Austen Heroines

Lesley is:

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I am:

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Even in fiction, we are still sisters!!

Twas The Greatest Thanksgiving That Ever Was

This is the girls at my mom's birthday last week.  They just HAD to match :)

Lesley and myself with Grandpa.

This is me stirring the cranberry sauce... yummm!

Lesley is checking the temperature of the turkey and IT'S DONE!!

Mom and Lesley with the turkey right out of the oven.

Mom and Grandma getting the 23 lbs turkey out of the roaster.

The stunning dinner table.  We even got to use Mom's fine china and crystal goblets!  

The gorgeous center peice. Aaron kept trying to blow out the candles, from the opposite side of the table :) Boy can that boy blow!

Happy 30th Birthday Cameron!!  Lesley made him an ice cream cake.  

btw: the girls conspired together and both brought leotards so they could do "ballet" at Gi Gi's during dinner.  It was kind of shocking to see them come into the dinning room while we were still eating in their outfits.  So funny!!!

Lesley cutting Cam's ice cream cake with cream cheese frosting.

Steve and a waking Aaron.  He just is not him self until about 20 minutes after he wakes up from his nap.  

I was laughing so hard in this photo.  Haley came up to us with 2 cameras in her hand and I thought she was going to take a photo with both at the same time!!  

Aaron eating pumpkin pie.  Aren't his eye beyond blue?!

I think Mom looked so cute today so I had to sneak photos of her.  I feel SO lucky to have a such a great mom!

Haley, Grandma, and Lesley eating dessert.  Grandma makes the best pies ever- chocolate cream and pumpkin.

 
Aaron loves to wrestle (and sit on his cousins!).

Poor Jack!

Tag Team Back Again... Whoop There It Is

Thanks Jenny for the tag. I'm not quite sure what to do, so Lesley and I are just going to talk about our top 10 favorite fabulous things about/in our house along with photographic illustrations.

10. Andrea left her dried wedding bouquet in the house and so it sits on a shelf in Lesley's boudoir which really adds a needful feminine touch. We love it along side Lesley's art nouveau card collection.


9. Our fridge is the cutest thing ever and our neices love to dress-up Barbie and organize our magnents (well up to the point they can reach). We know our fridge is "old" but we choose the term "vintage"! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for letting us steal it out of your garage, I'm sure you don't miss it.


8. Lesley's yellow KitchenAid mixer and Alli's architectural photo collage makes its debut at number 8! Lesley cannot live without her mixer (I mean what 13 year-old gets a mixer for Christmas and was thrilled?!) One time, she left it in Rexburg and only realized an hour later that it was not in the car so she turned around and got it. CRAZY!! My mom got me the photo frame after my study abroad in England 3 years ago. Sadly, I am lazy and never put any photos in it even though I loved it and it sat in a cupboard for over a year. Then two years ago, Les took the initiative to photoshop, uploaded, and print some photos to put in it for my Christmas present. It was so sweet and touching that I burst into tears when she showed it to me. I had just finished my first semester in grad school and had felt so alone and frustrated and this present was something so special to me.


7. Cakeplate Cubby! As you all may know, Lesley enjoys baking and baking leads to cake plates and cake plates = pink. Below the delicious decorative accessory is one of my personal favorite photo. It is of the two of us in Kensington Gardens in London, England. I just adore this photo! We both look so cute.


6. Lesley's dresser/dressing table used to belong to our beloved cousin Sherry Burke. She loves that is simple and has subdued French accents which match her daybed perfectly even though they were not made to go with eachother. It is special to Lesley and she enjoys opening the drawers everyday.


TOP 5, ARE YOU EXCITED?!

5. The Chair of Wonder: This is a simple Ikea chair for $99 but with the help of a brilliant mother, is was transformed by a stunningly chic, couture slip-cover.


4. Lips that Touch Whiskey Will Never Touch Mine: We bought this sign in our last day in London on Portabello Road. We really like Art Nouveau art and this was just too adorable to not take home from study abroad. The color scheme fits perfectly with all of our stuff, like the coral hand towels and the daisies. It sprouses up our rather masculine guest bathroom and really shows our personality.


3. Mantel: My friend painted this and I bought it from her in a charity auction. Unconciously, our entire living room matches the color palette of this painting. It is a fun way to add a bit of contemporary art into our floral and damask couch and chairs and the dark Ikea wood. It really brought the room together. Also on the mantle is Boucher's Four Seasons. We got these at the Frick Collection in NYC. We want to frame them, but can't seem to find an awesome way to do it. Lesley loves her mercury glass candelsticks that she got herself for our birthday- she spoils herself (lol!!!)


2. The Glorious Atomic Mirror!! This is Alli's favorite thing in the house. She bought it at TI Imports on State Street last fall. It was an ugly brown color, but I painted it silver to leave the focus on the glass. Sadly, I did not hang it properly (who knew Command Strips wouldn't hold up a 10 lbs mirror?) and it fell, which bent some of the sprongs and broke one off completely. With some prayers and magic glue, you can hardly tell where it has been damaged. I LOVE this mirror; if the house was on fire, this would be the first thing I'd grab.


Drumroll please.....
1. Coffee Table as Exhibition Space. Lesley fell in love with this table in an Ikea showroom. It has a glass top and pull out drawers on the side; we like the idea of hiding all the US Weeklies when our Home Teachers (or mother) comes by to visit. Lesley and I have a silly but serious tradition when we go to museums. We study each painting carefully and pick out our favorites. Then we head to the museum shop (as there is ALWAYS a museum shop) and purchase the post cards of our favorites. One strick rule must be adhered to at all times, the postcard must be of a work that is in the museum and we have seen it that day. This is a small sample of our collection and it is so fun to display them in this mannor. We used to have it up on our walls in college but I prefer the coffee table- it treats them with respect even though we use the table to put our feet up :)


The only thing I don't like about the house is that it means Andrea is living in California :(

I really want to blog but I don't have much to say

I really want to blog but I don't have much to say so I'll just type randomly until something brilliant and deep comes out.
I have been working SO HARD these past few days on the completion of my master's thesis and I am fairly happy with the result. I had to cut so much of what I had previously written but I wanted to not get too tangental and keep it focused on my topic of regeneration and social message of Hepworth's carvings. I have not heard from my advisor yet but my AMAZING sister got feedback to me in under 24 hours. I greatly appreciate all feedback so if any of you want to read it, just let me know :) It is 50 plus pages and I still need to polish up my intro and conclusion. But my conclusion is more like an epliogue where I discuss where the theme of regeneration has gone along with incorporations of the artist's body since Hepworth (I'm thinking Ana Mendieta and her Silueta series).
What I am looking forward to the most this week is TWILIGHT!!! My dear cousin Jenny has put a big midnight viewing together and Haley, Lesley, and I are going on Thursday night/Friday morning. Thanks Jenny!!!!! I am excited to see it, but as it's own entity rather than a manifestion of the book. They are separate and distinct and that way I won't be dissapointed if/when the director takes artistic license.
Yesterday I went down to Provo to return a load of library books. I've had them for almost a year so I no more renewals. So I took the day to spend with my best friend Kendra. We kidnapped her to BYU campus and then went to lunch at Kneader's. Then we went to her house and watched Casino Royale and just hung out in our comfy clothes. It was so nice to not think for a day!
Lesley got this heartbreaking message on voicemail from our niece Ashley. Apparently she took her daddy's phone and called Auntie Lesley and when her Steve said from the background, "I think they are in Provo today." In her painfully cute voice she innocently questioned, "why?" in such a hurt tone, like we should always be at her beck and call. It's just for the past few Saturdays, she spends a lot of time with us, like she helped us rake leaves in the front yard last week and we usually do her hair and take her to Eat A Burger every Saturday. I LOVE that she LOVES us so much!!! There is no greater joy than having a child's love.
Happy Sunday Guys!! Have a great week.

The Guns Fell Silent

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. 90 Years ago in the eleventh month, on the eleventh day, in the eleventh hour, the guns fell slient and ended World War I. On BBC World News tonight, they did a special report on the three living veterans of that war who will play a significant part in the comemoration tomorrow in London. This old man who fought in the trenches talked about when he was wounded and held a dying man in his arms. In a frail voice he said "I held him in my arms for the last 30 seconds of his life" and I just started to cry. Maybe it is because I have been writing about the period between the wars and the begining of WWII in England for the past 15 hours, but I was so moved by these old men who sacrificed and survived the "war to end all wars." Every year since that day 90 years ago, there is two minutes of silence in remembrance of what happened on that day and I encourage all of you to take a little moment at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning to think about what our veterans have done for us.