Fluffy Giveaways

There are some awesome giveaways going on right now!

Check out this one at Thinking About Cloth Diapers. There's also a linky at the bottom to even more giveaways!

Here we sit like birds in the wilderness… or maybe it’s more like a construction zone!

As I write this, I’m sitting in the bathroom downstairs with my laptop in our office chair (whose home is upstairs). I’ve plugged my laptop into one of the few outlets that has power in the house and the router and modem are being powered off an extension run from the kitchen! That should give you an idea of what our life is like. But, a look at our living room is enough to make anyone with any sense of organizational desire scream…

Here’s our coat closet…

I mean couch.

Before we get a look at all of the before pictures for the loft, here are some pictures from our painting projects a few weekends back. We have had the paint to paint our bedroom since we painted our master bath before Thanksgiving 2010… Well painting that bathroom was a PAIN, so it’s taken us a while to come back around to the idea of doing more painting.

Here’s our white room before:

Looking from our master bathroom to the rest of our bedroom.

And here's the finished product!






The pictures aren’t the best representation of the true color. The three main walls are a medium brown with a hint of orange/rust. The accent wall is a rich aqua color. We were a little nervous about the way all of this would work out, even when we bought the colors we weren’t sure about them, but we absolutely LOVE it!! The colors make the room so much more inviting and warm.

After we finished this project we spent quite a while planning and preparing for our loft, which is in progress!

So here are the before pictures with some explanations…

This is looking from our bedroom down the hall to the extra bedrooms. To your right before the double doors are the stairs and inside the double doors is the utility closet with the water heater.

This view won’t be changing drastically, except that the bedroom on the right will be closed off and have a different entrance and the closet will remain just the door closest to use with the second door being removed and becoming a hallway.

This is the view from the very top of the stairs of the landing and all the way up to the second floor ceiling. This is where the loft will end up being.

This is looking onto the utility closet from the guest bathroom. The full door on the left will be has been knocked out and will become the hallway to the adjacent bedroom and ultimately the loft.

This is a view from the bottom of the stairs up to the second floor ceiling, this is the entire area that will be turned into the loft.

There will be many more pictures to come after the project is finished! We are really excited to have this entryway built. It has already opened up the upstairs so much. We can’t wait until it is finished!

Tomorrow, Troy and Weston will be here and I’m going to be giving them a tour of BYU campus. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do a decent job and convince Weston to come to school out here!

At some point, Nate, Michelle and Jenna will be coming down from up north to see Craig, Nate and Weston. It shall be interesting to have 7 adults and curious toddler in our disaster zone, but I’m excited to for everyone to have a chance to get together!

Mama-to-Be Event over at According to Jenny

I am really looking forward to this giveaway event! I can't wait to see what she has lined up.

Giveaways, Giveaways, and more Giveaways! and an update on life.

I haven't been writing at all lately. I never know what to write about. We have been really great lately! Kyle still has his job at Novell and his been fortunate enough to make it through Attachmate's (who bought Novell sometime last year I think), downsizing. Things continue to rapidly change at work for him and we just hope and pray that he continues to have employment through it all.

I just entered my last year at BYU. I will be going to school all year long but I will graduate in December and I just can't wait! I've finished all of my math classes, so I now have a mathematics minor. I'm finishing up my last few generals and also family life classes. As hard as school is, I really enjoy my courses, professors, and class mates, which will make this next year more bearable.

Over Christmas Kyle and I drove up to Washington to stay with my parents and spend time with my family. It was a ton of fun. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures with anyone... So I can't share any pictures!! One of the best parts of our trip was surprising my sisters with our being there! We got to spend time with Charlotte, Cara, Eric and Brooklynn which was fun but as always Brooklynn was bounding full of energy and activity so we were beat each night! We had a wonderful Christmas with my side of the family and are very grateful that we were able to spend that time with them!

GIVEAWAYS!!

I have been entering a ton of giveaways the past few months. I started entered them in October but really just had one blog that I followed that did giveaways I was interested in. So I entered her giveaways and much to my surprise I won!! After that I started entering them fairly regularly! At this point I usually have 60-80 open giveaways that I have entered (and usually tweet about each day for extra entries). As of today I have won 16 giveaways. Some of them big, some of them small, each of them exciting to win! I haven't received all of the prizes yet but hopefully they will be coming in the mail any day now!

Here's the run down of the things I have won (and received):

MoDia Diapers Pocket Style Diaper (Elephant Walk with blue tabs)-$21.95

Bunzuke Pocket Style Diaper (lady bug with snap off wings)-~$20

The one I won is similar to this one, slightly different fabrics and snaps.

Real Nappies Intro Pack, Crawler Size-$17.99

Haute Mommy Swag Bag #1

Thirsties Dup Wrap (Size 2) in Warm Stripes-$13.75

Smart Mom Jewelry Teething Bling-$19.99

Willow Pad Reusable Feminine Pad in Robin-9.95

CJ's BUTTer from Modern Cloth (Sample Size x 3) in Unscented, Frankincense and Myrrh, Madagascar.-$4.50

Fuzzibunz Elite Pocket Style Diaper in Spearmint-$19.95

Fuzzibunz Original Pocket Style Diaper in Red-$19.95

Cheeky Cloth Fitted Diaper in Silly Santa-$17.50

BabyKicks Extra Small Prefold x 2-11.78

Oh Katy Pocket Style Diaper in Silver-$17.95

(Company is just right here in Spanish Fork!)

Thirsties Accessories

Fab Wipes in "Boys" (6)-$12.25

Booty Luster (8 oz, wipe spray)-$11

Booty Love (2 oz, diaper rash ointment)-$14.95

This adds up to: $232.51 plus all the money saved in shipping costs.

There are 6 giveaways I've won in the last month that I haven't yet received!

They are:

Boba 3G Baby Carrier in Kangaroo (as Pictured)-$125

Snappi Diaper Fasteners (an alternative to diaper pins) x 8-$20.85-28.60 (depending on sizes)

BumGenius 4.0 in Albert (snaps)-$17.95

Bumblebaby Diapers in a surprise print-~$20

Thirsties Duo Wrap (Size 1) in Meadow (different than pictured)-$12.50

Go Bananas Baby Newborn All in 2 (semi custom) in "What a Hoot Print"-$15.50

(This is just the print, actually diaper will be much smaller)

Prize total for those things I haven't received: 214.95

Assuming that everything arrives (eventually) I have been blessed to win $447.47 (plus shipping savings) worth of baby stuff. I am so grateful to have won all of these things!

We may not be expecting now, but we do eventually plan to have children and every bit that I win is one less thing we have to come up with the cash to buy! Plus I think we will get to enjoy some things that we wouldn't otherwise have purchased, like a $125 baby carrier!

Happy Anniversary Kyle!

I can not believe it but a year has already passed since my wonderful husband and I were sealed in the Logan temple. We celebrated our anniversary in northern Utah and spent time with Kyle's brother Nate and his adorable family. They were so gracious as to let us spend a few nights with them and we are very grateful for that! We were also able to visit the Logan temple on Saturday and take a few pictures afterwards. We spent Sunday night at the Logan Anniversary Inn. Which is a neat hotel with themed rooms, this time we stayed in the Lake Powell Suite. We spent the morning being "tourists" (as much as one can be) in Logan then came home.

We had a blast and really enjoyed the time together.

We have had an amazing year together, Kyle. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful husband. I couldn't have asked for a better man to support and care for me. I know that I can make things difficult and frustrating so I thank you for putting up with me. You bring out the best in me and continually help me to be a better person, but specifically a better wife, daughter of God, and future mother. I have grown so much in the last year of our marriage because of you and I can only hope that you feel the same. Thank you for loving me through my many idiosyncrasies. You help me to better see myself for who I am and that is an amazing gift, for which I can not properly express my appreciation.

I look forward to being able to continually

love and laugh with you and being able to serve you!

I love you so much!

Happy Anniversary!!!

It's been a while...

I have been very negligent of my blog lately. For some reason I find it difficult to keep things up to date. So rather than try and write a lengthy blog to update on all of the projects that we have done I hope to just post some pictures of our recent house projects.

I know that we took many more pictures along the way but I can't seem to find them. Prior to this project the fireplace was just the black metal portion that you see here.

Kyle (with a tintsy bit of my help) worked really hard on this tiling and building the mantel piece.

It was finished just enough on Christmas Eve for us to hang our stockings for our first Christmas together.

This painting hangs in our downstairs bathroom. I bought the painted canvas a few years ago in Nice, France and had been hoping to hang it somewhere in my house (down the road). Kyle and I stretched the canvas and framed it ourselves, which was loads of fun and super easy!

Cross stitching that I made my mom for mother's day/birthday.

Cross stitching in our frog themed guest bathroom.

Please pardon the mess! These are curtains and a valence that I made for our bedroom. They are very difficult to photograph and capture the correct color so just admire my amateur sewing skills and ignore the colors.

We used to have a ton of artificial plants about our cabinets but were sick of the look (and I was fed up with a spider infested kitchen). So we hung these neat little decorations.



Our new doorstops so that we can cool the house off overnight and not have the doors slam shut at 3 am (and much less obtrusive than a chair).

Here is a close up of our doorstops. I crocheted two of these but I haven't quite finished them. They both need a set of black eyes from a small bead but I need to go buy them and keep forgetting so they may look a little goofy for a while.

I started knitting this pillow about 5 years ago and it has been mostly finished for 3 or 4 years but I finally finished it recently.

I think it coordinates nicely with my quilt from that same time period (which is now the comforter on our guest bed).

This isn't a project but one of the few pictures we have of us. The Saturday before 4th of July was the stadium of fire here in Provo. We didn't pay to go to the concert but found a secret spot to hang out for the evening in hopes of being able to have a good view of the fireworks. We really lucked out because we could hear all of the concert and see all of the fireworks from our awesome hillside!

Kyle built this table that I think is beautiful. He constructed the frame, stained and finished the wood, and laid the tiles for the table top.

Here is Kyle building the shelving unit for a tiny storage closet under the stairs.

Here's the finished closet before it is loaded with tools, etc.

Here's the finished closet full of odds and ends.

I believe that is most of the work that we have done around the house recently. I know it was probably picture overload so thank you for bearing with me!

Stay tuned and I will try to be better about posting more often (as often as our simple lives give reason)!!