we separate ourselves from the Lord, whether it be a minor indiscretion, or the great sins that beset us in this life. The atonement covers them all, great and small.
I know that Joseph Smith walked into that grove of trees and that He saw God the Father, and His Son Jesus Christ. I know that it was through inspiration that he brought forth the Book of Mormon, and I know that that book is true, and as Joseph said, that a man will get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts than any other book. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints is the Lord's church on the earth, with the power and authority that come along with it, to administer ordinances, and to do works in the Lord's name. I know that Joseph Smith was just the first of many prophets who have been called and administered in that office in this dispensation. I know that Thomas S. Monson is the present president of the church, that he is our prophet, seer, and revelator, and the one person on the earth authorized to exercise all priesthood keys.
How great and glorious is the Lord and his love, to give us this gospel, to give us this church, to give us this organization. I invite all who read this who do not know for themselves to seek the Lord, to pray to him, to find him, to read the Book of Mormon, to live obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel, and find the amazing blessings that await those who do so. All glory be to the Father who created this earth, who sent us here to learn, and who created a glorious plan whereby we may return to him, all of us, the whole family of the earth, to dwell with him forever. He is glorious and bright. He is light and truth. When we seek him, that is what we find. When we read the scriptures that testify of him, we draw near unto him. And it is holding on to that iron rod that leads us to the one source of truth, our Father in Heaven.
How soft the whisperings of the spirit, but how powerful its message, that the church is restored, that God speaks to men on earth, and that salvation and exaltation are open to all. I love this gospel, and I love the truth. I love my Heavenly Father, who forgives so much weakness in me, and who provided a Savior that I can have hope of overcoming all my weaknesses. How glorious and majestic the love of God. I know he lives, because he loves me, and I feel that so much every day. I love him. He lives, he lives, he lives. That is my testimony.
I share it with fervor and humility, in the sacred and beautiful name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Differing Perspectives
When I was a kid, the draw of Halloween was to go around to all these houses, and get as much candy as I could. The funny thing is that I did not even end up eating all that much of my candy. I remember one year I got 10 pounds, and I think my dad was still eating it by the time next Halloween had rolled around, but I had stopped many many months before. I love planning for a costume too, and considering being something or someone else, just stepping into their shoes, but the focus of Halloween never seemed to focus much on who you were actually being, and rather that you were just looking like someone else. I think in some ways I wanted to step onto a movie set and act the role of that person, though without someone yelling cut, or following a script.
I think my favorite part of going out with my nieces tonight was walking down my own street, and meeting some of my neighbors. I was dumfounded to learn that there are two deaf men who life basically across the street from me. I was so excited to talk to them, I could barely sign. I felt so out of practice, and I couldn't remember how to say anything, but I still got the point across, and told them that we lived very close, and tried to point it out, and then described it by color. It was funny because walking away, my sister said she didn't know I knew so much sign. I had felt like I had really not done that well, that I had forgotten so much, and like I really didn't even say that much. I really want to go back and to take them cookies, just to stop by and have an excuse to make friends with them. I love my sign language, and I love using it. When people want to speak to me in Spanish, I will if I have no other option. No other language do I even try to speak that I vaguely know (though perhaps I would use a bit of German if I had occasion), but oh whenever I find a deaf person, I love to sign with them. I want to make friends with that person so I can sign with them forever.
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