Things you may not know about me...

Samarah tagged me. And since I finally finished the 30 day challenge (yay!) I'm gonna do it.


Books I've Read Recently...

1. Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot
2. Father Fiction by Donald Miller
3. Dug Down Deep by Joshua Harris
4. Broken Angel by Sigmund Brower
5. Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper
6. Radical Womanhood by Carolyn McCulley
7. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
8. The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

8 Songs or Albums I Listen to All the Time...

1. Let's Never Stop Falling In Love ~ Pink Martini
2. The House That Built Me~Miranda Lambert
3. You and Me~Declan Galbraith
4. Tonight~FM Static
5. Hold Me Jesus~Rich Mullins
6. Bailamos~Enrique Iglesias
7. Canto alla Vita~Josh Groban 
8. If I Die Young~The Band Perry

8 Things I Love...

1. Long socks
2. Peacock fashion
3. New books
4. Bright red nail polish
5. Eating oreos and milk at 1:00 am 
6. Red pick-ups
7. Cupcakes
8. Cowboys

8 Things I've Learned This Year...

1. How to blog. :-)
2. I love blogging.
3. Being an aunt rocks.
4. God is amazing. Really.
5. I'm in love with Donald Miller's books.
6. Mark Driscoll is brilliant.
7. Being a girl is pretty tough.
8. Portland is beautiful and I love it.

8 {I changed this to only 1} New Recipes I Want to Try and Make by the End of the Year...

1. Every cupcake in my recipe book. That's all.

8 Favorite Online Hangouts...

1. All of your lovely blogs. :-)
2. Gmail
3. Polyvore
4. Pioneer Woman
5. Grooveshark (music)
6. Goodreads
7. Pandora (music radio)
8. Amazon

8 Projects I Need To Work On...

1. Working out. :P
2. Finishing my book list. I'm doing pretty good, actually.
3. Reorganize my room.
4. Help Mama paint our spare room.
5. All of my sewing projects.
6. My story. It's not going so well.
7. Getting better at volleyball. Ha. Not likely.
8. Getting better at tennis. I bought a racket and all, but I've played like 3 times.

8 Other People I Think Should Do This...

1. Marie
2. His Handmaiden
3. Alvarezguitargirl
4. Raquel
5. Johanna
6. Lady Helen Mar
7. Brittany
8. ...And any of you other beautiful people who read this. :-) Comment and link if you do it.

Some of my beautiful birthday presents...

I had a birthday a couple weeks ago. :-) And I got some pretty awesome presents.

And...I haven't gotten around to doing a post about them until now.

I got up in the morning to find this on my computer!

My very own entire box of Krispy Kreme donuts, from Benjamin. :-)

I did share them.

A few of them.

Along with the cupcake liners and some other cupcake-making equipment, 

I got this book FULL of recipes. 

I can't wait to get started.

Lovely pashmina from my friend Beka... who got it in New York City! :-)

Red AND leopard spotted!

Leopard umbrella! It almost makes me excited for rainy days.

Benjamin gave me "When in Rome". We watched it that night... oh, wow. I love it so much.

Read my post about it here.

I also got an adorable polka-dot apron... I'll have to have a photo shoot with that sometime. ;-)

I did get some other awesome books and such, but these are the presents I wanted post about here. 

Day 30: A motto or philosophy {this is more like a prayer for my life}

Lord,

 make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon:

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope

where there is darkness, light

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

~St. Francis of Assisi 

Random song that makes me emotional.

For some reason, this song makes me sad. And happy. Mostly emotional.

And I like her boots. ;-)

Day 29: Hopes, dreams and plans you have for the next 365 days.

{another picture I took in Seattle}

Yes, I'm still doing this thing. Only one more day after this!

I hope

to grow in my relationship with God,

my family

and my friends

and to make new friends!

I dream

of a white Christmas.

that's all. ;-)

I plan

on going on a road trip.

on taking a photography class.

and taking three billion photos.

on taking voice lessons.

on going to an art class.

on reading a ridiculous amount of books.

on making 
and eating
lots of cupcakes.

                            

it's about time for another...

...shoe post.

Inception

We watched this movie in the IMAX theater in Seattle.

Which was one of the coolest things ever. 

The screen is 6 stories high and 80 feet across. Huge enough to see the actors' pores and their stubble and the texture of their clothing. 

I loved it. 

I didn't know anything about this movie except that I had read a vague and positive review. 

I purposely didn't watch the trailer, because I didn't want to know anything. 

(This is unusual for me because sometimes when I am super-excited about a movie I watch the trailer once a day for a week.)

It's rated PG-13, for violence, basically. It does have kinda disturbing scenes, but only a tiny bit of blood.

And there is some language, but not much.

Whatever can be said of Leonardo DiCaprio's looks or his previous roles...

he is an amazing actor and he was absolutely spectacular in this movie. 

Just wanted to get that out there in the open. :-)

Tom Hardy as Eames.

Usually, Cillian Murphey (on the right)  is... how can I say this nicely? 

Vile.

However, I have to admit, he did an excellent job in this movie, and he managed to act male.

Which I appreciated.

Joseph Gordin-Levitt as Arthur.

He wears suits and ties, beats up the bad guys, has ears that stick out, wore a sweet leather jacket when he wasn't in a suit, and was in general adorable and winsome in a tough way.

Oh, and he got yelled at by Leonard DiCaprio.

Ellen Page as Ariadne.

They did a good job of making her inquisitive, smart, and capable without making her super-annoying.

And, she is cute.

Yup. It was awesome. Go see it if you haven't!

And if you have seen it...

what did you think?

Seattle

We went to Seattle on the weekend. We were only there for about 23 hours, but that was long enough to see and do a ton of stuff... and, of course... take approximately one billion pictures.

We took the train.

We rode the ferry back and forth from Bainbridge island. Which was cool.

Benjamin wanted to jump off...

So there ARE a lot of pictures... prepare yourself... 

You're awesome if you can actually get through them all.

I so wanted to do this...

Sunset from the ferry.

We went up on the space needle at night... which was awesome, but it was hard to get good pictures. 

We went to the IMAX movie theater and watched Inception. 

OH MY WORD. 

It was so amazing. A post is forthcoming.

We didn't get to the hotel room until 1:45 AM. :-)

And then we got up in the morning and went to the Space Needle again, to see it in the daylight.

The view!

I got a cappuccino at the cafe in the Space Needle. :-)

We walked and walked and walked... and this is what Ben and Bethany were doing... 

These are my shoes. LOL.

On the monorail.

Architectural deliciousness.

I LOVE that red dress. Peacock! And red!

Bethany got the worst Starbucks drink ever. Green tea latte.

It tasted like alfalfa and grass and goat cud.

We went to the aquarium... this fish was Bethany's soul sister. Seriously.

We went a restaurant called Ivar's and I got shrimp. Yum.

I was having fun with a random freaky setting on the camera... :P

Pike's Place Market!

Of course we bought donuts...

Wanted to buy a hat... didn't have enough $$. :-(

The end. If you actually looked at all these, you are awesome and have a lot of endurance.