Nesting

Finally getting to some of the MANY projects on my to do list. Somehow I pictured having this to do list all done by April 24th--this will not be happening.



I've always loved gallery walls but had no idea how much time people put into them to make them look perfect! I am not one for perfection, at all, so instead of measuring and leveling and blah blah blah I just threw them up there and crossed my fingers. Many nail holes later I think it semi-turned out. Still have a few blank frames, baby pictures perhaps?





Always trying to make my kitchen look less like an apartment (cheap cabinets, counters and floors tend to give that impression), and more like a NY alley kitchen (hah!!). We decided valences to the ceiling might help emphasize the narrowness and height of the room. Everything else in my house is pretty neutral, so I though why not bring in some blue, pink and orange? Livin' on the wild side, I know. As with all creative projects, I take no credit---my mom comes up with all the ideas and sews everything. I provide entertainment and treats while she works.



I gave up finding affordable chair cushions that fit my chairs and I could stand to look at every day, so we made these! Never in a million years would I have thought orange fabric would look good. I love it though. I've always been scared of color and cling to white (can you tell?!?), my mom on the other hand lives for color, and I'm starting to learn she's always right.



As cute as this couch is, it's incredibly uncomfortable since it's from like the 70's. SO, we (my mom) made a really comfy seat cover over the cushions. Living room is till coming along, it's a hard space to work with since it feels super small, but we're trying to make it cozy.



Picked this cool thing up at the thrift store. It had an awful finish on it. We power washed it (quickest way to antique something!), and it turned out pretty nifty.

Mini Nursery

The nursery still needs a lot of work. We have all the fabric picked out but still need to sew sheets, bumper pad, and crib skirt. The closet needs some serious organizing (its very tiny, not sure what to do with it... good thing his clothes are ridiculously tiny as well). Also need to get light switch plates, door handles, dumb stuff like that. I finally feel like it's close to finished though! We (always refers to my mom and me, Brandon has zero interest in home decor, phew!) picked out the drape fabric a long long time ago and fell in love with it, but then had to match the entire nursery to it which ended up being really hard! I always wanted a yellow and grey nursery, but the yellow, turquoise and grey in the curtains is somehow the HARDEST shades to match. We brought home fabric after fabric that didn't come close to matching! And then there was the whole white-comes-in-waaaay-too-many-shades debacle. We had bright white trim around the windows, clashing with slightly off-white crib/changing table, clashing with very off-white drapes, clashing with cream chair cover, it was horrible. Somehow it ended up working out.



Duke thinks we are the coolest parents EVER for giving her her very own room. She especially appreciates how all the onsies are at eye level so she can carefully choose which one should be carried around the house (ugh). Naturally this is her new favorite rug to shed on (it is the softest thing I have ever felt).






Meet Mr. Monkey. My crafty (she would hate that I used the word "crafty") mom made him and he is oh so cute. She is in the process of making him an orange "fat friend" with a big old monkey gut. I had to take a picture of his hand---she sewed a bug on one and a leaf on the other because he's eating :) I love it. I'm not sure how she comes up with ideas like this and whips them out in a day with no pattern or previous experience, I'm so untalented.



I'm obsessed with this hot air balloon mobile. Because of the crazy slanted ceilings in this room I couldn't put it over the crib (kept hitting the ceiling and was way too low), but it's pretty cute over the changing table.

3 Weeks 6 Days

Not that I'm counting or anything. Just DYING to get this baby boy out of me and meet him! I always thought it was weird when people said they couldn't wait to "meet" their baby, but I totally get it now. It's strange being so close (literally) to another human but not even knowing what they look like. Official due date is April 24th, but I'm more than aware that only 3-5% of women actually have their baby on their "due date" (crazy huh?) and most go over with their first, UGH.

Pregnancy has actually been a lot easier than I thought it would be. I hate to admit that because I know a LOT of people have miserable pregnancies and I feel really bad for them and sort of feel like I got "cheated" of the "real" pregnancy experience (but I'm not complaining!). I really was never very nauseous, never had morning sickness, and haven't had trouble sleeping. Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been a walk in the park and I can come up with a huge list of my own complaints (soreness, heartburn, feeling fat, extreme exhaustion, etc.), but comparatively I got pretty darn lucky. My biggest cravings have been dairy and fruit. I go through milk like no one's business and I'm ALWAYS up for a bowl of cereal (honey nut cheerios are a favorite!). With fruit starting to come in season (kind of) I've been buying up over priced Strawberries and Watermelon like crazy (which Brandon likes points out is a very expensive not-in-season craving). I could eat Watermelon for every meal, and easily go through one a day. And then of course there's my constant need for sugar! But that's nothing new, everyone who knows me knows I'm a complete candy junkie. I admit I pictured myself eating a little healthier when I was pregnant, like it would be some really good motivation to eat nothing but the best organic veggies and leanest meats...but I have zero self control and I think I'm okay with it.

Below is my pathetic attempt to snap a prego picture in the nursery mirror. Note the oversized sweater and leggings. CANNOT WAIT to never wear leggings EVER again. I was so glad they were "in style" when I got pregnant because they're extremely comfortable and cheap but I am soooo sick of them 8 months later. Squishing into those pre-prego jeans is going to be so wonderful. I think I've stretched out a good 70% of my closet with my refusal to buy maternity clothes...guess I'll have to go shopping, whoops!

Not Rational

I'm sure all five of you who read this blog are also friends with me on facebook and know by now that yes, I'm pregnant! I know this doesn't excuse me from posting belly pictures, so I promise those will come soon (when I'm on my laptop and not at work). But for now you have to oo and aww over my new favorite obsession: ridiculously overpriced diaper bags.


Inspring the title of the post, this bag is called "Not Rational--Hansel Diaper Bag." With a price point of $598, I'm thankfully not even tempted by this one. It's a beauty, but one that not even I can justify.



I don't know why I'm in love with this bag, but I am. It comes in at a mere $198...is that so wrong? It's amazing how somehow $200 on a diaper bag seems just a-okay to me. But don't worry, I probably won't be owning this (or any of these bags) anytime soon. I married the man who invented the word "budget", and my consumer life has been much too predictable ever since. I miss crazy impulse purchases, but I guess I don't miss the bounced checks and overdraft fees I was famous for pre-marriage.



Another $198'er. Yes, Angelina Jolie toted this bag throughout India, and yes, that might be the only reason I must get my hands on it. After seeing The Tourist last weekend I finally admitted to Brandon that she is one of the worst possible actresses out there (it took painfully sitting through Wanted, Salt and The Tourist for me to come to terms with this). BUT this does not in any way affect my die-hard obsession with her.



Lastly, the cheapest bag I can find that I love---only $149 :) This will be the last one I show Brandon, and I plan on saying something along the lines of "FINE, I'll resort to this CHEAP-O bag if I can't have the 598 dollar one, hope you're happy!". Look at me, always willing to take one for the team and save a buck.



Prego pics and nursery pics to come....

Well Well Well...

I almost felt guilty about not posting anything for the past three months, UNTIL I got on here late last night and tried to use this nightmare of a picture up-loader and realized why I had sworn off "The Blogger". I finally got all of these pictures on here, but instead of seeing the preview of the picture all I can see is HTML jibber jabber. SO, you're gonna have to deal with the completely random order of these photos because I can't stand the thought of trying to rearrange them.




Oh, the back corner of the house is always a nice place to start! To the left is the garage which is FILLED with our stuff. We put an offer in on this house in June, didn't close till September 10th (never. buying. a house. again.), couldn't move in till the last week of September because we were getting the floors done, sooo yes I've had a whole month to unpack and decorate, I don't want to talk about it.



Now, this is where you have to use your imagination. I'm envisioning a "courtyard" feel back here, which is currently over-powered by this lovely "white trash" feel. The garage needs painting to match the house, and the lovely rotting siding at the top needs replacing. The previous owners thought it would be nice to leave all the crap they didn't feel like hauling off, in the basement. Yesterday we brought it all up and here it sits until we get that dumpster. I'm sure our neighbors love us. The shed needs a coat of paint but I think it could be really cute with some flower boxes?



These pictures aren't the best, I was in a rush to leave, but this is the side of the house (duh). Even though the yard needs a ton of work (I'm not a fan of the over-sized ugly holly bushes, rhododendrons, etc.), once we get it fenced in it will be a great little space I think. It's hard to find a cheap house, but it's even harder to find a cheap house with a decently sized yard. I would take an old run down house with a yard over a new house without yard any day.



This is the same side of the house taken from the front of the house, kind of. The previous owners had this cute little vegetable garden under those bent pvc pipes. I think the pvc pipes will have to go, but a vegetable garden would be fun!



This is the view from the upstairs bedroom. I rushed to take all these pictures yesterday because it was the only sunny day we've had in a long time. It's been raining and dark for days now (which I love).



This is the "mini-room" upstairs. It would be a perfect office or nursery :) Right now it's the perfect place to throw our crap so we can find some sanity in the rest of the house.



The hallway upstairs. Pretty boring.



This is the room across the hall from the mini-room. All of the rooms in this house are very small! Probably because the whole house is very small! Ideally this will be the guest room for all our lovely guests (come visit!!), but we are yet to be able to get the box-spring for this bed up the stairs (you'll understand when you see the stairway).



Ahh, the mini-stairway!



We had the floors all re-done because they were covered in nasty old carpet, and these stairs turned out to be this orangey wood. I love how rustic they look, although I never expected them to turn out like this!



Parts of the house like this need a bit of work. This is at the end of the kitchen. The door on the left goes outside to the walkway between the garage and the house. To the right is the stairway that goes to the basement (or the dungeon as we call it).



Right side of the kitchen....wait for it...




Left side of the kitchen! Hahah, this is the smallest kitchen in the world. When we were buying the house we'd always laugh about our skinny alley kitchen that is completely inaccessible if a drawer is pulled out or the oven door is open. My mom kept trying to convince me that alley kitchens are really "cool" in like New York and Europe....hmmm I'm pretty sure if I lived in NY or Europe I would think my whole house was really "cool", but this is Oregon City.



This is the dining room. The whole house looks a bit "dead" because we have absolutely nothing on the walls and barely any lighting. That standing light in the corner was left by the owners before us. I really need to decorate. Our dining table is my FAVORITE. My mom and I found it at a thrift store for $50. It had an ugly dark shiny stain on it, but once we refinished it it was perfect! I love the french legs. My grandma bought us the 6 white chairs when she was here visiting a few weeks ago--they are perfect! It's so hard to find wood-colored chairs that match a wood table (that aren't like $200 each), and we thought the painted white wood was really pretty with all the wood! I'm trying to find fabric to make chair cushions. To the left is the front door, to the right is the picture below.



This is what you see when you walk in the house. To the right is our bedroom (which you don't get to see quite yet), straight ahead is the bathroom (yes THE bathroom, there is only one, and it's munchkin-sized), and to the left is the stairway.



Bad picture, but this is the couch that I love! Brandon's grandma gave it, and the matching chair, to us because she didn't use it anymore (love free furniture!). I should probably do something with all those stacked boxes. We bought a bunch of lights to try out around the house week ago, but haven't quite gotten around to opening them.



I love thriftstore finds! This table was found by my mom for 5 bucks! It needs painting. I'm thinking a lacquered robins egg blue? I'm not sure yet.



The matching chair and the side table that Brandon's grandpa made before he died. Our living room is on the small side, and it REALLY needs some decorating love, but I like it. I love the rug but it's way too small for the room (even though the room is really small!), so we're looking for something bigger and more comfy looking.



Moving on to random events as of late! Brandon's other grandma passed away last week, so we went up to Washington for her funeral. It was really nice to be able to re-meet all of Brandon's family. This is Courtney and her sweet little girl Riley. She is soooo stinking cute, I couldn't get enough of her!



Yummy funeral potatoes! We took a ton of pictures but none of them turned out...something about that awful cultural hall lighting.



Daisy Duke cracks us up every day (even though most days I want to kill her). I had just brought our duvet cover out of the dryer and was putting the comforter back in it when I turned around and she was snuggling up in it. When I yelled at her she looked at me like, "What's your deal?! You didn't bring this super warm blanket out of the dryer for ME to lay on!?"



Real bad picture of the front of the house. The house is up a bit on a hill so I can't figure out how to get a decent picture of it. I swear it doesn't look this squished in person.



The DUNGEON! The unfinished basement in this house needs a serious rehaul, but it's a huge amount of space compared to the rest of our house! We plan on gutting it and turning it into a cozy TV/family room.



Manly man ripping out the wall so we can turn it into one big space. He thorougly enjoyed taking his anger out on this wall with a sledgehammer after spending 30 minutes on the phone with Comcast.



The woodpecker knocker. Unfortunately this guy had to go. I didn't have the heart to throw him away after all his days of dutifully knocking...so I "set him free" and relocated him to a nearby tree where he can knock away. I do LOVE having Billy the mailman bring our mail right to the front porch! Pretty darn cool.



Bran and his baby. She lays like this forever, I love it.



My Aunt Erika got to visit for her birthday which was fun! I can't remember what we were all laughing about...but it looks like it was really funny.



Brandon's mom is going to school to get licensed to take x-rays at the dental office she works at. Brandon was a very whiny practice-patient and kept telling her she was doing it wrong. We're so proud of her, she's the best dental assistant around!




Brandon spent a lot of time this summer up at my parent's cabin in Mosier. We went up there one Saturday so he could set up deer stands and tree stands. A few weeks later his dad shot a bear from that tree stand. I so don't approve.


WELL, that took forever! I've learned my lesson--don't save 3 months of pictures for one post! I'm going to go eat my honey nut cheerios now for breakfast. Have a good weekend!

Baby Daisy

Love these pictures of Baby Daisy and my two favorite sisters. We were going to go to Eagle Creek today and swim in the waterfalls but it's a rainy Oregon day, so we're watching "In her Shoes"---ever seen it? It's not over, but so far it's the worst movie I've seen this year (second to Valentine's Day of course).

Ahhhhhh!

Well hello blog friends (Amy, Peyton, and on occasion, Brittany...), I'm still alive! Took lots of pictures - can't find camera - found camera but memory card is MIA, you know how it goes. So to sum up the past month and half since we've been in Oregon (and done with Provo since Brandon graduated-yay!), here ya go: Went to the dermatologist two days ago because ever since I moved to Oregon I've had all these zits, blah blah, very boring. Anyways, I paid Doctor whoever-she-was $135 to not prescribe me anything because apparently my insistence that I am suffering from life-altering, extreme, 13-yr-old acne meant nothing to her, and she assured me they would go away and I might "be under an increased amount of stress lately?"

Hmmm, well, as of late:

-We've moved from Utah to Oregon. (Hmm, funny story for a later time on that topic. It involves my car making it to south Salt Lake before it plunkered out and died, which left me stranded on I-15 for 2 hours in the blazing sun.)

-We bought a new car (Rav4, not new of course, but fun!)

-We sold a car (Flames and all!)

-We are in the middle of closing on a new house in Oregon City (which is a million times more stressful than I ever thought it would be!)

-We bought a lab puppy (It pees, it poops, it pukes, it whines, it bites, it licks my face...we might as well have had a baby!!! Have you seen Marley and Me? Watch it, then cry for me.)

-We are yet to unpack any of our boxes because we live in Brandon's Grandma's basement until mid-August (which also means we don't have our own place and are NEVER ALONE). So naturally I can't find ANYTHING and every morning I spend a good chunk of time crying to Brandon that I don't know where any of my clothes are and I'm sick of wearing the same 5 outfits over and over...and over.

-While living at Brandon's Grandma's house we are conveniently located 6 minutes away from my parents and 10 minutes away from his parents. No matter how much I LOVE our families, this is a weeee bit to close.

-Brandon works 9am - 8pm pretty regularly and so I never ever see him.

-I work for my dad, and I just got a new job at a Real Estate company.

-We have taken on the care of 2 horses at my parents property which somehow is way more work than you can imagine.

Okay, now I just sound like the biggest whiner ever. I am very happy, life is fabulous, but for someone who stresses constantly this is not the ideal situation! Isn't it funny how in life we are so quick to look ahead and say "Okay, when this is over I will be happy and able to breathe"? That is exactly how I feel right now.

I'm really trying!

Okay, I'm really trying hard to take more pictures! It's kind of hard when there's only two of you. No adorable babies to photograph, and taking picture of each other kind of gets old. This weekend was fun! We did really boring "married" things like clean, run errands, wash the cars, go grocery shopping, etc., but for some reason when it's WARM out it makes everything a million times better! And sometimes just doing things together is so nice. I can't wait to someday have kids, but I'm sure I'll look back on these times and miss being alone with each other! These pictures are really lame, but they are a good start!

I feel like usually it's the wife who has to be careful not to "nag" and re-do the husband's chores because he can't do anything the "right" way. Well, behold the benefits of being married to someone with a little bit of OCD in their blood. I love it. I spent quite awhile washing these windows myself. As I was admiring my work, Brandon came and grabbed the Windex from me and went outside to "fix" the mess I made and get rid of all my streaks. He said something about being the window washing master...sure enough, 20 minutes later, there were no streaks. Weirdo. He's that way with everything though; it's really funny and really useful. We joke that he's better at cooking, better at cleaning, and better at doing laundry. Truly though, he definitely is!

Brandon is such a better cook than I am. Every time I'm about to make something (french toast for breakfast in this case!) he jumps in and says he'll make it. I would like to think he's just being nice...but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my cooking. I'm getting better though, really!

Ignore the prayer pose, not sure what's going on. I got a pretty good shiner on Friday. The story is more than embarrassing, but it has something to do with my horse, a horse dentist, passing out, a metal pole, and a vet catching me. I hate to relive the story at all, but it's the only picture I got of myself all week.

My hard little worker! Just a shout out to a great guy who someone pulled of 40+ hours/week of work and 19 credits this last semester! He's never not working. Even when he's watching the NBA playoffs he'd tirelessly making calls for work. The best is when he puts people on hold for long periods of time to focus in on the game and yell at me to "come watch this!!" And he still sells them, every time! 3 cheers for Brandon!