Hey friends, so since I have a lot of new followers in the last week I'm going to explain Happy Tuesday real fast. Happy Tuesday is my day to find the small (or big) things over the past week that have made me happy. It's a way for me to think more positively as well as giving gratitude and finding out how truly blessed I really am. I love when my readers participate in Happy Tuesday as well, so if you do please leave me a comment or show me on social media with #HappyTuesday.
Aaron Paul's incredible, emotional acting in Breaking Bad
Hiking for Memorial Day
Nature
Having sore legs from Hiking
Family
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Happy Tuesdays are about making a list of the things that have made me happy. No details, no stories, just the simple beautiful things in life that bring happiness and joy.
If you'd like to join in, stop by every Tuesday and share your post with me!
You know what's hard? Life. Life is hard. You know what's harder? Watching all your friend succeeding in life and doing all these wonderful things while you've been sitting on a couch for the past three days watching it all happen on Facebook.
It's not that I'm not happy with my life. I love my husband and my family. I love the people I'm around. But it's just hard to see what all my friends are going through and seeing that I'm not there yet. I'm not even close. All my friends are having babies and graduated and getting really good jobs and going on tons of vacations while I am starting over in college and can barely afford rent.
When I was younger I always wanted to grow up and be a ballerina and while that quickly changed, it's crazy that I have like four or five friends on Facebook that are professional ballerinas or teaching dance professionally, some of which are younger than me. And I wish I could teach dance, it's all I've ever wanted to do, but I'm not.
Then I have all the friends who are pregnant or have babies... and there's a ton of those. And I'm not saying I want a baby right now (okay, maybe I do) but it's still hard for me to see all these friends taking this giant step in their lives.
And then all the graduates, which is actually the hardest for me. This is my fourth year in college, typically you graduate after your fourth year, especially when your major is teaching, like mine is, but no, after this year of college I still have like three and a half years of college left, possibly more considering I can't get into a class I needed this semester. And while I absolutely love my sister to death, it's hard for me that she graduated super fast, is now in graduate school and will probably graduate for a second time before I even graduate once. Michelle, I love you but your success is hard for me especially when mom and dad always compare me to you.
Then there's all the friends who pretend to understand my money problems but really just don't get it. They live in the basements of their relatives or their family pays their rent and they have expensive phones and cars and go on tons of trips yet try to pretend they understand my money issues. I had to move in order to afford to pay rent. They don't understand it and it's annoying that they pretend to.
Finally we have the icing on the cake, the fact that all these "friends" never really talk to me, never hang out with me, and aren't real friends. The hardest part is knowing that none of my Facebook friends are real friends. And while they're moving on with their lives and becoming successful, they're also moving on from me. They aren't really my friends anymore.
And that is why I can't look at Facebook anymore.
P.S. -This blog has a Facebook page and you're welcome to follow it to keep up with all my new blog posts. One of my New Years Resolutions is to get 100 blog followers so if you like this blog on Facebook you can help me reach my goal! Also, in the near future I'll be doing a Giveaway exclusively for my Facebook followers so you have the like the page to enter it! So please like my Facebook page and you could win a special prize!
So anyone looking regularly at my Book Club page may have seen that this month's book, Beautiful Creatures, has been extended through another month. There are three reasons for this:
I was unaware at how long the book was beforehand
I didn't realize how ridiculously busy my schedule would be once I started school, and...
I think this book has a wonderfully creepy/dark sort of undertone that will be great for October and the Halloween season. So I don't regret leaving this book for another month.
So while I am not very far in the book (I honestly have no time to read for fun anymore) I am still posting the discussion post today for those of you who are on time. Congratulations to you! Try not to give away too much to me.
If you haven't started reading yet, there is always enough time to start! And what better way to start than by winning your very own copy of Beautiful Creatures to read!!!
I'm finally doing a giveaway on my blog and I figured the best way to start it out would be with my Book Club book. Here are the rules to this giveaway:
It is mandatory to like my Facebook page (found HERE) in order to enter; this is good for 3 entries into the giveaway.
You can gain more entries by following me on Twitter, tweeting about the giveaway, and commenting on one of my blog posts.
You may tweet about the giveaway everyday to gain more entries.
This giveaway is only available to persons living in the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii (I'm so sorry!!)
This giveaway goes from September 20th through October 6th, the winner will be notified during the week the contest ends and the book will be sent out by the end of that week through Barnes and Noble.
I want to thank everyone that voted on the giveaway prize, it was great to see what ya'll were most interested in. The book was actually tied with a gift card, so that will be for my next giveaway (I'm hoping to do one about every other month, so stay tuned!)
Anyways, back to the main reason for this post, please leave comments below discussing what you thought of the book Beautiful Creatures. Once I'm finished, I'll join in the conversation and maybe post a few questions for everyone as well. You can also join the book discussion on Good Reads if you have an account through them (this is a free app and website and a great way to find new books to read if you want to join). Don't forget to tweet about the book as well with #dancingcowbookclub.
Also, if you're behind and just finished last month's book, The Fame Game, you can join that discussion HERE. I'm more than happy to continue that discussion with you!
If you have questions you'd like to add to the discussion, please leave a comment.
Thanks everyone for joining my club!!
Discussion Questions:
If you've seen the movie as well, what do you feel about the director's interpretation of the book put on screen? Was there anything they left out? Anything you would have loved to see differently?
(more questions will be added when I'm finished)
(Discussion questions are completely optional, there are just added to get you brainstorming)
Why? Because at one point in my life I received a notification that a friend had given me extra lives on Candy Crush Saga, a game I had never played before. And I thought to myself "Well I have nothing better to do with my life. I work all day. I'm living with my parents. My fiance lives two hours away. Yeah, I deserve to relax and play a little game.
So I start to play. I'm really good at games like this and Bejeweled so I got the hang of it really fast and I just kept going.
And going...
And going...
And then I started losing. And losing. And losing!!!
And I things started to go a little like this:
And I would be stuck on a level for weeks at a time. And then I started feeling like this:
And feeling like this:
And this:
And this:
And really needing this:
Or this:
Yet all the while still thinking this:
Sigh. If any of you have an addiction to Candy Crush Saga (or any other game for that matter) please leave a comment! I'd love to hear about it. :)
NOTE: This is not, in any way, a REAL addiction. I do have a life. I may not have a job yet, but I do have a life. Just pointing out that I do a lot more with my day than just play this game. Which I love... and hate... all at the same time.
Facebook is mean. It makes pictures show up on my Home Page just because my friends want them. Sadly, this ends up being pictures I don't want to see. So when a picture of a naked woman showed up on my Home Page, I reported it to Facebook. I don't think nudity and pornographic pictures of women should be allowed on Facebook where anyone can see them. It would break my heart if my little brother found that Facebook profile page and saw the many naked women and semi naked women shown on that profile page.
A few hours later I got a notification from Facebook:
They wouldn't remove the photo. I don't understand how a picture of a naked woman doesn't "violate our community standard on nudity and pornography".
So I did a little research:
"Expose limitations on the display of nudity." Limitations? Why not just ban nudity on Facebook? There's already way too much of it on the internet, why can't Facebook step up, be a man, and declare that they won't allow it? I'm very in shock that this photo wasn't removed.
I am a "Facebook Fan" of a photographer on Facebook and she once had a Boudoir album of photos she took. She was very careful to put up only the ones that were safer and not revealing. While the images were of women in their underwear, I have to admit, they were beautiful images. I didn't feel offended by those pictures, I didn't feel she was portraying these women in a negative way, she showed the beauty of the women and it was not pornographic. However, too many people reported her images to Facebook and she removed the album from Facebook.
So when I found this profile page containing hundreds of pictures of nude and semi-nude women, posing provocatively (that's the difference) in their underwear I was sure I could get it removed from Facebook. Those pictures made me uncomfortable. They offended me as a woman. They showed off big boobs and nudity and I truly believe that images like that should not be allowed on Facebook. But it didn't happen.
I have seen, personally, how pornography can ruin lives and marriages. A very close friend of mine is currently dealing with her parent's divorce, stemming from an addiction to pornography. I have seen a relationship, where the girl suddenly felt very inferior when her boyfriends started looking at pornography, and it nearly killed their relationship.
Pornography is a very real problem. And I'll be honest, it scares me. I'm very protective over my little brother (regardless of the fact he's 17) and I learned he was looking at pornography, my heart would break. I would be devastated! If my fiance looked at pornography, it would make me feel inferior, like I'm not good enough, and it would have the potential to ruin our relationship.
Fight the New Drug is a non-profit organization that works to educate people on the harmful effects of pornography. Pornography is just as addictive as a drug. It's just as harmful. And it's a problem that needs to stop. I highly recommend checking out Fight the New Drug, they are very informative and resourceful. They really know their stuff.
I know that it would be really difficult to rid the internet of pornography. But I wish that it wouldn't appear on Facebook, where it could suddenly appear on the Home Pages of adolescents, like it did on mine. I encourage my readers to look at Fight the New Drug and educate yourselves on the problem and become a fighter.
Fight against this! Fight for what is wholesome and right! Fight for a better world! Fight the new drug!
So you may or may not have realized that this blog has a new name! The problem is it also has a new URL. Meaning that all the links I put on Pinterest, now don't work. All the Google searches of my blog now don't work, because it leads to a URL that doesn't exist anymore.
So if you still found this blog and can still read it, help spread the word!! Here's the new URL: http://whenthecowscomedancinghome.blogspot.com/. Please help spread my blog around! It has a lot to offer and it's still growing, it just needs more people to follow it and it will truly become something great!
Don't forget to follow our Facebook and Pinterest pages!! (but keep in mind that the Pinterest links no longer work... I'm working on that.)
1. She has a song called Penguin. Penguins are adorable!
See? Adorable!
2. Her song was featured on So You Think You Can Dance and it helped her become famous!
3. This song is just fantastic! The lyrics are incredible and I'm in love with the fact this this is a home recorded video.
4. Related to number 3, I love that Christina Perri has her Youtube channel that helped boost her career. I'll be honest, I'm not one of the lucky ones that found her on Youtube before Jar of Hearts, but when I found Jar of Hearts, I could not stop listening to her!
6. As the pictures above show, she's just... normal. She's not some crazy famous person. She takes photos with so many of her fans and posts them on Facebook. For example:
Gosh... I wish I had been there...
7. She wrote A Thousand Years for Twilight: Breaking Dawn (boo) and it's the most incredible song! I had my heart set on it being my wedding song... you know... until I learned a dance to it and listened to it way too many times. But I'll still be playing the song at my wedding. Because that song describes me in every way. For example:
"I have died everyday waiting for you, darling don't be afraid I have loved you for a thousand years, I'll love you for a thousand more. All along I believed I would find you. Time has brought your heart to me, I have loved you for a thousand years. I'll love you for a thousand more."
8. Jar of Hearts hit me in a way that no song ever has. I can, to this day, still say it's my favorite song. Why? Because it describe my life and situation 100% and it made me cry that she would write a song about me (while I know that's not true, that's how it felt).
I am forever grateful for my mom for showing me this song. She showed me because of the music video. Because it has dancers in it, and she said it reminded her of me. But when I really listened to the words, I realized just how much this song was about me.
"It took so long just to feel all alright. Remember how to put back the light in my eyes. I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed cause you broke all your promises. And now you're back. You don't get to get me back!"
A friend of mine has a video of me from one late night after driving from San Diego to Utah, and very much hyped up on Mountain Dew (my alcohol), singing this song. Screaming the line above at a broken drive-thru window, because that's EXACTLY how I felt at the time.
Luckily, the guy left my life, I met Chris, and now I'm getting married to the most perfect man in the world. Win for me!
9. Arms. So similar to my connection with Jar of Hearts. I don't know how Christina Perri is stalking me to write songs about me, but I love it.
"I hope that you see right through my walls. I hope that you catch me cause I'm already falling. I'll never let a love get so close. You put your arms around me and I'm home... I tried my best to never let you in to see the truth. And I've never opened up, I've never truly loved till you put your arms around me and I believe that it's easier for you to let me go.... You put your arms around me and I'm home."
When I first started dated Chris I was in a very depressed and vulnerable state of mind. And this song described me and how nervous and scared I was to open up to my Christopher. I truly have a difficult time opening up and sharing my true feelings with anyone. But with Christopher, I'm home.
10. I know this sounds crazy, but I feel I have a very deep personal connection to Christina Perri. We're like sisters... that have never met. But seriously, how else could all the lyrics to every one of her songs describe me, and hit my heart in a way that no other music does? Her voice is incredible. Her lyrics are incredible. She's beautiful. And someday, I want to meet her, because she is like a part of me. Her songs are written for me. I love her and I will always love her and her music.
BONUS! If you're wanting to get in the Christmas spirit, she has a new album out, A Very Merry Perri Christmas! Check out one special song here:
Clyde and I thank you for reading our blog! We wouldn't be up to 100 blog posts if it weren't for you readers! We really do love you! Thank you so much! Don't forget to follow our blog, like us on Facebook, and stalk our Pinterest pins! THANK YOU FOR MY 100TH BLOG POST!!!
I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS APP! I've been playing it on Facebook for a while, but today I was finally able to download it to my Kindle Fire!
I've always been a huge lover of music and I love finding new (or old) music to add to my iPod (which is a joke because my 8 gigabyte iPod is full and I can't add any more music unless I take some off, it's an annoying process, I'm working on getting a new iPod).
This app allows me to challenge my friends to show off my love and knowledge of music! It's so fun to challenge with different stations. I have these playlists:
80's Collection
90's Alternative
Classic Rock
Love Songs
Modern Country
Modern Rap
Musicals
Today Hits
And I'm pretty sure I purchased an Animated Movies playlist, but I'm not seeing it on my thing right now... I'll get back to you on that...
But they have tons more playlists to choose from! You just have to play to earn coins. From there, coins can buy you a new playlist. You get three coins for winning and one for losing. So either way, you can build up coins faster than you'd think.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook said:
"SongPop is one of the most fun Facebook games I've played in a while."
Which, you know, is a very generic quote, but it's something right?
I love this app! It's so much fun! Just, test it out for yourself and see how great it can be!
I'm grateful that my wonderful friend (and bridesmaid) Lindsay Judd hosted a marvelous Thanksgiving Feast for like 50 people. It was so much fun! She's too popular for her own good...
I'm grateful for MY laptop. Because right now I'm using my fiance's, and his is dumb sometimes, though the keyboard is so smooth and easy to type on... I just don't like it as much as mine though. And his doesn't have all my pictures on it, so I can't add pictures to this post and I wanted a picture of me and Lindsay Judd. Actually I could steal it off Facebook...
I'm grateful for Facebook that makes it creepily easy to copy pictures from. Dang. I have so many pictures up on Facebook and basically any of my friends could steal them. Maybe even strangers! I need to review my privacy settings...
Wow. Apparently on Facebook this is the only photo of just the two of us that we are tagged in. But I know for a fact there are many more, she just untags herself in all my photos. Well, there we are. Dyeing Easter eggs on Easter in our old apartment. Man... I miss when we lived together and shared a bedroom. Those were some great times. Love you Lindsay!!!
Recently I've been annoyed with Facebook. If it's not broke, don't fix it! I'm sick of all the changes. I hate timeline. Hate it! It makes it harder to stalk my friend's Facebook walls (ha ha, admit it, we all do it sometimes). I was a little upset when every "Happy Birthday" post on my wall was grouped together on the timeline so it was only a little square. Lots of things are much more complicated than they should be. Facebook tries to tag your friends into everything you do AND it's really creepy about tagging! When you put up photos it tries to guess which one of your friends it is... and it's usually right.
But this post isn't about any of that. In fact it doesn't have to do with Mark Zuckerberg's changes at all. It has to do with my friends. Two friends in particular. Who invite me to EVERYTHING!!! I probably get two event invitations from them weekly... each. That's not even the worst part. If I don't see it or don't respond to it soon, I start getting notifications from it. So I get tons of notifications for events that I don't plan on going to.
And why don't I plan on going to these events? Well, one of my friends goes to UVU. And for some strange reason wants to invite me to every UVU student event. I am not a UVU student! I go to USU. I see how that could be a little confusing, but really, they're like two and a half hours away from each other. And UVU isn't that exciting anyways. Yes, it was my 2nd choice college, but when typing UVU and USU, UVU is the one that says it's "spelled incorrectly", therefore, not that cool and not that exciting.
So when I push decline on all these events, Facebook asks me "Why can't you attend this event?" Oh, well maybe because I'm not a student. And it gives me the option to block all events from this friend. However, he is a member of the UVU Ballroom Dance Team. We were on the same high school ballroom team together so I majorly support him in this and occasionally I get invites to ballroom events. Those I love to hear about and want to go to! But they are few in the amount of invites I get.
I love Tiffany Alvord and think she is incredible talented and a very sweet and nice person... as well as gorgeous! So here is her newest music video as a special treat to my readers!
Thank you all so much for reading my blog!! I really do love everyone who reads and leaves comments. You guys keep my writing and keep me going!
Please, please, please leave a comment on this post to let me know what you want to see more of on this blog! Even though we're at 50 posts, I'm still developing the tone of this blog, and your advice and criticism is great appreciated!
Hey ya'all! If you don't already know her, I think you should meet Tiffany Alvord!
So as you can see, she's super cute. She's also incredibly talented. She had made her fame through youtube, singing covers, and has gone on to singing some original songs as well. I really like her stuff. Here's here newest cover of Taylor Swift's We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.
This isn't even her best cover (personally this isn't my favorite one). She is very talented and I love her makeup. She does travel and do concerts occasionally, I don't have any of those on hand, but if you leave a comment I'll find that out for you! So here's her social networking sites so you can really learn more about her:
This post comes about because of two incidents. The first being the 500 friends of mine who have gotten married this summer... okay, that was a lie. It's only been 13. But most of them have been in the past two weeks. The second reason was that I was filling out my W4 form for my new job and had to answer a question: Single or married?
Now I've written on this blog before about my boyfriend. He's amazing. I can't imagine anyone more perfectly suited for me. We fit perfectly (it's only a bonus that he's very attractive). We're very happy together... blah, blah, blah. I don't really want to go on about how great we are anymore... because of what I'll be writing during the duration of this post. But here's an image of us just to get your imagination going:
Ha ha, you probably thought I would put a serious picture. You thought wrong. (Shout out to Utah State!)
So anyways, the real point of this post is this:
I don't know what's more difficult, being on Facebook as a single, or being on Facebook "in a relationship".
This is a ridiculous amount of options...
So Facebook has this new "fabulous" thing where on the side of your "Home" wall, it will tell you everyone's birthdays, upcoming events... and who got married recently. On mine, the names there have changed basically every 2 to 3 days for the past two weeks. So I'm not that old, I'm 21, however I am from Utah. And I've come to find (or rather heard) that Utah relationships are weird. For example:
Story 1: My freshman year of college I had a psycho roommate. Okay fine, she wasn't really psycho, but the way she freaked out the entire duration of Princess and the Frog in the movie theaters was very odd. She was just awkward and odd. Anyways, she met a guy in January in institute (a class thing for LDS students, also available to non-LDS students, if you want more information or locations, please leave a comment!). They went on their first date at the end of March, April they started dating exclusively, and were engaged within two weeks. Two weeks? Seriously? But it gets better. He was gone on the East Coast for the summer, working. She stayed in Utah. Their original wedding date was set for November, but you know what, they decided against it and bumped it up to August. But wait a second... he's gone for the whole summer! He only gets back to Utah one week before the wedding! Whatever shall they do? Well obviously they had to PHOTOSHOP HIM INTO THE ENGAGEMENT PHOTOS. I'm not joking, kidding, or exaggerating in anyway. They NEVER got any engagement photos done and barely even had any photos together in the first place (probably from their lack of dating for very long). So they literally photo-shopped the entire invitation. I wish I could show you, but that's a bit too much of an invasion of privacy, so we won't do that. Moral of story: They got married really fast.
Story 2: This girl I know had a sister on an LDS mission. While on that mission, she met a fellow missionary and gave him her sister's address. So my friend (we weren't very close friends , more just Facebook friends type of friends) starting writing this guy half-way through his mission (you're all going to think all us LDS people are crazy, I swear we aren't!). So they wrote each other for a year (I actually think it was just six months, but I'm going to say a year just to make the story sound better) and when the guy came back they finally met for the first time. Apparently it was love at first sight. They immediately started dating, and within a month they were engaged. Four months later they were married (can I also add that in both of these stories, the girl was 19?). Moral of story: Another fast wedding and engagement.
So onto my story: I've been dating Christopher for nine months now (almost ten). We've basically known we were getting married since December and even started planning it for this November. But I still don't have a ring, we still aren't engaged. In fact, we don't even live by each other anymore. I live two hours away from him and it's terrible! More than that, I probably won't be getting a ring for a while considering I make more money than he does. But we are planning on getting married next May (after the world ends in December 2012, yeah, we're real thinkers).
Here's a real one for you. :)
Now I vividly remember the exciting days of being single and being on Facebook and watching once a week when new friends would get engaged or in relationships. It was terrible! My old roommate Lindsay complains about it all they time. She hates it! She says it's like a slap in the face. "Oh look at all the happy couples... and now look at you and your boring single life." (this is an exaggeration, Lindsay is the most socially active person I know, her life is loads of fun)
But quite honestly, I don't understand how my situation is any better. Everyday when I see all my friends getting engaged (younger than me, I'd like to add), it's like a slap in the face to me. I've been in a wonderful relationship for longer and I'm still not engaged. I don't know what's worse. And I don't like filling out a W4 form and checking the box that says "Single" when I'm not. It's as if it's not a real relationship unless we're married.
Facebook is ridiculous. It's always just there to make you jealous of all your friends and their happy lives. Whatever. Thanks Mark Zuckerberg! We really appreciate it! ;)
