Labor Day Weekend

I took a day off school the weekend of Labor Day, and Brian and I, along with Brian's parents and his siblings Emily and Matt, headed down to San Diego in the suburban. We stayed in Las Vegas with Brian's brother Jon and his wife Abby. They had just had a baby and everybody was so excited to see and hold little Will (now I have two nephews of the same age named William). On our way to San Diego we got stuck in the Cajon Pass fire. It was miserable. It took us five hours to get through what would have been about three miles on the freeway. We thought we would be in San Diego by 2:00 p.m. and didn't get there until 8:30. I was sad that our trip was cut almost an entire day short, but we still made the most of it.

You can tell I am scared of getting wet in this picture...the surf was really high, so we didn't see many seals or sea lions, but we did have fun taking pictures on this rock.

I know this is a disgusting picture, and you are probably a little disturbed right now, but besides the pandas, the feeding of the reptiles drew the biggest crowd at the zoo. It was one of those things that you just can't look away from, even if you want to. We watched this snake devour this entire rat. As a side note, the rat looked exactly like Penny, my pet rat that I raised from a baby. This would have been her fate had she been born at the pet store....

We also went to seaworld. Brian and I have two year passes which is really nice. It was great fun, I hope Brian's mom Deanna still had fun even though I told her that we wouldn't get wet sitting where we were and then she got SOAKED. At least our view was great....

Thumbs up for a fun weekend, despite the fact that we got stuck in a fire, oh, and that Joel and Deanna had their ipad and macbook pro stolen out of the car. I hope everyone else had fun too, even though it turned out to be a much more expensive trip than planned, what with the theft and all. It was great to see my parents, I miss you Mom and Dad.

And the School Year Resumes

School started today. And yes, I was dreading it for most of the summer, but I watched this video a couple weeks before it started and I was surprised to feel some excitement to start the year again. I taught all but one of the students interviewed in the film and most of them are pretty great. I hope I really am making a difference in at least one student's life or really teaching someone something that they will be grateful for later. If so, I guess it makes it all worth it. I also make a brief cameo appearance in the film. See if you can catch me!


Here's to another year....

I Can Make Clothes!

A couple things about me: I love clothes. I hate spending money. You see my dillema already don't you. In this battle between the clothes and the money, Brian will tell you that the money always wins. And he will be right. Sometimes Brian BEGS me to buy clothes. How many husbands do you know that beg their wives to go buy clothes? Probably not many. He finally convinced me to buy a new pair of shoes a couple of weeks ago. I took them back the next day. I was finally tired of never haing anything new, so I decided to try making myself some clothes. I took inspiration from my friend Kati who is like a sewing machine (pun intended) and has made some really cute shirts, dresses, and skirts. I didn't have a pattern, but I did have inspiration from places like Shabby Apple and Downeast. I have now successfuly made a skirt and a dress...no patterns and very little sewing ability. I loved this skirt from Shabby Apple, and I had some other ideas of what I wanted in a skirt. I also had some leftover material that I had purchased for pillows, but then it turned out to be just the wrong color from what I wanted. The material cost me 3 dollars. The skirt above cost 52 dollars. Below is the final product:

I also wanted a knit dress that was simple, comfortable, and sort of drapey. I took inspiration from the following dresses from Shabby Apple and Downeast. The dresses from Shabby Apple were close to or over $100 and the one from Downeast was in the $40 range. I bought the material for $10 and the belt for $5.

My version still needs a couple tweaks to make it fit better, but I wore it to church today and figured I might as well take a picture while I had it on. Who knows when I will get around to actually fixing it or blogging about it otherwise. Definitely not quite as cute and certainly not as well tailored (real sewing peolpe would be horrified I'm sure) but I think for the price difference it was worth it. Plus, no matter how bad it looks, I'm still proud of myself for figuring it out on my own.

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."