thankful thursday

(as someone who lacks a certain amount of creativity, i definitely did not come up with thankful thursday blogging all on my lonesome... but i'm definitely stealing adopting it. because everybody needs a bit more thankfulness in their lives, no?)


1. i am thankful for people who know how to do my hair.
because guess what. i am not one of them. unfortunately i was not blessed with the skill-set to have amazing hair everyday, but today i got a haircut. from meredith b. who used to live in my ward. i love spending a little bit of my day with her, she's great (ps if you want her info, let me know. she is really good at what she does).

2. i am thankful for colorful pens.
i have never been one of those girls who used colorful pens (well, maybe for a year there when colored gel pens were all the rage circa 2000). in fact, i was a bit judgmental when i saw girls using brightly colored pens to take notes (i know, i'm a jerk). but. then my black pen ran out and and my life went technicolor:

black notes

blue notes

green notes

purple notes

and moving into the most current phase: teal notes

i love it.

3. i am thankful for a clean sink.
it is no secret around my part of the woods that i hate doing dishes. i would rather scrub a toilet with my own hair than do dishes. i hate, detest, loathe and abhor doing dishes. so, so much. but yesterday i forced myself to stand in front of the sink for an inordinate amount of time to do the dang dishes. and today i have a clean sink. sigh. it felt so, so good to wake up to that.

4. i am thankful for michael's collection of jackets.
the boy has too many. so i borrow them frequently so they all get a little bit of love. call me crazy, but wearing his oversized clothing is the best. sweats. t-shirts. JACKETS. mmm... i'm wearing one right now and feeling quite cozy. they just make clothes for guys different than they do for girls and i like the difference every once-in-awhile.

5. i am thankful for crunchy leaves and weather that is cold enough to make me wear mittens.
fall is great, no? byu football games, picnics in the canyon, the smell of some rogue fire burning somewhere... i love it. it makes me so happy to wake up every morning. i especially love it when it's overcast... oh geez, just give me some soup and i am the happiest thing you've ever seen.

6. i am thankful for friendly strangers.
i have realized lately that my smile that i hand out to strangers looks a little like an unfriendly grimace. so instead of grimacing at people i randomly make eye contact with, i have started giving them the full-toothed smile. why? because i happened to walk by a friendly freshman boy who looked way to eager to be walking around byu campus the other day. and when he sent me his stranger smile, it was a full-toothed "there is nothing i'd rather be doing than smiling at you, stranger" smile. so i've been trying to pass along the freshman-boy smile to my strangers.

jack o.

in the spirit of halloween, me and michael tackled the great halloween tradition of pumpkin carving (because i am just so in love with all things halloween. poor boy. i don't think he knew what he was getting into when he bought that ring). while he was off in the testing center, i went to smith's to get the supplies:

i finally found a good use for all of the wallstreet journals lying around our house...

and then may or may not have had a half hour dance party by myself while i waited for him to finish his test.

cutie husband carving his cutie pumpkin

guess who carved which pumpkin!
hint: the one on the right was carved by the one
who loves byu and saving money...

ps: michael made a deal with me that he would dress up for halloween if i finish the rest of the thank you letters from our wedding by saturday (yes, we still have some left... shameful, i know). which means that FRANKENSTEIN & BRIDE are coming to town in exactly 1 week :)

a very bieber christmas

what way to better spend the holidays than listening to justin bieber's softly changing voice singing about the most wonderful time of the year (the other most wonderful time of the year)?

i can't wait.

ps: thank you, audrey, for bringing this to my attention. i anticipate that my yuletide experience will be greatly enhanced by the biebs.

the most wonderful time of the year:

HALLOWEEN.

call me crazy, but i love it. way too much. when i was just a little thing (think 10 awkward years old, somewhere along the lines of this:

hot, no?)

i started reading nancy drew mysteries. the boxcar children mysteries. and yes, i dabbled in some goosebumps. around this time, i fell in love with all things creepy. and halloween became a time when i could let that little bit of crazy out of the box.

today i still love love love it. back at the end of september this year i put up some red gelly hands in our window that look like bloody handprints. the next week a girl from our ward told me that her little four-year-old daughter saw them and asked, "mamma, why is it like someone died?"

whoops...

oh well. my love for halloween is no respecter of sunbeams. and this year i might have gone a bit nuts, it being the first halloween that i've had a space that is alllll mine to decorate. poor michael.

this is the best. white candles dipped in red candle wax. genius.

who doesn't love fake spiders? excluding arachnophobics, of course...

yes, that is a string of led eyeball lghts.

i can't wait for trick or treaters! we're gonna scare them so bad.... muwahaha!

dark mark

the other night i was walking past my mirror when i noticed something suspicious on my back. something that hadn't been there the last time i checked. it was a brand. new. creepy. mole.

i shudder.

well i might have freaked out a bit... unfortunately my discovery took place moments before i climbed into my bed. so naturally i fell asleep thinking about melanoma. and brightly colored banbandas to cover my chemotherapied head. and if me and michael would have time to squeeze in a baby before my untimely death. and my widower husband at age 23.

hi, my name is dani and i am a hypochondriac.

the very next morning i made an appointment with the dermatologist the moment the sun was in the sky and then skipped off to class filled with a new-found resolve to take tim mcgraw's advice.

by the time my appointment rolled around the next morning at 11:10, i was fully ready to go look for that bull named fu man chu, completely braced for devastating news. and after 30 minutes of waiting, i finally met the doctor, who showed absolutely zero signs of concern. all he did was numb me up, cut that creeper off of my back, slap on a tiny little bandaid and send me out the door. i have to admit, after 48 hours of frantically imagining the moment of devastation, it was pretty anticlimactic. but guess what, i'm very happy about that.

so here's my public service announcement for the day/week/month/year/lifetime: WEAR SUNSCREEN!! i wish i would have paid attention to this announcement when i was younger. and if you happen to have been dumb like me back in the day (or even if you weren't, actually): check your body for little black creepers. you do not want to find one of those guys too late.

just do it.

real great weekend

hi all you people we love :)

did anyone else have an awesome weekend? because we definitely did.

it all started with an amaaaazing byu victory over utah state.
we didn't think it could happen going into the 4th quarter (and one of us--the male one of us--was super grumpy because of it), but.

riley nelson and his luscious locks lead us to victory.

and yes, we stormed the field. against utah state. shameful, yes. but i figured that since i'm graduating in december i probably wouldn't get another chance to walk on lavelle's field.why not, right?

the storming begins.

me and jill get in on the action.

hello blurry cody hoffman.

this game was followed by a 6-page annotated bibliography that i slammed out in 1.5 hours (least fun part of the weekend) in time to be emailed to my professor. yes, i procrastinate. don't judge.

next morning: mountain biking nirvana. sigh. i love this trail.

pretty orangey leaves :)

and the yellow guys.

i know this picture looks like me and michael are getting
zapped onto a spaceship, but that just isn't true, promise.

and the mountain biking was followed by the best bbq that i've ever had in my life and some really really great face time (via tv) with some men who really know what they are talking about. general conference. one of my favorite things out there. and yes, i might have slept through (quite) a few of the talks, but i am excited to read every word that was said in the very near future. i. love. conference.

more fun? yes. more fun. this weekend was jam packed with it.

a two-day everton party complete with a consumption of massive quantities of sugar, watching inordinate amounts of college football, gooooood sunday dinner, making fun of the liberal in the family, an expedition to iggy's, lots of time playing catch (which i may or may not have looked real bad doing), and searching for the perfect car for jackson hole next week.

all in all, a fantastic weekend and i'm sad that it's going to be over in a few hours.
sigh.
monday is coming too soon.