Advent Calendar

My bestie Whitley found an awesome Christmas craft for us to do...an advent calendar! Those are where you have 25 boxes that you can open and get a little gift each day from December 1st to Christmas Day! This is what Tanner and I are doing in place of presents just on Christmas.

Start with a canvas and collect 25 boxes

Paint the canvas and modge podge cute paper to the box lids.
Number and decorate with cute stickers, ribbon, appliques, etc.

Took us two days and late hours, but I had a blast! Thanks Whitley!

If you want the instructions, here is the link: http://www.modpodgerocksblog.com/2010/11/diy-big-box-advent-calendar.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ModPodgeRocks+%28Mod+Podge+Rocks%29

Annual Gingerbread House Building...

Tanner's family has started a tradition of doing Gingerbread houses each year after Thanksgiving dinner. Tanner and I love this! We go all out planning ahead and try to find some new and unique candy interpretations.

Here are our previous years...

First Year

This is when we were just dating, I was going to the U and Tanner loved BYU, so we did red and blue lights in honor of our teams.

Second Year

First year married, this house is a replica of the little hovel we were living in our first several months in PG. This house took us 8 hours! These pictures do not do it justice, but this thing was massive and super detailed.

Third Year


An igloo!!! Tanner loves Alaska and worked there for a short time this year, so we did an Eskimo winter scene. The best part is all the details...


The Eskimos catching and cooking their meals.


The inside scene before we built up the walls.


You can look in on the scene from the front entry or the peep hole on the top!

The crafty part on this one that i want to claim is the lights. Instead of just M&M's like we normally do, I saw some chocolate covered sunflower seeds when I was with my mom and I just knew that would be the perfect shape for our lights!

We enjoy making these. We wanted to try and preserve all of them...but we have no place to store them, so Tanner likes to just destroy them...

The end, can't wait for next year!

Halloween

So, my sister-in-law reminded me that Halloween would be a good thing to post about since it is almost thanksgiving. HAHA!

Well this year my sister-in-law Tamsin and I decided to through a Halloween Party for our friends and family. It turned out great! However, we did learn a few things we ought to do differently to make life easier next year. lol.

Mr. and Mrs. Hasbro! (makers of monopoly and candyland)

Yeah, I totally won best costume, I know I know, by one vote. Tamsin, I voted for you!

Jester man and his trophy wife LOL!!! It's a competition now Tamsin!

One thing I need to do better next year is get more pictures!!! But it was fun!

Projects!!!

Okay, like I promised...here are my projects.

First up, our entertainment center! We found this at a garage sale for 20 bucks! It was super dirty and had some water damage, but we just cleaned it, sanded down the chipped parts and did a dark stain. We probably could have gotten it free, this guy was practically giving away all this stuff. Oh and it has a touch light that has 3 brightnesses! We'd already had the white thing under it, but this thing was way to heavy for just that to hold, so we found the side cupboard things at target.



Next, another wicked awesome yard sale find...our $30 shadow box sofa table!



I've got all my wedding stuff in it. The ring pillow and flower basket. My signing book. The sugar flowers from my wedding cake. Some fabric we'd used, pearls, and pics of me and my mom and me and my dad! love it! oh, and one of the KAZOO's!

Alright onto my headboard and poster board. We got these four giant squares from my sister-in-laws parents. The colors didn't match our decor, so I covered them. 3 of them were just right to make us a headboard, and the extra one, now I've got a sweet post-it board!




Next, I made a cute calendar to track our progress to the temple! I'd love to say I made the whole calendar, but no, I bought the thing. However, with some magnet sheets and dots, cute paper, and glue, I made the months and numbers!



And last, but most definitely not least, our furniture! Unfortunately and stupidly, I didn't take before pictures, but lets just say it was all ugly scratched up wood. We found these pieces on KSL and got all of them for $300 bucks! (We probably could have gotten them for way cheaper, dumb us.) Anywho, my wonderful husband did all the sanding! I did the priming and painting, and we both stained till the cows came home! I LOVE how it turned out!!!!





I still need to do the mirror. I'm going to do it the gray like all the rest of the furniture, but...I've been lazy. And it's gonna storm this weekend, soo...we'll see when that gets done!

So funny story...as you see, I've decorated with all the stuff I had from my wedding. When tanner came home after I did that, he said, "wow...it's all...shabby chic'ed". I know he meant it in a "this-isn't-the-kind-of-room-a-man-is-supposed-to-sleep-in" kind of way, but honestly, I was just so dang proud of him for knowing the term "shabby chic" and what it looks like!!!

Well, that's it for now. I've got a couple other things to get re-finished, so I'll attempt to update when I get them done! Thanks for visiting! (leave me comments if you have any ideas, suggestions, or just plain ole' compliments! tehe)

I SUCK at this blogging thing...

Yeah, so much for being a blogger. Well here is an update. We never ended up in Canada as my last posted stated. We stayed in North Dakota for a month and we were never able to get in, so we decided to head down to Louisiana. While waiting for our licensing to process we stayed in Nebraska for two weeks and then spent the rest of the summer in Louisiana. It was an adventure, but I'm so glad to be home.

We no longer have the miniature apartment, which I so wanted to blog about, oh well. But we now have a nice spacious two bedroom apartment in Provo. I have thoroughly enjoyed decorating it and doing tons of projects! (pictures to come, I'm very proud of how things have turned out.)

Tanner is still working for Pinnacle doing inside sales and I am...sniff sniff...unemployed! Yes, for the first time in 3 years I cannot get hired to save my life!!! This is driving me crazy! I am putting in applications everyday, and it seems like I've missed all the opportunities by one freaking applicant!!!

So, that really sucks and is seriously damaging my self-esteem, but the one good thing that's come of this experience is that I've gotten serious about school again! I've been missing it soooo much and I've realized that I need a degree or experience to get any of these good jobs. And seeing as how no one will hire without experience, thus I cannot gain experience, I need to seek education.

I'm starting school at Ameritech College in January. It's a 10 month program to be a Healthcare Office Specialist. Those of you who know me well know that I've always been interested in the medical field and after being an office manager this summer I've learned I love secretarial/receptionist work, so this will be the best of both worlds!!!

I'm super stoked! (and my mom even said she's so proud of me she could puke! wierd, but it made my day). I'm still looking for work, so if you know of anything please let me know! (especially if it has benefits!)

I'll update again on my projects. Seeing has how I have no job, I figure I can devote a little more attention to my blog.

Peace out for now!