Thinking of a title is hard

Dan had a birthday on the 5th and he turned the big 2-4. Now my turn is next and I have a birthday at the end of the month! We had a lot of fun celebrating and unfortunately I didn’t take any pics :)

One of the gifts I gave him was tickets to the first preseason Jazz game on Thursday. We had a ton of fun and I loved seeing Dan so happy watching the Jazz play! Luckily they won and we got to cheer them on.

We can’t wait to see the Jazz play again!

I have also done a few more Fall updates around the house. I made this little wreath for only $3 using dollar store leaves, dollar store foam wreath, and dollar store ribbon!

 

I also made this cute Thankful banner and hung it up in our entry way. It’s really hard to see very well in this picture, but I think it’s cute!

I used the tutorial from Centsational Girl here and it was really easy and fun to do. I realize it’s still awhile until Thanksgiving but I don’t really care :)

Cute Halloween decor on the french doors.

This is another wreath I made and it only cost me a buck! I just bought a wreath from the dollar store. I had a ton of burlap and ribbon from the other wreath project. I painted the door hanger black as well.

I copied Cowboy Phraseoloy with the wreath she made here.

 

I love Fall!

Cruisin’

You may remember this post over 1.5 years ago when I announced that we were going on a cruise to Mexico to celebrate my graduation in May 2009. Well…because of the lovely swine flu outbreak originating in Mexico in the Spring of 2009, our cruise was redirected to San Francisco. We really didn’t want to go to San Fran when we had been there before and were looking forward to going to Mexico.

Anyway, we opted to get a cruise credit and we had until the end of 2010 to use it. At the time it seemed like forever away, but now that is almost here! Craziness. Soooo we are finally going to go on our cruise December 12-19! We are so excited and we really just have to pay to get to Long Beach and for cruise excursions, etc.             So we are going to be lovin’ life and soaking up some sun in Mexico in a few months!                I might go on a starvation diet before the cruise so I don’t feel guilty about eating all day :)             I’m sure we will be shoving small children out of our way to go down the slide on the boat.               I plan on sitting here and reading my book and drinking diet coke (if we decide to buy a soda card…what a rip off!).           Maybe we’ll do some of this? Any tips or advice is much appreciate! Let me know if you have any suggestions about shopping, excursions, and cruises in general!               So while the rest of you are enjoying this December 12-19…              We will be enjoying this…

Suckers :)

The Circus

Dan and I went to the circus at the Energy Solutions Arena last week and it was really fun! We had seen the elephant parade and it was so exciting and then Dan’s brother invited us to go to the circus!

I got a discount from my work so we didn’t pay much at even though we were in the upper bowl, we were at the very bottom of the upper bowl :) There was so much to see and watch and I couldn’t see everything at once! They did some amazing things and we were completely entertained the entire time. 

The circus was on Friday and then on Saturday we went boating for the last time of the summer. It was such a gorgeous day and we wore wetsuit so it was really comfortable. I was so happy that I got some sun too!

 

After boating , we drove up to Alta to see the leaves. There were hardly any reds, but the bright green and yellow were beautiful!

 

I look awesome since we just finished boating…

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?