Self-Sufficiency

Lately I have been completely absorbed in reading articles and books about self-sufficient living. This has been nothing new for me; when I was younger, my father and I would often talk about my plans to retire onto a cranberry farm in northern Wisconsin. Lol. But now that I'm older and can actually do things, I'm starting to get antsy. I really wish I had a yard or something. Apartment life can kind of put a damper on setting up your 5 acre homestead...

Anyway, I know that a lot of times one of the goals of self-sufficient living is to get "off the grid," so to say, with electricity use and such. But I am really happy that some of the people who live that way can post helpful information online for people like me who want to live that way too! :)

My favorite "ad" n.n

I CAN DO ANYTHING. ^-^

a dream within a dream...

Today we watched Inception. I think this movie has a really cool idea, plus it has JGL and his smooth moves in it. But anyway, has anybody actually had a dream within a dream? Or had a dream where you know you're dreaming?

I think I have dreams where I know I'm dreaming a lot. Which is kind of fun sometimes because I can kind of control a little bit of what's going on in them. :) But sometimes I am dreaming, and I wake up from that dream, but I'm still in a dream...does that make sense? Not that I'm trying to uncover some sort of secret combination or anything fancy like that like in the movie, but it's still kind of interesting. Mostly I dream that I get some sort of pet, like a cute little baby puppy. :) But then as I start to wake up from that dream, the puppy disappears and I always think something like, "oh no, I'm dreaming again." And then I am mildly upset that the cute baby puppy isn't real. And then I was up from the puppy dream into some other random dream that I'm still having. Crazy, huh?

Does that happen to anybody else?

Blogs

On Monday we talked about blogging in class. Somebody mentioned having a sort of "blogging war" with their sister, searching for things to do or take pictures of just so they could blog about it and look more interesting (or something along those lines). I always see really neat ideas for things to do on pinterest (a website visited by almost every female I see in my classes with a laptop (lol)), but I have absolutely no talent for interior decorating, so I usually don't make any crafts or anything. It's harder, too, when your apartment comes with drab colored furniture that you aren't allowed to remove, a drab colored carpet, and the same weird off-white yellowy walls that all Provo apartments seem to have. Everything is this weird, drab brown-to-yellow gradient spectrum, and I'm not sure how to really work with that.

I went outside my apartment today to watch the pool filling up (my life is so entertaining) because it's been filling up for the last three days with the equivalent of a tiny garden hose - it's become kind of a sentimental event. Anyway, what do I see on the ground to my right just outside of my neighbor's door? Some old fancy vintage lamps that were spray painted a really neat looking teal-blue color! C'mon now, totally saw that on pinterest. I saw them and went back inside trying to think of some sort of neat thing I could do to be crafty as well.

All I wound up doing was hanging up some of my clothes that were on the floor and browsing more of those Mormon mommy blogs. I did absolutely nothing crafty at all today (unless doing dishes counts) but reading those blogs at least made me feel like I had some sort of creative mind - even though none of the ideas were mine and I pretty much just sat on my butt the whole time. Lol.

there is no picture in this post. I'm sorry!

Ghosts...?

So, my husband and I are really into this show called "Ghost Adventures" on the Travel channel. Basically, these guys go into a bunch of places overnight that are apparently haunted and they try and communicate with ghosts or spirits or whatever. I don't know...do you guys think we can communicate with spirits by using neat equipment and recorders? :) I think it's pretty neat, but I've always been a bit susceptible to stuff like this anyway. Lots of the recordings - responses, apparently - that these guys get are intelligent responses, meaning that the guys will ask a question, and the ghosts (or whatever) actually respond to them and answer the questions. I think that's really cool.

Maybe this is totally weird but it's always kind of a faith building experience when we watch this show! :) 

Dude looks like a lady.

Okay, so I saw this picture on facebook. I don't know what you guys think, but I think that the picture on the right looks absolutely ridiculous.
What up with that? I know we talked about the whole "sex sells" thing in class, but I guess I'm one of those crazy conservative people who's offended by advertisements and things that have to resort to this.

But really, lol. Think about how ridiculous the media would look if men were portrayed in the same way as women. Lol. And what if women were represented how men currently are? :o

The JammyPack!

So, how do you feel about fanny packs?

I have one pretty similar to the one in the picture. I bought it from the basement of the bookstore for like two bucks! :) One of my friends mentioned how she wishes fanny packs were cool...because apparently they aren't. Well, I think that if you treat it like it's dumb, then it's probably going to be dumb. But I treasure my dear fanny pack as a wonderful and practical fashion accessory. :)

Anyway, another person involved in this fanny pack discussion posted a link to this website:
JammyPack.com
You can see that they are trying really hard to make fanny packs cool. And alright, they probably are pretty neat, right? But what I don't get is the pictures on that website. I mean really, if you're wearing a bikini, why do you also have to wear a fanny pack and a winter hat? I don't get it. I don't know, I just feel like some of the pictures are a bit silly and unrealistic, though I can say that the concert picture made sense. Having a fanny pack at a concert is so much nicer than stuffing your life in your pockets!

But really, that's totally unreal. A bikini and a winter hat? Really?