A note on fashion...

Dressing fashionably is tough. Some days, it's hard enough just to put together a regular outfit, let alone trying to mix it up and try out something new. It takes courage to take a risk on something new. Sometimes it ends up being fabulous, and sometimes it just doesn't work out. You have to weigh the pros and cons of each situation. Living where we do, it's sometimes hard to find the latest trends that one might see in magazines or on TV. Also, we don't always have the money to buy new things. For example, rather than buying a flower headband, I pinned a flower pin that I had to a stretchy headband. BAM! New headband and I didn't pay anything for it.

Sometimes, however, you really just can't replace the actual thing. I was reminded of this during one of my classes today. A young man was wearing a suit coat with jeans and a casual button-up shirt. However, he was wearing a churchy suit coat, rather than a blazer, which is the usual article for such a combination. This being the case, he looked a bit awkwardly dressed, sort of like he wasn't sure where he was going today and just threw on a bunch of clothing. I pondered on why the choice in jacket should make such a difference and I decided that the blazer works better than the suit coat for two reasons: first, fabrication. Generally, the blazers you see in casual situations aren't smooth, silky fabrics. They're usually rougher fabrics with interesting texture. Second, fit. The jacket that the well-meaning boy in my class was wearing was relatively loose fitting. He may have gotten away with it had the jacket not looked so awkwardly large. I sort of wanted to pull him aside and say "Oh, dear....no". I do sort of feel for him, though. In my quest for originality of dress, I've certainly had my failures from time to time, which is why, despite the awkwardness of the faux pas, I congratulate this young fellow for his boldness in attempting a new trend. But, seriously, he shouldn't wear that again.

The Joys of Chubbuck

On Sunday, Amanda, Bergs, and I journeyed northward into Idaho to visit a former Primary teacher/Young Women's leader in Chubbuck. Sister Steph was gracious enough to let us enter her super cute home and visit her and her cute family for a few hours. Seriously, her house is like the cutest house ever. I wish I had taken pictures of it. Here are the pictures I did take, however.
Here we are with our goody bags that Steph gave us, full of awesomely cute stuff.


These are a couple of cute hair things with a box of wonderful Canadian Smarties. Canadian Smarties are kind of like m&m's, but better. The chocolate tastes like Sixlet chocolate. I told Steph that I remembered buying Smarties in Canada and how delicious they were, and she opened her pantry and had a huge giant box of them! So I got some Canadian Smarties.

Here are the very cute magnets that Steph let me take from her giant magnet board. The green one is a tiny dress with a tiny hanger (so cute!) and the black and white one is actually a matchbook notepad.

This is Steph's super cute magnet board. It's made of metal screwed to a frame of wall moulding. So awesome! All together, it was a really fun time and I hope we go back again.

Update: Numbering the Days of the Deathcab

Those of you who are familiar with my vehicle, the Deathcab, may be surprised to discover that the ol' Deathcab was never intended to be the car to carry me throughout my entire driving lifetime. I know, it's a shocker. For a while, I've been saying that I planned to buy my dad's car but it's been taking a long time to get that all together, mainly because I kept putting off the necessary inspection and registration. You will all be proud to know that my prospective car has been inspected, and we should be getting the registration done on Monday. It's sort of a weird situation because this is actually the car that I drove in high school (I just didn't own it). Since it's my high school car, it has all these awesome stickers that I got from seminary. For those of you who attended Logan High: "amped", "surrender", and "BOM". I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to try and scrape off all those super-rad stickers. If nothing else, I definitely need to get rid of the "KCI Rocks!" vanity plate....that really needs to go.

Other questions have plagued my mind with the passing of the Deathcab ownership: am I still the Deathcab's Cutie, or does this title transfer to the next owner of the car (my sister)? Of course, this leads to another question: if I lose my title, do I have to change the title of my blog? It took me a long time to come up with this one; I don't know if I could come up with one equally awesome. Man, I had no idea there were so many complications involved with selling my car!

Addendum

After discussing a recent blog post with a good friend of mine, I came to the conclusion that I may have insulted an entire group of lovely young fellows. I decided to write this amendment to inform the masculine masses that I'm not as stuck up as I may have appeared. For your information, I would not hold it against a worthy young man if he were not a genius. I only meant that I would like to date someone who had different interests/knowledge that I have, demonstrated by a moment of me feeling like an "idiot". That is all I meant. To make up for this, I'm including a list of other things that I find attractive:

1. Good hair
2. The ability to make me laugh
3. Handyman skills
4. Affectionate
5. The ability to quote movies

Once again.....these are not requirements. They are just ideas, like bonuses. Having clarified myself, I now close this blog post feeling a little bit less like a jerk and a little more like a normal single Mormon girl.

What's this? Happy Anniversary? I'll take it.

I got a card in the mail today from my place of employment, good ol' JCP. Not from corporate JCP; they only send information for stockholders or my 401k. This was from the local store. I was confused before I opened it because the only cards I ever get from JCP are for my birthday, which is 5 months from now. Taking the card from the envelope and saw the words "Happy Anniversary". I was perplexed for a moment because, as you know, I am not married. I soon realized that the "anniversary" to which the card referred was my anniversary working at the JCP. This month I will have been employed at JCP for a total of 6 years. 6 years! I look back at who I was six years ago and it's a total difference. Of course I wouldn't say that working at JCP has shaped my character and made me who I am today, but I've definitely grown as a result of working there. My supervisor, Jayne, likes to remind me that I've turned into a total fashionista while working at JCP, and I think she's right. For example, six years ago I would never even consider wearing colored tights or red plaid skinny jeans. Other things I wouldn't have done six years ago? Leave my social bubble, wear even relatively dramatic makeup, flirt, and of course write goofy songs and sing them at Village Inn and other locations around town. I guess you could say that I've grown more during my years at JCP than any other period in my life. Of course, it just so happens that most people change a lot during their early 20s regardless of whether they work at JCP or not, but that just isn't as sentimental a thought. So here's to my 6 years at JCP...and here's hoping that I get a new job before the 7th comes to an end because, let's face it. Soon I'll be a college graduate and should really try to move on ;)

My Mind Rebels at Stagnation

Tonight I saw "Sherlock Holmes" for the second time (totally awesome and you should all see it), and I came to an interesting conclusion. I am attracted to arrogantly intelligent men. I suppose I've always known this, but for some reason it clicked during this movie and I was able to provide myself with the clever phrasing of my condition. I began thinking about this the other day while reading Nikki's blog about her attraction to cocky guys. I'm not attracted to guys who are merely cocky; men wrapped up in their own appearances or general awesomeness are rarely worth involving in an intelligent conversation either because they can't focus on it or simply lack the ability. Of course, I also don't want some guy who just spouts out knowledge without any connection to the conversation at hand. There's a happy medium between the know-it-all and the guy who likes to pretend that he's not smart, an infuriating sort of modesty that you really want to admire but can't quite bring yourself to.

I have a couple of models for this mysterious and most likely non-existent enigma of masculinity: Sherlock Holmes (as played by Robert Downey, Jr.; sadly I have never actually read the stories) and Benjamin Franklin Gates (as played by Nicholas Cage in the "National Treasure" movies). These men, albeit fictional characters, have a sort of off-handed way of making their intelligence known. Sherlock Holmes uses extreme attention to detail as the basis of his deductive reasoning, but what makes him different from other simply observant characters (like, say, Shawn Spencer) is that he combines the details with his extensive knowledge and comes to a conclusion by way of his genius. Of course, it doesn't hurt that his period clothing, carelessly mussed hair, and strategically unshaven facial hair make him next to devastatingly handsome. While Nicholas Cage isn't nearly as handsome as Robert Downey, Jr., his character does have a vast amount of historical knowledge that he also uses to concoct plans such as stealing the Declaration of Independence or sneaking a peek at the matching Resolute desks. These men win because of their minds. Even when Holmes wins a fight, it's because he has evaluated his opponents' weaknesses and taken advantage of them with efficiency.

Now, I realize that this is asking a lot of the menfolk out there. I'm not saying he has to be a genius, and he doesn't even have to know the same things that I know. In fact, I would love it if I could actually feel stupid around a guy for just a minute. Let me make my meaning on this absolutely clear. I am not saying that I am so much smarter than every guy that they are all idiots. I am not saying that I am not able to have great conversations with guys. And I am absolutely not saying that I want a guy to treat me like I'm an idiot or make me feel bad about myself. What I mean is that I would love for a guy to go off on a subject for just a minute about a topic way over my head. This probably sounds weird, but I really respect intelligent guys. I've been told before that I am a smart girl. Whether or not that's actually true is debatable, but I've also heard that guys can be intimidated by smart girls. I would love to let the tables be turned on me, not to appear like some weak-minded female, but to let the guy know that he definitely has the upper hand in some part of the relationship. This is all starting to sound a little crazy. I really hope that my readers will take what I'm saying with a grain of salt and look for the meaning of my rant rather than hold my own words against me.

One more note: I know you're probably all going to tell me that I'm being too picky and that I shouldn't overlook a perfectly great guy because he doesn't perfectly fit the mold. Don't worry; I have no intention of turning this into some unbreakable rule that all guys must measure up to, that would be ridiculous. I'm just ranting about the possibilities of the ideal.