Hey Julie, SYTYCD?

My hair school bff Julie and I got to see SYTYCD LIVE! It was awesome, mostly because I won the tickets on the radio. Since I won the tickets, I figured they would be semi-bad seats-I was totally wrong! Our seats were awesome! Thanks to 97.1, Julie and I sat in the lower bowl pretty dang close to the stage. As is tradition with events at the e-center, we went to Costa Vida for dinner prior to the show (and fought with 800 other women in line while they forced their "friends" to reserve a table for them. Yeah, we thought it was weird too). The show was awesome, I love watching dance routines live. The routines are way cool on tv but so much better in person. Oops, gotta go listen to the radio for a chance to win tickets to something else!

Haircuts

Unlike the rest of my schooling, on Wednesday the 11th and the 18th, I receive the proceeds from the haircuts I perform. These proceeds will go directly toward funding me to go to the ISSE hair show in California in January. Call 801.763.0324 to schedule an appointment with me and make sure to ask for Stacy Hughes. Thank you!

TMNT

Julie and I were Leonardo and Donatello for our school costume contest. If you can believe it, we didn't win anything. If there had been a people's choice award, we would have definitely taken the title. Shout out to Marianne for allowing me to borrow the costume.
Cowabunga!

MATC

As you all know, I attend hair school and love every second of it! My hair school BFF recently blogged about an issue that is especially affecting us right now. I hope Julie is ok with me quoting her blog. I feel 100% the things she puts so perfectly into words.



"So it was no secret I wanted to attend hair school since I was really little. I got distracted from this desire and after 3 years at BYU I was reminded just how badly I wanted hair school. Its my "passion" if you will. Well when I started to look seriously into fulfilling my dream I was shocked and discouraged. The cheapest school I could find was over $10,000. There was no way I could justify that debt to get my dream education. So I kept searching and hoping I could find a way. MATC was that way. At less than half the cost of the cheapest school, hair school became a dream within reach. It sounds cheesey but without it I could have never been able to do it. Well now I have been attending since January and I absolutely love everything about it. The program is fantastic. My instructors are simply incredible. I get the attention I need, the training I need, and most of all I love going every day. When I first saw how cheap tuition was I thought there had to be a catch. I was wrong. It is really an incredible school and I feel like I am as well trained (if not better) as any other hair school student out there.
Why this MATC tangent you may ask? Well all the private hair schools have banded together and hired a lobbyist to try and shut my school down. They claim we are too much competition and some other things. I don't really understand the specifics. I do understand that this is a serious issue. Excuse the cliche phrase but MATC really does make dreams come true for people like me who felt their dream was out of reach. It is a great program and needs to continue."



When I first heard about these private schools wanting to shut our school down, I was afraid for myself. What was I going to do? Where would I go to finish my hours? How would I afford to pay more tuition? Then after I thought for a while, I started realizing how much it would affect everyone that is involved in any way with MATC. Where would my instructors find a new job? Where would all the students go to finish their hours? How would any of us afford more tuition? What about the students who want to go to a great cosmetology school in the future and can't afford upwards of $10,000?



I don't know why these schools think it's fair to take this education and this dream away from over 50 students. If there is a message that I can tell you from this, it's that I love MATC. It's a great school. The private schools are coming to tour our school tomorrow with their lobbyist, I hope they see what an amazing program our school offers and that we have dedicated, talented instructors that would do anything for any of us. I hope the outcome of this is

Paramore/No Doubt Concert

On May 25, Julie and I went to the Paramore and No Doubt concert at the E-center...without our hubbies! We had a blast and of course took tons of pictures. I warned you about the tons of pictures so here it goes-

get excited...we're in the parking lot!

After the opening band, Paramore was first.

The lead singer Hayley is super adorable.

We made a random guy take this picture of us!

Here is No Doubt--including the famous Gwen Stefani.

They were awesome.

Best part of the night...a couple not much older than us asked what time

we thought No Doubt would be coming on. Obviously we didn't know the exact time but

said we expected it would be about 9:30 and they said "oh, well we're old so we just wanted to know." Then at about 10:15 when No Doubt hadn't been performing for very long, they snuck past us and didn't come back...

Moral of the story is: If you pay for a concert, you should stay for the whole thing. Also, don't call yourself old when you're talking to people no more than 5 years younger than you.

Easy PB Cookies

I learned a new trick today! It's called supercook.com. On this ultra cool website, you can type in ingredients you have in your kitchen and it will come up with recipes you can already make! (Great for Sundays when you haven't grocery shopped in advance). I wanted a cookie recipe that didn't include chocolate chips-since I didn't have any- so I typed in typical dessert/cookie ingredients I already have (eggs, flour, sugar, brown sugar, peanut butter, etc.). Super Cook came up with this:

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg

Cook in 1'' balls at 350* until golden brown.

Easy, right? And I think they're pretty good! I'll have to wait until Ben gets home to get the final consensus. Happy Cooking!

Thank you 107.9 !!!

So I get into my car with my friend Julie and the radio comes on and I hear the 107.9 Touci Touci bird...which may not mean anything to some of you, but I knew if you hear the bird, you are supposed to call and be #10. So I am reaching around for my purse in the back seat for my phone and I figure I'm taking too long and the tickets are already gone, but I decided to call anyway. It was ringing! It never rings when I try to call radio stations! So a guy picks up and says "Mix 107.9, can you hold for a second?" and I say "Umm...Yeah!". Then Julie and I start freaking out...seriously, I was shaking! Julie keeps saying "What's going on? What did he say?". I told her what he said and both of us sounded like two 13 year old girls "shut up, oh my gosh, shut up!". So he comes back on the phone and says "Thanks for holding, you won tickets!" and since I only heard the touci bird and not what it was for I said "Umm, thanks. What were those tickets for again? I forgot." "Oh, you won tickets to see the new X-men movie." So he took down all my info and I just have to pick the tickets up within the next 30 days. Ok so X-men tickets aren't as cool as No Doubt and Paramore tickets, but I was still pretty stoked that I won anything at all! So thanks, I love 107.9 the Mix!

Is it time to get your hair done?

I am now taking appointments at my hair school! I am available Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings starting at 9:30 and Saturday from 9-3. You can call 801-763-0324 to make an appointment with me. I hope to see you soon!

Rex Lee Run

On Saturday, March 14th, I ran my 1st 5k! This is a post-race picture of the 4 of us who ran. L to R: Mare, Julie, Kelsey, Me. I don't know my exact time, but I'm pretty sure it was around 32 minutes. When we first got down to BYU campus, it was a frigid 28 degrees! I literally thought my toes would fall off, but once the sun came up, the weather wasn't too bad. I am pretty proud of myself for finishing the race without much training and this summer I am going to run a 10k!

A little more has changed...

Wow am I bad at blogging? Rhetorical question, I haven't blogged for about 3 weeks, but in my defense, I am pretty busy. I started hair school last month and I go full time Monday-Friday from 8-4:30, not counting homework (yes there is homework for hair school). 3-4 times a week I work at Old Navy by the South Towne mall and every Sunday we teach the 12 year old Sunday School class. I know everyone is probably thinking "Oh, if that was all I had to do, I'd have plenty of time to blog" but I find it hard to squeeze in time for this and working out alongside all of the above mentioned things.

Anyway--I have lost another 5 pounds! I can already tell a difference in how my clothes are fitting! What am I doing you ask? Well, everytime we saw the empty place in a store where a wii fit was supposed to be in the display case, I would go off about how much I wanted one. On Valentine's day, I was ultra surprised (really, I honestly was) to open my very own wii fit!!! For those of you who haven't had the chance to play on one, the very first time you play, you must do a "body test". I had heard that the wii fit would weigh you and I was pretty sure I wasn't a stick but I hopped on and the tiny wii fit voice said "overweight!" I was mortified! ...Here my wii fit character went from looking 'normal' to gaining a tire around her midsection and a fatty fat booty :( not my proudest moment. I looked around as my cute husband stared at the screen, not only did I have to hear that I was overweight, but other people heard too! (Disclaimer: the wii fit is awesome and there is a password protected option if you don't want others knowing your bmi and weight.) What is it about hearing someone else say what you already know that makes it harder to accept? I knew I wasn't the size 2 I wish I was, but I also didn't ever have anyone tell me I wasn't. After having a quick moment of self pity, I realized this is the starting point, I don't have to stay like this! Wow...really? I don't have to be an 'overweight' size forever? The wii fit then tells you that if you have a specific goal, it will help motivate you even more, so I set my initial goal: Lose 15 pounds in 3 months. I know on my previous post I said "lose 30 by my b-day in August" and I'm not giving up on that, I am simply setting a shorter term goal to get me on my way.

Another thing I have recently started is my ghetto version of Weight Watchers. Ghetto? yes, ghetto. I count my points and have meetings 5x a week instead of once and don't pay one cent. Okay, so they aren't official WW meetings, but I really think they help. My WW partner is my friend Julie from hair school. We are constantly discussing WW and supporting eachother through it. The reason I love WW is you can eat ANYTHING, you just have to count the points for it. M&M's just don't seem as tempting when I know that I have to account for them on my daily record. There are plenty of websites that are dedicated to sharing WW help. A couple of my favorites that Julie gave me are:

a point calculator- http://www.cdkitchen.com/www.php

common foods- http://quiddity.cc/rachel/diet/wwfoods.htm

and my mom gave me one:

for restaurants- http://www.dwlz.com/restaurants.html

And five more pounds...GONE! I'm feeling great!

Slow Start

I'm down 2 lbs. Definitely not an amazing feat but I'll take it.

Spaghetti...sort of.

I have put my own spin on spaghetti. I cooked some whole wheat spaghetti noodles on the stove and steamed some zucchini and squash slices in the microwave. Mix that together with your favorite spaghetti sauce and you've got veggie spaghetti all in about 10 minutes. I love the Bird's Eye pre-sliced frozen zucchini and squash slices. You just throw a few in the microwave with a little water in a steaming dish and they come out amazing every time. They are pretty good as a side dish at dinner with a little dill sprinkled on them or just for a snack. (if you love squash, of course!) I just had to share. I wonder if I could get my hubby to eat this...

Finally, cruise pictures!

Don't we look so excited?!?! This picture is at the Atlanta airport as we awaited our flight to Miami. Sorry about the camera blur, and lack of sleep!

TA-DA! The Canival Valor. This was our home for an entire week.

This is a lovely picture of the majestic (wow, did I just say majestic?) Carnival Valor at night. It is the one with the blue lights. I think the other ship was a Norwegian Cruiseline ship.After a couple failed attempts at a self portrait, a lady was nice enough to take this picture as the ship was approaching St. Maarten.

I took a picture with this towel animal...though we're still not quite sure what animal it is supposed to be.

And Ben took a picture with this one. Again, we weren't 100% sure what animal this is, but our best guess is it's either a puppy or a pig. Our other towel animals were a little easier to figure out. I loved coming back to our room with one of these on our bed every night.

CAUTION: SNORKEL GEAR MAKES FOR HUGE LOOKING LIPS!

Yeah, so I know this isn't the most attractive picture we've ever taken of ourselves, but I still love it. I actually printed this picture and have it hanging in our bathroom. This is Ben and I snorkeling in St. Maarten.

Again, another St. Maarten picture. These were the most common fish we saw.
This is actually a nudey (sp? real word?) beach on the french side of St. Maarten. Mostly the nudies were older women who seemed pretty confident with their saggin' parts...kudos ladies. I guess. The beach was beautiful and there weren't very many people despite all the chairs and umbrellas. We actually kayaked over to this beach to go snorkeling and the nudists were just an added bonus!

Wow, hot pic of me, I know. This is a random "climbing sculpture" in a park in downtown Miami. I was a little sketchy that we were downtown, especially at night but Ben seemed pretty chill. Just when I was really uncomfortable about all the homeless people we saw sleeping in doorways downtown, we actually met 4 LDS missionaries. We walked by them the first time and I didn't say hi so I felt pretty bad, but on our way back from dinner, they were still in the same spot. As we walked by for the second time I said "Hi Elders!" and one stared at me and said "How did you know who we were?". Um yeah, I think if you see 2 or more young guys in white shirts with black tags that have bikes and helmets with them, most people know they are Mormon missionaries. Pretty funny. So we chatted with them for half an hour about how Utah is and we asked them how their missions were going. It was kinda cool to see missionaries out teaching the bums. Okay they weren't preaching to the bums but it does sound funny.

So that about sums up our trip! We thought about stealing these life jackets from the ship but we figured we'd probably get in trouble...I must admit though, orange does look fab on us!

It was a fantastic trip and we absolutely would recommend going on a cruise. If anyone wants to plan one with us, we would love to go again!

Here I go...

I have been struggling with my weight forever. I haven't ever been very satisfied with how I look and I would love to feel great about myself, SO...Here I go! I am putting myself out there and telling you all about my 14 days late "New Years Resoloution". Honestly I don't like to call it that because most people that have resoloutions quit them by Valentine's day, but I guess with it being the time of year it is, this is mine.

I am going to lose 30 pounds by my 22nd birthday on August 7th. I realize that 30 lbs is pretty ambitous, but I am ready and 6 1/2 months is a healthy time frame to lose it in. The reason I am telling all of you (if anyone reads this---hi, mom!) is so I have people that know about my goal and hopefully check in on me. I'm definitely not going to post how much I weigh...ok maybe in August I will post my "after" weight so if you'd like to, you can do the math...YIKES! However, I will absolutely post my progress along the way (ie: this week I lost 3 lbs, or I am down 12 pounds!) as well as yummy recipes I find and little workout tips and favorite fat blastin' moves! Wooo! Are you gettin' pumped? I knew you were, so here I go!