A Christmas Project

For my mom's Christmas present I told her I would paint this cabinet that she's had for years and years. It started out looking like this:

Yeah....not great.

After days of sanding, priming, and painting, I managed to get it looking like this:

Woo! I think it was worth it. Merry Christmas, Mom!

Manhattan Math

Beautiful architecture +

One giant park +

A city-sized temple =

Beautiful day in Manhattan

(Now that's math I can get behind!)

Your Once Upon a Time is Now!

Dear Reader,

We had our Young Women in Excellence activity tonight. The theme was "Your Once Upon a Time is Now," based on the talk "Your Happily Ever After," given by President Uchtdorf in the April 2010 General Conference.

Our spread.

My second counselor made this cake! It was sooo amazing. And so perfect for our theme. (And it tasted delicious too!)

Little crown favors. (And the little tulle bags have mini "glass" slippers and raspberry M&Ms.)

Luckily the Relief Society had tons of lace we could borrow. And a piano. And a podium. And electric tea lights. And flowers. . . . Basically, thank goodness for the Relief Society. 

Our girls displayed some of the projects and experiences they had done with Personal Progress this year. (One of our girls even finished the program!!! I'm so happy for her!)

My first counselor (and friend) Kerri and I are thrilled it's all over. 

But look at their faces. All the work was worth it for them. :)

A-a-a-and two more:

As usual, Elder Holland was one of my favorite speakers at conference. The other was President Uchtdorf. Gotta love that man! :)

Two of my favorite conference quotes:

Dear Reader,

As part of my project for the value integrity (Personal Progress, what up!) I decided to make some memes of my favorite quotes from this last General Conference. 

Was conference as awesome for you as it was for me? Oh I hope so. 

Do the creep!

Dear Reader,

Last weekend I went to DC for the National Book Festival where I saw Lois Lowry, Jerry and Eileen Spinelli, Jeff Kinney, Jewel, and R.L. Stine.

In honor of Mr. Stine, I took a creepy stalker picture of him and Jewel. Jewel probably wouldn't appreciate it. R.L. (or Bob, as it turns out his first name is) probably would. I mean, he's kind of made his living off the creepy.

All those inspirational authors made me want to go home and write. Which is weird . . . because I'm not much of a writer. 

Although, in all fairness, I haven't written a word since getting home. Meh. Maybe one day. 

That night, Lisa and I made an army of monkeys. 

Aaaaand . . . we ate them.

Yum!

The City

By David Ignatow

If flowers want to grow
right out of the concrete sidewalk cracks
I'm going to bend down to smell them.