Balter

I have this personality flaw where I'm always wanting what I can't have. When I was single I spent way too much time wishing I weren't. Now that I look back on just a few years ago, I miss things that only could have happened while I was living in an apartment full of crazy awesome girls.

Example:

One night we decided to go clubbing...

In Provo that means finding a place where people your age are trying to look cool by dancing self-consciously to radio music. It was a pretty normal night out and we were having a great time.

Then we noticed this girl dancing next to us who had us transfixed. She was beautiful in that way that makes you want to hate her but you can't...because she looked awesome. She was disheveled but clean, cared but didn't care, and probably liked to sneak into swimming pools and could convince complete strangers to do so with her. She's the kind of girl that all guys want to date because she's the perfect mix of girly +  boyishly laid-back.

The way she danced literally made me stare at her, because I had never seen anything like it before. Her head was down, her eyes were closed, her knees were kind of bent, her arms were in raptor mode, and no matter how fast the song was, she always moved her body slowly with the smallest movement imaginable, and the most movement came out of here fingers. She looked like she was playing an imaginary piano with her eyes closed, and she did not give one **** as to who saw her. I was transfixed.

Ever since, my friends and I have perfected that dance and have spread it like butter. Even more liberating than the Harlem Shake.

And now I have a word for it.

2013 Bucket List Update: A Little History of the World

This post is a part of the 2013 Bucket List series, in which I tell the whole world my goals so I have to complete them. You can read the original post here. Here is an update on one of my 2013 goals:

Read all the books I got for Christmas

Remember when I had goals? Yeah, me too. Remember when I vowed to read all the books I received as Christmas gifts? And that it's the end of March and that goal had come to a screeching halt? Remember how I guilted myself into finishing this book for the sake of crossing it off my list? Please tell me I'm not the only person who does that.

The only reason the fact that I finished reading a book is getting its own blog post is because it happened. And it was a miracle. 

A wee little baby Christmas miracle. Also, the book was pretty good. You should read this book if...

- you have the worst memory and don't remember the order that stuff happened

- you have room in your brain for facts like how we got the Alphabet and weekends and whatnot

- you need some generational perspective

- you really really like reading about war. like, a lot of war. why is there so much war?

- you want to read an abridged, child-like account of the entire world from the beginning of time

- you're awesome

You should NOT read this book if...

- you're a genius and you already know everything

- you need to learn about stuff from 1935 - present day

- reading about war makes you sad

- you like reading about awesome female people

Joe T Garcia's

When we were in Ft. Worth, we ate out every lunch and dinner. We found a lot of good places, but the most memorable for me was Joe T. Garcia's. 

If you're ever in Ft. Worth, go there.

It's a five minute walk from the Stockyards, and when we got to the building, it took us another five minutes just to find the entrance. The parts of the building facing the street don't have doors. You have to walk away from the roads and into a parking lot, maybe mildly fear for your life for 6 seconds, then stumble upon wooden arched doors in a beautiful stone wall. Bam, an oasis across the street from a loan place and an abandoned theater. We walked into this courtyard with columns, plants and a beautiful fountain. My favorite part was that the menu only consisted of two dishes (enchiladas and fajitas), and we all shared them family style. If you go, make sure to bring cash because they don't split the bill, and they don't take cards.

Baby Leonardo DiCaprio

Remember when Leonardo DiCaprio was like...literally, the king of the world? I remember reading about him in my friend's teen bop magazine, watching him in Growing Pains, and secretly wishing I were Rose on the front of that boat. These pictures actually remind me of Justin Bieber. Is that bad? Don't hate me. It's true, and I speak truth. My favorite one is #6. Doesn't he look like Matt Damon in #2 and that burglar from Home Alone in #7?

PS, can't wait to see this.

Handwritten Poems by Nicole Lavelle

Handwriting blows my mind. Can you imagine how many kinds of "fonts" there are in the world? Think of all the people who have ever existed and what all their handwriting might look like. I would love to do an art project about that. I'm also a sucker for colloquial poetry. I like my poems quick and dirty. They need to feel effortless (even if they took seven straight days of toil) and sound like a glorified tweet. Does that make me shallow? I just can't handle poetry that seems too contrived. I guess maybe I should just say that I like good poetry. 

BFF lady friend Jeannette is a poet. I found out a year after graduation that she was a speaker in her college's graduation ceremony and performed a poem about life. She didn't even tell me. She took me to a poetry slam in Salt Lake once to hear her perform. Her poem was about trying to date a guy that everyone she knew approved of, but she personally didn't even really like. I ended up being a line in the poem. In that line she told me something I don't think she could have told me any other way. After that, I never pushed her to date this guy again. 

Want to hear something embarrassing? 

I went through a weird weird poetry phase in high school. I wrote poems about dumb teenage stuff that felt very real at the time. Example: boys. wanting freedom. feelings. more feelings. lots and lots of feelings. I was really bad at it. But I still love poems. 

Artist Nicole Lavelle writes poetry onto large sheets of colored paper in her one-of-a-kind handwriting. The best part is that you can commission her to handwrite basically anything for you. Example: your school's fight song, an old family saying, a really bad joke your grandpa used to tell, a list of every town you've lived in, and more.

PS: How often do I feel like this? : 

A Shopping Tip

When you have Best Friend Day, and you don't really have plans besides "going to lunch" and "window shopping", here's a tip: never bring your debit card with you and accidentally drive yourselves over to the fanciest mall in all the land. Bring only cash. Don't ask me how I learned this...



















...the hard way.

Things I Love: Stationery

one  // two // three // four // five // six // seven // eight // nine // ten

I grew up in a house where you wrote a note card if someone so much as smiled in your direction. So I got used to writing a lot of thank you notes. Now that I'm out of the house, I still love to write a line the old fashioned way, preferably on a gorgeous piece of stationery. I actually gave out number seven as my Favorite Thing at my party. They were a hit! Have you noticed yet that there are a lot of bizarre animals? Can't help it. Love it. 

Do what you want. Be who you are.

I'm a firm believer in doing what I want. I'm pretty sure I've always been this way. If you don't believe me, just ask my parents what I was like as a kid. Maybe some people call it stubborn? I've just always known what I wanted and how to ask for it. 

I remember when Matt was still on his mission, this girl came over to see to my roommate and I sat down to be polite and socialize with them for a bit. She asked about my missionary, then proceeded to tell me that it would never work out and that no one ever ends up marrying their missionaries and that I should just give up now. Ten minutes after meeting me. That conversation made me so mad and baffled that all I could do was politely excuse myself and go silently rage in my room. 

After an experience like that, you might expect a normal person to rethink their decision and maybe doubt their resolve. Somehow, criticism and doubt aimed at my choices only ends up making me want to follow through with 10x more enthusiasm. If someone tells me I can't do something, I just end up doing it anyway to show them it can be done. 

Maybe someone should tell me I can't lose 50 pounds and be a millionaire. Maybe it would work.

What I'm trying to say is, if you tell me not to do something, watch out, because it will give me the fiery passion of a thousand dragons' flames. And I will prove you wrong.

If you're prone to being a people pleaser (to your own detriment), I challenge you to start politely, yet unapologetically doing what you want. It's amazingly liberating.

BTW, I'm trying to take this theory even further with a new mantra, "Be who you are." I'm trying to stop feeling guilty for being an introvert/homebody/indoor cat. Because the world needs people who are true to themselves. 

Waking Up In Vegas

We are back from California! It was so good to be home and spend time with my family. The girls got manicures and (much-needed) haircuts, my dad took the men on a "man day" (who even knows what they did) and we watched lots of movies and ate lots of food with lots of people. And we had FOUR Christmases! 

On our way back, we picked up some friends and spent the night in Vegas! The last time I was in Vegas, I was eight and my grandma took us to Excalibur. I don't remember anything about that trip, so all my ideas about Vegas have come from movies like 21 and  Ocean's 11, 12 and 13.

This time, in real life, we spent some Christmas money on a nice meal and walked through the Venetian and saw the water show outside of the Bellagio. 

The whole time we were walking around town, I just kept thinking about how many casino heists and card-counting scams were most likely secretly happening all around us. All the moguls making huge business deals in elite penthouse suites, and me wearing my husband's huge sweatshirt to keep from freezing. Something about Vegas makes me nervous, because I am not a Vegas person. I don't enjoy anything that people who go to Vegas like to do. I felt pretty out of my element based on all the things I've seen in movies about Vegas (luxury, danger, sex, and partying, all done by George Clooneys and Julia Roberts' with lots of swagger). 

Have you actually walked around the strip and looked at the people walking around?  They aren't sexy. They don't look like moguls. In fact, they look just like ordinary people! The only people who looked sexy were the girls on the corner dressed up like flamingos who got paid $10 a pop to take pictures with people and promote their hotel. Even they looked like they were freezing and not having a good time. I'd rather be warm in a big sweatshirt than freezing in a flamingo costume. 

And that, my friends, is why I should trust real life instead of all those movies I watch. 

PS: My favorite things about Christmas was that it was our first year together as newlyweds. The last two Christmases were spent pining instead of fully celebrating. On Christmas Eve, after everyone went to bed, we stayed up playing Wii and Pinning (respectively) and watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional together. It was a great way to start Christmas and reminded me why we celebrate this holiday longer than any other holiday. What better reason than Christ? 

A Christmas Card

Can I just count our wedding announcement as this year's Christmas card? Who am I even asking? Who is in charge of all these questions? The answer for me is, my delusional self. Yes, Kellie. This totally counts. You can post a Christmas card on your blog and it will totally be the same as sending out a nice paper one to all your friends and family. 

Technically we haven't even been married a whole year. So this Christmas, we're taking our mulligan. Expect a Christmas card for the next 50 straight years. Or until the apocalypse comes.

(Please pretend you received this card after December 21, 2012).

The Best Thing Matt Has Ever Said To Me

So Matt and I spend a lot of time at home relaxing. Work is crazy, and home is this blissful sanctuary where we watch tv and google crap until the cows come home. We go on real dates on the weekends and go to the gym or the store, but we do spend a lot of after-work time at home. Last night I did yoga and Matt got pumped on his doorway pull-up contraption. And then we ate dinner on the couch. Something on tv must have referenced a chicken (I wasn't paying attention), because all of a sudden, Matt blurts out,

"Babe, did you know that I know how to hypnotize chickens?"

I mean, you can't just spring something like that on someone who's knee-deep in Pinterest. It's just too random! It was so out of the blue that I couldn't stop laughing for like 3 whole minutes.

Just the image of him trying to calm a chicken down makes me crack up.

I didn't even know chicken hypnosis was a thing! Apparently you do that before you kill it. Which makes me sad.

But there you go! Now you and I know about one more crazy strange thing that exists in the world.

So this is officially the best thing Matt has ever said to me, besides all that romantic stuff he said while we were engaged haha.

Happy hump day, y'all.

Tradition .... TRADITION!

I think I mentioned earlier that I am trying to find some new family traditions that Matt and I can share together. I love my family's traditions, and I love being a part of Matt's family traditions, but I think it'll be fun to have our own. Being newly married puts a big old magnifying glass on everything I thought was normal. Turns out, some things are normal for me, but not for Matt. The things I did growing up are not the same for Matt. Talking to people about their holiday family traditions has either proven that 1) my family is weird or 2) my family is awesome. I am wholeheartedly choosing #2. 

Here are some awesome Rowland family traditions that I am excited for this Christmas:

1) Watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. This is the only movie that I have seen more than 7 times. (Other movies that come close are Titanic, My Little Pony, and Sex + the City).  My father loves it. He quotes it all year long. It's a given that this will be on in the background at some point during Christmas vacation..........Do you see what I did there?

2) Chinese food on Christmas Eve. I think this tradition might have started because my mom was getting too stressed out about cooking a perfect meal on Christmas Eve, so my dad took away the stress by ordering Chinese food one year. I love that he gave her the perfect reason to relax and enjoy the family instead of slaving in the kitchen. We have done this for a few years now, and I look forward to it. It's a nice treat for us and for my mom...(BTW, she cooks amazing meals all the time and we love them). 

3) Mom's Annual Bathroom Reader Giveaway. That's right. I don't know how this started, but my mother buys literally every single person in our family a new version of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader every year. I always pretend to be grossed out, but those books are actually really interesting. I just keep them outside of my bathroom...

4) New Year's Empanadas. Growing up LDS outside of Utah means no LDS friends (except for my trusty sidekick, Jeannette). I obviously wasn't allowed (or invited, let's get real, I was a total nerd) to go to parties, so New Year's Eve was always a family night. We started cooking Empanadas every 31st while we watched the countdown. Now that I'm away from home, my new tradition is to spend New Year's with the very same sidekick Jeannette, no matter where we live. 

My favorite New Year's was the year before Matt left on his mission. We went to a party in SLC, but it was lame, so we went and watched Benjamin Button. That movie was so long that we had to run to get back to the party to see the fireworks go off at midnight. We were running through the deserted streets of Salt Lake and missed the fireworks because the buildings were so tall, but they reflected off of the buildings across the street. We stopped running and just stared...and then I got an asthma attack.

5) Three Christmases. My extended family is very small. And we all live within an hour radius of each other. We see each other all the time. Thanksgiving is always at my house, and Christmas is always split up between my mom and dad's sides. Christmas Eve: immediate family. Christmas afternoon: Mom's side. Christmas night: Dad's side. I had never even heard of a family reunion until I moved to Utah. We never needed them. 

6) The wrapping party in the laundry room. My mom usually stays up wrapping Christmas gifts late into the night. My sister and I loved helping her wrap presents growing up. I love giving gifts, and I love giving pretty gifts even more. I would try to make every gift look different somehow. We have a whole closet in the laundry room dedicated to wrapping supplies. Boxes of gift tags. Bows upon bows. 10 different kinds of wrapping paper. Bag and bags and bags galore. Wrapping the gifts for me was almost better than Christmas itself! I loved staying up late with them and talking or listening to Christmas music. When we had dogs they would come in and walk all over the presents, but we loved them so much we didn't care anyway. Good times.

7) Stake Christmas Choir. I don't do this anymore because I can't be at rehearsals beforehand, but in HS, I was always in the Stake Christmas Choir every year. We always sang at a special Christmas fireside a few Sundays before Christmas. I love singing, and I love Christmas music. It was so fun to be a part of a singing group that sounded pretty dece. Nothing brings the spirit of Christmas to my heart faster than singing Christmas music.

8) James Taylor Acoustic Christmas. Once my dad figured out how iTunes worked, I'm pretty sure James Taylor Christmas was the first album he bought. And then he played it loud enough for the whole house to hear. I would be in the bathroom and hear that guitar start up and I knew exactly what was going down. "James Taylor is such a good musician, but man, is he messed up." Who cares...his voice is like butta.

9) Late-night Mexican food runs. Somehow my brother found the most ghetto authentic Mexican food in Fullerton and craves it annually, at 2am. It's the kind of place where all the cooks expect you to order in Spanish. Since we both inherited the night-owl gene, we'd be the only two up and he'd ask me to go on a Tacqueria de Anda run with him. Of course I thought it was super cool when I was in high school to hang out with my cool adult brother, so I usually went along. One time he tricked me into eating a brain taco. I think that was the end of the late-night runs for me for a few years. I hope we go again this year.

NEW HARDIN FAMILY TRADITIONS: 

- Buying a new ornament every year when we go on vacation. 

- Decorating the tree together for FHE
- Small gift at Christmas. Use the saved money to go on a nice summer vacation.

- It's not Christmas yet, so I still have time to think of some more + execute them.

What's your favorite Christmas tradition?