Peppermint Stick Holiday Frock GROSGRAIN GIVEAWAY!!!!

Peppermint Stick Holiday Frock GROSGRAIN GIVEAWAY!!!!

Who wouldn't want a free dress!? We'll see how it goes. On the dress note: The winner from the dress design contest will be posted on Thursday! That's in two days!!! Crossing my bruised, and possibly broken fingers...(another story for another time, probably after my dr. appt. this afternoon)

Guess What! Monkey Butt!

So on November 13^th, for our date, I really twisted Dave's arm to take me to the Animal Shelter just to play with the dogs. Maybe take a few on a walk. We took a really cute 6 month old border collie on a walk around the building, then a supposedly white German shepherd. It looked more like a Siberian husky though. Then we went to try to take another puppy on a walk, but she was too scared to even come to the front of her kennel, so we crouched inside for her to get used to us and maybe come out for a walk. Eventually she warmed up a little bit, but not enough for a walk, but we played with her in a little room they had.

We both really liked her, but didn't want to make a rushed decision, so we went home and slept on it. And went the next day and adopted her. We renamed her Monkey!

From what we know, we think she's a Black Mouth Cur, but she's from the Animal Shelter, so we don't know for sure. What's a Black Mouth Cur? It's Old Yeller! Only she's a darker color than Old Yeller, and we're taking her to get her rabies shot tomorrow, so she won't have the same story as Old Yeller.

She's a little shy, but we've been socializing her with other dogs and people, and she's getting better. She's 4 months old, and we gave her a birthday as 4 months before we adopted her, so July 14^th. She already weighs 35 lbs, and she's skinny. She's gonna be a big Monkey dog! Oh and also she's super smart. She's pretty much potty trained (except a few accidents), and she already knows sit, lie down, and jump. We want to teach her how to jump really high and catch Frisbees, so we're starting with the jumping. I'll see if I can get a video of her doing it. She can jump super high, probably because she's already big. Here are some pictures of her:

She thinks she's a lapdog.

If she's not playing, she's usually sleeping

Isn't she so cute!?

Like most puppies, she loves chewing, but luckily, she hasn't chewed anything of ours yet, only her bones and toys. (Knock on wood!)

Aptly named Monkey, don't you think?

Halloween

Today is November 18^th. That means it's closer to December, and for sure Thanksgiving, than Halloween. Oh well. Dave and I both dressed up for Halloween this year. I wore my costume to work, and we both wore our costumes to a party. We had 1 trick or treater before we went off to our party, so I had to give away most of our two bags of candy at work the past few weeks.

I decorated our front porch and we carved pumpkins, too! Turns out, my pumpkin ended up being stolen, but Dave's wasn't. It happens to me every year. Stolen or Smashed. Sad panda.

See if you can guess what our costumes were:

Did you guess?

One last chance…

Dave was a blind referee, and I was swine flu (wings…get it?...flu=flew…haha) Mine was a great excuse to wear sweats and slippers to work! :)

TOP 15!

So remember that dress contest I was going to enter? I made it to the top 15! (Well, one of my dresses did.)

Please take a minute and go to the Shabby Apple Blog and vote for my dress! It's #10!

I'm so excited!!! THANKS!

What a Good Week!

It all started with the time change on Sunday. I absolutely love Daylight Savings Time in the Fall. I don't like it too well in the Spring. Gaining an hour is wonderful! Especially since I had gotten into the bad habit of waking up when I was supposed to be at work, so I'd get in an hour late. Set the clocks back one hour, and voi la! I wake up at the same exact "time" and get to work on time! Every day last week I got to work before 8:30. That means I get to come home on time, too.

So I got a lot done last week. I vacuumed up the nasty bugs/spider webs that had accumulated throughout the summer inside our bedroom window without a screen that we'd leave open. Dave helped me hang up our whiteboard calendar, my jewelry box picture frame thinger that I got for Christmas last year, and a mirror in the dining room.

On Saturday, one of my primary kids got baptized. So I gave a talk on the Holy Ghost. Oh, you mean I haven't blogged much so you have no idea what's going on in my life? Well, I got called to be the 2^nd counselor in the primary at the end of August. So I spent all of September and October writing, planning, and practicing the primary sacrament meeting program. I must be good under pressure or something. I got called to be a YW camp leader 2 months before, then primary 2 months before the program. Did I mention I got straight A's my last semester of college while I was planning our wedding? Yup, must be good under pressure. No pressure = lazy bum.

Back to the awesome week: Saturday I went to the baptism, then I washed laundry, raked the leaves in our front yard, and started digging up bulbs and planting them again. Our front yard has a flower bed that has clumps of Daffodil bulbs that are literally the size of a football. There must be hundreds of bulbs in there. I'm planning on finishing that project today after work so I can get it done before the ground freezes. (wish me luck!) I put crocuses in the front of the bed, then there will be daffodils and tulips, then in the back there will be Irises, which I'm going to steal from the neighbors.

"Thief! How dare you steal our Irises!!!!!" Oh, wait, no, our neighboring house is actually a condemned house, and the same people own it that own our house, and they're ok with me stealing Irises.

Then on Sunday I made delicious elk "secret ingredient" stroganoff for which we invited another couple over to help us eat.

I found a great task list site online that's FREE. It's called rememberthemilk.com. You can share lists with your contacts. So Dave and I have a couple of shared "honey do" lists, and we add to each other's and check off tasks that we finish. I think if I continue to get up on time, I'll continue to get a lot done. We'll see. Here are some projects I need to get done:

• Fold all the laundry I washed on Saturday
• Plant bulbs
• Un-plant carrots
• Sew tabs onto our quilt to hang it on the wall during the winter
• Finish sewing curtains for dining room doorways
• Poison Chinese Elm stumps (actually I think Dave's going to do this one…I'll help)
• Decorate for thanksgiving
• Clean upstairs for thanksgiving guests

Think I can get it all done in the next two and a half weeks?

We'll see I guess.

Recession Proof

Everyone has been talking about what the best way to get through a recession is. Some say one needs to be out of debt and have great food storage. Some say one needs to have a secure job. Some say that one needs to live in the right place. After researching all the best ways to get ourselves through the recession. Dave and I have decided to make some changes. First of all we're buying a tech support business from a friend that Dave has been running for a while. Then I wanted to have my own business too. So we looked into different types of businesses, and analyzed my likes and dislikes and came up with fish farming! When I was little I had a tank of Guppies passed down to me by Chelsea (for some reason, all the house pets eventually ended up as mine). Fish farming couldn't be too complicated. All I have to do is keep the fish alive, and sell them to restaurants, etc. when they're big enough.

So we bought our first set of fish eggs!

Those little guys will grow up to be rainbow trout!

Ha! Ha! Ha!

OK, actually those slimy fish egg looking things are grapes! :) Here's what they used to look like:

In May or so I hacked at a ginormous grape vine that probably hadn't been pruned in 5 years or more, until it was down to the bare branches. And we got about 3 cups of grapes from it.

I'm hoping next year it'll produce about twice as many. Granted I didn't pick them til this week, 1/4 had been eaten by...something, and 1/4 looked like they'd jump off the bunch and grab a saxophone and start singing.

Those are all the skins that the "fish eggs" are missing.

This morning I made grape jam! There's only about 1 1/2 cups of jam for 3 cups of grapes, but I think that's plenty for us for this year. I haven't tried it yet, but it should be delicious!

Expecting

What!? Me!? no.

However, Dave's parents have a dog that is. So we might get a "whoopsie" puppy in a few months. 17 or 18 weeks...that's about 4 months, right?

We don't know exactly what kind the puppies are yet. 1/2 pitbull for sure, because that's what the mommy puppy is (it was her first heat). So the puppies could be 1/2 beagle, or full pitbull, or unknown. I'm pretty excited!

Our landlady is a family friend of Dave's, so they'll allow us to have 1 dog. YAY!

Here's the mommy puppy (left) and possibly the daddy dog (right):

Artisticky!

So I'm designing some dresses that I'm going to enter into a contest. The winner gets to get 3% royalty of all the sales of that dress. I made a new blog especially for my artistic creations such as these dresses. So if you could, I need all the input I can get.

Criticism is what I need, good or bad, so don't be bashful. If there's something you don't like about them, let me know. If you prefer a different color, let me know.

Thanks!

The new blog is called Art I. Sticky. Clever, huh?

Big News!

Ha! Ha! Made you look!

What's that you say? I haven't blogged in a long time!? Shame on me!

We've had a lot of big changes lately.

First of all, we finally bought a coffee table for all the coffee we drink. It sits in front of our very ugly, comfortable couch in the living room. We got it for a whopping $25, and it has wheels on it! The top has pieces of slate in it, so need to worry about coasters.

We got a new fridge! Well, our landlords let us get a fridge that we picked out, and we get to take the price out of our rent—even better huh? Let me show you the amazing features it has:

The freezer has shelves, both in the door and in the…not…door…part.

The fridge has a light! …and drawers!

And it's bigger. Actually, it barely fits. Actually, we can't get the cupboards above it open any more. Hmmm.

Here's what our old fridge looks like. Yes, I haven't finished emptying it yet.

Last week I turned a year older. I got all sorts of wonderful presents to celebrate being 1 day older than the day before. It's really the best holiday ever. I think it should be an internationally observed holiday. The things that were perishable I don't have pictures of (helium balloons, twix bar, half-wilted flowers, and the pineapple upside-down cakes I made, yes, plural cakes) but here's everything else:

Dibs from the vending machine at work from my student employees who sang loudly to me.

Dave got me the flowers and a large pinata and a very large birthday card.

I made myself a pineapple upside down cake.

And then I got a plethora of gifts from Dave's parents:

Squirt, our hamster also got to enjoy some of the spoils of my birthday. I bought him a new wheel for sanity while I'm trying to sleep. Here's his new silent spinner wheel:

I've also been busy making rag quilts for friends having babies. This one was for our neighbor Risa, who moved to D.C.

This one is for our friend Michelle. Her baby shower was on Oct. 1^st, so I'm trying to finish it asap. *UPDATE*: I finished it on Saturday right before I broke my sewing machine (not un-fixable, but it had to go to the shop) then she happened to have her baby on Saturday as well, so I'm delivering it to her and the brand new baby today!

To cap it all off, here's a cute video from when we went to Penny's baby blessing.

Girls Camp!

I was called to be an Assistant Girls Camp Director in early June. Girls camp was scheduled for the last week of July. The other Assistant Girls Camp Director was pregnant, so she wasn't allowed to go to camp (insurance reasons…it's kinda far from any hospitals, and such). And the best part, we didn't have a Girls Camp Director yet. The Director was called 3 weeks before camp. Luckily the Stake took care of almost everything and the only thing we had to plan was meals, and crafts, and some certifications, and a skit. Luckily we had lots of help and were able to pull everything off. If you want, here's the link to Jennie's (the Girls Camp Director) blog post about Girls Camp.

Here's a picture of us at the Singing around the Lake activity (below), where they floated a fire (above) around on a raft (pulled by a canoe).

What's that you say!? Yes, it is a small world. Sean and Jennie Petersen are in our ward. It was a lot of fun getting to know Jennie at camp. Poor Jennie just got married in May and hadn't been away from Sean that long in…well…ever. But she made it through.

On Tuesday we arrived, brought all our stuff from the cabins, and did our Skits. We planned out our skits the Saturday before camp after we did some food prep. The Camp Theme was "Heavenly Heroes" so we decided to be the "Value Ninjas!"

Yes, those bad values better watch out, we're pretty scary value ninjas…ahem…I believe this is the end of a "Hi-YA!" Pretty fierce!

Rashelle was the "Dancing Ninja". I was definitely dancing too close to my drawing-boy.

Keri was the "Language Ninja". Jennie and I were using some pretty *#@&$ bad words, and &#%^ really bad words.

Then we went shopping for prom and got some pretty immodest cut out dresses to try on. Good thing Keri saved us again as the "Modesty Ninja".

Yolanda as the "Media Ninja" saved me from watching a really bad show full of bloody violence.

As you have probably noticed, our ward had a whopping 3 girls (out of the 4 total) at camp this year.

This is Yolanda, who tried to pretend she wasn't really sweet, but don't be fooled. She just likes to "roll with the flow".

This is Rashelle who got a little homesick sometimes, but we enjoyed having her there. She moved about a week after camp, and we're all sad.

This is Keri who cracked us up almost as often as we cracked her up.

We had fun trying to learn how to cook on a fire every day. Boy am I glad for modern technology (microwaves, stoves, dishwashers, showers, etc.)! Luckily I already know how to make a mean fire, without cheating, so we didn't have to struggle that way too. Only one of our meals flopped! (The mountain man casserole wasn't done in time, and then we cooked it too long, and it got burned to a brick.)

On Wednesday we slept while the girls did certification and stuff. I slept about 1 hour on Tuesday night because I was freezing and had to pee all night. I think we did some crafts as well on Wednesday but I don't remember it all. I think Sing around the lake was on Wednesday night.

On Thursday we went on hikes. Yolanda and Keri were second years, so Jennie went on their super long hike with them. I went with Rashelle on her 3^rd year hike which was only very long. We did a service project at the end of the hike. We "grubbed" a trail (basically you weed it and stomp the dirt down).

We hiked through this amazing meadow, and took pictures. (see other meadow pictures above. We were at about 11,000 feet or something. Surprisingly I didn't die from not having exercised in…well, a long time.

On Friday we had a fun afternoon of games and canoeing.

We did a few things in the confidence course. With this one we had to put the "logs" across "stumps" to get across the "acid river" without anyone falling off. It reminded me of when I used to play "hot lava" with Alex using all the couch pillows, only the ground seems a lot farther away these days.

Then we got to go paddle around in the canoes a bit. Jennie and I got out in time for the big water fight to start, and we watched everyone try to capsize the stake presidency from the shore.

That night the stake presidency had a surprise demonstration. They had asked all of us to write our heroes on a small slip of paper, which they then taped to...

a mega huge rocket. They had to clear the launch with FAA because it would go so high, and it DID! And FAST! ZOOM! It was gone! Best model rocket I've ever seen (and yes, I was in rocket club in elementary school).

By the end we were just about camped out. I know I was ready to go home and take a shower. It was a very fun experience. It was very different than the YW camp I went to growing up. I'd change some things, if I were in charge, but I wasn't, and it was still a great week.

Tahoe: July 4th Weekend

Every year we go to Lake Tahoe to visit my grandparents at their Tahoe house. It's almost like a family reunion, only not. Basically we just go and have fun on the beach and the boat. They have a great 4^th of July weekend, so it's fun to go then. The only downside is that the 4^th of July is usually a very crowded weekend at Tahoe, so sometimes we go in August. This year was a rather short trip because I only get so much vacation per year, and I had to save most of it for girls' camp this year. I hope I have enough for Christmas! Here are some pictures from this year.

Dave got up on the wake board this year, and even carved a little bit! I didn't try this year because I pulled both extensors trying to get up on one ski. I almost got up though! It was the closest I've ever come to getting up on one! Then I did two skis for the rest of the time (arms screaming at me and all).

Of course Daniel-Bo-Daniel got up on the wakeboard and even braved the wake a few times. This year only Daniel and Mommy were able to come the same weekend we did. Chelsea was 9 months pregnant, and Erik decided to go in August. (I think they're there right now…)

Mommy and I went tubing together on the new tube. Of course Mommy only liked going slow and in a straight line (for which Daniel and Dave teased her relentlessly), and I enjoyed the leisurely ride as well. I don't like tubing too much because for some reason whenever I go, the tube ends up under the water, and I have to jump off or go with it. I drove while Dave and Daniel were on the tube, and that was fun.

As you can see, Dave got a little bit sunburned. His poor feed turned bright pink for days.

Independence day celebrations

This year the barge of fireworks was set up, because there wasn't a high fire risk, and not too much wind! I don't think I've ever been there before that the fireworks actually got to go.

Every year they have a golf cart parade. Everyone in the community styles up the golf cart and drives it around in the parade. Uncle Bill usually decorates ours.

We all wanted to drive the cart, so we struck a compromise: I did the "gas", Dave did the brake, and Daniel steered from the back seat. It worked surprisingly well, unless I stopped paying attention and we slowed down.

The star of the 4^th was Aunt Lynda, whose birthday is celebrated with fireworks and picnics every year for some reason. Every year we're there on her birthday, we also make her a red white and blue cake. Yum!

Speaking of red white and blue picnics: This year and last year they had Men Wielding Fire cater the big community picnic. Basically they make a lot of food and you eat until you're stuffed. Drinks abound as well. Luckily one must pay for more than one glass of wine, so not too many people got completely drunk. As for our family, we raided the soda coolers and drank to our hearts content…and then made a tower: