Major Catch-up

I have lacked the motivation to blog lately. Honestly, I have lacked the motivation to do a lot of things I normally enjoy doing and things I should be doing...but honestly school wears me out! If I had to choose though to have one thing take so much of my energy each day, school would definitely be towards the top of the list. I know the endless hours Dan and I spend studying will pay off in the end. They just don't come across as something very exciting to blog about! If I blogged more regularly it would consist of posts such as: Today I studied for 6 hours straight for a single test? You wanna hear the details??? Hee hee. But no, we are getting used to our crazy lives. It is becoming more routine and we are doing our best to find joy in the journey. We both had great success on some really hard tests this week, when we experience moments like that, it makes all the crazy routine worth it.

In between school, I have turned into a paint-aholic. Dan and my mom have graciously volunteered to help in my scheme when they have been available. My dad has also helped patch many of the walls that needed major help so I could paint (like the hole where the doggie door used to be smack dab in the middle of a wall in our family room). So, mostly my time away from school and work is spent studying and painting up a storm! It is starting to pay off though. Our main living area, main bath, and guest room are totally done (except all the trim that I am ignoring for now...). I will post pictures of it all at some point, I promise! Next step is to paint our bedroom. I am going to wait awhile on that one though. Need to get through the rest of this semester first:)

Next week is spring break and we are so excited! Dan and I took the whole week off to spend with Dan's parents who are currently driving from Louisiana to come and visit! We are so excited for them to come stay at our house for the week. We are excited to take a break. One thing I can promise for sure: Spring Break will NOT include homework, painting, or Dano working until midnight. We are excited to just visit, relax, and take a break from reality:) So after spring break, I will have some exciting stuff to blog about!

Oh, and random picture for my friend Jenni. It is not the best picture, but we wanted to say thank you for the awesome mardi gras beads she sent us! We both were so sad to miss all the fun parades and yummy food in Louisiana this year (especially with the Saints winning the Superbowl...see the post below). It was nice to receive a little bit of the celebration decor in the mail!

Superbowl

This year was an exciting year at our house for the Superbowl. We decided this year to go all out and have a Superbowl party at our house. There were a few good reasons why we decided this:

1) The Saints were playing, with us living in Louisiana our house is definitely a Saints house.

2) Although I am not a major football fan, Dan is. Our first year married I attempted to watch it with him. But really, he watched it by himself. The second year he missed the game because he was deployed in Kuwait. Last year, I attempted to plan a party but then he had to go away for a Temporary Duty assignment for the Air Force at the last minute. He tried to watch the game there...until I ruined it by getting a flat tire in the middle of no where by myself in Louisiana at night. Yeah, he missed the end trying to calm me down over the phone.... So anyways, I figured he deserved a party this year!

We had Dan's brothers over for the game and did everything Cajun style! We had Jambalaya (Dan's favorite) and Hushpuppies (my favorite) for dinner along with a bunch of other junk food.

Dan enjoying the feast (not sure why his hair has that weird shadow).

Most of the gang on the couch!

Jordan pretending he is actually excited about the game (He actually listened to his IPOD most of the time...some of us were more there for the food and company than the TV. lol.)

Mike and Nat

Us in our Saints gear after the game.

Andrew and Dan showing off their excitement of the Saints winning the Superbowl!

And the best part about the whole night....I won our prediction contest! We all guessed what we thought the final score would be beforehand. For those of you that don't know, the only thing I know about football is that it includes helmets, pads, goal posts, tackling, and a ball. So for me to predict the closest score when I barely even know what kind of scores are possible...that's amazing in and of itself!

The other day I was thinking about when I was young and what I liked to do. Most girls loved to play house, barbies, dolls, dress up, etc....but that was definitely NOT me. Oh, I owned those things, but didn't get why you would ever play pretend. For some reason my WAY too logical mind just wouldn't allow that one. Instead, I would make clothes for my dolls or dress them up in pretty outfits and put them up for display in my room. That was my extent of playing with dolls. I also had a dollhouse, that I don't think I EVER put a doll in but I LOVED that thing! My mom and I would spend hours re-decorating it. We would get sample wallpaper books from the wallpaper store and re-do all the walls. We would make/buy mini furniture, make food and decor out of clay, etc, etc. I LOVED decorating that house. I wish we would have kept it.

Anyways, my point being...even from the time I was little I always have loved to decorate. I have impatiently waited for the time I could paint and decorate my own walls! And now that the time is here....I think about it WAY too much. When I should be asleep at night I wake up because I had a dream about this or that. Sometimes it is an epiphany...but most of the time it is me dreaming that I decided on something too crazy which turns into a weird form of a decorating nightmare. See? Told you I am a little obsessed.

Anyways, so now I feel like I have all this pressure, from myself and only myself, to decorate our house perfectly. HA! But I am enjoying our slow start... I am really into making things and having unique, one of a kind pieces. I don't want to just go out and buy all our furniture and decor (nor can we afford everything I would think we would need...) so instead I have been on the lookout for furniture I can refinish and decor I can make myself! I am addicted to craft blogs...I can't believe all the ideas people come up with! Now, every time I go shopping...my favorite places to hit are thrift shops, the DI, Ross, etc. I have found two things that I really like so far and I am still on the lookout for more!

The weekend before school started again Dan and I started painting our front room. This weird lavender/mauve color in our house is driving us both batty. We picked out a nice tan color, called Whole Wheat, for the main color of the house. I bought an accent color for the kitchen and bathroom but I am sure we will add more accent colors over time. We both felt like we can't really get a sense of what we like until we get rid of this yucky color and have a good neutral base to go off of.

I may or may not have accidentally painted Dan a few times....and I may or may not have painted his hair later on as well...but don't worry, he got paint up my nose trying to get me back, so we are even:)

I just had to show proof of how pinky/purply our walls looked, it was quite obvious once we started to paint the tan color.

More proof....

One of my great finds was this cool cabinet at the DI for 10 bucks! I was so thrilled! I forgot to take a picture of it before I started painting it...but here it is during my refinishing process. It was originally this weird 70's brown wood color with brown knobs and was quite scratched. I loved the character of the piece and knew it had great potential though!

I first sanded it, then painted it red. I then sanded it again along all the edges as well as a few other random places. I took black wood stain and painted on top of the red and wiped away the stain anywhere I didn't want it (thanks to all the crafty blogs out there that gave me this idea!). I love it. I can't wait to try the same technique again. I just painted the knobs black that came with the furniture. Eventually I want to get some unique artsy knobs to replace them.

This is the front room so far...still a little boring but we just finished painting it Saturday. We are just happy there is no more mauve and that it has some furniture in it now! We didn't have anything in there for the first two months (other than our Christmas Tree in December). My parents gave us their old couch so the room wouldn't look so bare, which we are so grateful for!

My next find was this bench. I have been wanting a bench for the foyer area by the front door/front room. I found this bench on craigslist. I was so lucky to just happen to get on the internet right after the lady posted it for sale. I was the first out of like 10 people who offered to buy it from her.

I painted the bench dark brown/black and sanded the edges. My parents gave us a picture of the Bountiful Temple (where we were married) for Christmas that I had just been waiting to hang until we found a bench to go beneath it. I also splurged on this rug this past weekend...yeah...that wasn't one of my thrifty finds but I feel in love with it and couldn't resist.

While I was one my spray painting kick (Donna you should be proud....) I decided to go ahead and repaint and distress our old kitchen benches as well.

We have now moved onto painting the kitchen. My mom helped me paint yesterday and Dan and I are planning on finishing the job Saturday. Our goal is to have the main part of our house re-painted by the time Dan's parents come to visit us during Spring Break. I guess my other goal should be to get my homework done and get good grades during the next couple of months as well.....hee hee

Christmas Break

We had three weeks off between semesters from school for Christmas. It was SOOOO nice to have a break but it went by WAY too fast! I didn't start any Christmas shopping or prep at all until finals were over with on December 11th. So I was feeling VERY behind since normally I get so excited for Christmas I start decorating and shopping at least a month before that! It made for a few fun weeks though. I love Christmas. I love everything about it. I love the warm feeling that comes just from knowing the importance of the holiday. I love getting gifts for others. I am the person who will buy a gift, return it because I find something better, buy another one, return that, etc, etc...because I want to make sure I find the perfect gift for everyone! I usually end up with lots of ideas of things to make for people as well. This year I made a few projects, but time only allowed a couple.

Anyways, like I said. We LOVED Christmas break! We were able to finish unpacking our house, pick out a few paint colors, go to Christmas parties, have a sleepover with Dan's younger brothers, etc, etc. On Christmas Day it was fun to be able to go to Dan's family's for Christmas Breakfast and to my parents later. My mom works every other Christmas so we got there in time for her to arrive home for work. Enjoyed the evening which included talking to my brother in Philly!!! He is currently serving an LDS mission there and it was so nice to hear from him!

I didn't do too well at taking pictures...I was too busy relaxing but here is a few!

My mom and I both have started collecting nativity scenes from around the world. I have a mixture of both ones that just have special meaning as well as ones that are international. I am getting quite obsessed with wanting a huge collection already:)

For my birthday, my sweet mother-in-law got me this cute little handmade set from Guatemala, her home country. I love how small it is!

This set is from Kenya. My mother-in-law did a fundraiser at Weber State for women in Guatemala. She takes students there every summer to help teach women how to provide for their families by helping them start small businesses. Most of the women need as little as $50 to get started. They had lots of handcrafted items made by women from 3rd world countries trying to support themselves. This set was hand carved by a woman in Kenya. I couldn't help myself from buying it, not only did I LOVE it but I love the fact that not only did it help the woman who made it but it will help women in the future in Guatemala as well.

This set I got for Christmas last year from my mom. Dan's brother served his mission in Argentina and my mom had his family bring us both a set back last year. I was excited to finally get to display it after having it in a box the past year!

Dan also got me this set last year for Christmas. It is the Willow Tree collection, which I love. As you can see...I love nativities.

Our Christmas tree in our new home! I forgot to take a picture of our new ornament this year. It is a snowman, representing our first Christmas as a family living somewhere with snow!

And for the ONLY picture I took of people during Christmas Break! This is of Dan and some of his siblings at the family Christmas Party.

Life in the fast lane

Our life has been a little crazy lately but I wanted to let everyone know we are alive, well and enjoying life! As you will see in the next few posts we have had a fun time celebrating the season with family and friends as well as moving into our new house! We have had a few bumps on the road with our house, as well as my car majorly breaking down, and Dan's car breaking down (needing repairs 4 times within the last week or so)....not to mention our crazy school life...but we are PROUD TO SAY that the semester is over! Yay! And now that finals are out of the way....Christmas shopping and unpacking has begun! We probably won't repeat moving into a home the week before finals ever again but we survived and are excited for this new phase in our lives! In case I don't blog again before Christmas....we just want to send our love and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Party

This past weekend I helped Julia host a Christmas Party in return for her helping with my Murder Mystery Dinner. We had lots of yummy food, a white elephant game, and a timed gingerbread house making contest!

Team #1- Amber & hubby

Team #1- full mansion including a gummy bear family consisting of red mom, yellow dad, and orange baby.

Team #2- Chantel & Hubby

Team #2- The Church

Team #3- Michael & Date

Team #3- The licorice machine gun

and.....

smiley face to top it all off

Team #4- Us (The team with the MOST issues...ironically enough the sideways picture fits our gingerbread house that was determined to fall to the ground!)

Team #4- Refurbished house....only 5 minutes to spare when it crashed and for some reason this Eiffel looking tower thing decided to hold!

Team #5- Mike & Julia (the other gingerbread house challenged team...lol)

Team #5- Their house at least had spikes on it!

Team #6- Seth & Deborah

Team #6- Graham cracker lawn and all (I mean who seriously has enough time for something like that??? We couldn't even get our walls to stay up!)

Team #7- Jordan & Date

Team #7- Flat roof=good idea...they actually finished their house!

Team #8- Lindsay & baby Flint (daddy was working on finding a bottle)

Team #8- Wins the prize for creating a house with one hand that actually stayed up and looked great!

Moral of the story---some people were born with spectacular gingerbread house making skills and then there were those, like us, that had a great time despite our obvious handicap!

***Ignore the sideways pictures...I had issues with getting this to post!

Thanksgiving

So this year for Thanksgiving we decided to start some new and fun memories of our own! The last 3 years Thanksgiving has been a little random with our turkey catching on fire the first year, Dan being deployed the second, and us making a quick stop for a Cajun Thanksgiving last year on our way to a weekend getaway/half marathon on the beach. So this year we decided it was about time to have a traditional Thanksgiving (although I totally missed having cajun fried turkey and the warmth of the beach!!!)

The morning started off with the Crandall boys playing football, winning 3-0.

We decided to be crazy enough to host Thanksgiving at our house this year (we hadn't even moved in yet...my mom and I just packed up her dishes and went to town cooking! We are proud to say...we ended up with entirely edible food despite a oven neither of us knew how to use!)

My mom's awesome Turkey plates that she has wanted for years and purchased just in time for the feast (and she got a great deal on them too!)

Dan's family joined us as well.

I had to put this picture...it just made me laugh. I have no idea what Gabe was eating but this picture just cracks me up!

My grandpa (far left) joined for the day as well!

Gabe has food in his mouth again....lol.

It was fun to have it at our house for our first Thanksgiving back in Utah! The only bad part about the whole day was our water heater wouldn't work. Boiling water to washes dishes by hand for like 3 hours is definitely a memory we won't forget! Thanks family for making it such a special day and helping make our house feel like home! We are so glad you all could come!

House

So....hopefully better late than never is the way to go! We closed on our house on November 12th and do to totally craziness in life the blog has been horribly neglected...but now that finals are over with (yay!) I have a little more time on my hands:)

Due to some complications at closing we didn't officially close until almost a week later. So the Saturday before Thanksgiving I set out to majorly clean the house. I was glad Dan had a few hours off from work to help as well as my parents who graciously spent a portion of their day scrubbing.

I know the next picture is gross...but I had to take it to prove why I spent like 8 hours just on the kitchen alone. Between just total grossness, burnt/moldy top ramen in the microwave, and the ledge pictured below (they kept plants on top of the ledge and would water them up there I assume...there was basically lots of wetness, mold, and rust)...it was a project! But in the end, we have a very clean kitchen!:)

Our Front Room

The front window/door

Looking from the front room into the dining

Dining Room



Dining room looking down into the living room

kitchen (and my sweet dad helping with some of the kitchen grossness! The previous owners tried putting this plastic strip on the top of the countertops for some weird reason to cover a teeny gap and it looked awful. When we pulled it off there is this glue that is everywhere that has to be removed...my dad spent like 2 hours cleaning just a couple feet of it with solvant. So...the kitchen is going to be an on-going project for awhile but it will be worth it in the end)

The kitchen pantry and my retro green contact paper installation

Bedroom #1

The funky fan (we have a blue one too!)

Bedroom #2

Master Bedroom

Walk-in Closet

Master Bathroom

Main bathroom. We re-did the floor before closing and plan on doing the same floor in the master bath.

Overall, so far we LOVE having our house:) Life got a little crazy with finals, cars breaking down, etc but we finally got a little unpacking done this weekend! When we first moved in we found the shower curtain and that was about it! Now you can actually walk into the bedrooms without tripping and our clothes are now on hangers! More pictures to come in the future when we get rid of the sea of boxes!