October and November Goal

October was one eventful month. I turned 21, which is a milestone but not my goal for the month. October was all about having my interview for my major and waiting to hear the result. I decided to apply for the public relations program the second semester of my freshman year. So from start to finish, I've waited to know if I'd get into the program for 18 months. I'm happy to report that I did indeed get accepted! I've always had a feeling that I would get in, but after the long wait I was so relieved. I didn't have a back up plan and I only have one general class left, so a lot was riding on the decision. Now I have a degree I can count on earning and internships and jobs to look forward to.

 (The day I interviewed)

November was the month of the trips. I went home for Thanksgiving which was an easy trip, but I'm been hoping I could go to LA for one of my best friend's wedding. This can count as a goal because I wasn't sure if it was going to work out. When I could book my flight and get ready to go, I got nervous to travel by myself for some reason. I've travelled alone plenty of times, but this time I was anxious. Everything worked out really well. It was only a short trip (Friday-Sunday) but it felt like a full vacation. I got there and got to help with the reception, spend time with my friend before she got hitched, go to the wedding and luncheon and reception, and decorate the car. I have a cousin (on the other side of the family) who lives in LA so I got to spend Sunday afternoon with her and her kids. We walked around Beverly Hills and went to church and the temple's visitor's center. It was a great getaway and I learned that I can be less nervous about traveling and more excited about the adventure.

My goal for the month of December is to blog 12 times. Call it the 12 Days of Blogmas. You can check and see if I make it here.

September Goal: Family Vacation

Since it is now November, I'm had a hard time picking a goal for September. The biggest thing was starting a new semester and moving into a new place. Those big things aside, the best part of September was going to Disneyland with my whole family, minus one brother, s-i-l, and niece who were stuck in medical school land. We rented this house in Anaheim via airbnb. It was perfect for our large group of 11. We had plenty of space, our own pool and view of the fireworks, and a nice kitchen and laundry. We spent two days at Disneyland and another day at the beach and in L.A. As cheesy as it sounds, my favorite part was being together.

Megan Allen: Road Trip

Well, I would count finishing my summer job and writing a blog post about mental illness as big goals accomplished, but I've already had goals about both of those things so I found something new. 

I went on a mini road trip from Calgary to Edmonton to visit my best Canadian friend who lives there. It was a three hour drive there and three hours back, so a decent amount over three days. I wanted to see where she was living and her campus, and of course spend some quality time together. I truly treasure my friendships and I'm glad that we could make this trip work. It's hard to go from seeing each other everyday to only three or four times a year, but it's comforting knowing we can pick up where we left off. 

You can count on bright yellow summer canola fields to immediately cheer you up!

Stopped by the favorite local vintage store...

and I bought a surprisingly flattering western themed muumuu that has the most ridiculous horse giving side-eye.

Who knew Edmonton had beautiful views and a train?

Went to a FIFA game and had an all-around sporty time.

Thanks for reading my little journal entry of sorts, and I'll be back next month with another to-be-determined September goal.

Figure out My Blog

Wow, wow am I talking about July? What a whirlwind my life has been lately with the move back to Provo and starting school. One new thing I accomplished in July was creating a new personal blog. I've had a blog since I was 13. I've gone back and forth and had periods of steady blogging and months of not blogging. I've been thinking about what blog I would like to have and so I took the first steps in July and August. I created a url, meganmarieallen.blogspot.com. I did a basic design and header and wrote a few posts.

 I got caught up in work and in lack of energy so I didn't really post again until August when I felt inspired to write. After Robin William's death, I wrote about my own mental health journey. I wrote it from 12-1 am and just posted it. The next day I did not expect the outpouring of positive support. I loved that experience and I'm motivated to (eventually) get my blog going and keep it going. I have my dream blog title and vibe figured out, I just have to execute it. I'm sorry this post is over a week late, but better late than never I suppose!

June Goal: Get a Summer Job

June meant finishing school, packing up, and moving home for the summer. I got back home to Canada in the middle of June and after a few weeks of recuperation, I started my summer job. I work for my dad's construction company doing manual labor at one of the sites in the northernmost part of the city. The drive takes about 40 minutes each way, but I love not having to apply for jobs/interview/worry about resumes. It's been about a month of work and I'm going some good experience. Being the only girl around was expected, and it's not too bad. I'm mostly sweeping up sawdust and dirt and dodging electricians as I clean. It takes a lot of motivation to get up and going since the days are long and repetitive, but audiobooks are saving me! (I finished Billy Crystals's autobiography which is so fun and "All The Lights We Cannot See" which is absolutely stunning.) One more month and I'll be back at school and with dolla bills in my pocket.

May Goal: Clean Eating

My goal for May turned out to be completing the Buzzfeed Clean Eating Challenge. I was browsing the website one day and I saw the post for the two-week challenge. I said, "why not?" and committed to do it. I ended up having a lot of fun with it. I liked having an exact meal plan, because as a college student I never know what I'm going to be eating later. What was a bit more difficult was the time involved to prepare the food and getting all of the obscure ingredients. Some of the meals took a lot of preparation and some nights I would sacrifice time doing homework or other things to cook. I did love having a breakfast and lunch planned the night before so I had stress free mornings getting ready for school.

I discovered lots of new recipes that I like. I also found out how easy it is to make your own salad dressing that tastes fresh and delicious. The challenge involves eating loads of vegetables, fruits, gluten free grains, and some dairy. The first few days I had digestion problems which I think was due to the large amounts of fiber and other "raw" things. My body adjusted to it. I loved feeling responsible for what I was eating, and though I was spending more money on groceries I rarely had to buy any food on campus, which is always expensive. I would recommend this challenge! You could even go through and find some meals that look good. Each meal has accompanying instructions so it makes it easier to make. I also loved having a grocery list prepared for me. I also felt better overall eating better food, especially eating less sugar and processed foods. I think I'll do a modification of this challenge again this summer.

I'd always have my laptop with me in the kitchen so sometimes I would snap a photobooth picture of me and my finished meal. So now you all can see for yourself!

I'm all about eggs. This omelette was make with roasted cauliflower which was so good.

Everyone needs to try this! It sounds crazy, but trust me. It's an apple omelette. I've made this several times since the challenge ended. My extra trick is to cook the apples on the stove in coconut oil and add a bit of vanilla to the scrambled egg mixture. 

Here's a stir fry that included sugar snap peas that could've cooked longer.

That's all for my May goal. Thanks everyone for your comments on my last posts; I really love reading them!

April Goal: RIP Barre

I've been going to the Provo Recreation Center since March. I started going to a class with my friend Naomi called RIP Barre. It's a combination of RIP, which is isometric strength training, and ballet. The class is Monday and Wednesday at noon. We were both able to work our school schedule around it, luckily. This class was really difficult at first, and as we went on it stayed pretty much just as difficult. It's one of those corny things like "It doesn't get easier, you just get stronger." I've noticed quite a difference in the few months that I have gone. I've felt more confidence and I am stronger. I'm always trying to get into better shape to a fault, but I've loved going to this class. I have about three more weeks here in Provo until I go home for the summer so I'm going to pack the workouts in. Even though before class every time I'm like "Oh I'll just stay home today and do homework" or "I'll just stay home and do other stuff" to "I just want to stay home." Each time that happens I just have to push myself a little bit more and then I make it. 


I have no pictures of my own, so here's a few images of the rec center from Google.

Here's where I fill up my water bottle

Pretend this is us walking around the track like we usually do after class. 

Alright, I'm done. Somehow this post would not be written but here it is. Happy June!

#LDSShareExpo, Megan Allen, March

I'm figuring out my goals month by month, and I've had a hard time narrowing down one for March. I finally chose my participation in the LDS Share Expo to count for the month of March. Allow me to explain...

I just finished my Communications 101 class officially titled Mass Communications. It was a
pre-requisite and I thought it would be a straightforward and simple class. It was in a way, but we got to participate in a huge event that just so happened to count as my final for the class. Our class joined up with an organization called The More Good Foundation and other sponsors, including the church. We worked to put together a fair held on campus that was all about using social media to share the gospel. Elder Lund of the Seventy had taken charge of the event so it was able to become a bigger deal. Pretty much all of the YSA stakes in Provo were invited. The class was divided into groups that each was responsible for a platform. I volunteered to be the group leader for Pinterest.

Our job was to learn about the platform, and learn more about how we could share the gospel using it. We went to workshops held by those from the foundation and the Flashlight club on campus. (They used materials from this website, that has information that you might find useful or enlightening.) We had to prepare materials, activities, and distribution of info at a booth. On March 25th, our class manned booths around the student's center and we passed out flyers and promoted the big event which was on March 31st. It was promoted as a FHE activity so many student groups and families could come.

The night turned out very successful! We were busy all night long. We had created a pinboard of our own on a bulletin board behind us and as people came around we would ask them to write their own "pin" which could be a favorite hymn, scripture, or one or two words of wisdom. We also promoted a communal pinboard which you can see here.

Going into this, I had no idea about many of the ways you can be a missionary online. I also knew very little about the official online missionaries, who came to our class one day and talked about what they do. Did you know that mission has a 90+% retention rate? It's all pretty amazing.

Here's some news coverage of the event:
BYU Eleven News (you can see my laptop screen, shiny nails, and hear me say "and" around 0:57 seconds and 1:24)
The Universe (this one explains everything very well)

There were some amazing results out of this. Over 7,000 people came to the event. While there, each person was doing little bits of missionary work. Each group had three goals. Ours, for example, were to have
1. Have 500 people follow the Pinterest board
2. Have 250 people make their own pin
3. Have 500 people re-pin something LDS related or follow another LDS pinner
We were able to meet those goals. The one result from another group that stands out to me is that The Book of Mormon (the actual book) is now the #1 search result on Amazon. This means that before the two hour event started, the scriptures came up as #6 if one was to search "Book of Mormon." With hundreds of people giving their good reviews, it became #1. I think that's pretty neat. As I finish this month's post, here are my

 Five Ways to Use Pinterest to Share the Gospel Online:

1. Share a quote from a general conference talk and have the image link to that talk on lds.org. Share uplifting messages from church leaders that would appeal to everybody in an nonintrusive way.

2. Create specific boards such as Girl's Camp Ideas, Lesson plans, Family Home Evening, Seminary, Family History, etc.

3. Pin your personal Mormon.org profile to your profile

4. Pin videos directly from YouTube (Mormon Channel,etc.) 

5. Use hashtags such as #lds #ldsconf #BookofMormon in your descriptions 

See you next month! (P.S. feel free to follow my board heh)

Megan did Survive and Managed to Thrive

My goal for last month was modified from hosting a Valentine's Day party to simply establish better daily goals and to survive the month. February had plenty of rough times. My best cousin (not to diminish all of the best kind of cousins I have reading this) Maddie left on her mission on February 12th. She's been my best friend my whole life, and I was an emotional wreck for a majority of the month. She has now been in California for a month and is loving it and doing extremely well! I'm so proud of her and I would want her to be nowhere else, but saying goodbye was still so difficult. Tuesday morning (the day before she went into the MTC) she came by my apartment and stayed for about a half hour. She had to go since she had many other goodbyes of the day, but we cried and she was gone. It helps to say "see you next summer!"It makes it not seem so long. But if I think about it too much, I get sad again.

So that was the major part of my February survival. I also had to write a case analysis and keep up with school in general but that comes with the job! The second part of my goal was establishing better daily goals. Getting in the sound habit of journalling at the end of January has really helped with this, because I can report on my progress to myself every night. Here are some examples of the goals I've been working on:

-Books only after 11 pm. This one is huge because it helps me a lot with going to bed earlier (which should be a monthly goal in itself.) I strive to have my iPad and laptop put away by 11 pm so I'm not tempted to watch YouTube and Netflix into the depths of the night. I'm racing against the clock right now to finish this post by 11!

- Drink 2L of water 

-Paint my nails every week

-read scriptures earlier in the day 

So daily mini-goals was my monthly goal. Now I've developed a new tactic this month. Each night I write a to-do list of sorts for the following day in my journal and go over the goals I set for myself the night before. February's goal was a bit random, but that is my life most days so it works. See you next month!

January Goal: Learn How to Ski

My name is Megan Allen. I'm 20 years old and I'm a sophomore at BYU. I lived with my three older siblings and my parents in South Jordan, Utah until I was 12 years old. Then my parents, my sister and I moved to Calgary, Alberta, Canada for my Dad's job. It was intended to be a three year stint, so far my parents have stayed put and my sister, since she married a Canuck. I spent junior high and high school there, and therefore I survived six Calgary winters. I now get to visit at the best times of the year- Christmas and the summertime- so I get the best of both worlds.  This is my fourth semester at BYU, and I'm currently taking the Public Relations prerequisites. My only claim to fame is that I spent Fall 2013 in London on study abroad. It turned out to be a very good thing since my only friends now are the ones I made on the trip since the mission age change captured all of my other friends.

Lucky for me, I've known Nora my whole life! I'm number 70 out of 250ish people in the Allen clan, which means I have concourses of amazing older cousins. Throughout elementary school I would help Miss Nora at her preschool whenever I had school breaks. I took my responsibility as Miss Megan very seriously and still know the Days of the Week song by heart. I'm so glad I had many opportunities to get to know Nora better since I'm at the end of the cousins, and I'm so grateful to have her influence in my life. My sister Melissa is also contributing to the blog, along with many of my favorite cousins!

I worked a skiing class into my schedule this semester. Side note: I was registering for classes while on our class trip through the Lake District. I was sitting at a table in our hostel in Ambleside with my friend John and he worked skiing into his schedule too. Little did I know he was level 6 while I was in the never-been-on-skis group. We were able to drive up together each week and have a good time. I recommend a buddy if you plan on embarking on learning a skill like this, because you need a bit of commiseration!

It was an eight week course, and class was on Wednesday afternoons. I ended up in a really great group with an instructor named Steve who was helpful and really fun. I missed two of the classes due to anxiety/laziness. I'd say my biggest accomplishment was conquering my fears. Somehow I was able to really paranoid about everything.

I can say with the end of the class today that I am no longer petrified about:

• Getting off the lift
• I can get off without falling, as long as I'm the far left or right side of the chair and can use the side to launch off and balance. I'm sure now I could get off while sitting in the middle but why switch things up too much?
• The back mountain
• Our class took place at Sundance, and up until today we rode the green and easy blue runs on the front side. Today we explored the back and I had an amazing day. I've really been able to enjoy the midweek break and be in nature. I am now confident to explore many different trails that only a few weeks ago I would have said no way. 
• Falling
• I've just perfected it. Well, the getting up part. Falling down is still about as graceful as it can be.
• Everything etc.

I've come a long way from the first class. I can make it down blue runs fairly comfortably, and I'm starting to really enjoy it. My other main purpose in learning to ski was being able to go with my family and other friends. Plus, having a good ski resort 20 minutes away can't be beat. 

Extra bonus, I saw Robert Redford twice (and three wild turkeys) on the sidewalk.

(February's Goal: Survive the month and establish better daily goals and habits)

Megan Allen's Goals & Projects for 2014

January:

Start Learning How to Ski I'm enrolled in a beginner skiing class at BYU. I'll take seven classes, and by the end of it I hope to not be afraid/fall of the lift every time I get off, make it down an intermediate run, and to develop enough skills that skiing will continue to be fun.

February: 

Plan a Valentine's Party My roommate and I are hoping to host a Valentine's get together for our study abroad friends mostly. It'll be complete with food and snacks and a good playlist.

March:

Study (What's not due tomorrow) Everyday I tend to only do homework/study when there is a deadline, but with finals in April, I'm planning on doing a little bit everyday.