Two Words

If I had my way, this little wannabe Zooey Deschanel would be packing her wannabe scenester bags tomorrow.

My fans will like it? Seriously, Megan? You're done.

Hopefully Scott and Anoop will round out the bottom three, but I bet little Matt Giraud will take Scott's place.


Whatever.


My real beef is with this one.Usage of the word "artistry" in your critiques does not legitimize you.
Everyone has an excuse for rambling incoherent pointless critiques but you.

Paula's high (and lookin mighty haggard)
Randy is a placeholder
and Simon is hilarious


I vote you off.

Fifty Dollars later

Due to circumstances that were out of my control,

AHEM
I was forced out of my apt and ended up at Target on Friday night...by myself.

Commence pity party.....now.

Thank you for the tears.

And we all know what Target is. It is a black hole of crap you probably don't need.

Tinkerbell air freshener? Why but of course.
Dora the Explorer backpack? Yup.
Tetherball set? Perfect.

*****

Also, if you were wondering where all of the Provo engagers are on a Friday night, look no further than the bridal registry at Target.
I saw no less than 10 couples...most of the girls came straight from prom and the boys right off the plane from Chile/(enter your choice of South American mission field here)....am I sounding bitter? I think I'm starting to sound bitter.

I overheard one darling conversation of a potential groom-to-be with his bestie about some nerd video game that they were planning to play "ALL NIGHT, MAN." They made killer plans to meet at Beto's and then they were gonna play until they "TOTALLY DOMINATED."
From the next aisle, I said OUT LOUD..."Run girl, just run."


As you can see, only essential items were purchased.

Oh, and our carpet is drying quite nicely, thank you.

Ten out of Tenn

The Ten out of Tenn tour is coming to SLC at Kilby Court next Wednesday.
I'm going.
You should too.

What is it, you ask?

Ten amazing artists out of Nashville..coming to UTAH, PEOPLE.
You need to take advantage.

ANDY DAVIS*JEREMY LISTER*BUTTERFLY BOUCHER*
KS RHOADS*ERIN McCARLEY*
TYLER JAMES*MATTHEW PERRYMAN JONES*TRENT DABBS*
GRIFFIN HOUSE*KATIE HERZIG

all of them...for 20 bucks.

listen to a few of my favorites, andy davis and tyler james.

Couldja do me a favor?

Last week, as I was microwaving my vending machined/hardened/somewhat frosty bagel at work, I had an incredibly awkward encounter with your standard nerd zoobie. He will be referred to as NZ from here on out.

NZ was hovering around the break table with his tupperware of (mom made?) lasagna. I noticed he was getting a little ancy around second 4 of my 30 second reservation with the microwave.

So, instead of waiting for 26 more seconds like a normal person, NZ hands his lasagna to me and says "Couldja put this in there for 2:20 when you're done?"....and then ran off down the hallway.

I'm not kidding.

I'd never seen NZ before. He didn't know my name, if I was a serial lasagna stealer, if I was wielding cyanide in my pocket waiting for an opportunity for usage, or if I cared in the least about the temperature of the lasagna he was about to eat.

HE GAVE HIS LUNCH TO A STRANGER AND TRUSTED THAT I WOULD MICROWAVE IT TO HIS SPECIFICATIONS.

You have no idea the temptation of microwaving it for 7 seconds and leaving just to defy his orders...or better yet to take 3/4 for myself just to teach this ZOOB a lesson.

But the freaking lasagna got its 2 minutes and 20 seconds. And I got another classic story to add to my BYU dossier.

Announcing

My fetus niece/nephew...Coming August of '09 or '10..we're not sure yet.
I can commence my hoarding of baby clothes as soon as this fetus decides to let us know what's what.
Thanks modern science/the natural way humans develop. Why can't we figure out the sex at a month?

In order to dispel any doubt....(you know us Nielsons and our fake pregnancies?) here's Carly, her belly, and a crib.
It's highly unlikely that they would have gone to all of the trouble if there wasn't a fetus in there.


And here we are last month making the obligatory fetus treat bags (complete with Yo Gabba Gabba valentines) for all of Daniel and Carly's friends that were still in the dark about the fetus's existence.

Man, when this fetus sees how crafty its mom and favorite aunt (see how I slipped that in there) are, it will be so grateful.

I, for one, will be grateful when Nielson fetus #1 is no longer a fetus or an it.

******
You should probably read the mother and father's official fetus announcement here.

It rivals any "I'm Pregnant!!!!" or "Bun in the Oven" or "Guess what happened on the honeymoon?!!!" blog headlines that tend to make the rounds.

Guaranteed Obesity

This recipe seemed appropriate to commemorate the first day of Spring...especially because Utah is actually complying this year (thanks fickle weather gods)

I'm obsessed with this blog, but I forewarn you, you WILL become fatter just by reading it.
I'm down.

Without further ado, I give you frozen lemonade pie.

Looks refreshing, huh?
I look forward to enjoying this in a sundress by a pool with a diet coke in hand.
But lets be honest, most of my dreams include a diet coke.

See the recipe here. So easy!

AI Elimination

Yes, Alexis (or Allison, according to awkward Randy) got voted off.

Moving on to the important issues.

I'm going to circulate two important petitions.

The first involves Carrie Underwood never pinning up her extensions again to reveal a helmet of blonde covered in an atrocity of black flora.
The second is much more grave in subject. It involves the absolute BANISHMENT of all future lip-synched, awkwardly choreographed, cheese ball group performances at the beginning of elimination nights. Do something productive with this time...invite Joel McHale on for a weekly roasting of Seacrest....It would spice things up a bit and wouldn't leave me wincing in discomfort.

Confessions of the Bitter

Disclaimer: If you read this and only see it as a tirade of a bitter single girl, go for it, at least you're reading my blog. Also, most of these experiences have occurred with strangers from class or acquaintances...if you're married and my friend, I'm not berating you.
I love the marrieds here at the BaYoU. I really do. And the engagers (technical term).
My issues with them begin with their assumption that the attachment of fiance to their name moves them to some magical upper echelon of society that I can only aspire to get to.

The fact of the matter is, that ring from Jared's only signifies that you are in love and said lover put a ring on your finger (even though said lover was your gf/bf two weeks ago and a complete stranger a month ago..but I digress, you cute little cougars)
For that, I am extremely happy for you. And that can be said without a single drop of my usual sarcasm.

Unfortunately, after the conversation ebbs and flows its way through the fact that you do, indeed, have a ring on your perfectly manicured left hand, and the fact that your mom wanted a simple get together with friends, but you want three feet high arrangements of ranunculas and daffodils..."I WANT RANUNCULAS. THERE WILL BE NO CELEBRATION OF MY LOVE WITHOUT THEM.".....it eventually ALWAYS turns to the following, directed at yours truly.

"SO, are you dating anyone?"

WITHOUT FAIL.

AM I RIGHT OR AM I RIGHT?

This is usually followed by an artificial offer to set me up with "Ben's AMAZING companion from Brazil" or "Kent's GORGEOUS cousin who just broke up with his 18-year-old gf because she just wasn't ready to settle down and all she wanted to do was make out at Squaw Peak."

Thanks, but no thanks.
I assure you, I do not need to be taken on as your charity case.
The fact that you have a ring on your finger and I do not does not create an elephant in the room that you need to address. I like hearing about your wedding.

The fact is, I'm happy.
And that is not just a daily affirmation.
I love my friends, I love my freedom, I love the fact that I do not feel bad about spending entirely too much on clothes.
No, I don't want to grow into an old shrew of a woman with a menagerie of basset hounds.
But, since when was 22 a shrew?
I'm fine.
Thanks for the concern you cute little marrieds and engagers...but Ben's companion is probably a frosted-tipped, summer sales tool anyway.

AI Top 11

Favorites from last night:
Anoop and Matt. These two have been underrated thus far.


As for this little wannabe goth drag queen: Three words
Trying.Too.Hard.
Adding the sitar to your arrangement of a Johnny Cash classic doesn't give you street cred, bud. It just adds to your ridiculous persona.
Also of note, in looking for a pic of precious Lambert, I discovered that he most definitely likes men...so let the rumor mill stop milling.
Take my word for it, no need to go search for yourselves.
He also played Joshua in a touring production of "The Ten Commandments."
Seriously..I can't make this stuff up people.

Unless he has some freakish fan base that I am unaware of, I'll put money on this guy going home.
Sorry, Sarver.

You'll notice no mention of the girls. This is on purpose. They bore me.

Brooklyn Bride

Go watch the video from this wedding immediately. It is absolutely gorgeous.
I'm going to start saving my pennies so that I'll have the $5,000 to have one of my own from these guys one day.

See the video here.

Boutique Crawl

We did a little boutique crawl on Saturday-the weather was unbelievable.

However, the only one we deemed worth returning to was Hip and Humble in the 9th and 9th area of SLC.


The rest of the boutiques were filled with snotty employees, $150 cotton dresses, and NO GOOD SALES...our sole purpose in our voyage.

Hip & Humble had a 60% off rack to welcome us and an offering of diet cokes to keep us there.

Read what Your Heart Out says about it here.
Read about the 9th and 9th area here.

And after that...drive around and look at all of the fabulous houses..then up the street to Sugarhouse...and over to East High...and say hi to Zac and Vanessa.

Boycott

I hesitate to write about something so

.stupid.

.poorly executed.

.annoying.

.pointless.

and

.downright offensive.

but the sheer infiltration of this into my life forces me to bring the issue up.





THE OLD NAVY MANNEQUINS.
Yup,
there they are.

We have the ad firm of Crispin, Porter + Bogusky to thank for this obnoxious ad campaign.
They just sound shady.

Those commercials will be the death of me. MANNEQUINS PROPOSING TO MANNEQUINS?!!!! ..and then the finger falls off with the ring? WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?


******
I can't handle it. Can you be offended by the sheer stupidity of an ad campaign? I propose that this is worse than nekkid Abercrombie and Fitch models. At least A&F didn't shell out the big bucks to a firm just to tell them to disrobe their models to up their sales.

Stop Old Navy, just cut your losses, and move on to the summer ad campaign SANS talking mannequins.

Scientific Sonic

I responded to my call to Sonic mecca a few too many times last week. You'll be relieved to know it was all for the love of science...ish.

It all started innocently with Kaley ordering a vanilla cone on day one.
The thing was huge..an epic stack of ice cream swirls, if you will.
My large diet coke (easy cherry) was looking pretty lame by that point.
The only solution was to make a return to stall 3, on the far side (everyone knows that the near side of ANY Sonic is where the lameos park) the following day...for research purposes.

Day 2: I ordered my cone...and they brought me out a sorry excuse for ice cream. I was so offended by the small stature that I actually think I grimaced at our delivery boy.
The only solution was to return the following day. I had to know what the ice cream stature norm was.

Day 3: Somewhere in the middle. Not huge, but not offensively small. Then again, how could we know that THIS wasn't the fluke. Had to return.

Day 4: Medium stature. With that, we concluded our experiment. The norm is, in fact, somewhere in the middle.

******

As pathetic as this may sound, I just saved you from having to perform the same experiment. Don't pity me, thank me.
Oh, and they're under 200 cals a piece, so my thighs aren't even notably larger.

Is it just me...

...or do you suspect that Ryan is hooking up with all of the ousted 16-year-olds on Idol, too?

I didn't find his whispering in her ear or this creepy face to be genuinely sorry for her. It was more of a "fresh meat" sorta feeling.

Is that slander?
Not if some teenage girl is willing to hook up with the little elvin creature.
More power to ya Ryan, get em wherever you can.

Lazy Dazy

KK and I had a lazy afternoon yesterday filled with old shopping, new shopping, and a heaping portion of sweet potato fries and quesadillas.
What can I say, I'm quite the health nut.

Coincidentally, the only thing I purchased were the foods and copious amounts of DC.
Here's to 80 ounces of nectar preventing future addiction headaches and the glorious sunshine that gets me out of my winter hibernation!
Utah and I have been particularly friendly lately.

JBT

Do yourself a favor and download "Better than" by John Butler Trio.


Best pick-me-up I've found.
And it will forever remind me of Whitnugget.

This Young House

I found This Young House somewhere in the blogging world a while ago and have become completely obsessed ever since.
This couple (both 27) are DIY geniuses who flipped their entire house by themselves.

Before:After:


Instead of listing and linking every little thing that you need to see on their site, just go here and look at everything...their wedding, the entire house tour..etc etc.

This is what I'm wearing

"Courtney, did you take a Myspace mirror picture to show what you're wearing?"
Why, yes, I did, thanks for noticing.

At least it's better than this one....

What a darling face.
I love basics that I can rotate every other day...

cardigan:splendid, flats:old navy, jeans: 7s

******

Three things i've learned in the past 24 hours:
1. I went all day yesterday thinking it was Thursday but working on my Wednesday schedule. I checked my phone every hour yesterday to confirm the correct order of my days. Yesterday was, indeed, Wednesday. Today was Thursday.

2. Do not take your electronic toothbrush out of your mouth while it is on and in the process of spinning. You may or may not get toothpaste in your eye at 7 in the morning.

3. Do not let your friends convince you that purchasing 72 pieces of Kraft singles at Sam's will be more cost effective than constantly buying grilled cheeses at Sonic. Especially when you won't even be in your current home for the next 72 days. Accordingly, I will be hosting a grilled cheese party in the next month.

Mecca

I have a recent obsession with Darcy Miller's "The Bride's Guide".
She is the wedding goddess over at Martha Stewart weddings.

She recently posted pictures of the prop closet that they use for all of Martha's magazines.
Catering mecca. My mom would die over those cake plates. I would bake a color-coordinated cake every day just to display all of them. And, subsequently become morbidly obese.

THE DINNER PARTIES I could throw. Of course, this is all contingent on getting out of my cramped college apt. with a dinner table from 1985 and four mismatched chairs...no abundance of Martha china and champagne flutes will mask a bad venue.

But I digress...and dream a little Martha prop closet dream.

Whoopsie Poo

I tried to resist blogging about ole' douchebag, but according to Chris Harrison, we witnessed an HISTORIC NIGHT on Monday (Was the after the rose special part 2 considered historic, as well?), and I am bound by blog contract to write about all historic events.

Ain't no thing girls, he just pulled the switcheroo. Maybe he got you mixed up, you do look AWFULLY similar.

In my humble opinion, that was just the tip of the proverbial scripted reality TV melodrama iceberg though. The best moment of TV came right about here....
Now Jason, I hate to make light of your gripping tale of love won..err lost..BUT wait! won again..but this moment of hurling yourself over the balcony, crying to the reality TV show gods.."WHY MUST I CHOOSE?" was just TOO GOOD. No seriously, Joel McHale should send you a personal note thanking you for the endless number of times that this clip will be interjected into The Soup in the coming year.

And how about that poor kid of his? Ty, I don't want to put you through any more, so I won't introduce you to my fake TV girlfriends until there are only two left. So, here's your new mommy..cue jumping into pool together in formal wear to signify start of new family. BUT wait, daddy got annoyed..so HERE is your new mommy...oh and I'm going on a press tour for three months.

I was really holding my breath that Molly would announce that she was prego...with Jason's brother or something equally soap operaish on the After the after the after the final rose special last night..but to no avail. It was simply an hour of recapping the 7 hours of crap that we had watched the previous night.

Regardless, now women across the country have a new douchebag to hold up with the utmost douchebag esteem. Thanks, Mesnick.

This is what I'm wearing

And I thought I would only last a day.

Oh, and just for the record, I'm doing this in reference to Cupcakes and Cashmere. That girl is darling, but her shoes cost more than my entire wardrobe. This is more recessionista/co-ed/I sustain myself on bulk cereal friendly.

tunic:old navy, belt:j.crew via buffalo exchange, boots: wet seal (FOR SHAME!)

This is what I'm wearing

I thought about clothes of the day (C.O.D), garments of the day (G.O.D) and ensemble of the day (E.O.D), but all of them yielded awkward acronyms. Instead, here is your first installment of the critically acclaimed series, "this is what I'm wearing."

I would like to say that this will be a daily occurrence, but I doubt I'll post pictures when it looks like a rats been suckin' on my hair and my clothes are akin to wash rags.

Having said that, here is the poorly lit, poorly staged, poorly first post. I have to go write a term paper or maybe I would to take a picture where you can actually see what I'm wearing. This series is starting off with a bang! thanks, priorities.


I am a ridiculous human being. So much so that the camera opted to cut my whole head off.

jeans: banana republic, shoes: target, trench:old navy, scarf: madewell

Tay Tay Monday

Miss Swift's coat is on sale over at kate spade.....


...for $596.....useless.

Don't ask me how I just happened to know this...I even scare myself at my wealth of useless knowledge sometimes.


Also of note, look who's on the cover of Rolling Stone!

She was even cute in her awkward stage. Gracious.

While we're on the subject, go watch her new video for White Horse.
Stephen Colletti makes a cameo appearance. Yes, THAT Stephen Colletti...proving that scripted half-hour MTV reality shows CAN be a springboard to stardom. Hear that, Brody Jenner?...errr, hold that thought.