Fall Fun

I seriously LOVE Fall. I know a lot of people do, but it just makes me so happy I can’t even explain it! There are so many wonderful things about Fall and here are just a few (in no particular order):

1. Sweaters
2. Halloween
3. birthdays! (Mine and Dan’s)
4. Crisp weather
5. Leaves changing
6. Football
7. Relief from summer heat
8. Boots

I put up a few Fall/Halloween decorations at our house and I really love it! I don’t have a ton of little spots to decorate which is good because I hate having clutter and knick knacks everywhere.

I changed a few things on this little table in our kitchen area. I’m going to paint this table soon…I’m thinking red to match our red wall in the family room. I “spookified” it by putting little skulls from the dollar store in a lantern, and using spiderwebs. I added little spider rings and skulls. The glittery skeleton is also from the dollar store.

I really love the front porch and I love even more how cheap it was! I had been wanting some cute fallish stuff for the porch but I saw it at Joanns and stuff for a lot of money! I almost lost my mind when I saw a whole bunch of houses in our neighborhood selling cornstalks, straw and other fall stuff!

We basically live on the shores of the Great Salt Lake (lakefront property hello!) but we love the neighborhood and also how “farmy” it still is. There are a lot of farms around and in our neighborhood and it’s awesome! It reminds me of Cache Valley…love it :)

Anyway, I picked up everything except the pumpkins on the stairs and the “Happy Halloween” sign for $8!! SWEEEEEEET! And I just had to wheel my wheelbarrow a few houses down. Awesome.

I still need a wreath and I’ve been making one but since I go to bed at 9, I don’t have a lot of time :)

This is the little shelf that you can see from the upstairs looking down toward the front door. You can see it from the front door too.

And here is another update on the bedroom progress. I was able to get the nightstands painted and they look great! I don’t have a pic close but they were honey colored wood with round knobs on them before.

I sanded them, primed and spray painted them bright glossy white. I also covered them with a clear glossy topcoat enamel. I put on new hardware and now they are updated and look awesome!

The room so far…I was too lazy to take the water bottle, alarm clock, etc off the nightstands just for a pretty pic :)

I obviously still have a lot to do in the room, but I’m loving it so far! Curtains are my text battle and I have decided to do something similar to this:
*from isabellaandmaxrooms.blogspot.com

I’m going to do the curtains white, but I need to decide what fabric to do along the bottom. Here are a bunch I have.

Please help me decide what color to do at the bottom of the curtains! I also have a chair kinda like this

I’m going to paint it white and then cover the cushions in fabric too. So please let me know what fabric I should use on the curtains and on the chair! PLEASE I NEED HELP :)

Thanks kids :)

Life update: I’m just finishing up my third week working at SunGard and so far I’m enjoying it! I love that I get to wear jeans and casual clothes! And working at the Gateway is really cool. Dan came and met me for lunch and we watched the circus parade where they brought the elephants down through the Gateway. It’s fun to be downtown and I take the train a lot too which is nice. I’m excited to have a good job and I like learning new things and I’m ready to know how to do my job and be done with the “I don’t know what I’m doing/training” stage :)

Dan is killing it at school and I’m so proud of how hard he is working and all the studying he is doing. School is not his favorite and studying doesn’t come naturally to him :) But he is amazing and doing great. And he’s trying to plan to take extra classes so he can graduate and start his Master’s program sooner! Yay!

We also bought some trees for our yard and they are great. Fall is a really good time to plant and buy trees since they’re all on sale. We got 5 trees and a few perennials and the yard is still coming together but we really like it!

Be Prepared

I have been really interested in getting food storage since we moved into our house and we have a little more space. At the bottom of my blog list I have some resources about food storage that I refer to often. I've been really happy with the progress I've made and getting food storage is weirdly exciting for me. Anyway, with the fire in Herriman I have been more motivated to do a few more things right away in case something like that happened to us. It's so easy to think that we will never have to evacuate or have an emergency or need food storage or 72 hour kits, but it's so important and I really feel strongly about it.

I know that one family who lost their home in the fire said they only had a few minutes notice and they didn't bring one single thing. How awful would that be? I know a lot of people use back up hard drives to back up their pictures and computer documents, but if you don't, I highly recommend it! You will be so sad if you don't have backups of your pictures and your computer crashed or got destroyed. An external hard drive is really easy to grab if you only have a few minutes to leave and you will have your important pictures and data. I also recommend backing those things up using an online storage site as well so if something were to happen to your hard drive you have them stored somewhere else. There are a lot of free sites and some that offer a lot more space for cheap. I use windows skydrive.



Here are the things I'm making a point to get finished by the end of October:


1. Grab and Go List: This is a list of what you would grab if you had to leave quickly. Here is an example from preparedldsfamily.blogspot.com. She has a lot of really good information.



2.. Completely finish 72 hour kits. Here is the list I put together based on other lists online and our needs (sorry I didn't fix the things that are crossed out).

I think the most important thing is just to do what is best for you. Get together what you need so you don't have to depend on others or worry if there is an emergency. I like feeling like I can have a little control over an emergency situation by being prepared. I feel really strongly that this is important so I wanted to share it with everyone! I hope you guys can get motivated to do some food storage/emergency preparedness because you will be glad you did. It definitely doesn't hurt and you can do it really inexpensively if you start now and do it over time. Let me know if you want me resources or information or my 72 hour kit list and I can email it to anyone who is interested.

A few of my favorite things...

I thought I would do a post about a few of my (and Dan's) favorite shows. Some are just as of late and some are classics.
House Hunters is considered a classic for me. I've always loved it. And it's always on HGTV. House Hunters International is also very awesome. We like the rich people houses the best :)Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory is sooo funny! He is just nuts but we always laugh really hard at the things he says and does. Surviving The Cut is on Discovery (or History...not sure) and it's new this season. It's about the most elite army/navy/marine/etc groups and how they train and get in. It's painful to watch but it's really amazing and interesting!Swamp People is a big time winner. This is about people in the Bayou during alligator hunting season and they are hard core. There are usually subtitles when they talk and they catch alligators with string and their hands! Madness.American Pickers is a cool show about these guys that go to all these back roads small town places and go through people's "junk" to look for treasures and things to resell. They're pretty funny and the stuff they find is crazy!Flipping Out is probably my fave right now and I'm so glad that I found it on Comcast OnDemand. It is so hilarious and Jeff Lewis and the people who work for him are serious characters! His housekeeper Zoila (below) is probably the best one on the show besides Jeff. This is awesome because it combines decorating, remodeling and comedy! Another classic. Obviously we can't wait for The Office to start again.

Glee is a great show too. I started watching last season but got busy and forgot to watch so I got caught up and now I'm excited for this season to start. The music is awesome and Sue Sylvester is absolutely hysterical.Since Flash Forward got cancelled (sad!), we need to find a new show and I'm thinking I will give The Event a chance...hopefully it's good! Those are some of the shows we really love and watch a lot. Thank goodness for DVR! What are your favorite shows right now? What do you HAVE to watch every week?

Bedroom in progress

My bedroom is still not done but I have made a lot of progress so I thought I would show some updates so far because I'm really happy with what I've been able to do while I've had some time off of work!

Here are the only shots I have of our room before we moved in. The walls were tan and red and white...nice.

The paint job was really awful and they had used really bad rollers so I had to sand every inch of every wall. Wow. I painted the walls a gorgeous gray color called Behr Porpoise. I did a darker accent wall on the bed side of the room called Behr Creek Bend. I LOVE Behr Paint+Primer! It is amazing and I have used it in my whole house and love it. Also, I bought a nice Purdy paintbrush and it was amazing for the corners and ceilings. I didn't even have to tape and it looks great!

I made and upholstered the headboard and I'm really happy with it. It's definitely not perfect and I'm really bugged that the nailhead trim is not a perfect line, but it was sooo hard! I had to hammer every.single.nail. By hand. Luckily Dan went camping this weekend so I sat in front of our new TV (picture below) and worked on this all weekend!I followed the instructions over at Isabella and Max Rooms (awesome decorating blog!) to make the headboard and it worked great. Of course hers is absolutely perfect but whatevs. By the way, I really really love nail guns and staple guns! :)I'm in love with these lamps! I'm mad I didn't take a before picture of them, but I got them on sale at TJ Maxx and I left the bases silver. One shade was pink with brown flowers and one was blue with brown flowers. I covered the shades in white muslin and added a yellow ribbon on the top and bottom. These shades turned out better than the shades I did in my family room thanks to using some great fabric glue called Liquid Stitch.I still have a lot more to do in the room. I'm looking for a cheap used dresser that I can paint yellow because I built this dresser and don't want to paint it. I'm also going to spray paint the night stands white and add silver hardware. I'm going to add curtains (still decided what kind...) and hopefully some kind of chair in the corner. We also have this cute little nook/shelf area that I can decorate somehow. And hopefully we'll get a flat screen around Christmas to hang on the wall :)The picture above shows the different colors the best. I love how calming they are. Sorry about the junk on the floor...that's real life right? Also, below is the white bedskirt I got and I started to add a yellow ribbon along the bottom but I ran out of ribbon tonight dangit! I'm still not sure about the pillow configuration yet, and I'm on the hunt for more/other pillows so I'm sure they will change eventually.

We had my family over for s'mores on my Dad's bday (Labor Day). It was fun and a great Fall evening for enjoying the firepit!
My parents both had their eyes completely closed in the only picture I took of them but they were there too :)And last, we picked up this beauty last weekend.Dan and I have talked about getting a big screen for awhile, but we were going to wait until the holiday sales. Dan NEVER spends money (luckily I'm really good at it), and he came home last week and wanted to go look. I was pretty surprised and I recognized the crazy look in his eyes but I was up for it. We got an awesome deal at RC Willey on this 50" plasma and we also got a free Blu-Ray player! We're really happy with it and of course now I want to find a new stand for it but we'll probably hang it on the wall eventually. I love this commercial too ("This is Peggy....yes...yes....")! The best part about it is that our cable package already had the HD channels so we don't have to pay any extra per month for HD! SWEET! High def is incredible and we love our new TV. Dan really loves it. Like a ton. Way way a lot. He's obsessed.

I start my new job on Monday and I'm really excited and really nervous! I'll post more updates on the bedroom progress ASAP.

Changes

There have been a lot of changes going on with us lately and I think it's about time to update everyone (for those who care and don't know....). First of all, I have done a few projects and I'm in the middle of more, but here are some pictures of what I have been doing!

I have been wanting to paint the front door for awhile and we had an heavy ugly glass door as well that we wanted to take down. So I took off the glass door and filled in millions of nail holes around the trim. Then I sanded and painted the trim white and painted the front door black! I got some vinyl and a new rug and I love the new look!

Here is the front porch when we first bought the house before we closed:

And here is the front door now! I really like it and it looks great from the street. I still have a lot of plans for the porch to do eventually! For anyone interested, my door was already white, and I bought a quart of Behr outdoor paint + primer in black. It took a few coats, but it looks awesome. I used a satin finish and it covers really well. I also took the doorknob and deadbolt off and spary painted them with a metal finish that closely matched what was already there! It was peeling and looked bad and the spray paint looks awesome!

New doormat from Lowes. Weird how much I love Home Depot and Lowes now...

Next are curtains and new lamps for the family room! I have wanted curtains since we moved in and even though it has taken awhile, did something different than I originally thought I wanted and I love this even more! It was so cheap and easy and they look great!

I made the curtains out of painter's drop cloths from Home Depot. I was planning on doing 4 panels, but it looks good with just 3 so that's what I ended up with. I got the idea from a whole bunch of different blogs who have done it and since I don't sew (at all), I loved the idea!

I bought 2 packages of 6 X 9 foot drop cloths. They come already hemmed which is awesome. I washed and dried them and then laid them out on a blanket on the floor and ironed forever. Then i cut them in half and used hem tape (stich witchery) to hem the edge that I cut.

I used the hem tape to attach some brown trip to the edge and I was done! I folded over the top of the panel and attached it with clips on the back. It's the perfect length and "pools" on the ground a little, but you can't really tell because the couch is in the way!

I also re-did these lamps and I really like them, but since I'm a perfectionist, I'm a little bugged about some small imperfections, but oh well! I learned a lot which is good :) I got the lamp bases at D.I. for $7 each. They were ugly off-white and gold! I spray painted them heirloom white by rustoleum. I also got the drum shades at D.I. (different trip) for only $1 each! Score! They were tan colored and I covered them in this cute fabric I found. I also trimmed the top and bottom with matching ribbon.

The lamps were not my idea either so I can't take credit for any of this. I'm just really good at copying other peoples' great ideas! I just love blogs and their great ideas!

The total cost for this was:

drop cloths: $20 (I still have one panel left)

trim: $8 (JoAnns with coupon)

curtain rod: $25 (JoAnns with coupon)

curtain clips: $15 (Lowes)

lamp bases: $14 (D.I.)

lamp shades: $2 (D.I.)

fabric/ribbon: $18 (Pfaff/JoAnns)

TOTAL: $102! Sweet!

I took some pictures this afternoon with the sun and I thought it looked weird so some of these are done at night and some during the day.

The above picture is the view from the front door when you first walk in.

Some other exciting news is.....

Not pregnant sorry folks :) Haha but Danny started school again, but he was doing summer school so it's not a huge change. I'm just sooooo glad to be graduated and not stressing over school all the time! It's great to be done but somehow I'm always helping him now! Haha it never ends I guess. He's still working a ton but hopefully he'll work less or get a new job soon.

As for me, I was told that I had a 60 day notice at my job and would be laid off and my last day was August 20. I was told this in June so I had some time to digest and figure out what the devil we were going to do. It wasn't a total shock because Flying J (I worked at the headquarters in the IT dept) was in bankruptcy and we basically got bought out by Pilot. So the headquarters was moved to Tennessee and we had no interest in moving there so I had to find a new job!

Thing were really stressful and overwhelming, but at the same time, I was pretty calm about the whole thing and I felt like things were going to work out okay. I was really lucky to have 60 days notice, a severance package and the ability to look for jobs full time at work! I applied for TONS of jobs and was really optimistic about them, but after 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 6 weeks and only 1 or 2 interviews I was getting pretty bummed. I was stressed because we have a house now and a mortgage to pay! But the Lord was watching out for us and like always, He knows what is best. We tried to make an effort to go to the temple, fast, pray and pay tithing and fast offerings. I still wasn't sure what would happen, but I was at least at peace because we were doing those things.

Anyway, I ended up getting a whole bunch of interviews the last week or two of my job and I was so excited! I got several job offers and I had the difficult decision of weighing my options and choosing the job that I thought was best for me. It was a hard decision but I feel like I made the right choice! I have a job with SunGard Protegent which is a large financial company with offices all over the world. I will be a Systems Engineer and working with Brokerage software. That's about all I know right now! The office I will work in is at Gateway Mall downtown and I'm so excited to work downtown! It's only about a 35 minute drive for me and I can also take FrontRunner if I don't want to drive when it's snowy or to avoid traffic!

The job has great benefits, time off, pay, and the location is cool too! I'm still nervous about the position because I feel like they are going to think they made a mistake and I don't know what I'm doing! Ahh! But I'm sure it will be fine. The best thing is that I get 3 weeks off between jobs! That is exactly what I was hoping for and it has been amazing. I have been able to sleep in, go to the gym, run errands, cook, and best of all-do projects around the house! I am in the middle of doing our master bedroom and bath and I can't wait. Here is a picture of my inspiration to give you an idea of the colors and stuff I'm doing. Mine will be different, but it's similar to the pic and I ended up buying one of the same pillows! I've started the painting process and hopefully I'll be done by this weekend! YAY~!

So that is the latest with us and now that things are settling down, we are so grateful for the blessings we have received. I'm so grateful for my education and experience and that I could find a great job! Dan has been amazing through everything even though he is super busy. We just have a great time together and I love him so much! It's so nice to have a partner to go through life with and I'm lucky to have him :)