My parents decided on my first name before they were married, way before I was ever born. Actually, it might have been before they even decided to get married. My mom told me once that she and my dad were talking about names for future children and both said that they loved the name Sara. And from then on, it was decided.

Sara(h) is a name I share with my maternal grandmother and her maternal grandmother as well, making an every-other-generation chain of Sara(h)s. Both my grandmother and my great-great grandmother spelled their name with an 'H' at the end, but my parents opted for the shorter spelling because they thought it looked more modern. The with-an-H vs. without-an-H debates are pretty epic among the Sara(h) population. I'm definitely partial to the H-less spelling, and as I was growing up, the name's Hebrew meaning -- princess -- meant a lot to me.

So when I was born, my name was Sara Staheli, my last name coming from my dad. Staheli is a Swiss name that probably originated with the word for steel (stahl) back in the olden-olden days.

When I was 8 months old (or thereabouts), my parents legally changed my name by adding Katherine as a middle name. Katherine is my paternal grandmother's name, and according to my mom, the change came about kind of as an "Oh duh!" moment, like they should've just had that as my middle name all along.

So I lived my life as Sara Katherine Staheli for many, many years, and when I was 21, I got married and added a fourth name -- Hanks. The decision to change my last name was something I went back-and-forth on for a while, and I had a lot of really intense feelings about it. I made my decision final about a year after getting married and became Sara Katherine Staheli Hanks. While four names is a little long compared to the names of most people I know, I think the sounds flow nicely together, and I actually enjoy having four names instead of just two or three. It's nice to have little tokens from my grandmothers, my ancestry, and my marriage to carry around with me all the time, and at the same time, the combination of those elements is totally unique. There's no one else out there named Sara Katherine Staheli Hanks. Pretty sure.

Friday pick-me-up

If I'm lucky, this weekend will feature some fall leaves in Provo Canyon, some delicious barbecue, and a peaceful Sunday. Here are some finds that are putting a little pep in my step heading into the weekend. Enjoy!

image source

46 novels so short you can read them in a day (I've only read a handful!)

a way to measure a film's female-friendliness, inspired by Mako Mori from Pacific Rim

11 memoirs inspired by Rilo Kiley's "More Adventurous" (easily in my Top 10 Favorite Albums)

a woman who makes intricate art from old books

a step-by-step on blow drying fine+wavy hair

how weird it is to travel without your spouse

a casual fall outfit that's triggered my newfound love for quilted baseball hats

a little boy's shoes

When my son first started wearing shoes, he looked like a kitten wearing mittens. Walking + wearing shoes = not walking, basically. But thanks to some practice with Dad, he's totally gotten the hang of things.

As it turns out, this little guy is quite the shoe enthusiast. He's endlessly pulling shoes down from shelves and trying them on, whether they're his or not (emphasis on the not -- shoes belonging to either parent are fair game). And now that he's made the connection that putting on shoes = going outside, he'll occasionally track down each of his shoes from the far-flung corners of the house and bring them to me, as if to say, "I'm ready to be wearing these now, Mom. Let's just put them on my feet and see what happens."

(PS: we picked up the shoes at H&M a few months ago. They're sold out now, but these would be my choice for a replacement pair.)

reading "Mistborn"

I've noticed that a lot of my sentences start with the words "I just read this thing." Seems like I'm always sharing observations that came out of something I read -- a book, a story, a bumper sticker, a blog post, a newspaper article, a magazine profile. I could probably document my whole life just based on the things I've read, because it would show what topics I was most interested in at any given moment. When my son was newly born, almost everything I read had to do with motherhood. When we were preparing to move into our little house, I sought out advice that would help us organize our lives, downsize, and live happily in such a small space. The things I read tend to say a lot about where I'm at and what I'm thinking. For example:

I just read this thing. Well, actually, I just started reading this thing, this book called Mistborn that my husband has been recommending to me for years. Fantasy, as a genre, is not really my jam, but Craig has an enduring, deeply-felt love for it. (Proof: We have a large, framed map of Middle Earth hanging on our living room wall.)

While Craig and I both love to read, both majored in English, both have deep respect for the written word, our literary tastes have very little overlap. If my current reading of Mistborn says anything about the state of my life these days, it's that I'm consciously taking an interest in something that's important to my husband. It's a bonus that the book is well-written and the story, though definitely different from the ones I typically gravitate toward, is compelling.

One of the main characters is Vin (shown here in a piece of fan art by Ella Williams). I'm only five chapters in, but so far, I'm intrigued by her instinct toward self-protection, skepticism, and mistrust. She's experienced serious trauma in her life, so frequently that additional pain and betrayal is what she expects. It seems like the book is going to focus on themes of class struggle and racial segregation; those topics fit in much more neatly with my usual interests. All in all, I'd say Mistborn will be a challenging but worthwhile text. The things we do for love, right?

wedding do-over

My cousin is getting married this week. We grew up in the same neighborhood, playing together/tormenting one another, as cousins so often do. And now he's a grown up person, a soon-to-be husband!

There was a time when weddings really sent me on a downward mental spiral. My own wedding was in December of 2008, and while I don't have a single solitary regret about the marriage itself, the wedding was a little ... meh. And for a few years afterward, other people's weddings provided great excuses to host my own little pity parties, because waaah waaah my wedding wasn't the picture of perfection, I'm so saaaaad! Et cetera.

Maybe I've matured or maybe my brain's gotten too busy with other things, because nowadays, weddings are just a time to be happy for the betrothed and eat mints, and even my wandering thoughts about how I'd do my wedding differently if I had the chance are pretty mellow. But since we're on the subject ...

Let's play pretends that I'm planning my wedding all over again. Here's what you could expect to see.

Or maybe ...

Or perhaps ...

Pretend worlds come with pretend budgets, right? All these dresses are by Jenny Packham, and they're as pricey as they are beautiful. (We're talking Duchess of Cambridge money, okay?)

I'm crazy about flowers with some wildness -- feathery ferns and open roses like these (from a beautiful spring wedding shoot, which you can see here).

I think my goal would be to create a wedding that was laidback, personal, and sweet. I can just see it now -- the tables littered with empty bottles of root beer and sangria, the ragtag band playing upbeat country love songs, a few Scrabble boards set up for folks like my husband who like to boast of their amazing vocabularies.

5 ladies who know what they're doing

I think I'm like a lot of folks my age in this way: I've started probably 40-60 personal blogs and have pretty much abandoned them all. With half of them, I don't even remember what they were called or where I would go to find them. They hold little snippets of my life, little diary entries, in some forgotten corner of the Internet. Never to be seen again, the poor things.

So this tells you something about my stick-to-it-ive-ness (which is generally low), but I think it also says something about my fascination with record-keeping and the whole world of blogs. I just can't stay away for long. Something pulls me back again for another try, and another, and another, and another ...

My favorite bloggers these days are ones who are personable but not over-share-y, who present beautiful, thought-provoking, honest things (honest, yes, honesty above all!) that aren't necessarily polished or sparkly.

I've curated a short list of my most inspirational bloggers. There are dozens of other blogs and sites that I enjoy, but these are the ladies whose styles and approaches really jive with my soul (... jive? or is it jibe?), in a way that says, "Yeah, I wanna create something like that."

A Cup of Jo -- A New York City writer, her husband and two boys, and their cozy apartment home. I have serious love for Joanna's Motherhood Around the World series.

exPress-o -- Diana's blog is here and there and everywhere, with recipes, fashion, and all sorts of delicious nuggets of life (life nuggets, if you will).

Deer Circus -- Bridget is too fanciful for words. Seriously, sometimes I'm like, Woman, how do you even exist in the real world? I'm all about her experiments with writing and her fuzzy photographs (fuzzy in the best, best possible way).

Posie Gets Cozy -- Alicia makes things. Her quilting and embroidery and knitting -- oh my. Her writing about nature and her daughter and her home makes me feel all wrapped up in one of those quilts of hers. So cozy, indeed.

Reading My Tea Leaves -- Erin's just the most chill girlfriend ever, I think (and by "girlfriend," I mean "someone I haven't met, but I'm sure we'd be buddies if we did somehow meet someday"). Her series about Life in a Tiny Apartment is so thoughtful and clear.

Un-Fancy -- Remember when I spent all-day-every-day reading about 500 style blogs? Boy, I do. These days, I only keep up with about ten on a regular basis, and Caroline's Un-Fancy is a fairly recent addition. Her simple style is enviable, and I love how she presents fashion in such an approachable way.

These ladies have been showing me the ropes as I've combed through their archives, and as I start this new blog of my own, I'm really digging their examples. We'll see how it all comes together.