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Hi There

18 Apr

Hello world. I thought I’d take a peek and see how you all were doing. Show you my busy, not as tired, now healthy, now happy face that I’ve kept hidden away for awhile.

Clark and I have been going to the doctor and getting straightened out. Our spines are healtheir – and we notice our minds are getting healthier too. We’re not as drained as we used to be. Clark calls me more ‘zen’ and I call him more ‘motivated’. I will be posting my review of our new doctor very soon.

I’ve been busy busy busy with my job. I now sit on a Yoga ball to work. Keeps my back straight.

The Doctor says that I need to keep my chin down and back of my head pulled up. Feels weird. I hope it works and I don’t have to force it for very long. Doctor also says that I need to push my chest out more and my shoulder blades down…. hmm….

This morning Clark woke me up and took me out for breakfast by surprise. We had so much fun we decided to drive out to the Beach. We had so much fun there, by the time we were done at the beach – we drove down to the newly opened Cafe Rio in Los Angeles by LAX airport. Yum! After this, we drove back to our little world and drove up to the very top of the Target Parking garage, it’s on the 6th level that we’ve never been too. Not one single car there, and had a beautiful view.

Then we came home and I slept for 4 hours. SO tired from too much fun. After too much fun, I worked for two hours, we then watched one of my favorite shows, Merlin. Started having so much fun again, we decided to have a late night visit with our friends, but the one was sleeping and the other was baking bread. She (Claire) gave us a loaf to bring home and cook in the oven. Cranberry Wheat Soda Bread. Never had it before, and it is SO GOOD. Eating a hot slice right now. Too much fun. :D


Now I must sleep. 2AM and we have 9AM church. Good night.

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Women As Examples – General Conference Saturday

3 Apr

I believe that if you find that General Conference is speaking directly at you – you’re on the right track on life, because you have prepared yourself well to – listen.

Remember my recent post “A Lesson on Looking Good?” I was thinking during the first session today – particularly after he hit a valid point that I hadn’t thought of “… women who wear flip flops to Church… and my heart sunk and face flushed, “How did I let myself slip so far to where I’ve lost so much time not being up to par of the woman I should be?” Then I reminded myself I can’t be hard on myself, I have to learn the lesson in the act and move forward being that woman I want to be.

I am going to take notes for myself, notes on what led me to “letting myself go” so I can recognize these signs and stop the actions before they take control. Here are my thoughts on the reasons why I feel I let it happen:

  • I had never moved out of the house before I got married. When I did, I moved over 1,000 miles away to a completely foreign place with no family close by. I was left to create my own life – not knowing how, and not really been prepared. A newlywed, adjusting to a new life. Anxiety set in, and reality of who I was and who I had become. It’s not that I was a bad person, but it’s like all the junk that had been stored in my brain – decided to rise to the surface. Which wasn’t fun, nor easy – but a GOOD thing I got help from a counselor and realized now because it has allowed myself to clean it out for good.
  • Going through those MAJOR changes I believe is where I ‘let myself go’. Part of the junk that I was cleaning out – included superficial beliefs. Growing up, I developed  the belief that for a man to value you – you had to look good. Instead of learning from the ground up, that a woman of virtue and integrity – will always look her best, because you’re an example of a daughter of God. Men are attracted to women who shine with the spirit, confidence & beauty. See how both are telling that it’s important to look good, but how I took the wrong road to the end result? So, how I let myself go from this belief of looking good was having to relearn the lesson. In doing so, I wrongly developed a hate for makeup and “superficial” items. All the while, from stress and comfort eating I gained weight – so I didn’t feel pretty all around. Thankfully I was attracted to skirts because they felt far more comfortable then jeans I felt huge in. So I was at least that much dressed up. I also wanted to make sure that Clark loved me no matter how I looked – which of course he did! Throughout this whole process, Clark never stopped telling me I was beautiful, that I was sexy and attractive no matter what. I think I felt that because I let myself gain weight, that I didn’t deserve new clothes, or I would look funny in trendy clothes because I was bigger. Putting on make-up, I didn’t look the same. These were all false and distorted beliefs. Through counseling, I had to learn to love myself – and see myself beautiful no matter what – Clark didn’t need to learn that. Because if I feel beautiful – people view me how I feel about myself. So, it starts with me. :)
  • Feeling poor – less motivation to buy new clothes. A belief I learned growing up, that if you can’t afford it, you can’t buy it. Makes sense right? Well, priorities shift when having that belief towards clothes, because when you have money – things like food, items for the house, things you have saved up for,  take higher priority. When you have clothes that fit and aren’t torn – why buy new clothes? I still have clothes from early High School!  This is what I learned instead of, making sure that things that make you feel good about yourself – should take a higher priority, because then you attract the good in life and radiate an appearance of someone who values themselves to everyone around you. In return, people will give you credit and value your standards instead of assuming you’re someone that you’re not.
  • Taking things too personal and developing resentment inside when they were only trying to help. I know I have family members who have tried to teach me this lesson far earlier than when I finally heard the lesson from a ‘stranger’ / friend. I guess my natural instinct/learned behavior is to protect myself from nagging, criticism, controlling etc because I was trying to get away from learning the wrong way because I was desperately trying to learn how to do and be the right way. When I heard “It’s important to dress yourself up and get ready first thing in the morning”, I instead heard “You’re doing something wrong, I see you’re not wearing as much make-up, wearing old clothes – you should be something better”. Of course I felt guilty, but I was feeling upset. I wasn’t ready to hear it.

I am so thankful for all that I’ve learned while re-learning how to be and look like a daughter of God. I am so happy that I have learned that if you ever feel like someone is judging or criticizing you, take a step back – take a deep breath and listen to what they’re trying to tell you. Can you be better? More likely than not if you’re feeling upset – you’re feeling guilty or sad about something. There is NOTHING wrong with fine-tuning yourself. Just make sure you keep God with you in the act of changing, or you’ll easily skew the advice and look less than your value (i.e. modest vs. immodest).

In between sessions, Clark and I went to Target. I got some more make-up and hair stuff. We’re going to JCPenny next week and get some new clothes. I’m not trying to prove myself to anyone but me and God that I value myself and the body He gave me. :)

I am so happy I have learned this lesson of how to be a beautiful woman of virtue and integrity. I am so happy I have opened myself up with love to hear ways that I can improve – because we always have room to improve. Each and every one of us. We don’t have to take everyone’s advice, because not everyone will be right. But if you listen by the spirit – He will teach you the truth in all things. :D

I am going to write more about what I learned today later this week when I can have text reference from the other talks…

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A Lesson on Look’n Good

26 Mar

Friend: Is that your picture on the wall? [referring to my bridal picture]

Me: Yes!


Friend: Wow… ummm… you look… wow, how do I say…

Me: Sexy? [*giggles*]

Friend: Well, yeah… you look so… MODERN! You look so good, so modern…

Me: Well, thank you!

Friend: Yeah, you really let yourself go didn’t you?

Me: :( Huh… I guess so… 8-O


There is a certain respect you have to give to your really blunt friends who just say it how it is. I mean, I don’t want to hear EVERYTHING, but THAT I needed to hear. The old me wanted to crawl into a corner and just feel incredibly embarrassed and sad because I knew she was telling the truth. I haven’ t always been wearing make-up. I do, sometimes get so wrapped up in work in the morning I completely forget to get ready for the day or don’t get ready until afternoon.

The past couple years I have been going through some pretty intense changes in my life. I relate it to a drawing that is in development – that gets messed up. You can’t always just erase and adjust where necessary without still showing flaws. Sometimes you have to give a complete re haul and start again from the beginning so you can do it perfect. That’s what I’ve done to myself – completely went raw, tore out all the yucky stuff from the inside out and began again from scratch.

I used to be SO SO SO into make-up. SO much I was studying all I could about how to be a make-up artist. Studied Make-Up artists at the mall and on movie sets. I think somewhere along the line the past couple years where I have been changing myself for the better, I lost the interest in make-up. It’s no longer important to me, other than having fun dressing up and put on to feel good. That’s it. I have my natural hair color, I used to color my hair blond. But it’s 3 times the price to get my hair done here as it is in UT where I used to live. So I let my hair go natural and I actually like it better – only because I feel I have attached it as a representation of my new self. I fear feeling like my old self if I go back to blond. I just don’t think being blond really shows how I feel.  Who knows, I may change my mind later when I feel even stronger.

What I learned after I really pondered about my friends comment is that: Looking good is just as important as doing and being good. Looking your best is a representation to those around you of how you feel inside about yourself.

So, if I’m feeling good inside, I should show it! Clean myself up and look my best!

The moral of the story is, I could have taken offense, been insulted or thought she was being rude. She wasn’t. She was giving good advise.

So, Thank you friend for the bold and blunt reminder – that it’s important to not only look my best for others, and for my husband – but also for myself!

I now have added another goal to my list of daily self reminders. Dress up every morning even if I’m staying in for the day- and show a representation of how I’m feeling for the day or how I want to feel for the day. :D

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Helping My Surroundings Feel Better About Themselves

28 Feb

Another change of large proportion! Since lately I have been feeling 10x better about myself I have been inspired and motivated to help our Sophia laughing to the sunapartment feel better about itself. Basically helping my surroundings look more like how I feel. So, Clark and I have been switching up our place, getting rid of A LOT of STUFF. We have decided to take each room one at a time and re-style it with new fix’n's. We started with the Bedroom, and will move on to the main room and then the kitchen. Having removed so much in our bedroom, we have condensed our closet space to half, and moved the food-storage to the empty half of the closet, saved A LOT of room in our bedroom. Now we don’t have to go to bed dreaming of food. haha! ;)

WOW! Big changes, and it feels sooooo good to have a clean and organized house. It’s so symbolic this change. Removing all this ‘junk’ in my head, my mind feeling so FREE and clear and more organized. It’s so true that your surroundings affect how you feel about yourself. Clean house – clean mind, filled with joy! I literally feel the spirit growing in our home and it feels wonderful. :)

That is mainly what we have been working on this week besides – just working. One new habit we applied to our daily life is removing TV from Monday through Thursday. I’m so grateful for DVR :D So we party it up big time on the weekends, movies and TV & going out and having fun at the Beach. But MY-OH-MY does a simple act of moving TV – time to only weekends make a HUGE difference! Clark and I never realized how long days can be when you do that. We find ourselves doing so much more work, or hobbies that we always felt we didn’t have time for, etc etc. I think this will be a permanent change to our daily lifestyle. It helps in so many ways to make you feel like you have LOTS more time in a day to get things done.

Work has been really busy lately, but still fun. We’re meeting deadlines for this upcoming week – releasing new website themes and a new company site. I have been making video tutorials, written tutorials and keeping up with the customer support. A lot of people out there in the world can’t wait until 5pm to stop working, I feel that way too – except, since there is SO many things on my work ‘to – do’ list, it’s hard for me to actually physically STOP working. Clark has been helping me to breathe – stand up and walk away from the computer or get out of the house. Then I can switch off my ‘working’ mindset and let go and leave it until tomorrow. It’s hard, but my life is getting less rigid and more relaxed and flexible and spontaneous. :D

I know I might sound like a ‘seriously so blessed’ person lately, but I can’t help but shout out to the world of what a difference Charity makes in renewing your life. That life doesn’t have to be taken so seriously. If someone is mean to you, or you have a hard time understanding why he/she did that or chose to make that decision in life or – whatever – it doesn’t matter. When you’re in the mindset of what’s in it for them, and you make the best choice: to LOVE, it makes ALLLLL the difference in their world and yours! There is so much beauty and love and happiness in the world, that there is no reason to doubt that God will help you in whatever struggle you may have in your life. Give it time, have patience, God will send you angels – pay attention to the subtle messages He sends you and you will find your life slowly but surely becoming brighter and better each day! You will feel stronger and more confident!

I still have down days, but they are not nearly as bad as they used to be. I’m still growing, still learning and building up my strength, but I see success and further joy closer down the road and it’s exciting!

I hope for everyone who reads this, whatever you might be thinking – that you always seek for ways to remove the critical thoughts, or judgment or assumptions you might have for people in your life – and replace these ‘beliefs’ with loving thoughts. Ask yourself  “What’s in it for them, if I have this belief about them? Does it help them become a better person? Does it help me feel more love for them and myself?” . It takes practice, but believe you me – you’ll find your life much more happy by working on this little by little each day. You might be shocked at how active your mind may be, in its negative beliefs, whether they be about yourself or others. Replacing negativity with positivity is ALWAYS a good thing. :)

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