Sunday Best: The Easter Dress

dress: Mikarose, shoes: Ross

My mom kept buggin' me about how she "needed to get me an Easter dress." I calmly insisted I didn't need one. I have a closet exploding with way too many clothes and my mom spoils me way too much as it is. But then a phone call came and my mom smugly said, "A dress is coming in the mail for you." I let out a deep sigh but accepted my fate.

Then a package came and this dress was inside. I fell in love. I mean. . .it has POCKETS. So there you have it, my mother carries on the tradition of buying her twenty-two year old daughter an Easter dress. I can't say that I mind it. After all, my mom has a rockin' sense of style.

I hope everyone enjoyed a sunny day of Easter goodness. Although I love a good Easter dress and a plate of deviled eggs, the true meaning of this holiday is such a beautiful one that I hold very dear to my heart.

"He is not here, but is risen. ."  -Luke 24:6

Bloglovin Nonsense

Well, I guess I'll switch over to Bloglovin since Google reader is going extinct and all. 

You may follow me by clicking here.

Boy, that was the lamest post ever written by a living thing. See you on the other side in Bloglovin land.

http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/4956565/?claim=2wewnzh93ry%22%3EFollow%20my%20blog%20with%20Bloglovin%3C/a%3E 

Truth Tuesday

• You know when you get a group picture and they say, "Okay everybody, strike a pose!" And then you panic and your eye starts twitching and you have no ideas of witty ways to pose? Well, I've found myself a cure. Every time the "strike a pose" thing happens, I've just decided to turn around. So far it has solved all my problems. Proof: 

• When applying my foundation, I skip my forehead all together. I've gotten quite lazy. And I'm sure all you cosmetic gurus are all like, "Gasp. That girl is sick and wrong." But hear me out. My foundation is my most expensive cosmetic product. I like to use it sparingly. And besides, my bangs block my forehead. Problem solved. 

• I worked for ABC 4 yesterday and my story was on the 6:00 news. Usually when I've done stories for stations in the past, it's just my footage and then I let them do their thang with it. This time it was different. I did the editing. It was my voice heard during the package. Aaaand, my face was on the news. They gave me full credit. They introduced the story as, "Our Cache Valley correspondent, Kelsey Keller, blah blah blah. ." It was all a little nerve-wracking. All that hustle and stress all day all for one minute and thirty seconds of news. Let me have you know, it's stressful but also so exhilarating and awesome. I am studying the coolest thing at school. I LOVE being a journalist. And thanks to all who sent me sweet comments about my story. I needed them. Because, of course, I'm my own worst critique. After my story aired, I crawled upstairs to my bubble bath and replayed all the things I did wrong/should have done better in my mind.

• Last night, Brian called from the kitchen, "Oh no, we are out of clean spoons." To which I replied, "Oh, there are a whole bunch of clean ones in the dishwasher. I used one this morning to eat my yogurt." Then there was a pause until Brian said, "Did you start the dishwasher?" Pause again. "No. . .I thought you did." Pause. "Kelsey, these are dirty. I never started the dishwasher."

• I read that the average person checks their smartphone 150 times a day. That totally just makes me sick. I never should have gotten a smartphone. My flip phone I was using up till last year was treating me just fine. 

• On Friday we went to Wingers and it was packed. We were looking at like a 15 to 20 minute wait. That all changed when we saw two of our good friends sitting in a nearby booth, looking over menus. We were invited to join them and HUZZAH that's how you turn a 20 minute wait into a 2 minute one. I love getting lucky. Then we stayed until closing time chit-chatting, which made the situation all the more enjoyable. Yay for friends. And yay for not planning things but then randomly running into one another. 

Sunday Best: Spring?

coat: Violet Hill Boutique, leggings: Maurices, flats: TJ Maxx, scarf: gift, earrings: gift 

Spring in Northern Utah means winter clothes sans the puffy coat. And maybe if you are feeling extra brave, a pair of flats rather than your snow boots.

Warm weather, where art thou? 

Instagrams & Milk: Vegas In Instas

So ready for the weekend o'er here. Apparently spring break decided to come back and bite me in the butt. I think I'm still in Vegas mode. You know: sleep in, be lazy, go to the pool, stay up til all odd hours of the night. But I need to get back to normal mode. Wake up at 4:30, work, class, gym, homework, bed before 11. That sort of a thing.

In my first class today after I left work at the radio station, I could literally not keep my eyes open. During the fifty minute span of class, I kept fading off. Just taking a look at my notebook would give you an idea of how tired I was. Every bullet point starts with clear legible words and by the end, it fades off into scribbles. Those scribbles are the parts where I went to sleep. It was almost so pathetic it was funny. I would come to, look down, and realize my pen was moving across the paper, but I had no idea what I was writing. And that my friends, is why sleep is important. So I'll be catching up on it over the weekend.

In the meantime, here are some grammy grams from Las Vegas. . .

Find me on Instagram @mrskellwell. We will be insta-friends. It will be insta-good.

Truth Tuesday

• I'm not Catholic but I decided I wanted to try out Lent this year. What the heck. So in honor of Lent, I gave up all soda pop. I'm sorry to admit I am a Lent failure. I caved and ordered a Cherry Coke while in Las Vegas. But I was just getting so bored of water and milk. And I'm a bit of a juice snob (we only drink Simply Orange under this roof). I thought I would feel really bad about breaking my Lent deal, but I don't. The month I lasted for taught me some valuable things though. I had never been a big soda drinker until the last year. With my stacked school schedule came lots more eating out, and with ordering meals, I started drinking lots more soda. I could feel myself growing dependent on it which I really didn't like. My month without the soda showed me that I can be disciplined and I do not need that Cherry Coke to make it through the day. While I am back on pop, I will now keep the drinking minimal. I also started the good habit of drinking more water. I've never been good about my water intake. Now I find myself needing to carry a water bottle with me everywhere I go. And I even crave water now. I didn't think that was possible unless I'd just finished working out. Oh, I also learned that many restaurants have absolutely terrible lemonade. Some of those lemonades must have more sugars than any soda. For reals. 

• No Katy Perry, I never have felt like a plastic bag drifting in the wind. Really poetic though. 

• I'm in the process of cleaning my closet. By doing this, I quickly discovered I have a problem. Why can I not part with clothes? I can't even part with clothes I don't like. Shirts that haven't come off the hanger in YEARS. It's bad. But I am going to let my little sisters go through the things I don't want before I take it off to goodwill. So perhaps that will be good motivation, to know my little sisters might get a thrill from picking out some of my old things.  

• Sometimes I'll just look at Luna and imagine how goofy she'd look if she was a human instead of a cat. Can you imagine if humans had whiskers sprouting from their eyebrows and cheeks? Funny stuff. 

• Today in class, I repeated the same wrong answer to a question as the girl right before me did. I'm still blushing about it. What a dork I am. 

• This morning at work, while researching wacky stories to share on the radio, I found this article that predicted that Americans would spend something like 7 billion dollars on Easter or maybe it was 17 billion. Okay, I don't remember the exact amount. . .but it was in the billions. Isn't that crazy? That's a lot of Cadbury Eggs. 

• Also, I think Easter candy is my favorite holiday candy. Cadbury Mini Eggs, Creme Eggs, jelly beans, Easter edition Sweethearts, Reese's Eggs, chocolate bunnies. Oh. My. Dear. However, this excludes Peeps. I've never been a huge Peep fan. 

• The only television shows we watch at our house are the creepy and violent ones. We are extreme fans of both The Following and The Americans. Anyone else fans?

Viva Las Vegas

Brian and I have enjoyed some dang good spring breaks together. In 2011 it was a Mexican cruise. In 2012 it was Hawaii. We kept things a little cheaper and more simple by spending this year's week of freedom in Las Vegas. You think we would be sick of Vegas since we've already been three times in our year and a half of marriage. But that crazy town always has something new to offer and I argue that it also has the best people watching in the country. And I like me my people watching. Our days in Sin City didn't disappoint. I think it would be safe to say that we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Conveniently enough, Allstate had conferences in Vegas the exact same week as our spring break, so they picked up the tab for our hotel. Thanks, Allstate! You always keep us in good hands. While I missed BWell while he went to a few business conferences, we still ended up having most of our time together. It was nice to just have some carefree "us" time. The only downside is that it had to end. Boo. 

A few highlights from the trip: 

The Beatles Love Show

It's been on my bucket list for a while now, so we finally decided to just pay up and get tickets. We ended up getting a sweet deal on our seats and we sat on the second row! I think I could smell the acrobats breath as they swung past me, we were that close. I was in my own little Beatles heaven watching my favorite songs come to life on stage and having colorful confetti spill from the ceiling onto my head. Brian loved it too. If you are a fan of the Beatles (like me) I suggest you plan on going to this show at some point in your life.The only negative of this whole event was that we decided it would be a good idea to walk from our hotel to the Mirage. It was a ways. And then we were almost late. And then we were running through a sea of people. And I was wearing heels. Those heels gave me blisters. Whew. We took a cab back.   

Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat 

This was such a hoot. I mean, really. I don't have photos because I had the video camera out the whole time. So perhaps a video will be shown at some point in time. If I was an animal, I would have to be a dolphin. They are precious. I squealed so much through this exhibit that I may have scared some children. The tigers and lions were cool too, but they were so tired. They mostly just napped and occasionally peered at us like we were such idiots for standing around, watching them.


The Aria and their perfect beds

. . .perfect for jumping on, of course. Allstate put us up in the Aria hotel. It was one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed at. It's only three years old. The beds are stupendously comfy. I wanted to open and reopen the huge curtain to our window over and over again with the remote. I'm kind of a child. My parents are probably disgusted (I swear they taught me better).

Gambling

Yeah, that happened. But don't fret, BWell and I are responsible gamblers. I played at an actual blackjack table for my first time and lucky for me, our dealer was extremely nice. I had a ball until some unkempt, big man sat down next to me and pulled out the largest cigar I've ever laid eyes on. He was such a loud, gross man and he kept blowing his foul cigar smoke right in my face. That ended the game for me and I felt sick the remainder of the night. Bleh. But things could have been worse. I could have been the other guy at our table who was completely wasted. He bet 300 dollars on a few hands (hands that weren't even good, mind you) and lost it all. I bet he's really sad now since he lost so much money. He probably doesn't even remember how he lost it.

M&M World

Fun to see, but don't you dare buy a bag of M&Ms there. It's a scam. Sure, you can get any colors you want but you'll also pay an arm and a leg for them. And I promise they don't taste different just because they came out of the bin from M&M World. I really think they need to sell crispy M&Ms there (make that happen, M&M world!). If they did, I definitely would have splurged.

Food

Enough said. I think I gained ten pounds.

A few other things that happened that I shan't forget to mention. . .I drove down the strip to the mall all by myself. I didn't even hyperventilate. Pat on the back for Kelsey. Of course, the pool was a hit. 80 degrees, me likey. We also made friends with our cab drivers because it's one of my favorite things to do. Oh, and Brian bought some dude's album from off the street. We were just innocently walking the strip and he runs toward us, asking us if we'll buy his cd. While I'm thinking to myself, "Who is this crazy guy?" Brian starts pulling cash out of his wallet and says, "Sure, here man!" And then the guy signed it for him. He said, "Who can I write this out to?" Guess what Brian said? "You can make it out to King Brian. That's what they call me."
Something about Vegas turns my husband into a high roller wannabe. I have to say, it's very amusing.

I also have a plethora of iPhone pictures from this trip that will most likely make it on this blog at some point in time. So it aint over yet, folks. Fasten your seat belts.

Sunday Best: Pressed Luck

blouse: Bella Me Boutique, skirt: Forever 21, wedges: Target, belt: Maurices, necklace: Forever 21

My mom once bought this special necklace made by a random lady. Hanging from the necklace was a pressed four leaf clover so it was said to be super good luck. My mom thought it was awesome and was succored into buying it. 

That lucky necklace was a bunch of bogus, I say. My siblings and I quickly discovered that this necklace was not lucky at all. More like cursed. She would wear it everywhere to big events for good luck. 

My family is into horse racing. We've owned horses since I was just a little girl and we've had a few good ones at that. A few years back, we had a young horse who had yet to be beat on the race track. The horse went on to the triple crown (these races are the equivalent to the Kentucky Derby for quarter horses). We traveled out to California to watch the first race of the triple crown. Our horse was all the talk. It was favored to win by a landslide. Before going to the race, my mom said, "I'll wear my necklace for good luck!"

Our horse and another horse ended up crashing on the runway. The other horse was fine. Ours broke both its back legs and had to be put down. It was probably the most tragic event I've ever witnessed. 

Another time, my brother had district track as a sophomore in high school and had a good shot of making it to state. My mom said, "I'll wear my necklace for good luck!" 

My brother qualified for state. . .but on his last jump he broke his leg and was out for a full year going through all kinds of nasty surgeries and physical therapy. 

After these and several other tragic happenings, it became custom for us to forewarn my mother. "Mom, whatever you do, PLEASE don't wear your lucky necklace." 

My mom finally admitted the necklace must be bad luck after all and she put it away for good. So I can't say I totally believe this "luck of the Irish" shenanigans. But all the same, I love the color green and I adore any excuse to pinch people. So this holiday is fine by me. Now I'm gonna go catch a leprechaun and do more amateur skirt twirling in my green skirt.

To view my St. Patrick's Day outfit from last year, click here. 

Disclaimer: Mom, please do not feel guilty after reading this post. So maybe you were responsible for breaking your son's leg, but oh well. That stupid four leaf clover necklace may have created some mishaps but it's also created a funny story to tell. ;)  

Because I Care. Duh.

I'm in Sin City right now. As I type this post, I'm looking out a huge window over all the flashy buildings. I'm just waiting for Brian to get out of a business meeting so we can go down to the pool and let our pasty bodies see some sun.

And since I probably won't be posting again while I'm on my little vacation, I thought I would at least leave you all with a treat. I went to a blogger meetup last week and the gals there were super fly. You will want to check out their blogs for pure entertainment and enlightenment. You won't be disappointed.

^^that's us, becoming pals^^

And here are the bloggity blogs: 

sincerely, laura

This Little Blonde

Happiness Is

Imma Walking Fashion Crime

and sam sam

words, ramblings, and the random

K. Until next time. I'm gonna go get a sunburn now. 

Sunday Best: Shoulda Coulda Woulda

dress: Modcloth, leggings: JCPenny, heels: Kmart, necklace: Buckle, earrings: Claire's, headband: ?

I shoulda started packing for this Vegas trip days ago because then I would be in bed right now. I'll never learn. 

This lovely mustard item coulda been a bridesmaid dress for my wedding. I had all my bridesmaids mismatched but they all wore mustard yellow. We ordered this dress and when it came in the mail, we realized it would be way too short. And leggings were a no go since BWell and I were married in early August (heat wave). But instead of sending it back, my mom just said, "Keep it. It's cute." And now it's a forever favorite. Mustard yellow just makes my heart go pitter-patter. Swoon. 

I woulda worn boots with this outfit if I had known how blustery of a day it would turn out to be. The whole week was sunny and delightful. So on Friday, I got brave and let my white feet blind the world by wearing these heels. It was still sunny(ish) but a cold wind blew all day. It's not my fault I go into work at 5:30 every morning. It's hard to predict weather conditions when you leave your house to stars and moon still in the sky. Oh well. Life goes on. And by the end of this week, let's hope my ghostly feet shall be a few shades darker. 

Happy Spring Break. See ya'll later this week. 

Whale Moments

Do you ever have those moments where something happens, whether you see something or hear something, and you tell yourself it was meant especially for you?

A couple spring breaks ago, I went on a cruise with a group of friends. I woke up early and didn't dare wake anyone else, so I decided to find a good nook on the boat and do some reading. The sun was not quite up yet, leaving the ocean air on deck cool and a bit demeaning. So I resorted to sitting on a little cushioned seat next to a giant window indoors. I read for quite a while until I noticed the sun peeking over the horizon. I set my book down and looked in amazement at the pink burst of sky. I remember feeling so tiny out there on the ocean, looking out to see nothing but water until it turned into sky. Instead of opening my book back up, I continued to watch the sun creep up over the water. I kept telling myself, in one more minute I will start reading my book again. Just one minute more. 

Then, just as I was getting ready to reach out for my book, I watched as something erupted from the glimmering water. It was a whale. I gasped and pressed my nose up against the glass of the window. I stared, unblinkingly at this huge and magnificent creature. Its tail waved through the air as if saying, "Hello and good morning, Kelsey!" Then, just as soon as it came, it went. It splashed back beneath the salty waves and I was left in utter amazement. I looked around, wanting to share this moment I had just witnessed with someone, but there was no one in sight. I was the only person in the whole world who watched that whale say hello to the earth that morning. No one else. Just me. I smiled to myself and decided that it was my special gift from God. That whale had been my whale.

source

I had another "whale moment" on Wednesday evening. I was dragging my feet, not wanting to go to my two and a half hour class. I knew the professor would not be there and we were just watching a documentary. It would be an easy class to skip. But for some reason, although every ounce of me wanted to play hooky, I still went to that class. And I watched the documentary. And the documentary moved me so much that I was almost brought to tears (which would have been really awkward and embarrassing for all ten of us in that class). You see, I have been praying and wondering what I can do with my life and with what I am studying at school that could be beneficial for others. I'd been feeling rather discouraged. But then I got a bright idea. But then I decided that bright idea was stupid. Then that documentary, the one I would have missed if I'd skipped class, made me realize my former idea was not stupid at all. That maybe, just maybe, I can eventually turn this idea into a physical thing. I felt so much comfort sitting in that classroom, knowing I just had a 'me' moment and that someone out there created that moment for me to experience.

 But I almost missed it. I would have missed that whale on my cruise if I hadn't gotten up early or if I would have been delving into my book. I would have missed that important moment on Wednesday if I would have skipped class like I so badly wanted to.

I know this post is so vague, and I'm sorry for that. I mainly just want to share that I know there are "whale moments" for all of us, and if we don't open our eyes and look, we just might miss them. With a little patience and faith, we might just watch that whale pop out of the water at the very moment we least expect it.