Settled In & Beginning of Summer

After nearly a month and a half of having no place to call home, I found an apartment in Orem that allowed me to move in a few days after the showing. Although it's no brand new house, has no granite counter tops or under-mounted sinks, I am happy! So happy to have a place to call my own again or at least until my contract ends in the fall. Regardless, the first night I moved in I just sat in complete aw at the new direction my life would be taking and shed a tear or two to have a place to call home again! The first Saturday morning in my apartment, life just hit me! I woke up and felt like my old self again. I was happy to have been able to sleep in. I was happy that it was sunny. I was happy that I could go to the gym and take as much time I pleased! I was happy when my favorite songs came on the radio. Guess what? This was the old me and it felt good to be back!

My favorite corner in my bedroom. My new nightstand complete with books and Ipad, a beautiful picture of Christ and a comfy chair to sit and read a book on.

In addition to a new home, I started a new job as a part-time office administrator. I'm so grateful for the hours, my co-workers, and the location! Being able to work part-time allows me to feel more like a student which I never felt in the past. I have the opportunity to meet new people everyday, mainly Realtors, and I just love it! Did I mention I'm offered sweet treats almost everyday at work? I'm getting a bit better about saying no, but it's a nice perk for a foodie like myself. Over the past two months I have been able to attend a few events with my co-workers and community Realtors. One of them was a private showing to Iron Man 3, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Another event was a luncheon where Bobsled and Skeleton Olympian, Noelle Pikus Pace, was our motivational speaker. She even brought her medals and now I can say I've seen an Olympic gold medal!

Perhaps one of the best perks about getting settled and eliminating stress out of my life was the weight loss. I kid you not, I dropped 12 pounds in less than 40 days! I lost it without working out or any clean eating. The only two contributors were getting settled and eliminating stress. Regardless, I will not complain about loosing my extra pounds from earlier this year. Now that I am settled though, I've been working out anywhere from 4-6 days a week and it feels great. I've always loved fitness and feels great to take care of myself again. The only downfall is now I'm getting an obsession with buying fitness apparel. It it's cute, comfy, or discounted, I can't resist buying it!

Post-gym high and smiles!

Between school, work, institute class and hitting the gym my days are busy, but that's the way I like life. I just finished my first block classes for the summer which went pretty well. I was happy to find that one of my friends from culinary school, Hayley, was in my Written Business Communication class, so it was fun to reconnect and chat with her. Hayley is just one of the genuinely, happy people and she gave me advice about guys when I needed it these past few weeks. Thanks Hayley! I also just finished an Institute class, which covered October 2012 General Conference talks . One of my favorite things I learned or rather relearned came from President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk- Of Regrets and Resolutions. The bits and pieces I'd love to share with you are in regards to enjoying every moment in life, instead of being caught up with the notion that when certain events or milestones happy in life that "then I will be happy". I felt like I learned this lesson in part when it hit me that life was going by faster and faster each year. Some of his talk said the following:

              ". . . It's not a race; it's a journey. Enjoy the moment...Do we listen to beautiful music waiting for the final note to fade before we allow ourselves to truly enjoy it? No. We listen and connect with the variations of melody, rhythm, and harmony throughout the composition. . . We shouldn't wait to be happy until we reach some future point, only to discover that happiness was already available-all the time. . .Perhaps we should be looking less with our eyes and more with our hearts. We are commanded "to give thanks in all things." So isn't it better to see with our eyes and hearts even the small things we can be thankful for, rather than magnifying the negative in our current condition?
Let us resolve to be happy, regardless of our circumstances."

I love this talk and if you would like to read the rest you can find it here . Institute was a great opportunity and a midweek break and I look forward to taking some more classes in the future.

During the month of May, I had some great opportunities to do a lot of fun things with friends. I forgot how social single people are and considering most of my friends are either married or moved away, or both, I don't have a ton of them left "in the scene" so I'm starting from scratch again.  Anyway, if I had to name my top favorite events in May it would be seeing Urijah Faber in real life, attending the Imagine Dragons concert, and going to the SLC Tastemakers event. If any of you watch UFC then you know who Urijah Faber is, aka the "California Kid". When I used to watch UFC on a regular basis with an old friend, I would pick my favorite fighters according to how easy they were on the eyes and how exciting they were to watch. Urijah happened to be one of them, with his unorthodox moves and his blond hair. Anyway, I was at the fight cage side with a couple of guy friends and they mentioned that Urijah was there. I thought they were just joking with my because I openly admitted that I thought he was "fine". Low and behold a few minutes later Urijah walked in with his crew of buddies and I about had a heart attack. I tried to keep it cool, but I was just a little star struck and couldn't help myself from going a little ga ga over him, his muscles, and just the whole picture! So... back to the fight, it was pretty fun, action packed, and quick, which is how I like my sports. It was a little hard to see blood and hear the punches to some of the fighters' faces firsthand but other than that I enjoyed myself. Before the end of the fight, people kept going up to Urijah and asking for pictures and I kept thinking that I should but as soon as I realized he was about 5'6' and I'm a 5'9' female, I just couldn't bring myself to do it, haha. Instead, I just took these pictures from behind which my friends gave me a hard time for, but what is a girl to do when she sees her favorite athlete in real life??

Next, was the Tastemakers event which has to be one of my favorite local events. It is hosted in two different locations-one is held in a pavilion where 8-10 different fine dining restaurants serve tapas (a bite-sized appetizer). The other half of the event is in downtown Salt Lake, in the restaurants themselves. You are given a map and walk from restaurant to restaurant and try their tapas too. My old co-worker and friend Jillian, introduced me to this event last year so naturally we attended this year together as well. She is the biggest sweetheart and a foodie like myself and so she is so fun to go with. Her cousin came too and we had a great time trying so many different foods. I guess it has never occurred to me that taking pictures of your food isn't "normal" but I'm a culinary arts student and foodie so taking pictures is my "normal". So just bear with me as I share my favorites of the night below:

 

                

                                    

                     

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While we ate our food in the pavilion we found a seat and listened to this gentleman sing jazzy, Michael Buble songs, and oh my goodness the lungs on that man! His voice was smooth like bread on butter and I just sat there and ate my little foods listening to him sing, the cool summer breeze hitting my skin, and enjoyed a perfect summer night. All my favorite things, friends, food, music, and a nice summer night! After we hit up all the restaurants in the pavilion we walked around downtown to a few restaurants. While we were walking around we encountered a bum asked us for money after telling some HUGE lie of a story, and we explained we didn't have cash. After the bum cursed at us and walked away, sweet Jillian burst out that she actually had cash, a ton of cash and we just burst into hysterics.  Maybe you had to be there or maybe it was because we had eaten so much and were in food comas, but regardless it was just a fun night. I highly recommend it to those in the surrounding Salt Lake area.

Other fun things in May-besides the concert which is getting it's own post-were going to some new movies, trying new restaurants I've never been to before, going to baseball games, celebrating my niece and nephews birthdays, and going for pedicures with my friend, Leah, while she was in town. 

 

 

 

I'd have to say, May couldn't have gone any better! I can't believe June is almost over though. It makes me so sad! But I hope ya'll are having a great summer!

Calissa