New Blog, come follow me!!

So I have started a new blog! Hope you will come follow and read it every now and then!
http://loveoutsidethelines.blogspot.com/?m=1

Brave

Lately when its slow at work, I try to read talks from lds.org. I usually type in a certain subject that I want to read about, whether its just something I want to know more about or something I'm struggling with. I try to read a couple articles on that subject. 

Reading these always makes my day so much better. I love the gospel! I don't even want to think about where I would be with out it. Mostly because I know where I would be. I wouldn't be here, that is for sure. The gospel saved my life, in so many ways. But thats a story for a different day.

I was watching one of the videos on the site about courage, and two things two different women said kinda got combined into one thought the way the video was done,I dont know if it was on purpose or not. But one said "Brave is just acting in faith." and the other said  "When we know we don't want to face it, but we know we have no other option, we just have to push forward!" But I absolutely love how it is if you combine the two: "Brave is just acting in faith when we know we don't want to face it, but we know we have no other option, we just have to push forward!"

I feel like that is so true... Especially for me in my life.

A Year of Firsts

This year I didn't really make any New Years resolutions. But I was thinking the other day that I kinda wish I had, so I decided I will now. But Its not really resolutions I want to make. i want to make this year a year of firsts. Whatever that is, I want to experience new things, add a little spice to life! Right now I am trying to save money to go to California for the first time and see the ocean for the first time. I've wanted to go to Cali for years but it just has never happened, this year I am determined to make it work. So who wants to road trip with me? Im think mid July.... 

Favorite Things Friday

I really want to get back into blogging, more for my sake then anyone elses because Im pretty sure no one even reads my random ramblings, especially since I tend to go into way too much detail, but again thats for my own sake because I have the worst memory ever!

But I have been thinking of things I can do to get back into blogging even if its something Little and I think I want to start doing reviews, so on Friday I want to do "Favorite Things Friday"

So today first post is about one of my favorite makeup items! I love E.L.F make up. Its so inexpensive, easy to use and it looks great.

One of my favorite things by them is their Makeup Remover Pen. This thing is A-MAZING! I love it, its great to keep in your purse to take care of smudges that happen through out the day. Best part? Its only $3.00 at Target.

I use it almost everyday to fix eyeliner, remove mascara smudges, etc. And right now its on sale on for half off on E.L.F's website, all of their best sellers are right now when you use the code LOVEIT! Go order one now or pick one up next time you are at Target!

 

Source: eyeslipsface.com via Meleea on Pinterest

Better Than Anything Pumpkin Cake

On Saturday night my old singles ward got together and had a dinner! I took a new desert that I had never made for and was a little nervous about how it would go over! It was a HUGE success! Everyone wanted the recipe so I decided to just post it on here to make it easy for everyone to get! It was such an easy dessert and was delicious! (sorry I don't have pictures, I forgot to take some and when I remembered, it was gone!)

Ingredients:

1 yellow cake mix

1 small can pumpkin

1 can sweetened condensed milk

half a package heath toffee bits

1 container cool whip

Caramel syrup

Mix the cake mix and pumpkin together until smooth.

Pour into a 9 X 13 pan and bake according to the directions on the pakcage.

(I used Betty Crocker and I did mine at 350 for 28 minutes)

Let cool for ten minutes then using the end of a small wooden spoon poke holes

all over the cake and pour the sweetened condensed milk all over the cake and filling the holes.

Place in fridge (it will still be hot so keep it on hot pads) for 30 minutes.

Spread cool whip on cake, sprinkle with toffee bits and drizzle with caramel.

Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or over night!

Thats it! Seriously so easy!!

Enjoy!

Just something to think about

Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.

Farewell Celeste!

Today I went to my good friend Celeste's missionary farewell!

Celeste is one of the kindest, most sincere, sweet, genuine people I have ever met! I'm so grateful that she is someone I have been able to call a friend these past couple of years! I'm going to miss her but I'm so proud of her decision to serve the Lord!

She gave such a great talk at church today! The people of Paris, France are so lucky to have her for the next 18 months!

Phone Blogging!

So I just downloaded the blogger app for my phone! So hopefully I can start blogging more once I figure this thing out! I'm so far behind on blogging! I want to be posting like once a day, but I'll be lucky if I get to once a week....month even! Wish me luck haha!

1st post of the new year

So I didn't really make an New Years resolutions exactly. But I've decided to make a couple! I need some goals to motivate myself! There is so much I want to accomplish this year and things I want to do better!  I took the lyrics to Lee Brice's "Love Like Crazy" as a starting point for my resolitions/goals/bucket list, whatever you want to call them!

"Be a best friend, tell the truth, and overuse I love you
Go to work, do your best, don't outsmart your common sense
Never let your prayin' knees get lazy
And love like crazy"

If we all lived by these words every day life would be so much better for everyone life would be so much nicer!

"Be a best friend."

I have some of the greatest friends anyone could ever ask for.

They all do so much for me and I don't do nearly enough to repay them!

I want to do more for them and become a better friend to those Im not as close to.

"Tell The Truth"

okay so this one isnt that hard! I always try my hardest to be honest in

everything I do on a daily basis.

"overuse I love you!"

I don't think that is something you can over use. We should all tell those we care

about that we love them on a daily basis!

"Go to work, Do your best and don't out smart your common sense"

I definitely don't always give 100 percent on a daily basis and thats something I need to work better at. 

I need to get myself on a better schedule so that I can go to bed at a decent time and get up earlier

and accomplish more during the day before I go to work.

As for the  not out smarting your common sense, well thats some advise I think everyone 

would be smart to take. 

"Never let your prayin' knees get lazy."

I definitely need to improve on my daily prayers! Thats probably what I want to work on the

most this new year!!

"Love like crazy"

So some of my other goals for this new year are:

1. Daily scripture reading

2. Be better at saving money

3. Eat better, I have the worst eating habits ever! 

4. Keep a journal

5. Be better at blogging

6. Help raise more awareness in helping find a cure for Neurofibromatosis

7. Make it to California-Ive never been

8.Read more, i used to read so much and now I rarely ever do!

I have more of a bucket list of things I want to do this year! But I will post that later!

So fuuny! You can thank me later!

If you only knew how much time me and my friends have spent watching the first one! (One time I looked at Peters teeth, and I got a sunburn!)
So glad they finally made a second one!

November

November is here! That means Thanksgiving will soon be upon us! Then Christmas, New Years/ My Birthday and then my brothers will be home from their missions! Woohoo! But first things firsts!

Source: simplysweethome.com via Kimberly on Pinterest

I Decided a while ago that during the month of November that I would blog everyday about something I am thankful for! And it looks like I'm not the only one with the idea from the looks of others blog posts today!

The world is so full of greedy people and people wanting things now . No one takes the time to appreciate what they have and to often people don't express their gratitude for anything anymore.

"Gratitude is a mark of a noble soul and a refined character. We like to be around those who are grateful. They tend to brighten all around them. They make others feel better about themselves. They tend to be more humble, more joyful, more likable." ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin


My first post of thankfulness is Fall! I LOVE fall!

Source: sunsurfer.tumblr.com via Meleea on Pinterest

I love the changing of the leaves! I love looking out my bedroom and seeing the temple up on the mountain surrounded by all the gorgeous colors! I love it when its just right for sweaters and light jackets! Hot chocolate! Hot chocolate is one of my most favorite things ever!

Source: justgetoffyourbuttandbake.com via Katie on Pinterest

Help?

Im in a contest to win a family trip! And I need votes! I figured this is the best way to do it! The link changes daily, well at midnight so i can easily change it on here each day. I would LOVE this and any votes would be so appreciated! My family hasnt been on vacation in over 12 years so a trip to Hawaii would be great! If the link doesnt bring up the right picture please look for mine. I posted it below so you all know which one it is, Im currently in 2nd place, I keep trying to gain on the people in first but its NOT working! So please please please vote! It takes less time to vote than it took you to read this blog post! So click the link and rate my picture at a ten! Thanks!

    CLICK HERE TO VOTE

Taylor Swift

Just 4 days until Taylor Swifts concert!! I am so excited! She is one of my absolute favorites! I went to her concert two years ago, she is the best performer I have ever seen!

I've been hearing that at all of her concerts this tour she has brought other singers up on stage with her, like in Nashville it was Tim McGraw, Andy Grammar and a few others. It'll be itneresting to see who she has with her for Salt Lake, speculation is David Archuletta. Guess we will see!

Walk to Cure NF

On Saturday Oct 1st there will be a NF Cure Walk for the Childrens Tumor Foundation In Salt Lake City.

First off I have to say I am horrible with words. so Hopefully I can put this all into words for you to understand.

I have suffered from Neurofibromatosis for most my life. I was diagnosed with the NF type ! when I was just a couple months old.  When I was about 6 I started to get migraines all the time would I would pass out from. It became routine for my friend in the neighborhood to have to run across the street to my house to get my parents because I had collapsed again! Doctors ran all sorts of brain scans and tests and nada. They couldn't find anything.

At this time I was also suffering from lots of ear aches and infections, so it was decided that I needed tubes put in my ear. It was during this surgery that it was discovered that I had a tumor growing on my cranial nerves. From here we went from doctor to doctor and test to test to see what could be done. all this while the tumor is growing like crazy. NF is a fairly common disorder. But the places where my tumors were located were uncommon. Doctors couldn't find anyone with the same growths as me, except for an older man in France.

By the are of 7 I wasnt given much hope of surviving. In fact i was given less than 6 months.

At one point I was hooked up to a morphine pain pump at all times. I had a feeding tube and a lot of the time I had to use a wheel chair or was basically bed ridden. I had a Broviac Catheter that a nurse would come every few days to switch out the needle. One time she sneezed on the area and didn't clean well enough and I got a major staff infection that almost killed me and I had to be rushed into surgery to remove it and they replaced it with a central line.

One day, my pain pump malfunctioned giving me way more morphine than my body could handle. We were getting ready for a doctors appointment when I collapsed. My mom called 911 and when they got there they asked my mom if she even wanted them to work on me because I was basically already gone. While they were reading the machine to see the doses I had been getting, it turned out my doctor  had been overdosing me on the morphine for a while. I had been taking daily doses that were more than to call a large horse. Even tho I did need it for the pain, I  had been taking  such large doses of it that I had become severely addicted to the drug and had to be taken off of it cold turkey (if any of you have ever tried to overcome an addiction, you know its hard, try doing it when you are only EIGHT).

After that my mom fired all doctors and  had  the feeding tube and central line removed. I'm now 24 and I've since then have seen specialist sparatically through out the years. But they all say the same thing. Nothing can be done. One doctor even took it to a convention where every other surgeon there agreed it would be to risky to operate. Id most likely die on the operation table, my air way is to obstructed so there is no way to intibate. Id have a seizure or bleed out. And even if they could operate the tumor is growing off important nerves, in order to get all of the tumor they would have to cut into the nerve, Id be paralyzed. Or if they missed any little piece of tumor it'd grow back large than it was before.

So I basically just have to live with this hope that they can someday find a cure. I probably won't be around long enough to see that happen, I know this. My last MRI results weren't good. I try to live as normal of a life as possible, I just have to take extra cautions with everyting I do. I can't get bumped in the head or neck because the anyursms in neck could burst easily, quickly killing me. Little things like catching the flu become instantly life threatening. Last time I had the flu, I got so sick so fast and they couldn't find a pulse. They had told my parents I was dead.

Im not the only one that this has been hard on. My family has sacrificed so much for me because of this. We have moved numerous times, selling homes and vehicles to pay medical bills. My family has done with out vacations and extras because I was to sick or we could never afford it. My brothers weren't able to play on little league teams and had to give up lots of the extras that their friends had. This has affected them too.

NF is just as common as cancer. But at least with cancer there's a chance to be cured with chemo and radiation! With NF there is NO cure, even if a tumor can be removed, NF is still there, it never goes away. And for most NF patients having a tumor removed isn't an option.

If  all I can do is help raise money so that someone else doesn't have to go through what my family and I have been through than at least I'm doing something to help. So please, come join in this walk. And if you can't please consider making a donation. Invite everyone you know to join the facebook event I created and encourage them to make a donation. Even if you only make a one dollar donation its something! And it'd mean the world to me!


Click HERE to join my team or HERE to make a donation to help find a cure for this horrible disease!  Even just donating a dollar is doing something!

Life!

“This life is what you make it. Not matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up. Girls will be your friends - they'll act like it anyway. But just remember, some come, some go. The ones that stay with you through everything - they're your true best friends. Don't let go of them. Also remember, sisters make the best friends in the world. As for lovers, well, they'll come and go too. And babe, I hate to say it, most of them - actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can't give up because if you give up, you'll never find your soul mate. You'll never find that half who makes you whole and that goes for everything. Just because you fail once, doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will, sweetie? So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life's a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.”
― Marilyn Monroe

Backstage at Flatts Fest!

Yup I totally won backstage passes to meet RASCAL FLATTS! How cool is that? Seriously?! It was a text in contest from Z104 (formerly the Cowboy). I sat there texting them over and over trying to win the pass! They announced that they had text the winner so I checked my phone and nothing. We waited a few a minutes to see if I'd get one but didn't so decided to just go into the concert. As we were walking they announced again for people to check there phone to see if they'd won. I said to my friend "I just want them to text me and tell me I've won." As soon as I finished saying that my phone went off and I received the following text "You are the winner come by the z104 tent and show this text" I FREAKED! (for those of you who know me, know that Im a fairly calm person, so the scream and the squealing was not something normal. Im sure I freaked out everyone around me) So Jackie and I booked it back to the radio stations tent and showed them the text (where the DJ said to me "I should have known that was your number!" Ha ok so I win alot of concert tickets, but never beackstage passes) I was lucky enough to win TWO passes so my friend could come with me!

Weren't allowed to take our own pictures or get autographs but they had someone there taking pictures for us and they were uploaded that night so we could get it. It turned out pretty great! The guys were way sweet! It was so exciting to get to meet them! And the concert was a blast! I'll write about that later!

Never Again.....

Will i eat at Iggys in Centerville! Last time I went there was a disaster! Our waiter was friendly (which is rare) but a complete scatter brain! The food was decent. But Monday morning (We went on a Saturday) when I was checking my bank account, I noticed my bank account was over drawn by .04 cents (which Im always way careful about. it always gets WAY close but i never over draft). The stupid server had charged my card for $8.90 MORE than I had signed for. Seriously!? I was so ticked!!! So I called and spoke to a manager and she was super nice and kept apologizing (she called me a couple times to keep me updated on fixing the problem) and told me she couldn't authorize a refund but the general manager would be in the next day and he would call me first thing and take care of it. So the next day I don't get a call so at 5 that evening I call and the general manager isn't in. So i talked to some other manager named "Rich" who was basically a jerk! He didn't apologize once, rushed to get me off the phone, and was just like your money is here whenever you want to come get it.

So I went in the next day and talked to another manager (Seriously, how many "managers" do they have) who gave me my money back and told me the general manager would be calling the next day to apologize. Yup no phone call. No apology. The whole situation should have been handled a lot differently I think. So I won't be going back to this location. I love Iggy's food. But the service and management is junk!

So if you ever go here. Take cash.

I want to make this.....

 





And it them all! 

Source: 2.bp.blogspot.com via Meleea on Pinterest

Netflix

I love Netflix right now. I'd been planning on buying a couple season's of Grey`s Anatomy and they were all, well almost all, on There. I love that show. If you haven't ever gotten into you should.

There's also a few movie's I've watched on Netflix that are pretty good that i watched that I'd never even heard of before. I thought I'd do a couple reviews on a few of them.

First up: My Girlfriends Boyfriend. This one is SO cute. Filmed locally in Salt Lake the movie follows the adventures of a girl named Jesse (played by Alyssa Milano who is one of my favorite actress's who BTW had her baby boy Milo today, a random side note I thought Id share) as she tries to balance dating to guys. One a super rich, super handsome (Or well he's suppose to be, I didn't think He was all that attractive) CEO of a advertising company. The other a guy who's a little on the dorkier side, but still cute, who is a struggling writer and can't get anything published. She knows she's going to eventually have to pick but when she does will a secret from her past keep the man from loving her back? And the twist at the end will definitely be a surpirse you weren't expecting. I've seen this twice now and plan on buying it!


Number Two: Elle A Modern Cinderella Tale. This movie was actually pretty adorable. Its kinda like Another Cinderella Story (Ya know the one with Selena Gomez and Drew Seeley) Mixed with every Disney/ABC Family movie about going for your dreams out there.  Elle Daniels parents die in a plane crash. She is sent to live with her "Uncle" (really just a close family friend) who is owner of a record label. So I was expecting him to be mean, since technically his role would be the wicked step mother. But he's not. He's a good guy. Just to wrapped up in his work to really give her attention. Elle is an intern at his record label with her best friend. Anyways its your typical "modern Cinderella story" boy charming see's girl, falls for girl, girl runs away, boy can't find girl. You do have your typical "step sisters" they are a girl band at the record label who basically Elle has to do what ever they tell her to do. They find out she is Ty (Prince Charmings) Mystery girl and set out to sabotage her once they find out Elle is this SUPER talented country singer. Anyways.......... Long story short its a fairly predictable movie, similar plot to what we've all seen before. But it was still way cute and my description isn't doing it any justice. If you have Netflix and need a movie where you don't have to think and don't want to cry (because we all have those nights where we just need simple) go with this one!

I have a few more that I will blog about a later date!

day 5: your parents (Mondays Post)

Yup once again, I got behind. I really shouldnt even bother playing catch up, but what else is there to do?!

My parents are the best. And i really dont express that often enough. They have done so much for and sacrificed so often the things they need/want to help me with everything I have had to go through.I couldnt ask for better parents!

They do so much for others to. They never expect things in return.

Lets see.... My works for Architectural Building Supply in SLC. He's also really good at building things! (if you have ever seen my bookcase or tv stand.... or my house you know this to be true)

My mom is a VERY talented cook (look for her cookbook to come out someday, hopefully soon) and very talented at sewing things.