One Short Day in a Christmas Village

I've always had a fascination with those little Christmas Villages that people put up in their homes during Christmas time. I will always remember My Grandma Betty's little village she'd put under her Christmas tree each year- complete with little ice skaters that really moved around the frozen pond. When I'd go to her house around Christmas time I'd just sit and play with it for hours.

For some reason these little towns have always just been pretend places in my mind, like a fairytale of sorts. I never pictured them as little minature towns that actually exist. I'm sure if I would have stopped and thought about it I would have realized that there are actually places that look like little Christmas Villages, but I just never did for some reason.

Well, this past week Jayson has been gone to Colorado for work. He doesn't go out of town for work very often, thankfully, as I missed him like crazy. But, one day he called me and told me about these little towns he had passed through and he said they reminded him of my little Christmas villages that I'm so fond of. Naturally, as soon as he got home (he's back now, and he returned with roses.:) Yay! Though, I would have been just as happy to see him if he didn't have the roses) I had him look up pictures with me on Google. Here's what we found:



Adorable, right? He actually drove down those very streets. I can't pretend I'm not a little jealous. I wish I could have been there driving through these towns with him!

That is until I remember that he was driving a semi-truck transporting a really large machine down those tiny narrow streets. YIKES.

But don't worry, we've vowed to take a little family trip to these towns (not in a semi truck) some December in the future.

It's the Hap-happiest Season of All

Ladies and gentlemen (ok, probably just ladies...I really doubt any guys read my blog),

It's December. That is crazy.

But I am CRAZY-EXCITED.

I swear to you December gets better and better every year.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am one of the really crazy Christmas loving people. I'm obsessed. Mostly though, I love the great feeling of love and cozyness in the air. Although it can get stressful with the jam packed schedule around this time, I even love the gazillion Christmas parties that there always are because it usually means I get to see an insane amount of people that I love in one month and I get to eat some really delicious, free food.

Anyway, I'll spare you from the longer list of the reasons that I love Christmas, because I'm sure the rest of my reasons for loving Christmas are no different from everyone else's.

But Christmas isn't the only reason I get excited for December. Especially this December. I've been waiting for this December with great anticipation since like...January?

This December is already kicking off with some really exciting things, like one of Jayson's good friends getting married and a baby blessing for the baby of someone I love very dearly.

It's also our third wedding anniversary on the 18th. THIRD. Three years. That is just insane. Don't you think like three years sounds really long and amazing? Probably not. But, to me it does. It is, of course, one of those things where I feel like we've always been married, but I also can't believe we've been married for three years.  Anyway, I'm excited.

And then these two are getting married:

See the girl in the above photo? That's Stephanie. I love her to pieces. She lives with my in-laws, as she's one of my sister in law's dear friends. She lived with them for a year and we all love her so much that we basically adopted her into the family. I've just started calling her my sister in law because it fits and it's much easier to explain. So, for all intents and purposes my sister in law is getting married. I couldn't be happier for these two. They both so fantastic. I thought I'd post a picture because I feel like I talk about her a fair amount and not that many people that I know, know what she looks like.

I also get to see this face this month:

Cam is coming home from her mission and I'm going crazy with happiness about it. I have missed her so and I can't wait see her again!

It's pretty amazing that one month could be packed with so many exciting things, right?

But,you guys, that's not even all! There's more! Can you believe it?!

Two of my very favorite out of-towners are going to be in town.
Do you know what all of that means? !
It means that group of girls that I talk about so often are all going to be together again, in the same place, for the first time in two years (two years and two months, acutally). I cannot even begin to express how happy this makes me.

Yes my friends, it's a great time to be alive. I think this might go down in history as the greatest December ever.
Well, it will probably be right up there with December 2008, because I got married and that was pretty awesome. I'm pretty positive it's at least going to be the best month of 2011. But yea, let's be honest, it will probably be the second best December ever.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

Done. Sort of.

The question I get asked most frequently is, "So, are you all done with your house?"

And..I'm never quite sure how to respond. It really depends on your definition of done. People always says that once you have a house you're never actually done working on it. I'm beginning to see exactly what they mean.

I feel like we've come SO far and our house looks a billion times better than when we bought it. Then I think about all of the things we eventually want to do and I start feeling like we've only made a slight dent.

But, when you get right down to it, we really are pretty much done with the things we plan on doing right now and that is one amazing feeling. All we have left are a few baseboards to paint that are in the downward stairs area that we might have...erm.....forgot about. Then in the basement we have a few little things like getting trim for those chair rail-shelf type things, painting out little "door" to the crawl space and added a baseboard on one of the walls. Then Jayson wants to clean out the garage and the crawl space so we have more storage area....

And before that list gets any longer, let me just show you some pictures of what we've done to the main level.

Let's recap, shall we? The following pictures are what it looked like before:

I'll admit, the main level really wasn't all that unfortunate looking in the first place, unless of course you looked up. The ceiling wasn't in the best of shape, as there were all of these weird circular holes that were previously used to plumb the swamp cooler to all rooms of the house, which is really ingenious, except we now have central air. So, those holes just became a waste of space. We had to cover those up, which was possibly one of the most annoying tasks. You see, you have to patch and mud them, which takes like an hour or less. Seems simple right? Well, the thing is, the patches take like a day to dry and you have to mud the patches at least three times... so it takes at least three days to do...but really only like three hours of work. Anyway, then we had to paint the ceiling..which was probably the hardest thing we did on the house. That vaulted, super thick textured ceiling was a beast. We were up two week nights until 1 in the morning painting. We're talking three gallons of paint for just this one area of ceiling. Unfortunately I didn't get a single picture of before, so the after picture really wouldn't do much, as it now just looks like a typical white ceiling, but trust me, it looks much better than before.

Now that the really boring story of painting my ceiling is over I will show you pictures of what our lovely main level looks like now:

I will confess, when we first put that blue paint on I freaked out a little bit. It was a lot brighter than I thought it would be, but I have completely fallen in love with it (this is exactly what happened with the green wall downstairs). It couldn't be more perfect. I think it just gives it a cute little quaint-cottagey feel.

We weren't originally going to put the table in the bay window, but we put it there one day just to get it out of the way of other things and we just fell in love with it being there. It's so relaxing to be able to look out that big window while we're eating, so we just had to leave it there. It's pretty magical sitting there, eating away, and watching the snow fall from the sky at night. mmmhmmmm....


I think I may have told you this before, but I have a little bit of an obsession with doors. This is a new development since we bought the house. But seriously, I get all ga-ga now when I see a lovely door. Hence why the following picture happens to be my very favorite part of our house:

This door color is perfect. I never want to have any doors that are not this color ever ever again.

Yep, more doors. Doesn't that color look amazing against the white wall?



I still get a really giddy feeling when I walk into my house. I just plain love it. There's just something about knowing that it's ours and that it looks beautiful because we put so much of our own hard work and time into it.


Also, we discovered something magical about our house over the weekend.

We opened up our front door on Friday evening and.....

yep. We walked straight into Narnia.


Side note: (this probably should be its own post and not a side note) Happy Thanksgiving week everyone! I must confess, I'm a Christmas lover and I never obey the, "No Christmas things before Thankgiving" rule. This drives Jayson crazy, because he LOVES that rule. I totally see the logic behind the rule, it's just that I can't help but act like a kid in a candy store when I hear, see, smell, or feel Christmas. Because of this I think people think I dislike Thanksgiving, but that's totally not true at all. I actually adore the holiday. I know this is going to sound cheesey, but I adore gratitude. Seriously, I believe it's the secret to happiness. It's so hard to be sad or in a bad mood when you are thinking about all of the blessings you've had poured upon you. It's when I'm grateful that I feel truely and completely happy. I also really love Thanksgiving because it's somehow managed to escape commercialism, for the most part. Good job Thanksgiving. Plus, it doesn't hurt that I only have to work 2 1/2 days this week, but get paid for all five.

Is anyone else craving turkey and candied yams now?

This is Halloween

Well, it's about time I finish up my Halloween posts, don't you think?

This year we wanted to make Halloween loads of fun. For some reason Halloween always sneaks up on us and before we know it, it's gone. So, this year we decided we wouldn't let that happen.

One night when we went to dinner with the Broughs and the Whites we started talking about Halloween and how fun it would be to throw a big party....

And so the planning began.....

And then the Saturday before Halloween came and the decorations went up (props to the Broughs and Whites for those, you guys are fantastic decorators!) Please observe:

And then, the guests began to arrive....

And my personal favorite costume of the night...Mermaid Man!

Amazing, right?

The party was a blast. It was so good to see friends, some we see often and some we haven't seen in a long while! Great food, great games, great people, great fun.


As for the evening of actual Halloween Jayson and I got back in our Peter Pan and Wendy get-ups, handed out candy to the little trick-or-treaters (which I was beyond excited for..I haven't been able to pass out candy since high school), and watched Hocus Pocus. Yup, it was stupendous.

The Best Things About Halloween

KIDDOS

I don't know about you guys, but I think the very best thing about Halloween is seeing little kiddos in their costumes. I'm obsessed. Why are they so cute in costumes?! It doesn't even make sense. Jayson's family did a little Halloween shindig a couple of weeks ago so that his youngest sibling Jana could see all of the nephews and niece (it's going to sound so much better when I can say nieces. Yay for February! Also, I wish there was one word that meant nieces and nephews.) in their costumes while she was in town. For overwhelming cuteness please direct your attention the the pictures below....

Here's my youngest nephew (until February, yay!) Joshua. I LOVE his costume. His talented Mommy, Alona, made it for him.

Here's the whole gang, minus Joshua. Dominic, Mackay, Drew, Kelli, and Sammy. DAH! So adorable

And another one of Dominic because who can get enough of that monkey costume? I love the little added padding in the costume for the belly. :)



THE PUMPKIN WALK

My second (ok, maybe kids in costumes and this tie with first) favorite thing about Halloween is the Pumpkin Walk!!

What's the Pumpkin Walk, you say? Well, it's only the coolest Halloween activity that you can attend. It's an anual thing in good 'ol Logan, UT. Lots of different groups of people come up with incredibly awesome scenes to the theme of the year and then create the scenes out of pumpkins, squash, and other such things. Plus, it's free AND I get to see Logan in the fall. WIN. I can't even explain to you how lovely Logan is in the fall. Big trees line the little streets in a yellow and fiery orange/red color....

Anyway, back to the topic. this year we decided to make it a family event, so a few of Jayson's siblings came with their spouses, and kiddos, and his sister Karissa came (I think I may have started a family tradition). It was awesome. I will show you.

Pretty classic, right?

Also very classic.

 This was one of my VERY favorites. The pumpkins are the PERFECT shape for the little minions.

 The little girls look so good too!

 And, of crouse, Gru.

 CANDYLAND?! Yes, please.

 I think the Winnie the Pooh scene was my very favorite. It was so cute and, in my opinion, the most well done. Tigger's tail is made out of tiny little pumpkins. SO. AWESOME.

 Are those squash things not perfect for Eeyore's legs?!

 Tangled. The best scene of the whole movie. I love it!

And here we are, with our excited Pumpkin Walk faces on.

Yup, Halloween is pretty fantastic. And, don't even worry, there are more Halloween-ish posts headed your way. 

Delightful.

I just want to blog about things that make me happy right now. So, without further delay...

• Fountain Vanilla Coke. I've always really liked Vanilla Coke and I was pretty sad when they stopped making it for a while, and I was super excited when they started making it again. I can still picture my dear friend Vienna raising her fists in the air, clenching her hands together, all truimpant like and changing, "welcome back, welcome back!" I don't think there is a better way to acurately discribe how good it was to have Vanilla Coke back. But then, I kind of forgot about it. I know, so ridiculous, right? So, a few months back I was at Cafe Rio, with Vienna actually, and I saw that they had Vanilla Coke as one of their options for a fountain drink, and I remembered my love for Vanilla Coke. It was even better than I remember. I am obsessed. I basically don't even like any other soda now and I really only like it from the fountain now, which is kind of a good thing because the obsession has gotten a little crazy and I don't know of anywhere else I get get fountain Vanilla Coke except at Cafe Rio, so I only get it when I go there...which then only increases my love and want for Cafe rio.
• Speaking of Vienna, she had her little baby girl this past week and I'm insanely happy about it! I can't wait to meet her.
• I love pizza and I love Cafe Rio (mainly because their house dressing is to die for). If you ever ask me when I want to eat at I will always, hands down, pick somewhere with pizza or Cafe Rio.
• That being said, I'm going to Red Lobster tomorrow night and I don't have to pay for it and I am STOKED. That food is to die for.
• General Conference was this weekend and it was absolutely wonderful.
• Elder Uchtdorf's talk from the General Relief Society Meeting about the five Forget-Me-Nots was amazing. Seriously, when I was listening to it I felt like that talk was made specifically for me. If you didn't get a chance to hear it I strong suggest that you take a little visit to lds.org and give it a listen. Or, maybe I'll just post it on the end of this post. But really, I can't get over it. It was fantastic.
• It's fall! Have I mentioned that fall is my FAVORITE season? I feel like I tell anyone who will listen. I just love it. I love it more and more every year. Jayson and I went for a drive up the canyon today and oh my goodness. I was indescribably happy. They are just so beautiful! I have posted pictures below for your viewing pleasure, but they don't even do justice to how pretty it was in person. Fall also means it's times for jackets, scarves, tights, cider, hot chocolate, pumpking carving, Halloween (little kids in costumes is pretty much one of my favorite things in the entire world), cool weather....sigh.

You know what I come to realize more and more though? The best things in life are that way because of people. Pretty much all of my happiest moments involve people. Life would be nothing without them. Many people close to me are having babies and some are getting married...and it's that sort of stuff that makes me feel truly blessed, full of life, and really really happy. Everytime I think about the people in my life I am overwhelmed with love and gratitude.

LOVE those colors.

And... I love this video. I love Sara Bareilles. This video is fantastic to watch if you're having a bad day. I like to replace the word 'you' when she sings "I'm gonna get over you" with whatever it is that is making my day bad and then it makes me feel better. There's something about realizing that even though right now is hard, you know you'll feel better, "someday". I also love that this video is so fun and everyone in it is having fun. Then I remember that I can still be happy, even on hard days, and even if it isn't "someday" yet. Plus the end of this video is pretty funny.