Mannheim Steamroller = Christmastime

Happy October

Wow, I'm terrible about this blogging thing lately, huh? I keep telling myself I need to be more regular about it, but I guess I'm just being lazy. 

Happy September!

It's the best month of the year. And not just because I was born in it. ^_~

There must be something about September 1st, because I moved into a new house exactly one year ago on September 1st, too. It's nice not to be homeless anymore.

August Update

It's been more than a month since I've updated, possibly the longest time I've ever gone without writing on my blog since I started. The problem isn't that I haven't had enough to write about, but that I had too much. It's been a crazy, stressful month.

The first half of August I spent tying up loose ends at my jobs in Logan. There were a lot of things to do at my office job, in particular. We had to hire someone to replace me, and then she spent a few days with me learning the ropes. It never seems like you do a lot until you have to tell someone else all about what you do, and then you do way too much. My nannying job didn't require anything like that, but the little girl I'd been taking care of turned one the Monday of the last week I was there, and of course there's a lot of hullabaloo for that momentous birthday. (On a side note, it seems that one is the magic number for the kids I nanny, something akin to Cinderella's midnight curfew: the day after the first little boy I nannied turned one I left to move to Utah; just a week after the little girl I nannied turned one I moved to SLC.)

And there was that weekend -- the weekend before I moved -- that I got sick and puked my guts out every hour or so all night. That was fun.

About a week later, I moved down here to SLC with no place to live. A kind friend generously lent me the use of an empty room in her basement for a few weeks while I searched for a place to live, but come 1 September I would have to be in my own place. Needless to say, not having a plan or a permanent place to live -- not to mention living out of half-unpacked suitcases and boxes -- has been stressful. Add in going back to school and some fun hormones, and the latter half of August has been...interesting. I did find a place, though, and just in time -- I signed the lease to rent a room in a small house with three other girls yesterday morning.

To say it was a relief is a huge understatement. I found the place last Wednesday, but it wasn't until this Thursday morning that the landlord told me he'd decided to rent to me. The wait was interminable and nerve-wracking, especially since I wanted to live there so much. The house is located in a quiet family neighborhood just off a major road that goes past the university. It's got two bedrooms, a living room, a small bathroom, a small kitchen, and a small dining room upstairs and a laundry room, a small bathroom, and two bedrooms downstairs. It has a decently sized backyard (with a laundry line! I'm excited to hang my sheets out to dry) and a small front yard. All the other girls are RMs (returned missionaries), and all are about my age, going to school or working. I have one of the upstairs rooms, which is a real blessing. After living in basements intermittently over the last two and a half years, I've learned that basements are not a good place for me. I need good natural light to stay happy and positive. More details and pictures to follow when I actually move in.

And school. Graduate school. That started last Monday, the 26th. I even remembered to take the traditional first-day-of-school picture! Since no one was around to take it of me, I had to do it selfie style.

My schedule isn't very grueling. Because I'm a grad student, I only have to take nine hours to be full-time. Because I have the FLAS Fellowship, I'm not allowed to work. And because the Asian Studies MA program at the U is interdepartmental and very, very small (think seven people total), I'm taking all undergraduate classes for graduate credit. I also have a couple of Institute classes, but they don't require work outside class, and I'll be spending a few hours a week helping with a professor's research study for one of my classes. And I have no classes on Fridays.

My goal for this year is to treat graduate school like a job: up to campus by nine, and no going home until five. Hopefully this schedule will allow me to do all my work during those hours on campus and I won't have to bring anything home with me. That was the best part about working: once you're home, you're done. No homework, no papers, no readings. All your time is yours. I loved having guilt-free free time in the evenings, and I'm hoping to preserved that. Thus far I haven't done too great...but I'm working on it.

Three Generations

Ever since I moved here two and a half years ago, I've been meaning to sit down with my grandparents and interview them on camera about their parents, their own lives, and my parents. Then both of my grandfathers died, and I lost that opportunity forever, something I still regret. The impending deadline of moving away for graduate school finally prompted me to action, and these last two Mondays I've taken my camera over to my mom's mother's house to interview her.

Last week didn't go too well, simply because I neglected to make sure my camera battery was charged. I still managed to get about twenty minutes of interview time, though, mostly about how my grandmother's parents met and a little bit about my great-grandparents. I had just started asking her about her mission when she began to feel ill and our session was cut short.

This week I remembered to charge my battery, and got some great stories about my grandma's mission, but halfway through my camera cut us off again. Not because of the battery this time, but because my memory card had run out of room! Thankfully I had my other card with me, but soon that, too was filled up. Not surprising, since I hadn't erased any of the pictures on either card since I got them for Christmas last year. Today I got more than a half an hour of interview footage. Next time I'll make sure my battery is fully charged and my cards are empty!

The three generations the title of the post refers to is the three generations of sister missionaries in my family: my grandmother, my mother, and me. When I realized that a few weeks ago I was so excited: what a wonderful tradition and heritage! Of course, I always knew my grandmother and my mother served missions, but I had never really processed how unusual that is. Up until last October, when President Monson lowered the age that sisters can serve from 21 to 19, sister missionaries made up a tiny percentage of the overall missionary force of the Church. Most women of my grandmother's generation in the Church didn't serve missions, and both my mother and I were far outnumbered by elders on our missions. I hope, though, that one day I'll be able to help add a fourth generation to that tradition, and that in my daughter's (or daughters'!) day there will be just as many sisters as there are elders.

Where Am I?

Healing Hurts

My name is AnnMarie, and I'm a TV addict.

This is probably not news to any of you reading this, assuming that the set of all those reading this is a subset of the set of people I know. If I don't know you and you're reading this (how did you get here?), you might actually not know this. But that's beside the point. The point is: I'm a TV addict. I watch way too much TV and it's bad for my physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual health.

Like most addicts, I've been in denial about this for quite some time, but something I read tonight hit me hard enough that I finally couldn't rationalize my way out of it. Or rather, I could have, but I was finally humble enough not to. I finally admitted to myself that TV-watching is not just a casual hobby, that it's not not having an effect on my life and well-being, that it's actually keeping me from things that I want in the long term.

It's ridiculous to say that watching violence and immorality or hearing vulgar language and jokes on television has no effect on you. If you saw those things in person they'd affect you; why not if you see them on television? After I watch something violent or vulgar I always feel dragged down. My mood becomes dark and brooding, and the effects can linger for hours or sometimes even days. I'm not sure what science would conclude, but for me that's pretty compelling evidence. I have enough problems with depression, anxiety, and self-loathing from my wacky hormones, I don't need anything exacerbating the problem.

To quote something from the article I read tonight: "When we are not doing what we know we ought to be doing, and when we are not living the way we know we ought to live, we have a tendency to be unhappy." Well, I'm unhappy, and it's because I'm not doing what I know I should be doing, and I'm not living the way I know I should be living. My time is spent on "that which is of no worth . . . [and on] that which cannot satisfy" in the eternal world (2 Nephi 9:51).

What am I going to do with my new-found hours and hours of unspent time? I'm going to do family history. I'm going to learn to cook healthier food and actually sit down at my table, hopefully with a friend or two, to eat it. I'm going to attend the temple more often. I'm going to pray more sincerely, read my scriptures more diligently, and ponder the words of living prophets and apostles more carefully. I'm going to be more active. I'm going to cultivate and strengthen relationships. I'm going to go to bed earlier. I'm going to serve others.

It's going to be really hard. I know, because I've tried it before. And it was hard. And I eventually (sooner rather than later) fell back into my TV-watching habits. I want this time to be different. I want to be healthier, physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, and spiritually, and I can't do that without removing this negative influence in my life. Obsession and addiction, in whatever form they may come in our lives -- harmful substances, people, activities, seemingly-innocuous foods -- are not healthy. They become crutches that hold us back instead of helping us move forward; they prop us up in our brokenness instead of helping us to heal. Have you ever healed from something? Healing hurts, but it's the only way to be whole, and I want to be whole and not broken.

I would love your encouragement and support. I don't need a watchdog to tell me how disappointed in me they are when I slip up, but I could use a few cheerleaders. If you volunteer I could bring brownies. ^_~

Quote of the Day

My youngest brother, age 8, said to me as I was tucking him into bed this evening:

"I hope the apocalypse doesn't come when I get married."

Just a little bemused by this seemingly out-of-left-field statement that came out of our discussion about our baby niece, I asked him why. "Because I want to have kids," came the matter-of-fact response. Hard on the heels of that revelation came, "But kids are a pain in the neck."

I wonder if he realizes the irony of his observation.

T-47 Days

This is me almost six (!!) years ago in July 2007.

This is me a little more than six weeks ago in March 2013.

This is me today at approximately 5:25 pm, getting ready to go on the first run I've run deliberately...and felt motivated to run in a long, long time. 

This is me upon returning from the aforementioned run, approximately 5:53 pm.

And this is me, sharing how I feel after finally quitting making excuses (no running shorts that fit, my shoes are too old and worn out, I'm tired, I've had a hard day and I just want to sit in bed and eat ice cream while watching TV, etc, etc) and just doing it. 

I think Nike is on to something.

So what's the 47-day countdown to, you ask? 

This.

Go here for more details.

That's right, I've decided to stop making excuses, stop procrastinating, stop pretending I'm happy being a couch potato and run a 5K. Not a timed one (not yet), but a fun one. Hopefully that will keep me motivated and excited to run, because I've got less than two months to whip myself into shape (well, a shape that isn't squishy, anyway) for it. I'll be following the Couch-to-5K running plan, which has many enthusiastic adherents and seems to have worked for more hopeless cases than mine.

"A distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc."

My friend Mary wrote a post today that gave me pause when I read it this afternoon. In it she talked about fear and the things that we fear the most, and not allowing those fears to overcome us. 

I am a fearful individual. I am afraid of a lot of things, everything from the usual spiders and grasshoppers to failing life. Over the years I've let my fear stop me from doing and accomplishing a lot of things: trying out for Honor Band, talking to people about the Gospel in Korea, telling that cute boy I had a crush on him...you get the idea. I have come to understand this about myself much more clearly in the last few years and regretted my timidity in the past, while at the same time trying not to fall into those same patterns in my life right now. 

This is Mary's suggestion for facing those deep, dark things that you fear: "If you have some fears either lurking in the back of your mind or filling up your whole being I encourage you to say them out loud or write them down. You will see that they are lies. Pray to Heavenly Father about your fears and He will help quiet them. Face the future with faith and not fear." In an effort to follow her example, here are a few of the things I fear most.

I fear being inadequate -- in school, in life, in relationships, in the eyes of my Heavenly Father and the plan He has for me.
I fear my weaknesses and imperfections will keep me from being with my family eternally because I will procrastinate repenting and changing until it's too late.
I fear the disapproval, censure, contempt, and indifference of others toward me.
I fear disappointing my earthly parents and ancestors, and my Heavenly parents.
I fear being lonely and alone the rest of my life because of my imperfections.
I fear finally having a husband and family and then losing them.

This list could go on for a very long time. Like I said, I'm afraid of a lot of things, though most of them fall under two larger headings: inadequacy and rejection. I think I am probably in good company, though, since I am sure I am not the only person who fears those things. I'm sure I wasn't born that way, but I've struggled with them almost as long as I can remember, and while I've made progress in overcoming them, I still have a long way to go. Overcoming them will require many hours on my knees seeking the Lord's help in prayer, as well as a lot of effort to forgive and love myself.

The Evolution of Me

You know those graphics that show the evolution of man from Neanderthal to homo sapiens, going from stooped to upright? The same general principle holds for the pictures below.

I'm not even sure what I want to say about this, but the general feeling is one of disappointment. Yes, a part of that is that my waist is no longer that tiny (I can't get over how small it looks in that second picture -- I don't remember being that slender). I can't lie; I'd like to look like that again. But there's more. What I see -- and what you reading this can't see -- is all the memories and emotions and circumstances and attitudes surrounding each of the split seconds in time these pictures represent.

While I'd love to be a size six again, what I really wish I could recapture is the excitement, the anticipation, the innocence, and the hope in my eyes in those first few pictures. I miss that about myself. When did I get so cynical and fatalistic? When did I start "fixing" my problems with a large bowl of ice cream instead of working out my frustrations by going for a run? I don't know that the person I was in the first picture would recognize the person I am in the last picture.

When did that happen?

And how do I change it?

Restless Furniture and New Friends

For all those of you who have been holding your breath since the last time I posted about my room, today is the day you can finally exhale. There have been quite a few changes in the last few weeks.

Let's take a little peek at how my room used to be.

And now for how things look now!

There's obviously a lot more work to be done, but let's not talk about that - let's talk about how it got to this point.

If you'll remember, in the post about the new curtains a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I'd taken a trip to IKEA (that place full of wondrous happy dreams). Well, the curtains weren't the only thing I picked up while I was there. I also got a new duvet and duvet cover for my bed, a bedside lamp, and a few small picture frames. I was planning to do a post about these things last week, but I worked for the first half and was on vacation the second (post about that coming up!), so I was too lazy didn't get around to it. And in the interim, I went and bought a new bed when a local furniture store slashed their prices. (Seriously, I got it for less than one-third of the original price.) A significantly bigger, more comfortable bed. Hallelujah.

That's my kitchen on the left, and the hallway outside my room, looking in to the pantry, on the right.

Of course, it's a bit silly to have two beds in one room, so I needed to take apart and store the twin bed that was in my room.

This might have been true at one point (long, long ago), but I can attest that there was no "spinal care" or "back rest"ing going on while I slept on that thing.

I got this far without too much trouble, but then I ran into this:

I'm ashamed to admit it, but when I popped off the endcaps and saw this staring back at me, my mind went blank. Actually it more like, Great, what do I do with that? No screwdriver was going to get that thing out. I tried to persuade my roommate that we could maneuver the whole frame out of my room, down the hallway, through the kitchen, down the stairs to the basement, and into the storage room without wrecking the walls. She disagreed, and suggested I text some guy friends of ours that live around the corner. As I was walking over to borrow their tool kit, it came to me like a revelation: a socket wrench! From some dim place in the recesses of my childhood memories I remembered my dad teaching me what they were and how to use one.

Ten short minutes later, I had not only a tool kit, but a helper:

He wishes to remain anonymous. Actually I just can't take pictures, but it's a good excuse.

This is the tool kit he brought with him. Apparently boys have these things, though my dad did try to send me off to college with at least a screwdriver and a hammer. I'm not sure where they are, but he did try.

These are the bolts that were holding the bed frame together. They're longer than my palm. Pretty serious pieces of hardware. It still squeaked, though.

And voila! This (plus the sheets, of course) is where I've been sleeping since Tuesday. But my old furniture arrangement just wasn't going to work with this larger bed. The bookcase loomed over the frame-less mattress and box springs, and I couldn't push them all the way into the corner because of the awkwardly placed phone jack (!) and electrical outlet.

So this afternoon I whipped up this highly sophisticated, technical drawing:

I know, amazing, right?

And then I got down to work hauling my furniture all over my room, and ended up with this. I think it looks pretty darn close to the drawing.

This is more like what my bed looks like day-to-day.

And then I tidied up and stuffed a bunch of papers into my desk so that it looked like the picture at the top of the post.

Let me just say that this new, larger bed is pretty much the best thing ever. I like sleeping diagonally and sprawling, which is very difficult to do on a twin bed with a crater in the middle of it. And with no frame, my bed never squeaks. I'm not a fan of the "mattress on the floor starving college student" look, but I have a plan to remedy that and hopefully give my bed-on-the-floor a little class. Don't hold your breath, though, it's going to take a few weeks.

This post is already epicly long, but I want to show you my new duvet and lamp. Here's my new lamp, the JANSJO work lamp from IKEA in black.

I was planning to get the clamp variety, but when I saw it in person it was smaller than I liked and also $5 more expensive. Now that I no longer have a headboard to clamp it to, I'm glad my cheapskate ways made me choose the work lamp.

Sexy, right? I love the slim, flexible neck, and the LED light is much warmer and less blue than I expected. It also puts out quite a bit of light, and it's fantastic at night when I'm snuggled down in bed watching or reading something and I don't have to get out of bed to turn off the light when I get sleepy.

The other things I picked up at IKEA were my duvet and duvet cover. I went cheap here, too, but I did get the full/queen size instead of the twin, and I'm glad for that. The duvet I got is the MYSA STRA comforter with a warmth rate of 1, and the duvet cover is the EIVOR ORD. The cover isn't exactly what I would have chosen had money been no object, but I do like the alphabet design on it. I think it's pretty fitting for a book lover, don't you? I may dye it another color one day if I get tired of it being white, but we'll see.

As for the duvet itself, you might have noticed in the pictures that it's a bit lumpy. I accidentally dried it in the dryer. Without a dryer ball. So it clumped up and I cannot unclump the polyester filling. Thus:

The dark spots are the clumps of filling, and the light ones are where there's no filling. That was stupid of me, and it is a little annoying. But I'm forcing myself to live with it until 1) I figure out a way to pull out the ruined filling and stuff it with something else, or 2) I finally get tired of it and spend another $20 on a new one and do something else with this one. Until then, I haven't noticed it making a difference in how warm the various parts of me are, and I don't suppose anyone else besides me really cares.

So there you have it! Some restless furniture and a few new friends.

Grad School Is Happening

I've made some big changes in my living space and I just got back from an awesome vacation, but this is all I'll share for right now:

It's happening!

Curtains and Light

Lately I've been on quite the DIY-home-improvement-blog tear. I read them religiously and dream of the day I will own my own home and have the opportunity to do things like paint and knock down walls. While there's nothing wrong with my room, to me it still feels "Hello, I'm a college student!" and that was something I wanted to get away from. I'm trying to do things to distance myself from that mentality, especially since I work at the place I graduated from. I even work in the department my major is in. The gist of all this is that I'm making some changes around here in an attempt to reflect a more mature, less totally-broke-college-student atmosphere.

Remember the navy blue curtains that hung in my room? Here's a refresher for you.

It's not this clean any more.

I have nothing against navy blue, but I'm not a fan of the color for my curtains. Even with the two windows, one facing south (the one on the left) and the other west (on the right), when I woke up in the morning my room was pretty dim. My philosophy about light is that if you've got it, you should flaunt it, and so I decided to buy or make new curtains. Let's be honest: I have a lot of talents, but making things is not one of them.

Long story short, I went down to Draper last week for the wedding of one of my companions and made a pit stop here:

Please forgive the bad phone picture, I didn't have my camera.

That's right, IKEA, home of all wonderful homey goodness. Cheap homey goodness. Since I'm not exactly made of money and I don't plan on living here forever I didn't want to spend a lot of money. Whilst wandering around drooling I managed to collect myself long enough to pick up some Vivian curtain panels ($10, woot!) and curtain rods and finials. I also picked up a few other things, but I'll save those for later.

I'll spare you the details of putting them up. It involved a lot of climbing on chairs and muttering to myself and measuring and screwing things into the wall only to discover I had mounted them too close together, etc. You know, all the dirty, behind-the-scenes of the pretty DIY "after" pictures you see on blogs. So I'll just unveil the "in progress" shot.

The curtain is obviously too long, and since the panel was so wide and my window so small, just one panel would work for each window. Yay for saving money, but it meant cutting the panel in two and hemming the raw edges, as well as trimming and hemming the bottom. Fast forward a week and bam!

I wish I could say I was that handy, but it was actually my mother that did all the hemming. (I will take credit for cutting it in half and trimming the bottom, though.) It turns out that having your mom live in the same city you do, as opposed to 2000 miles away, is a really useful and handy thing. Thanks, Mom!

I haven't finished hanging the curtain on the other window, but I did take down the old curtains and wow! This morning when I woke up my whole room was filled with a symphony of light. Cheesy lines aside, switching out the curtains has made a huge difference in the amount of light in my room, which does wonderful things for my mood.

I've made some other changes in here, and I'm in the middle of a few more. I'll share updated pictures when I get things in a more complete stage of completion. Until then you're just going to have to stew in an agony of suspense. I know, I'm sorry. You're all dying to know all about every tiny detail of my room decor, but you're just going to have to wait.

Living Life on the Edge

I just cut my hair. Myself. With kitchen scissors. In my bathroom at 11:00 on a Sunday night.

That just happened.

Happy V-Day to Me!

For someone who has no special someone, I sure did have quite an impressive V-Day haul.

And this isn't even counting two cupcakes and the three other cake balls I already ate before taking this picture.

It started this morning when I arrived at my nannying job. The woman I work for is a professor at the university, and she made cupcakes for her class for the holiday and left one for me in the fridge as a valentine from the little girl I take care of. Then, when she got home I had another because she had some left over. (Let me tell you, that cupcake is possibly the yummiest thing I've ever eaten. At least this morning, anyway.) Then I arrived at work to find my boss had left six delicious red velvet cake balls in a cute bag on my desk. After work, as I was on my way downtown to do a little pants shopping a random group of girls passing by handed me the yellow paper heart.

Then I arrived home to find this waiting for me on my bed!

I know I knock them sometimes (physically as well as verbally), but little brothers have a few redeeming qualities. I have to say, I'm not very good at expressing it, but I'm very grateful for mine.

Just a few minutes ago there was a loud knock at my door and these showed up, thanks to some awesome friends. I'm pretty sure the one on the top left is meant to be a zombie cupcake. I already ate it. It was delicious.

I know Valentine's Day is dreaded by some, but to be honest I didn't spend the day dwelling on it. I even managed to forget that today was even V-Day several times. As I was shopping after work I wondered why the stores seemed so deserted and under-staffed...only to realize that, Duh, it's Valentine's Day! Anyhoo, I'm grateful for all the people who have gone out of their way to make me feel loved and appreciated today. Right back atcha!

I Guess My Mom Was Right About a Clean Room

A clean room really does make you feel better. Who woulda thunk? (Maybe me, after being taught the virtues of an orderly living space by my parents for years. Or not.) Right after I got back from Christmas vacation I moved from the basement of my house to the upstairs, thanks to a roommate who embraced matrimonial bliss. While I didn't mind living in the basement, per se, it is nice to see a little more sunshine in my room. I've been meaning to mention this, but the thing is it took me about two weeks to finally get around to actually unpacking/organizing. (If you're new, there aren't many things I loathe more in this world than unpacking, hence the procrastination.) But last Monday I had a day off of work thanks to MLK Day, so I decided to bite the bullet and just get it done. I present to you the pictorial record of my labors. And thanks to my awesomest-of-mothers and the new camera she gave me for Christmas, the pictures are actually decent. Warning: Below There Be Messes!

This is what my room looked like when I moved all my stuff in:

The view looking straight into my room from the door.

A slightly angled view into my room through the door.

Standing with my back against the open door, doorway to my left.

 The view from the head of my bed. 

The other wall as seen from the head of my bed. 

It never ceases to amaze me, the amount of stuff you accumulate, even when you try not to. It doesn't seem that bad when it's all hidden away in closest and drawers, but when it's spread out all over the floor it seems just a little ridiculous. Anyway, this is how I lived for about two weeks, until I figured I'd finally better tackle it instead of ignoring it and hoping little elves would unpack for me in the night.

But you know the saying, Things get worse before they get better?

I decided, after two weeks of sleeping with the bed on the south wall that I didn't like it there. I wanted my dresser next to my mirror so I could use it as a place to hold all my make up. Makes sense, right? But having the foot of the bed so close to the front of the dresser meant I had a hard time getting into it to get my clothes. Not to mention I wasn't awfully fond of the cinderblocks as bed risers, so with the help of my roomie's awesome boyfriend (thanks, Tyson!) I removed the cinderblocks, moved the bed, and put it up on my (slightly less ghetto-looking) plastic bed risers from Wal-Mart.

But you can see that I hadn't actually gotten anything put away at this point. The mess just migrated from one part of the room to the other.

See that frame hanging above my dresser? I should have taken a closer picture of it, but it's got four cards in it that are shaped like hanbok, or traditional Korean dress. Well, the ones I have are traditional Korean dress for nobility/royalty. Traditional Korean dress for peasants is much, much less elaborate (and not as pretty). The top two are for girls, the bottom two for boys. Appropriate for over a dresser, right? Right now they're just slapped into a frame I got half-off at Hobby Lobby, but I need to either get a new mat or paint this one, since I think the black is too stark. The chain of hearts down the left side of my mirror is actually a sweet letter from a friend of mine. Each heart is one thing she likes about me, and it makes my mornings just that much better.

Can you spot what's been added in this picture? In addition to the hanbok frame in the last picture, I hung these four, as well.

(Please forgive the bad pictures of my art. I was shooting at night in artificial light and I'm still getting the hang of my new camera.) To the left of my bed I hung my Proclamation on the Family, flanked by pictures of the First Presidency and three significant temples in my life: Seoul, Washington D.C., and Logan. At the head of my bed I hung a poster of Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville by Robert Doisneau, which I've had a sentimental soft spot for since my junior year of high school. Not, mind you, because of the subject matter, per se, but because a large poster print of it hung my high school French teacher's room and at the time I was enamored with all things French. Maybe it's because of the influence of my art-loving father, but I never really feel a space is mine until there's art on the walls, even if it's only the cheap kind I can afford.

Are you ready to see the final product now? I have to admit, it bears little resemblance to how it started out. Only the dresser stayed in the same place. Well, and the curtains.

I spent a good half-hour or forty-five minutes trying to figure out what to do with my desk. I'd had it facing the wall the window is in, but then my second bookcase had to be awkwardly placed on the blue wall, and it just didn't look right. I finally hit on placing it at the foot of my bed. It's not necessarily perfect, but it looks better than any other alternative I could come up with.

How about some closer shots?

Yes, I do have four pillows, and yes, all four are necessary. And yes, I do still sleep with my stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh my parents gave me for Christmas when I was three. He's a great cuddler. And yes, that blanket he's sitting on is my baby blanket that I still sleep with. I refuse to give them up until I have to sleep with someone else.

My Grandpa Saunders helped me put together this shelf, one of the last things I got to do with him before he died. Consequently, even though it's cheap it's rich with sentimental value. I love having a bookshelf next to my bed so I can always have my books within arm's reach.

  

My closet really needs little explanation, but I wanted to prove that I didn't leave it out of the organization/unpacking spree.

I'm determined not to clutter up my desk by throwing random papers and junk on it, which is what happens when it's next to my bed. I don't do any studying for school anymore (hallelujah), but I like having a dedicated space for my scripture study. It brings back an air reminiscent of the mission. The print I have there on the right was a gift from my mother. It's called Add to Your Faith Virtue; and to Your Virtue Knowledge by Walter Rane, and I love it. Perfect for this study space.

And last, but not least, is my second bookcase. This one holds all my church books and magazines, like my Korean Book of Mormon and Bible, old General Conference Ensigns, and a few books like The Miracle of Forgiveness by President Kimball and Jesus the Christ by Elder Talmage. I put the words Faith, Patience, and Diligence (from lots of places in the scriptures, but these are specifically referring to Alma 32:41-43 in the Book of Mormon) in frames to remind me to work on them, since unfortunately they are not terribly developed in my character. My Scentsy is behind the Faith frame.

And there you have it. My room, finally finished and in order. It only took me two weeks to get around to it and four hours to accomplish, but it's done. How about one last look? It's probably the last time my bed will ever be made.