I feel like a person now...

So i bought my first actual piece of furniture today.
Yes...an $8 end table from IKEA.
I have been dying to decorate my apartment the past few days...
I have even been losing sleep because i can't stop thinking of ideas, the sad thing is...all of those ideas involve money...and usually a sewing machine.
SO instead of going with my wonderfully amazing ideas, i had to settle with trying to use what i already had, and 10 dollars in hand at IKEA to try and come up with something.

And let me tell you...I never knew that buying a Table and trying to decorate would be the thing to make me feel like i'm actually a person. Ya know what i mean?...I feel like when i'm living in an apartment full of someone else's furniture i'm not an actual person. because nothing is MINE.... it's like I'm paying to live someone else's life with all of their stuff. haha.

but i am happy to say that i now own a cute little black end table that is sitting in the middle of our living room. with a little bouquet of flowers that savannah sent me the other day.
Then i stuck some pictures on the walls...moved a couch...made a collage...and well...there you have the best i could do with what I've got.

Now all i need is like $100 to actually make it look GOOD haha. I would love some throw pillows and curtains. but it looks a lot better than it did this morning so i won't complain TOO much. :)

Well...

I don't really have anything exciting to say...but i'm trying to keep up with the blogging these days so i'll just catch you up on the events of last week.

Noteworthy has been pretty crazy.
We're going to start recording this week for 0ur next cd.
We already recorded about half of the songs for the cd last year, and we are finishing up by doing some songs from this year.
I'm pretty excited! it's always funny when i'm trying to sell people cd's and they ask me which songs i sing and i have to tell them that i'm not actually ON the cd. But this time i'll be one the whole CD so i'm pretty excited :)

This week we went and sang for the BYU mens basketball game against San Diego. It was pretty fun. Although singing in a basketball arena is different than any other singing experience. You can't hear each other...you can't hear yourself...the sound takes a few seconds to come back to you so the timing is a little wonkey...haha. but it was fun anyway.

Then on thursday we went and sang at an even that was being held by Miss American Fork. It was an event to raise awareness/money for Domestic Violence. This was also a fun gig. Even though it wasn't a big audience. I think a lot of the time the smaller audiences are more fun than the big ones because you feel a more personal connection with each person.

Now we took a break from rehearsing today so that we can be ready for the full speed ahead weeks coming up. With recording and Semi-Finals coming up it's going to be pretty intense from here on out. Wish us luck! haha.

I think i'm going to head over to IKEA today with courtney and one of the Noteworthy girls. I have been having this problem where i can't study at all because i only focus on how disgustingly boring my apartment looks haha. I don't have any money, but i feel like just going to ikea will at least give me some idea of how to make it better. But if you would like to donate to my "katie can't focus with cinderblock walls" fun. then i would greatly appreciate it haha.

anyway i hope you all have a great day!

i'll put up some pictures from the basketball game/ Miss american fork thing. :)

Love Love

Noteworthy & COSMO!

Noteworthy and Miss American Fork

Noteworthy & another guy who performed...his name escapes me at the moment haha he was really good though! :)

I Got My Passport in the Mail today....

and i have a new goal in life.
To fill every page with a stamp.

First stop....Hong Kong :)

Song of Tonight.

"Stand Still, Look Pretty"

I want to paint my face
And pretend that I am someone else
Sometimes I get so fed up
I don't even want to look at myself

But people have problems that are worse than mine
I don't want you to think I'm complaining all the time
And I hate the way you look at me I have to say
I wish I could start over

[Chorus]
I am slowly falling apart
I wish you'd take a walk in my shoes for a start
You might think it's easy being me
You just stand still, look pretty

Sometimes I find myself shaking
In the middle of the night
And then it hits me and I can't
Even believe this is my life

But people have problems that are worse than mine
I don't want you to think I'm complaining all the time
And I wish that everyone would go and shut their mouths
I'm not strong enough to deal with it

I am slowly falling apart
I wish you'd take a walk in my shoes for a start
You might think it's easy being me
You just stand still, look pretty

Who do you want to be?

Well, I was woken up from my peaceful Sunday nap today when the home teachers stopped by. I will admit i wasn't too happy to be woken up because i DO love my Sunday naps, but in the end I got some good spiritual enlightenment so it was worth it.

While we were talking about the First Presidency Message from the Ensign this month, Courtney mentioned how she liked a line that said "in the search for your best selves...". We talked a little about how this life is really a time for us to become our best selves. It's not a time for us to get by by doing as little as we can to be good people...it's about trying our hardest to be the BEST we can be every day. It's about growing every day so that when this life is over we will have become the best possible person we can be.

One of my home teachers said that one day he decided to make a plan of who he wanted to be in the future. He made a 5, 10, and 20 year plan. And this wasn't just a plan of "I want to be married and have 5 kids and a good job"....It was more than that. It was who do i want to be spiritually? What can I do to become the best version of me in the next 5,10,and 20 years? Sure we all want to have a family and a steady career, but we can't exactly MAKE that happen...sometimes things don't work out the way we want them to. But when it comes to our spiritual, emotional, and mental selves...that we CAN make happen. That is something that we CAN do on our own (with the help of God of course).

It really made me think because any time i think about the future i admit I'm one who just makes the "i want to be married with 5 kids" goals. But I think we all need to spend a little more time making goals just just ourselves.

Because it's like my Marriage and Family professor always says "to become a better husband, wife, child, friend, etc.....we must first become better disciples of Jesus Christ" when you are being a disciple of Jesus Christ, those other things will come naturally. Your other relationships will be strengthened and it can make each of us a little happier.

I think I definitely need to take some time to be come a better version of ME. I think we all probably do. No matter where we are in life...there's always time to improve.

Realizations of the past few days...

1. I don't like snow. Like really...i don't. It looks all pretty in the movies and people look all cute in their little scarves and cute little jackets...but movies don't show you the reality...wet socks, make-up smearing all over your face, the bottoms of your pants all wet because you are too short and they drag on the ground, you walk up stairs and you're freezing but burning up at the same time. and driving in the snow is really not all that fun when you feel like you could die at any moment. I just...don't like snow.

2. Being in noteworthy is great. It's so fun to perform and to be able to be on TV and all that jazz, but I've come to realize that i have ZERO friends outside of noteworthy. It can get kind of depressing when you've been spending every moment with noteworthy...and then you have a little break and you realize you have no one else to hang out with so you sit at home in your apartment all weekend with nothing to do...except clean and do some laundry...not my idea of a fun weekend.

3. Has anyone ever been on the facebook site called overheard @ BYU. because i have become obsessed with it. It's a group where people post funny things they heard on campus. I spend approx. 30 minutes a day reading those. once you start you just can't stop.

4. A clean apartment is the happiest thing that could ever happen. When the apartment is clean it's okay if nothing else is great, because you have a clean place to live in. It's wonderful.

5. I don't know how to cook many things, but i LOVE to cook. One of my favorite things is being in the kitchen listening to music and cooking. If only i had money to buy more things to cook with. hah. I can only afford mac n cheese these days.

6. I like to have set plans for life...not in the crazy way where i have to know what I'm going to be doing every minute of every day, but i like to know where life is going. I like to see where the future is going to lead, and when something happens to change those plans in a big way...it throws me off for a few days.

7. I really need some new books to read...does anyone have some good ideas? or a book you could lend me. I'm having withdrawals from reading.

8. I have a wonderful mother and some amazing sisters. Without them i might literally go insane.

that is all.

<3

ICCA 2010 Quaterfinals

Wow. what an experience. Noteworthy went up to Oregon this weekend to compete in the International Competition of Collegiate A cappella (ICCA). The competition was in Eugene at the Hult Center. There were 8 groups competing and the top two would go to the Semi-finals at USC next month. We were pretty excited/nervous because this was going to be probably THE toughest quaterfinal that has ever happened, but we were mostly excited because we were going to be able to see our very good friends DIVISI (they are the all female group from University of Oregon).

We left for Oregon last friday. When we got to Oregon we all stayed in 3 different homes of People from the ward there. (Apparently EVERYONE wanted to house us and were fighting over us haha). The family me and Courtney stayed with was a nice family with 3 little girls. They were so cute and we had a nice little bed to sleep in which is always good :)

On saturday we woke up and had breakfast and then went to the Hult Center where we got to meet up with Divisi. It was really fun to see them and we were all glad that we weren't in crazy competition mode...there wasn't any tension between the two groups, and we all did each others' hair and just hung out since our dressing rooms were right next to each other.

We had a meeting with all of the groups to pick the order in which we would all go...We got number 5. not too bad...opening the second act! :)

Our sound check was at about 3:40...courtney and amy had warned us that we would not be able to hear each other when we were on stage and they weren't kidding. The monitors didn't really do ANYTHING haha. we couldn't hear each other, so it's good that we trust each other so much, because we still felt really good about it.

Then we had to wait until the show started at 7....and then keep waiting until about 8:30 when we would go on stage. I found a lucky penny on the floor of our dressing room just as we were about to go on...that seemed like a good sign. Before we went on we were in the hall SOOOO excited and SOOO nervous...even though we'd already been on national television we had never performed in front of a live audience this big (there were over 2,000 there i believe). But once we got out on stage we all did the best we could and we felt pretty good about our performance.

We were still pretty nervous, however, because like i said before this was a REALLY tough quarterfinal and we hadn't really been able to hear any of the other groups perform. But we tried not to stress too much because we knew we had done our best.

So the judges finished deliberating and we went out on stage for awards and such.

First award:
Best Solo:.......AMY WHITCOMB!!! (we went crazy...she definitely deserved that one!)
Best Vocal Percussion:.....COURTNEY JENSEN!!!! (oh my...i'm not gonna lie i had tears in my eyes haha i was like a proud mother) [and also another guy from one of the groups got this award as well]
Best Choreography:.....COURTNEY JENSEN & AMY WHITCOMB....("wait what? are you serious? oh man") [divisi also got this award]
Best Arrangement:....CATHERINE PAPWORTH for "staying alive" (wow...did we really just win awards?) [divisi also got best arrangement]


then the judges gave out a special award to Jo from Divisi for her amazing bass skills it was funny how excited we were for each other. it was great!


Then they named the 2nd runner up: OUTSPOKEN
1st runner up: DIVISI


and the winner is.....:NOTEWORTHY (oh my...i didn't even realize how good it could feel to make it to semi's after all of our hard work. We got to sing Listen for the audience....i can honestly say that this is probably one of the best feelings IN the world)

then we all went of stage and cried and prayed and screamed....we were so excited!

but i think the best part of the night was when we got back into the dressing room....after divisi had finished performing earlier we had made a tunnel for them to come through on their way back into the dressing room (you know one of the ones you make after a soccer game when you're little?)...well after we had won we went back into the dressing room and there were all the divisi girls lined up to make a tunnel for us. It was amazing.

I'm so glad that both of us were able to make it to Semi's...it's going to be pretty tough!
Their score was only 9 points lower than ours...that's not a lot. but we're all just really excited to go.


anyway sorry this is kinda scatter brained haha. but yeah...ICCA was amazing. i love noteworthy, i love divisi, i love singing, i love performing there is no better feeling.

:)