Matthew's Shoot

My little brother Matthew was my first test subject for taking portraits. Here's the result.



p.s.
If you read this post via email from me or view it on facebook, you'll have to go to the original post on my blog to view the slideshow. Sorry. http://beckygreen.blogspot.com

Christmas Vase

Yesterday my boss's wife brought in some Christmas decorations, and it gave me some wonderful inspiration :) I love it when you get an idea you know you can accomplish quickly. Those are the projects I thrive with--not the ones that take a month to finish, haha :)

I found a 2 foot vase at TJ Maxx for $7, and got some cheapo ornaments for like $5. Then I went to Michael's and rummaged through their ribbon section and their fake plant area for some red and gold berries. I only found the kind I wanted on stems, so I took 5 minutes and cut them off.

mmm, Christmas :)

I also found these blocks for $10. I've been looking for something like this for a while, so it was worth it to me.

Then I filled up the vase with ornaments and the red berries and gold sparkly ones; I sort of just filled it up around a ribbon inside.

And arranged it with the blocks and some $2 tower candles! I used a couple of scrapbooking glue dots to hold the ribbon in place and to hold some of the ornaments together.

The pictures kind of don't show the whole thing, but I LOVE IT :) It totally transformed my dining room and I'm super happy. And once I got home, it only took me like 15 or 20 minutes!

Saying it out loud

I am going to work out twice this week.

I want to take your picture :)

I would love to try taking some pictures of some people I know to see if I can do it. If anyone wants to let me take some pictures of them, totally let me know. And we can laugh together if they turn out crappy :) I'm thinking someone might want to try on their wedding dress again, or have some pictures taken with their kids, or OF their kids, or just get some pictures taken of themselves or with their boyfriend or husband to help me out, FOR FREE :)

Most of my pictures so far aren't of people, so I'd love it if anyone would like to help me expand my portfolio!

Thanksgiving, CHECK. Christmas CHECKAROONI

I can't believe it's already Christmas time! Thanksgiving is over, fall is over, it's officially December, and Christmas is knocking. We had an INSANE Thanksgiving week--probably the craziest we've ever had.

• Trevor's boss called him Wednesday afternoon and asked him to put together a last minute sales flier by Friday. And since we were planning on leaving for Idaho WEDNESDAY night, he had to hurry and make it before we left.
• We headed out the door on Wednesday at 5:30, just in time for the Northbound traffic, for our 4 hour drive to Idaho.
• Got there at 9:30--but the drive was actually kind of fun. Trevor and I had some time to finally talk (he's been working SO MUCH overtime lately since they have a new manager) and complain about work. Trevor read to me while I was driving, and we playing this new game where I have to guess the genre of music that Trevor plays for me from his iPod. Seriously difficult... Even after 5 years, I STILL can't keep track of it all! Maybe I'll do another post about what genre is what...
• Checked in to our hotel--which was another cool part--they upgraded all their furniture and bedding and stuff, so it was pretty nice :) AND they have the FoodNetwork. So we went to sleep to the sultry sounds of Dinner: Impossible.
• I let Trevor sleep in on Thanksgiving and headed over to help with the dinner prep at 9. My Grandma pretty much did everything before we got there but I did the potato washing, haha. We hung out with my family and played The Game of Things until dinner at 2, promptly took a 15 minute nap and had pie at 4, just in time to head back to Salt Lake at 4:30 PM so Trevor could get 7 hours of sleep before he had to be at work at 5AM the next day for Black Friday. Ugh.
• At 5:30 PM driving home from Idaho Trevor got a text from his boss saying not to come in until 1 PM instead of 5 AM. WHAT THE CRAP?! So we missed out on Thanksgiving evening with my family for no reason, AND it put a new crimp in our plans for a second Thanksgiving dinner with Trevor's family on Friday night.
• Back home by 8:30 with no reason to go to bed so we had leftover turkey sandwiches and I read Harry Potter to Trevor. You know, I never get tired of reading, "I'm a WHAT?" "Yer a wizard, Harry."
• We got up at 8 on Friday and hit Best Buy and Target for some SWEET deals. We saved probably $150 on stuff we were going to buy for ourselves and for Christmas gifts anyways! We got a new printer for $25, and I got a memory card adapter for $20. And Trevor got World of Warcraft for $5... so that means Trevor has been on the computer since Friday, haha :)
• We had Thanksgiving dinner numero dos on Friday (after Trevor got off work) at Trevor's mom's and it was fantastic :) We shared the food making responsibility and took everything over in crock pots. I LIKED this and I think we should do it every year.
• Saturday Trevor went back to work for another 12 hour shift, and I stayed home and finished Christmas shopping, cleaning up the house, and putting up the TREE and decorations while listening to Christmas music! It felt SO good to get the tree up so early! Thanksgiving was DONE, and Christmas was HERE! I also started on my Christmas cards that night too. Seriously, I'm feeling incredibly accomplished right now, haha (oh, but I accidentally got a mini-disc for the card adapter stuck in the iMac... I'm still trying to figure out how to get it out. The disc slot is on the side of the monitor and when you put in the disc, it just slides in and there's not tray or manual eject button. Apparently I'm not smart enough to realize the disc was too small and just dropped it in...)
• Sunday we chillaxed and Trevor finally got to play WoW uninterrupted by work. I foresee a LOT of reading on my part for the next few weeks. I tried WoW and it was interesting. I'll let you know if I like it when (if) I play more.
• So yesterday was Monday and it's officially December, like I said, and I'm READY for Christmas! Tomorrow we're going to see Christmas Carol at the Hale Center Theater, Friday I'm making Christmas Toffee with a friend, and sometime this weekend we're going to the Festival of Trees! AND I'm 75% done with Christmas shopping, and we aren't poor, haha :) I'm hoping my head start on Christmas will give me more of a chance to spend time with friends and family this year. I'm excited to fit in as much Christmas as I can this year!

Halloween--Real Quick Catch Up

So it's been 18 days since I last posted.
I'm over it; you can be too now :)

Here's the pictures from our AWESOME Halloween Party!

We also decorated our entry way with black walls and stobe lights and a fog machine! Sa-Weet! Trevor hid himself and used Brandon's axe to scare Travis and Robyn when they came in.

We watched Hocus Pocus and had way too much yummy food.

Halloween Weekend!!!

This weekend is going to be HUGE!

Today I'm renewing my car's registration today-- ON TIME. Which is, frankly, amazing. I just HOPE the crack in my windshield is small enough that I won't have to buy a new one. CROSS YOUR FINGERS WITH ME.

I'm also going to get the oil changed, and possibly clean it out--spectacular Friday, right?

THEN, I'm making chicken for dinner with my old friends Megan and Danny--who I NEVER get to see but who I love :) It will be so awesome to hang out. I know it's kind of mean of us, but we're bringing our husbands and making them hang out with each other too. It's all part of growing up :) I'm excited to see Megan's house! YIP!

Then tomorrow is the big day for the amazingly awesome spectacular tremendously crazy Halloween party that Amber and I are throwing at my apartment! I have been into everything Halloween this year--except dressing up. For some reason I just can't find a good costume :( I'll tell you how it went later. But we have some AWESOME stuff planned!

Then to top off the weekend, we all get an extra hour due to Daylight Savings! Mmmm, my kind'o weekend.

Trevor and Me

I've been reading a lot about friends who are in love and happy, who are making families, who are new to families, and old to families. And it made me stop and think about my tiny half-a-family with Trevor, and how much I love him. When you don't have kids, it's easy to focus on yourself. It's easy to focus on the two individuals who are married, and BE individuals who are married. That's good, a lot of times, because I think every married couple needs time to be individuals and spend time getting to know each other as well as spend time together alone AFTER you already know each other. I'm looking forward to when we can expand our family, but today I spent a lot of time thinking about the family we are NOW. On a day-to-day basis we can get distracted by the dishes all over the counters, the dinner that needs to be made--the dinner that needs to be cleaned up, the towels that are all wet, used up, and dirty on the bathroom floor, the new cute basket in the bathroom I picked out that Trevor thinks is going to get moldy (but wouldn't get moldy if he would just not get it wet when he washes his hands), family parties, new gadgets, or miscellaneous cords for the tv/computer that will make our lives 10 times better. It's easy to focus on the long road ahead of Trevor and me before we have the money and time to begin the "life" we want to begin. YEARS before our debts are paid, YEARS before Trevor can finally go to school for what he wants. WHAT are we doing with our life in the meantime? Just waiting? It wouldn't be worth it if there wasn't an upside. Today I've been thinking about that upside. That I get to spend time developing my hobbies into talents that I can use to help myself and Trevor, and later my family. I can turn preparing food because I'm hungry into making dinner for Trevor and I to enjoy and relax with after a long day at work. We can spend time sitting next to each other under a blanket watching a movie, only interrupted by the need for more pudding cups. We can stay up late in bed talking, diving into the dreams and pains we have. I can turn over at night and be close to Trevor, and feel his arms wrap around me, and feel his hand find my hand, even though he's half asleep, to warm me up when we left the window open and Mother Nature decides she wants it to snow. I can count on Trevor wanting to say goodbye to me before I leave every morning, so we can let each other know we care, even if he only has 5 minutes more to sleep before his alarm clock makes him wake up. I can count on Trevor listening when I've had a bad day, or when I have an opinion about something that is different from everyone else's. I can count on Trevor to nudge me towards a goal I've set for myself, even if he doesn't want it.

Yep, we've got it pretty good right now, I think. Even though we feel like we may have lame goals, or too much time before we can feel like we've become active human beings progressing in life. I have Trevor, and he has me, and we can really take advantage of that. Even though it can sometimes feel like compared to other people, we got married to early, or we blew our money more than other people, or we are more extravagant than other people--there is a reason we love each other, and there are reasons we decided we love only each other, and those reasons still exist.

I gave in to the girly reading thing again

I want to be completely proud of my reading decisions lately, but in reality, I've been a little surprised at the books I've been into since I graduated high school. I have discovered that I really am a sap when it comes to romance and happy endings. I mean, holy crap, I read Twilight last year and didn't hate it! What has the world come to?

Last week I decided I needed to take a break from Trevor's Series Ginormo to read a little classic romance--specifically, Pride and Prejudice. You know, THE Jane Austen.

I know what you're thinking, "What? How can someone have never read Pride and Prejudice?" How can I have read Ivan Denisovich, or Voltaire, or the Inferno but never the obvious Pride and Prejudice? Really, I was confused myself. I wouldn't say I'm WELL-read, but geeze, it really was a little ridiculous.

Thus, I began. I little skeptical, a little excited. Skeptical of all the rave, excited to see if it could really live up to the "happily ever after" standard I was seeking. Mr. Darcy was enticing, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett began an interesting statement on class, and Elizabeth was not as annoying as I was expecting (given the Kierra Knightly disgrace of late--Oh Kierra, don't you know that just because her name is Elizabeth doesn't mean she's the same Elizabeth from Pirates?). Then the Bingleys came, and it was refreshing to read the subtle mockery of the upper class that Austen obviously felt. She was in the middle of it--she lived the class structure--she gossiped, dined and danced in the time. But she could see the hypocrisy, and the prejudice. I won't give you my whole "book report" but just know I appreciated the honesty.

All in all, I was pleased with the tension, and with the resolution equally. I will definitely be reading another Austen book soon to get my fix of happy endings. And I feel good about recommending it to everyone else :)

Stay-Cation

I was planning on blogging about our vacation WHILE ON vacation but that didn't really work out. I was too busy doing nothing to worry about documenting. Now that I'm back at work, my time is in high demand and I'm feeling almost freak-out-ish because I can't get a break. So I'm basically forcing this break on myself right now during the last 20 minutes I'm at work. I don't feel too bad because I've been working my butt off for the past 3 days, and technically I'm still manning the phones in case someone calls, so...

I haven't blogged about my photo class too much (or at all) because I haven't really had time to take that many pictures using the stuff I've learned yet. At least, not very good ones. It's hard. I can't wait till the stuff I've learned is natural to me so I can get back to taking spontaneous pictures. I'll put in a couple in this post though just so you can see what I mean.

Mmm, stay-cation...

It was amazing. Really. Do you guys even know what the word amazing means? "Causing great surprise or sudden wonder." And yep, that was stay-cation. I was greatly surprised how easy it was to put work completely out of my mind and be "weekend Becky" for 9 days straight. And I felt wonder spending so much non-stop time with Trevor. We only fought for real, like, 1 time. And that wasn't even till the end of the week :)

Here's some of the stuff we did:

• Friday and Saturday--Becky cleaned up and got the apartment ready for REAL vacation while Trevor worked. Friday night we went grocery shopping to stock up on all our vacation goodies, and bought Trevor new dress clothes for work (at the new Kohl's on 33rd--oh my, don't go there unless you want to spend money) since he's up for the Lead Assistant Manager position. He wears a tie every day now :) So hot.
• Saturday--Watched Conference and cleaned. Did you know they play re-runs from 12-2? Becky visited Trevor's nephews while Trevor was at work. Got to play in the sandbox and make mermaid feet out of little boy feet. Went to Panda and had our first official meal out of the week. It was glorious and our stomachs were unadulterated by other fast food products from previous trips to eat out. Went to get us a spot in line at Leatherby's BEFORE 8 (when all the men are supposed to be in the priesthood session still) and the line was HUMONGO, so we got hot fudge and caramel to go, and had ice cream sundaes and banana splits at home with Brandon, Amber, Robyn, and Travis. We watched Justice League :)
• Sunday--Our actual anniversary (yay! 3 years!). It really is so weird that we've been married for 3 years now. That means we've been together for 5 total. WHAT exactly have we done with the time?! Oh well, I love Trevor. Our relationship has grown so much in the last year; I'm really proud of us for our progress and our new goals. We let ourselves sleep in, caught a little conference, smelled candles at Kohl's (yes, we went there again), and had hot cocoa from Starbucks, where Trevor laughed at me because I didn't know to how to say "grande." Shopped for a new jacket for Becky that looks like this:

• Went to Rodizio Grill. I can't believe we went there again. We were just going to go to Marie Calendars or something and then I said, "mmm steak sounds good" and magically Trevor wanted to go there. Surprisingly, I didn't gorge myself this time :)
• Monday we went to the DI and found a really great pea coat for Trevor for only $8. We found snow boots for me for $10 at Plato's Closet too :)
• I'm sure we did other stuff on Monday but there was a lot of lazing about, keeping things tidy, watching movies, DVDs, doing upkeep on my Farmville (which I've gotten Trevor so addicted to, that he has officially gone creeper on it and created fake friends so that he can expand his farm...), browsing Barnes and Noble, that sort of thing. No TV though, surprisingly.
• Tuesday we were supposed to be at my boss's cabin but we had to wait because of the snow, so we saw The Invention of Lying--which was super good and I recommend it to anyone. I think Ricky Gervais is becoming one of my favorite actors. I hope I never see him in anything that bothers me so I can keep my impression of him intact. I wanted to go to the Ogden Dinosaur Park or the Museum of Natural History, but Trevor "wasn't in the mood", bah!
• Wednesday we had breakfast with Trevor's brother and his girlfriend, which was really great and I'm glad we got to spend time with them. We never get to since we have opposite work schedules a lot. Then we packed practically our entire bedroom + food and drove 40 minutes up Big Cottonwood to my boss's house where he was letting us stay in his cabin. Besides the awkwardness of the giant bedroom window being 50 feet away from HIS bedroom/kitchen/dining room windows, it was super relaxing. We made a huge fire in the fireplace, went on a small hike-ish thing and took pictures, and lazed about in our pjs to read. We roasted marshmallows and made s'mores, ate leftover lasagna for dinner, and had cereal for breakfast. You can see the pictures in the slideshow at the bottom.
• Thursday we recuperated and had dinner with Trevor's other brother and his girlfriend.
• Friday we... I have no idea. I think this is the day we saw Surrogates. Good movie. Slightly different than a normal robot movie. And we went to the mall (practically half the stores), and Burlington Coat Factory (but ended up only getting Trevor a new beard trimmer, weird). We did a TON of window shopping.
• Saturday we helped cut limbs off of Trevor's mom's apple tree, and went on a walk through the Parkway with Trevor's other OTHER brother and his wife. I took a COUPLE good pictures before I realized I'd put used batteries in my camera and it crapped out. I still need a lot of practice with getting the exposure right on the fly, but some of them turned out. Some of them were just fun :)
• Sunday was our last day and we spent it making apple pie, watching as many movies as we could, reading as much as we could, and relaxing as much as we could before going back to work on Monday.
• We did a lot more stuff I just can't remember. WE LOVED relaxing and spending as much time with each other as possible! Can't wait till next time. About the only good part about going back to normal life is the NORMAL food. My stomach STILL isn't back to normal :(