new year, new york

"i look out the window and i see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance." -nora ephron

2016 has officially rolled around, which means—and i can't believe it—that i've been living in new york for a year now. i am so in love with this city and wouldn't have wanted to spend the last year anywhere else.

2015 was definitely hard. being unemployed for a while totally sucked, as did moving far away from my sisters and all of my friends. but mostly, 2015 was very, very cool. i figured out what i really want to do with my life and career, i made new friends and was visited by lots of old ones, and i got to see my parents more times than in the last five years combined. i met my favorite celebs, saw broadway shows, tv tapings, movie premieres, and concerts, waited in cronut lines, toured museums galore, and ate my weight in pizza and bagels. i got to know new york intimately and feel how living here has made me more driven, confident, and independent.

i am also very grateful that my career plans have started to really fall into place. i worked crazy hard all year and it feels amazing for that to finally be paying off. i have been enjoying working at j. crew and was so excited when they moved me to the bridal team. i am loving it so far. i was also thrilled to land a book publicity internship at w. w. norton that will start later this month. i can't wait to learn the ropes and see where the opportunity takes me.

i always love new year's and the feeling of a fresh start. i'm so looking forward to everything ahead in 2016 and am so happy to be sticking around in this city. i love that new york feels like home and that i get to grow as a person and build a life for myself here. here's to all good things this year!

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!

hello from the other side

"the other side" in the title is referring to the actual other side because i'm dead now. RIP me.

i, like every other person in new york city, entered a few contests the other week to win tickets to adele's special one-night-only comeback concert at radio city music hall. when i got the email telling me i had actually won, i was shocked. the concert was incredible and i still can't believe i got to go. i took my friend mckell with me—she's given me jimmy fallon tickets and broadway lottery tickets, so i figured it was time to return the favor. when we got inside radio city and saw that we had amazing orchestra seats, we almost fainted. then we sat down and realized bill murray was sitting in the seat in front of us. shoutout to matthew mcconaughey, who is a babe and was also sitting in front of us. maybe the most satisfying part of the evening was that we had better seats than donald trump, who was sitting in the section behind us. LOL. but seriously, i could not believe that we were sitting in such swanky seats and that we were surrounded by movie stars. i legitimately felt like i was at the oscars.

then adele came on. she was introduced by jimmy fallon (sup) and she opened with "hello" and blew us all away. homegirl is unbelievable. THOSE PIPES. she is also stunning. she was wearing a gorgeous sparkly gown and a big beehive hairdo and that flawless makeup look. so beautiful. she sang lots of songs off her new album, as well as all of her hits and even some of her early stuff. every single song was pretty mind-blowing, but my favorites were "hello" and "skyfall" and "water under the bridge" and "when we were young" and "rolling in the deep" and "set fire to the rain" and "someone like you" and okay, everything. mckell and i were crying and singing along and having an emotional breakdown aka we were in heaven. also, adele is hilarious and so sweet. she came across as so funny and down-to-earth. her accent was cracking us up and her laugh is this amazing, adorable cackle. my favorite part was when she said she had a surprise for us and she was like, "whoa, it's not drake or anything, don't get too excited." but i think every person there was just in total awe of her and her talent. she is a queen.

basically, it was the best. such a special, inspiring, magical night i will remember forever. adele's album, 25, comes out on friday, and the concert will be aired on NBC on december 14th, so you can (and should) watch it! meanwhile, i will still be over here trying to process. in a good way. I LOVE U, ADELE!

to grandmother's house we go

this weekend my dad picked me up in the city and we headed upstate to visit our extended family and the family pumpkin patch. i would just like to say that my dad is a good road trip buddy because he let me listen to taylor swift the whole drive and showed great interest in my explanations of which ex-boyfriend each song was about.

our family has operated a pumpkin patch for the last 30 years and it is quite the beloved institution in upstate new york. there are so many fun things to do, and they have added at least one new attraction every year. this year was also the third annual pumpkin patch mud run 5k, which was very fun to watch. pictured above is my grandma's house, where my dad and his seven siblings grew up. for october it's decked out with pumpkins and storybook characters. also pictured is the barn, with the snack bar, halloween gift shop, and apple cider donuts straight from heaven. on the lower level of the barn there is a movie theater, hay maze, and farm animals. not pictured are the farm market, go-carts, hayride, four-story treehouse, giant slide, and corn maze. all my childhood memories of october are fond ones of playing at the farm with my cousins, and all my teenage octobers were spent making donuts or working in the gift shop and snack bar (and dancing to ghostbusters in the barn after all the customers left). because i was out at BYU, i hadn't been to the pumpkin patch during october since i was in high school, and it was such a treat to visit again while it was up and running.

i love my family, and the pumpkin patch really is a special place. my grandpa passed away four years ago, and my dad is currently working on putting together his personal history. i was reading some of it while visiting home recently, and i was really touched by what my grandfather had shared about the farm, and his lifelong mission to make it a place that would teach, support, and uplift his family and the community. he had a lot of goals for the farm and the pumpkin patch, and among them were creating opportunities for his grandchildren to learn to work, have fun, and make memories. i can't imagine a better place to have done those things and i am grateful for the pumpkin patch and for my grandfather's legacy of love and hard work.

between general conference, quality time with the fam, and unlimited donuts, it was a pretty perfect weekend. if you're ever in new york in the fall, be sure to make it to the pumpkin patch!

washington weekend

i managed recently to find round trip bus fare to D.C. for $1 (hashtag boltbus VIP), so that meant another trip down to visit my friend emily. we had such a fun weekend. my first order of business was getting a sweet pork salad at cafe rio, but other delicious highlights included thomas sweet ice cream, baked and wired, &pizza, founding farmers (those beignets tho), and bluebuck pancakes at eastern market. my diet starts tomorrow.

i also checked out the library of congress, botanic garden, phillips collection, and hirshhorn museum. all of them are free and pretty great. i was excited at the hirshhorn to see quite a few works i learned about in my feminist art class, including the shirin neshat exhibit and barbara kruger installation. the photo above of the busts is actually "lick and lather" by janine antoni (1993-94), and i was so psyched to see it in person. they are self-portraits made of chocolate and soap and antoni actually licked the chocolate and washed the soap in the bath to wear away the features and comment on femininity and physical appearance. so amazing. i love them.

we went to see everest and pawn sacrifice (i recommend both) and it made me miss when emily and i were roommates and all we did was watch movies together. also she lent me her copy of into thin air by jon krakauer because as soon as we got out of the everest movie i wanted to read it. it's amazing so far.

but my favorite things we did all weekend were definitely visiting the national zoo and riding bikes around at night. i am obsessed with the clouded leopard at the national zoo. it's the prettiest animal i've ever seen and SO CUTE. we rented bikes from the capital bikeshare and rode all around the monuments and the national mall. i hadn't ridden a bike in forever and it was the best. we rode during the day too but nighttime was amazing because the streets and sidewalks were so empty and quiet and the monuments are stunning all lit up. it was so much fun. new york is number one in my heart, but D.C., you are up there. be back soon.

book report

i mentioned in this post that i have a goal to read thirty books this year. i'm now on book number 23 so i'm feeling pretty good, especially considering last year i basically read nothing that wasn't a textbook (if you're in school and feel like you'll never have a life again, i want you to know it gets better). the last two books i read were why not me? by mindy kaling and all the light we cannot see by anthony doerr, and i loved them both so much that i had to post about them here (even though i already posted these reviews on goodreads) (which you should seriously join if you haven't already).

why not me? came out today and i bought it and read it immediately. i am a devoted mindy kaling fan and i had been incredibly excited about this book since hearing mindy speak about it at bookcon. i love mindy and i loved her fresh, funny take on topics like fame, television, work, friendship, and dating. why not me? felt, in many ways, more personal and mature than is everyone hanging out without me?, and it was exciting and entertaining to be privy to the behind-the-scenes realities of mindy's career, relationships, and life in hollywood. i also found many of the essays inspiring, particularly the titular one, which discusses confidence and hard work, and "unlikely leading lady," in which mindy shares her refreshing opinions on body image and beauty standards. my favorite thing about this book was either that in reading it i felt like mindy's friend and confidante or the approximately two pop culture references included per page. she gets me.

all the light we cannot see won last year's pulitzer prize for fiction and was a new york times best book of the year, so it obviously needs no endorsement from me. but if you thought that was going to stop me from telling you about it, you were wrong! it follows a blind french girl and orphaned german boy as their lives intersect in the chaos of world war II. i couldn't wait to finish and yet i never wanted it to end. the characters are lovely, the story poignant, and the writing masterful. it's beautiful and heartbreaking, and most of all, an incredible, luminous feat of storytelling. i can't recommend it highly enough.

my other favorite reads this year include the martian, spinster, men explain things to me, one more thing, unbroken, and wild. if you have any suggestions about what i should read next, please send them my way!

every night with us is like a dream

this past weekend i saw taylor swift in concert when she brought the 1989 world tour to metlife stadium (as you probably saw if you follow me on instagram #sorry #notsorry). it was my first time seeing her in concert and it was a dream. i've been a huge fan of taylor's for nine years now. nine! each of her albums has been the soundtrack to a year of my life, and i have always related to her music in a way that i've never experienced with any other artist. i think this is why when she surprised us all by playing "you belong with me," i felt such a powerful wave of emotion and nostalgia that i started crying. i was kind of a hot mess, but they were happy tears.

the concert was incredible. taylor opened with "welcome to new york" and ended with "shake it off" and in between she sang the entire 1989 album plus some throwbacks ("love story" & "you belong with me") plus some twists on the classics (rock version of "we are never ever getting back together" & dramatic version of "i knew you were trouble" & medley of "enchanted" and "wildest dreams"). she also brought out all her supermodel friends and nick jonas aka my first love. they sang "jealous" together and i was jamming in absolute heaven. unless beyoncé makes an appearance at one of these shows, i don't think that can be topped.

here are my impressions: taylor is literally the cutest human. she is so talented and sweet and engaging with the audience. she has amazing stage presence and is an even better performer than i realized. also, homegirl is truly rocking the crop tops. she changed outfits at least ten times. she sounded great live and she danced and played guitar and piano. she was just generally killing it all around. it was so exciting to finally see her in person, and everyone there was clearly having the best time. all i can tell you is that even if you barely tolerate taylor swift (what is wrong with you), GO BUY A TICKET FOR THE 1989 TOUR RIGHT NOW AND IT WILL BE WORTH EVERY PENNY YOU SPEND. mad love for real.