lately:

i've been obsessed with princess diana.
i've eaten a lot of pickles (much to the chagrin of parker).
i've had some mini (and not so mini) crises as to where my life is going.
i've wished i didn't live with so many people (sorry roommates...i'm kind of grown out of that stage).

but through all of it, i've had a parker. who studies a lot. and hates calculus.

(mostly this post is a cop-out because i wanted to write, but didn't have anything to write.)

ladies and gentlemen, kayleigh (almost) jolley

sometimes i have the tendency to get somewhat annoying (those of you who know me well, please do not comment on that previous statement). i'm not a center-of-attention kind of person, but at times i really am. which means i embarrass myself and say irritating stupid things.

like in the middle of a critique in my illustration class.

a girl got up to explain who she painted a portrait of, and said it was her fiance. i proceeded to squeal with delight (okay, maybe not squeal with delight...i was just loud. very loud. with excitement. i love love. not a crime.) and asked to see her ring. from across the room. in the middle of a class critique.

a. nnoying.

at that point, i explained how i was engaged and was just super excited for her and how we're in the same boat, yadda yadda.

later in the class, a girl talked about how she hates engaged people and she thinks they're so annoying. she kept going on and on and i looked at her and said, "you just said you hate engaged people?"

at which point in the post, i insert this:

wedding flowers: $700
wedding cake: $200
wedding dress: $450
the look on her face: priceless.

it was nice being on the other side of the open-mouth-insert-foot spectrum, since usually i'm the one doing it.

she quickly backtracked, but sweetheart....your damage was done. lucky for you i've been in those shoes and wasn't even upset about it. it was just hilarious.

this is how us annoying engaged people act.
see? parker's engaged and not annoying.
it's just me.

stay tuned: updates on my wedding obsession (you have been warned). updates on my life (again, you have been warned).

hey peeps.

today featured:

me posting up the beginnings of a giant love letter. (pictures to come)
me applying for my first illustration-type job. (not full-time. just commission. that's how it starts.)
me calling john hendrix and chatting with him about illustration. (yeah, it's not like he's famous or anything.)
me taking a 1 1/2 hour nap. (when you've been sick for a week, it takes it out of you.)

thank you for reading.






p.s. how many of you besides whitney actually want me to keep writing on this here blog? i mean, because i can just write it for whitney, but some more hands in the air would be encouraging.

Never ever ever give up on me, Whitney! I would write more but my means of connecting to the Internet won't let me. Promises for a better blog year!

there are a pile of fashion magazines on my floor right now. not for leisure reading, but so i can draw facial features. (remember, i'm taking 12 hours of figure drawing a week.)

i was perusing some of the magazines while sketching the other day and realized how i looked at every body and every face with a pinch of salt.

it dawned on me that, because i've been drawing real bodies for twelve hours a week for the past two months, i really know what a body looks like. a real human body. flesh, blemishes, marks, hair, freckles. all of it.

i always knew that those magazines were completely photoshopped, but i never knew to what extent until now. and it gave me this sense of empowerment, knowing that i know what a body looks like, and that those bodies in magazines aren't real.

it makes me sad that people look at those magazines and feel like they need to reach this unattainable standard. because they don't. because the bodies and the people in those magazines remind me of the fake, platinum, plastic-ness of the people in the capitol in the hunger games. they aren't beautiful bodies. the bodies that i draw on a daily basis are beautiful. the real people that i see every day of my life are beautiful.

you, my friend, are beautiful.

sappy as it may be, don't let anybody else tell you otherwise.

blue or the color of my nupastel.

this semester i'm taking two figure drawing classes. meaning i have 12 hours of sitting at a drawing horse, staring at a half naked model, drawing.

at times, it's lovely, really. the human body really is a divinely designed thing, and i've had a positive body image since i've taken the class and realized that curvy human beings are much more interesting to draw.

other times, though, it downright sucks. i sit there, my back hurts, i'm drawing this model when other people around me are drawing the same model infinitely better, and it just sucks.

today, i felt, was one of those days. crappy crappy foreshortening, crappy crappy lighting. crappy crappiness. so, i began experimenting with my drawing, with my technique. omitting things, darkening things, and as it turns out...it became one of my better drawings.

the girl who is the best in the class thought it looked cool. brother barrett (the professor who wrote a book on figure drawing, that's how good he is) said it looked very interesting with the way i edited it. and i thought it looked good.

sometimes the most beautiful things in our lives come from the crappiest situations. you have to push through. you have to get out of your comfort zone, because when you're comfortable in life you're not growing.

i learned that today.

and people said i was photogenic.

most people put cute pictures on their blogs.
i don't.
we're going to celebrate the failed attempts at picture taking, because i think they're the funniest.

at whit's wedding reception.

apparently when parker gets bored waiting in
lines, he licks things. or people.

mini golfing. no one knows what that look on my face is.

hahahaha. every time i see this picture i laugh.

in the car, going to get a snow cone.

things to do

things to do today:
allocate hours worked
do 4 months worth of finances (yikes)
pay utilities
go to the library
write branticus and andous letters
go to the bank
clean room
clean purse

things i actually did today:
allocated hours worked
did 4 months worth of finances (it was a yikes)
paid utilities
went to the library (to no avail)
wrote branticus (not andous)
cleaned room
cleaned purse
and tried a new, over-priced crepe place.


all in all, a very successful saturday.

friday, lucky may 13th.

i just clicked onto my blog and for whatever reason, my post yesterday is gone.

i was seriously convinced for about two minutes that yesterday never happened.
welcome to the twilight zone.





in other news:
i built stairs the other day.
(that was on my updated post yesterday, but since may 12th apparently didn't happen on the internet, you get to hear it today. and see a picture.)

yeah. i did that.

i also love dandelions. not generally, but when they're in a field and the sun is perfect and pj and i have randomly pulled into a senior center parking lot because i've finished teaching him how to drive stick shift, then i love them.



i also love them when we're walking down 1st east and they're scattered in the grass.
because then i get to make a wish.
and then pj takes an oh-so-lovely picture of me making said wish.
(which i am now posting for the world to see. that's cool.)



my wish today: many more sunny skies and love love love.
(mostly because whit leigh is getting married. and i'm going to a reception tonight. and hota hota is getting married. the list is getting long.)

updating part deux

updates are as follows:

i built stairs the other day. with a drill. all by myself. (minus one of the screws that matt from work had to drill into the wood.)

i won at speed on sunday against parky poo. he's going to kill me for calling him parky poo. whatever, though. i've already shamed him by beating him at speed.

i taught said parky poo how to drive stick shift.

i've been obsessed with broccoli recently. no one knows why.

it's beautiful outside. i love it. and that i get to walk in it to my two new jobs, which i also love.

i also painted a mug at color me mine. i love mugs.

ess oh ess

focusing is a near impossibility right now.
usually illuminated manuscripts are rad for me. but my brain is just done.

too bad i have 1/3 of my art final to finish by tomorrow (and i haven't even started it).
also too bad: my quiz for new testament. and my breakdown to alycia today. good thing she's wonderful.

will get back to you soon.

today:

i'm eating honey nut cheerios from my obama mug (see below) and thinking about a year ago from this week.

also thinking about 12 days from now.

and also thinking about how much the lord has blessed me with good, solid, wonderful people.

distractions

so, i'm still putting off writing that essay. it's almost done, but i always justify writing one sentence with at least 10 minutes of blog stalking and mindless facebooking (because that's all facebook is: mindless).

it's kinda like how i put off going to bed last night, just because my heart hurt and i wanted to keep talking to my red-headed alycia friend.

(here's a secret: redheads are lucky for me.)

then i wanted to pull an all-nighter and make cinnamon rolls with her because it seems so poetic to be heartsick and cooking cinnamon rolls in the middle of the night when you don't want to go to sleep. then logic decided that since i get up at 4:15 in the morning, i should probably go to bed.

so i did.

then different art ideas were swirling in my mind and i almost got out of my bed to sketch.
then i was too warm and decided against it.
then i fell asleep.

there's me on the far left.
becca (my other roommate) in the middle behind me.
and the redhead laughing in the pink?
alycia. who'll kill me for putting up this picture.

'tis the season

it is now the first of december.
maybe i've been reminiscing a little about a year ago. specifically a year ago this saturday.
if you don't know what i'm talking about, it's cool. i won't go into details. maybe one day, but not today.

my portfolio for the art program? in. submitted. now it's out of my hands.

christmas?

oh, how i love it. LOVE it. i'm listening to christmas music as we speak, and it's bringing oh-so-much joy to my heart as i try to write an essay about byzantine and romanesque architecture that is due tomorrow at 4:30. i'll be done. i just don't want to do it.

and this christmas song is singing what i really want to say.

maybe i'm not as done as i thought.

on shopping for ice cream

I once had a conversation with one of the best people I know. Becs. Who then told me of a theory about dating invented by one of the other best people I know. My call girl Whit.

The theory goes like this:

Dating is like going to the ice cream shoppe [insert your favorite ice cream place here] (and yes...it is a shoppe...when has an ice cream place ever not had an extra "p" and "e"). You walk in. You see the myriad of flavors and you can't decide which one to choose. Will you go for the fantastical flavor with marshmallow cream and chocolate chips and caramel? Or will you opt to go for vanilla or chocolate?

I mean, the flavor with the marshmallow cream and caramel....man, that looks good. You love all of those things, and you never thought that putting them into an ice cream was a possibility! But, instead of wasting your money and maybe not liking it, you don't. You decide to go for the safe choice. The vanilla.

I mean, there is no doubt you will like the vanilla. [insert chocolate if you are a chocolate person] You've had something like it before. It's safe. It's never failed you. But once you taste that other kind....you know, the kind with all of that great stuff, you'll never go back. You'll love it. It's just a matter of taking that leap, risking that small amount of money, and finally tasting it.

There are some girls (or guys, for that matter) who are vanilla. They are the girls who get the dates all the time. Every weekend. Without fail. There's always a line miles long outside the door for them. They're great people (I mean, vanilla is a rad flavor), but they are vanilla [Interjection: Please don't think I don't like vanilla....or those vanilla people...I do. It's just a fact. Vanilla gets more dates.] . Not quite that acquired taste. Not quite that risk. Whereas there are other girls who are the marshmallow-caramel swirl ice cream. The girls it's kind of scary to take a risk on. Maybe because you don't know what's going to happen. Because you don't know if you'll like it or not. But once you do take that risk for them...

...man alive, you will never regret it.

[Again. I take no credit for this theory. And Whit, if I have ruined it, I'm sorry. It's been on my mind a bit recently.]

nuffink

I sometimes sit down to write a blog post and I think about what I want to talk about.
love. loss. (or both). school. blessings. the gospel. friends. family. the beatles. coldplay. art.
Usually it's when all of those things and more are on my mind that I can't think of anything to write about. Which is what is happening now.

Nada. Zip. Zero.
Can't think of a single specific thing to post about that could be of worth to you. Or to me, for that matter. The question isn't what's on my mind; it's what isn't on my mind. I think I've become numb to the pervading mass of chaos that has taken up permanent residence up there.

So, take that. Nothing too fancy. Nothing profound (not that I claim to write profound things on this blog, but things of greater importance have been posted). Just life.

But life is about the in-betweens. I've said it before.

EXCITING UPDATE! My mormon.org profile is up and running! Check it out on the side bar! [It's the orange button.]

from zero to infinity in 2.5 seconds

i ran into an old friend today. he wears birkenstocks [with socks] and was there when my world was falling to pieces back in january. he knows things.

i knew that our conversation wasn't going to last long. he had a newspaper in his hand and i had an empty flat rate box in mine as i was shuffling over to the jkb. it was a quick hello-how's-life moment when i realized that the months of creme filling decorated between this cookie present and the cookie past when i last saw him wasn't going to be enjoyed in 2.5 minutes. and i said that.

which is when that 2.5 minute shallow speech turned into a 2.5 something wonderful.

i told him how i had changed. one eighty. how i loved my life, despite its downfalls and mondays. how it took something as silly as....well, we won't mention it explicitly, but something seemingly silly to refine me to right now. he said, "it's funny how the lord often teaches us the most through relationships. probably because that's what we are invested in the most. often more than school and everything else in life."

the thoughts were bubbling in my mind.
"yeah. wow. you know, having spiritual experiences and all that is completely about feelings, which ties in so poetically with the emotions we experience when we are in relationships. it's kind of cool."

he nodded agreement. "and when they don't work out, it makes us tender and receptive to the things god wants us to learn."

hug. mental silence. mental awe. 2.5 minutes.

colloquial

here i sit, fully prepared to write a misunderstood artist's post about how life yesterday was one of those days where french was literally swimming through the cavities of my mind in un-understandable patterns and even english began to look foreign and keane wasn't speaking my vernacular comme d'habitude and breeding colors in my design class was making my eyes fatigued and i just wanted to stop in the middle of the paved stones on campus next to the library and melt into some kind of oblivion because i didn't want to keep going with the lack of fluency in all languages of my life.

then i started listening to this song. and all of the influent flutterings in my mind took a sick day.

the mountain

i hiked timp the other morning.
it was one of those magical experiences where everything around you is profound and metaphors just exist. i decided that our entire existence was dichotomous because of the opposition of all things.

the mountain was on fire. i walked through it. i also carried some of it out of the canyon with me.

And then I sat there with my fingernails freshly painted blue. His pictures were haunting, but in a good way. I remembered why I loved him. And maybe why I still do.

Sunday was surreal.

There I was. The weekend still brimming over with the promise that my life was fulfilling itself more than it ever had before. It was crisp outside. I had cried because I was so in love with life: its struggles, the people, my friends. Supreme Court was telling me a tender story about miracles and prophets when in the crowd of people our eyes met. Briefly. Because if it hadn't been briefly, we would have waved. But because of its subtlety (and maybe because of the tears brimming in my eyes from happiness and the sudden tsunami of nostalgia that came from seeing him) I was a face in the crowd. It's as though he didn't want to disturb my moment. I felt pretty. And I felt like he thought the same thing.