Yep I Know How to Sew

I have been looking for a new talent/hobby for the past year. I wanted to try flower arranging but evidently you have to go to floral school for that and I think I paid less to get my masters. I looked into cake decorating but thought that might be too pricey on my hips. So I got into running as my new talent but kept getting injured. And then it came to me....

I wanted to learn how to sew. Sure I sewed a dress in Young Women's for a Personal Progress goal but I am pretty sure my mom just did it for me. I also made a baby blanket for my first born child. He/She would know how hard I worked on it because I put blood, sweat, and tears into making that thing. You can even find my blood on the blanket! But this was all amateur stuff. I wanted to learn how to sew cute things! I have several friends that sew cute things all the time and I wanted to be like them. So I got a sewing machine for Christmas and some essential sewing supplies and I was ready. My first task was to sew a patchwork bag from a pattern my friend, Sarah gave me for Christmas. Seemed easy enough.

Well two hours later and a lot of "redoing", I was done with the first step! And then came the pleats. Pleats evidently are not usually something a beginner starts with. But my roommate, Cami, who is also a talented seamstress was able to help me through the pleat stage of my project. After two days and quite a bit of help from Cami, I had my completed bag! It is more a summer bag so I won't be using it anytime soon, but it was fun to make. I signed up for a beginning sewing class called, "Ready, Set, Sew" so maybe in that class I will start with some more basic stuff and stay away from pleats for a bit. I must be good though, I have already had a request to sew a friend's wedding dress. That will probably be my next project...

My little display: The finished bag, my new sewing machine, and my first pattern!

Patchwork bag up close. I may start my own line of patchwork bags. Let me know if you would like to purchase one!

2011: It can only get better!

Well I must admit 2010 was not the most exciting of years so I was more than happy to get that year out of the way and move on to what could only be better, 2011. But I didn't want to just sit and wait for the year to hurry and move on, I had to celebrate a little! So on the last day of 2010 I strapped on my new snowshoes and went off with my friend, Suzanne, to explore new land up Little Cottonwood Canyon and make new friends. Well it was bloody cold, my nose hairs froze, and I had a little health issue so we had to turn around earlier than everyone else, but I think we still had fun. I got a new Facebook friend out of it, so that makes it a positive experience right?

After an afternoon in single digit temperatures, the night heated up with dinner at The Bombay House, the best Indian restaurant ever! Lots of fun friends, good food, and a waiter who flirted with us and was half my height, made for a spectacular night. And the fun just kept comin'! After dinner we had a billion parties all demanding our appearance. We tried to get to as many as we could before we said good bye to 2010. We managed to hit three parties and rang in the New Year with a bunch of people we didn't know, good times!

Suzanne, Mary, and I in the car on our way to one of the many parties we appeared at that night! It is hard being wanted in so many places.

So we are 5 days into 2011 and I have to say not too much has happened, but I have high hopes! I posted this Mormon Message on my Facebook page but I want to post it here too. I just loved the message of not looking back. I think I do that a lot, look back at what was good and wish it could be like that again. I really hope this year I can look to the future and not live in the past but make each day I am presently living in a great day. I love the idea of agency and how I can decide each day if I am going to have a good day or a bad day. I will admit I chose to have bad days kind of a lot in 2010. But I am looking forward, remembering that 33 is the year for me and I will not look behind thee!

SNOW DAY

I realize this post is a tad late, but I still wanted to document the first day in like 30 years my school district canceled school and had a Snow Day! It was the last day before Christmas Break. I was up getting ready to go to school noticing it was quite snowy and I had better hurry since it would definitely take longer than the 10 minutes it usually takes me to get to school. All of a sudden I started getting calls, "Are the rumors true?" I had no idea what they were talking about and right then the radio announced, "Nebo School District is canceling school today!" I was thrilled not to have to drive in the awful storm, but a little bummed they couldn't have canceled like an hour earlier so I could have just slept in. The teachers were calling me a little sad to miss all the Christmas fun that was planned for that day. And of course we will have to make it up, but baby it was cold outside that day and I am glad I got to stay home!


This shows the snowfall when I got up to get ready that morning. It snowed for a good four more hours after this, definitely deserving of a Snow Day!

A Very Merry Weekend

This weekend was full of Christmas joy! I attended a production of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens on Friday night. It was in a very small playhouse but they sure do a good job of using the space they have to put on an amazing show. The man who played Scrooge played grumpy and mean well and was just as good being giddy and happy at the end, he was cute. I had actually forgotten I had said I would go to the play with some friends so when Cami asked me what time I wanted to leave I was quite surprised to find out I had plans. I had already made plans to sit on the couch and watch television all night, so these surprise plans were much more inviting. To put just the right touch on a wonderful Christmas celebration when we came out of the playhouse, the actors and actresses were singing carols to us as a light snow trickled to the ground. It was very movie-like.
The Christmas merriment continued on Saturday morning by attending the Ward Christmas breakfast. It was jolly good fun to sit with friends and laugh and see my cute Sunbeams sit on Santa's lap. That night I spread Christmas cheer by taking care of my friend's dog. We watched the Christmas classic, Transformers 2. (Okay so this would be the part that was not so Christmasy, but I was serving and we should all serve our neighbors at Christmastime.)

To finish the weekend off right Cami and I got up before sunrise to make the trek to Salt Lake in the rain, sleet, and hail (well really just rain, but it sounds so dramatic to add the other two) and see the Mormon Tabernacle Christmas Concert featuring David Archuleta. This year with girls of all ages dying to get tickets we were very lucky to get some Sunday tickets. I have to admit after hearing David sing and see his cute smile, I may be a little smitten myself. The MOTAB is always amazing and David has quite the voice. It was a great Sunday morning. I made it back to church in time to spend one last Sunday with my Sunbeams before they head off to CTR 4 in January and I start with a whole new set of unruly 3 year olds to mold. We had a lesson on the birth of Christ and it was so fun to hear my cute Sunbeams tell the story of the birth of Christ and they always surprise me by how much they know.

So as I prepare to leave the rain, snow, and cold of Utah behind and have a beach Christmas in Florida, I have to say this weekend did make me feel merry and bright!

Rain couldn't keep thousands of people from pouring into the Conference Center to see and hear teen cutie, David Archuleta. Cami and I were there for the MOTAB though, not David. :)

Here we are after the concert! Do you like the new rain-dos we are sporting? It was worth it!

I realize this is a picture of the big screen in the Conference Center but I was too far from the real thing and I just had to capture how stinkin' cute and happy David is!

Here are my cute Sunbeams! They have tons of energy and the attention span of a fly, but I love them dearly and will miss them!

33 is the Year for Me!

I am sure you are all anxiously awaiting a blog about my trip to Greece but that blog will take more time than I have available at the moment, so you are just going to have to wait a little longer. (I do have some pictures and commentary about my trip in a photo album on Facebook to tide you over until then.)

I thought I would make sure I document the most important day in all of our lives, my birth! Admit it, your life wouldn't be the same if you hadn't met Angela Day and on November 30th, 1977 my journey towards knowing all of my devoted readers began.

I have always enjoyed my birthday, a day dedicated entirely to people paying attention to me, who wouldn't love it? Although, since I have hit the 30s I will admit I haven't been too excited and for some reason 33 has been really hard for me to say, getting closer and closer to 35 then 40! Ugh! Now having just gotten back from Greece I felt that was a pretty great birthday present to myself. The guy that checked me through customs even wished me a Happy Birthday since it was a few short days away, nice huh? So nothing too grand for the real day, dinner with a few friends and a little party after.

My principal did manage to announce it was my birthday in morning announcements, so all day I had kids wishing me Happy Birthday and trying to guess how old I was, that was fun. Fortunately no one guessed over 26, man I love kids! Then some good friends and I went to a yummy restaurant, Texas Roadhouse. To celebrate your birthday this place makes you ride a saddle while the whole place sings to you on your birthday, something I was super excited about, but sadly I didn't have time to ride the saddle since we had to get home for my party. Big bummer! ;)

At my party I displayed my Greece pictures and some Greece candy for others to enjoy, had a great time laughing and catching up with friends, it was a good time! Happy Birthday to me!

Now at the beginning of the day one of my good friends at work asked how old I was to which I forced myself to say, "33." She told me her little motto when she was that age was, "33, the year for me!" We joked about it but the more I have thought about it, the more I really like it. So my goal for my 33rd year is to make the year for me, in all aspects of my life: career, having adventures with friends, serving in my church more, putting myself out there, doing great, crazy, exciting things. So hopefully I will have lots of future blog posts about this year being MY year!
And now for some pictures...
Taylor Lauttner was nice and stopped by work to wish me well on my special day. He stayed all day actually and kept freaking me out every time I walked into my office! But it was a good freak out.

Here are Suzanne and I at the yummy restaurant posing with the cute card she gave me. It might just be the cutest card I have ever seen!

So when you turn 33 you don't blow out wussy birthday candles, you blow out honker candles like this one! It was close, but I blew it out so my birthday wish should come true...

My friends think I rock! I think they rock too!

Here are some longtime friends, cute Dave, Boyce and Suzanne. Boyce and Suzanne are expecting a baby soon and I am still crossing my fingers they name her after me!

Lovely ladies that stopped by to say hi and give me a birthday squeeze.

The cutest roommate ever! Cami set up the dinner, made the yummy cake and all while conquering world hunger at the same time! She is truly amazing!

My dear friend Sarah had to show up after everyone else had left so she could spend some quality time with just me, she is so thoughtful!

Pre-Thanksgiving Stretcher

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday! I love the idea of spending a day with loved ones and just eating all day. Plus Thanksgiving dinner has all my favorite food groups: potatoes and gravy, bread, and pie! The funny thing is even though it is my favorite holiday I usually don't spend it with my family because they are too far away. I usually go over to the house of a friend and enjoy some yummy food but it's not quite the same as spending the day with loved ones. Often I will spend Thanksgiving weekend by myself which sounds depressing but sometimes it's nice to have some quality Angela time. :)

Well this year I am changing things up a bit and I am going to Athens, Greece for Thanksgiving! (I'm sure I will have many blog posts about the trip in the near future.) But I didn't want to miss out on the yummy food so I improvised! I organized a pre-Thanksgiving stretcher with some dear friends. Usually we get together to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving for our dear Canadian friend, Sarah. We just got together about a month later this time. Same fun friends, same yummy food, same silly traditions. It was such a great Thanksgiving and I was able to enjoy loved ones, a delicious Thanksgiving feast, and I still get to go to Greece!

Boyce is carving the turkey that I baked!!
(Okay Cami helped me and there wasn't too much to do to it, but I did take out all the yucky insides and butter the baby up!)

Here's the loved ones! One of our traditions is to write what we are thankful for on a slip of paper and then we draw them out of a bowl and read them. Mine said I was thankful for DVR, Zac Efron, and great friends who love me. I really do have amazing, loving friends!

The kiddie table. Although the kiddie table had better manners than the adult table.

Here is my favorite little turkey, Jacob. We had a great time at the party together and he is just dang cute!

Happy Halloween, I guess...

I was realizing the other day it had been quite some time since I had posted anything new on my blog which meant nothing all that exciting had been happening in my life. Well with a weekend of Halloween festivities how could I not post about the great thrills of dressing up, eating lots of candy, and parties, parties, parties! The only problem is I just don't seem to get as excited about Halloween as I used to. It is kind of a drag to dress up at school and you feel like a loser if you don't go to some Halloween social event, so I force myself to do all these things. To add to the pain, I was sick this weekend also. Of course any other person would have said I am too sick to go to another party where I talk to the same people and enjoy the same activities I do at every single event. The only difference is, we are wearing some silly, scary, or stupid get up. But not Angela Day, she is social girl! She will be there rain or shine with a stuffy nose and sore throat, you can't keep her down!

I feel like I am sounding a little cynical in this post and while I am trying to convey I wasn't all that thrilled to celebrate Halloween this year, lets see if I can turn this downer post into one of merriment and joy. I had big dreams and plans of being Raggedy Ann (again) this year but my principal supplied me with a much cuter outfit. This year I was a bee, a cute little Honey Bee. At school there were about 10 other little girls dressed as bees. I pondered gathering them all together and taking a picture with them, but then thought I might feel a little silly- the big honker bee with all the cute little bees. Saturday night I went to the big Halloween partay that is thrown for all the singles in my neighborhood every year as a bee and believe it or not, I was the only one! So either I was super creative or being a bee is only for small aged children. Oh well, I'm young at heart!

May I share again that while I was not feeling all that great the minute I starting seeing my friends, my attitude changed and it was fun to see all the different costumes. We have this guy in our neighborhood that is like 7 ft tall (he played volleyball for BYU) and he was an Avatar, very clever. Also we had the Obama family visit our party and a whole bunch of other creative ideas, but these two were my favorite. And the best part of the whole night, there was dancing! I love to dance and DJ Dave did not disappoint with some great songs I could rock out to. So while I may have not wanted to go, I am always glad I do. I saw great friends, ate some yummy gummy bears, and got to dance, dance, dance.

Here I am, Angela the bee! I'm trying out my new camera, thanks parents!

Cami and I arriving to the party, buzzzzz!

Suzanne, Candice, and I getting our dance on!

And now that Halloween is out of the way, on to my favorite holiday... Thanksgiving! Of course this year I will be spending Thanksgiving with the Greeks in Athens, but we will save that for another post. :)