The 36 Hour Vacation

This past Memorial Day weekend Jeff and I took a quick trip out to Cali. Seriously, the whole trip took place in just about 36 hours. We just needed a break and to get out of this HEAT. (I have a feeling this is going to be a long summer with these temperatures.)

We drove straight to Balboa Island Friday morning for a little sight seeing and shopping. We chowed down on their famous chocolate covered bananas for lunch! YUM!

(Balboa Island Chocolate Covered Banana)

 From there we headed to the Dodger Game. The game on Friday night was pretty terrible (Dodgers came back for a win Sat. and Sun. though), but the fireworks they light up at the end of the game were so much fun. We got to go down on the field to watch them being sent off.


(Jeff's first time on the Dodger field)

We headed to our hotel for a nice long night after the game. Because we got to the hotel late, the only non-smoking room left was a suite with a Murphy Bed. Yes, a Murphy Bed. It was so tiny, Jeff's feet were hanging off the edge all night, but we must have been tired because we slept until 10:30. That right, 10:30! This for a girl who considers sleeping until 7:00 as sleeping in.


Beach!

In the morning after we dragged ourselves out of bed, we went to eat brunch at Polly's on the Pier (scrumptious!). Then we headed to a nearby beach for a few hours before hitting the road. We knew we had to get back because Scout was in a new place with new people and we didn't want to freak her out so soon after adopting her. (Jeff and I think with a little more planning we'll take her with us next time. Even with only a 36 hour vacation we still came home to a dog with colitis- spent Tuesday morning at the Vets office.)

So there you have it. A 36 hour vacation. We had such a good time, didn't have one quarrel, and got in lots of fun. Maybe we should take more 36 hour vacations? Wish I could have another go at one this weekend!

Side note, this is also our first vacation where we pretty much exclusively took pictures on our phones. It was kind of liberating not to have to lug my huge camera around.

Pinterest Pickings - Let's Talk Marriage

I don’t feel much like blogging lately. Summers here and I am getting a bit overwhelmed with “Need To’s,” “Should Do’s,” and “Want To’s.”

Speaking of "Want To’s", I’ve been pinning a lot of relationship stuff on Pinterest lately. Right now the DH and I are in one of those good spots, you know, where we are all lovey dovey and neither one of us can do anything wrong. I love those phases! I know it’s only a matter of time before we have an arguement disagreement about something or the other, and I kind of want to capitalize on the current euphoria.

I don’t know when I’ll find the time for any of this stuff, but these are defiantly going under my current “Want To’s.”

99 Things to be Thankful About Your Husband

30 Day Marriage Challange

30 Questions to Ask Your Spouse

(We actually did a few of these on a recent road trip and we totally were laughing and I found out some new things about this man of mine!)

100 Date Night Ideas

101 Things to do for Your Husband



Cute Love Notes
( I actually made one of these picture frames a few months ago. A few times a week I'll write down something I love about DH. Sometimes he writes back. It's super cute & fun. Even when what's written on the frame is: "I love you because your snoring sounded like Chubaca last night.")

I love that people started posting some stuff to help strengthen a marraige, or to be a better wife. I was getting a little tired of all the post where women were dreaming up "the perfect guy." Yeah, I want a husband who can build me a bookshelf too, but I would never base a relationship, or even a date, on such trivial matters.

I think sometimes women need to stop dreaming about prince charming and find someone to love for their strengths and their flaws. No one is going to check off all your boxes, instead of creating a list of things you require of your man, start becoming those things yourself, and eventually the right guy will come along.

. . . Oh! Shoot! Is that a soap box under me? I guess I had stronger feelings on that topic then I thought! Anyways, I just really like the Pins above and hope I can peruse them more in depth sometime. Make my honey bun feel special! I do love him so very much!

A Few Unnecessary Things

- Our re-plumbers didn't put our house back to where we I can't tell they were here. I can totally see where they patched and painted our walls. Jeff kind of thinks I'm crazy, he can't tell the difference between mate and gloss paint, but I'm gonna make them re-do it anyways. I know it will drive me nuts. This means my house is STILL a mess!

- I can't stop day dreaming about vacations and spending time with my family. Along with that I am swamped with church calling duties. This does not look good for my 30x30 list. Time is ticking!

-Speaking of my 30 x 30 list, I can't decide what kind of unnecessary clothing item I should purchase to finish off #4 on my list. Here is what a quick search has aroused in me:

1,2,3

4,5,6

For some reason unnecessary clothing items always reminds me of accessories. Probably because even though most would say they are essential to putting an outfit together, I can never seem to get it together enough to get that far in assembling an outfit. These are cute enough though that I just might be able to manage to put one of these guys on!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Replumbing = Messy House

This is an example of what my house looks like this week . . .

Why is all my furniture squished into the the middle of all our rooms you may ask? Our home is being re-plumbed due a settlement made with the builder KB Homes. I guess they went a little too cheap on our plumbing when this house was built and they needed to go in and do repairs. The repairs make our walls look like this . . .

 This is our living room wall where our sofa normally lives. It is kind of weird to be able to take a look in our walls. I've always been kind of curious what its like back there. There are some areas of the house that I didn't know why there was a bulkhead or a push out and would like to have claimed the space, but turns out, there's lots of pipes and stuff in them thar walls!

 
Our ceiling looks like it has the chicken pocks, except instead of pocks its just a bunch of HOLES! Yes, those are all big holes in our ceiling.

Even the outside of our house isn't safe! Supposedly, everything will be put back in place, walls patched and re-painted and we'll never know any workers were here or that the plumbing has been replaced. I've seen a house where the work was already done and I couldn't even tell any work had been done. They better do a good job for us as well.

New plumbing you better be worth all the chaos you are creating this week! I can't wait to get my house back and to start working on our bathrooms and other projects we have planned!

Graduation Party Inspiration

I am thinking about graduation parties this spring. Maybe that is because my younger sister is graduating High School this June. That would only make perfect sense. I have been racking my brain for some inspiration and trolling the web to help with ideas.

Here is what we (myself and my other sisters) are thinking so far:

Seriously, is there anything that says party more than balloons? And when they are all put together in a banner, it can only mean that the night is going to be a good one! We ordered some 2012 grad balloons in her school colors from Oriental Trading Co. and can follow this tutorial to make a balloon banner. (We ordered some other stuff from Oriental Trading too. It’s great to be able to order things in your school’s colors.)

My sister is obsessed with photography, so we want to try and include that as much as possible. I was thinking of making her a memory book of growing up, or some people make videos for their kids, but in all honesty, if we did something like that we would have had to of gotten started a long time ago. Plus she is so picky about her photos that I’m sure no one but her could do it right. I think that instead we will gather up some pictures of her growing up and just place them around the room is some cute way. Pics of her could be strung on twine and clipped on with laundry clips; they could be hung from the ceiling, or even attached to our trusty balloon friends.

We also are thinking of incorporating a photo booth to capture everyone that comes over to celebrate with her. There are a couple of sites online that you can make any pictures into a photo strip for free (find them here and here). Plus there are lots of great free printables for photo booth props online as well, like this one I want to use from Oh Happy Day.

I am not sure how we are going to incorporate them yet, but somehow tassels are going to be incorporated. I found this tutorial online to make our own tassels from embroidery yarn.

Pic

Lastly, we want to be able to dole out sound wise advice for our new grad. Ideas I thought of would be to have everyone sign in on the pages of the Dr. Seuss book Oh The Places You'll Go and have them sign in with one token of advice. I thought about having people write it out and posting somewhere around the house, or having her read them at some point during the party. Putting them on school lined Post It Notes? I'm not sure where we'll end up with that one, but it's got to get in the mix somehow.

I am excited to plan her a little party and to try and make it special and memorable. She is so lucky to have sisters like us! Back patted!

Gifts that don't SUC-culent

This past Christmas I made these cute little potted succulents for the ladies I work with. I wasn't able to post about it because I didn't have a computer at the time, but I've been thinking, these would make pretty cute thank you gifts for a teacher at the end of the year as well.

They were pretty easy to make. I just started with a handful of succulents from Lowes ($2-$3 each) and terracotta pots from Michael ($0.80 each). I had the chalkboard paint, grout, foam paint brush, and the ribbon on hand.

I mixed a tablespoon of tile grout with my chalkboard paint (maybe half a cup of paint?) in a Paper cup so that the paint could hold up on the pots inside or out. I liked the idea of a terracotta strip on top and on bottom of the pot, but of course, the pot could be left unpainted or just paint the whole thing.

I wrapped each pot with ribbon, secured with some double stick tape on the back. I double knotted the ribbon around a piece of chalk (dollar store). Then I added a tag I had from Target and tied it to the chalk. On one side of the tag I stamped "JOY" ("Thank You" would also work), and on the other side I wrote the name of the plant and the care instructions that came with it.

After about an hour I was left with these cute, partially hand made, gifts that I think anyone would enjoy. Who doesn't like succulents? Am I right?

The ladies seemed to like them. I think it was a better hit then the miniature mason jar apple pies I made last year (which took much, MUCH longer to make). Who would have thought people didn't like apple pies? Crazy town.

30 x 30 It's almost reckoning time!

Here is a list I created a year and some months ago with all the things I thought I could accomplish by the time I turn 30. It doesn't look too good for me!

1) Have my hair professionally dyed a dark auburn.
2) Go on a 'real' date with Jeff once a month, no family members invited. So far so good!
3) Blog once a month. So far so good!
4) Update my wardrobe with at least 5 fun and totally non-essential items.
5) Lose 20 lbs, feel more fit.
6) Take a road trip.
7) Organize the garage and all our tools. Jeff has the tool bench and has them all wrangled in ONE spot. It’s amazing!.
8) Re-vamp the office. It needs an overhaul. I think I can mark this one off, made huge improvements, even if it does still need some work..
9) "Grow up" our decorating style a little. I think I did okay at this, at least our bed is no longer on the floor and our TV stand is no longer an old painted dresser. I'll consider this success!
10) Paint the hallway and stairwell.
11) Frame the dried flowers from our wedding. I did this in our hallway picture grouping.
12) Print the disposable camera pictures from our wedding.
13) Make a window treatment for the kitchen window. I forgot about this, it was so simple, I should do a post about it.
14) Complete 5 crafts from the Martha Stewart Encyclopedia of Crafts.
15) Find at least 5 go-to recipes from "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cook Book."
16) Take better pictures with my Nikon.
17) Write, record, memorialize my grandparents history.
18) Sew something. (Kitchen window and a little bad to organize my Primary stuff)
19) Decide if I'm going back to school and for what.
20) Stop drinking caffeinated soda.
21) Tithes.
22) Pray more.
23) Go to the temple once a quarter (4 times a year) So far so good!
24) Read the Book of Mormon again.
25) Get preggo.
26) If preggo, decorate the cutest nursery ever!
27) Read 6 books.
28) Reduce our monthly expenses by 10% I reduced our utility bills by 10%. Not much I could do about the car payment and what not. But, the car and credit card payment only have a few months payment left and then they are GONE!
29) Learn how to play my favorite piano song from the Sense and Sensibility movie.
30) Take a trip with just Jeff and I for our 30th birthdays

There are a couple of items that I know will be completed, I just need to see them through. #2, #3 and #23 will definitely be checked off the list (Dating, blogging and temple going. Check, check, and check.)


Then there are those that I think I could pretty easily check off if I concentrate on them in the next couple of months:


4-Updating my wardrobe: So far I have an owl ring, a jersey knit skirt, a floral scarf, and yellow shoes; I just need one more unnecessary item.
10-Painting the stairwell
12-Printing out our wedding pictures
16-Taking better pictures Signed me and my sister up for a class. AND I know how to change my f stop and aperture now. On my way to success!
20-Caffeinated Soda’s : Almost broke the addiction, down to just one caffeinated soda a day.
21-Tithes
22-Prayer
24-BoM read through


Then there are those that I think I may have just dropped the ball on and will have to keep working on:

5-Losing 20 lbs: I got the gym membership, went once. HA HA HA! Guess I need to work on this.
14- 5 Martha Stewart Crafts: I glittered eggs, that’s about it.
15- Cooking: Total fail. I think I made one soup from the recipe book but that was it. I still don’t really cook.
17- Writing my grandparent’s history: I started this, but there are still so many more stories I should write down.
19- Decide about school:
25 and 26- Getting preggo and make nursery: I broke down and have the appointments scheduled with the fertility specialist.
29- Learn a song on the Piano: Total fail. I’ve probably only played the piano a couple times in the last year.
30- Taking a trip with Jeff: We are still thinking about this. If we do go on a trip I think it would be between our two birthdays, maybe some time in the fall, so I won’t make this one by the time I turn 30.

Wow! So I’ve only completed 10 out of 30 in the last year and some change. I am nothing if not a procrastinator! Let’s hope I can get some more of these babies done!