Christmas Activities

 

We had a lot of fun Christmas activities over the past few weeks. We had our annual progressive family dinner. This year was a little different because Ben and Becky are in Mongolia so we went to Mike and Hailey’s apartment instead. We start at Jon and Julie’s house for appetizers where we had a sit up competition to warm up. Not sure how that started, but it was funny to watch the kids and Dan and his brothers do as many sit ups as they could in one minute.

Just a warning, most of my pictures are edited a lot in picasa because I was playing around with their newer editing options.

We moved to our house for salad. I made the creamy dressing from Café Rio and it was a hit. It was really delicious if I don’t say so myself!

I love cute little Sarah peeking over the chair while I’m taking the picture above. She is such a doll. Below is Ryan devouring his salad. He is always eating something.

Wellyn loving on Matt! He loves to love Matthew.

Everyone enjoying salad and chips at our house. P.S. I love our new floors with the white island!

We went to Mike and Hailey’s house for homemade pizza! It was super yummy.

We skyped with Ben and Becky and the girls so it was fun to have them around too. The little kids are obsessed with saying hi to them on the laptop or Ipad. They get closer and closer to the screen until they are touching it. It’s pretty funny.

Dan and I went with Steph and Andrew to the Jazz scrimmage and then to see the lights at Temple Square.

The lights were amazing as always, and it was surprisingly warm!

On the 23rd, we had Jon and Julie and their boys over to our house to frost sugar cookies. I was really impressed with how well they did, especially Wellyn. He helped me roll the dough, cut the cookies and he frosted a ton of cookies too. Everett really loved putting on the sprinkles and eating the frosting and dough!

The cookies turned out really delicious and it was a lot of fun!

I love these adorable boys.

On Christmas Eve, we had a huge lunch at Jon and Julie’s with the missionaries. Julie did a great job on turkey, potatoes, stuffing, rolls, etc. It was awesome!

The boys love playing with Uncle Danny and he throws them up in the air and onto the couches. They will beg him to play and he usually does it for a long time!

The boys had fun sliding down the stairs and just showing off for us. They are so fun to play with and it’s adorable to watch them together. Everett copies EVERYTHING Wellyn does and is just his little shadow. They are sweethearts and I’m so excited for them to have a new baby join their family in the summer! Yay!

Great Deal

  

I just signed up for the DownEast newsletter so maybe everyone gets these all the time except me…but today all their tees and camis are on sale for $5! That is an awesome deal and I love their shirts. They have half shirts which I would think might be great for pregnant moms, long sleeves, t-shirts, spaghetti straps, v necks, 3/4 sleeves and more for just $5 EACH!

They are usually at least $9.99-$14.99 so I bought a few. Shipping for me was also $5 but the sale is in stores too, I just don’t have time to go to the stores. I thought I would pass along the great deal!

You can go here: http://www.downeastbasics.com/teesandcamis.aspx to see what they have.

Silhouette Cameo

Have you heard of the Silhouette Cameo? It's the newest Silhouette craft cutter which is similar to a Cricut. The best part is that there are no expensive cartridges and you can just purchase images from their store for $1, or make your own images and cut them!  It cuts paper, vinyl, fabric and there are so many AWESOME projects and things to do with it! I have wanted one for quite a while and finally got an early Christmas present and bought one during a good sale on Black Friday!

There are so many awesome things you can do with a Silhouette and I can’t wait to try them all. I just found out that it should be waiting for me when I get home and I’m STOKED. I'm beside myself with excitement and I can't wait to make some of the awesomeness that I have seen in the blog world. I will probably be using to make some Christmas presents as well!

 

Temporary tattoos (Dan is really excited about this one).

Heat transfer to make your own shirts.

Etched glass

Fabric/paper bunting and banners.

There are tons of great ideas for all kinds of different things and the possibilities are endless! I can’t wait to get started…

Flooring Extravaganza

We are still not completely finished with our flooring project but it’s just about done so I thought I would finally share some pictures because we love it! First of all, here are some before pictures. You can see my white painted island that I finished the day we started the floorings. Good timing. See the weird angle of the carpet/laminate? I hated how weird that looked and we had to squish the chair into the family room more so that it wouldn’t have one leg on the laminate and look weird. The carpet was also grungy and not very soft. We picked up about ten million tons of laminate flooring from Sam’s club and lugged it into the house. This is only about half of it! This is also a before picture of the living room with carpeting.

Dan stayed up late several nights in a row ripping out baseboards, moulding, carpet and the old flooring. He was amazing and got so much done so we were ready to lay floor when people came to help on Saturday. Thank goodness for Dan’s amazing family and their willingness to help because we definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it without them! They work great together and did an amazing job on the floors. Our house was a disaster zone and covered in dust. Debbie was there for moral support (she has a broken leg), and she did a great job giving tips and pointers since she had done flooring at their house before. The saw was set up in the living room and dust was EVERYWHERE. Julie came to help and brought the boys who tested out the newly laid floor. Everett almost biffed it a few times since the floor was really dusty but they are always fun to have around. Julie also brought us pizza for lunch! Dan finished up the rest of the floor during some late nights on Monday and Tuesday. We took a break for Thanksgiving on Wednesday and Thursday and worked on the baseboards and finishing things up Friday and Saturday. I have cleaned everything about ten times but I think most of the dust is finally gone! There is still a lot to do to finish up the baseboards, but we are just about there! We put the house together and found a new rug for the family room. And here is what things look like now. We love it and I think the floors look amazing. I love the dark wood, wide planks, and hand scraped detail. It’s also really durable and will hopefully last a long time! I love the rug we found at Home Goods (and shoved in the back of our Accord!). It makes it more cozy and softer to lay on but you can still see the floors.

You can see the new baseboards and moulding around the door frames here. I love the thick and simple look of the moulding and it matches the kitchen island and I also framed the window in the kitchen.

A few more shots from some different angles.

While at HomeGoods, we found a chair we loved to put in the little nook/desk area. We have been using a folding white chair for 2 years so this looks much nicer and it’s comfortable too!

Below is a pretty good idea of the main room before we moved in almost exactly 2 years ago.

And here is the main room now from a similar angle. I still have more plans (always!) but we really love it. It’s amazing how much there is to do in the house! There are always more projects and ideas, and I remember thinking when we moved in that the entire house would be “done” in about a year! That was a joke…we still have empty rooms but it’s getting there and so far we love it!

Linking up here:

http://www.beneathmyheart.net/
http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/

Hello gorgeous

 

I’m pretty sure that I have used that title before but oh well…I haven’t updated forever because our lives have been a little hectic lately and I really haven’t taken any pictures! But here are a few things that are coming up around the house that I’m really excited about!

I have wanted new floors since we first moved in and I noticed the terrible installation job they did and the weird way it transitioned into the carpet. The floor is not in good shape and I kind of hated it. You can kind of see in this picture how it curves around the carpeting.

New floors are pretty pricey (even laminate) since we’re doing 800 square feet they were not in our future for a while because of the price, but I have still been keeping my eyes out for good deals and I know exactly what I wanted. I came across this blog randomly here: http://www.theyellowcapecod.com/2011/10/31-days-of-building-characterwood.html. I got REALLY excited because I loved the floors she had and she said they looked awesome and were great for durability. And the best part is…they are CHEAP! She got them at Sam’s Club and they are hand scraped laminte. I was obsessed and after doing some research, measuring and discussing with Dan, we are going to get them! I debated on what kind of flooring to do and decided that real hardwood is way out of our budget for a while and it’s really not a great investment for our home. It’s not something we would probably see back when we sell in the future. Also, I really want durable floors that my children and other kids can beat up on and I don’t have to worry about them getting ruined. These floors fit the bill! And they are exactly the style I want too! Look how gorgeous they are:

So hopefully we will be purchasing these lovelies in the near future and then installing them ourselves! Yikes…Dan is really handy and many of his family members have installed laminate floors before so I’m pretty confident that it won’t be a problem. And we’ll save a ton of money. I’m so excited and I know it will really open up our room to get rid of the cheapo carpet. And then I can get a nice big rug so it’s still comfy! I will definitely update on our progress.

Also coming up in an update I have been working on with our kitchen island. I love the look of white cabinets but Dan would freak if I painted them and I’m really not up for that right now anyway! So I decided to paint our island white and add some moulding just like the pictures below. It’s almost done and it looks really great! And just like I predicted, Dan likes it too!

Finally, the latest with us. We were able to take a lot of drives this Fall and saw some awesome Fall leaves! It was so much fun to drive together and chat and enjoy the beautiful views. We did a hike and got dinner and just drove around to different places.

A few weeks ago at work, I was told that they company wasn’t doing so well and that day was my last day. Wow. Total shock. I had only been there about 13 months and I was laid off by Flying J before that! What was wrong with me?! I couldn’t believe it and I had no idea it was coming. I was devastated and leaving my amazing friends at work was heartbreaking. I cried a lot. I was so worried and overwhelmed and just had so many emotions. That happened in the morning and I called Dan to let him know. We carpooled and so I went to his work and his amazing boss told him to leave for the day to be with me. He is a great guy. Dan is so wonderful and I honestly couldn’t ask for a better husband and friend. He says the best things or sometimes says nothing and just hugs me a lot. He is perfect for me and I would be so lost without him.

That morning he suggested we head up to Cache Valley to enjoy the scenery and get my wedding ring cleaned. He is so smart and knew that I wouldn’t want to spend any money, but that was a free way to make me really happy! What a guy…the colors in the canyon were incredible and we took a lot of pictures and also stopped in Brigham City to walk around and check out the new temple being built. It was beautiful! Considering the circumstances, it was a wonderful day and even though I bawled most of the time, I still loved being with him and it was a great thing to do that day. We talked a lot and he comforted me and calmed me down like only he can!

I immediately started looking for jobs and sent out some emails later that evening to people I had kept in touch with. The next few days were pretty depressing and stressful, but the Lord was watching over us as usual. I forgot to mention that the first thing I thought of after getting over the shock of getting laid off AGAIN was that I wanted to go to the temple. We hadn’t been in a while and it was immediately what I thought of. We were able to go a little while later and it was great.

  To make a long story short, through some amazing blessings and thankfully keeping in touch with a previous boss from my job in college, I was able to land a new job! I couldn’t believe how quickly it all happened and it was definitely a blessing from the Lord. I started my new job last week and so far it has been really great. The only negative is the 45-60 minute commute up to Research Park. It sucks, but once I’m trained more and I’m settled (in a few months hopefully), they said I can work from home 1-2 days a week and during bad weather! That is awesome and I’m really stoked for that. Dan and I are also going to keep carpooling once or twice a week.

So that is the latest with me and I have honestly been an emotional wreck the past month! I’m such a bawl baby and I’ve had quite a few meltdowns. But of course Dan is there to calm me down and make me feel so much better. It’s weird how well he can do that but I couldn’t be more grateful! Now we’re pretty much back in our routine and things are relatively back to normal!

Dan is still working his little booty off doing school 8 hours a week, plus a lot of homework and working full time. He still manages to find time to watch our shows with me and help me with projects and cleaning the house! He also fits in working out and a lot of football and sportscenter after I’m in bed :).

I will try to get the kitchen island wrapped up soon so I can take some pictures! I didn’t plan on this post being so long, but sometimes that just happens.

      Life is tough but once again, we are blessed.