Trick or Treat!

Happy Halloween!!

I love Halloween. It is one of my favorite holidays. I love dressing up and throwing parties and eating candy and it is what I consider to be the beginning of the "holiday season." Hence, it has a lot of good things going for it. This year, much like last year, I decided to through a Halloween movie night. I was debating it for a while since there is always that worry that people won't show up and the process of actually getting everything together, but Korina convinced me that I should and I knew that at least her and Nathan would be there.

So, I'm big into the decorating thing. I love having that "feel" to a place when it is decorated for a holiday. And I kept seeing all these cute ideas in Country Living, Home and Garden and Martha Stewart magazines. Anyway, here was my attempt at chic Halloween with an Edgar Allen Poe feel.

Notice the skull, apothecary jars, tattered book, candles.....yeah, I'm good.

And the raven.

We covered the chairs in black satin and the couch in white with only dreary pillows to brighten the place up. Haha. Pun intended.

Then our fireplace with black candles and stacks of books, shredded cheese cloth and leaves to finish it off.

I think the overall affect is quite good. What do you think?

Everyone looked so good for the party! I truly thought that Bryan and I would be the only ones dressed up, but everyone showed up in mourning! I loved it!! We watched Hocus Pocus and everyone had a really great time. I know....they told me. And we even had butternut squash soup from a pumpkin and rootbeer from a dry ice cauldron.

Can you guess WHO Bryan is? And that is totally a hint.

Does this help?

Okay, does THIS help? No....Well, he is totally Doctor Who. If you don't watch it. Start. Enough said.

This is not the costume I wore for the party, but to our ward party the next night. I call it Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. You can't really see the deadly makeup. At the party it was similar because of the hat, but I was a dead horseback rider with my khaki pants, riding boots, frilly collared shirt with a black riding jacket and crazy eyes.

Here, I wore it to work today too. This is what I was for the party.

Once again, Martha was my inspiration.

Anyways, it was a great weekend. We had a blast. Maybe I will get the energy to do a Thanksgiving party, but with Matt's wedding, I doubt I'll get to it. Plus Bryan and I need to recuperate. My parties always take a lot out of you. Just ask Emily.

1st Anniversary

So this past Sunday was our first anniversary!! Can you believe? Me neither. I must say that I have married one of the best men in the world! He is so wonderful, funny, caring, and handsome. I am so blessed to be sealed to him forever!!

For our anniversary this year we obviously celebrated on Saturday. I "made" us cinnamon rolls in the morning (thank you Rhodes Rolls!) and we spent the morning going to DI and stuff to see what old frames and books we could find for Bryan's brother's upcoming wedding---which I will be doing the decorations for!! Exciting!! I have some simple, crafty ideas that I think will look great. Anyway, then we got all ready and headed up to Salt Lake. We had reservations at The Roof (which Mom has always told me I HAD to go to one day---well, Saturday was that day). It was delicious!! And all the views are great, but our's was super-great! And they have a live pianist and she happened to play all the songs I would want her to play like Somewhere in Time, Rachmaninoff, and Claire de Lune. What are the chances? It's like she knew it was my anniversary.

I know that we are just so cute. And I had to take a picture because it seems like we never do it nowadays. And then we had tickets for the Utah Opera. The opera was Beethoven's only, Fidelio. It is a story about a wife who basically saves her husband from prison and death. It was very women-empowered which I didn't really expect from an opera from 1805. It was amazing and our seats were really pretty good. And we got to walk around Salt Lake which is really cool although it may not seem like it all the time.
After the opera was over it was past 10:00pm and all the Church Buildings were closed. Sadly, our car was parking under the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. I was so worried that we couldn't get our car and would have to stay in a really chic hotel in Salt Lake. That would have just been the end of the world! But a side door was open and we safely got to our car. We even got to exit the VIP side and didn't have to pay the 5 hours for parking. It was pretty cool. Overall a wonderful night!! Thank you, my love, for everything!!!!

BYU Football

I just had to blog about how my job can be pretty cool sometimes. We have been doing some advertising with BYUtv and so they gave Dean 2 tickets to the game last Saturday. Since Dean already has season tickets, he gave the tickets to me if I wanted them. They were pretty good seats and they had set up those cushy seat things with the back rests for us. We were also fortunate to sit next to some really cool people--they were so much better than students--and they were all families. It was probably some of the best fun I have ever had at a game.

Then Dean told me to get in contact with Aaron, our Concessions Manager (who I know really well), and ask him for some vouchers. It took a little while to find him in the stadium, but we did and he was awesome enough to give us all the yellowy-orange and red vouchers. The red ones are for the subcontractors (things like Costa Vida) and are redeemed for $10.00, while the yellowy-orange ones are for BYU Concessions for $3.50. We had somewhere around $60 to spend all for free! We had so much food it was ridiculous and we shared some of our fries with the kids from the family we sat next to. And we WON!!!! It was so great! And all because I have a pretty darn good job!

Utah State Fair

Last Saturday, Bryan and I went to the Utah State Fair. I have to admit that it has nothing on the Texas State Fair. I sometime miss Big Tex. But still, it gives us something to do on a Saturday and we had fun anyway walking around and seeing the exhibits. This year they had sea lions who would take pictures with you. They were pretty darn cool.

Next we went to the photography exhibit and looked through hundreds of pictures. Some of them were really amazing. We had to take a picture of this so that we could brag about our sister in law.
That's right! Sarah got second place in her category. Great job Sarah!!
We, of course, had to eat our once-in-a-year greasy, deep-fried food and so we stopped and watched a show at the same time. The show at the time was called Tagaloa and it was Pacific Island dancing. Yay!!
A picture of us at the fair. I really wish my front camera took better pictures, but it works I guess.
We walked through all the cows, sheep, goats, pigs, bunnies, birds, 4-H clubs, garden, anything else you can think of areas and lasted end with Aussie Kingdom. We got to see kangaroos. I find it kinda sad that they are put in cages and on display when they usually hop around everywhere, but it was cool seeing them.
Later that night we had the privilege of watching BYU majorly loss to the Utes, but so is life. At least we were able to spend time with one of Bryan's old mission buddies and his family. So in the end, it was a great weekend!

Newest Addition

So, Bryan and I have really been wanting this fluffy pillow from Pier 1. It is the softest, most fluffy, bestest pillow ever. (see below) Anyway, it FINALLY went on sale and I told Bryan that he had to go and pick it up after work. So, being the good husband he is, he did. But being the BEST husband ever, he saw this chair and proceeded to hurry home with pictures of it to tell me about it so that I could decide if I wanted it. We've been looking for a chair for a while now, but just haven't found a good deal for one we like. I LOVE that Bryan 1) knows what I like 2) now knows a good deal on furniture when he sees one and 3) lets me buy things. So I saw the pictures and we scurried on back up to Pier 1 (all while having tickets to a movie at the dollar theater in less than half an hour) and bought it on the spot. Yeah, we thought it was that good of a deal. Plus I love the color and shape!!

So now I have a green and red chair next to one another and I love it!! Now I am in the works of getting a fat, squatty red pillow for the green chair to counteract the wonderfully large white one and tie everything together. Which, come by and cuddle with the white one. You'll love it.

Us

Just some pictures of us. This was at Alex's wedding. Sorry they are a little fuzzy.

Rockin' Chair

I finally remembered to take a picture of the finished rocking chair (which has been done for like 2 or 3 months now) so now I can post about it. I guess there isn't much to say. It was old and rickety, the paint was coming off and it was brown. Like old 70's brown. So we changed it. We were debating between white and red, but decided on red since we needed color somewhere and we'll just paint it again if we want to change it in the future. So after many hours of working on it.....here is our "new" rocking chair.

Yes, we took it apart and sanded the whole thing.....by hand.

In pieces.

All sanded and back together again---much more sturdy too with new glue.

Primer. So this is what it would look like white.

RED!! Please don't look at it and think it looks really bright. It doesn't in person, it was just late at night with terrible overheard lighting. It looks great in person. Everyone compliments it.

So yep, Bryan and I can do things if we put our mind to it.