my week with jo

this past week i got an unexpected, special visit from my mama


i was so excited when she texted me friday night saying that she would come up on monday.
i had been trying to get her to come out to celebrate my birthday since i won't be able to go home for it this year, but it was too chaotic of a time so she said she couldn't. 
luckily she was able to find time before my birthday which was perfect. i hadn't really realized, but this is the first summer i've spent not at home. in california. it's kind of strange that in my almost 23 years of life that this is the first. this will also only be the 2 time i haven't been home for my birthday.. which is also weird. i guess i actually am kind of.. sort of... growing up. how weird. anyways....
she arrived monday afternoon so austin & i hurried up there to catch up & have dinner with her.
we also went to see woody allen's latest, to rome with love..... and we were all disappointed. 
so maybe don't go see it if you haven't.... that night nick & shayla came up to see my mom & we played bananagrams which incredibly fun & apples to apples. 
tuesday austin & i went boating with his family for pioneer day & it was so much fun. i love just riding in the boat, i'm perfectly content not going in the water, but we did go tubing & i love tubing. i don't know what it is, but i absolutely love it & can't stop laughing when i'm on one! after boating we went & had dinner at one or my mom & my favorite restaurants the dodo. the dodo is in sugar house & is delicious. plus, they have my favorite dessert: peanut butter cheesecake. it's heavenly.
i oddly enough have no recollection of what happened on wednesday.. so skip that day..
thursday we got our nails done & went to lunch with, taryn, my cousin whitney & her little babe wren & wandered the mall. 
friday austin & i went to lunch with my mom & her siblings before austin headed off for a weekend of fishing with his dad & brothers. later that night we went down to city creek to meet danece, kirstine & whitney where we wandered that mall & got dinner at kneaders. 
saturday my mom & i went & saw a friends new house & then went to see rock of ages. i actually really liked the movie! i love musicals, & what's not to love about the 80's rock & roll? it was really fun.
afterward we met whit & baby wren for dinner at brio.
sadly we had to say our goodbyes on sunday, but it was so fun having her here! & austin came home, so that was a good thing! 

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1. view from the boat for pioneer day
2. my new favorite accessory: an open ring from my mom for an early bday gift!
3. i may have eaten all of the oreos...
4. fresh raspberries
5. lovely sunset in lehi
6. my sunday read. who doesn't love louis l'amore? 

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band of horses @ twilight

i was going to start this post off with a video of one of my favorite band of horses songs, but youtube doesn't want to cooperate. so instead, i'll just tell you which one it was: our swords. it's a really good song. i also really, really like evening kitchen (it's a little slow & semi sad) & no ones gonna love you. so check them out if you don't know them already & you are interested. moving on...  austin, nick, shayla & i went downtown to one of the twilight concerts to see band of horses play. i was so excited because i love them so much. it seemed to be way more crowded than i remember from last year, & really, really hot. but we somehow managed to run into a lot of friends that we haven't seen in a long time. we stood around & waited for the show to begin & once it did, i had a lot of fun. i truly love band of horses & have for some time now. this was my second time seeing them play live & it was just as good as the first time (just more crowded). austin likes to take picture of people. not just people he knows, but sort of everyone, & they're usually pretty funny & twilight concerts are seriously the best for people watching/getting great pictures of random people. so during the show he took the camera & went wild taking pictures of whoever he & our friend christian thought was a good subject. not all of them  turned out too well, but he did manage to get some pictures of our group of friends we were with, which i was happy about! 
nick & shayla, just so excited for band of horses
 christian
 boy with a mullet & christian in the background
 front view of boy with mullet & me trying to make the picture
 kody!
 close up on nick
 jake, who we went through nick & shayla
paparazzi shot of kylie "please, no. i hate having my picture taken" 
i love this book! i had so many different parts highlighted & underlined that i loved & i always have liked this quote from it! read it if you haven't 

the uintas

I've been asking/telling austin that i wanted to go camping for a couple of weeks & we finally went this past weekend. our plan was to fish & to rock climb, so we drove up into the uintas & searched for a campsite. we drove all around looking in all the different campgrounds, 
assuming it would be easy to find one, however we failed to notice a tiny factor. we chose to go camping over the 24 weekend, & for anyone who doesn't live in utah, the 24 is a big deal since it's pioneer day & all. anyways, we drove all over & 
failed at finding a campsite, so we decided to hike in & camp at ruth lake. i've never hiked into ... anywhere... with a pack on, so i won't lie, i felt pretty outdoorsy.
we hiked in around 8 pm, set up camp & made dinner around 9, so we quickly went to sleep.
when we woke up our plan was to go fishing & climbing, but it had rained during the night
so we needed to wait for it to dry out a little bit so we started off with fishing.
we fished for about an hour & a half, but we noticed rain clouds headed our direction,
so we packed up, headed out & made it right before the storm hit.
luckily for us. even though we didn't get to climb, it was still so much fun just to go out
& camp.
 me all ready to hike
 admiring our hike
 reeses for dessert 

 view out of our tent
where we camped 

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1. my new glasses i got while i was in california arrived in the mail!
2. austin holding his brothers cat on his head
3. austin before we hiked out of our camping spot in the uintas
4. my skull i photographed for my photography class
5. out little garden is blooming
6. my current read: the perks of being a wallflower 
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ruffled

i'm so excited to say that our wedding has been featured on ruffled wedding blog
when our photographer told us that they had submitted our photos & that they chose to feature us, i couldn't help but tell everyone. i've been checking the site nearly every single day waiting 
for our wedding to be shown & yesterday when i checked i was so excited to see the day had come!
they have a lot more photos for you to go through if interested! 

photographing a skull

for my photo classes latest project, we had to bring in an object to photograph to help us learn about different lighting effects. i chose to bring in one of my favorite decorative items, a skull that my mom gave to me last year. the skull was an awesome object to photograph because there is so much detail going on in it & it has amazing shadows in the eyes, nose, jaw & it also casts a great shadow. i really liked this project & working around the skull, trying to capture the detail. here are a few of my favorite pictures from today



our little nest: the kitchen

our kitchen is more of a hall way. it's pretty tiny, but we have been able to find a way to fit it all in. i will admit we are trying to be simplistic, but we still have a lot. to make it look more open, we took the cupboards off of the shelves so there wouldn't be so much bulk in our kitchen. we don't have a lot of shelving, as you can tell, so we have had to improvise a bit. 
 like we did in the bathroom, we got these little racks that help to 
give us extra space for all of our cups.
it's been really helpful too, otherwise we wouldn't be able to fit all of our cups in one section, 
making us loose a whole other shelf.
the next extremely helpful bit is our ikea cupboard. 
it's not too big, but it fits everything perfectly. it gives us an extra counter top, 
& the inside houses our flour, sugar, rice, crock pot, baking pans, mixers, cutting boards... basically everything that we don't want to have on display. 
plus, it gave us a spot to keep our toaster & knives, otherwise, there would be no spot of them!
our sinks & counters are small. slightly limited. without our ikea cupboard top... 
we would have no where to place things. & since our space is limited, it's necessary to keep it as clutter-less & clean as possible. besides our soap, scrubber & dish drying rack, we try hard not to keep anything out. it was difficult in the beginning, because with sponges, soap, & dish scrubbers, it's hard to keep the clutter away. so we looked for getting a sponge holder where we can keep all of those little things out of the way.

we keep this on the inside of our cupboard under the sink, so that it is out of the way & not seen, which keeps it a lot cleaner looking. plus, it's helpful because our dish scrubber kept leaking soap, & now it doesn't since it stands vertically.

besides our sink & ikea cupboard, this wooden table is our only other counter space. it's what we use to prepare most of our meals & where we store our mixer, a record shaped cutting board & pitcher full of whisks, spatulas & spoons. we didn't have much space left for pots & pans, so we found a metal rack for us to hang the pots & pans & to keep them out of the way. 
instead of an actual pantry, we have a really good sized book shelf that we use. it was here when we moved in & offers us plenty of space. though it gives us a lot of space, the shelves aren't very tall, so unfortunately we can't store appliances in it. we can't even seem to fill 3 shelves completely, it's really long. so we use the shelf for food, office supplies & random storage, so we don't have things out all of the time. the shelf started to look pretty cluttered though, so we added a curtain to it so that people wouldn't see the mess that's inside & i like to think it makes it look nicer!

a few things i'm loving

i've spent some time lately looking at different things online & i have compiled a list of the things i'm loving right now from my finds. enjoy!

madewell's toolbag in orange & their peplum top
these glasses
bony levy's open ring & bracelets with black diamonds 
this picture frame for our picture wall 
sydney evans love ring  & hamsa bracelet
this pillow from anthropology
wooden salad bowl from wind & willow 
a fancy fish bowl for the fish we don't have...
& last but not least, no doubt's new single

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1. homemade banana bread!
2. sunday afternoon drive
3. peaches & ice-cream 
4. provo street art by leaven
5. austin & i bought cactuses, this one is mine!
6. bowl of marshmallows
7. riding bikes to 7peaks 
8. old picture of me looking like a drunk baby
9. a piece of our wall part
10. found this guy on a bike ride
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our little nest: the bathroom

as i'm sitting cozily on the couch, watching vampire diaries (my latest addiction from netflix),eating lucky charms & blogging, austin is fishing. that's right.... fishing... at 1:30 a.m. i'm not exactly sure why, but he & nick thought it sounded like a marvelous idea & off they went. i guess boys will be boys. 
so while i'm waiting for austin's return, i've finally uploaded pictures of our little nest & have decided to give a tour. first off: the bathroom. 
it's tiny & it's perfect. we've figured out how to fit everything & to reduce the clutter that seems to come with bathrooms. our bathroom came with a mirror vanity & a little cupboard underneath the sink. to give us more space we added the over-the-toilet vanity that i got from target a few years ago. it's the perfect add on. it gives us enough extra space & a couple extra shelves.
since we have limited space underneath our sink, we keep our extra towels on top of the vanity along with q-tips, cotton balls & all my hair ties & bobby pins. inside the cupboard is makeup, perfumes, & a brush. the shelf underneath holds my hair supplies, glasses & a mug where we keep sunglasses. since it's such a small space, we try to keep this looking as clean & organized as possible otherwise the bathroom will look instantly cluttered. 
the hardest part has been trying to decide what we absolutely do & absolutely don't need. i know this picture isn't pretty, & it looks pretty crowded, but trust me, we've gone through many times getting rid of things. these are the remains: mouth wash, lotions, toilet paper, wash clothes, nail polish, medicine, a curler & straightener, & a lint roller. to get the most use out of our little space, we've gotten some bins to help us organize & not have too many things just floating about. we also have two racks to gives us an extra shelf, which has helped out a lot. 
& since little spaces get dirty easily, we clean a little everyday. wipe out the sink & countertop whenever brushing our teeth, & we use a daily cleaner in our bathtub. doing these little things really do add up & help a lot. 
i feel so domesticated writing this & giving my insight on living spaces & cleaning... 
i bet anyone that knows me is surprised.