Snowcones, Barbie, and DIY

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Amelia M.

June has just been flying by. Nothing truly BIG has happened. There’s just a lot of small things all stacked together making the calendar wooosh by.

For instance I had the pleasure of attending a Barbie themed birthday party that was lots of fun. Everyone was supposed to come dressed up as either Barbie or Ken. Many Barbies and Kens attended including Sleepover Barbie, Rockstar Barbie, 50s Barbie, Business Casual Ken, Tourguide Barbie, Baywatch Barbie and Ken, Jazzercise Barbie, and Army Kens (or G.I. Joes, haha). I love costume parties where everyone gets into it; it’s always good inspiration for future parties. I was Western Barbie.

They even had a “Barbie Box” for everyone to take pictures in.

Note: This party really made me want to watch Lifesize. It’s been way too long.

This is the shoe picture I took on purpose of Katie (Sleepover Barbie), Me (Western Barbie), and Karen (Classy 50s Barbie).

This is the not-so-on-purpose shoe picture I randomly ended up taking while playing with my camera. However I felt it was really fun with all the different color shoes and party dresses going on, so I kept it :)

I helped my sister move back to Texas. We did a lot of packing boxes and creative car tetris to get all of her stuff in my Toyota. But it wasn’t all work and no play. We took a little break in the middle to get some delicious snowcones. We also discovered my car’s cupholders are just the right size for Ben & Jerry ice cream containers, making it easy to attempt to eat the last content of your freezer while on the go, haha.

I was sad to see Gabby go (at least I’ll get to see her in August!), but I was excited to see another family member move to Utah. My cousin Amy started at BYU for summer semester so I got to see her and her family. We had a lot of fun catching up.

Mmmm, lemon lime and cherry! This was a “small.” I can’t imagine how you’d handle anything bigger. They also let you get ice cream in the middle or a snow cap, but I just like pure snow cone :)

I also finished Sarah’s Key. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it if you need a good book (Warning: It is very sad, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a light beach read or anything like that). Now I just need to go see the movie!

I also went to Emily’s brother’s wedding with Courtney and Emily. We took advantage of the photobooth while we were there:

We got surprised by the first photo, haha.

Oh, also did I mention there was cake at this wedding? Over 20 different types of cake (Don’t worry I didn’t try all of them)?

Yum.

I also saw the movie The Lucky One (Starring Zac Efron and his handsome smolder) in the dollar theater last week. Let me tell you the dollar theater always comes through for entertainment, one way or the other. We got super giggly over the overly dramatic romantic-ness at all, making for a very fun time (Don’t worry, I don’t think we made any enemies. We managed to keep it under control for most of the “serious” moments.). You can check out Emily’s opinion here. Warning: She pulls no punches when it comes to Nicholas Sparks.

My final June task I wanted to share is a little DIY project I’ve been working on. I’m in the middle of making a new duvet cover based off of some knotted quilt Anthropologie bedding I’d been eying. I was a little intimidated by this at first, but my Aunt Mary had done it before and assured me it could be done. I’ve been meaning to work on it for I don’t know how long, and now I’m finally getting close to the finish line. I’ll post some pictures (and links to the tutorial) as soon as I’m done.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Knotting the squares is the most time consuming part. I’m a rather inexperienced seamstress so hopefully it all comes together well. I’m pleased with how it’s going so far (not perfect, but not embarrassing either, haha).

Well that’s it. I hope you are having a wonderful June and a great summer!

Currently: have Francoise Hardy songs stuck in my head thanks to Courtney’s blog :)

Picnic your way through Summer: Antelope Island and Willard Bay

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Amelia M.

I know technically we have not hit the first day of summer yet, but I prefer to get started on these things as soon as possible. I just love summer and summertime activities. Like picnics and day trips. Which I’ve also decided to get a head start on.

My friend Emily has been dying to see the Spiral Jetty so we decided to go but we could only go one day after Courtney got off work. Long story short we realized we didn’t have as much time as we wanted, so we decided to change our plans to Antelope Island instead.

On the road to Antelope Island

It was a very nice change of plans.

Although we will definitely be going to the Spiral Jetty sometime soon! Antelope Island was an addition to our summer wishlist not a replacement :) Antelope Island is a state park in the Great Salt Lake. We went on a weekday, in the evening, so things were relatively empty so it felt like we had the place to ourselves. It’s north of Salt Lake; if you’d like to visit you can see the info on it here.

See? We had the place to ourselves.

Great Salt Lake

Emily made us a lovely picnic dinner to enjoy while we were there.

There were many wonderful things to eat, but my favorite part of the picnic was the homemade pita chips and the amazing cheese dip that went with it.

We explored a bit then headed through the sand to wade into the lake. After we’d gotten all the Great Salt Lake time we wanted we washed off the sand and salt as best we could and headed home.

Showing off their flexibility, lol

The drive home. Wouldn’t it be nice if the view outside your window was always this beautiful?

A more lively view of our ride home.

For Memorial Day we wanted to go somewhere fun that wasn’t too far and decided to try out Willard Bay.

The water was a tad cold, but the weather overall was gorgeous. We set out a blanket and enjoyed all the sunshine.

We packed another picnic. This time a group effort. I made some pressed sandwiches from this blog post (Thanks Sarah!), Emily made some amazing maple bars, Katie brought fruit, and Ben brought all the drinks and sides we could ask for. It was dee-lish. Seriously. Everything was beautiful and sunny (as you will notice since I am squinting in every picture). The water was cold, but that didn’t stop me from jumping in.

Who wouldn’t want to spend the day here? This is later in the afternoon/evening. What you don’t see in this picture is this way too open with their pda couple who ended up having a blanket right next to our picnic table. They made it… memorable…to say the least, haha.

We also took advantage of the rentals they had there and took out a canoe for an hour. It was really fun, but I seemed to be cursed when it came to getting the boat to go in the direction we wanted, lol. I kept not coordinating with my cousin who was also rowing, so we ended up taking a very curvy and zig zag-y path across the water.

We’re off!

I took the lead and then was quickly demoted when it immediately became clear I was no good at navigating the canoe, haha. I was pretty much happy to go in whatever direction the bay wanted to propel us. My cousin Ben ended up being our “Captain.”

All of us canoe adventurers. It was very bright and sunny :) Thanks to Emily for these pictures; I was afraid to bring my phone/camera on the canoe.

Possibly the only canoe picture where I don't look in pain from trying to smile while looking at the sun, haha.

Me and Emily. Ben was supposed to be in it, but have you ever tried to take a MySpace style pic (Arm outstretched…) of three people while staying balanced on a canoe? Also this is possibly the only canoe picture where I don’t look in pain from trying to smile while looking at the sun, haha.

After we were done playing in the water, we just relaxed, played some games, and then ended the evening with some hot dogs and s’mores.

Me and Katie.

Cooking up some hotdogs.

I introduced everyone to Egyptian Slapjack/ Ratscrew (which got slightly competitive!) and then we played some Apples to Apples.

We made s’mores with a variety of fillings. One of my favs was the Reese’s cup s’more! So good!

Me and Cousin.

Sunset at Willard Bay.

The only thing we forgot? Water!! In our efforts to pack a fun picnic lunch we only packed soda. Oops. We ended up sucking on ice cubes and then everyone had a huge glass as soon as we got home. We won’t be making that mistake again anytime soon.

The sunset left the water looking so colorful and glow-y.

Everyone who went. It was a great group :)

Of course, local parks are always lovely spots for picnics too. Just two weeks ago my friend Courtney and I had a wonderful picnic lunch in Sugarhouse Park (See? I told you I was on top of this summer thing.). She even brought her mini grill so we could make hamburgers.

I hope there will be plenty more fun picnics, day trips, and good weather in store this summer!

Currently: relaxing after some much needed sister time in Provo. oh and OBSESSED with cinegram. That’s how I made the little Antelope Island gif (I had taken a video of the window view with the music playing in the background).

Let Them Eat Cupcakes!

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Amelia M.

I love art. And cupcakes.

So this UMOCA (Utah Museum of Contemporary Arts) exhibit was perfect for me. It was called Let Them Eat Cupcakes (I went in April, I’ve been meaning to get this up for ages now). In exchange for writing your thoughts about hunger on a large index card and adding them to the exhibit you were given a cupcake. The exhibit had already been to LA so there were lots of cards to read and look at.

Me with my cupcake.

The cards had a wide variety of things. Some had funny stories, some talked about people’s philosophy about hunger and how they would solve hunger problems, some were just little kids who wanted to participate, other people complained that the resources for this exhibit should have gone to hungry people, other people wrote their own sad stories (many homeless people wrote on the cards), and a small few even offered assistance and contact information.

The cards were displayed in a tent. They were hung from the ceiling and connected with binder rings. The tent itself was decorated in bright colors and had a candy print for the back wall.

Emily’s contribution to the exhibit.

This exhibit was part of the Museum’s First Friday event, which means the exhibit (and the rest of the museum) was free to the public. I’d never been in the UMOCA before so I took this opportunity to look around and see what the museum had to offer.

One of the things we explored was the fax exhibit. This had a lot of interesting individual faxes that artists and other collaborators had contributed. We also explored a bunch of technology exhibits. A lot of them were interactive. A few of them were even games.

This was a technology exhibit that featured a loop of video featuring people “melting down” over technology.

Let Them Eat Cupcakes was a great introduction to the UMOCA. I look forward to more fun here in the future!

Currently: Spending too much time on Pinterest and watching Community

Bedelia

The less literal and fictional Amelia

Tag Archives: Salt Lake City

Snowcones, Barbie, and DIY

Picnic your way through Summer: Antelope Island and Willard Bay

Let Them Eat Cupcakes!