Peppermint Stick Holiday Frock! (I want this dress)!

Peppermint Stick Holiday Frock GROSGRAIN GIVEAWAY!!!!

This is such a cute dress! I want it!

(Thanks, Megan for introducing me to this blog!)

BAD PERSON QUIZ

As most of you know, I never do blog posts unless it's something I get really worked up over. Well here's what happened. In my biology class we have been talking about global warming and our ecological footprint and what not. Today I had to take a quiz online to find out if I was a bad person. Here is the link http://www.myfootprint.org/en/about_the_quiz/what_it_measures/. If you would like to see how bad you are feel free to take it! Basically it tells you if the whole world lived your kind of lifestyle, how many worlds would it take to support it? My score was 5.30!! And the area that I scored the lowest was the food section! In other words, I have a very heavy food footprint. I was kind of insulted by this especially because the questions took TONS of points off I didn't eat organic foods and things (which I don't.) Anyway, we were supposed to write a 1 page paper about how we can reduce our footprints. I was still angry when I wrote my essay so it turned out to be a little sarcastic. I have included it here for your reading pleasure.


My Footprint
I was honestly kind of annoyed with this survey. In almost all areas I was below the country average. There was one area however, in which I was substantially over. That was the area of food footprint! Food footprint? I know that I am a more conservative eater than the average American – eating more nutritious foods, eating less food than the average, and not wasting food, but still it gave me a ridiculous score because I don't buy organic products. That's ridiculous. Anyway, 5.30 earths are required to maintain my “excessive” and “glutenous” lifestyle. There is not a whole lot that I can do at this point in my life to reduce my housing footprint – being as how I live in an apartment and cannot control what it was built out of and what energy efficient features it has. I suppose next year I could decide to only rent a place that meets certain energy efficiency standards, but I know that will not happen as it will probably cost more. As far as my goods and services footprint goes, the biggest thing I could do would be to completely wear things out before I actually replace them. Recycling isn't really an option right now, but I can definately do that in the future. My carbon footprint was well below the national average, but I could still reduce it further. The biggest thing I could do for that would be to take fewer and smaller vacations so that I am not driving and/or flying all over the place. Instead I could ride a bike or hike to my parents place in Pennsylvania. Riding a bike or carpooling to school would also be an effective way to reduce my carbon footprint. I could also do little things around the house to reduce my carbon footprint – like unplugging idle electronics for example, and turning things off with a power strip. Buying more energy efficient light bulbs would be good too. If I can get permission from my landlord I could install solar panels on my windows. And I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I draped all my clothes out the window to air dry. I could also turn my thermostat off and wear my frozen solid air dried clothes to keep me warm. Another big area I could improve in is the organic clothing area. I have 1 shirt that is 100% organic cotton. Quite frankly, I feel very ashamed that I don't only have a 100% organic cotton wardrobe. To fix that I can throw all my current clothing away and buy organic, or better yet, make all my own clothing from grass and twigs and things I would find in a forest. Finally, I need to reduce my consumption of pesticided foods and focus on the natural foods and support my local organic farmer. I think this is a pretty good plan of what I can do to reduce my ecological footprint. And just for good measure, I will reduce my C02 output by breathing less.

Fun weekend

Richard and I made a fun trip to Salt Lake City this weekend, to do some family history research at the family history library for our genealogy class. We ended up spending a long time there, and I found what I thought was a missing branch from our famlily tree - after spending hours doing the work, and having a French translator help me find the real names of some great great greats... I found 5 new names! It was so exciting and so rewarding. The only bummer is that once I called home to tell Mom the exciting news, she already knew those names! Guess I should have done a little more basic research - aka finding out what had already been done. But on the upside, it was good experience, to at least go through the steps and learn how to use the library and the resources there.

After that, we went to an amazing Greek restaurant - Aristo's.

We got a gift certificate a few months ago there, and we were glad we did! I have never had Greek food before, but let me tell you....A-MAZING. The overall atmosphere was really nice and relaxed. Our appetizer: Tzatziki and Pita bread... mmmm...

My dish and Richard's dish...I can't even try to remember what they were called...
Mine was breaded chicken stuffed with spinach, on top of rice pilaf with a creamy mushroom spinach sauce.
Richards was Beef marinaded in olive oil with spices and good stuff, with fried potatoes and a salad.
(I should write menus, huh)

We had fun, and it was nice to get out of Provo and do something different!



Oh...and I can't forget..
yesterday, we had a pilgrims and Indians dinner to kick off Thanksgiving, at my old roommate Kel (and Ron)'s apartment. Max and Rebecca came too.

We all came as indians..I guess we must have scared off all the pilgrims.

Oh, except Max and Rebecca were Greek Gods...I don't know.

I am grateful...

I have decided that I really need to spend more time thinking about what I am grateful for. I tend to get caught up in the areas that I want to improve on, but I don't focus on the blessings that I already have, as often as I should. I have a goal to keep track regularly, of the things that I am thankful for, or the blessings that I experience.

With that, I am going to start on my new goal by saying that today, I am grateful for my wonderful husband. I am thankful for the person that he is - his kind and gentle temperament and his fun and easy-going personality. I look back at the past 15 months of marriage, and I'm just so grateful for all of the growth, and for all the happiness that I have experienced as a result. I'm thankful that Richard helps me to step back and look at difficult situations from a more eternal perspective, and that he is willing to listen and help me through each thing that I encounter. He is my best friend, and I love him so much!

Halloween was fun.

We had a fun Halloween a week ago - we went over to Rochelle and BJ's for the evening, along with our friends Max and Rebecca. We ate lots of yummy junk food and carved pumpkins! Richard's was a Strongbad pumpkin, and mine was an Emo pumpkin. We were very proud. I just wish that we could have gotten some pictures of our pumpkins in full light... then you could see how awesomely designed they both were. Oh well!

And here is what you have all been waiting for......

Richard dressed up as a box for Halloween, as agreed.