Black Friday & Crafts

I realize this was a few weeks ago, but some of the pictures are just too good to pass up. First, Lacey Lani and I went to Twilight where we kind of heard the movie over the squeals of the pubescent audience members. For some weird reason that theater was way worse than the one on opening night. Then my mom and Lisa joined us to make these little countdown to Christmas advent calendars. It was really fun, and we always have a good time taking fake, ultra-cheesy candids...

This was the finished product

Then on Black Friday McCall, Megan, Sara and I braved Fashion Place mall's midnight opening. The highlight for me was when they first opened the doors and everyone sprinted in. We found some pretty sweet deals and had a blast. Megan was lucky enough to snatch one of these bad boys before they all got sold out (sorry the picture is a little blurry, and if you couldn't catch the sarcasm)

After a few hours of shopping we needed a little R&R at BrookStone where we basked in the glory of there full-body massage chairs.


And perhaps the greatest find of the night...this weird "ab work-out" machine at BrookStone that was as close to a mechanical bull as you can get. amazing.

Then me and Megan went to Best Buy at 5:00 am where I got a couple of blu-rays. I was very impressed with he way Best Buy handled all the crowds. We ended the night/morning at Target at 6:00 am. It was ridiculous. Two lines at both doors, wrapped all the way to the back of the building, and once inside, every single register was open and each had a line of at least 12 people.



We decided we didn't want anything that bad and left. People were being ridiculous, ramming into eachother with there carts, yelling about DVD's and just acting ridiculously animalistic in general. I can now fully understand the term 'mob mentality'.

The Talented Tavis

No, I didn't forget the "r", it's pronounced Tavis (like have-is). Tavis Johnson was me and Brody's wedding photographer and I was so pleased with all the pictures he took for us, I had to dedicate a blog post solely to him. I had first heard about him through a couple of my friends (pictured below) and completely fell in love with his work. He is unique, classy and so easy to work with. You can look at all his stuff here.

Here are a couple of my favorite shots from our engagements, bridals, groomals & wedding.





We went to Wendover/The Salt Flats for my Bridals. We got really lucky with the weather, it was one of the only cloudy days last summer and the sky was awesome. Thanks again Lace for helping!




We took a bunch of 'groomals' (as Tavis has deemed them) around downtown before the actual wedding day so we weren't rushed. I am so glad we did this, they are some of my favorite shots and we barely had time for pictures on the actual day.










This is a picture from his "trash the dress" session with my friend Toni. They found the dress at the D.I. and went to the great Salt Lake with incredible results. Of course it helps that she is drop dead gorgeous

This is my other friends, Ashley & Tom Swapp in Oakland, CA. Such a gorgeous picture, thank you girls for the tip!

One year ago...

On this day last year I was doing this...


...hang gliding over Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Easily one of the top ten greatest things I've ever done. Rio was the last stop on a 21 day cruise that me and my friend Katherine were lucky enough to experience. I'll just give a super brief summary because it is probably boring to anyone but me and Katherine. We started in Barcelona, Spain where we boarded the 800-passenger Marco Polo (The average age of the passengers was around 65, literally I'm not exaggerating) We stood out like sore thumbs but we really didn't care. We stopped in Malaga and Cadiz, Spain-both beautiful. Then Casablanca (where we saw the 2nd or 3rd largest mosque in the world, Hassan II)and Agadir, Morocco. Before the cruise we had booked our own excursion in Agadir, and went 4-wheeling in the sub-Saharan, desert. This was my 2nd favorite part of the trip because we stopped in a Berber village and drank tea with the natives. It was just the two of us and our tour guide so the whole thing was really authentic and intimate. Luckily, we made it back to the ship without being killed in traffic, people there literally DO NOT obey traffic lights, signs,and laws in general. The people were really kind but it was such an eye opener to experience a 3rd world country and see the heaps of garbage and ghettos up close as you can see in the picture.

Then we went to the Canary Islands, where we got to ride camels!!! (My third favorite part of the trip) The island we were on was pretty much all volcanic rock. It was beautiful because all the houses are required by law to be white, rectangular and only 2 stories high max. our next stop was Cape Verde, off the West coast of Africa which had one of the most beautiful beaches. Then we spent four days crossing the Atlantic, finally coming to port in Fortaleza where we road buggies on these huge sand dunes right by the beach. Our next port was Recife, which some may recognize from shark week specials-it has the most shark attacks than any other city in the world. We stayed out of the water and visited this old military fort that was straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Salvador was the last stop before ending in Rio. It was gorgeous, old European architecture from the Portuguese settlers against the poverty of modern Brazil, set in a Rain forest. After the cruise, we stayed in Rio for 3 days and I completely fell in love with it. The city itself is breathtaking, gorgeous white sand beaches, rain forest and jutting mountains with the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking the entire city. Not to mention that the food is amazing, they put cheese in almost everything, and you can get a huge plate of delicious food for about $2.50.

The whole experience was superb, and totally worth the 33 hour trip home.

Here is a little video I took from inside our taxi in Agadir, complete with Euro/African techno...

Private Function

My friend's, sister-in-law's, brother's, work (follow that?) rented out a theater at Jordan Commons for an early screening of Twilight. We got to go at 7:00 pm the night before it opened. The movie was good, not great. Just like the books. A fun story, but nothing earth-shattering. Plus, they showed a new trailer for Harry Potter 6 before which was awesome. Perhaps the best part of the night though, was watching the hormone-crazed, superfans who were gathering for the midnight showing.

Jordan Commons capitalized on this by throwing a "prom" in one of the hallways, complete with Edward look-a-like (even though he really didn't) food, and decor. It cost $45 dollars to get in. Yeah. Seriously. People (when I say people I mean teenage girls) paid that much for a fake prom in a hallway at a movie theater, on top of the price of their ticket. I mean I love when people go all out, but $45??? in a recession? To each their own. I can't really talk, I was 13 when Titanic came out and I paid to go see it in the theater maybe 7 times. Embarrassing, but like I said, I was 13. I snapped a pick of some of the tweens who went to the prom thing. The best part was how they walked around like they were in the movie or something.

Then we got to pose on the red carpet that they'd laid out for the movie, doing our best "i'm-better-than-you, faces" like the celebs. I still can't get over how much hype there has been for this movie. And I've seen my fair share of midnight showings.

All in all, the movie was good, it had a great soundtrack and the people in our theater were hilarious. That's the best part of a big blockbuster debut, how the crowd gets into it, clapping at the end, or in this case squealing with delight during Edward and Jacob's first scenes in the movie.It was a fantastic night, we even had time to watch the new episode of the Office that Megs had DVR'd. Toby's back! Oh and Here is the new Harry Potter Trailer that I mentioned above. Enjoy!

Hoop La

Hey everyone, my amazingly talented cousin sells jewelry online and she is having a Christmas Sale- For every 3 pairs of earrings you order you get a 4th pair for free! Her website is http://www.hooplajewelry.blogspot.com

French Lick

This weekend, my work had it's annual retreat to French Lick, Indiana. It's claim to fame is that it is the birthplace of Larry Bird. Other than that, there's is not much goin on in French Lick except these two gorgeous hotels. They were built in the 1920's and have a major 'Great Gatsby' vibe. They are completely random and are in the middle of no where but it was cool. Here is a picture of me relaxing on a chaise lounge in this HUGE ballroom, it was amazing.


I had to take a picture of these two guys from my work. They just looked like they should be sipping brandy in their smoking jackets discussing business with Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. Plus, the one on the left, Roy, actually gave me $100 to gamble in the casino. I tried to refuse, but he is loaded and wanted me to have fun, and he is just a nice guy. Needless to say I lost it all in blackjack and roulette but I did have a good time. It's much more fun to gamble with someone else's money.

Our Last Goonie Weekend!

Needless to say, the Goonie costumes were a smash. I was so proud of everyone's costumes, Logan even had a member's only jacket for Mouth (amazing) and Eric's costume was complete with yellow backpack, 007 belt buckle and boxing glove. Everyone did an awesome job! We even had a Sloth-on-a-Stick!


We started the evening off at the U's Halloween party at the Skybox at Gateway (kind of funny for me and Brody as it was a party for singles) but it was fun none the less. Then in true goonies style we went looking for One-Eyed Willie's rich stuff but got distracted by the window displays at Forever 21.


Then we we got hungry so we went to Freaky Dee's for a little sustinance where we people-watched for a good couple of hours. Let me just say that the Dee's on 7th is amazing any weekend night, but it's truly a must on Halloween.


Earlier that week we had carved pumpkins and had a blast as you can see. It was a little tricky because we could only use steak knives to carve....but we made do, and then some. Here are a couple pics. Enjoy!