My Very Own Princess

My sweet Sarah is five years old today! Happy Birthday! She is the child that, I feel, is most like me. Which means she is not only adorable, cute, and funny, she is also high-maintenance, a drama queen, and desperate for attention. Hmm…

So, here are five things I adore about my precious Sarah!

1. That endearing dimple every time she smiles. And she knows that when she flashes it she can get away with anything!

2. She has more make-up than I do, and that’s saying a lot! She also has a talent for applying it.

3. Her favorite show is What-Not-To-Wear. She loves to watch Carmindy apply makeup and tells me constantly that she’s going to be a makeup artist when she grows up. (I have no doubt of that.)

4. She hates to leave the house without a purse.

5. She loves to wear high-heeled shoes and wishes I would wear them more often.

Just to clarify she is turning 5.

Not 16…

FIVE!

Oh I love her.

Happy Birthday Sarah, thank you for everything you bring into our family, I couldn’t imagine life without you! I love you so much.

Piano For Sale

The digital piano did not sale at the garage sale. SO...that means it's still For Sale. I actually had two people interested that said they would come back later... and never came back. LUCKY FOR YOU!!

It is a 2004 Roland Digital Piano HP1.
and Piano bench
$800

I bought it brand new for $1,800, and it's in fantastic condition. It comes with the manual, (the manual does have a few scribble marks, but not the piano) And it comes with the bench. I will post a picture of it soon, I promise. I'm just too tired to do that right now. This is just the factory picture, but I'll post actually pictures so you can see what you are buying... but it looks just like this. Leave a comment, call me, or come on over if you are interested or know of anyone who is. I'll be advertising it on Monday, but I thought I would post it here first.

You may ask why I'm selling it. I love my piano, it is a beautiful fun instrument, but I'm not using it. In fact I've gone the past two months without even turning it on. My husband recently left one of his jobs in order to focus on his private practice. That's good... and bad. Well not bad, it just puts us in a financial crunch for a few months. And I realized that the piano was something that, although I love it, is not being used by anyone in the house.

Of course, once my husband's business is strong and he's bringing in several million a month I'll have him buy me a new one... (several million a month, at least!!)

Thanks for your interest and please let me know what questions you have!

Come check out the Garage Sale

IT'S AWESOME!!

We are selling a digital piano
some antiques
and lots of cool stuff

Massive Garage Sale

Ok, we’re not really selling garages, just stuff. But it should be massive! Like giant. Huge. Really really big!

It’s my friend’s, Sabine’s, moving sale. As in, she is moving and all her stuff must go. Anything not sold will be sent to the D.I., so you better buy it now before the D.I. marks it up 200% from the price we’ll be selling it at. There will also be a cool boutique and other fun stuff.

When: SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 20th
Time: 8:00-1:00
Where: My house. (I’m not going to post the address, because I’m assuming that if you read my blog you know where I live, and if you read my blog and don’t know where I live then email me, and I’ll send you my address! Or, if you don’t want to email me, then you can randomly drive around Orem looking for garage sales on Saturday morning. We hope to put up lots of posters.)

Come by, and buy lots of fun cool stuff. We’ll have music, a play gym in the backyard for kids to play on while you browse, and lots of water for drinking. In fact, the first 100 customers get ice with their water—FOR FREE!!!

Ya can’t beat that.

See you on Saturday.

The Perm

I think it turned out cute!

Welcome to SRA (Slow Readers of America)

Hello, my name is Alyson King and I am a slow reader.

It started in elementary school when books with no pictures and pages of words terrified me. It wasn’t until eighth grade that my love of reading truly blossomed, but by then it was too late. Although I loved books I would find myself taking each word slowly, forming the sentences and stories in my head, taking three times as long to read something as those around me. I’ve tried throughout the years, I’ve struggled to skim sentences, skip over parts that seemed boring or unnecessary, but I find myself carefully reading each word. Taking days even weeks to read a book that might take only a day or two for others.

I thought I could hide this embarrassment from the world. No one ever needed to know. But I’m here today because I want help…


…OK, let me get the heart of this post. I seriously feel awful that I am such a slow reader and that there are people in book club waiting for my copy of the book that I STILL have not finished. I’m just not a fast reader. I don’t know why. But it really causes problems in my life and I don’t know how to fix it.

For most people, reading slow might not seem like a problem, but the more I’m trying to become a published writer the more I’m learning that to be a writer you need to be a reader. A good reader. A fantastic, fast, amazing, reader. I LOVE reading, but I’m not a fast, in depth reader that can devour four to six books a week in my spare time. I don’t think I could read four book s a week even if I did nothing but read. I’m not fast enough. I think I once did three books in a month, and I felt so cool afterwards. (Oh and they were all YA books that you can gobble up in a day.)

It’s becoming discouraging only because I feel that the harder I try to be a reader the further behind I fall. For ever book I read I discover three more I want to read… I'm creating this group for others out there that may feel that don't read as fast as most people, but still love to read, SRA! (Slow Readers of America) So here is my public announcement so it’s clear for all. I….a..m……a…….s..l..o..w……..r..e..a..d..e..r……

Who do you want for president?

There has been a lot of talk, lots of passion, lots of issues. Should we vote for Obama? Should we vote for McCain? Well, a solution just presented itself. Finally, someone who knows what they're doing!!

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Movie clips

I had to join in the fun and post some of my favorite movie clips of all time. It was hard to pick only a few and I realized I might need to go watch some of these movies now and get them out of my system.

First up is Howl's Moving Castle. I ended up putting two scenes from this movie because I remembered just how desperately in love I am with Howl. What is it with two-dimensional anime men? I can't help but fall in love! This first scene is intensely romantic. It is one of the opening scenes in the movie and it can’t help but make you fall in love with Howl. Who wouldn’t want a wizard like this to save them?


My second clip is, by far, the funniest scene in Howl’s Moving Castle. Understand that it is about a girl who has been transformed by a witch and turned into an old woman. She is struggling to break her curse and has to deal with this selfish wizard that only cares about his own good looks. Love it!

OK, I had to include something from Grave of the Fireflies, because I think it is the saddest movie I have ever seen in my life. Since I couldn’t post the whole movie, and there isn’t just one scene over all the others that I love most, here is a montage of several scenes. The movie is about two young children trying to survive on their own in Japan during WWII.

Finally I had to include the ballroom scene from Labyrinth. Who knew that lipstick and eye shadow could look so incredible on a man? I’ve watched and diagnosed this scene far too many times; I find it interesting that it’s one of the few scenes in the movie that there are no puppets, only humans.

Thanks Kami for letting us do this. I hope others join the fun, I would love to see your favorite scenes!

Ghost Hunters ROCK!

I am a huge fan of the TV show Ghost Hunters. Sometimes I’ll watch it and it’s a little blah, as in nothing happens, but every now and then you get an episode that is just awesome and cool, and super scary! Last night’s episode was like that. Chills! What I like about them is that they go into a situation trying to prove that a place is NOT haunted, so it's very cool when there are things they can't explain.

Does anyone else out there love Ghost Hunters the way I do? I love the idea of ghosts, though I think if I ever really saw a ghost it would scare me to death!

Getting a perm

My oldest daughter wants to get a perm. I’m kind of excited by the idea, since her thin hair seems impossible to do in the mornings, since it’s so straight and, well, blah. She desperately needs some kind of style and refuses to let me cut it.

But I thought I would see if anyone out there had any feedback or information on perms for kids. When I was younger I got perms all the time, and they were always home perms. I’ve never had a professional salon perm. Has anyone? What’s the difference? I’m trying to decide if I want to perm her hair myself, or take her in and drop $50 to have someone else do it. I’ve never done it before, but I can’t imagine it would be too terribly difficult… (I say that nervously) Any feedback would be awesome, especially from all you amazing woman that do hair, what do you think, salon or home??