Friends – The Rebekah Koontz Site

10 Ways To Offend Your Friend Before The Day Is Up

March 12, 2017March 10, 2017Friends, How To, Humor8 Comments

Sadly, this post was inspired by real life events.

My friends (*cough* friend… just one) have had the unfortunate circumstance of being victim of my… not-so-subtle comments.

And all this happened before the clock struck 11am.

Continue reading ➞ 10 Ways To Offend Your Friend Before The Day Is Up

What I Got For Christmas 2014

January 8, 2015January 8, 2015Blogmas 2014, Christmas, Family, Friends, Life8 Comments

I love reading What I Got For Christmas posts, so why not write my own?

Disclaimer: I am in no way bragging. (Everyone puts this disclaimer and for good reason, so I shall do the same.) I like reading these kind of posts because I’m nosy, and I think what you get says a lot about your personality. But if you’re the kind of person that is easily jealous, please read one of the other 357 posts up on my blog. It will be more enjoyable for the both of us that way.

The final thing I will say is that Christmas is in no way about the material presents, but about the greatest gift of our salvation in Jesus Christ, who was born on Christmas. Let’s not ever forget that. We have so much more to be thankful for.

All that to say, I’ll jump right into the post.

Continue reading ➞ What I Got For Christmas 2014

BLOGMAS Day #23 — Chris’ Movication

December 23, 2014December 23, 2014Blogmas 2014, Christmas, Friends, Life, Movies, Reviews4 Comments

I love movies. Spend fifteen minutes with me, and I’ll give you either an exact quote or ask you three different times, regarding three different movies, “have you seen —??”

Constantly, Chris and I have been saying we need a movie day. He doesn’t understand half of my movie references, though he can appreciate my actor impersonations.

Well, we’ve officially started his movi-cation.

Continue reading ➞ BLOGMAS Day #23 — Chris’ Movication

BLOGMAS Day #19 — He’s HERE!

December 19, 2014December 19, 2014Blogmas 2014, Christmas, Friends5 Comments

Woke up early today, which is a sign that today was a big day. (Or else, believe me, I would not be up at seven otherwise.)

Jake picked me up, and we started the day off with breakfast.

Continue reading ➞ BLOGMAS Day #19 — He’s HERE!

Get Ready With Me – The Beauty And The Beast Show

October 10, 2014August 10, 2015Fashion, Friends, MakeupLeave a Comment

Beauty and the Beast is probably my favorite Disney movie. I say “probably” because, come on, it’s a Disney movie, can you really choose one?

When I heard that Beauty and the Beast would be performed at my local theater, my ears perked up intensely. When I found out one of my friends would be in it, I was more than interested. When I was told he was playing Beast, I was already checking my calendar and buying a ticket.

Dressing for plays has always made sense to me. I’ve always been the one in the performances which may have led to this concrete thought, but you should dress for plays.

The actors are dressing and performing and giving it their all. Audience members should attend with the same consideration.

Hence, why my Get Ready With Me is to get ready for a play.

Continue reading ➞ Get Ready With Me – The Beauty And The Beast Show

Gonna Miss My Best Friend

September 3, 2014December 17, 2014Church, Friends, Life2 Comments

A few blog posts ago, I wrote about being a college stayer, though I fear that that post came off too “woe is me.” The reality is I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life. But I’m not sitting around, pitying myself day after day or anything of the sort. I didn’t want it to come off that way.

However.

Today, you may pity me. Pity away. Because today (well, yesterday) I lost my best friend.

“You make it sound like I’m dying,” he told me and my friend.

“You’re gonna be dead to us,” she joked.

This is true. Though I am very much aware that the dead are incapable of shooting me a “I’m making friends!” text, when you see someone on an almost daily basis because they lived a few streets down from you and then suddenly can’t see them for three months. Instant. They’re gone. Only memories remain. It’s quite similar to death.

Continue reading ➞ Gonna Miss My Best Friend

Sleepovers and Girl Time With Amy

July 30, 2014December 15, 2014Friends, Life3 Comments

I may be nineteen, but that doesn’t stop me or my friends from having sleepovers and doing… the same exact things we’ve been doing since middle school. We’re just more… mature about it.

I’m choosing my words very carefully for this blog post.

Last night, I spent the night at my friend, Amy’s, house. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know exactly who she is.

She’s home from college so we’re spending as much time as we can together while she’s here, even if it consists of us posing in flower crowns and taking selfies in the middle of Claire’s.

We eat candy. A lot of it.

We get frozen yogurt. With more candy.

Amy got a swirl of Chocolate and Pecan Praline. We had met up with an old friend, Noelle, who stuck with strawberry, while I got a dab of each flavor that interested me, followed by cheesecake bites, brownie, cookie dough, and sour gummy worms.

It was agreed that Noelle was the knowing mother who stayed true to her favorite. Amy was the tween, playing with the swirl option. And I was the three year old who wanted everything.

And it was delicious.

We drove about Redlands, looking for pretty houses to stare at, chewing on more sour gummy worms and gummy bears, soon said goodbye to Noelle once again, and began thinking about movie ideas.

When Amy slept over at my house, we went and saw Divergent.

As I was at Amy’s house, she asked me if I had seen the trailer for Lucy. I thought it was a scary movie I didn’t want to watch at first, until the trailer reminded me it was the one with Scarlet Johansson about the girl who had drugs implanted in her body that began to leak and slowly she could use more and more of her brain capacity.

Movie review: mostly gory. Some nudity. All violence. And very much agrees on the theory that evolution is real, which tripped me up. Disposable movie. You see it once and that’s it.

However!

There was no one I would rather see the movie with than Amy!

We would flinch, cover our eyes, hide behind our hands and knees, and laugh randomly all at the same spots of the movie. People would be digging into the slits on each other’s stomachs to retrieve the drugs, and Amy and I would shudder and wince. I was holding my own stomach throughout the entire movie.

I felt their pain. Really.

Or it was all the candy and CheeseIts…

It was real.

This is what girls do at sleepovers though, let’s be honest. We eat a lot of junk food. We go shopping. We watch bad movies. We talk until we fall asleep, mid-conversation.

We live middle school all over again. Those were the good ol’ years, right?

Sliced apples with cookie butter at nine o’clock at night. Hot chocolate at eleven thirty. That’s the good life.

Amy keeps me young. We knew each other from church and didn’t truly meet until six grade. Being stage sisters in a play propelled us into Stage Sisters For Life-dom and the rest is history.

I can be a guys-gal most of the time, but every girl needs a good girl friend. We have to face it. We may say we refuse drama. But a good girl friend is out there, and it’s amazing how much more she’ll understand than your best guy friend.

All that to say, I want to encourage girls. To first, take a chance on friendship! Find the Lucy to your Ethel. Then take your girl out and be silly, and girly, and tell your secrets at midnight, and eat chocolate, and watch scary movies.

Friendships are a big deal. Take care of them.

It’s a good reminder.

And count your blessings if you have a good friend or two. That’s something to smile about.

Thanks for the good times, Amy! You’re such a caring, cute, and godly Christian friend. You’ll be one of my five blessings for the day. *girl-to-girl wink*

Smelling Good

July 23, 2014December 15, 2014Fashion, Friends, Life3 Comments

Chris and I had another friend day. We went and saw How To Train Your Dragon 2 with a bunch of moms and ten year olds. We thought sitting in the back would put us out of the way, not knowing ten year olds want to sit at the top. Two chairs over, Chris had a little boy explaining quite intelligently to his mom, “the dragon is sad because of this-this-and-this.” I started to laugh, and Chris flashed an excited grin and whispered that we had a narrator.

We wandered the mall, and I’m always enamored by the “stinky store,” Bath and Body Works. I kept finding myself inside, sniffing lotions and trying perfumes and imagining myself burning a yummy candle at home, but I never bought anything. That time, however, I made the mistake of telling Chris these life-changing little words.

“Chris. You should help me buy a perfume.”

Bath and Body Works has these little white cards available. The thought is you spray the fragrance you’re testing on the paper, in case you hate it. That way you don’t have something horrible leeched to your arm until you take another shower to rid of the smell.

Chris took it to an extreme.

He collected a small stack of the cards in his hand and went one by one, down the wall of fragrances. The card has a side you spray and a side for you to write the name of the scent. He borrowed a pen.

By the third smell, we had a system. He would spray the card, wave it twice, smack/smush it into my nose, smell the card, shrug and give me his opinion, then let me smell it.

He got creative, adding smiley faces and hearts for ones he liked, and sad faces and tears for ones he didn’t like. He even changed what I believe was “Forever Love” to “Forever NO!”

Cute girl workers in black aprons would come and ask if we needed help, but we said no. They would smile politely then give us a weary look that said “please don’t destroy everything just to have fun” before going away.

We were having fun, probably too much fun to make sense. But it got to the point that I was saying between giggles, “Chris you’re really funny today!” Then I would be minding my own business, to turn and hear Chris chuckling to himself because he thought my expression was something to be laughed at.

We were high on Bath and Body Works fumes. Chris claims he’s always that funny.

But we were high on Bath and Body Works fumes.

We made it down one side of the wall, and exhaled happily, feeling accomplished, until I had to point out that we started in the middle and missed the first half of the wall. Determined, Chris went back to the cards, grabbed more, and we tackled it from the beginning until where we first began.

It didn’t end there. After going through the whole lot of perfumes, Chris shuffled back through our cards and repicked the ones with smiles and hearts. He was going to get more cards, but I stopped him. We had agreed earlier (when I made him try a peach lotion) that different smells smell different on different people.

“We should just spray these scents on me and see if they smell good.” Was my brilliant plan.

We sprayed my wrist, elbow, shoulder, wrist, elbow, shoulder on both sides. And magically had spots for each smell.

We looked ridiculous.

Again, weary Bath and Body Works employees watching us.

I do have to admit, it got to the point – after maybe the third hour of harassing the poor workers – that I did feel compelled to buy something.

I had originally gone to Bath and Body Works for the new Sunset By The Pool scent, which supposedly smelled like peaches. I’m infatuated by peaches, apparently. So I had to get that one. A big bottle would be six dollars. Or I could get three little bottles (originally six each) for twelve.

Isn’t that how they get all of us? This isn’t my first time with the three for twelve. Last purchase, I bought Sweet Pea, Moonlight Way, and Ocean Breeze. Sweet Pea was the only one I liked and finally finished.

When Chris did his smell test on Sweet Pea, he shrugged, made a face, and said it was “okay..” and that he wasn’t very found of it, which made me double over into unnecessary laughter, because Sweet Pea is all I wear. He didn’t know and stood there awkwardly.

I walked away with Sunset By The Pool, White Citrus (even though Chris wasn’t a fan), and Beautiful Day. I have to thank Chris for his help, though. I’m in love with Beautiful Day, it has a subtle apple scent. I would’ve never found it without his crazy system. White Citrus is great too. A scent I stole from my friend Amy that I liked.

Ironically, Sunset By The Pool hasn’t been my favorite. But two out of three is definitely an improvement.

I then had the biggest tantrum when I got this coupon AFTER I had spent all my money.

But just now, I realized it’s not valid until August 4th, so I feel dumb.

I’d like to say I’m joking about us spending three hours in the store, but I’m not. We did. And we had the best time.

I have all the scents to prove it. Just in case you didn’t truly take in the 24 fragrance cards the first time, look again.

We had a very good time.

Back In The Thrifting Game & Converting A Retail Shopper

June 11, 2014January 19, 2015Fashion, Friends1 Comment

After my big makeover on From My Secondhand Closet, it’s only fitting that I follow it up with a thrift day. We all know this.

The last time I hung out with Jake was for our Ontario Mills excursion. We both dressed up and walked the mall and drank Starbucks, and ate Auntie Em pretzels, and shared a huge Cinnabon that plopped, in unison with Jake’s gasp, onto my prom dress..

It was a fun day.

But Michael Kors and Calvin Klein are Jake’s thing. Now it was time to show him some real shopping.

We were going thrifting.

Continue reading ➞ Back In The Thrifting Game & Converting A Retail Shopper

Pin-up Photo Shoot

February 13, 2014January 5, 2015Fashion, Friends2 Comments

With February comes love, chocolate . . and Julie’s birthday. She’s been wanting to go to Victoria Gardens or Ontario Mills and try on ball gowns and pose with them, and the ideas and birthday options continued to evolve, until she found the perfect idea: A pin-up photo shoot.Julie loves pin-up styles. It just worked.

The original plan was to go to an old fashioned diner and take pictures there. But there were paperwork issues and all this stuff, so we ended up going to a park nearby. I think it worked just as well.

Without further ado, here are the pics, starting, of course, with the birthday girl.