So I was talking to my favorite Aunt and found out that my cousin doesn't so much know how to study and she just started college. So I decided to make her some study guides. I had a little too much fun with it. But here is what I came up with:
I made all the graphics on picnik.com, A site which I highly recommend. It's really fun to just play around with if you get bored.
I downloaded all the fonts from a couple different sites. That was a whole other kind of fun.
Anyway.....Just being all excited about my little printables. Hey maybe I'll make more now. Hmmmm
Today I had to turn in my first story for my reporting class. For those of you who are unaware, my reporting class is not just a class, we actually produce a news show. Thankfully our first story got to be for practice and so it wasn't aired today. Although I must say...I'm pretty proud of how my story turned out.
Anyways...this story really starts on Wednesday at 12:45 at the story meeting.
CUE: Wednesday, classroom, 12:45, me prepared with two stories to pitch.
CUE BRO CURTIS: Who has to run to a 1 o'clock class?
CUE: My hand raising
CUE BRO CURTIS: Alright Jocelyn, Let's start with you.
CUE: Dry mouth, sweaty palms, butterflies fluttering around knots in stomach...
Story 1: TSA has released new guidelines for children so that they won't have to take off their shoes and they won't get patted down as often.
CUE BRO. CURTIS: Yeah TSA isn't going to talk to you.
Story 2: A new study just came out that said that certain shows are bad for a child's brain so I...
CUE BRO. CURTIS: I like Spongebob. Alright who's next?
(Just to clarify...the study was based on kids reactions after watching SpongeBob...my teacher doesn't have tourettes or anything.)
And that was that.
CUE: Sitting down in my 1 o'clock Russian class to take my first 200 level Russian exam
CUE: Me unable to hold back tears (of nervousness?? Frustration??)
CUE: Me determining that college and a degree is useless and I should drop out....Until
CUE CHRIS WORDS OF WISDOM: Babe, all you have to do is make it through today, then we can look at our options.
And from that I was off to get my interviews and B Roll for my story.
My first stop was Dr. Clyde Robinson's office. Dr. Robinson is a professor of child development and was kind enough to not only interview with me, but he made a powerpoint just for me to explain the specific effects of fast paced cartoons on a child's brain.
The goal for a good story is to have two interviews. I had one now...and no idea where to get the other one. The plan was to do my stand up ( part of the story where I am on camera giving a fact) at a park. So me and my wonderful advanced reporter, who was helping through this crazy ordeal, went off to pioneer park and hoped that maybe I could get one of my neighbors to interview with me.
CUE: Driving down the street to pioneer park.
CUE: Cute family playing in their front yard.
CUE: Me creepin on said cute family.
"Hey Sarah, how awkward would it be for me to just ask this random family for an interview??"
CUE SARAH: Doo ittt!
CUE: I become all professional and whatnot
"Excuse me. Hi, my name is Jocelyn Langford, I'm a reporter for BYU 11News. (So legit) I'm doing a story on the effects that some cartoons have on children's brains. Would you mind if I interviewed you?"
CUE: Nicest lady in the whole world agreeing to let us interview her, film her children playing, and film them watching TV inside her house.
And off to the park we go. Naturally once we get out of the car it starts to rain. But that doesn't stop us. We head straight to the playground to get a great stand up and even got some footage of kids playing.
CUE: Back to the newsroom, 7:45 PM, ingesting my video onto the computer and learning how to use Avid.
CUE: Back at home, 11:30PM, sitting in bed working on my script while Chris is asleep.
CUE: Back in the newsroom, 6:30AM, Script still not done.
The 8 o' clock story meeting verified that I was doing a straight package (anchor lead, voice overs, interviews, stand up, and anchor tag, a total of 1min 20 second tops).
My script was certainly a work in progress and Sarah was helping me fine tune it. When we got to a point that I was sure it was my best script writing I ran to the assignment desk to get Brother Curtis to approve it so I could record my voice overs. I made it to the assignment desk at 8:40AM in hopes of making my 8:45 script deadline.
CUE BRO CURTIS: I really think you need to reorganize the order of your story. Make it more about the family so people can relate and less about the hard facts of the study.
Back to the drawing board.
Take 2: 9:20AM
CUE BRO CURTIS: Let's change this random word and add some flowery language and rephrase this and make your story much longer than it needs to be so that you have to go back and edit it down later mwahahaha (I'm just ad libbing here)
"Jocelyn this last sentence needs some work. You are just repeating what you have already said."
Take 75: 9:30AM
CUE BRO CURTIS: (Interrupted for 5 min by phone call) Alright Jocelyn this looks good, let me just approve it and...WAIT...your story is a minute and 36 seconds...thats way to long. You need to go cut it.
Take 478: 9:40AM
CUE BRO CURTIS: (Helping another student for a year and a half)
CUE MY MIND: Thinking of every 4 letter word I know (lard, boat, park, flop, turn...what kind of 4 letter words were you thinking???)
CUE BRO CURTIS: Well I still think this last line is too repetitive but you need to go get to work so you can get done on time so I'll approve it.
CUE MY MIND: freaking lard boat park flop turn!!!!! Crap I'm gonna cry...no I'm too mad...nope I'm tearing up..NO! I'm boatin' mad!
After that, due to my awesome recording abilities and my mad fast editing skills I made my 10:45 'Everything has to be done now' deadline, and went to work on the radio version of my story.
Too bad I didn't actually remember how to do the radio version. Thankfully the nice little radio man made it there by noon when the show was pretend airing.
CUE: More parkin' complications saving my sound bytes.
But it all paid off. I got an email at around 4:18 PM that said
"We are using your story for the 4:30 newscast for Classical 89"
CUE: angels singing.
Well Someone liked my story apparently. Sure it was on a Provo only radio station where they only play classical music but I'm sure someone heard it..
Well decide for yourself. Here is my story that pretend aired. But don't judge. I'm still learning. Oh and on top of the interview imagine one of those little bars that tells the person's name and occupation (mother, professor, reporter, etc.)
Well it won't let me post the radio story on here because it is just audio but if you really want to hear it email me. If you don't have my email you probably really don't want to hear it...missing out...
In light of recent events I have been thinking a lot lately and school doesn't even start for another week. Ha but no really......I have been thinking about life. Watch out fellas, I'm about to get deep.
I have been alive for 20 years 7 months and 4 days ( and some hours and minutes). I could be gone from this life at any minute. I'm not trying to be morbid, it just honestly makes me think:
what have i done in my life that is worth anything??
have I made the most of every moment?
If I died today or tomorrow or even next week, would I look back and be happy with the life that I lived? I know that I am young and I still have time to live all my dreams, but what if I don't? What if today was my last day? This is coming across a little more depressing than I had intended. The truth is, I don't think I have lived my life as full as I could have. I don't think I have made the most of every single day.
This morning for instance I layed on the couch for an hour or so because I was too lazy to get up and get ready for work. But because I did that I had to rush to get ready and get to work on time. I don't want to spend my whole life in two different speeds: lazy and rushing. I want to take each moment at a nice pace and appreciate everything in this world. I don't want to spend another day taking anything for granted.
I want to wake up every morning and fall to my knees and thank my Heavenly Father for another beautiful day that I get to spend on this earth with my wonderful husband.
Watching TV is not expanding my life in anyway. I should be building skills and talents, I should be spending quality time with those I love. I should make each day, each hour, each minute, each second really count for something. I want to look back at the end of each day and feel happy and accomplished.
I don't want to waste another second doing something that doesn't mean anything!
So because of these new feelings, here is my personal manifesto.
I am a daughter of God.
I appreciate the small wonders of the world.
I take time to meditate.
I am bold.
I am strong.
Everyday is a chance for me to create something.
I am creative.
I spend my time with the people I love and cherish.
I strive to learn things that interest me.
I do not wait.
I am proactive.
I am responsible for my actions.
I do what I want because I want to, not because someone told me to.
I take the opinions of others as just that: an opinion.
I don't let anyone else rule my decisions except me.
Everyone is a child of God, which means not judging anyone no matter how different they may be.
I do not judge myself on the standards of others.
My best is good enough.
I am astonishing.
My body is a temple.
I do not waste time.
Every moment of my life is spent where a want to be doing what I want to do with the people I want to be with.
No one can force me to do otherwise.
I am powerful.
I do not regret my mistakes.
I learn from them.
I am true to my emotions, not embarrassed by them.
I eat when I am hungry.
I find myself through dance.
I am in the world, not of it.
I am not my possessions.
I am wealthy through my knowledge.
I am rich through my love.
I am blessed beyond belief.
I look for people to serve.
I respect everyone.
I am not afraid of dying;
I am afraid of not having lived enough.
I am silly.
I am LOUD.
I feel.
I love.
The world is how I perceive it.
My view of the world is the one I have seen in person;
So being the poor married college student that I am (and also having the desire to have a pretty house), I have been finding cute decorations that I like and making my own version of them so it doesn't cost nearly as much money. Plus it has my own personal flair.
I got lucky and found an amazing sale at Michael's for paint (0.29 a pop) and the rest of my materials have been things I found or already owned (For the most part).
I am also lucky that I have a handy man of a husband who likes to collect random pieces of wood. Plus my aunt has a very large wood pile in her back yard for fire wood so again...I got lucky.
The basement of my aunt's apartment (where we are living) is mostly furnished (with more furniture than really necessary) so there isn't a whole lot I can do to the living room...So I started with the half bathroom.
The walls are already a tan color and it has very pretty wood and tile that reminded me of the outdoors so I went with an outdoorsy theme with a little bit of my own colorful flair.
Here is the counter top:
I Painted this picture. It's modeled after one I saw online.
This is the original one below.
I found the pine cones in the back yard and I already had the vases. It took forever to paint the pine cones because I didn't have enough paint to dip them so I did them all by hand with a paint brush. Luckily because they are all on top of each other in vases they didn't have to be perfect so only one coat was necessary.
I found the mason jar at DI (Utah's version of Goodwill) and the pump came from an old lotion bottle. I found the tutorial on how to make it here: http://theblissfullycontentlife.blogspot.com/2010/08/homemade-christmas-canning-jar-soap.html. Check it out. It is really easy. I don't especially love how this turned out. The lid was gold which would have clashed with the silver of the pump and I didn't have silver paint (although now that I'm thinking about it I suppose I could have mixed some silver paint.) so I painted it white. But maybe I'll repaint it. We'll see.
I made this project significantly more difficult because I don't have a glue gun. If I had a glue gun it would have been a lot easier. I picked some sticks from outside in varying thicknesses and broke them all to varying heights , the shortest of which would still cover the glass of the candle. Since I didn't have a glue gun I would put 5 or so sticks on at a time (or however many I could hold on) and then tie some hemp around it.Once I was finished with all the sticks I wound the hemp around pretty thick to complete the look I was going for. Honestly if you're going to try this...use a hot glue gun.
This is over the toilet (Obv.)
Here is a close up. If you can't tell, those blue splotches are leaf outlines. This really didn't turn out as well as I had imagined.
First of all it's painted on cardboard...cardboard doesn't look great up close when it's painted. Secondly I was trying to tape the leaves down to paint them but they wouldn't stay so I ended up just holding them down with my hand. That was hard because they wouldn't lie flat and so the imprint isn't great. Shortly after I finished this I found a site that shows you how to make leaves into stamps...little to late there buddy. So maybe I'll remake this with DIY leaf stamps instead of...this. (Here's that website http://buildmakecraftbake.com/2009/04/how-to-hammered-flower-and-leaf-prints.htm).
Now like I said before, I have no money. So instead of buying an awesome frame for this I pulled the frame off of a full length mirror I had and then cut it to the right size. Once again not having a hot glue gun I glued it with Elmer's. Surprisingly this worked pretty well. It just took a lot of trial and error to get to that point.
Last but not least, this is hanging on the back of the door.
Yes, those are sticks wrapped together with hemp to make a heart. No, it was not especially easy. But regardless, I really like how this turned out. It just took trial and error and a lot of little stick pieces to make it look like this but it has a fun rustic feel that I'm happy with.
Well that's the whole bathroom. I'm done decorating it for the time being but who knows when I'll find something else that would fit perfectly. The next project I'm working on is decorating the Hollywood themed guest bathroom. Ha. I know you're excited to see how that turns out...I sure am.
Have you ever done something that seemed like a really good idea at the time and then turned out to be a really bad idea?? Well this is a story about how I did that one time (one time...ha). And it's called:
Figaro
and it looks a little something like this:
Now where to begin??? At the beginning, naturally. On a cold day in January all the way in Frankfurt, Germany I pushed myself into the world. (Well more accurately I was pushed...) Okay Okay maybe that was a little too far back. Lets start instead on July, 25, a holiday celebrated in Utah as Pioneer Day.
Chris' cousin and his cousin'sbrother in law were over playing computer games all day. Woo. I was less than excited. I made it to the gym, watched a little tv, but honestly I was feeling a little neglected. My best friend Alena was still out of town for the summer so I really didn't have anything fun to do. At one point I decided that I wanted to be artsy and so I headed to Michael's to get some paint. The Michael's in Orem is right near Walmart so Chris asked me to go get a new computer game for him and the guys to play. woo.
So after getting a GREAT deal on paint (0.29 a bottle!!!), I headed over to Walmart to look for their computer game. And what did I see as I pulled into the Walmart parking lot???? Two people sitting on the lawn with a box and on the side it said:
Sidebar: I'm living in my aunt's very nice home and she doesn't want me to have any sort of animal that could relieve themselves or scratch up the carpet.
I drove past the sign and parked but I couldn't stop thinking about the cute little kittens who needed a home. I called Chris to find out what the title of the game was,
Chris: "Heeyyy Babbyy"
Jocelyn: "Hey"
Chris: "Are you there yet"
Jocelyn: "Yeah I'm walking back to the electronics right now...guess what was outside?!"
Chris: "What?"
Jocelyn: "Kittens!"
Chris: "Your aunt would never know..."
Jocelyn: "You think?"
Chris: "Nahh"
If only he had been paying attention to what he was saying while he was playing his game.
"Alright," I thought to myself, "If they cost money, I won't get one."
So I drove up to the nice people with the kittens sign and saw three of the most adorable kittens I had ever seen in my existence. I couldn't wipe the goofy grin off my face.
"Want a kitten?" The man said.
"YES!" Was my overly enthusiastic answer.
And before I knew it, I had a tiny 4 week old kitten in my lap and I was driving home. Before knowing her gender I was calling her Goliath, and then Oscar Wilde, and then Koshka (which is Russian for oatmeal when pronounced with a long 'O' but a regular 'O' means cat, but her name was oatmeal.) before I decided on Figaro (Figgy Pudding for short).
I stopped by the grocery store on the way home (yes I know I was just at Walmart) to get some baby kitten food. While inside a small boy, missing the appropriate shoes and shirt needed for a place of business, saw me walking down the aisle, "A kitten!" He exclaimed. (Obviously I couldn't leave her in the hot car...thats baby 101 people). Then he went to retrieve his small and also shoe-less sister so she could see the kitten too. After getting passed some more "aww how cute"s and "I want a kitten"s and one sarcastic "oo look a rat" I made it out of the store with baby kitty in tow.
Now getting her inside the house without being detected was going to be the hard part. So being the smart new mother that I was I put her inside my purse instead of inside the plastic bag with my new paints (honestly people, the bags say keep away from children right on the side.)
Just as I stepped out of the car with cute baby kitty tucked safely in my purse, my aunt walked outside on her way to a neighborhood get-together, "Jocelyn are you coming over," she asked referring to the little event.
"No," I replied, "Chris and I have dinner plans," which at the time was the truth.
Safely inside the house I closed the door behind me and pattered down the stairs to our basement apartment.
Chris was standing right next to the door when I opened it. No words came out, I just smiled and held my purse open so he could see the two adorable little eyes peering out at him. He practically jumped into the air when he realized what he was looking at.
And so our cute little family of three began. I set up a litter box in the bathroom and a place for her food under my desk on a plastic bag. She was too timid to really explore the house so she stayed with me wherever I went, mostly just sleeping on my lap. That night we had to go pick up Chris' newly married friend at the airport from their honeymoon. Figaro came along and slept in my lap the whole way. It was precious. It was love.
She cuddled with us all night and since I don't work until 3pm on Tuesdays I got to sleep in. When my body woke me up at 8am and I wasn't ready to be awake, I saw Figaro just sitting there watching me. Not daring to move until I was ready to get up. Unfortunately her timidity didn't last for very long and soon she was happy to explore. But exploring was only fun for so long. And when she got bored and wanted attention, she whined/meowed. Not a good combination when you're trying to keep the kitten a secret. After a day and a half it became apparent that I couldn't keep her.
I was heartbroken. How can I fall in love with something I just met? I just didn't have the time or energy to watch her every second of every day to make sure she wasn't getting into anything she wasn't supposed to. As much as I hated it, She had to go.
My first goal was to put her on KSL (online classifieds in Utah) and hope that some nice little girl or boy or young couple would want a new kitten. It was so hard to take the pictures of her knowing I was just putting them on the internet to find someone to take her away. Just as I posted the ad, I noticed a wanted ad posted at the same time...looking for a kitten for her daughter's birthday!!! "It's fate!" I thought. I perfect home for my perfect kitten.
But apparently it wasn't fate because that woman wasn't interested. I was afraid that the longer I kept Figaro the more attached she would become to me and then when I did give her away she would feel betrayed. I couldn't stand the thought. So I started researching animal shelters. It eased my heart a little to know that little kittens go fast in places like this. The fact that I had to pay $15 for them to take her just assured me that they would take care of her.
So on Thursday, only a couple days after she had come home with me, we took her to the animal shelter. Despite the fact that every other time I had taken her in the car she was content, she wasn't then. She wouldn't sit still in my lap as we left our street and would not stop meowing. We pulled over down the road a ways because Chris was afraid she had to go to the bathroom and didn't want her to do it in the car.
She stood in the grass by the high school we stopped at, meowing even louder than she had been before.
"It's like she knows," Chris said.
And I think she did.
After some poor navigating on my part and several U turns we made it to the animal shelter. I stood outside holding her, not wanting to go in. But I knew this would be better for both of us.
So one broken heart, $15, 1 bag of uneaten kitten food (still sitting on my kitchen floor btw) and about a week later and am still a little sad to think about my little Figaro who is probably named Princess or Fluffy by now. I have also realized that it is NOT smart for me to make spontaneous, rash decisions (unless its something like, I'm gonna get some ice cream).
But in the end I blame the whole thing on Chris. After all, he was the one who wanted me to go the Walmart in the first place...
