together in paris

last week i took a quick trip to utah for my cousin becca's wedding. it was also the perfect excuse to see my sisters, friends, and extended family, and i am so grateful i could visit. becca and david got married in the oquirrh mountain temple, and it was a very cold but very happy day. basically, it reminded us all of cat's freezing wedding in manhattan two years ago. it was so wonderful to be there and be reunited with my cousins and liz and lauren (cue the anastasia quoting). shoutout to my bestie, caroline, who came to the wedding, lent me that beautiful purple dress, and let me stay in her gorgeous condo. caro stayed at my house in new jersey for cat's wedding and i stayed with her family for her sister amanda's wedding, so it's kind of become a tradition at this point.

the other major highlights of this trip were seeing friends and eating food. lauren picked me up from the airport, so obviously we hit up cafe rio and sodalicious right away. i was only in utah for two days, and multiple meals were covered by the wedding events, but i still managed to eat cafe rio, banbury cross donuts, cubby's, and waffle love. oops. it was so good to see my utah peeps! love you all. i should've been better at taking pics, but i'm glad i got a photo with alyanna and with my 1100 girls. also that pic of lauren at target makes me LOL. miss u, homegirl. to be honest, i never thought i would miss utah very much but i really do. two days was definitely not long enough! it was so sad to leave and head back to new york but i guess now it's everyone's turn to come visit me, hint hint. in the meantime i will keep praying for cafe rio to come to manhattan. till next time, utah!

sundance & shameless celeb-stalking

the other weekend lauren and i headed up to park city to spend the day at the sundance film festival. we were hoping to get into a film and ended up having no luck with that (curse you, e-waitlist) but we decided to go to park city anyway and i'm really glad we did. if we couldn't get into a movie, then celeb-stalking (or star-gazing, which i think is a much classier euphemism) was the next best thing. at first we just walked around main street, got some free sundance swag (thx l'oreal for the glitter nail polish), and grabbed lunch. later, we walked farther down on main street and ended up by the cnn lounge and some kind of press tent where celebrities were coming in and out. we were actually able to see/say hi to/meet quite a few of them. we met ben schwartz, who plays jean-ralphio on parks and recreation, which is one of my favorite shows. he was a really nice guy and he totally remembered us and said hi later when we happened to run into him again. we also met maggie gyllenhaal, who was adorable and a total sweetheart. we told her we liked her hat and she said she wore it in her movie frank that was premiering at sundance. she walked by a couple times and every time i could not get over how cute and nice she was. we also saw zach braff and donald faison from scrubs and they were really funny (though my personal favorite role of donald faison's is dionne's boyfriend in clueless). another funny moment was actually when harry styles appeared across the street from us to get into his car (the one pictured above). out of nowhere, girls were screaming and running into the street. it was wild. i also got to meet ashley greene, and she was so sweet. at this point there were lots of fans around her, but she took the time to let every single person get a photo or an autograph and she was so happy and patient the entire time. she is beautiful and just seemed really sincere when i got to talk to her.

we also saw jerry from parks and rec, meredith from the office, and anna kendrick! however, the biggest highlight for me was meeting dan stevens, also known as matthew crawley on downton abbey. i love downton and him and he is beautiful so that was an awesome moment in my life. lauren and i are very much into movies and pop culture, so seeing celebrities in person was actually a really fun experience. i thought it was refreshing that, even in such small, simple interactions, and in circumstances that could be seen as inconvenient or annoying, almost everyone we met was just so nice. it made for a pretty great day. thanks for going with me, lauren! (next year's the year you're going to meet joseph gordon-levitt, i can feel it.)

field trippin'

last weekend i went on a field trip for my art business class. we drove to kanab for a conference on the business of art and we had a great time! i love the girls in my class and we had so much fun together. we got excused from our friday classes, so we left that morning and we stopped in zion national park on our way. it was so beautiful! i've driven through southern utah before but i haven't really spent any time there so it was really neat to take our time and stop on the way down. the red rocks are gorgeous. i want to go back and hike sometime. when we got to kanab we ate burgers and shakes and went back to our hotel to watch movies. there isn't much to see in kanab, so we just hung out together. our conference ended up being a bit of a letdown (mostly because it was geared more towards artists than towards others in the art world) but we still had a really good time. on the way home, we stopped at artist maynard dixon's house and studio. they were these really cool, beautifully decorated log cabins. i would've moved right in. the rest of the way home we ate pringles and beef jerky and made our professor listen to beyoncé and taylor swift and maybe even a little cheetah girls, so i'd say it was a good road trip!