truth is who You are

"And it's not enough to just say, "I believe"

'Cause truth is that talk is cheap

So grace give me eyes to see

You came to take us back to the start

You came to touch the hardness of our hearts

You gave us truth that truth is who You are

It's who You are"

-Tenth Avenue North

I love this way of talking about the Atonement and Jesus Christ's mission. He didn't just teach truth, He is truth. And taking full advantage of His grace is doing our best to be like Him.

I made a Pandora station of this band a while back, to mix up my Sunday playlists, and I've gotta say, it's Monday and I'm still listening.

Listen to the whole song here.

mountains

Oh wow.

So it's been a while, right?

Somehow this semester is still shaping up to be crazy busy, because I am working fewer hours and I quit the ballroom team/world.

I love it, and I love the things I'm doing, but sometimes there are days when it just swallows me up.

A lot has happened and a lot has stayed the same in the past few weeks.

I dated someone and then I didn't date someone.

I didn't know what I wanted and I felt unsettled about the whole thing, so I ended it.

And now I think I know what I want, but I'm not sure how to go after it. Or if I should wait for it to come after me. Or worry that it won't.

But this is familiar, I'm used to being this girl. And I'm good at it. And I'm trying to muster up some hope because doubt is my vice.

I just have to keep treading water and telling myself that somehow I will get everything done that I need to, and if I don't, then it probably wasn't that important anyway.

So we'll see what the rest of this season holds. But, come what may, I'm going to make it great.

soundtrack to my morning:

Summer reminds us every year to keep our hearts young

Okay, so I couldn't find a decent quality live version of this song, but I'm completely smitten with it.

It's so childlike and innocent.

So just listen to it, and then go run through the nearest sprinklers you can find.

music to my soul

{This is the song that made me fall in love with Carbon Leaf}

My relationship with music can be pretty random.

There are some days where I'll listen to the same song 10 times in a row, and other days where my mix will be nothing short of Ella Fitzgerald, the Les Miserables soundtrack and Hanson.

I've never been someone who defines themselves by the music they listen to. I don't know everything about classic rock, or have 40 hours of orchestral music on my iPod, and I don't only listen to bands that no one has heard of.

But I love the Joshua Tree album, anything by Frank Sinatra, the Chopin nocturnes (thank you, parents), and a few bands that no one I know seems to be familiar with.

Carbon Leaf, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, and Jon McLaughlin are the musical men that I've had pretty long term relationships with, stereo speaking. I don't listen to them every day, but I've never played one of their songs and not fallen in love with them all over again.

I saw Carbon Leaf in concert last summer at one of my favorite little concert venues, literally an old garage turned hipster scene. It was incredible. I don't know what it is about their music, but it hits me right in the soul. It's like coming home.

SK and the Sixers has some kind of drawl, but they aren't really country, and their music doesn't make me want to dance, but it makes me love my life a little bit more.

In 2008, when I saw Sara Bareilles in concert, I found out later that she'd been touring with Jon, but not when I saw her. Jon McLaughlin's music is like a breath of much needed fresh air. It's like a weekend in the country, when you've been stuck at the office all week, smothered in city smog and subway steel. (Not that I've actually had that experience, but I'm pretty sure if I had, Jon's music is the sort of thing that would keep me sane.)

They are like old friends that, even when we haven't talked in a few months or years, when we bump into each other and decide to grab lunch, after five minutes, it's like we're back in high school and we never lost touch.

dare you to move

Every once in a while, a song comes on the radio,

not a new song,

but one that knows you by heart;

it stops you in your tracks,

and it's all you can do to just remember to breathe.

This is one of those songs.

vintage

I've never been very trendy.

Not to say I don't take effort in putting myself together, but I grew up with my mother's and grandmother's examples of timeless class rather than of-the-minute fashion fads.

However, I've always been partial to old things, so I guess you could say I'm vintage in the sense that I love old movies, used books and the music of my parents' and grandparents' era.

Someday when my bookshelves stop moving themselves every year or so, I'll stock them with a collection of Barbra Streisand movies, books I've read and reread so many times they automatically open to my favorite pages, and Rat Pack records that make that scratchy sound when placed on the turntable.

everything is more romantic in french

This may just be one of the most romantic songs I've ever heard.
I fell in love with it when I heard it play at the end of French Kiss.

Louis Armstrong's trumpet can take my breath away any day.
And Edith Piaf's voice is incredible.

I don't even need to hear the words to want to melt into some dashing man's arms and forget the world.

thought of you

I saw this yesterday.

It was like coming home.

*Thanks to Ryan Woodward for making this masterpiece. It is absolutely stunning. I can't say enough good things about it, so i'll just leave it at that.

the way to my heart

Love-to-be:

Let's bring it all to the table.

Your strengths.

My weaknesses.

Your faults.

My gifts.

And let's make music from all the discord in our lives.

image via weheartit

What you're doing this Saturday:

This is what I spent a few hours on yesterday.

It was really fun to play around in Illustrator.*

Two more reasons to convince you to come:

-My semi-famous peanut butter brownies (actually, it's my mom's recipe, but I brought their fame to my corner of the world)

-I'll be singing a little song with my friend Clark.

So come stuff your belly and fill your ears with the feel good sounds of doing some good in the world.

*slowly checking off #3 on this list.

Currently obsessing over:

Can I just say that I love everything about this?

Oh, to sing a duet with Andrea Bocelli.

In Italian.

Someday, I want to be able to understand this without having to use Google Language Tools.

the shorter story

Some people like to go to haunted houses and watch scary movies and let their imaginations run wild to feel that thrill of utter horror and fright.

But I've never been like that.

I'm the one who watches sad movies when I'm happy.
And listens to rainy day music when it's bright and sunny.
And cries not only in movies but at the end of really good books.
Whose idea of a perfect Saturday morning is curling up in a blanket with a mug of hot cocoa and watching something like "The Way We Were."

Because there is something about that heartbreaking, purely human rush of delicious melancholy that gets me every time.

cowboy take me away

Maybe I need to add one more thing to the poll on my sidebar: go spend the summer with my extended southern family in beautiful South Carolina. Oh and this little ad shop intrigues me.

Hmm..I wonder what interning in the South would be like. Do they down too many cups of sweet tea instead of coffee, and have big porches instead of basketball courts? Do they still wear suits and say "Yes, Ma'am"? Do they get late night bbq instead of Chinese?

I fell in love with the South when I was 8 years old.

And I wonder if I'd make a better southern belle or city girl.

I think I might like the pace of the South better than the hustle and bustle of the city.

But, then again, there is something magical about the city that never sleeps.

"I want to walk and not run.

I want to skip and not fall.

I want to look at the horizon

and not see a building standing tall."

-Dixie Chicks

image found from the lovely colby ranae on Pray Hard. Live Easy.

one fine day, you're gonna want me for your girl

Jack: Maybe you should let somebody help you out every once in a while.

Melanie: Definitely not. I've got all of these little balls up in the air. And if somebody else caught one for me, I'd drop them all.

-One Fine Day

Today I feel like I'm barely keeping all the little balls from crashing to the ground.

And I wish I knew how or who to ask for help.

I need a mental health day.

Or a good old fashioned Saturday.

A day to curl up in many many blankets (because our heat is not working right now), make a huge mug of hot cocoa, and watch a silly movie that will make me cry and laugh in the same hour and a half.*

*As my friend Clark pointed out, 90s chick flicks are the best. I agree. Am I old enough to say things like, "they just don't make them like they used to.."?

**On another note, I liked One Fine Day so much that I taped it when it was on TV and still have an old, worn out VHS copy with commercials. Maybe the plot is incredibly unrealistic, but I don't even care. Maybe it's not. Maybe you can meet someone on the worst day of your year and things could turn out alright. And this song is half of the reason I love the movie.

these foolish things

Today as I was tidying up my room, Nat King Cole and the sound of rain in the background, I thought about how lovely life is.

Even on days when the power goes out, and it's cold and rainy, and sometimes a little lonely.

The learning and loving and moments of loneliness can be so sweet.

This song started playing and I decided that someday I will dance to it and it will be terribly romantic. As all songs by Nat King Cole are.*

"A tinkling piano in the next apartment

Those stumblin' words that told you what my heart meant

A fairground's painted swings

These foolish things

Remind me of you."

I love rainy day music. It's so...cleansing. Just like the rain.

image via vi.sualize.us (isn't it just gorgeous?)

*According to this little peek into my 16 year old self, Nat King Cole is already on the list to be played at my wedding reception. I'm not sure how many of the other songs I'll keep. But definitely Mr. Cole.

Suitcase Heart

Loving these lyrics by the Weepies:

I held so many people in my suitcase heart

That I had to let the whole thing go

Sometimes I stretch myself too thin.

I try to be everything to everyone.

And end up losing myself and what I want.

Because sometimes it's okay to care about what I want.

And to sometimes put myself first.

Because if I don't take care of myself, how can I do anything for anybody else?

So out of the crazy, hectic, wonderful busy-ness of this semester, this is what I want:

-to create a decent start on my creative portfolio (and maybe compete in YoungGuns?)

-to get rid of a lot of stuff that I just keep lying around my house. Simplify.

-to make some good habits: eating less sugar and more vegetables, flossing, reading for fun

Anyway.

I love my life. I really do.

I am so blessed with so many opportunities.

But sometimes I think I need to relearn the lesson of Good, Better, Best. :

We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives.

I think sometimes I have too many good things in my life, and I neglect a few of the "Best" things.

So this semester is going to be another semester of learning. Because that's what education is about.

Not just books.

Or tests.*

It's about life.

And learning how to do it right.

*like the one I need to be studying for right now.

Born in the 80s

So what if I'm too young to really remember this song?

But I'm loving it.

Not sure why.

And maybe I wouldn't have followed John Waite's tour bus all over the country.

Or had posters of him all over my walls.

Or listened to his music nonstop on my walkman.

But I do like this song.

And the oh-so-80s sense of the music video.

Some Kind of Story, Part One

She was never one to go for the lead singer.

She liked drummers.

Almost hidden behind shaggy hair and a stack of hi-hats.

Keeping the beat.

They seemed steady, but reckless at the same time.

And always so much about the music.

And not so much the spotlight.

No band is complete without one.

And neither was she.

I never knew just what it was about this old coffee shop I love so much

I've always loved coffee shops.

Not for the coffee, because I don't drink coffee. (though they generally have killer hot cocoa)

But because of the atmosphere and the energy.

They just seem like creative spaces.

And I love that.

There's something really endearing about the boy in this video. Maybe it's that he seems like more of a boy getting into mischief than a man looking for his soulmate.

Maybe he's both.

Either way, I'm digging the video.

ps: I just checked out a couple of his other songs, and love love love this one.