What makes me Happy: The Beach

So I've been reading this book called the Happiness Project, and it gave me the idea to write down what makes me happy, just for the sake of having a record. Well, and that writing down what makes me happy kind of makes me happy in and of itself.

What I want to focus on for this post, as you can probably infer from the title, is the beach. I love the beach. My grandparents had a timeshare in Cannon Beach, Oregon, all while I was growing up. We went pretty often, and spent a lot of time with my cousins there. Cannon Beach holds a very special place in my heart because it is the first beach I remember every going to. I spent so many days looking through the tide pools by Haystack Rock, searching for starfish and anemones. I spent just as many nights there sitting around a fire in the cold sand, bundled up in an oversized sweatshirt but still wearing shorts, like a true oregonian. I remember the time my cousin was showing us all how she could do the splits, but I couldn't, so I tried jumping of a log so I could land in the splits and then spending the next 30 minutes crying because I really wasn't flexible enough for the splits. I also remember sitting in the hot tub with my cousins, playing lots of water games, because the ocean was always too cold to swim in. I remember exactly what the walk to the beach looked like, and the two beach houses we walked between to get to the actual beach. I so dearly miss walking through the cold sand, watching the sun set over the sea. What I miss the most though is all the time we spent there with our family playing phase 10. Okay, maybe that's not what I miss most, but it was a staple of every trip!

Another beach that I hold close is Corona Del Mar, just south of Newport Beach in SoCal. The first time I went there was with my ward for FHE, where we played beach volleyball and roasted marshmallows over a fire after it got dark. After that first time, I went back almost weekly. It was about 30 minutes from my apartment and I was kind of going through some things at the time, so I spent a lot of time there, usually with friends, just sitting on the sand after dark, listening to the waves. It was my escape. I remember the last time I was there, 2 days after I had lost my job, I went with a handful of friends that I wanted to spend one last night with. It was in late April, so it wasn't particularly warm after dark. The sand was cold, just how I like it, and the waves were strong. I spent nearly an hour, by myself, sitting on the lifeguard stand, just listening to the waves crash onto the jetty. I go back there in my mind whenever I just need to get away from the world.

One thing that I have said before, I don't remember who it was to, but I remember telling them that I always feel at home whenever I am at a beach. Well, I want to revise that a little bit. I always feel at home on a cold beach. Warm beaches feel more like a vacation destination to me. I much prefer the cold sand, water that is far too chilly to swim in, and a brisk breeze, just enough that I need an oversized hoodie :) I would take an Oregon coast beach over a Florida beach any day.

Well, now I live in North Texas, where the only sand is found on the banks of muddy lakes, far away from anything even remotely resembling the beaches that I love. But I still have plenty of memories to look back on.

Cold beaches make me happy :)

The first picture is Corona Del Mar, the second is a heavily edited Cannon Beach. Both pictures were taken by me.

The Pro's and Con's to Living in a Small Town

Throughout the course of my 22 year long life, I have lived in a total of 5 small towns, all at very different times in my life. What I want to talk about is the good and bad that comes with living in a small town.

The first small town I lived in was a little bitty town called Damascus, just southeast of Portland, Oregon. Where I lived was way out on the edge of town, which is pretty much where everyone in Damascus lived. The population when we moved away was about 8500 people. It was a cute little town, where the vast majority of the land was residential and there was only 1 stoplight. I remember there used to be a Safeway and an Albertson's across the street from each other, which was always good for prices. There was also two gas stations less than a block from each other and they would always be in a price war. What I learned living in small town Oregon is how to get along with kids from other faiths. I actually went to a Seventh Day Adventist private school for 4 years there, where we prayed and read from the bible every day. One time a kid in my class actually prayed that "the mormons would come to know they are wrong and realize that they are all going to hell." I actually told the kid that had prayed for that that I was a mormon that day at recess. That day I noticed that everyone in my class started treating me differently. They all looked at me like I was some poor brainwashed little child. I didn't really have many friends after that. That was the last year I attended that school.

Another small town that I lived in was little old Hurricane, Utah, "Gateway to the Parks!" We moved here when I was 11. I learned quite a lot living in small town Southern Utah. The population at the time we moved there was almost exactly the same as Damascus. One of the things I learned here is how to build a house. When we first moved there, we were living with my grandparents. Shortly after we moved there my grandparents bought the plot of land next to theirs and gave it to us on the condition that we built him a decent woodshop, which we did. We designed and built the house on that land from scratch, and we all got a chance to work on it in some way or another. I actually hid a note in the insulation just before we put up the drywall :) Another thing I learned in Hurricane is how narrow minded some people can be. I would hazard a guess that 75% of what would have been my graduating class stayed within 4 hours of Hurricane. Of that 75% probably 90% stayed within 45 minutes. Everyone there lived in a bubble, where going to St. George, a whole 15 minute drive at most, was considered a major event that had to be planned ahead of time. This was a big change for us, everything being so close together. In Oregon we were used to having to drive at least 20 minutes to a decent grocery store and about 45 minutes to an hour to the nearest mall. I have wanderlust, so living in a place where 90% of the population has never been out of the state (it was 20 minutes to Arizona) was really sad to me. These people didn't want to leave! But, Hurricane had so much charm that after having to move away, I would move back in a second. I would just make sure my children knew there was a whole world out there to explore.

The last small town I want to talk about is Rexburg, Idaho, home of Brigham Young University - Idaho. I lived there for less than a year altogether, but over that time, I grew to love small towns so much more. After living in Texas, where the number of students in my high school was about a quarter the population of Hurricane, Rexburg was a welcome change. Rexburg was the kind of college town where the population doubled when school was in session. It had 4 stoplights when I first moved there. They also had the smallest walmart I have ever seen. Everything was within walking distance. The furthest I ever had to walk was from my dorm to walmart, which is about 2 miles. One thing I learned there was what a good doctor that truly cares about his patients is like. Not only did my doctor remember me as soon as he saw me after I had been gone for almost 2 years, but my chiropractor there gave me free treatment for 3 months, 3 times a week, because my back was so messed up that he didn't care that my insurance wasn't accepted there, he just wanted to make sure I was getting help. My favorite thing about Rexburg was the temple. The temple there is on top of the highest hill for miles around so that you can see it from about 20 minutes away when it is all lit up at night. I only every got to do baptisms there twice, but the two times I went I was incredibly impressed with how well they kept things going smoothly for being so busy all the time, and it was amazing how even then the spirit was so strong. Even though I haven't lived there in a year and a half, Rexburg feels like home just as much as Denton does.

So, to sum up, living in Hurricane taught me to be careful that living in a small town doesn't make you forget that there is a whole world out there. Living in Hurricane also taught me that just because everyone around you has the same religious beliefs doesn't necessarily mean they have the same standards. Living in Damascus taught me that how to stand up for my religious beliefs when your classmates think you practice witchcraft and are going to hell. And lastly, living in Rexburg taught me how to fall in love with a place so perfect for you that you didn't think it existed.

The Mindy Project... and some other stuff...

So I'm going to try something a little bit different with this post. My mom brought to my attention today that I should combine my love for writing with my love of TV and try writing about the shows I watch. So here goes!

The most recent show I have been into is The Mindy Project. The show just finished it's third season, and if you don't know what it is, I'm about to tell you. Mindy Kaling is a single Indian thirty-something comedian who has spent the majority of her career writing for comedy shows such as The Office. She started out doing stand up in New York with her roommate. They wrote this comedy play/routine called Matt & Ben about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's friendship. They also performed it for quite some time. Just picture it, right now, in your head. A short Indian girl and a tall White girl acting as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Sounds pretty entertaining, right? So you can imagine why Mindy Kaling would make it in the comedy writing industry.

I digress. The Mindy Project is about Mindy Lahiri(Kaling), female gynecologist, who works at a practice with three male gynecologists. Mindy is your typical thirty-something woman in New York City looking for a guy that she can spend the rest of her life with. But, she doesn't have the best luck in the male department. She falls hard and fast and gets her heart broken several times in the first two seasons. In the most recent season, she ends up dating her best friend in secret because they work together.

What I want to talk about mostly is the concept of falling in love with, or just plain ending up with your best friend. Everyone has heard they saying that you should "marry your best friend." I know this actually happens in real life because I know about 5 married couples that started as friends, became best friends, and ended up getting married. So what about the rest of us? What about those of us who have a best friend of the opposite sex but don't see that ever becoming something more, huh? What then?

Every girl knows that some of the greatest TV and movie couples started as really close friends. The absolute greatest example of this is Monica and Chandler from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. If you haven't seen it yet, there is a post on Buzzfeed that explains exactly why they are the best(http://www.buzzfeed.com/oliviaroat/why-youll-never-really-get-over-monica-and-chandl-ehzv). This is one of my absolute favorite posts on Buzzfeed. And that probably explains why I'm such a hopeless romantic. I want the kind of relationship like Monica and Chandler had. I want to marry my best friend. I want someone who knows why I'm such a dork about One Direction, someone that knows just how deeply I feel anything and everything, someone who shares my love of late night Macaroni and Cheese, and I want someone to want to know everything about me. That song by Rascal Flatts, Take Me There, basically says everything I want a guy to ever say to me. I want him to see where I grew up in Oregon, where I went to middle school and part of High School in Utah, where I lived in Florida and California, where I've taken pictures in Hawaii, where I spent so many weekends in a beach house on the Oregon coast, and most of all I want him to see my absolute favorite place in the entire world. I want to share my entire life story with him, and I want him to share his entire life story with me.

I'm not exactly sure how this ended up being more like a confessional rather than a TV review, but I don't particularly care either. If you read all that, you're awesome. If you skipped all that weird stuff in the middle, shame on you. I'm weird, get over it.

Anywho, I really want Mindy to wise up and take a chance on falling for her best friend, because really, it's what every girl wants.

The Act of Writing

I love to write. I constantly forget how much I love to write. But when I get an idea, which isn't very often, I can sit down and the words will just flow out of me. I prefer the physical act of writing with pen and paper. But it has to be pen because then everything I write is deliberate. I can't go back and erase everything and start over, I have to keep going where ever the words take me. That's why I find writing on the computer to be difficult. I'm always thinking I could have said that differently or better or bolder or lighter etc. It's too easy to go back and delete something I'm not so sure about. That's my problem, not being sure of myself. When I don't go back over something I've written I worry that something will be wrong or out of place. But when I do that for a paper at school, that paper that I didn't reread has always gotten me a good grade. I guess what I'm trying to say is trust yourself to convey your message properly the first time. Before we had the backspace key or erasers or white-out we were much more careful about what we put on paper. I think it should go back to being that way. I vow to only use the backspace key in the case of bad grammar or spelling errors from now on.

That being said, I got this book/journal type thing at Barnes and Noble the other day called 642 Things to Write About.

It's awesome. The prompts go from morbid to flowery and everything in between. I would like to share one of the prompts with you and what I wrote for it. Don't judge me though, it's kind of sappy. (I'm a sucker for YA Fiction, which mostly includes coming-of-age stories and first loves, so that's kind of what I wrote.) Anyways, I'm super nervous about putting this out there, please be nice. (My sister read it and said I should write books, so...). Oh, and this was written originally in pen, just so you know :)

Here is the prompt: "Start a story with the line "When I confronted him, he denied that he'd ever said it."

Here is what I wrote:

When I confronted him, he denied that he'd ever said it.

"Oh come on," I retorted, "it was just last friday! How could you possibly forget, let alone deny, that it ever happened?"

He seemed very tight-lipped. Maybe he regrets what he said.

I hope not.

When he said that to me, right to my face, I may have froze, but that doesn't mean I didn't like what he said.

"I shouldn't have said anything," he paused,"I don't want to ruin our friendship."

"But what if it works? What if, by some miracle, we are actually perfect for each other?" My counter argument brought some light to his face. There was hope there.

I don't know what I expected him to say. But, what happened next was better than anything he could have said. We were close enough that I could smell peppermint with the slightest hint of cinnamon on his breath.

"Are you sure?" He whispered, almost to soft to be heard, but loud enough to be felt through my entire being, straight down to my toes, making my heart pound so furiously I hoped he couldn't hear it.

He put his forehead to mine and we stood so close I could feel his heart beating just as excitedly as mine.

When our lips finally met, I knew this wouldn't be the last time.





Now that I go back and read through it again, it kind of sounds like the excerpt that you would read on the back cover of a book. The hook to make you curious enough to dive in. I just hope some day I can expand the excerpt enough to fill the whole book and not just the back flap. That sounded uber cheesy, geez, maybe I shouldn't be a writer… TTFN

Beach Houses and Bungalows

I've always had an affinity for beach houses and bungalows. Bungalows in particular have always struck my fancy for the cozy intimate nature of their appearance. If you don't know what a bungalow looks like, here are some examples.

(This is technically called a Craftsman style house, but they have very similar styles.)

As you can see, I could spend days looking at bungalow style homes online.

I've never lived in a bungalow. But it is on my bucket list. I don't know, they just seem warm and welcoming to me. I want my future home to look like a place you can go when you want to relax and feel right at home, and bungalows convey that feeling.

Some key traits of a bungalow are a deep covered front porch. The front door is usually pretty wide, made of a heavy dark wood, and has window panels at the top, just above eye level. They usually have a darker exterior, more earth tones than bright or loud colors. The inside is pretty distinct as well. There are usually large dark wood columns for support beams, lots of earth tones, and the windows are a particular style as well, usually large with dark trim and narrow panels along the edges. Here are some examples of the inside of a bungalow.

I also love beach houses. When I was younger, my grandparents had a timeshare at a beach house in cannon beach Oregon that we would go to fairly often. As a result, I developed a love for weathered siding and sand covered porches.

Beach houses have some similarities to bungalows and craftsman homes, but the biggest difference is the color scheme. Beach houses employ the white and distressed motif more often than not. Like a bungalow, beach houses have large covered porches. They use earth tones as well, but usually on the lighter end of the spectrum. They also tend to have a raised main level which means there are usually steps up to the porch or front door.

The interior of a beach house is what I like most about them. I love the distressed and antique look that can be so often found in beach houses. I also love wood paneled walls, which is also quite common in beach houses. There are usually doors to every interior room, and they are usually not painted so they have the natural freshly sanded look. Another common aspect is lots of big windows that usually have views of the beach. I also love the type of window that don't slide open but have the handle in the middle and open out. That's not super common in any type of home, but I still love them :) Here are some interior examples of beach houses.

I love love love love love love LOVE looking at homes. It may be a really weird obsession, but I just love finding unique architecture and style (which is why I hate cookie cutter neighborhoods that are full of brick houses). I can't wait until I get to find my own home and decorate it however I want :) (I'm hoping I end up in the pacific north west because bungalows and beach houses are in abundance up there :D ).

Since I usually share something personal, I guess I should do that here :) The reason I love looking at homes is because I fantasize about my future family quite often. Will it be big? Small? What will my kids be like? Etc. I want my home to be the house in the neighborhood that all the kids love spending time at because it feels homey. I love the romanticism of bungalows and craftsman homes. I want my teenagers to have movie nights all the time because everyone always likes coming to our house because it is comfortable and welcoming. I will strive to make everyone feel at home in my house. That is something that has been a prominent characteristic of my home growing up. I have movie nights pretty often now and it's come to the point where everyone knows where the things they may need in the kitchen are, and they usually don't bother asking if they can go through our cabinets anymore, which is how I want it. I hope to be a stay at home mom that spends her days refurbishing old and well loved objects like desks and cabinets and lamps. I want my house to be full of successful pinterest projects, old window paneled doors turned and made into picture frames and coat racks, an old sewing machine table covered with old wallpaper and distressed to keep the vintage look, DIY projects galore. I just hope that one day my family can look back and say they had a home full of memories and joyous moments.

Someday my prince will come...

Don't freak out! This isn't some weird post about the woes of being single or some classified letting the world know exactly what I am looking for in a man. No, none of that will EVER be on this blog.

This post is about pinterest. I would guesstimate that roughly 50% of people that get a pinterest do so because they are getting married and they are looking for wedding ideas. Then there's the good chunk of us that are single twentysomethings with 40+ boards. One of which is our wedding board. That's right, we all have one. (Except Denee, Denee doesn't have one.) My wedding board is called "Someday my prince will come..." It used to be called "One day," but that just sounded too depressing so I put a little Disney in there to give it a little less "woe is the single girl" feel. My wedding board is kind of an all-encompassing board that has engagement photo ideas, save the date ideas, dresses, rings, photography tips, decorating tips, super cheesy romantic crap, etc. Anyways, I digress. The other day I was talking to a girl that has just gotten engaged (one of the about 10 that I know that have gotten engaged over the last few weeks), and she was telling me how she doesn't have a wedding board on pinterest. So naturally I assume I'm the freak that has a wedding board but no prospects whatsoever, but no. She tells me having a wedding board on pinterest isn't weird. And I was like, "yeah! fantasizing about my far distant wedding when I don't even get dates is totally normal!" Okay, I didn't really say that. But let's be real here for a second. The majority of women on pinterest are probably single twentysomethings like me with no prospects and we all have wedding boards. (Except Denee.)

Okay, I totally forgot where I was going with this, so I'll just finish by saying this. It's okay to fantasize about the perfect wedding. In the back of our minds, we all know that the perfect wedding doesn't really exist, but it doesn't hurt to shoot for the stars. So go make your wedding board. Just remember that having the perfect wedding isn't the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal should be to prepare yourself for marriage, not a wedding. Aspire to be the mother/wife you want to be. Perfection is not the goal, making good memories is.




P.S. Here is my wedding board if you wanna sneak a peek :) http://www.pinterest.com/ambernina/someday-my-prince-will-come/

Figuring it all out

Being an (almost) 22 year old comes with certain expectations. 10 years ago, the mormon world would have expected me to be married with 1 kid and another on the way, especially if I lived in Utah. Today, the average 22 year old is expected to have some sort of degree and a plan for further education. Either that or you are at the very least expected to know what you want to do for the rest of your life, with a plan set in motion. I don't fit into any of these categories. The only plan I have is that I want to make a plan. Pretty pathetic, right?

There are a few things I know I want to plan for. I know that I want to be a wife and mother. I know that I want to get some sort of bachelor's degree, currently I'm going for Psychology with a minor in Education. I know that I want to continue progressing as a disciple of Christ.

There are also a few things I know I need to work on and be careful of. I know that I need to be careful about who I put my trust in (there are a couple of back stories there, neither of which I plan on sharing, EVER). I know that I need to trust that God has a plan for my life and that He will do whatever He can to make sure I fulfill that plan, provided I stay faithful. I know that I need to work on my social skills, specifically with the male species. (If I ever want to get married, that is.) I know that I need to work on seeing individuals as children of God, my brothers and sisters. As the song in Prince of Egypt says, I need to look at my life through heaven's eyes.

Obviously, I don't have it all figured out, far from it. But I know that life is long, the days are short, and I need to take advantage of the time I have and make the most of it. I need to spend time with my friends, do the things I love like writing and taking pictures, prepare myself to be a good wife and mother someday. And I know that someday will come, but I know it's not tomorrow, and it's not next week, or next month, maybe not even next year. But until then, I'm going to do everything I can to be happy. Because if you aren't happy in your current situation, what makes you think something is going to change that? Nothing except you can change that. Only you can decide to be happy.

So be happy while you're figuring it all out. It's the best you can do.