Washington DC

Erik and I just got back from Washington DC.  The Alex/Emily Wedding Tour is over and we are looking forward to staying home for the next little while.

The wedding was really beautiful.  I'm grateful that Alex found someone that makes him so happy and I look forward to seeing where their lives go.  We had the opportunity to be in the Washington DC temple with them.  It's a beautiful temple even if it's in the most humid place on earth.

I don't know why this is sideways.  It isn't sideways in my files.  Oh well, this is us with the handsome groom.

This is us without the handsome groom

Cake cutting.  Emily's eyes really aren't crazy, they just are in this picture.  

Dancing with Jack at the reception.  I really do have the crazy eyes. And a big butt.  But I digress...

The day after the wedding Erik and I hung out with my family.  Due to unforeseen circumstances Erik and I ended up mooching lodging off my parents and my aunt.  We had two hotel rooms, a boy room and a girls room.  On Saturday we went the Air and Space Museum.  It was really cool, but not nearly cool enough to justify the 5 hours we spent there.

3 in the bed and the little one said roll over, roll over

On Sunday my family went home and Erik and I had a few days to explore DC.  Turns out Washington DC is pretty awesome.  We only scratched the surface, but we managed to squeeze a lot in.  We even saw Erik's college buddy Barney. 

This is part of the Berlin Wall.  The Newseum has the biggest chunk of the Berlin Wall in America.

We rocked the National Mall, the National Archives, Dupont Square, and the Newseum (thanks Jeff, it was awesome).  Also I saw the headquarters of the Church of Scientology, which is relevant because I'm totally Team Tom in the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes divorce. 

This last picture was taken on Sunday before my family left.  I love it because it's the only non-wedding picture of my whole family.  I hate it because I look short.

I feel so blessed to have had so much time with my family this summer.    These are the people who continue to let me wear their clothes and use their stuff even though I never give it back.  Who spend roughly four hours playing chauffeur to my husband and me while they are supposedly on vacation and then say it's "no big deal".  Who sneak People magazine and prescription zit cream into my luggage as a surprise when for me when I unpack.   Those are some of the ultimate barometers of love.  I am one lucky girl.

Two Years Ago

2 years ago today I was a bride.  Now I'm just a pretty lucky wife.  I love you, Erik. 

Idaho/Utah Adventure

I had a wonderful time on my Idaho/Utah adventure.  I went to Idaho on the 13th to be there for a bridal shower on the 14th.  Alex and Emily were having an open house in Logan on the 21st, so I split the week in between spending time with my family in Boise and seeing friends in Salt Lake.  On Thursday I went back to Logan for a family reunion and open house prep.

First, can I just say, the shower was beautiful.  My mother can orchestrate an event with the best of them.  After some crazy shopping on Monday, my mom, Nina, and I headed for Utah.  I dropped them off in Logan before heading on to Salt Lake to see my good friends Chris and Beez.  The drive went pretty well, but we were running low on gas near Hammit, Idaho.  If you ever get the chance to visit Hammit, don't.

Getting gas in Hammit.  The cute probably-a-former-prospector gas station clerk had to come show me how to use the pump.

When I was in Salt Lake Chris and Beez took me to City Creek Mall by Temple Square.  Oh. My. Gosh.  I want to die there.  It was amazing.  I also got to see their beautiful new home, watch a lot of HGTV, and do some pretty killer face masks.  I love those two.

I've missed Zuppas so much

After two nights with Chris and Beez I headed to Morgan to see cute Larissa and her adorable new baby Boston.  Larissa restored my faith in the idea of body after baby, she looked amazing.  Jamo is a lucky son of a gun.  And I just want to eat their little baby right up.  So there's that.  Larissa was my best friend in high school and my college roommate.  I kind of count on her to test the waters before I try something new.  She had her first kiss first, said 'I love you' first, got married first, and had a baby.  After each one of these pivotal events she gives me the dish and I can decide from there whether or not it's something I'd like to pursue.  It's a good system, really.

After Morgan I went back to Logan to see my extended family at my mom's family reunion.  I don't think I even realized how much I missed these people.  It was so much fun and so nice to be surrounded by so many people I loved.  Plus Nina and I kicked butt at the three-legged race.  It has to do with having roughly the same length of legs, as well as no racing ethics.

The open house was beautiful.  I feel like an idiot for not taking any pictures, but Emily's open house dress was a Pippa Middleton knock-off, which is awesome.  And Alex looks decently handsome when he shaves.  It was so fun to watch the new couple, but watching them open all their gifts makes me think it's time for Erik and me to have another wedding.

Come visit us.  Particularly if I came and visited you, some reciprocity would be nice.

Heather's Visit

A couple of weeks ago my beautiful friend Heather came to visit me.  I was so stinkin excited for her to come.  She bought her plane tickets in April and I all but made a paper chain counting down the days until she got here.  We thrifted until our feet hurt, ate chocolate covered pomegranates, watched the Bachelorette (go Jef!), crafted up a storm, and caught up on every single person we went to high school with .  We even went hiking.

 One of the many things I love about Heather is that she is also very into crafting.  In sociology once I read a study that people are attracted to people at or slightly above their same level of attractiveness, but are not nearly as attracted to people well above their level of attractiveness.  I feel the same way about friends and craftiness.  I want to be friends with women better at stuff than me, but not much that I am intimidated.  Heather is perfect for that.  She's just a little better than me, so I feel like I produce optimal cuteness when I work with her, but not so much cuter than me that its demoralizing to sit next to her.  Like I said, perfect. 

Another nice thing about Heather's visit is that she was able to drive back to Idaho with me so I didn't have to make the drive to my brother's fiance's bridal shower alone.  A lot of singing went down.  That girl's got a pair of lungs. 

Over the River Dishes

We had a wonderful 4th of July, which I will probably blog about later.  What I want to blog about right now is actually the result of a conversation I had on the 4th.

I am looking for a cheap china hutch that I can paint and make work for a few years to display our wedding china.  Our wedding china is super pretty, and it kind of kills me that it is tucked away in Bed, Bath, and Beyond boxes on the top shelf in our pantry.  I was telling a friend about my hunt and she suggested I look at this new consignment shop I'd never heard of. I had errands to run that would take me right by the store the next day so I decided to check it out.  The shop was freaking adorable.  I wanted everything in it.  I didn't find a china hutch, but I did find these:

This dish pattern is kind of special in my family.  We call them the over the river and through the woods dishes, and they originally belonged to my grandma and now my mom has them.  As the story goes, my grandma was collecting these dishes from a certain store in Utah and would get a few new pieces each month.  In the middle of building her collection this store stopped selling milk from the Utah Dairy Association and my grandma's brother was a Utah dairy farmer.  Her mother (my great-grandmother) told the whole family that no one was allowed to shop at that store anymore.  My grandma loved these dishes so much that she would sneak out to this store to buy them behind her mom's back to finish her collection.  I love the idea of my grown-up, married grandma sneaking out to buy these dishes.

I have my own memories with the over the river dishes.  My family uses them every Sunday for Sunday dinner.  There are two versions of the smaller plates.  One version has an over the river scene and the other version has a steamboat.  There were only five plates with the first version, so my mom got out one of the steamboat plates and said it was the "special plate".  So of course my brother and I fought over the special plate every week.  For a while we actually had an every other week rotation of who got the steamboat plate.  Even now when I go home I feel silently smug when I sit down for Sunday dinner and notice that I am the honored recipient of the special plate.

So obviously when I saw this set tucked away in a corner I had to go see them.  It made me smile and feel sappy and nostalgic, but I wasn't really in the market for a whole new dish set, so I figured I'd get a plate or something to display and remind me of my family.  The first plate had a $20 sticker, and I figured that was a little steep for a used plate so I looked to see how much one of the smaller plates would be.  That's when I realized the whole set was only $20.  I about died.  The cute little high school cashier must have thought I was crazy with how smiley and gooey I was over this dish set.  The two of us wrapped them up and I took them home.

Traditions are really important to me.  There's something wonderfully comforting about doing the same things week after week or year after year.  The love of traditions is something I got from my mom, and something I hope to pass on. Traditions helps me feel closer to my family, especially now that I'm living away from them.  I love the idea of using these plates with my own family; with Erik right now and with our own children someday.   I can't wait to tell my own kids about their great grandma sneaking out to buy these plates, and the best part is my dish set came with a full steamboat set, so everyone can have one of the special plates. 

Princess Camp and Other Lovelies

Last week was my first Princess Camp in our new place.  It was adorable and seriously so much fun.  I think my calling in life might be as the Purple Queen, the director of all things Princess Camp.  There were 6 princesses, but some didn't like having their picture taken. Here is a photo dump chronicling our fun week. 

Highlights:

One of the princesses spoke in a British accent the whole time.  When I told the princesses it was time to go inside to our next project she put her wrist against her forehead and was like "Must we go inside Purple Queen?"

We made cupcakes to decorate one of the days.  My older girls (like 5 and 6) were a little apprehensive about cracking the eggs.  Out of nowhere the youngest girl, barely 3 slam dunks her egg into the mixing bowl.  Okay then.

The fact that all the girls loved Erik.  He was home from work one of the days and the girls kept asking me when Prince Erik was going to come play.  When he finally came to visit the British accent girl told him she was going to marry him.  Adorable.

Watching the princesses dance.  Those girls have moves.

On the day of our Pinkalicious Party one of the girls walked in, looked around, sighed, and said "Princess Camp is beautiful".  

So that's what I've been up to.  Next month I'll have cheerleading camp and maybe another princess camp, so be sure and let me know if you're interested. We had a wonderful visit with my brother Alex and his fiance (!) Emily.  I'm contemplating re-doing my closet.  I want to do that thing where you paint it a matte color and then stencil the same color in high-gloss over it, and I am definitely accepting color suggestions.  Come see me, or if you live here lets go out to lunch.  My life has become a little dull without the sparkle of Princess Camp.

Projects

We moved into our new house a month and a half ago.  It's awesome and we are loving it.  My mom flew up and helped us get moved, and we had such great support from the ward, the whole thing went really smoothly.  We're finally all settled in and we're busy making little tweaks to make it feel more like our home and less like someone else's house.

I have a lot of free time this summer.  Headstart ended for the year and so did cheerleading.  The piano recital was last Thursday, and only about 10 of my students are taking summer lessons.  Pretty much the only things I have going on in my life are 9 credits worth of classes, a few piano lessons a week, and taking care of Erik and the house.  In some ways it's really nice, but honestly I'm just not wired for that much free time and I'm going a little bit crazy.  I'm in this strange position where I have a lot more time to blog, and even less than usual to blog about.  Look forward to posts entitled "What I ate for Breakfast"  and "Musings on why the Former Owners of our Home Thought it was Okay to Paint Over Screws Instead of Removing Them from the Wall"  and "Erik vs. the Sprinkler System: the Saga Continues".  I'll be a lot busier in July and August, but this month is looking pretty mellow.  The timing is okay though, because it's given me a lot of time to work on projects.

My first project was the craft room.  I figured this would be a good place to start because its easily hidden if I messed up.  My old craft room was a craft room/guest room and was white and aqua.  My new craft room had light blue and dark blue stripes all over.  I chose a purple color for the walls, but that meant I had to repaint all my aqua furniture.  Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I got the picture frame clock idea from pinterest, which worked out well because it takes up a lot of empty wall space.  Just today I painted the top of the table with chalkboard paint after I accidentally demolished the old canvas top with a x-acto knife.

Before

After.  I feel the need to point out that the paint is actually a really pretty lavender, not brown as the picture might indicate

Erik has been busy working on projects too.  I relented and gave him the go-ahead on the home theater, and I'm really proud of him for how it turned out.  It's pretty cool and adds something fun to our house.  Erik self identifies as "un-handy" but he and his friend Travis did a pretty dang good job building the screen.

See, I helped.  For about 10 minutes before Dance Moms started and I was otherwise occupied.

My family visited this weekend and it was awesome.  I was definitely sad to see them go.  It was so fun to have the house full of people and to spend time with my brother and sister.  In keeping with family tradition, we woke up on Saturday and did yard work.

Whenever my Dad wears the purple sweatshirt it means yardwork.  Just the sight of my dad in that sweatshirt made my little brother cry one summer.

My dad also installed chair rail and wall frames in my music room.  This was a pretty lengthy project that he started in Idaho.  I emailed him the measurements and he made all the cuts, then when he got here we painted and installed the frames.

Before

Still before, but with our stuff in it

In progress

 Yard work and home improvement, some vacation, huh? I also randomly acquired this little beauty from a moving ward member (thanks Jen!), and it was nice to have my dad there to help transport and arrange it.

Final product.  This picture does not capture the loveliness of it all.  It is way classier than Erik and I actually are.

Come visit us.  We'll watch a movie on Erik's home theater and you can help me figure out how to play my organ.