Ice sculpting and Santa Clause!

So, Ben and Isaac and I decided to go check out the Riverwoods Mall this weekend. Partly we were there to see "Wreck-It Ralph," (which was an amazingly done movie in my opinion!) and partly because Peter Breinholdt was supposed to be singing there. Well, unfortunately we missed the singing. However, we DID run into something else that was rather amazing:

An ice sculpture!!

A life-size, fully carved ice sculpture!  I've only ever heard about these or seen them in the movies! Never have I seen such a big and beautiful one in real life before!  I couldn't get over how it just sat there, solidly, yet so slippery and wet to the touch. I had no idea they could sit out for so long and still maintain their beautiful shape! (Hmmm... maybe I will have some done for my wedding someday... wouldn't that be awesome?! Anyway, I just HAD to touch it and feel it's textures! It was so amazingly done!

Further along our walk through the Riverwoods, we ran into a few other ice sculptures as well: 

This bear was in front of the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory!

This cool Christmas Tree almost looks like a rocket ship!

Anyway, it was fun to be out and about, see Wreck-It Ralph, and spend some time with my friends. Oh and by the way, guess what else we saw:

 None other than the jolly old man himself!  Better start getting those letters to Santa ready for the mail!

Snowgirl Christmas Card

So my latest assignment in my Character Design class has been to design a Christmas card and place a character in some kind of setting. I'm not so sure how the setting part will work out (it doesn't have to be too complex, but can in fact be very simple), but here is my sketch for my little character I intend to use:

I've got her all colored up on photoshop already, but I'm not sure where I put the picture of that... so as soon as I find it I will add it too and update this post. However, it is still going to need some editing. My teacher mentioned that it looked more like a snowman than a girl and that maybe I should add some hair or something so you can tell what she/he/it is. That's a good point! I also need to stop reverting back to the anime faces I grew up trying to draw, as well as fix the funny blob on the back of her head that can be a little bit hard to read...(what is it?? It's supposed to be the ball... like on the end of Santa's pointy hat!)
Anyway, I'll update you a bit more when she is better, updated, and improved upon! Just thought I'd give you a sneak peak of the thumbnails. (Can I still call it a sneak peak, even if I'm no where near publishing it professionally? lol)

Mary Poppins!

I guess it's time to give a little update on my recent art stuff. Mostly I've just been doing things for the character design course I'm taking this semester. We've done a lot of very fun and helpful assignments so far including hand studies, head designs, silhouettes, stretch vs. squash, villians, hair, etc! It's probably been one of the most influential classes I've taken here at BYU and I fully accredit that to my amazing teacher Boston Madsen. She has only been graduated for a few years, but has been working for Avalanche part time as well as doing many other pieces of beautiful artwork of her own! I've fully been enjoying her class this semester and have been taking so much from it!  Do you remember the first assignment I posted back at the beginning of September?  Well, contrast that to my latest assignment: taking any live action movie character and designing her in our own character style. It was so amazing and fun to do this!  I chose to do Mary Poppins, and I am actually quite pleased with how the drawing turned out! Check it out!

 Isn't she cute?!  I decided to give her a more conventional way of flying. This way she can sit down and take a nap if she'd like, and also, now no one can see up her skirt as she floats down. In my imagination, the giant umbrella would shrink down to normal size the minute she set foot on land. If she can pull lamp shades out of a carpet bag and make toys go into their toyboxes by using magic (and not to mention fly) then why can't she have a magic umbrella that shrinks and expands when she needs it to? Now I've just got to figure out a way to color her and make her look realistic-like (in an illustrative-type way) I feel so proud and that my skills have certainly improved a lot over the last few weeks! I hope they continue to improve (especially since I'll be graduating soon and leaving all my professors and their helpful critiques behind.) :,(
Thank you, Boston, for all you've done to help me improve over the semester! The time you take to work with us individually has been so helpful and exactly what I've been needing. The time and effort you have put into making this class so great has been much appreciated!

Bananagrams!

So, my roommates Kallie is in love with the game bananagrams! If you know the rules of bananagrams, you'll know that it is much like scrabble, but you are each building your own set as fast as you can. Every person starts out with 14-21 tiles (depending on the number of players) and you leave the rest in the middle. Everytime you run out of tiles to use, you shout "peel" and every person must grab a new tile. You win if you are the first person to use up all your tiles after the pile in the middle has runs out! Kallie loves this game, because she can make all sorts of fun big words and swap out as many tiles as she needs to get the cleverest ideas to put down. On this particular day we had two special people join us!: Our buddy Cristian, and our roommate Amanda!

 So, confession, I also happen to love word games like scrabble and bananagrams! Every time I complete a puzzle, I can't help but feel so proud! (and of course... I HAVE to take a picture!!!) Sooooo, here are my clever word combinations!

Then we decided to get really creative and only make puzzles using words for the upcoming holiday: Halloween! Here is my clever Halloween bananagrams attempt:

I'm not gonna lie... I think I did quite well!

Happy Halloween!

Special visit from my dad!

This week I had such a special chance to spend some time with my dad!  He was here for a few days for a business trip (which never happens!) and so, being the great daddy that He is, He met up with me and his sister, my aunt, Diane, and bought us both lunch AND dinner! It was so nice to spend some time with him here in my own town and to just have him to myself for a change. It so rarely happens that I get to spend any time with my dad since he lives so far away, so this was such a special treat for me! We went to Kneaders for a delicious lunch in the new City Creek Mall and spent some time wandering and seeing what shops they had. We only went into one store: Bose. He he. We went all the way up to where he'd be staying to get him his hotel and then took some time to drive around and visit the old places we knew when we lived in the area. It was fun just to chat about life. He gave me some good financial advice and listened as I vented my frustrations about not having a job when I graduate and not knowing where to go from here. He's a great Dad and is always willing to listen to these kinds of things and offer advice. Believe it or not, He even lets me talk about boys, lol. He's the kind of guy who just wants his kids to be happy, and I'm so thankful for that!

The best part of the day was when we met up again with Diane and Dad took us to dinner at The Roof on the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Diane and I are very unaccustomed to being treated so well, so we were in awe of the entire thing.

Every seat has the best view of the Salt Lake City temple, and the all-you-can eat buffet was spectacular. I had never eaten so nicely in my life!

Better than the food or the location, however, was just getting to be with two people who have meant so much to me over the years: my aunt and my dad. They may never fully understand what an impact they've had on me throughout my life-my dad for being there and providing for me well beyond the necessary and my aunt for her every Sunday dinner and for caring for me and being a friend and treating me as if I were her own daughter. (Not to mention being my most faithful writer while I was on my mission). She is a stellar individual and hardly has any time for herself. It is a miracle to me that she does so much and manages so well with so little.

 It was a special evening indeed, down to the beautiful live piano music being played the whole time. We arrived at just the right time as well, because the sun was just casting its golden glow upon everything as we were seated.

Before our meal was through it had sunk deep behind the mountains in the distance and left only the beauteous aura of the temple just outside our window, shining in the darkness.

What a moment in time which I shall never forget! The feelings of peace on that rooftop, the ambiance, the food, and my family. It was a night (and day) never to forget!

Family Night at the Cornmaze!

So as part of being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I get to participate in what we call Family Home Evening. It is one night set aside every week-usually Monday- for the family to get together and have a spiritual thought and spend some time doing some kind of fun activity together. As a student at Brigham Young University we still get to participate in "FHE" but with our roommates and other members of our apartment complexes. Every Monday our "family" still gets together for a spiritual message and a fun activity. This particular week our family decided to go to a local corn maze! It's such a fun way to get to know new people and build and strengthen friendships, as well as a way to establish a group of individuals on whom you can count for whatever social activity or need. Here is my FHE group sitting near a pumpkin patch at Cornbelly's Cornmaze. It was fun to navigate the maze and try to stick together, despite it being very dark! We got scared a couple of times as we paid our entrance fee by what appeared to be nothing but bushes and hay, but really was really a couple of employees dressed up to scare! It turned out to be a fun night as we also rode a few play tractors and on the swings and slid down the giant slides in burlap sacks and fed the goats and played in the pumpkin patch. Activities like this remind me that I am never too old to be a kid. :)

left to right: Grant, me, Nicki, Brian, Nate, Amanda, Emily and Dave volunteered to take the picture. :)

Roses are Red

This might be the silliest thing I've ever blogged about, but this week I was given a single rose. I've been given roses before and have seen them given to many different people, but this particular rose just seems to me to be the most beautiful and perfect rose I've ever seen! I couldn't help but take some pictures of it! (This is only a portion of what I took!) It truly is simply a gorgeous red rose!