Musica Monday

Hey friends, I'm back. These past few weeks have been absolutely nuts for me and I have been beyond stressed! I owe Matt for bringing a post last week...even though it was the only one. I've been struggling with whether I want to continue with my current jobs a lot lately simply because I end many of my days looking to my dear Matt for a reason to continue working these jobs. However, this is only every so often because for the majority of the time I find my jobs rewarding, draining (physically, emotionally, and mentally) to the point where I am almost not coherent some nights when I'm home, but rewarding in knowing that I am making a difference in peoples' lives.

I don't mean to complain, but I guess I just wanted to give a quick explanation (I prefer not to think of it as an excuse) as to where I am personally since this blog is a bit about me personally as well.

I've been listening to some new music lately and a few weeks ago I was on Pandora listening to music while reading and I heard this song. Now, I'm a fan of the singer/songwriter genre as you may know if you've read this blog before. The artist I'm sharing today is called Jaymay. Made up of a woman in her early thirties, Jamie Kristine Seerman is originally from New York. Her music to me encompasses the essence of singer/songwriter with a bit of folk tossed in. This is 'Sea Green, See Blue' by Jaymay. Enjoy!

Also, I'd like to just put in here that this song is beautiful and is honestly the quintessential break-up song, however, I personally am not going through a break-up, I just happen to like the song.

Love,
Sara :)

Dreams: Ideas and Traveling

Sometimes I get ideas. Ok, I get lots of ideas and many of them float through my head and are stored way back in a distant, cobweb-filled corner of my brain to most likely never be seen again. However, some ideas stick with me and no matter what they don't ever seem to really leave. These are only emphasized by me finding people who share my ideas and who are equally as enthusiastic to try and someday put them into action. Now that's the key word: someday. I feel like half of my ideas get thrown out because of a lack of time or money or the drive (honestly I can get pretty lazy some days). However, I have been talking to people especially lately because I was suddenly put back in contact with friends I haven't talk to since I'm not sure when. What happened? Facebook and I had a birthday, and what happens? All those friends you used to talk to send you messages saying 'Happy Birthday! I miss you! We should get together! Where are you now?' I don't mean to sound mocking, but it seems to be what we all end up expecting when our birthdays come around and we go of Facebook. Well, this year I actually went through and answered all of the people that I never talked to and tried to catch up with the ones that I could. I had a lengthy discussion with a friend from Washington about going out and visiting her and another with a high school friend who is now in California (what?!) and moving to New York next year (sweet!). It was actually pretty fun!

Now I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to my ideas. I have these ideas and one big one that I've had for years was to travel to all 50 states and to as many countries around the world as possible. I currently have a severe case of wanderlust! As Matt and my relationship has progressed, we have learned quite a bit about each other and one thing that we both really want to do is travel. When I shared this idea with him, he was super supportive as long as he could come along, which I have absolutely no problem with! Anyways, this is where talking to long lost friends comes in. I talked to this friend in Washington, and I think Matt and I might be going out to Washington for a visit later this summer or this fall if possible! I am super excited to get this traveling started! I know we are still young, but there is just so much out there to see and do and we want to do so much that we better get started soon!

With our first few stops consisting of Chicago, Minneapolis, and possibly Washington (random, but hopefully it works!) I can't wait to see what other adventures the future holds!

What sorts of adventures do your lives have? Remember adventures don't have to be traveling to a foreign country or even to another state, an adventure is whatever you make it and it can really be anything! So, go forth, and be adventurers!

Love,

Sara :)

Musica Monday

Some days are not spectacular, but they aren't bad either. Some days are just what they are and not much more. They come and they go, but you find yourself simply exhausted by the end of the day. Has anyone ever felt that before? I came home today thinking that I had a good day, nothing extraordinary, but I was exhausted by the end of the day. I texted Matt saying that all "I want to curl up, watch TV, and maybe have a glass of wine :P". The only issue with that was that I still had to go to bell choir practice and I prefer to not drink wine alone. So, I went to bells with my mom, then came home, hung out with the sister, then proceeded downstairs to my room where I opened a bottle of Clear American Kiwi Strawberry naturally flavored sparkling water beverage which proceeded to explode all over me and my desk. Sigh. C'est la vie.
Anyways, I had no ideas for music for today and asked Matt for a suggestion, and he suggested this song which I absolutely love! Not only do I love the Lord of the Rings both book and movie series, but this man's voice is freaking amazing! I will also say that they lyrics really are quite amazing and can speak to each one of us as we try and find our places in the universe, what do we see on the horizon? Where do we see ourselves going? These are questions that many of us will never fully be able to answer, because we follow wherever life takes us and each day is a surprise, whether we look at it like that or not. I hope you enjoy this song as much as I do!

Love,
Sara :)

ps. Also, we confirmed the date for moving to be March 29th!!

Shower Cat

Hey guys, so I'm heading to my first ever professional conference tomorrow! It's on injuries in athletic youth and I'm definitely going to be low on sleep for it but I had a date night with Matt (which shall come up later :P) and then got distracted by my cat sitting in the shower. Well, standing by the time I got a picture, but yes! Have a good night all!!

Love,

Sara :)

Wait...It's February?!

Where on earth did January go?! Ok, yes, it is a few days into February, but I kind of tend to sign out of reality during the weekends and January just seemed to have gone by so fast. Maybe being busy is what was doing that. I hope that you all had a wonderful beginning to 2014. I've got a few things going on this month that I wanted to try and start now, in hopes that I am able to do much better at posting for this month than I did last month...

Well, first off, a friend and I are looking for an apartment! We are planning on moving before summer (fingers crossed!) to Brown Deer, which is about 30-40 minutes south of where we currently live with our parentals. As of now we have not picked a place, but we are looking and that is super exciting! So, hopefully this month I will be able to update you all on that and the craziness and excitement of moving! This also means that I will be doing some DIY stuff to get ready for moving as well as after moving (because I have not for a while and my mind and fingers are itching for activity!) starting with reupholstering a set of dinning room chairs that we may end up using (stay tuned!).

Also, I'm two months into my new job as a personal trainer, meaning that I am supposed to have a handle on what I'm doing. While I would not say that I am an expert or extremely good by any stretch, I would say that I am for sure learning and I'm getting to that stage slowly but surly :). I'm also working on dropping some of my times at my first job that are affecting my current work. Since personal training is what I want to do (at least for now) I think concentrating on that would be a good idea, so I'm going to try to slowly drift away from my last job in hopes of putting more focus and energy into the training job.

It's February, and that means Valentine's Day! While I did have to remind Matt (twice...) about the date, he now has it written down and we are going to have a date day, probably on the 15th since we both work until late on the 14th. Besides, I think it's all worth it and hopefully we will have some fun :D Any suggestions for a place for dinner or activities?

I also found my camera (yay!!) while I was cleaning this past weekend! This means that I can start trying to take better pictures. Although, I am still saving up for a nice camera (or a video camera, I still have not decided) it's nice to have something other than my iPhone to take pictures.

I can't wait to do more during February and get a handle on everything that I'm doing :P It is going to be a very, VERY busy month!

Love,
Sara :)

ps. As you've probably noticed, we've been playing around with the style of the blog. I owe this to Matt, who really seemed to get into it last night and we found a new style that may or may not be changing again :P

History Lesson: Theory of Nun

Egyptian Mythology is probably one of my favorite mythologies. Norse and Greek and Roman aren't far away, but Egyptian was the first mythology that caught my interest. Maybe it is because the gods and goddesses are so numerous and so interesting looking. Well, I'll be doing some talking about Egyptian mythology every so often here, but for today I want to talk about the theory of Nun.

Nun was the father of the gods, also called 'Nu' or chaos. Unlike other gods, Nun was a purely intellectual concept, meaning there were (and are) no temples or worshipers. The theory of Nun is the Egyptian theory of the beginning of humankind. The theory is the idea that there was a primordial ocean with no surface that completely filled the entire universe. This ocean started retreating and in this process it leaves little pools which are the basics of life as we know it.

What do you think? I thought this was cool and I'm adding it to my storytelling book that I'm working on (one of those projects that I'm not sure I will ever get done, but I've always wanted to write a book).

Also, a big thanks to Matt for having my back and producing an awesome Musica Monday on Monday :) you're awesome!!!!

Love,

Sara

Musica Monday

I'm not usually one for country music, I mean I listen to it often enough but it is not one of my favorite genres by far. I'm much more of an indie and alternative girl myself. But lately I've become hooked on a crazy song by Hunter Hayes. Alright, that was my attempt at being funny, I won't try it again :P The song is called "I Want Crazy", and it honestly reminds me about my own current relationship which is going very well. Today was one of those days that I got to spend lots of time with Matt and we had a lot of fun hanging out and going and doing stuff together. I admit to dragging him to the library and half-price books, but he didn't object! This is the type of relationship I've always searched for, because it is in no way perfect and neither him nor I are perfect but we both try hard and seem to be perfect for each other. I found someone to be silly with, who accepts and loves me for being me, and treats me well! This song reminds me of my ideal relationship because it involves doing some crazy things that make you both happy. I fully support love of any shape and size because in my opinion love is love, and you can't argue with the heart (it doesn't have a mouth or ears so it  doesn't care what you say).

Love,
Sara :)

Musica Monday

Return of the Musica Monday! So, I have been quite lucky as far as my new car since my accident this past December. With my new car, I was lucky enough to get a 'used' car, which turned out to simply be a pre-owned (dealer owned), meaning I get free satellite radio for a while :D, super exciting!! Over the past few months I have experimented with different Sirius radio stations, and have collected the names of several new songs that I find awesome (or funny!). This is an example of a more funny song. It is by Thomas Dolby, and is called "She Blinded Me With Science". I'm not exactly sure why I like this song so much, I think it is possibly because it is so random :P Anyways, here it is! I hope you enjoy!

Not an exciting video sorry, but I hope you all appreciate it!
Shout out to Matt! It's his birthday today!! :D Happy Birthday!!
And now I'm off to bed, good night all you lovely people.
Love,
Sara :)

Fun Facts about 'Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and The Girl' (1919 film)

Every Monday night my American Film History class meets to watch a different movie. Since I got into the fun facts over interim, I figured why not continue them this semester? So, here's my first one!

The movie we watched this past Monday was a D.W. Griffith film starting Lillian Gish (one of America's first movie stars) as Lucy/the Girl, Richard Barthelmess as The Yellow Man, and Donald Crisp as Battling Burrows. And so begin the fun facts :P

~It was selected to the National Film Registry in the Library if Congress in 1996.
~Lillian Gish did not originally want to make this film, but agreed after some convincing from D.W. Griffith, later saying that she was glad to have done it.
~During the famous closet scene, Gish's performance/display of terror had seemed so real that it frightened Griffith who hadn't expected her to put on such a dramatic and convincing performance. Her screams had seemed so real that they caused people from other sets to become concerned and actually had to be prevented from barging into the set in order to 'save' her.
~In order to make Barthelmess appear oriental, a tight rubber band was stretched across his face, hidden by his hat, it caused his facial features to be pulled upwards slightly, no other makeup was used (maybe this is why we can all tell he isn't oriental at all...).
~Gish was in her late 20s when shooting for this film, only 11 years younger than Crisp, who played her father.

I hope you all enjoyed it!! Again I get this information from imdb, and my professor, so no copyright anything intended :P
I hope you guys have had a great week! And shout out to Matt for doing the past Musica Monday!
Love,
Sara :)

Reasons Why I'm a Geek 1

Since I've been in high school, I've been into different science fiction, anime, and other ideas considered 'geeky'. And I will freely admit that I am a Geek! But you want some actual proof? Well, I will probably have a few of these posts throughout the time I blog. To start off I will start with a show called Doctor Who, a classic. Doctor Who is a BBC TV show that has been running since forever ago. OK, not really, but the original TV show did start back in 1963, with their first episode and first 'Doctor'. The show follows the adventures of the 'last' Time Lord, an alien who looks human, who travels throughout space and time in his TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), which looks like a blue police box, causing trouble and solving problems, trying to make the universes safer places to live in. While he attempts to not cause trouble, it seems inevitable for this man and his 'companions', usually Earth humans who travel along with the Doctor for a season or two.
The Doctor himself changes his appearance every once in a while, usually when he gets hit by a particularly deadly beam that would normally kill any human, but just causes the Doctor to regenerate. The current Doctor is played by Matt Smith, who portrays the doctor as a quirky, energetic man who wears a bow tie and suspenders. Matt Smith plays the eleventh Doctor in a very long line of them. I would encourage anyone who enjoys adventure, humor, action, or science fiction to check out this show! It is really a fun show, some episodes are creepy, while others are more humorous and quirky.

Getting on to my geeky-ness! First off, these are my keys:

Second off, this my keychain that has to do with Doctor Who. One of the Doctor's arch rivals is called a Dalek. They are considered 'pure evil', and Matt got me a model of one of them that is a bottle opener :D
Alright, that explanation was a bit lackluster, but I'm really struggling with how I can explain what a Dalek is. You really have to watch the show in order to understand, because they are pure evil, but they are also just empty, so they are just sort of confused at the same time, and can be implemented with human emotions to give them emotions. In other words, it's complicated. :P

So that was my geeky-ness :) I hope you all enjoyed! Or in the least, learned a bit more about me and might have gotten interested in a new show. I hope you guys had a good weekend and have a good start to a new week!
Love,
Sara :)

Date Night

For those of you who haven't figured it out, Matt and I are dating, a few months now, but since we spend most of our time in different states, it does make that whole dating thing a bit difficult at times :P But tonight we went on a fun date to a local bowling alley. We went there with the intention of playing 2 games and ended up playing almost 7! It turns out that tonight was a Thunder Bowling. This means that for $11 per person, groups can bowl as many times as they want for 2 hours starting at 9 pm. Since we got there at 8:45 pm we just started a little early (we got lost cause I forgot where the bowling alley was :P) and ended a little early as well. We had a blast! For the first few games we bowled normally, meaning neither of us ever scored over 124, but for our last one and a half games we tried bowling with our non-dominant hands, which was quite entertaining, or going granny style. Although we didn't score even 50 points on that game, it was still worth it in my opinion because we had a lot of fun doing it and were laughing nearly the entire time!

What are some of your favorite things to do/places to go for dates or when you go out with friends?

Happy Friday :D

Love,

Sara :)

Hamburger Cookies

Alright, I'm not sure how many of you have heard about these wonderful inventions called hamburger cookies. I was introduced to these little cookies by Matt on Christmas Eve day! They are pretty simple to make and also very cute, perfect for the holidays or pretty much any other occasion you could think of! The overall rating is that they are better than regular burgers :P

The ingredients are simple: vanilla wafers, chocolate covered mint cookies (girl scout thin mints are best), vanilla frosting (to be dyed red), coconut shavings (the kind that we sometimes put on top of cupcakes and the like, to be dyed green), and green and red food dyes.

To create the "lettuce" and "ketchup": Take about half a container of vanilla frosting and add a few drops of red food coloring (it is more pink, but that's alright, you can't have everything) which will make your "ketchup"/glue. For the "lettuce", take about half or more of a bag of coconut shavings and add just 2 or 3 drops of green food coloring (it is strong stuff) and combine them in a ziplock bag, close the bag, and shake it up until all the coconut shavings are a light green color. You can leave some parts white if you want it to seem more like iceberg lettuce, or dye it a darker green for a shredded spinach look, it's completely up to you!

To combine and create a hamburger:
1- Take one vanilla wafer and spread it with a thin layer of your "ketchup" on the flat side.
2- Set one mint cookie on top for your "burger patty"
3- Spread another layer of "ketchup"
4- Add in a pinch of your "lettuce", or until you are satisfied with the amount
5- Take another vanilla wafer cookie and spread the flat side with "ketchup" (the ketchup on this layer is optional, if your burger will stay together without it, then it isn't needed, but we might have added a bit too much lettuce and needed some extra glue to hold it all together)
6- Place this second wafer cookie on top of the lettuce and Ta Da! You have a hamburger cookie!

For a visual reference, check the picture below. I did not get any pictures of actually making the cookies, but I can assure you that if you have more than one person it goes by very quickly, we were able to make two platefuls (about 18 cookies each plate) in under an hour. Best part: NO BAKING INVOLVED! This is a perfect last minute cookie idea!

What we are trying to come up with now are variations on this burger. I mean burgers are awesome, but what about adding cheese? Or two thin mints as a double burger? We haven't come up with anything to use for the cheese, any suggestions from readers? I'd really appreciate it, and promise to try it out and report my findings :P

Well I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas, or a wonderful past few days. We've been running around visiting family and friends for the past few days so it's been a little nuts, and I'm taking whatever time I can to blog and/or craft. I'm currently working on a few ideas for New Years that I will share when I finish at least one of them! I am also now back at my grandma's house so there may or may not be a post about the neat things around her house tomorrow or something.

As always, your replies are always appreciated and more than welcome! Happy Hump Day! :D

Love,

Sara :)

Climbing Update

Alright so today's climbing update is a bit more than just a quick update on my climbing stats, I'm also going to share and "if only..." that has to do with climbing gear. Here goes!
This past week-ish (yea a while ago, oops!), I was back home for Thanksgiving Break. So, while I was there, on Friday, Matt and I decided to go rock climbing, because we obviously haven't gone together in a long while. We went down there and found that they had put up some new routes (apparently they try to put up and new route or two every month) down at Turner Hall, meaning of course we had to try at least a few of them. We did, and it was pretty fun! I got a little lazy at one point but we continued to climb about 4 or 5 times up the wall (which is like half the size of the wall here at Olaf, but still functional and pretty fun) and did several boldering challenges. We ended up climbing alone, a little sad, but friends were able to stop by which was nice. I feel like I'm finally getting better at climbing!
After climbing, we talked for a while about the different equipment and looked at what Turner Hall had for sale. We learned that harnesses cost between $65-$95 and that doesn't include shoes, chalk bags, chalk, or a belay device. We did a little research when we got home and found that there is a place at Bayshore Mall (the closest mall to us) that had a store called Erehwon, which carried climbing gear! This was news to us and so we decided to investigate later on.
On Saturday, we headed down to Erehwon (nowhere spelled backwards) and talked to someone about the harnesses they had there. We learned that one big difference between harnesses was the leg straps; meaning some harnesses had adjustable ones while others didn't. We definitely decided that we would want the adjustable ones (you never know! we might grow!). The other difference was the double backing loops, these were I believe all automatically double backed now, which is pretty nice! It save a lot of hassle and extra work when putting on the harness.
Unfortunately I can't show any pictures because the website is a little lacking in the accuracy area (at least when we first checked it). But if me or Matt gets one for Christmas or at any point, I will be sure to post some pictures for you to see.
Have an great Tuesday :D
Love,
Sara :)

Break Update

Hey guys!
So as you may have learned/guessed, it's Thanksgiving Break currently (yay!!), which means I'm home for the first time this school year :). I do enjoy being home, but unfortunately, being in the middle of a busy and slightly stressful semester of college, I have homework to do over break as well. I will give you a quick little run down of what has been happening so far during my break.
To start off with, I got home late Tuesday night (meaning a bit after 10 pm). I got to say hi to my family and meet our new cat, Dorito (I will have some pictures up of Dorito in a later post, probably tomorrow), and try out a new coffee machine that we have (pretty snazy!). On Wednesday, we cleaned the entire house, which really took most of a day, we also got food ready for the family that was coming up for Thanksgiving on Thursday (yesterday). I got to cut up the cheese and sausage and arrange them on the plate. That night I visited Matt for a while and we talked about Thanksgiving, school, made some plans for Friday, and just enjoyed each other's company.
Thanksgiving day (happy belated Thanksgiving everyone!) was a very busy day that included lots of food preparation and I was placed in charge of the stuffing, gravy, creamed corn, and sweet potatoes. Also, I was by the microwave, so when relatives brought in mashed potatoes and rolls, I heated them up. We had many people at our house yesterday for thanksgiving, I believe it was around 16-20 people, it was nice to be able to catch up with the family and to see them again. We haven't all been able to get together in several months, I believe the last time was June and before that was last December! While not everyone was able to make it, the majority was and that was very nice to have :)
Today is a homework day. I'm hoping to get most, if not all of my outline done for my history research paper done. The outline itself is due on Monday, and is a big part of our grade for the paper. I'm going to be working on that until around 4, when I'm heading out to dinner with Matt, and then we are going rock climbing with his sister and her boyfriend. I hope to get a majority of this (if not all!) outline done before 4 pm, and then to have a good time tonight! :)
How was everyone's Thanksgiving? What are some of your plans for the rest of the week? Did anyne go to Black Friday?
Have a great day!
Love,
Sara :)

Halloweekend...After

Alright, so I promised to post my costume after the weekend, and here it goes! So I ended up dressing up like a fairy. It wasn't my original plan, but it's what I ended up using. As one of my best friends from school says "You're wearing PINK!", and yea I did. But it worked out that way and I actually felt very cute in the outfit. We actually tried to temporarily dye my hair and did! Only thing was that we didn't count on was that when sprayed with yellow temporary dye, my hair would actually turn green :P So, that was interesting and unexpected, but still worked out in the end! So this is my fairy costume!

Well, I hope you all had a great weekend and I hope the week goes well!

In case you're wondering, I believe that the music post will come later, because my friend Matt will be (hopefully) posting that for an unknown video that he promises will be good :) and I believe that it will be! So be excited for when that comes up!

Love,

Sara :)

Fall Break Fun

Hey folks!

I'm back! I hope you enjoyed Matt's post, it is my hope that he will be posting every once in a while here, because he has some good ideas!

This past weekend I did spend with Matt which was a lot of fun! It was one of his first times in Minneapolis in quite a while being here and I was determined to show him a fun time. Now I'm not exactly the party girl that many college students are, my idea of a good time is hanging out and going to different sites in the city (which I really haven't seen so that was really awesome!). I picked up my boy (Matt) from the Megabus stop Friday afternoon, and we had dinner with one of my friends from college at the Mall of America (MOA). We ended up hanging out around MOA for a while just looking around at all the stores, it was a nice way to relax after a long week for me at school.

Since Matt had never actually seen my school, I took him down to St Olaf on Saturday and we spent the day there looking at the buildings and had a good time. I was able to show him where my classes were and where I lived. We had lunch on campus at the Cage and then dinner at Perkins (a great place for a fun and casual dinner date!). It was wonderful to be able to show him my world!

On Sunday we visited the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. This was my first time ever being there so it was very cool for me! These pictures are from our trip there, and the ones near the end are of the park that are across the bridge from the Sculpture Garden.

This is my favorite picture of us right now!

We were being silly here and it was quite a lot of fun once we figured out how to do it!

Yes, this guy is actually feeding the squirrels! It was pretty sweet! Even though it was cold outside and many of the plants in the garden were dead, we found some flowers that were still fighting the cold and leaving us with some pretty fall colors and warm feelings :).

Monday was a day of realizing that not everything goes your way, but changes ensued and it happens and we have fun. I learned today that Matt and I can find something fun to do no matter what the circumstances are and it's a big part of our relationship, we are able to communicate and have fun! Anyways, on Monday, we attempted to go to the Minneapolis Institute of Art because we thought it was be interesting. However, it was closed (not a normal thing for it to be closed on a Monday, but it was closed). This created a bit of a predicament for us and we ended up wandering around the Minneapolis area and getting lost several times, ending up in Franklin where we found a neat park and hung out there for a while, enjoying the fall colors (sorry about no pictures but we left phones in the care and I forgot my camera :( mea culpa!). We finally decided we should actually go to dinner, we splurged and went to Olive Garden. We had a glass of wine, which was surprisingly very very good, and had a lovely dinner! We then decided to finish off the night by heading back to MOA and going on the rides. We were so stuffed that we weren't sure if we could actually go on the rides without getting sick, but we did! It was a blast to be able to go on so many rides indoors at a mall with someone as enthusiastic as I was! I also had a nutella crepe, which if you haven't had it is a MUST TRY!!!

This concluded our wonderful weekend. I hope that there will be more weekends to share later on, but for now it's back to the reality of classes for me and job searches for Matt.

I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend! Any upcoming plans to share? What was one of your favorite fun trips with a good friend or special someone? Care to share? I love stories and I'd love to hear yours!

Thanks all for continuing to read here, my few readers :P, tell your friends!

Love,

Sara :)