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)!!

Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and School

Right before Thanksgiving last year Cara twisted my arm into creating this blog. As you can see I haven't been very good at keeping up on it. So a quick update!

We had a fantastic holiday season! Kyle and I spent Thanksgiving day and part of Friday at his parents house. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Grandpa Barker, Larry and Karen, Heather and her kids, and Camron.

After Thanksgiving the end of the semester quickly came around. Boy am I grateful to be done with so many math classes! I am so excited to embark on this new semester, after changing my major to Family Studies I am immersing myself in family life classes and so far I love it!

Early the morning after I finished my finals, I hopped on a plane and flew up to Washington. Unfortunately my trip up was made solo and wasn't long enough! During my whirlwind of a trip, I enjoyed spending lots of time with my family! Some of the more exciting things I did while in Washington:

Ushered and then watched A Christmas Carol at the ACT Theater in Seattle

Learned how to cross stitch and cross stitched our names on the cuff of our stockings

Learned how to make Grandpa Perkins' fudge

Went and saw the light display at the Botanical Gardens in Bellevue

...Most importantly... saw Brooklynn take her first step!!!!

As you can tell, the biggest highlight of that trip was spending time with my family and more specifically Brooklynn.

After the quick trip to Washington, Christmas was soon upon us! Kyle took a few days off around Christmas so on Thursday the 23rd I attempted to make Edwards Donuts per our tradition of making them on Christmas Eve (unfortunately we weren't going to be home on Christmas Eve). I say attempted to make because they were a complete failure! Friday morning, we drove up to Ogden and spent the day with Grandpa Barker, Larry and Karen, and Camron. We had a good time with them, working on puzzles, learning new card games, eating and visiting. After our short visit we trekked home in the fog and snow mess!

We had a very simple Christmas with just the two of us. As is typical of us, we didn't sleep in and so we were done opening presents by about 8! The highlight of our Christmas were wonderful gifts from my parents. Kyle and I each received longed for toys/tools! My parents gave Kyle a fantastic shop vac and me a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer. We love our new toys and are so grateful for them! In true Edwards style I was dying to make a huge feast for Christmas, so I made a huge feast for the two of us! We had a yummy ham, tasty yams, "thanksgiving" rolls and au gratin potatoes. It doesn't sound like much, but when you're only feeding two people that goes a long way!

Shortly after Christmas, Kyle came down with some kind of flu bug. So we spent our first New Years' Eve together on the couch watching Lois and Clark, a Superman show from the 90s and went to bed around 9:30! So not much to speak of there!

This new semester of school that I mentioned early is loaded with family life classes and general credits. In many of my classes we hit the ground running! I anticipate this semester will be a very challenging, rewarding and fun semester!

Picnic in the Park

After some arm twisting by Cara, I am finally starting a blog. She convinced me about a week ago, and I've already taken this long to get my first post up! This may not bode will for how current I will keep this thing!

Last Friday Kyle and I were invited to watch a friend's choir performance. So I decided that I would take the lead on this week's date night, since I always make Kyle do it. The weather was very promising so I decided to go out on a limb and go on a picnic in November in Utah, which could have ended poorly.

Luckily, the weather held out nicely and we had a beautiful picnic. Our dinner was pretty simple, but somehow I still spent 2 hours getting it ready... Go figure! Although in my opinion, my efforts paid off. Kyle loved the Pasta Chicken Caesar Salad we had, which is a really good thing because it's one of my favorites and I would have been devastated if he hadn't!

For dessert I tried a recipe that I found online that was amazing! This is probably what took most of those two hours to prepare! We had, Caramel Turtle Brownies, and they were fantastic! The best thing was that they kept getting better. The longer we had them around, the gooier and chewier they became! In case you want to know the recipe can be found here, http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Caramel-Turtle-Brownies/Detail.aspx.

We ate dinner, admired the mountains and watched people, then went on a walk around one of the best parks we've ever been to. They have this really cool swing at this park, that is similar to the swing rides at fairs.

Except, this one is human powered.

Kyle was a great little work horse! We had a blast. I attempted to pull Kyle around but that didn't go very well. I ended up being pulled around by the swing, which Kyle thought was hilarious.

After our time at the park, we went to th BYU Men's and Women's Chorus concert and listed to our good friend Daniel and the rest of the group. What a talented group of young men! It was such a treat to listen to them and a perfect way to finish our date!