The Haunting Hour

WOoohhhhh! The creatures were out in full force this morning!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. So much creativity, and fun. I love it!

This morning we had our Grandpa Breakfast: Halloween Edition. It was a blast. Usually its just an excuse for the little kids to show grandma and grandpa their costumes, but this time nearly everyone was dressed up to some extent. It was awesome!

I apologize for the upcoming onslaught of collages. I figured out what I was doing wrong last time, and went a little overboard with the pictures from today. We really did have a fun time though.

We had so much awesome food. We sat around upstairs talking and laughing, and generally enjoying ourselves.

The Princesses

The Greeks

The Superheros

The Couples

Rapunzel and Flynn

Pirate vs. Wolverine (aka Maile pretend punching Dave in the gut and the fallout.)

And finally, my costume.

Jem! As in Jem, from Jem and the Holograms. Only the best cartoon from the 80's. My sister Lori taped all of the episodes, and has been indoctrinating me since I was little. Now she has the dvd's, and shows them to her daughters.

If you sadly have never seen Jem and the Holograms, check it out here.

Leaves Are Falling All Around

Fall is in full color up here in Logan, and I am loving it!

Ever since my friend Britney got married, nearly 2 years ago, I've had my own apartment, and a small twin guest bed that has rarely been used. My friend Alesha, who goes to school up at BYU-I, decided to make good use of it, and come visit me this weekend! Since Cache Valley is such a gorgeous departure from Rexburg, we decided to enjoy the absolutely fabulous fall weather, and do traditional Autumnal activities. In the morning we went up Logan Canyon to see the leaves. We walked along the river, and took tons of pictures, some for one of her classes, and some for ourselves. During the afternoon we walked around beautiful downtown Logan, before heading to a pumpkin patch to pick our own pumpkins. We had an awesome time carving them up while watching the ever fabulous Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in the classic The Philadelphia Story. Since I couldn't narrow down our photos to a reasonable blog amount, I decided to make my first foray into collage making. I'm sure there is a better, and faster way, but we had fun putting it together. Enjoy!

More Photos Here

Les Beaux Jardins

I love when friends give me excuses to recount my experiences, either through word, or image!

My friend Lindsey texted me a few weeks ago for ideas for a travel article she had to write for a class. She had more parameters that aren't important, but I ended up suggesting the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, BC. She thought it was an interesting idea, and I didn't think much more about it. This evening she texted me to see if I had any pictures of the gardens that she could use for her project. Of course! I'm no pro, but it's hard to make a flower look bad in my opinion. Since I was already uploading them, I thought I'd share them with all of you.

More Photos Here

If you ever have a chance, this place is gorgeous. My photos just don't do it justice.

Minor Changes?

Minor Changes: or How to take a small change, and turn it into a major remodel.

So I was going to wait until we were completely done with the downstairs bath before posting about the remodel, but I realized that the post was going to be too long for anyone to want to read, so I'm going to break it up by projects.

The remodel started with one small problem, and then expanded from one thing to another, until all of a sudden we were redoing the whole bath.

To start at the beginning, there were no drawers. It's a small space, and because most people in this condominium complex don't have anyone but guests stay in their basement, our downstairs bath had just been finished with under the sink storage, and no drawers. For all of you girls out there, you know that means no place for bobby pins, and pony-tail holders, hair brushes, make-up, and other such items that get lost anyway, but when there is no place for them, they are nearly impossible to find.

The bathroom also had tile in half, and carpet in half. Carpet in a bathroom is disgusting. Since the easiest time to retile the whole floor would be when there is no cabinet, it made sense to do that at the same time. And since we didn't have any way of matching the (dated) tile that was already in there, or the grout color, we decided to just do the whole floor. (Its only 36 sq. ft. total so it wasn't a huge deal.)

When we tore out the floor we had to take down the baseboard which was just carpet/tile from the floor that had been extended up the wall a couple inches, so we had to get new baseboard.

While we were also doing that we took out the awful gold sliding doors and frame on the tub/shower combo. And since that was gone we replaced the sink faucet from gold to brushed nickel. We did not replace the one in the shower because it was more expensive, and for now we can cover it with a shower curtain, but supposedly it's on the to do list later on. I'm hoping we do someday come back to that.

Since we were doing everything else we also painted the walls, and bought a new rug and shower curtain.

With the new paint, tile, and vanity, the cabinet over the toilet no longer matched, so we are also painting that.

Yep its a big project, just to get drawers in the vanity. Haha :) At least we have saved a lot of money because we are good do it ourself-ers.

Here are some pictures of our biggest project, the tile.

Deciding where to cut to tear the carpet out of the bathroom.

Tearing out the carpet tacks

Chipping out the old tile.

My mother did a ton of work helping with this part of tearing out the carpet and tile, because she knew she wouldn't be able to be of much help once I started laying the new tile.

We got this far on our own, and then the tile was laid with a different mortar or something because it just wouldn't come up.

Time for the big guns! Such a fun power tool.

Getting up a bunch of the old mortar.

We learned our lesson. It took us a couple hours to pull up the first 2/3 of the tile. It took us 5 minutes to get the rest of this. Definitely borrowing that tool again if we ever tear out any other old tile.

It took us a long time to find a tile that we could both agree on, because I like more modern and sleek, and my mother likes very traditional borderline rustic. We finally found one we both could agree on, and miracle of miracles, it was on clearance. The only issue, was it was a little large for the small room, and I really didn't want a square tile. We'd been to the parade of homes this year, and one of the big trends was rectangle tiles, and they looked awesome, so I decided to cut all of these square tiles in half, and do a brick pattern with them. I like this big wet tile cutter. It's a lot of fun.

The finished stack of cut up tiles.

Laying out the mortar and tiles. I started by the door to the family room because it would be the most seen edge, and then lined it up with the edges I had to work around.

Laying more tiles with spacers. Loved that I could lay it directly on top of the ugly linoleum that we found underneath the carpet. It saved a lot of time, and was a nice clean surface to lay on top of.

This is where we were at the end of weekend #1. I was making sure what I had just laid was level.

Grouting the floor. I think that might be my favorite part of tiling, possibly because it reminds me of frosting a cake.

Cleaning up the floor from the extra grout.

Our lovely finished floor. I'm quite proud of it. I think we did a pretty good job. More to come later, once all of the projects are done.

Monthly Cooking Attempt: Take 2

I wondered last time if this monthly cooking thing would work or not. I was excited, but a little nervous, but so far so good! Its kind of fun! We've learned a lot since the last time around.

1. Zucchini does not freeze well. It just becomes rubbery, and yucky.

2. We needed a lot more containers.

3. As we've cooked new things throughout the month, we've made bigger batches and froze them as well.

4. Sautéing veggies and portioning them out is the best time saver!

Since last time we have added

*More chili

*Chicken Casserole & Hamburger Casserole (for the non vegetarians in the family, aka not me.)

*Basic Pasta with Marinara sauce. Easy as can be and so very nice.

*Vegetable Lasagna

*More Apple Bean Bake (So amazing!)

*and Nacho Sauce

We've also added a new addition

This is our lovely new fridge that Dave and Mike helped us finally get into the house this weekend. We're in love. After living with the one that was already here when we moved in for a few months we really needed something new because it was tiny. Hopefully this week our plumber (and my bishop) Bishop Dispain will have time to come by and hook up the water so we can finally have water and ice in the door again. We had that in the old house, and have very much missed it since moving here.

Today's cooking was smaller in some respects, but is giving us more variety.

One thing that isn't different is the sautéing of veggies. Mmm...so yummy!

We also used up the last of our sautéed veggies from last time to make two kinds of potato cheese soup. One basic potato cheese with velveeta cheese.

The other a spicy potato cheese soup I invented one fast sunday up in Logan. I didn't have any cheese wiz or velveeta, but I wanted potato cheese soup, so I threw in my Salsa Con Queso that I had in the fridge. It turned out just lovely, and has become a staple in this house hold.

We had some bananas going ultra ripe, beyond edibility, so we also made some amazing banana bread. :)

And our last big project this time around was homemade whole wheat bread. We ground our own wheat flour and everything. It's lovely and the house smells HEAVENLY!!!

We're only a month in, but so far I am loving this once a month cooking. We spend a little more on groceries when we actually do this cooking, but it has cut my average weekly bill from $45 down to $15. I like that aspect a lot.

Definitely planning on keeping this up, because it has been awesome.

How to Entertain a Child

My favorite feature on my Mac is it's photo booth program. You can do Andy Warhol style photos, four quick photos, comic book style, colored pencil, and all sorts of wacky warpings. I have learned that it is a fabulous way to entertain a child for long periods of time. This last Saturday we had our family over while the men were at priesthood. Because we've been redoing the bathroom downstairs, the basement wasn't accessible for playing. The girls did really well going outside, and playing with the toys we brought up for them, but by the end of the night we needed something new. I pulled out my computer and this was the result.