12.30.2011

Nostalgia

Baby J turns one tomorrow. At the time of her birth we were signing our offer to this beautiful home. So I began perusing our photo files and decided I wanted to share our wedding photos. 

Lets start with how it all began. Back in 1993 when we were kindergarteners at Dilley elementary... Just kidding I wont go back that far. But that truly is where it all began. The date is an estimate. Fast forward a few years and we arrive on March 16, 2010. I arrive home (our apartment) from work to find that Justin has made dinner. Cue the collective "awww" because it was the first time he did this alone. He helps with chopping veggies every once and awhile but not a whole meal. It was tacos. On a tuesday. Every tuesday since has been deemed "taco tuesday" because I am cheesy like that. He was wearing his "nice jeans" (aka the only ones without holes). Afterwards he acts a little suspicious, saying he needs to take the mail to the box. I needed something at the store and I knew there was a mailbox there so I convinced him to walk with me and drop the mail off then.  Then he goes out on the porch. Its March. In Oregon. We never go on the porch at night. Whatever. I start making our favorite cookies, my grandmothers snicker doodle recipe. I hear him talking to someone but don't think anything of it. He disappears into the bedroom and comes out all lovey dovey, big grin on his face. He hugs me. (I have a batch of cookies I need to remove from the oven at this time) He tells me all the things he loves about me. I won't bore you with specifics. I had a feeling something was happening so I got a big grin on my face and he gets down on one knee and pops the question. Boy was that ring shiny. Of course I said yes. And I burned my first batch of cookies. It was worth it. Next day, St. Patty's day, we took the family out to chinese at FG's spot and told everyone. I love all the green at one table.

Fast forward a few more months. J and I are not big party people. I didn't have a pinterest album full of wedding things or know about style me pretty. So we decided the best solution for us was to head down to the court house. Heres a photo montage of the events.








 When you think of court house wedding you didn't think of this did you? I loved it. My parents, grandparents, sister and his parents were in attendance. The fabulous photographer was none other than our dear friend Bea Haynes (Hansen) and her Hubby.

Thats it for today. I have all next week off of work. Want to know why? Monday is the observed holiday for New years and also the Rose Bowl -GO DUCKS! I figured I might want the day off after said rose bowl so I took my Governor's holiday, months and months ago I had asked for January 6th off because my cousin is getting married that weekend so I took a "floating furlough". That left me with a 2 day work week. One of which is my BIRTHDAY! So vacation days it was. To explain the relevance of this I was letting you know I will be posting the rest of our story next week. Its time for work now!


BTW I went to work this week. It was brutal but it felt good to go back. Plus, I am still sick. I just cannot kick this nasty bug, and I think I contaminated my co-workers (oops)

12.26.2011

Happy Holidays!

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Ours was fantastic. And today is technically the observed holiday so its a day off, yay!

Here's a timeline of our holiday events.

23. Christmas eve-eve we took the bigger kiddos for a fun filled night of watching prep and landing 2 and making some whirly pop(which was received as a gift for my bridal shower from my dear friend Bea). O was so strong it took two of us to hold the whirly down while he twisted. He even held onto B's arm. 


We went to the park. Here is Dude enjoying the sun.
Cheesy family pic. Hubby made me promise not to put this on facebook. Perfect.
The only one we got with Dweet (he is quite stubborn).
24. Christmas eve we attended my parents for dinner. Chef cousin Ben made a delicious salad, and grandparents made ham and scalloped potatoes. It was delicious.

 And there was a great sunset during dinner as well. Sorry, I just have a point and shoot so my photography skills are mediocre at best.

 Dude thoroughly enjoyed his first christmas. He got the hang of opening presents and pulling them out of his stocking.

 25. Christmas morning we went to his parents house for "brunch". I got to play with my littlest niece. She was hungry so I gave her some orange and got the absolute, hands down, cutest sour face I have seen in awhile. Ignore the boogs she was a little stuffy.


And now for some home improvement (because I am all over the place). I don't know if I have mentioned the "de-brassing" movement ever since move in 10 months ago but it is still in the process. All our door and cabinet hinges are brass, and the glass doors on the fire place. So one sick night we decided enough was enough, how to rid ourselves of this central brass? Simply removing the doors was the answer. Dweet loved it.  
Another photo he asked not to be on facebook. Win. Now from the comfort of my couch I do not see any brass. Another win.

12.22.2011

More sickness!

As you may have guessed by the post title, I am taking another sick day. I swear I have the cold from h-e- double hockey sticks!

On top of this horrible sickness I am experiencing, last night my sister called with what she thought was a broken foot. Yikes. My parents were otherwise occupied so Hubs and I were volunteered to take her to the ER. She hobbled up the front porch with an enormous ankle. We gave her ibuprofen and an ice pack and drove her AWD vehicle to the ER.


After only an hour and a half of waiting the x-rays determined that she did not have a fracture but an acute sprain on her ankle. A sprint and crutches later we are released. We got home only an hour after bed time. Yipee. My sister is taking pain meds and doing great now. Wahoo!!

Back to today-

Today I am home alone, hubby is well enough to attend work half day, holiday party the rest of the day! Lucky him.

I took the opportunity to clean the house HEAD TO TOE. I swear I cannot relax for the life of me. After 8 hours of sleep I wake up and can not rest. So 6AM this morning alarm goes off, cant breath due to mucus build up, call in sick again....and start cleaning. What is wrong with me?

I washed windows, dusted shelfs that haven't been touched since installment and swept hard surfaces. I took clorox wipes to every handle in the home. Seriously, multiple wipes on all door handles, knobs, keyboards etc. Hopefully nobody gets my sickness. I don't know what it is about cleaning but I LOVE IT!!.. The thrill of organization, knowing that every belonging has its place it makes me giddy and happy all at the same time! Does anyone else feel that way about organization? I have so much crap that I feel organizing it makes it all better.

This week marked the one year anniversary of us "meeting" our home. We were doing only saturday visits on potential homes. 10+ homes a saturday beginning in December 2010. Three weekends of home tours and we made the decision. Our house was the first house on the second weekend of tours. Any way, just a tidbit of nostalgia I experienced this week. Can't believe we spent every saturday for a month with our wonderful realtor and haven't seen her since. I bring this up as we just got a christmas card from her today. I absolutely adore her. She even sent a starbucks card, yum. Nothing better than free stuff....Moving on to what brought this up.

Last year hubby and I were saving up for our down payment to purchase this lovely home so we weren't in the space to buy everyone a present. His siblings partake in a name drawing so you are only responsible to purchase one person a gift. We felt awful being unable to do so due to our financial situation. My solution was to bake cookies for all families. Easy enough. I love to bake and everyone loves sweet treats. We had hoped for our financial situation to improve but alas, this year hubby's tuition is more than expected and we unfortunately aren't able to participate in name drawing again =( wah wah. So cookies again! I got all the necessary ingredients out as you can see in the messy prep station area. Oh how I wish my island was ready...No joke, I day dream about the work I could be doing on this island. Or how a party could be layed out with the help of said island.


 Hubby had requested chocolate chip, snicker doodle and mollasses cookies but while perusing the cook book I happened upon "Best Ever Sugar Cookies" so choose to tackle those, snickerdoodles and molasses cookies.
 They turned out well if I do say to my self. Even Dweet was enjoying them and the sun we had today.
Dude knows better than to sniff the human food.



I really hope to be well enough to attend work tomorrow. I have clients I NEED to help and really dread calling in sick. I feel guilty calling in. I went to work two days this week and almost dripped all over the office yesterday.

12.19.2011

Sick day, BLAH

The hubs and I have been lucky enough to come down with the holiday sickness =(
When he gets sick, its bad because it so rarely happens. I mean like- he whines and begs for juice kinda bad, so we are spending the day at home.
We feel okay enough that it really just sucks that we can't be out doing something on this semi-nice Oregon afternoon. His nose is running and my neck/ throat is killing me. After some pain meds I am a little better but still contagious. I wanted to go to work as its monday morning and I have been home since friday afternoon (left early as I thought I had strep and definitely didn't want to spread that at work). So all the cleaning and dishes has already been done.

What to do then? Why, lets tackle some projects I have been putting off! My grandparents were generous to purchase me a sewing machine earlier this year. They found a hot deal with a coupon and thought it would make a great christmas gift. Of course it was doing no good in their shed until christmas so they gave it to me early. This was in June maybe? Stayed in the box in our office on the floor until about October when I finally decided, enough was enough. It came out of the box, got put together and what do you know? Sat with projects piling up next to it for a few more months.

I decided today was the perfect opportunity to learn how to use the thing and put it to use. Dude was runnings out of toys and I had a few to repair for him. He just loves ripping stuffing out of them! Yes, I have sewed before and should have known how to piece together the thing but I was at a loss, instructions in front of me and everything. Guess who stepped in and remembered his Home Ec acquired skills? Hubby of course! He threaded the bobbin and everything! Thanks babe!

First "tackle" a pillow Dude chewed up on one of his rampages. Easy enough. Didn't turn out PERFECT and brand new but at least it is useable again! Yay!

 Photos necessary for my grandparents.

Then Dude got his bed back. He had one before this that he destroyed and when he didn't fully ruin this one I decided it would get mended. YAY! He didn't remember its function at first, but as you can tell he is now enjoying it and can hopefully now move off of the adult bed at night ;)
 Dude loved this duck for the day he had it. He tore open the beak and its been waiting for "cosmetic surgery" ever since.
 Dude, back in love with his Duck <3
 Dweet just being a model.

Oh, and did I mention, my nephew turned 7 this week! Yikes, where have the years gone? Tongue to the nose picture? Why not!

12.10.2011

New Years Bash. in the planning stages.

I have a baby niece that I have yet to post about. She was born last new years eve while we were signing the offer on our home.  One of her aunts threw her baby shower and her other aunt threw her momma's bridal shower so I felt it time that I threw this family a party. Luckily for baby J her actual birthday this year falls on a saturday- perfect party throwing coincidence! So I went nuts looking for party ideas. After HOURS of googling I decided the best theme was : CUTE AS A BUTTON eeeekk. I am super excited about this. My grandmother had a button collection that I snagged and I sorted through these and color coordinating them (I love organizing). I came out with four groupings *Black/Grey *Blue/Green *Yellow/Tan * and Pink/Brown.

I am not a fan of pink. Sometimes it works but for most of my decor/ design I don't use it. As a result I have all these scrap-booking papers in PINK! Perfect for a little girl don't ya think? I used left overs from J's parents wedding invites for the twine in multi colors and choose cute little buttons to put on the invites. 



Dweet loves anything shiny so of course he loved these first stages of the invitations. 




 The end results, as approved my mom are,
(in my opinion, I may be biased here) 
To-Die-For! 


The only obstacle with creating the invites out of scrapbook matting is that they don't fit in standard envelopes. Luckily, as wedding invite left overs keep coming to good use we have located some that don't have to be purchased! I love me a good deal!



Oh, and I guess you want to see baby J.
I don't blame you.
She IS cute as a button.


Yesterday, after waking up from an adorable slumber. 
I can't get over her face and those blue eyes.

Tis the Season

We LOVE the holidays. Hubby sits and watches the "25 days of Christmas" while drinking hot cocoa and I get a chance to change up the decor in the home. We don't have much in the decorations department as we are still considered newly weds (I hope...) and this is our first Christmas in the new home.We have hand me down exterior christmas lights that my grandparents so generously donated to our cause. They said they were not even thinking of doing lights this year or maybe buying new ones. We are convinced he just likes to help us out so made up the stories. Either way we got some icicle lights for the front of the home. My parents friend had a house fire a few years back, no house = no need for lights = give to someone who would put them to good use, a.k.a. us =) So on the street side of the home we have real bulb blue lights. I only broke two putting them up, score! As for the interior I got this inspiration from the Potter Barn Catalog. For two reasons I DIYed. One being that I can not afford practically anything in their catalog and two, they weren't even for sale!



To start I searched for the garland. There was some expensive options that I wasn't digging, they had garnishments such as berries and holly. I was going for plain and simple. This was in a separate holiday aisle wrapped up like a wreath. 3$, nice find if I do say so my self. As for the words I got some glitter scrapbooking paper, and did them two ways- stenciled and then cut out with scissors and when I didn't like the way that turned out I tried exacto knifing straight out of the stencil. Let me tell you, glitter paper does not cut easily. I think I used alot of muscle for this task. I still do not know which one I preferred. I have "CHEER" and on back up I did also make "MERRY". Nicely enough this only required a few more letters to be made. Win win.

The boxes on the mantle, Dollar Tree, One dollar. Wedding date sign, stays on year round and is green so it fits into the holiday spirit! You may be thinking "Where are their stockings?" Here's the story. Hubby is convinced that if we leave our stockings at our parents homes Santa will still fill them for us. He is so precious. I am less optimistic about this but still going to give it a whirl. What does it hurt? This way we don't have to buy stocking holders until after the season, and hopefully a better deal!




We adore our neice and nephew. They make us happy. So, to get into the spirit of the season we took them on the polar express the day after thanksgiving.The Hood River Railroad does their own rendition on the polar express and the idea caught our eye. We actually got really excited for it. The kids wore PJ's and she even had pig tails. Here we are after the train ride. Don't ask what his face is, he doesn't like to cooperate for pictures on a regular basis. 

What would a post be without ending with a themed ending regarding the animals? Last year we thought it would both be cute and tortures for Dweet to wear a Santa hat. He HATED it. The first is the best shot we got of him and I was holding his paws so he wouldn't rip it off immediately. The second is Mr. Dweet this year lounging in the hat. He has learned patience ever since he became a big brother. And then Dude of course is cooperative and adorable posing in front of the tree.