Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

I am one of those sticklers who believes that the Christmas season does not start until AFTER Thanksgiving. Those who start the season early for any reason other than performance preparation such as those in the Nutcracker ballet, or a Christmas Choir, are out of their mind, and should be shot. (Ok maybe not shot, but definitely ostracized from civil society.)

That being said, Thanksgiving is now over and Christmas celebrations can now begin. What better way to ring in the season then by trimming the tree to a soundtrack full of Christmas favorites. My brother David got the tree down for us yesterday, so this evening we set about putting it together, and creating a festive atmosphere in the living room. We set my ipod on Christmas, and got to work, pulling out all the familiar ornaments to traditional faves like Bing and Dino, and more quirky faves like Beach Boys and Kermy the Frog. Our living room looks so Christmasy, and now I am much more in the holiday spirit.

Thanksgiving Week(end)

The leftovers are in the freezer, shopping is done (for this mad weekend anyway), and the lack of sleep from Black Friday shopping has been combatted with a 4 hour nap, and a good nights sleep. The family won't be showing up for Grandpa Breakfast for at least another 45 minutes so I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the weekend.

My Thanksgiving break started Wednesday morning, after a particularly busy Tuesday filled with grinchy teachers determined to force their students to stick around until the officially designated break began by imposing mandatory group presentations and/or tests that day. I wan't excited, but I got through it with the promise of a lovely weekend ahead. I had determined that I would go to the temple Wednesday morning before leaving, since I wasn't sure what time I'd have over the weekend. My head started to pound a little at the beginning of the session, but I figured it was just dehydration. Well a 2 hour session, lunch, and 3 glasses of milk latter my head was still pounding. I finally resorted to tylenol, but at that point it was futile. The migraine set in, and I laid on my couch with a pillow over my pounding eyes for the next 45 minutes or so until the nausea and pain started to subside. Leaving much later than originally planned, I drove down to my parents, with much less music than usual. The music or traffic reports I did listen to were also at a much lower volume than my typical weekly drive.

Thanksgiving day was by contrast, a fabulous day. Cooking started early in the morning, and much of the day was spent putting together all of the classics. I was in charge of the potatoes and green bean and corn casserole. Thanks again to my former roommates Jess and Kirsten, who introduced me to this twist on the classic dish! It's become a favorite in our family. We took a long break to pour over the ads for Black Friday and see if there was anything we had to have. We worked on our list, and went back to cooking. Family arrived, and we had an awesome time visiting while waiting for the turkey to finish cooking. It was an away year, so most of my siblings that are married ate with their in-laws, or did their own thing. We were lucky enough to have Dave and Maile, and two of Maile's brothers here, because her family is back in Hawaii. Dinner was fabulous, and we learned of Mike's superior veggie plating skills. The guy is an artist is any medium apparently. Often times the marrieds show up for pie afterwards, even on our away years, and this year was no exception. Out of 9 kids in our family, 8 of us were here by the end of the evening. All told we had 26 people over, and it was fabulous. What better way to celebrate a day of Thanks, than with the people I am so very grateful for.

After everyone left my mother and I reviewed all of our marks in the Black Friday ads to see if there was anything worth going out for, to stores that opened at 10pm or 12am. We determined no, and set our alarms for 4:15 to get to our first store that opened at 5. We had Shoe Carnival as our first stop because they had a deal going that the first 100 people got a gift card, most of which were worth $10, but one lucky winner would get one worth $100. I scratched mine off and saw the expected $10, so I went over to my mother to see hers. She was still scratching, and I saw the 1 and the 0, and thought ok cool, but she kept scratching, and another 0 appeared. $100!!! We had to take it over to the clerk to verify what we were seeing, because it seemed so preposterous that we couldn't truly believe thats what it actually said. Thanks to a coupon for $10 off a purchase of $70 or more, we ended up having $120 of free money to spend. Our purchase had to be over that amount, and with tax our purchases (after a quick addition of a pair of socks) totaled $125.22 before discounts. Everything was on such a bargain price anyway that when we got home we surveyed what we had bought and added up their original prices. We walked out of there with 2 new pairs of boots, one for each of us, a new pair of New Balance exercise shoes for my mother, and another pair of shoes (that I don't get to know exactly what until Christmas morning, but I have a pretty good guess about), as well as two packs of 3, plus another pack of 1 different style of socks. The price of everything before any sales was $230. We spent a grand total of $5.22. It was amazing, and I still can't believe it was us. The rest of the morning was spent having fun with the early morning madness, and ended with our traditional breakfast out. It's a crazy tradition, but I absolutely love Black Friday.

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was as wonderful as mine, despite it's rough start. I have so much to be thankful for, and am grateful to have started out this holiday season on such a beautiful note. Now on to the Christmas festivities, starting with my mother's choir concert downtown at the Assembly Hall tonight, and more concerts in a couple of weeks at Bingham. Now I just need to survive through finals week. Love you all!

Coast to Coast

Just bought my plane ticket! I am going to see my cousin Dan and his family over Christmas break. They live in New Hampshire/Maine, and I am really looking forward to seeing them. They're in the military, and move around a lot, so we don't usually get to see them very often.

I was trying to remember the last time we went to go see them, as opposed to them coming to visit us here in Utah, and it's been way too long. The last time we went to see them was when we went to Hawaii the summer after I graduated from high school ('07). While strolling down memory lane I came across these fun pictures from that last vacation.

This is Joel running through the puddles of water at Pearl Harbor. I've always loved the childhood fun and adventure in this picture.

Love this cute little girl! Shannon is such a precocious thing. I had so much fun playing with her while at Pearl Harbor.

Obviously the sun was an obstacle. Hence the need for two attempts at this picture of Spencer, Sabrina, and me at Hanauma Bay. So pretty.

Sabrina at the lookout over Hanauma Bay

Joel at a the blow hole, an awesome tourist spot on Oahu where there is a hole in the rocks that the waves splash up through.

It was such a fun trip. Of course that time I went to warm, tropical Hawaii. This time I am going to Maine in the middle of winter. Good thing my favorite part is the constant: My cousin and his family. I'm getting pretty excited. And just think, I will have visited them at the Eastern and Western extremities of the United States!

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.