Antelope Island

I've lived in Utah all my life (excluding one year) and yet I have only been out to Antelope Island once before. I don't remember how old I was. In fact, the only thing I DO remember is eating a buffalo burger which I threw up later that night. Not a great memory. I've also NEVER been swimming in the Great Salt Lake, and only been out to it maybe twice. This last weekend I found out what I was missing, and while thousands of bugs was one thing that I wouldn't have MINDED missing, everything else was pretty great.

We rode our bikes on some of the mountain biking trails out there and were not disappointed. The trails were sandy and sometimes hard to pedal through, but the views were great. We even ran into one of these guys while we were on the trail. Brain was out ahead and the buffalo stopped and glared at him and started to swing his head and paw the ground. Not a great sign.

Brian turned around and came back to the slower folk until the danger had lumbered slowly away.

They aren't kidding when they say you can float in the Great Salt Lake. You can hardly swim because your feet and legs are pushed up to the surface.
Despite the brine shrimp and the SALTY SALTY water, we enjoyed ourselves. The water is warm and you can bob around like a little bouy.

Brian even ate a couple brine shrimp in order to earn five dollars (which translated to papusas back in SLC later that night)

I think one of my favorite things about the whole trip though (besides dutch oven dinner and dessert) was the sunset. It was absolutely gorgeous and my dinky digital camera just cannot do it justice. There was a warm breeze and the crickets were singing as Kati and I watched the sun sink over the water. It was almost as good as being at the ocean. Thanks Kati and Jeff for joining us on another fun adventure!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well it was the weekend of never-ending-birthday and I am grateful for all the people who made number 24 a fun and exciting Birthday. Brian's family took us out to dinner Friday night and then Brian took me up to a bed-and-breakfast up Ogden Canyon. It was nice to get away and feel like we were on vacation. Saturday morning (after jumping Brian's car...again) we made it back home, but in the evening headed up to Park City to Bandit's BBQ and Grill where Annie, Todd, Atticus, Kati, Jeff, and Amanda and Adam were there to greet us. It was fun to be together with everyone, and I was especially glad that Amanda could make it up. Thanks for coming everyone!
Brian and I went up to Oakley afterwards and Annie had baked and decorated this delicious and beautiful cake and Kati had made homemade ice-cream. Can it get any better than that?

They also made me a cute little banner. I'm sad we didn't take a picture at dinner with Amanda, but at least we took one of the three girls before the night was over.

As if all this fun wasn't good enough, on Sunday Brian's family put on a dinner and made some delicious desserts for Christie (my sister-inlaw) and me who happen to have the exact same Birthday! Thanks everyone for the fun, and the presents, and the cards and whatnot. I have WONDERFUL people in my life, and I am glad that I've been able to spend another year with all of you!

Armchair Redo

Brian's Aunt Julie and Uncle Chris gave us this old armchair. They said they had looked into getting them reupholstered, but it was too expensive and not worth it. It would be cheaper to just get new chairs, so they gave one to me and one to my sister-in-law. While the chair wasn't terribly ugly, it wasn't really what I was looking for, and was kind of dirty. It sat unchanged in our bedroom for several months, but one day I decided it was time to try my hand at some serious upholstering. I didn't have a clue what I was doing...but I dove right in and did what I could.



The first thing I did was to get the back off the chair. From there I could see how the whole thing was put together--where it was sewn and where it was stapled. As I took it off piece by piece, I saved the material to use for a future pattern.



Pulling the staples out took HOURS. The whole chair probably took me two weeks to complete, but the fact that I have seriously sewn nothing but a few pillows, and those in the past couple months, it isn't surprising. I made some big mistakes and had to unpick a bunch of stuff, but I muddled through. It was fun to watch it come together though, and to think that I did it all by myself. It definitely doesn't look professional, but that's ok. I spent $16 total on the project, so if I had to do it again in the future, it wouldn't be a huge loss.

Ta da! I'm not sure where to put it, and don't tell anyone, but I still haven't finished the back. I just got too tired and wanted to get the chair out of the front room, so the back is to the wall in our bedroom right now. Whew....what a job. I wonder what I'll try to tackle next? If anyone has furniture...let me know before you throw it out.

I Chopped My Hair

I finally got so sick of my hair that I chopped it off. Was I sad to see it go? Not at all. After an entire year of pulling it back into a sorry-sight-of-a-bun for school and having it strangle me in the middle of the night, and dreading taking a shower because it took so long to wash and dry I was not sorry at all to see it go. Ahhh.... it feels so much better!

And I can do it curly or straight in about 20 min or less. Much improved from the hour it would take with long hair. So with gladness I say to my hair, "Go, Go. I would not wish you back again."

My Decoupage Table

While I wasn't able to do anything near as cool as the pieces in my last post, I did figure out HOW to do something that cool in the future. It started out with a little writing desk that I got for $10 off of KSL. Of course I forgot to take a picture of the original, but here it is after I had primed it. The desk was fairly unremarkeable, but I liked the thin and curvey legs. Those are some fine legs on that table...(does that sound weird to anyone else?)Here is it after I had painted and put the glaze on, and used Modge Podge for the top and drawer. The glaze was a little darker than I wanted, but I sanded and distresed some parts since this picture and I think I like it better. I also want to get a nice little piece of hardware for the drawer. I am thinking a crystalt knob or something of the sort. All the paper I used was just from a stack of scrapbook paper. I was going to do a music desk, but honestly I just got too impatient to wait to try and find old unused music in Oakley, so I went ahead and used what I had on hand. While it is not my favorite piece of furniture, I did learn a few things on the way, so hopefully I can do something better next time.

Maybe Someday

So if ever I gain the skills, time, and/or accessories, I would love to try either of these projects. I am just amazed at some of the creative and talented stuff I see out there in blog-land. The first project I want to share is from Flea Market Trixie. I fell in love with this desk that she redid. I love traveling and the world, and Brian has always had a strange obsession with maps so this desk would be perfect for us. Just look at the transformation.

I also love this little side table from Miss Mustard Seed. She used the same technique of decoupage as the desk above. This would go nicely in my future dream piano/music room.

Sigh.....someday.

London, Paris, New York, MOAB

Let me tell you a story. This story is about a girl who never does anything physical besides patrol the center aisle in her English classroom, glaring down at students who dare to have the audacity to speak out of turn. This is a story about a girl who used to bike to her friend's house across town, but that was the extent of her biking experience. This is a story about a girl who decided to go with her husband and her friends down to Moab and bike Slickrock--said to be the hardest biking trail in Utah--classified as a black diamond. This is the story of a stupid girl....
Kati, her husband Jeff, Brian, and I all took a break and headed down to Moab for some fun (and some pain, as I will relate to you). The weather was beautiful, the company great, the food amazing (thanks Kati and Jeff for planning, procurring, and preparing our gourmet meals. I mean crepes with fruit and cheese blintz filling for breakfast? Clam sauce spaghetti? Fat juicy brauts? Are we even camping here?) and the scenery breathtaking. The biking, however, while fun, just about did me in.

Here we are on the Poison Spider trail. This trail starts off with a climb up to the top of the plateau. Halfway up the climb I was ready to turn around. With a dramatic and self-sacrificing look on my face I told the others to go on without me....which they did. I sat on a rock and contemplated what a tragic news story it would be when they found me dead of a heart attack. I'm serious. My left arm went numb, my chest felt like it was being squeezed by a vice, and I couldn't get enough air. I finally recovered, walked to the top of the hill and continued my journey. I did finally catchup to everyone else.

After our early morning biking jaunt, we went into arches to do some hiking. This is more up my alley, and despite getting us completely lost in the Fiery Furnace and being incredibly disappointed in myself (Dad--I'm so ashamed) we had a great time.

On Saturday we woke up early to get started on Slickrock. I had no idea what I was in for. I thought I would just do the practice route (about 1.5 miles) but I didn't want to do it alone, so I ended up tagging along with everyone else and doing the 12 mile loop. Bad idea. Slickrock is 90% straight up or straight down big sandstone hills. There was only about 10% that I could actually ride, everything else I had to walk. The uphill was always way too steep for my poor, atrophied legs, and the downhill was way to scary for my faint heart. The views were gorgeous, when I was actually conscious enough to look at them. By the end I was at least half a mile behind everyone else, plodding along--watching the desert tortoises pass me up. Ok, not really, but if there had been any around, I wouldn't have been surprised. I began wondering why in the world I had even brought my bike---it just meant pushing about 30 pounds of extra weight up every hill, and then trying to keep that 30 pounds from pulling me down on my face in the other side. I did make it to the end though, singing in my head "some must push and some must pull" and "pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked and walked......." I was just waiting for the angels to come push me up the last hill. Maybe they did, because for awhile I didn't think I'd make it.

On our last day we hiked up to Delicate Arch in the morning. I was surprisingly not as sore as I had expected. That is always a fun hike, no matter how many times I have done it.

Brian and Kati experimented with some yoga...or something...at Delicate Arch. I think Brian just liked the upside down view.

Brian and I are glad that we have such fun friends to hang out with, and I'm grateful that my friends and my husband make me do hard things. I'm also grateful that they just "go on without me" and don't complain about waiting at the end for me to catch up. Hurray for summer! I can't wait for more adventures!