"Dream" Boys, Sumo Wrestling, and Gold Coins

Ah, so here is My Last BYU Winter Semester AKA Things I Didn't Have Time to Blog About Part 2

A lot of this is pretty recent (the last two weeks or so). Why does so much always happen just as finals and final projects are due? lol

One night (way before final study time sucked away all our time) Katie, Emily, and some friends all played the classic board game Dream Phone. It's an apartment favorite.

"He looks cool in whatever he wears, but he's not wearing yellow." Oh Dream Phone!

Me and Emily with the Dream Phone listening to a clue! Katie actually beat both of us and won the game that night!

My ward recently had its closing social. For the first time EVER I am staying in Provo for the summer so its strange to see everyone leaving and not trying to frantically pack up my room during finals (I'm very grateful for the last part). At the social things ended up being unseasonably blustery and cold (Utah weather! It snowed this week!), but we still had a lot of fun. Katie even put on one of the Sumo suits! Go Katie!

Katie also went with me to an art show called Standing in Reserve (done in connection with CUAC). It was in an old building just down the street from my house (I found out about it from one of the TAs in my art history class who was actually in charge of the whole thing). It focused on technology. There were a lot of interesting pieces there. Katie and I particularly liked this interactive exhibit they had where they put you in a video game setting and you collected gold coins (I'm not sure how they did this, maybe one of those Kinect things?).

My family went to see the Taylor Andrews hair show last week. The theme was women in music. Elizabeth worked on the Pink section. It was so fun! And we got to see some of our favorite people: Elizabeth and her dad, Sam.

Elizabeth made that hair piece!!!! Isn't she talented?!

Despite the business and craziness it was a great semester! I hope Spring and Summer terms will be just as good :)

Currently: full from all the crepes I ate this morning, yum

VIPs, Cookies, and Misadventures in Gluten-Free Baking

My Last BYU Winter Semester AKA Things I Didn't Have Time to Blog About

Here are some fun things I did this semester that for some reason never made it to the blog in a timely manner (What was I doing with all my time? Oh yeah, studying like a crazy person):

This year at BYU I got to hear two interesting, VERY well-known people speak: Condoleezza Rice and Mark Zuckerburg.

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In January, Condoleezza Rice came. I really enjoyed her thoughts on education. You can read some of her remarks here.

Mark Zuckerburg, the creator of Facebook, came and spoke at my school. He did a question and answer session based on questions left on the BYU Facebook page. Senator Orrin Hatch came and asked the questions. It was great hearing Mark speak and hearing his perspective on things. Here's a link to BYU's news release about it. It has some of the questions he answered, as well as his responses.

Some other important people that came to visit? My family. Not only did my parents come this month to see me graduate, but my Aunt and Uncle also came to Provo to drop my cousin off at the MTC. We had lunch at Jdawgs before he left. Love you Jack!!!

I also made snickerdoodles earlier this semester. I bring this up not because it was particularly unusual, but because I always have the same problem when I make snickerdoodles. Really chewy, warm, and delicious when they come out of the oven. Rock hard an hour later. Seriously does anyone have a tip/recipe to help me out with this?

Even though they got a bit hard, they were still good tasting (providing you had some milk to soften them up).

Speaking of baking projects that don't go quite as planned...

Remember when I had the post called Conference: Sister Edition (Part 1)? Well Part 2 never made it up, but here's the short version. I attempted to make gluten free cinnamon rolls. Silly me, I thought I could simply substitute regular flour for gluten free flour (plus a little xantham gum). Well it's a lot more complicated than that. I looked up recipes later and I realize now that a combination of flour types would have worked better. Oh well! Thankfully I had regular gluten-full bread baking at the same time so we still had a yummy conference treat :)

Sad little gluten-free cinnamon rolls about to go into the oven.

This bread smelled (and tasted) so good! Plus it was pretty easy to make (You can see the recipe here). I didn't even use the bread machine.

Well that's it for now, but there's more to come!

Currently listening to: The Supremes (a favorite of mine)

Graduation Day

I did it.

I graduated.

From college.

Ok well technically I'm a student until August. I postponed the technical side of it until August.

But really. I'm done. As my dearest roommate Pash would say, "You're doing it Mimi! You're doing it!"

Anyway here are some pictures from the big days (it was sort of a two day affair):

Luckily I have some good friends graduating at the same time :) We got to hang out during convocation (during commencement we had to sit in alphabetical order).

Me and Elliot! My fav study buddy!

Me and Emily

My family also came out to see my graduate and it was a fabulous visit. They spoiled me!

Me and Dad :)

I'm kind of ruining this one by closing my eyes, but I still like it.

It has been great having Gabby here this year. She was able to attend all my grad stuff before going back to Texas, although she did get a little bored during convocation.

They even bought me a lei

We did lots of fun things including visiting my Aunt Mary, driving in the canyon, seeing Elizabeth's hair show, and eating lots of yummy places (the picture above is a fruit and cheese plate from La Jolla Groves, sooo good).

Oh, and after graduation Elliot and I rang the bell!

So I guess it's official :) Thanks to everyone who helped me along the way!

Currently: not studying. Do you know how good that feels?

Currently thinking of: the graduation song,As we go on, we remember... haha love it!

Happier Times

Finals and the last few days of school have been eating my time away. The worst time-eater of them all? My British Enlightenment paper. Sigh. The good news is soon I will be done with papers FOREVER. Until then let's reminisce on happier times.

Like the Arcade Fire and Local Natives show last Monday.

Waiting for things to get started :) We got there early since we had floor tickets.

Local Natives. They were, seriously, AMAZING. So good live. Gorilla Manor, check it out.

This is Gabby waiting for Arcade Fire to come out. Still over-the-top happy from seeing Local Natives.

Soooo good.

And then after the show?

We met Local Natives!!! We kind of freaked out, lol.

I got a picture with Kelcey (as you can see), but Gabby met everyone :) Check out her blog post which has more pictures (I let her take over for awhile) here.

Then we got Sonic slushes. Cranberry-limeade. Yum. It was an amazing night.

Currently: Studying for finals, of course.

Conference: Sister Edition (Part 1)

So Gabby and I have not lived in the same place for quite some time now. It's been really fun to have her up here for school. This year was Conference: Sister edition. Having Gabby here for General Conference was really fun. For any of my friends out there who don't know what Conference is, it's basically this big meeting for everyone in the LDS church. Instead of our normal individual church meetings, the Prophet and other church leaders get together and give talks that are broadcast to LDS people everyone. It's good times :)

Saturday we had tickets so we were able to go to Salt Lake and see the afternoon session in the conference center. Afterwards we did some shopping at Gateway mall (where a found a great dress on sale! yay!). We had a little sleepover and then Sunday morning we watched conference in our PJs then made pancakes.

At first our pancake making went normally:

Big Pancakes

Small Pancakes

Then we tried to get creative:

Mickey Mouse Pancake!

The elusive G pancake. This is one of the harder letter pancakes to pull off.

Then we got a little too ambitious:

This was me trying to make a star pancake. It obviously did not go as planned. Luckily it still tasted good, even if it did look funny :)

Me and Gabs had a great time cooking together.

Currently reading: The Sky is Everywhere, Jandy Nelson

Currently looking forward to: THE WEEKEND!!!

Currently: not forgetting I promised a Mark Zuckerburg post