Happy Valentine's Day!

For Valentine's Day this year, Jonathan and I decided  to keep things low key, especially considering that I have a nasty cold bug which makes tonight anything but 'romantic'.  Since I have been cooped up at home all day,  I made Jonathan this collage of all of the years we have spent together. We have had so many amazing memories over the years and I can honestly say that I know I am a better person with Jonathan by side.  I love him so much!
Jonathan got me an Italian themed gift equipped with home made Italian pasta, pasta sauce, Italian chocolate, and Italian coffee. I thought for sure the next thing he was going to give me was a plane ticket to Italy - not quite because that definitely would not be equivalent to "low key".  It was a seriously thoughtful gift which is another reason why I love him so much!

In between the cold weather, the winter storms, the smoggy air, and being constantly sick I have been spending quite a bit of my time being 'crafty' this winter.  I think it helps to lift my spirits when the weather feels so drab.  I made this heart wreath for my door which is made out of felt and cardboard.

Now I need to think of a new cute wreath for Easter/Spring.  I am not going to lie, I hate decorating for Easter.  I am not a fan of bunnies, pastels, or eggs.  Bunnies are evil. Pastels remind me of the 90's and eggs are simply food.  I guess I'll just have to pull together my creativeness and do something a little different than the norm.

I also made this DIY painted rug. I bought the rug from Ikea for $40. I bought the paint from home Depot for $20, color: Behr, Midnight Dream. And I made the stencil myself which was free! The only cost associated with this rug was the cost of time. For me, the time that I spent working on this project (which was about a weeks worth of time) was therapeutic. I love crafts and tot to mention that I think it turned out pretty awesome :)

Anyway, I hope that everyone else has had a great, 'sick-free' Valentine's day!

Happy New Year 2013!

At the beginning of 2012, I vowed to myself to make this a year to remember, to live large and celebrate life.  Heck, for all we knew in January 2012, the World was coming to an end in less than 12 months. The following is a recap of the year:

FEBRUARY 2012: 

In a last minute decision, the day before President's Day weekend, we decided to utilize a "Travelzoo" deal and we went to Las Vegas with our friends Arica and Taylor Mathie.  It was my first time going to Vegas and it was an AWESOME time!

MARCH 2012:

Our friends from Jonathan's law school days, Tyne and Dave, came to visit us in March.  We spent the first day skiing at Snowbird and the rest of the trip we went to Moab Utah and went hiking and camping.  One of the things that I love most about Utah is the opportunity to have so many fun outdoor activities. I am so glad that they came and visited us!

Panorama view of our campsite in Moab as the sun rose

House Projects 2012: 

Jonathan started working on our newest house projects.  Currently we only have one bathroom in our house, which is, well to put it lightly, horrible.  So Jonathan has spent numerous nights and weekends working to add a bathroom in our basement.  In addition, our laundry room was unfinished so we have been working to finish this project as well. Unfortunately we still have quite a bit of work to do, but hopefully at the end of 2013, I can say this is a finished project!

This is the before picture (see caption below)

After Picture: We re-painted our house.  I hated the cream trim and the mint green siding so we painted the trim black, and the siding a light grey.  I feel as if these pictures don't really do justice to the drastic difference, but we are happy with the final product :)

Oh yeah, and I stained the front door black.  

MAY 2012:

In May we went on a delightfully fun vacation to Cancun, Mexico with some of our close friends.  Cancun is so beautiful, and the beaches are simply gorgeous. Now we have to decide whether or not we will go to Costa Rica with the same group of friends this year. Tempting...

Jonathan sold his Jeep and bought a new Acura MDX.  I was sad to see this car go. This car took us to and from Vermont a few times.  Needless to say, we shared a lot of memories and put a lot of miles on this car. 

JUNE 2012:

On June 2nd, 2012, we celebrated our five year anniversary! Five years of happiness! I can't wait to see what the years to come have in store for us.

In June, we went to Sun Valley, Idaho and took a day trip to Red Fish Lake.  I must say, this Lake was absolutely gorgeous! I have never seen more beautiful crystal clear water and amazing scenery.  I really want to go camping there in 2013.

 SEPTEMBER 2012:

 

For Labor Day weekend, we went to Dillon, Montana with our good friends Jo and Randy. Like the past few years, we had an amazing time fishing, four-wheeling, golfing and of course enjoying the Rodeo.

My dear friend Julia got married to Trevor Rametta in September.  This was a gorgeous wedding for a gorgeous bride!

DECEMBER 2012:

For Christmas this year, Jonathan and I gave each other ski passes to Park City.  Here is to learning to be a better skier in 2013!

In December we went to St. Maarten with my brother Jared and his wife Liz. This was the most amazing and relaxing trip.  I am still having a hard time getting myself out of vacation mode and motivated to work.

After our trip to St. Maarten we were able to spend a few days in Chicago with family and friends. I simply love Chicago!

We celebrated New Year's Eve with my friend Joni as she married the love of her life, Alex Koncar.  Another beautiful wedding and an amazing celebration!

And lastly I wanted to add a few pictures of our house lately.  I realized that I blogged a lot of the house as it was a work in progress, but I never added pictures of the final product. 

Our kitchen nook

I have been so happy with the way our kitchen turned out! I absolutely love it! If only I could discover a sealant that would make marble invincible to all stains!

 

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has had a memorable year!  Maybe my New Year's resolution will be to update my blog more often in 2013 ;)

Have you missed me? I feel like I haven't blogged in forever, which is actually a true story, considering that the last time I took any time to express the happenings of my every day life was almost a year ago.  Most recently, Jonathan and I went to Cancun with 5 of our other couple friends and we had an absolutely amazing time! The beaches in Cancun are SO amazingly beautiful! Below is a picture of our group as well as a few pictures of the trip...

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Enjoying the beautiful beach with my beautiful friends

Me and awesome JoJo!

Beach volleyball was always a great time!

Necesito Lasix para mi sausage toes? For real though, nearing the end of the trip, my feet, ankles and entire legs began to swell. No joke, the swelling got so bad that I eventually went to the pharmacia and asked for help...

Towards the end of the trip, we went deep sea fishing and despite the sea sickness and massive ocean swells, we managed to have a great time and catch a HUGE White Marlin!

Honestly though, my favorite part of the whole trip, was swimming in the ocean every night with Jonathan. There is something fun, yet at the same time, calming, about getting in the ocean at night. 

It was sad to leave, but at least I have St. Maarten to look forward too in a few months! Woot woot!

Scatter Brain Update

Do you have any silly regrets? My most recent frustrating, irking regret is over a piece of $5 furniture that Jonathan bought at garage sale in Vermont. For a quick background on the situation: Jonathan was in law school for a year before we got married and I moved to Vermont to be with him during his second year of law school. When I moved into his apartment, I immediately felt like I was living in a Bachelor pad. Not to mention that this $5 arm chair represented the ultimate man cave piece of furniture and I immediately thought it was hideous.

When we moved away from Vermont and back to Utah, for some reason we thought it would be important to bring our ginormous love sac with us and get rid of the rest of our furniture. Stupid.

So this is where I owe it to my dad to say, "you were right". He told us that it was a waste of time trying to get the love-sac back to Utah, but we insisted that we 'needed' it. We spent aimless hours taking the stuffing out of the love sac and putting this stuffing in garbage bags which we then stuffed in our small shipping pod. So you might ask, "so where is the love sac now?" Well despite my efforts to incorporate it somewhere, let alone anywhere in the house, we finally gave it away to a well deserving friend.

As I spend more time caring about the design style of our home, my thoughts have wandered back to that $5 chair that Jonathan bought at a garage sale in Vermont, but today was the first 'slap in my face'. To my dismay, similar arm chairs are selling for $5000 (see below)!!!! Grrr.... Considering that I am in the market for an arm chair in our living room, I am super annoyed with this discovery, hence why I decided to share my frustrations.

Now for a side note, Jonathan and I went to Dillon, Montana last weekend for Labor Day with some friends and we had an amazing time. I golfed for the first time in my life and naturally, because I never have 'beginners luck" - I sucked. I still had a ton of fun and I learned a lot.

I obviously need to work on my form a little bit :)

Labor Day in Dillon Montana is also known as the "Biggest Weekend in Montana", so naturally we had to attend the rodeo

The crew

We also went fly fishing and I after about 25 bites, I finally caught a fish!

Landscaping

I know I have been a crappy blogger lately, but in my defense Jonathan and I have been super busy manicuring the outside of our house. It all began when one day Jonathan decided that he wanted to build a pergola. The next morning, he got up early and bought all of the necessary supplies and we spent the entire weekend building this pergola (see below)

Then before we could landscape the area, we had to put in the sprinkler system which was a lot of effort in itself.

I could not be more happy with the way the final product has turned out. I love our backyard because it is our very own little piece of bliss.

So our next project was our front yard, which also required more time consuming sprinkler lines to be installed.

The cinderblocks in front of our house were indisputably HUGE eyesores that many of our neighbors were thankful to see leave. Apparently they had been original to the house since the 1950's!

So the picture below was taken after we landscaped and while I love the way the landscaping turned out, I still really want to repaint the outside of the house - possibly a really light grey, or a really light tan with some black accents? Regardless, the mint green needs to be gone!

Now I am already excited for next spring/summer to see how everything matures. I am also really curious where all of the tulips will come up because I threw a lot of different bulbs randomly throughout the flower bed. Should be interesting :)

Our garden has been another huge project. We started out with this massive play set (below) that we needed to get rid of. Luckily we were able to sell it online - gotta love KSL classifieds -A couple came and paid us cash, and hauled it away and we did not have to do a thing!

Our tomato plants are legitimately 6 feet tall! I guess two truck loads of fresh manure will do that for a garden, right? We have already been eating a ton of fresh lettuce from the garden and now we are excited for tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, pumpkin, and zucchini

And our very last project was an area of the yard that does not have a sprinkler line. We planted three aspens in the spring, but the area needed a little more help before we could really say that it was "done".

Originally we were just going to put down mulch and nothing else, but we decided to plant water-wise-natural-to-Utah plants so hopefully they do well with very little water.

Isn't it amazing what a lot of time and sweat in combination with a little mulch and some plants can do for a yard?