Stacie's Place

Are you all sick of my graduation posts yet? Well, here's another one you may or may not have read yet. So take a looksee! I got to see the amazing Kirby Heyborne perform at a benefit concert for a school in South Jordan. I started a magnetic chalkboard project with Tony's cousin. In the process of being finished still, got a little stuck, have you ever gotten stuck on a project before? Some of my Target favorites for the month of May! Do you want to take a 5K vacation? Participate in The Color Run happening this August in Salt Lake City! I have a $5 off code on the blog so be sure to use that if you are planning on running (or walking). I am loving Jones Creek beef! Tony & I got to cook up some hamburger meat that we picked to review. Check out what we made here . ***Exciting news***  Our travel blog is getting a complete overhaul! New name! New domain! New layout! New posts! I'm soo excited about it but it's not ready yet. Tony works...

I tweeted today that working a full time job stifles my creativity. It's computer work and any idea I have for the company or ways to do things, usually get shot down. Kinda sucks but that's how it is right now. Sometimes at work I am brainstorming things I want to do in my life to do with my blog or social media in general.  I came up with a super super awesome idea of how I want to run my "staciesplace" Snapchat with a format and everything. Right now I am compiling at least a month's worth of content so I can be prepared. I'll be snapping every M, W, F evening I think or roughly around that time. It will revolve around things I blog about so stay tuned for an announcement about that. I'm so excited about it! Finish up my social media resume so I can start actually really applying for jobs. So far I am not in a position to change jobs quite yet but when we move I want to find something. I also have not seen a whole lot I've wanted to apply for ...

The time has come where I get to graduate!! This is happening on Friday and it's right in the middle of a huge blogger conference I signed up for a year ago. I had no idea I'd be graduating the same day/time as the conference. #thestruggleisreal Overall I'm happy to be done but also sad at the same time not to be a student anymore. It has been really fun to go back to school and learn some new skills, make some new friends and do some really cool stuff! April has been insane so far and it's not even half over yet. Tony got a job offer in California. The St. George job fell through - boo. We got to attend the movie premiere for Saturday's Warrior  I held another Pinterest party - spring themed! Tony and I participated in a crazy fun 24hr event called Questival ! And last but not least, I did a review for my friend here and am giving away $100 of LuLaRoe clothing! Go enter!

I can find time to crank out a post occasionally here but there is so much still I want to write about and include pictures! Hot air balloon festival in Kanab, Outdoor Expo in Sandy, a family dinner with some of my siblings last Sunday...I dont know - just whatever random stuff I am up to! So here's the latest. This week started off slow and has gotten busier and busier.  Tonight after work I got to attend a "Cricut Crafternoon" at the Cricut HQ. It was so crazy fun. I got to design 2 baby onesie outfits. I ended up ironing one on a bib because all the onesies except preemie sizes got snatched up. We got a bag filled with tons of swag , I had hearts in my eyes! I learned some new tricks and am excited to figure out time to sharpen my skills. Thursday after work I head to FanX - I won a multi-day pass! and I got a ticket to meet and get a picture with NICK CARTER from the Backstreet Boys. I gotta pinch myself - is this real life?! Thursday I need to make a...

I went to a great dinner at Blue Iguana tonight in SLC that Blogging Concentrated put together. It was fun to meet and see lots of bloggers from many places. A group from the midwest, Boise and here in Utah too! I was exchanging information with a couple ladies at my end of the table and one came to check out this blog and said, your last post was January 30th and I was like yea...I haven't been great about blogging lately. In my head I thought, what's the big deal? January 30th wasn't that long ago, was it? Then I realized today is the 18th of the month - of February!  Honestly I haven't given this blog the love or attention it deserves. To be even more honest, I haven't done hardly any blog posts since the end of last year. I need to blog about girls camp, Tony's family reunion, Thanksgiving, Christmas, CES, CHA and so much more! Some bloggers just pick up where they left off, others say forget it, I'm starting fresh and not worrying about pictures I have...

Let me preface this by saying that I won an Apple watch from school last night. Super duper exciting! While I think it's one of the coolest watches out there, it obviously won't connect to my Android phone and I've been searching for an iPhone on eBay and KSL without too much luck (no responses from people mostly or the phone doesn't work with T-Mobile).  I'd like to get a 32gig even though 64 would be super great, however, out of my price range. I'm already getting attached to the Apple watch even though I have not even been able to use it yet. (Weird, right?!) I'm thinking of selling it to get the new Pebble Time Steel or another smart watch. A win is so fantastic but if you are unable to use the prize, it doesn't do you much good, agreed? I've had the original Pebble smartwatch for 3 years now and cannot live without it on my wrist. I like the long battery life, it's waterproof and pretty much all the watchfaces can be downloaded for free...

I'll probably write about this a bit in a different blog post but recently I went to Las Vegas for CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and while standing in line to get some swag, I noticed the bag of the lady in front of me. It was really cute and I complimented her on it. We got to talking, she was there with her husband and they were just so nice and down to earth, easy and fun to talk to. We got our swag and continued talking and exchanged information so we could keep in touch. I don't remember it all now, it is such a blur! She told me she was going to Anaheim next for CHA,  a show I've heard about in the last few years, thought it sounded awesome but it has never worked out to go. However, she told me she could add me to her 'list' and I could come if I wanted to! I was in so much shock, thinking about how I could possibly make it work. I had a couple commitments in Utah , I had 1 person who wanted a ride back to Salt Lake on Friday night and then there was the w...

I have so many things going through my head tonight so I thought I would write them down. Here goes!  It's less than 40 days until Christmas and I have barely done any Christmas shopping. This is the first year in a very long time that this has happened. I tend to shop throughout the year. This year, not so much. I do not want to be a crabby and stressed person in December but I have a feeling that's going to happen whether I like it or not. I am already thinking of the Christmas themed Pinterest party but I have to make it through Thanksgiving first before I can commit fully to it.  I have a couple crafts I need to put together to make in Idaho with family and that combined with food we need to bring and planning a strategy for Black Friday shopping...it's just too much to think about all at once.  I guess I have Christmas on my mind. How ready are you for Christmas? I refuse to decorate or have anything much to do with Christmas until Thanksgiving is ov...

How many of you feel like it was a whirlwind of a summer? Inbetween working full time, 2 classes at LDSBC, homework, roadtrips and my husband's summer internship, I can't believe the long warm days of summer are over. Tear. I heart summer.  Here are some links to what's been going on so you can catch up! I got to go to the Mystery Escape Room at the Gateway mall in SLC. Does your city have one of these? It was a pretty fun experience! There was a hot air balloon event every weekend in June, so crazy fun! I loved all the roadtrips and visiting some of my favorite small towns in Utah. We volunteered at an event in Springville which we had never gone to before. There were not a whole lot of blogger events this summer but I did go to one at The Roll Up in Orem which has crepes - one of my favorite foods! Tony & I had a fun little trip to Idaho for his nephew who got baptized plus we got to see family and hang out for a few days. That's always nice!...

Times are changing, the world is crazy. Things will change in my life, dramatically or not, maybe even less than a month from now. What I do know is that I never want to forget these days. Mainly in my own personal life. I never want to forget the times when Tony is in school or working his internship and we dont get to do as much together because he is busy with all that. His working on a website for BYU or endless hours of studying with his headphones in or falling asleep with his laptop. I do not want to forget when I decided to go back to school to get a degree in Social Media Marketing after not being in college since 2007 and the fun times, things I learned and the friends/connections I made and continue to make. Winning the selfie contest on the LDSBC Facebook page, that was fun. I do not want to forget living where I live. It may not be my dream home but it's what I've known for the past 4 years since living in Utah. The crazy neighbors. The cool neighbors....

WHY do I feel the need in my life to have so many choices! I am starting to realize that it just makes things harder instead of easier. Take for example, clothes. Those who know me well, know I have a lot.  I say I wear at least 90% of what I own, depending on the season. I like to have options because I have a lot of colorful shoes that I need to coordinate with my outfits, right? But having so many options gets overwhelming and makes me late for work.  3 pairs of gray pants, 3 pairs of black pants and brown pants, skinny jeans, athletic pants, leggings...I wish I could decide what I liked best and just stick with that, but I cant seem to do that. For awhile I was in to the colored or patterned jeans but lately I just dont want to wear pants. Haha, just kidding. I just want to wear soft , comfortable pants. Not pants that are tight on my legs. It just feels so restrictive. Maybe I need to lose some weight? Or get a little less skinner type of jeans? No! I have too ma...

Tony and I celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary last weekend by going to southern CA to do some fun things such as Medival Times dinner, Universal Studios and the beach. We stayed the night in Vegas and my Macbook started making a crunchy sound. Tony told me to shut it down and don't turn it on the for the rest of the weekend because my hard drive was crashing. Scary and sad! Luckily we were able to save everything plus most everything was backed up. Friday morning when we woke up, my iPod touch restarted for no reason and did not want to get off the reboot screen no matter how much we tried. There went my camera for the weekend, or so I thought. Once we arrived in L.A. , Tony, who is not a fan of Apple at all, esp iTunes, installed iTunes on his laptop and set to work to fix my iPod. I had already gotten on Craigslist to see about buying another one but by the time we went to Universal Studios on Saturday, he had the iPod up and working again! So amazing he was able to fix i...

My social media marketing strategy class put together this video to help drive donations for Operation Underground Railroad. It was quite the process to put this all together. I was there the day most of this was filmed and my sister brought her boys to be in it. My nephew Riley made it into the scene with the kids at the playground. It's been really neat to watch this all come together.  Check it out and share it on your social media accounts. Plus consider donating $5/month to help rescue a child from slavery. You can visit Operation Underground Railroad on Facebook too to check out a competition going on where you can win some O.U.R swag.

Here are some new blog posts to check out! One of our favorite places to eat, The Habit Free Ice Cream night at Dairy Queen Celebrating Pi day with food and fun As you can tell by the links, they all revolve around food. Oh well, sometimes its like that!

Just wanted to say Hello! to anyone new who might be reading my blog since snagging my card at Build Your Blog conference over this past weekend. I got home Saturday evening and my head was spinning with all the awesome things I learned, people I met and fun experiences. I cant wait to write out everything in the next day or two. In the meantime, I have a big'ish project due for one of my classes on Saturday but I want to turn it in earlier since I may be going down to southern UT this weekend - all depending on the weather. Not sure what happened to the early spring Utah was getting but winter seems to be back. It may look nice outside but it's a trick because it is icy cold! Every time I look at the weather for Kanab, its a mix of snow and rain. Bad bad bad. Hot air balloons can't go up in that kind of weather! Hoping and praying for a miracle. I have wanderlust so much right now. What's new with you? Let me know and link me to your blog too so I can come say...

Many of you reading this are most likely aware that after my job at WGU ended in early November, I've been looking for a job and working with temp agencies. I've had interviews here and there but nothing happened from them. Until last Friday I got a call asking me if I was still looking for a job and would I like to come in for an interview on Monday. Stupidly I said I could, forgetting that Monday was a holiday. Oops. I had badly wanted to go to Capitol Reef National Park to see a friend, hike and do fun things but I was unable to find anyone who could come with so I decided not to change the interview and just stick around town for weekend.  I went in at 10am for the interview...well I got a little lost but luckily was only delayed by a few minutes.  I started filling out paperwork and by the time everything was said and done , about an hour and a half later! they were offering me the job. I was stunned because I never had anyone offer me a job so quickly before, at least, n...

Last Wednesday I got to go to Dev Mountain in Provo to hear YouTuber Stuart Edge speak. If you have not heard of him, definitely go check out his channel . He is pretty funny! He spoke about "How To Be Funny & Make Money" which caught my attention although I did not know that was the topic before I went. What drew me in was who he is (I have seen him before and watched some of his videos) and there was free food afterwards. Spoiler alert - it turned out to be just cookies. All I wanted was real food! However, Sodalicious has fantastic cookies, esp their sugar cookies.  Alright! Here are my notes, enjoy. Figure out what you do. Figure out who you are. Don't paint yourself in a corner We paint ourselves as something. Facebooker. YouTuber. Don't paint yourself in a corner.  What/who does the real world say I am? Give yourself more room to grow. Vlogger? Ok a  reality tv show. How are my ratings. How can I grow? Expand your brand. Figure out how we ...

I've been upping my blogging lately and working on redoing what I do, as in, I have too many blogs and I am trying to think of what I can do to get rid of 1 or maybe 2 of them. In the meantime, while I figure that out, you may have noticed that Stacie's Place is now a .com! So excited to finally just DO that. I think it looks great and will be easier to tell people as well. Check out the Valentine's Pinterest Party I hosted last week I also took a quick trip to Idaho over the weekend with my sister and her boys Tony & I got to go to Midway to see the ice castles for our first time ever. School is going awesome!   I blogged about some moving tips for moms (or anyone!) and have you heard of the Great Inflatable Race ? What fun things have you been up to lately? Link me in a comment below and I will come check it out or comment back!

I super love that the daylight is lasting longer. It's happening slowly but each day is a little better. The longer it stays the light, the more I feel like I can get done. Especially things outside. These past few days I have gotten a lot better somehow about getting rid of stuff. Or at least, committing to get rid of it and organizing clothing , shoes, craft supplies and other items into a donate and sell pile.  Unfortunately the pile to sell grows bigger and I am not really getting much sold. I did sell one item from the Facebook yardsale pages. I sold another couple items on eBay. Made less than $30 but something is better than nothing! More things are posted so fingers crossed I can make a few more sales. Eventually though I  will have to decide what to just let go because I just keep re posting, it doesn’t sell and it takes up way too much space. The other day my friend came over and helped me go through my closet full of jackets and sweatshirts. She offered...

My first week (er, day) at LDSBC seemed to go well. I only had 1 fail where I had a smear of chocolate on my jacket. Maybe it blended in and nobody noticed (hopefully). Tony wasnt home to check me before I wrecked myself.  Sigh. Luckily in my classes I dont feel like the oldest one. It feels like mostly a good mix. It will be interesting to go to class tonight and see who has still stuck around. Tony and I are sharing a car at the moment. My poor HHR. Tony's poor truck. I feel like I dont have good luck with cars and I have not even had the HHR a year yet! Both of our vehicles are drivable but need work so its best to avoid driving them. My HHR died last week waiting for my sister in the Smith's parking lot. A kind teenager used his truck to help me jump my car. I got it home and it promptly died in front of my house. I started driving my Mazda again. I heart that car so much, despite its problems. Since Tony had Monday off of work, we went to Sweet Tomatoes for lunc...