We have some news!!!!

Yes, folks, it’s true, Adam and I have quit the paper route! We are done! Done done done done done! That is all the news there is.

The Fourth of July!

Last year Adam and I went to the Clearfield fireworks and loved it! This year we went to the Clearfield fireworks and brought our lovesac, nothing compares.

Here is last year, taken  with a camera phone:

Here is this year, taken with the same (lametastic) camera phone:

I must say it is very weird knowing Adam over a year. We got married in just 6 months of knowing each other! So to talk about what we did the year before, and it was together, quite honestly is strange. I wonder how not strange it’ll be in 20-30-40 years!

Again, here is last year, laying on the hard cold ground:

And here is this year, enjoying the heckles out of our fluffy pretty amazing lovesac (also note how long my hair is!):

I see an oak table, and I want to paint it red

My neighbors, the amazing ones, gave us their old oak table. I asked if they would be upset if we did “something” to it. They were a little hesitant, but conceded. Jesse never liked the table anyway. Let me assure, since the project, they are happy about the transformation.

Ok, so here is it in all it’s 90’s glory:

Now I must say when I first started painting it, it was clearly pink paint. I even brought it back to Kwall to make it more red, and when I brought it home, it was just a cranberry pink.  However, when it dried and I brought it upstairs it is undeniably red.

All the chairs aren’t quite dry and upstairs, but here is the photo of the dining room.

Adam put up those floating black shelves. He is such a stud. I don’t quite know what to put on them, so I put my china on display and some wedding photos. According to Feng Shui this room should represent Marriage. I am not sure how serious I am about Feng Shui, but it doesn’t hurt to display wedding pictures =)

Update: Here is the table with the red chairs.

Finished project

My camera was acting up, and so the photo is a little fuzzy. I hope to put a little table underneath it with pictures and things on the table.

Mandala Wall Art

I am so excited to say that I have an art project. I saw these little designs as stamps at my work and I couldn’t escape the idea of scanning them into my computer, projecting them on my wall, and painting them. I had the paint from when I was collecting the 5 dollar Kwall miss-tints. I love how the image is skewed, and when it is all done it is going to be an amazing feature of my home.

These were my options, and that one is the one that looked the best in the space.

My friend, Acacia Tanner, who is a beautiful artist, came over to help me. She has a steady hand and an eye for detail, unlike me, so she was perfect to be my help for the day. By the way, her baby is due in September! She has the “glow” and looks more beautiful every time I see her.

After we penciled the image on, we began the paint project. It’s aesthetically pleasing, what with the tan wall and chocolate brown contrast.

I had so much fun. Honestly, making things beautiful, being creative, and spending time with friends can possibly be the remedy for any dark cloud.

In this photo below, I accidentally caught my dog’s shadow on the wall. He likes to sit up on the lovesac and look out the window. I really liked the photograph when I uploaded it. This is the wall art so far, I am not finished with it quite yet. After I finish getting it all up on the wall, I still need to go over it with a more few coats.

Window Coverings

My neighbor, Anette, is the nicest lady ever. So far she has given me a care package with a door mat, a cabinet, a dishwasher (which won’t work until we can get a garbage disposal), a kitchen table (soon to be all put together and in place), use of her bathroom during construction, and for some reason unknown to me she took me to JC Penny last night and had me pick out curtains for my kitchen. I am astonished at her good will, and if I had any pride then I might not let her, but I accept with a smile and a sigh of relief. Her husband, Jesse, and Adam get along so well. He let’s Adam borrow the lawn mower (since we don’t have one nor the money for one), and pretty much any tool he has. We love them so much and they tell us daily how happy they are that the old owners moved out and we moved in (they didn’t get along with the last owners). I am hoping for Christmas we can give them a gift card to JC Penny paying them back for the curtains.

I have not even looked once for window coverings, and I had no idea what was out there! It is amazing! There is some of the cutest, contemporary, chic stuff I wouldn’t have dreamed of! I was still thinking it was all what my parents had in the 80’s. It never occurred to me that when style changed so did curtains. It has made me all excited to do the rest of the house, one day in the future.

I took some photos of it, but the back splash is still not up and the kitchen is still in it’s remolding state, so don’t look at that. Oh, I finally picked out my back splash, it’s going to be a this beautiful stone arrangement.

Not everything tastes like chicken

I am a good cook, however mac n’ cheese always gives me a tough time. In addition to the evil Kraft Mac n’ cheese, I have never mastered cow meat.  That blasted cow has always given me trouble. Oh, wait, ground beef and hamburger patties I am good at, its the intact steaks, ribs, and roast cuts that always come out undercooked, gamy, tough, and tasteless. I realized the other day it usually comes out white and imitating chicken. Gross. I don’t have a BBQ nor a roasting pan, but I thought I’d try my luck one more time. I stuck some sort of cut roast in a pan with butter and olive oil and browned all the sides. Then I drowned it in a can of beef broth, a package of onion soup mix, and a package of au jus sauce powder mix. I brought it to a boil then simmered, covered for 2 1/2 hours. The last half hour I stuck peas, carrots, and a potato in it. I must pat myself on the back, because it was delicious!!! Finally! I was beginning to worry about myself. I was so happy I took pictures. Adam was playing guitar and messing around with the recorder thing (pulling a Keller Williams in our front room), so I got him in the pictures.

Oh, and I even, for the first time ever, made home-made gravy. That was easy. I just put a 1/4 c. of cold water mixed with about 3 tablespoons of flour into the drippings and voila! there was gravy.

p.s. I really like cooking.

Summer Baseball

Adam and I went to the Salt Lake Bees game last night. The last time we went was over a year ago, and I’ve got to say, the Bees rocked it last night. There is this guy, Brandon Wood, who stepped up to bat with all of this expectation. Everyone in the crowd was talking him up so much, and I doubted he could live up to all that glory. Bases loaded. He was at 3 balls and 2 strikes, and what do you know? He hit a grand slam, right out of the park. It was pretty awesome, and I don’t know the first thing about sports.

Here is Adam, me, my mom, and her boyfriend Thomas (who was more interested in watching the game rather than photo session)

I took a photo of Dustin, which is a cool photo, then my mom started complaining that he should have showed teeth (she meant smile), so the next photo is him showing teeth.

The thing that I LOVE about baseball is the amazing hot dogs: foot-long, covered in cheese, tomatoes, pickles, and sauerkraut. I crave them often. If you are wondering what Dustin is doing, it’s his gang sign for “brat”  with “kraut.”

The day would have been just lovely had it not been for missing the train coming home by ten minutes and thus having to wait at the station for an hour and 15 minutes for the train ride which is 50 minutes! We didn’t get to Roy until 12:45 am. Needless to say we watched The Dark Knight on the iPod and the whole thing went with less angst. But the paper route still is at 2 am, so that was super fun =)

Twilight

I discovered that great things come with Twilight: Stephenie Meyer’s book Twilight, Elliott Smith’s brooding/beautiful song Twilight, and Salt Lake City’s Twilight Concert Series.

The Twilight concert Series is an epic line-up of indie music artists. Last year the series rocked Yonder Mountain String band, Keller Williams, among others. The year before Kara and I had the privilege of seeing Peter, Bjorn, and John (pb and j.) This year is one for the scrapbooks, we got the talented deep-southern sounds of The Black Keys, the praised He himself M. Ward, and my all time favorite – - – - IRON & WINE.

Want to know the best part? It’s free.

Want to know the second best part? The Frontrunner and Trax takes you right to it, which, as Adam and I are students, is free.

Want to know another BAMF part? I’m poor.

Here is another one (again maybe for the scrapbook): I LOVE IRON & WINE.

Here (in order of appearance) are the before mentioned bands:

(Yonder Mountain String Band)

(Keller Williams)

(Peter, Bjorn, and John)

(The Black Keys)

(M. Ward)

(Iron & Wine)

Oh, life

After 5 weeks of unemployment, and intense searching, I got me a job. Thanks solely to my Heavenly Father. Adam and I cannot live on paper route and music school teacher pay alone. I really really wanted a full-time job, but they are scarce these days. I got a 4 hour guaranteed a week, minimum wage job. Fortunately this week I get 20 hours. Probably not enough by far to pay for our humble lifestyle, but it’ll do. I do have to admit, I am pretty scared about being in this situation.

Adam and I have been waking up every morning at 2 or 3 am for almost a year now. We took Septmeber 25th and December 31st off (the morning after our birthdays), but that is it. I wanted to get our anniversary off, but that wasn’t a possibility, and it’s looking like ever getting another day off will never happen. I really want to go to The Fiddle Festival in Wieser, ID. I don’t know folks, I guess we are just going to have to continue this. Also, our brakes went out, again, despite the fact that we replaced them not more than three months ago. I thought something was wrong, but it looks like delivering papers every morning, stop and go, for 60 miles, wears a car down, and we should now expect to get new tires every six months and brakes every three. yay….

I finally got Adam to watch Pride and Prejudice. The 300 minute, A&E version. I think he cannot resist my outrages, intense giggles, and my witty banter so much so that he smiles and laughs and agrees openly that Mrs. Bennet is the cuh-raziest lady ever, and reminds us both of my mom. We are going to finish it tonight, and then I hope to optain the Kiera Knightly version (since I appallingly don’t own it.) I think he’ll totally dig the new one more, since it’s much better, even though the A&E one is awesome.

We love our dog, btw. He rocks banana socks.

I am super into listening to Sean Lennon all day. His songs are lovely.

Oh, I work at Robert’s craft store. I like it so far. It’s a great place.

I have the right!

Adam and I now own the rights to all of our wedding photos! In addition we got every single shot done at our engagement, bridal, and entire wedding day! Our photographer, Brody Dezember, gives this to everyone of their clients on their one year anniversary. Pretty exciting.

Shot by Celeste

Celeste Drake is my sister-in-law, and she is amazing. She got this fancy camera for her birthday and has been putting alot of miles on it. She even has made a separate blog for just her new photo shoots. Its appropriately named, Shot By Celeste. I secretly wanted her to take photos of Adam and I,  so it was fantastic when she stole us away and took some really amazing photos of us. I like to call them my anniversary pictures, considering its our one year mark.

Thanks Celeste!

Django

Adam and I rescued a young dog from the pound. We love him. He is very well behaved. Adam says he is a little too well behaved. He is a genuine mutt. No one can really figure out his breed. I think of all the dogs he may have more Welsh Corgi than anything else. To me he looks like a small Golden Retriever, but I don’t know. He is cute though. We named him after Django Reinherdt, the gypsie jazz guitar player from the 30’s and 40’s.

When we first picked him up, and man at the shelter said he worked at a groomers and they give the first bath free to those who rescue, so we followed him to his place and he gave Django and really nice bath. It’s called Pet Pals Place. The lady who runs it is way nice and it’s a beautiful place that’s all new and large. She gave us some brochures. Coincidentally, we ended up needing to put him up in day care, and the lady was there at 6 am to get him, he ran around her huge property and played with dogs all day, and it ended up being free (as opposed to the measly twelve dollars it would have been.) It was real nice to not have to lock him in our house for 12 hours, only after having him for about a day, and not have to worry the whole time while we were at the funeral.

He is such a good car rider. He just sits on your lap and enjoys the uninterupted time with you. He is a people dog.

Pretty much his favorite activity is layig or sitting. One time I got him to bite his toy, only for a second before he sat next to me in hopes of being pet. You know, most times, he doesn’t even care to be pet, just being there with humans is enough for him.

I’ve got to say that having a dog is very wierd. We now have to take care of this little thing that requires bunches of time and attention. I hope we don’t kill him or anything, hopefully we are good dog owners. I’ve never had my own dog.

Here is a great photo showing our life with Django. He lays, Adam plays, and I portray.

I love how color schemes come together!

We cleared our living room! In the spirit of volunteering more, Adam and I signed up to be a family that will receive the young men and young woman when they pretend to be missionaries for a stake activity. They “track” to our door and we pretend to have never heard of the church, we invite them in and listen to the first discussion. It was really fun. We got sister young-woman missionaries. But because they were coming over we needed to make our house ready to receive them so we unpacked and cleared away like crazy. I did the kitchen and Adam did the living room.

After they left I went to put the pillows on our couch and noticed the red pillows that we were never too fond of (sorry, Celeste) and they just don’t go with the rest of my living room. The day before Lynette gave me two giant bolts of fabric that was going to go in my room in high school but never did. So I took the material and made pillow covers for the red ones! It was amazing yet again. So we had this blue lovesac that went with nothing, then bought Celeste’s blue couches, and they happen to look perfect together. That was back in the apartment in Ogden. So now we made the color scheme of our living room brown and tan, thinking we would eventually get the brown couch and tan lovesac of our dreams. But until then, we thought we’d just have to do with the blue, but they look amazing in the space, and the pillows are blue and tan, which pulls it all together!

Now, you may be asking, wait, Danielle, you don’t have a sewing machine, and when you were going to buy one you bought a Kitchen Aide stand mixer instead, so how did you sew up pillows? And I will reply, that is true, blog followers, I don’t have a sewing machine, so I just safety pinned them. But they still look awesome! And the neighbor saw them and offered to sew them up for me anyway, so I am clean.

Here are some photos of the project:

Above: This is the before picture with the random red pillow.

Below: This is the after!

Here I am making them in the spare room (currently, junk room):

Down here is the material I used for the big couch.

And this is the fabric I used for the little couch:

This is Adam enjoying the room! It’s really a great room. I love spending time in it. I love to have a nice comfortable room for visitors to enjoy and relax and converse in.

Oh, p.s., we adopted a dog from the pound! That post is coming soon….

Progress on our home

The house is coming along nicely. Adam and I are receiving far more blessings than two little people should get. Despite this, we are welcoming these blessings into our life and trying to dedicate more of our time to the Lord. Adam and I are looking for more ways to serve, but it’s hard when we are in a position where we need others to continue to serve us. For example, last Sunday, the Relief Society passed around a signup sheet to make dinners for a family going through a tough time. I was racking my brain trying to figure out a way I could make them dinner, but I don’t have a kitchen and I worked that night anyway. So, we decided when our house gets up and running we will be able to serve more.

Firstly, we moved our stuff in and started _quasi living in our house! The picture shows our moving crew: Matt, Curtis, Adam, and Scott. Moving into the house was a heck of a lot faster than moving out of our apartment! I was very grateful they were all there to help. So our stuff is mostly just chilling in our living room, because our house is still a construction zone. In this picture below you can see our awesome carpet! Can you believe we have carpet?? Me neither!

Our bathroom is way too fancy! Granite counter top, custom built tall vanity, fancy new toilet, lovely tile, bowed shower curtain rod, and super nice stainless steel faucet. I don’t have a pick of the finished product, because the baseboards still need to be put in, but here is Scott putting on our counter top.

Another of the many blessings is this: A neighbor, Kenny, called and told us he is extending his driveway and also building a playground in his backyard for his two cute kids. He said he thought of us when he was thinking about all that extra grass. He wanted to know if we wanted it, and said it’d be enough for our front yard, if not more. Of course we want it!

I just saw Candi’s blog post about just getting grass, and it must be the thing to do this year. Ours does look like a patchwork quilt though. However, when the old lawn had been removed and tilled, everyone commented about how it already looked better than before.

I got a wicked sun burn that day, which was actually real nice to have when its been cold for the last 6 months. Then we received yet another blessing/miracle. right after we layed the sod, it rained for three days straight. Only letting up for it to snow for a bit, and then back to rain. It was so nice to not have to water it with our house water for tht whole time. I hope it made our lawn happy and it will grow well. Speaking of which, we had this dead peach tree off the the side of our house, and the neighbor came by and said it was not dead, that it had just been dormant. So I went and looked at it and there were pretty pink flowers on it! So he pruned it up (he used to be an orchard farmer) and I am going to have peaches this year!

In addition to all of this, I need a summer job. I picked out the one I wanted but they were not hiring, so I just sat on my hope chest and became discouraged about choosing another place of employment. Just yesterday, the manager called me up and said that she saw my resume and was wondering if I was still interested! I told her YES! So, my interview is today, but she already said she needed me to start Wednesday. I am so excited!

And this is one of Adam’s favorite pictures of himself during moving day:

I think it’s about time

I am going to be redesigning my blog, so stay tuned! (This is a picture I took for a humanities class I took at BYU-I. Why it is here, I am not sure)

Color

I LOVE the colors I chose for the walls. It was sort of done haphazardly. They all three were miss-tints I got from Kwall. The tan and the green were chosen along time ago, but the gray was just recent. I knew I wanted gray. I just had this idea in my head of a beautiful gray room, so I went down to Kwall and sure enough, because God has blessed me with the little things, they had a super cheap miss-tint of the exact color I wanted. I was so impressed as to the beauty of the three colors together. Granted when the doors are up, they are never really going to be seen together, but they flow very nicely anyway. 

Adam did the tile in the bathroom. He had help from his dad, but Adam picked out the color (but the tan was a KSL find, and we didn’t have enough so he chose the dark) and he also made the pattern. I think it looks amazing!

In this picture below Adam is showing his stress level. Tile is a difficult thing, especially doing it alone for the first time. Personally, I think he looks cute when he is upset.

Now I installed the light in the second bedroom. I cannot believe how handy I can be if I am forced. I picked out the light, and without anyone to show me what to do, I read the instruction and got the thing working in no time. This picture is sad because you can see my crappy paint job over on the side. Don’t worry, that’s what touch-ups are for!

So those are the pictures I have been taking so far. We bought the carpet and the laminate wood yesterday. Our kitchen is going in on Monday, the laminate on Tuesday, the carpet on Wednesday, and then we are moving in on Thursday!!! I am so excited! Everything has been so great!

P.S. a neighbor called and asked if we wanted his lawn. He is tearing up part of it to extend the driveway and make a playground, and because he has a large property its enought to do almost all of our lawn, so we agreed! He just asked if we get the cutter and cut it up and roll it ourselves. We’re going to till up our sorry-excuse-for-a-lawn lawn and put in a lush beautiful one for about 50 bucks!! Adam and I are so blessed!

My Career Choice

I could do this. I can take pictures of things, mess with them on the computer, make pretty fonts, and design beautiful things. I’ll just gain some skills, buy some expensive programs, and badda-bing badda-boomb, I have myself a career I love. Or… so I am pretty much done with all of my generals. Now I need to pick an area of study. I would like a job that utilizes my degree. I HATE science, so that throws out a BS. Most likely I will choose a BA. I am leaning towards graphic design right now, but with that I am a semester behind, because I’d have to major in Art, which requires 5 classes that I haven’t even touched before I can even take one graphic design class, but I think that’s ok.

Anyway, I made a poll, so my readers can help me decide. Have fun!

My house

I have some photos from Adam’s cell phone.

I wore a chicken mask to keep the sprayer from making me white.

This is Jerrod Nelson. The nicest neighbor ever. He owns a contracting business and has a sprayer and offered to come over and do our painting for us. How did we ever deserve this??

This is our lovely fish wallpaper that gave the toughest time.

Here is my brother-in-law Tim. He came by and put our baseboards up. I can’t believe how beautiful they make the house look. When I saw them, my first though was “Now this looks like a place I’d like to live”.

Here is our kitchen. We have daffodils in our front flower bed, and I picked one to put in a vase, but I realized my vase is packed and I don’t have a counter to put it on anyway. I’m so silly.