Home Is Where the Mountains Look Normal

This week I drove up to Logan for a good friend's wedding. It was the first time I'd been up there since Christmas, and as I drove down into the valley from the canyon I was struck, as I usually am, by the excitement of getting to see my friends and being somewhere familiar.

Only...it wasn't as familiar as last time, in some subtle way. As I was driving around in Logan, I finally realized that my baseline for "familiar" now is Salt Lake. The mountains in Logan are not unfamiliar, but I kept expecting to see the shapes of the mountains near my house in SLC when I looked up. That expectation is in such strong contrast to even just last year, when going to Logan felt like going home. Without me noticing, something has subtly shifted.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

This was me, 25 Christmases ago.

I'm hoooooooome!

Not jiggity jig, though. Stephen and I left Logan Saturday morning (after pulling a late night doing laundry, packing, and cleaning) with my cousin and his wife. We stayed the weekend at my aunt and uncle's house and had a fun time visiting with the cousins we don't get to see as often. I also got to go to church with my trainer - she goes to the Korean magnet ward in SLC, and so we went to Sunday School in Korean. I was thrilled to realize that I could follow the lesson on the book of Revelation; there were only about twelve words that I didn't know. Radically different from when I used to go to church in Korean, whew! My mission president and his wife only live about a half-mile from my aunt and uncle, so I was able to go over there Sunday evening and have a nice chat with them, too. All in all, a good weekend.

Monday morning we woke up long before the crack of dawn to go to the airport and catch our 7:10am flight. Everything went smoothly until we were on the approach to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where our flight was scheduled to land before we got off in Houston to catch our flight to Nashville. We made the approach, but weren't able to land because visibility was so bad. They rerouted us into El Paso, where they had us switch planes to a flight going from El Paso to Nashville, while our first flight flew back to Albuquerque. Thankfully, that meant that we didn't have a layover and landed in Nashville only a half-hour later than we were originally scheduled to land. On the downside...we had no layover and landed a half-hour later than we were originally scheduled to land. Which meant that all we had to eat between 5am and 3pm was juice and peanuts. Suffice it to say, we were very, very hungry.

The worst part of getting home is never flying, though. It's the three-hour drive home after we've already been on the plane for six hours. By that time you're just impatient and tired of sitting, plus, let's face it: driving the highway in the dark in Tennessee is not the most interesting thing to do. Thankfully, though, Heidi came to pick us up, so the company and the conversation was good. And of course, actually getting home and having all your little siblings run out of the house screaming your name with joy and launching themselves into your arms more than makes up for not eating for ten hours.

It's good to be home.

"Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig"

Increasingly often, I get this feeling that my life is speeding by and I have yet to do anything. How is it the end of another year? Let alone the end of the decade? Ten years ago, our family had just moved into a new house two months previous, and to a new town only a few months before that. It was our first holiday season away from our family, and I was bitterly bitter about it. Ten years ago I was my second younger sister's age, almost-fourteen. Ten years ago I only had five siblings instead of seven. Ten years ago I had no idea my family would still be here; ten years ago I would have never dreamed in a million years that I'd be who I am today. Ten years ago, if I'd bothered to think about it, I'd probably have thought I'd be married with a kid or have one on the way. I never could have guessed that I'd be sitting in my living room, listening to Korean indie rock music and typing a blog post on my very own Macbook, very much not married, with no kid (but wanting one), a Korean-speaking return missionary on the way to my third college in six years. Isn't it funny how life happens to you?

It's wonderful to be home. Every time I come home, though, it gets slightly more unreal. I'm home, but this house isn't really my home anymore. It's my parents'. But at the same time, I don't have a home anywhere else, either. I'm homeless in a non-homeless way, if that makes sense. It's rather disorienting at times. But all that being said, it is wonderful to be home. For the first time in a long time, my whole family was at the same church at the same time last Sunday. I'm looking forward to Christmas coming up in a few days, and more family-togetherness time. We'll open our stockings, have ice cream on our waffles for breakfast, open the presents slowly (and one at a time -- my dad insists), oh and ah over everyone's new stuff, sit around doing nothing much of anything, make perogies, eat those yummy perogies. Traditions involving food are always the best traditions.

Random snippets of life

This morning I woke up on the floor of the living room. Of course, I was there on purpose, having slept there to escape the heat and humidity of the attic. But the view is quite different from the floor.

I've recently rediscovered how much I love the scent of Head&Shoulders shampoo. My sister has it in our shower at home, and everytime I shake out my hair or run my hand through it, I inhale the smell of it happily. There's something so nice about liking the smell of your hair. It's better than perfume, I think.

I'm so glad to be home and surrounded by all my books again. They're like old friends I'm getting reacquainted with again. Since most of my human friends are no longer in town, having moved away for jobs or school (or visiting family in Turkey, in one case), it's been especially nice to have them with me again.

My dad's been away since Tuesday, and won't be back until Sunday evening. Mom and I undertook our own DIY project in his absence, and its successful completion left my vanity very gratified. The cupboard under the sink has been an eyesore (and awfully smelly) for years now; Mom and I decided to do something about it. So she went to Tuck's and got $3 worth of linoleum (spelling?), I pulled everything out and cleaned out the cupboard, and we collaborated to get it properly cut and positioned, and now we have a lovely arrangement that looks (and smells) quite nice.

Home is a pretty slow kind of place. It's even slower and less bustling than Annapolis. Nothing much ever happens here. That used to annoy me to no end, and honestly, every once in a while it gets on my nerves now, too. I like to have things to do besides watching dramas, believe it or not. But I enjoy being home. I didn't used to like my town, but the older I get the more I do like it. I don't mind living in a small town, provided the education system is good. But then again, maybe I'll homeschool my kids. I'm debating that point. I don't know if I have the patience to have my kids home with me all day, or if I'll need to send them off to school just so I can regain my sanity. We'll see; that's a little ways off, anyway. It would be cool to teach my kids Euclid and Apollonius, though.

"There's no place like home, there's no place like home!"

image found here

And truly, there isn't any place like home. I've been home in good ol' Martin for about four days now, and it's been heavenly. The only detracting factor is that Heidi's in Chile while I'm home and Stephen can't afford to come home for the summer. (Actually, I can't either, but my parents paid. Wonder why they didn't pay for Stephen to come home? Maybe because he's getting a job out there? No idea.)

I love being home. Of course, I still fight with my siblings and go crazy when they run around the house acting like, well, kids; but it beats the heck outta living in the dorms. I'd rather put up with kid-noise than drunk people-noise. And then there's the fact that I can't sleep in with my dad insisting that everyone be up by 6 am. It's amazing how much more of a day you have when it starts at 6 am. On the other hand, it gets kind of tiring. But on the other hand, when I wake up in the morning I can have yummy, hot muffins made just for me by my amazing mommy. Or her amazing potato chowder for dinner.

All in all, being home is the best.

Still, I'm really psyched to be going to Korea in just a few weeks. Wooooohoooooo!