Finals Week! DUN DUN DUN!

It's finals week...the last week of school...the last fence before freedom. I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that school will be done within a week and I will be graduating with my Associates! I don't think it'll ever hit me. I just want to be done and get out of this terrible weather. It's been snowing constantly up here in Rexburg. This is the first we've made it up to the 30's in a long time. Oh and you can never forget the biting wind that we have up here too! Yeah!

Well hey so I was going to wait until I had already turned my project in before I posted this but I'm too excited! Here is my last Art project! The subject: Self-portrait...or whatever. Size: anything we want. Medium: However we want to do it! With those three ingredients, this is what I came up with!

Title: Me (subject to change)

This is what happens when I'm finally able to download Photoshop onto my computer! Muahahah!!!!

Oh and I dare you to click on the picture to view the actual size! It's ginormous!

Ok so I had to post one more....

Today, I was in a store pretending to be a mannequin. I saw a little girl running around as her mom tried to leave, yelling, "I haven't said goodbye to everyone!" She proceeded to run down the line of mannequins, hugging them all. When she got to me, I hugged her back. I've never heard anyone scream so hard.

Laughter

Today I was shown one of the funniest sites ever! It is, mylifeisaverage.com, a site where anyone can get on and write something they found funny that day. My sides hurt from laughing at all the stories. Here is just a taste of what you may find there.

Four years ago, when i was 18, i noticed that at night my front window is very reflective so i was pretending to dive in slow motion and shoot, dual pistol style. Suddenly a really hot girl walked past and i was startled and fell over. Embarrassed i waited for a bit and then stood up. As i stoop up i saw her slowly shooting an imaginary rifle from behind a car. We then proceeded to do this for 10 minutes until she did an extremely dramatic death. She wasn't getting up so i went outside to meet her. Once i got to where she was, there was nothing but a piece of paper with a mobile number on it. Today, we are getting married.

Today, I got a nosebleed in the cinema. My girlfriend rummaged around in her bag, then got a tampon and shoved it up my nose. It worked.

Today, I went to my friend's house, who is Chinese. Her mom is still learning English. When I sat down, I glanced down and saw their grocery list which read, "Dead cows. Dead chickens. Plants. Snowflakes." That last part still confuses me. (This one reminded me of Yegor so much!)

The other day, my boyfriend and I were walking to our seventh hour class. As we walked down the hallway, some upper-classman shoved my boyfriend, and he, by chain reaction, hit me. Well, I managed to hit a locker. Not realizing it was a locker, I turned and immediately apologized, "Oh my gosh! Are you okay?! I am so so-... Sorry." I stopped, realizing it was in fact a locker. I remember saying, "Oh... You're a locker... You don't talk..." At which point, no doubt a freshman from inside the locker replies, "Yeah, I'm fine. How about you?"

Yesterday I was in Chemistry, and the teacher passed back the tests we had taken the previous week. I had read an MLIA (My Life Is Average) about a guy who drew two stick figures on his test, gave one a gun, and had him say "Give me an A or the stick man gets it!" or something like that. So I figured I'd try it. When I got the test back, the teacher had drawn a superman stick figure saving the one at gun point, and written "Nice try! MLIA?" I didn't get an A, but it was still pretty awesome.

I had a fake spider i had thrown under the computer desk and was to lazy to pick up. Later that day i got a call from my dad and he was freaking out. He said that there was a huge spider and he is trying to kill. i didn't bother to tell him it was fake. i got home two hours later, and he was still attempting to kill it with a broom.

Today, I was in my bedroom doing homework when I heard my dad yelling "GO! GO! GO!" I went into the livingroom, wondering what sports game was on when to my surprise I found him yelling at my brother to call and vote for his favorite couple on Dancing with the Stars.

We did it! We got the jobs! Jesse and I are officially going to be working for Walt Disney World coming January 20 til August 6. We're both really excited about it. We also can hardly wait to go to Florida during the winter! We're getting pretty tired of it up here in Rexburg. My "role" (they don't call them jobs, but roles) is in Main Entrance Operation. One of Jesse's old roommates used to work there and he said that's the job that everyone wants. So I'm pretty lucky! But there it is for you folks. Our official plan now is to spend Christmas with my parents (a.k.a. Mom and Dad for most of you readers) and then head out to Illinois to spend New Year's with Jesse's. Then on to Florida and to the white beaches, sun, palm trees, shorts, sunscreen, and Walt Disney World! Oh and we do get discounts on the resorts in the parks and possibly some in the local community. We'll know a lot more about all of that stuff when we actually report.

Hope you all have a magical day!

Here's the new update on my art projects. This is project number 4 and it is called "The Name/Word Project." What we had to do with this one was find a picture we liked and picked five colors out of it that we liked, and that went well together. These were our Color Harmonies. With those colors we were to make a good design using only letters, shapes, and symbols. We didn't even really have to have a word be apart of the picture. We didn't have to matte this one but, we did have to spray mount it onto foam core. Oh, and the size was 5"x 11." This project took me FOREVER to come up with an idea. But I finally found one, to great relief. Especially, since there were only 5 days left before the due date. But this is what I came up with. The Chinese symbols are "Family" or "Home." And for all of you siblings/relatives, you may recognize the dragon above the window on the house(that is if you can see it). It is the Welsh dragon, that is one of the symbols for the Reese family (mom's side). It's Welsh and not Chinese, but I didn't think anyone would notice it, while yet being a little inside thing for me to smile at. Oh and when it came to the class vote I got in second, one vote behind the first. I still don't know if I've made it on the Wall or not, but I'll let you know when I know!

"Family"

Acrylic and Watercolor painting

Christmas Is Coming

Ok I don't care what anyone else says but I've done It! I've put up our Christmas decorations. Now granted for us, at the moment that only consists of a 3' Pre-lit Christmas Tree, purple lights left from Halloween, and now our new Christmas wreath that I just made. Yup, I just made it. All for around $20! I made the horrible mistake of going into Porter's (the local craft store) with a firm mind set to NOT BUY ANYTHING! Of course I failed miserably. I even left my wallet in the car so I wouldn't spend anything.

The reason why I was in there to begin with was because I was waiting for Jesse to get done donating plasma. That was another mistake, not having him with me to tell me no. So I bought a wreath, a bunch of flower stuff and a wreath hanger. The next day I made it, left a bunch of glitter on our carpet (right after I had vacuumed it of course), and hung it up. I had a lot of fun doing it and want to do it again, but there is no reason to unless I'd be able to sell it somehow.

Oh and if you think our early preparations for Christmas are bad, take a look at this house. It's HUGE and it's completely lit. I couldn't get it all the way in the picture too. Call me crazy but I would love to do this kind of thing to my own house someday.

This is just a little part of the decorations these people have!

And no I'm not referring to my size...if you hadn't notice,

but I'm taller than the figurines!

Walt Disney World

Hey everyone. So as most of you may have heard, Jesse and I are trying to intern at Disney World in Florida next year. We already know that Jesse has been accepted into the program (College Program) but we are still waiting to hear back about me. Technically this is our back up plan if we don't find a job anywhere else. But if I do get accepted to the program as well, and we do decide to pursue that path, then we'll be in Logan (or wherever mom and dad are) for Christmas and then we'll high tail it to Illinois to be with Jesse's family for New Years. And after that we will report to the Mouse. We don't know exactly when we have to be there but we just know sometime in January and we would be there till August. But! If I don't get accepted then we wont be going. The thing is you have to live in their housing if you are in the program, and if you're married then your spouse has to also be in the program. So if only one of us gets accepted then it would be kinda hard to follow that.

If we do go then we have an offer that is open to everyone. If we both get in, then we will each be able to get up to 3 people into the park for free, 6 times that we work there. Which means between the two of us we can either get up to 3 people in the park 12 times, or 6 people in the park 6 times. Hope that makes sense. We're already of course going to save at least two of those times for mom and dad and Jesse's parents, and leave it open to them to accept or not. Other than that, the rest is fair game. Although I will say...Brittany already has dibbs on a day. So you better hurry quick and make plans if you want to go or not. Because if you do then you might want plane tickets now while they're cheap! And if you don't come, we'll try to bring you a souvenir. =]

"The Wall" #3

Hello everyone! So I have the results from my newest project for my Color and Design class. I got on "the Wall" again! Yay! However, I don't know the vote of the class on this one because I was late to class because I was stuck in the library trying to get my matte size correct. But there you have it. I have now, technically, made it on the wall every time, 3 times in a row. Yes I was bragging right there. Please excuse me for it, but I also don't think anyone else in the class has done that. But then again I don't think anyone else other than me, knows that as well. But there you have it folks! However, I will admit that as you may see, may design may be good, but some of my color is off (aka the background, it's a little too dark). I struggled with it for a long time and unfortunately still do. So there's my weakness.As for our next project, it is called the Name Project. We are to come up with a sweet design with sweet colors (Color Harmonies) we pick out of a picture we like (so that we get the color no matter what) and only using letters, words, symbols, and shapes, make a masterpiece. To tell the truth, I've thought about what I'm going to do for about 2 weeks now, and I still have no idea. And it's due next week. So cross your fingers and wish me luck that this artist's block we'll leave me. Other than that, I hope you enjoy my painting.

(p.s. We didn't have to paint these so that's why some are different. And I have no idea why my font is underlined.)

The Wall!

(I couldn't get a straight shot of this one)

"Birds in the Rain"

Analogous Acrylic Painting

Happy Halloween

from the Crawfords

Hey everyone. I hope you all had a Happy Halloween. Jesse and I sure did. On Thursday we carved our pumpkins with one of our neighbors. I decided to go with a pattern and Jesse decided to wing it with his own creative design. Mine is the headless horseman and Jesse's is the scary looking monkey. Or at least that is what it looks like to me ;).

On Friday we went to the famous Haunted Mill that is in Teton (8 miles away from Rexburg). I had gone to it last year with a friend and was scared so much and had so much fun that I knew I had to take Jesse this year. Needless to say, even though I had already been through it before, I was still scared half to death and screaming majority of the time. Jesse was very brave and didn't scream once, but he later said that it was probably the scariest haunted thing he had ever been to. It takes about an hour to get through and you go through four floors of this old run down mill. There's a waterfall and suspension bridge and you even go through and underground mine! It's really cool. If you are ever in Rexburg during Halloween, I definitely encourage you to go. That is if you like that kind of stuff.

On the actual night of Halloween we finally lit our pumpkins and waited maybe about 5 seconds for any trick-or-treaters. We actually saw a couple walking around with two little kids and thought they would come to the door...but alas they didn't. So I guess now Jesse and I will have to eat our own Halloween candy of Reese's Cups, Reese's Pieces, and Snickers all by ourselves ;). We also went and watched the movie "Surrogates" in the cheap theatre. Good movie. We really liked it. It wasn't our favorite, but we still liked enough we'll probably get it when it comes out on DVD. So that was our first Halloween together. We wish we could have been in Logan because we heard Brittany was throwing a Halloween party that we didn't want to miss but alas we couldn't afford it. Hope you all had a merry Halloween and I hope nobody gets too many cavities ;)

I Made "The Wall," But I Didn't

Ok so this has been a ridiculously long time since I actually found out the results and grade for my last project but here are the results. I was voted number 2 in the class =] (yay!) and I got the best score possible. I also made The Wall again...but then I didn't. To better explain my phrasing-I made it because the design was perfect. There wasn't anything else I could've done to my painting to make it better. And the teacher really liked it...therefore it "made" the wall. It didn't though in reality because my matte board (the big black thing that is its frame) was 1/3-1/2 an inch off on the measurements. And that's why my painting is sitting at home right now and not up on the wall. However, I did feel a little better about myself because my teacher specifically came up to me after class and told me the only reason why my painting wasn't on the wall was because the matte size was wrong. Even though I really don't know how I measured it wrong. But still I was only 1/3 off. *sigh* I was not very happy that that was the only reason why I hadn't made it. But there you have it. I made The Wall...but then I didn't.

Caught Red Handed

So the second art project that we turned in was a Monochromatic painting. Monochromatic is where it is only one color, but you are using the different values of that one color. Hopefully I just made sense right there. Well, for this project the subject was Children's Stories. And our teacher actually said that even if we made it up it could count...so basically anything as long as it rang as kiddy...in a way....

Well, after drawing a bagillion thumbnails (little sketches about the size of your thumbnail) trying to figure out what in the heck I was going to do, I finally settled on Alice in Wonderland. Now I don't really have any fond memories of this story, in fact it actually scared me when I was a little kid and still kind of does. But I really liked the card soldiers so I went for it. And vwalla! I give you the card soldiers painting the roses red.

"Caught Red Handed"

Monochromatic Acrylic Painting

(close up)

Oh and just so everyone knows. I did come up with this design by myself. I did use the characters but I did not copy the placement or the overall design of this piece. It came out of my own noggin. There was a question that was raised in class of if I had just copied it. I'm betterthan that! But we actually just turned this project in today and this time I got 2nd in the class vote!!! =] Let's just hope I'll make "The Wall" again! That would be sweet!

Art Work and "The Wall"

So I've been meaning to post this for a long time now but just now got to it. Ok, so this semester I am taking a Color and Design class for my Art major and boy oh boy am I having so much fun. We've already turned in two projects and on both I've had tons of fun with them and my teacher has really liked them too. Oh and in this class we only paint with Acrylics.

First we did an Achromatic (Black and White) picture. The subject was the human face. It could be anything on the face, or the whole face, or whatever. So I of course used Jesse as my guinea pig and used our 5 headed lamp as my spotlight thingy. I just unscrewed all the lights except for one. Clever aren't I? Anyway, it came to the due date and when we have to turn our pictures in, we first have to hang them up on the wall and the class critiques them. Also, with the teacher that I have, he has us all vote for the one that we thought had the best design. Not the best face or picture, but the best design. And mine got in the top 5! I was so surprised and proud of my painting! Also there is one thing that will light up any art student's week even more is when the professor puts your art piece on "The Wall!"

"The Wall" is the main area that all of the art classrooms lead to. And "The Wall" is there for the teachers to put up their favorite art pieces that their students do. Then, EVERYBODY sees it, and you feel all fuzzy and warm inside because then you see people admire your work. Plus it's a big bonus because that means your teacher liked what you did. Let's just hope this wasn't a fluke and that I can make it on "The Wall" some more!

Tada!!!

Achromatic Acrylic Painting

Title: "My Phantom"

(yeah it's cheezy but it reminded me of Phantom of the Opera)

"The Wall"

These are all of the other paintings my teacher liked too...

Can you see Jesse?

Ok so I had so much fun doing that project

and I had some more board, so I did one of myself!

Yellowstone cont...

Hey everyone. So if you have already looked at the pictures, you can tell that Jesse and I went to Yellowstone last weekend (Saturday Oct. 16). We had TONS of fun and were quite surprised at how beautiful it really is up there. We both just thought that it was like the rest of the west. Dead, nothing, with the exception of Old Faithful blowing its top every 90 minutes. But instead we found mountains, tons of other geysers (one that smelled so badly of rotten eggs we could hardly stand it), snow, wildlife, and tons of tourists. We didn't go around the entire park. We just stayed to the south-western part. But look below the pictures, again if you've already looked, and you'll see I have captions now. Yay! I would definitely recommend for anyone to go if they get the chance. It's a beautiful place to see where the true beauty of nature.

Yellowstone

Don't worry!!! It's only Hot Chocolate!

Our first peak of Yellowstone

I thought the river looked pretty so I took a picture...

We saw a guy fishing so we thought he deserved a picture too...

This picture was taken for my father.

But anyone in the Nelson family should understand

what I mean when I say,

"One sharp-toothed buzzard, sitting in a dead tree!"

We found our Christmas Tree =]

This was one of the geysers that made a little waterfall

down the rock and into the river.

And the steam in the background isn't even half of the size of the geyser!

IT'S A BEAR! RUNAWAY!!! hehehe

my little snowman =]

We really didn't see a bear, but we saw these elk

that were on the side of the road...and still alive!

So at this point we were actually following a trail next

to the waterfall...but we went off the trail...and on purpose.

It was really pretty in the woods. But we didn't go too far cause

we got chicken and didn't want to run into any bears.

Big Watafalla

So we actually took a different route home

and went through the Teton Mountains.

Peacoat

So if anyone is looking for a Peacoat for a good price, you need to go to Rue21! They have a bunch all between $30-$35. I've been looking for one for FOREVER but they've all cost $60 and up. I'm so excited about this. I had my mom get me one because there isn't a Rue21 anywhere in Idaho and she was in Logan (which I knew there was one there). Only problem is, now she wont send it to me. It's supposed to be for Christmas but it get's kinda cold in Rexburg sooner than later. Yet she still says I can wait and really get it for Christmas. What do you think? Should she go ahead and send it so I can actually use it? Or should I wait 3 MONTHS before I get it.

The Worst Plasma visit EVER!

As you may know, Jesse and I are two college students that do the typical college student thing to do. Donate Plasma. We go so often that the flebs and workers there have come to recognize us and have come to know us a bit. They were there when we were engaged and are here now that we are married. Well today was just like any other day. Or at least that is how it started. Said hello and asked how each other was doing. Said no to a million questions all asking the same thing (Do you have AIDS???). Getting your finger pricked and waiting for your turn with

"the BIG needle."

What first went wrong was my decision in what arm to use. Usually I use my left because the veins are a bit bigger than the right and are easier to hit. But my left arm was a little sore from so many pokings, so I thought I would give it a break. Bad idea. It probably took the worker three minutes before he could actually get the needle in my vein in my right arm. Talk about painful. I think that was the worst it's ever hurt going in. It was straight downhill after that. You could even say I was free falling off the side of a cliff. Apparently the needle was in the vein perfect but sometimes it would flow, then stop. Flow, then stop. So they had to keep moving the needle around, pulling it out a little, pushing it back in a little, shifting it to the side, then the other side. My vein just did not want to cooperate. I was on my second cycle (total of 3 for me) of the process when things REALLY got bad. The worker was making one last ditch effort of getting my vein to finally work before using my other arm. This last ditch effort marked the end of my donation because he poked too far and hit my tendon. Now THAT one hurt. And I made sure I was vocal about it. It hurt so much I started to get really dizzy and very sick at the same time. I felt so bad for the worker. He was trying to do everything before I did "anything." Needless to say, by the time my stomach got the better of me, I had three workers hovering around me. One with a bucket, the other wrapping my arm after getting the needle out, and the other watching the fun. Talk about VIP treatment.

After my fun little "episode" they still unfortunately stuck my left arm so they could get my blood back to me. Then, I was asked some more questions about how I felt, how I felt before I was reintroduced to my lunch, and etc. Thankfully I still got the full amount of money even though I didn't donate a full thing.

It was cute though because I texted Jesse that I was having problems and he made them let him come back so he could check on me. Isn't he such a cutie pants! When we got home I slept for about two hours. I probably would have slept til morning but Jesse made me wake up. I still feel like I could sleep for forever, that and my arm is making sure that I know that it is still there. Moral of this story. I am never letting them use my right arm ever again! Never, ever, ever, never, ever, never!

The Mom Song

So I saw this on a friend's facebook page and thought it was really funny. I know I can testify of hearing things from this song. And I'm sure others can as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXgoJ0f5EsQ&feature=player_embedded

Projects

So, lately Jesse and I have been looking for a picture of Christ to go into our apartment. We have one of the Logan temple where we were married, one of the Proclamation of the Family, now we just need Christ! So we began our hunt! We looked at Distribution Services and they didn't have anything that we wanted. All they had were the old pictures like the ones that you remember from Primary. Then we looked at Deseret Book. They had some really nice ones there! They were even half off! For $450! Yeah, didn't happen. But hope was still there.

The very next day I had to go to Porter's (the local craft store). I had to because they sell art stuff and I needed to get some brushes. While I was looking at brushes Jesse found this fantastic way to create your own homemade collage thingy. (I don't really know what to call it.) But you get a board cut in sections. And then you get your images (they can be whatever you want), some scrapbook paper, and your High Gloss Finish (we got EnviroTex Light. Apparently it's like 50 coats of varnish in just one layering) and vwalla! You have a masterpiece! The only thing is I'm not a very patient person when I get really exciting art projects. I had a couple of problems in the beginning because I spray painted the board black and tried to put the pictures on too soon. Needless to say, I had to redo the paint and wait even longer. Right now mine is still drying (it takes 24 hours to cure all the way) but I was too excited to show you all how much fun I've been having and saying that you should do it too! Or if you want to pay a little for supplies I would totally do it again!

Date Night Bowling

Jesse and I went bowling the other night at the local theatre/bowling alley/game place called The Rex. We did try to go to the bowling alley up on campus but it was packed. Probably because it only costs a $1.75 and it is A LOT more expensive at the Rex. It's a good thing that we had a card with buy one game, play another for free. So we bought blue cotton candy with it (also got one bag free for the heck of it) and had a very fun evening. My inner child was especially happy with the cotton candy.

Jesse of course creamed me and my no more than 60 score both games. He's taking a bowling class (just for the credits) this semester so I think he had a very large advantage. It was nice though because there was only one other couple there and they had the black lights on so no one could witness all of the granny shots I took because anything else would get me a gutter ball. Other than that we just relaxed and enjoyed watching all of the funny cartoons on the screen after all of my gutter balls. =]

Jesse eating cotton candy...it was SO good.

My wonderful bowling skills! Gotta love the music too. lol

We Will Survive!

So for all of those family members (not mentioning names) that think I will stave Jesse and I, well these pictures are for you. To prove you wrong. Besides...I've got Jesse, and he likes to eat so he likes to make dinner a lot of the time anyway. lol But these are some pictures of Jesse and I cooking Easy Cheesy Enchiladas sometime last week. I would have posted these sooner but we're having problems with our internet and we have no idea when it'll be fixed. Plus the school's internet has been on the fritz too. Very annoying. And thank you Brittany for the recipe. =]

Jesse in the kitchen minding the sauce.

Yummy, ooey-gooey, in-ards for the enchiladas.

Look I can cook! Or at least stir it....

Jesse snitching.

Jesse's punishment for snitching! =]

Moses, our angry betta fish.

Ta Da! The finished product! And it was SOOOooo good!

Yay Wedding Pictures

So for some reason it was really difficult for me to post a lot of pictures here on my blog. Probably because they are so big. So if you would like to see a whole lot more, then I invite you to look at more at...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=309472&id=512025556&ref=mf.

That is the link to my facebook page. Unfortunately you have to have a facebook account to look at them. I tried to go around that but it didn't work. All of the photos were done by Leanna Gina Photography (she's is also a very good friend of ours). We recommend her to anyone and everyone. You can visit her at http://leannagina.blogspot.com/. Hope you enjoy them as much as we have!