My mom and I make a good team. We take turns taking the pictures and posing the models. I was able to take more of the pictures this time than usual which was really fun for me! I LOVE IT!
Seth and Jenn are really fun to work with because it is honestly CONSTANT laughter the ENTIRE time. Out of almost 300 pictures about 200 of them were goofy/laughing pictures but we did come out with some really great ones. While shooting them I have NEVER laughed that hard in my life. They are sure perfect for each other and have SO much fun together. It was the perfect way for my mom and I to get to know the two of them better as a couple.
Some background on Jenn. While in high school she swam, played softball, danced, cheered, etc. She started college early and went to school to be a personal trainer in Spokane, Washington (where she grew up). Her family then moved to Idaho where she worked at a Bakery and now she actually OWNS her OWN Bakery!!! (and she is only 21) Sweet huh! Star Bakery, look her up on facebook! She is so sweet, she doesn't stop smiling, she is genuine, hardworking, loving, funny, and perfect for my brother.
(If you want to see any of the images bigger just click on them and it will expand for you)
and now for the goofy/creeper/stalker/weird/hilarious/laughing pictures...
We did a second set of pictures but we had some difficulty getting the location/time/sun etc. to work out so we didn't get too many to choose from. Seth plays baseball at his college and Jenn grew up playing softball as the catcher. So naturally baseball pictures were in order.
How is it possible to feel like I am already running out of time this summer and it is only my 6th full day of vacation.. AH! It is going to end before I know it and I have so much i need to do!
So far this summer has been busy busy busy, 4 week vacation abroad (NYC, Paris, Milan, Vegas), weddings/receptions/showers almost every night, and sketching/engagement pictures/and hanging out/running errands with the fam during the day.
We'll start with Vegas. We went for Bain's dance competition and stayed at a beautiful hotel on Lake Las Vegas. Mom, Sy and I just relaxed in the room and by the pool for the 4 days while Bainy danced her little heart out. She is getting SO dang good. I LOVE IT! I love watching her. My granny and grandpa came to watch so it was fun to see them! It was a nice little break. BUT it is WAY too HOT in Vegas!!!!
The Hotel
Bain Dancing
Bain and her team winning
My fierce and famous, soon to be roommate Nicole Knudson
Bain and Mom, Bain with her dance teachers
The night I got back I was able to see my lovely Katie! and the day after was the 2nd of MANY receptions I am attending this summer. Brady Hansen and Aly Tucker.
Saturday was one of my best friends 20th birthday! MEGAN MILLER! YAY. My camera battery died so I have no pictures, but it was a blast! We had cake and ice cream with a few friends then went and rode the moonlight lift ride at Sundance. It was BEAUTIFUL! I was then introduced to Glee, which was really good! I am so happy I was home to celebrate with her.
Megan and I (Picture taken at Christmas break)
Sunday we took Seth and Jenn's engagement photos which will require its own post.
Monday my family went out to lunch/dinner at Red Lobster! Mmmm... my favorite. Then I went up to AF where there are vendors who sell every Monday at the 'Free Concerts in the Park' I went to see if I would benefit from selling my stuff there. AND I think I am going to. I'll post more info later but I will be selling from 5-7 every Monday in AF for those who are interested in 'aBree Original.'
Tuesday was Jenn's Bridal Shower at our Aunt Ann's house up in Salt Lake. It was really nice to see relatives that we don't get to see very often. It was also great for our extended family to get to know Jenn better. Then we took some more engagement pictures of Seth and Jenn.
I started working out. YAY. I am sore though. I run or bike with Dad, Mom and Bain 1.25 miles (the goal is everyday, we'll see..) and I do my muscle building ab/thighs/bum/arm work out everyday with Bain. Jenn and Seth invited Bain and I to do a fun cardio/dance workout with them so the 4 of us burned calories together which was real fun. Working out makes me feel SO much better!!! And I'll have you know I haven't had an actual 'sweet' since Saturday (birthday ice cream cake) yesterday I had a little Trifle too and Jenn's shower. I am doing so good! I feel great!
Those are the main details, in between is all busy, everyday is full. I haven't had time to see barely any of my friends yet, I am sorry!!! I really don't know where the time goes.
6 am. (Paris time) meet in lobby for bus ride to Milan airport.
1 Hour ride to airport
1.5 Hour flight Milan to Paris
7 Hour flight Paris to NYC
4 Hour Lay-over in NYC
4 Hour flight home NYC to Utah
(lots of waiting and lines in between)
11 pm. (Utah time) Arrive home, FINALLY.
I spent 25 hours riding/sitting/waiting/flying.... miserable, considering airplanes are THE MOST UNCOMFORTABLE things in the WORLD. BUT I was smiling and happy the whole time, SO glad to be home with my family! A great 2 month break. So looking forward to it.
A few updates..
When I got home my mom told me that I am leaving again Sunday morning 1 a.m. to head to Vegas for 5 days for my sisters dance competition. 5 days of nothing but laying in the sun and relaxing, so excited! Not too excited about hotel beds and living out of a suitcase again.
The BEST thing about being home was my bed. Oh how I love my bed. It is THE most comfortable place in the world, so soft and fluffy and big and amazing. But it is weird, I have been having the weirdest sleeping problems. Like this morning, I woke up at 5, wide awake, went to bed at midnight. I don't understand since I should be so TIRED. Same with the night before, I barely slept 8 hours... My body is so messed up. yikes.
My sister had her dance performance last night, she is INCREDIBLE. It made me miss dance so much. It was so fun to watch her dance, she is a beauty. I love her! I got to see all my lovely dear dance friends too which was so nice.
It is weird being here in Utah this time because my two besties from forever are BOTH gone this summer. Elder Taylor Wilkins and Talyn.... I don't like it.
My brothers poor face is looking much better, and the kid who punched him was charged with aggravated assault, and destruction of property.
My cousin Brenna who is my age is getting married today!!!!! YEAH so exciting, I love weddings! So today I am doing that, cleaning, un-packing, packing, running errands, WORKING OUT!!! (which I will be doing 2 times a day all summer so I can work off all my sweets), and so much more, my list goes on forever... All this and no time for a nap. Going on 5 hours of sleep and tonight I sleep in the car.... no more bed. But soon it will just be the sun and me, what a great relationship!
We started the day going to a fabric mill. We saw how designer fabrics were made, embroidered. The machines, the technology, the archives, everything. IT WAS INCREDIBLE. Fabric is something that is just there for me, I never think about the actually designing/producing side of the fabric. WOW. This mill is family owned and has been around for a 100 years. They do fabric for all major designers. It was a once in a million opportunity.
Our class then went out to lunch to this panini place where there were about 100 different types of panini's to choose from. BUT all the ingredients were in Italian. Basically we had NO idea what to order or what anything meant. Everything was delicious though. I ended up with a sausage type meat and spicy mustard. (The panini pictured was not mine, but this one photoed better than mine did) Yum. Bailey made some paper crane's, Baja was playing with them. That is what happens when creative people are starving and waiting for their food.
Then we went back to the yarn store and I bought the most BEAUTIFUL set of colors. It was my souvenir from Milan. I LOVE COLOR so so so MUCH. There was supposedly the BEST gelato place that we were referred to. It took us a while to find it but it was worth it. So many flavors, I couldn't choose, so I got a 3 scooper. Cheesecake, Lime, and PINEAPPLE (A.M.A.Z.I.N.G).
Our class was given some fabric as a present from them mill we visited so we picked numbers and were able to choose 4 different pieces of designer fabric to have. VERY nice of them to give us some of their material.
Heather was set on eating horse meat while she was in Europe. It is illegal in America, and not very well advertised even in Europe where it is legal, so she hadn't been successful in finding a restaurant until tonight. We went to this random part of town, past a castle and a beautiful green field, to this little, dark, tavern where on they menu they had cavalli. horse. It was placed in a meat sauce on spaghetti, I tried it, but I didn't order it for my whole dish. It is really sweet but it was fine. I feel pretty cool, not many can say they have had horse meat.
Naturally we made our way to GROM, for our final goodbye. I had a 3 scooper. Fiordilatte, another attempt at graham cracker, it was kind of graham crackery with a light hazelnut flavor, delicious, and Melon on top. Okay guys, don't judge.... I happily consumed 21 scoops of gelato in one week.... awesome, I know!
After, Heather was trying to teach Bailey how to embroider.......on my bed sheet!... haha only FIT students....
It was a perfect end to my trip!
P.S.
Stephanie Meyer books are ALL over Milan, Go Stephanie. She has really made a name for herself and has done an amazing job with her career.
Nudity is allowed and accepted. There are billboards everywhere with this one ad were there are just 5 people, a mix of girls and guys, nude from the waist up, with animal masks on. weird. And there are nude girl paintings everywhere... weird.
Guys dress GREAT. I saw salmon and lavender pants on guys, HOT!
Everything is so CHEAP. Minus travel (to and from Venice 45, and boat ride 25) it has only been 60 euro’s in 5 days. And I thought I was thrifty in Paris.
One thing I learned most on this trip is to ENJOY THE MOMENT. So many people spend their life complaining and it just ruins everyone's mood. Negative energy should be kept to yourself! Notice the little things, enjoy life and all it brings. Life is good. Embrace it!
We met as a class to discuss the lecture and to have my professor critique us. I was worried because I really don’t know how mine went, I didn’t have any notes and I didn’t know if I just ended up looking like a fool. My professor said if he gave an award I would get it, haha for being the most poised and handling the circumstance so well. He was seriously FLOORED that the guy would have said that to me. Oh man, we all had a good laugh. It went well though, I am happy. He said I was definitely the adult in the room. Basically this guy was a bit of a creeper, he was WAY too interested in the girls, and everyone noticed. My poor professor was sitting on one side of him and a girl from class on the other side… ya.. awkward, gross old man. Creeper.
Some of us in the group went back to the pizza place from the first day for lasagna. IT WAS AMAZING!! The workers there are a little… touchy. He kept grabbing our faces and pinching our cheeks… weird. Creeper #2. We tried to find this design museum, we were told to take the subway to this specific metro stop and it would only be 8 blocks away…… WRONG. We walked a good 45-60 mins. after we got off the subway. It was very nice out so I didn’t mind the walk. We stumbled across a gelateria, you know me… I had to get one. It was a cream with some sort of chocolate heaven mixed in. SO YUMMY. We continued walking and ran into the train station the runs right along the street we were trying to get to…. Hmmm… pretty sure the metro was a BAD idea. Oh well, so we get to the museum… CLOSED. Seriously. We were told by 2 people to go to this place, no one bothered to tell us it is closed… The sign only had specific things listed under mercoledi, which is Wednesday… Hmmm.. awesome. I am assuming it meant it was only open on Wednesdays… I don’t know.. basically it didn’t work out. Then we go back to the train, at this creepy deserted station and waited for about an hour for a train.. later we found out we were waiting by the wrong track. We had the right line, station, direction, etc… but, we were in the wrong place. FINALLY we made it home.
There was this gelato place I had wanted to try, I had it marked on my map but the street name was Via Giovan Battista Pergolesi and the map had a road called Giovan Battista, and a different intersecting road called Pergolesi… So I figured it was at the intersection.. nope. But we did find this random guy who wanted to help, he even gave Heather a ride. Haha.. ya. 3rd creeper. We kept walking along the road Pergolesi hoping it would come up and it finally did. The place is called La Bottega del Gelato. AND thank goodness because it was to die for good. SO SO SO many flavors. I could hardly pick. EVERYTHING was DELCIOUS!! I ended up with 3 flavors I haven’t seen anywhere else (they had a LOT LOT LOT of flavors) Kiwi-perfection, Peach-so GOOD, and Avocado-definitely a winner, so delicious and creamy and nice!! Mmm Mmmm mmmm! I am up to 15 scoops I think…. Haha oh goodness. Basically not much got accomplished today, yet I was out until 5:30. Haha, oh vacations. So nice!
We met at 830 to head to where the FIT in Milan is located for a lecture by the dean of design there. It was a cool architecture/engineer school and FIT Fashion Design just uses the campus for their small program.
The lecture was 3 hours… SO LONG. And no matter how hard I try, it is so hard to listen to English with a European accent. Wow, so much focus is required. It was not very exciting, or interesting, or really related to our class… but it was fine. It was one of those days where you are just sitting there so uncomfortably, fidgeting around, and just praying the time will go fast and that you won’t fall asleep.
We had an hour lunch break so we stopped in the first restaurant we saw, it happened to have GREAT food, I had a lovely Panini but the service was not so good. There were 9 of us who all ordered from the same table, together, the 2 with the past dishes got theirs in literally 2 minutes. 15 minutes later 5 get their Panini’s, all of them are headed back to class because class is starting and Chris and I haven’t even received our food yet. Finally we scarfed our meal, thank goodness it was delicious, and ran back to class.
For the next 3 hours we had 16 class presentations of each of our design ideas for our collection. (The reason we had this lecture was so we could present to the dean guy who gave it and he could give us pointers and critique us.) Everyone’s ideas are so great and so unique and different. It was a lot of fun hearing what everyone was planning on doing. I had put together a page with my main customer on it and was just planning on winging it. I know my customer, I know my objective, I know my style, I figured it would be fine. Everyone else wrote speeches and power points… I was kind of getting nervous but tried not to let it get to me, I just went up and talked. It went… interestingly. Haha, so I start describing my market (P.S. only my teacher and Heather know I am LDS at this point) (P.P.S. having to describe our market and modesty to people in a professional design setting is actually very challenging…) So I just go on about how my customer is very unique, must be higher neckline, sleeves, etc. and how there is a huge market in Utah, epscially at BYU. Blah blah blah, how we get married younger etc. and as I am probably 30 seconds into this speech the guy basically yells, in the middle of me speaking “so are you Mormon”… um, “yes I am…”.. [continue with speech] talk about how I feel there is a need for sophisticated dresses designed modestly, because I feel there are modest dresses but most of them are designed for a very young bride and I feel even if they are a young age, they may want to be more sophisticated. For instance, I have not seen one modest wedding dress I would ever buy and wear. Many have to have their dress custom made or built up which adds a lot to the price and I am hoping to bring a fresh, sophisticated, dress (that doesn’t look like a tacky white prom dress-no offense) to the market at a price range that is affordable for college student brides. Blah blah blah. Here comes my critique “so, since your Mormon do you practice polygamy?”… haha awkward smile (since that has so much to do with design...oh wait apparently it does).. “no, we don’t…” continuing with the awkward wide eyed smile, looking around at everyone with the same shocked look on their face, my professor was so embarrassed that this guy would ask that (this man was definitely in his higher 50s) haha oh wow. Then, here it comes… not exact quotes, I couldn’t remember all his detail, but… the idea is the same “yea, cause ya know, you could recycle the dress to the next wife, and the next and so on, ya know, share….reusable, modest, wedding dresses”… hahahaha????? What? Are you serious. More awkward smiling… everyone was dying. He finally finished, good thing I could barely understand him anyway. SO FUNNY!!! HAHAHA. Oh goodness.
This is my design inspiration board. (pictures borrowed from wedding blogs; greenweddingshoes and Rebekah Westover)
So after everyone came up to me telling me what a great idea I had, and that it was a really good market. People were talking about the Jewish, Muslim, and a couple other cultures that would also be interested in what I have to offer. I was surprised, I didn’t realize everyone would love it so much and think it would really work. How sweet would that be??? I never thought I would or ever wanted to do my own wedding dress line and design forever but… I could. aBree Original wedding dresses, not just custom made, but my own shop, my own real dresses in boutiques all over the world. It actually seems like it could work too! It got me really excited.
We got gelato on the way home, double scoop, fiordilatte (the cream cheese one) and what I thought was graham cracker… nope, wrong, it was some other something with dried fruit type stuff in it, not what I was expecting but still good. MMMmmm GROM. Delicious. Thank you. Scoop #10
Happy Hour for dinner. Basically restaurants in the city have happy hour every night where you pay a flat rate of 7 euro for a drink and the buffet is free. It is filled with so much food, fruit, everything delicious and it is so cheap. Sadly for me my drink was only really 2 euro because it was non-alcoholic… so I guess it is a better deal for everyone else, but still good, good company, good time. Our class is really so much fun; it has been so good getting to know everyone! We all get along well.
Venice=my new favorite city of all time. Love. Beauty. Happiness. Breathtaking. Amazing.
About 10 of us in our group (out of 16) went to Venice. We took a 30 Euro, 2.5 hour train ride to the most beautiful city on earth.
When we got there we pretty much just headed out and got lost in the maze of beautiful buildings. We finally stumbled across a restaurant, gnocchi, for 7 euro. Lovely. I love Italy. It was good, but still Le Zie in NYC still takes the prize for best Italian food. We continued on our journey to the center of the city, St. Mark’s basilica. Honestly the journey was the best part; just walking around with the inspirational, picture perfect colors and buildings was what made Venice so amazing. The atmosphere is just so incredible.
We all pitched in for a gondola ride, it was so wonderful; very peaceful, gorgeous, inspirational, romantic, and absolutely lovely. Let me tell you, there are some pretty good looking gondola drivers too! Think, Italian Job, handsome Rob, YES! He wasn’t my driver, but I sure saw him and I wished he was mine. My best friend even came along for the ride. Perfect.
We were running short on time and had to run to catch the boat metro ride which lamely cost 6,50, but we made it just in time for the 14 euro train ride back to Milan, which is all we wanted! The train ride was longer but we saved 16 Euros, I am ALL for saving my money. The train ride was nice, breezy, and enjoyable. It ended up being a 4 hour train ride in the end, which wasn’t so great, but it was well worth it. I think today was one of the best days here on this trip. I LOVE VENICE!
P.S. naturally I got gelato. 1 scoop, 2 cones. Licorice on one, Vanilla with cherries on the other. Both good. I’ll stick to Farr’s black licorice ice cream though this one was a bit more bitter, it had the very distinct after taste. This tasted like legit licorice, Farr’s tastes like licorice caramel.
