Bella--9 months

We had a visit from my brother's family this weekend and I got to see my niece, Isabella. She grows SO much everytime she goes away. She's 9 months now and crawling, can say mama and dada, and looks just like her parents :)

It is freakishly hard to take pictures of moving babies.

They were all blurry since she was moving so much and my batteries need to be changed. Bah!

Toys R Me and The French Guy

This weekend was SO much more productive than my last, like, 10 weekends. (Okay, maybe not THAT many, but it feels like it.) Trevor worked both Friday and Saturday—all day. So I had to find stuff to do on my own. On Friday I went to Toys R Us and shopped for the little kids’ birthdays in my family this month. I have to admit, I enjoyed it for myself, not just for them :) I found several things that I would have loved to get them—they’re interested in SO many things, Star Wars, practically every superhero, Spongebob, all the Pokemon/Bakaghan (sp) stuff, dinosaurs, cars… And that’s just the boy stuff :) Have you been to the girl section in Toys R Us lately?! Holy mama! I would have spazzed out as a kid if I’d seen all that stuff. They have every single accessory you can think of to fit into a doll house. I love all the mini kitchens and laundry rooms :) And their dress-up section is ginormous compared to what I remember when I was little. I’m sure my parents kept me out of Toys R Us for good reason :) I remember how excited I was just to go into the toy store in the mall, or in K Mart. Oh, EasyBake, how I miss you.

…sigh… maybe I’ll have to go buy myself something cool. Not sure if I can wait till we have kids of our own. I wonder how many moms are into their kids’ toys… I know I’M going to buy at least some of them because I think they’re awesome. That’s pretty much a given for Trevor too. Every time we go ANYWHERE that sells toys, we always have to go down the toy aisle and compare their quality of Star Wars and Iron Man toys, and hear how much “the quality of toys nowadays has gone down,” and yet, he still buys them…hm.

You know what kinda bothers me? Boys can still read their “graphic novels,” and play with their legos, and play their videogames and it’s not considered kiddish at all. What do girls get to do? WASH REAL DISHES? Psh. I want my EasyBake and 4 foot dollhouse, with mini-cupcakes, flushing toilets, and Grandma doll to go along with it.

ANYWHO. Back to my weekend.

We went to a barbeque at a friend’s house on Friday night—seeing as it was Pioneer Day. I kind of forgot the entire day until we were invited to fireworks. It’s been really nice to see friends here and there at different things lately. It always reminds me how different my life is than most of my friends from high school though. Do you realize that some people Trevor and I graduated with have finished college and are starting their careers?! Crazy biz. I don’t regret my life, don’t get me wrong. It’s just different. Some of them have babies (although, they generally don’t show up to bbqs), but most of them are just either living at home going to school, or living with friends going to school. And then there’s the handful like Trevor and I—married and boring, with “plans” to go back to school :) No, I’m kidding. We’ll get back. We just did things backwards. Who ever said Trevor and I are the smartest people on earth? Not me.

YEESH, back to my weekend again.

Went to the kidlet birthday party on Saturday morning, where I got to see them open their lightsabers and silly string. I was also the not-so-cool aunt who gave them books to read (shudder). They liked their monster cupcakes though, and I’m glad :) I have to say though, that I snuck in a little reduced-sugar cupcake mix in there, and they didn’t even know it. (although I’m sure the frosting kind of counterbalances everything…)

I got to drop off my car (!) at the body shop on Saturday!!!! Yip! I have /get to drive a rental all week and we’ll be $500 poorer, but I won’t have to look at a mashed headlight every day and be reminded of my stupidity while driving (and my car will pass inspection in the fall; extra bonus). The car rental place picked me up at the body shop which was nice, but since it was Saturday, there was only one person on duty, so I had to drive him back to the car rental place… awkward. He was a nice black man from France who graduated from Accounting school 10 years ago but got laid off because of the recession and is now working at Enterprise to pay the bills. He and his wife love to travel though, and I should do it if I can—especially the Caribbean in the off season.

I got to spend lots of time with family this weekend what with the birthdays, and extra practices for musicals in church, and family dinners, and going to the canyon. It was super great :) Now I’m starting an incredibly relaxed—but that much harder because I have no one to tell me when to stop blogging and get off facebook to do my actual work—week because my boss is on vacation.

This post is supremely convoluted. And I'm not even going to spell check or proof-read. So there. Good luck :)

Up the Canyon

We actually DID something this weekend--you know, besides watch a movie at home :) Trevor and I went up Big Cottonwood Canyon to the picnic areas a few minutes inside the mouth of the canyon ; Trevor's brother Travis and his wife Robyn, and brother Brandon and his girlfriend Amber were with us. We made a fire, roasted hotdogs, and made smores--then went to the cave that's just off the path. I've been there a few times for different things, and even though it's pretty safe and used a lot--it's still stupendously creepy :) Especially when you're with people who've never done it.

Of course my camera's batteries were dying when we got up there. It's just a part of my life, I've decided. And night-time + fire = a)really dark pictures with really bright fire, or b) super over-exposed pictures because you have to use your flash. But oh-well. It was SO much fun and we have extra firewood, so we're ABSOLUTELY going again. I have decreed it.



It was pretty hot. And the fire made it even hotter. But who really cares? YOU HAVE A FIRE!


Trevor, checking out his magnificent fire.


Trevor wrote my name on some wood in charcoal.


Trevor pretty much always cuts my head off :) But I made sure to get some pictures of us this time. I realized a while ago that I don't really put too many pictures of myself on here, so I decided I needed to take more.




We forgot condiments for our hotdogs, so Amber (I think) asked the people at the next picnic area if we could have some of their ketchup :) They gave us a ton!

Mmm, smores









One of many flaming/burned marshmallows.




In the cave. Trevor's low voice was pretty spooky.


In the cave, we got to the end, and someone had put a manequine (is that how you spell it?) head sitting on a log at the very end. It was seriously one of the creepiest things I've ever seen in real life! I know the picture doesn't do it justice, but when we came around the last bend in the cave, it looked like a creepy little kid staring at you with this pale face! OH MAN. I hope it's still there to scare the crap out of everyone else :) It actually made it hard to go to sleep that night.


Afterwards we all changed into our pjs and watched the newest X-Files movie--and it's pretty disgusting too--lot's of needles and blood.

We're not like out-doorsy freaks or anything, but a good night out with a fire, melted marshmallows, and creepy heads in caves will do the trick every time :)

Monster Cupcakes

I made cupcakes for my brother and girlfriend's kids today. They're supposed to be monsters with long bodies like dragons or bugs or something. I don't really know. The cupcakes with their names were supposed to have a candle for how many years old they are, but I got the wrong number :( That's so me.








So to make the monsters, you just put on a dollop of black.


Spread it around on half of it.


Then you put green (or whatever color monster you want) on the other half, and add as much dimension as you want. I had leftover bottled frosting, so that's what I used. If you make your own frosting, it's so easy to just put it into a sandwich baggie and cut a hole to squirt it out.


Next you add teeth. I wanted mine big on this one. You start by squeezing hard at the base and going side to side, and sqeezing less as you get to the point of the tooth.


Add whites for the eyes.


And red evil eyes--seeing as they're evil monsters.


Then eat.

Sage and Bunny

This is another picture that was on my phone from a few months ago. I can't help but post it because my niece is just too cute :)

Trevor's Madrigals

I found this picture on my phone while I was cleaning all the random pictures off. It's from last December at Trevor's Madrigal get-together. They let me sing with them, and it was SO awesome :)

Curves

Pounds lost in June: 2.0

Total pounds lost: 5.0

Inches lost in June: 1.0

Body Fat % lost: 2.27%

I know this is a little late but I've been busy. Not much to say about it really. I'm glad I've kept up with losing at least 1.5 pounds each month--I actually lost 2 this month. It's nice to see the total number go up because now that I'm past 3 pounds it's more real. I still fluctuate, but I fluctuate even lower than I have before. In fact, most days when I weighed, my total for June was at 4 pounds lost. But it's okay that on the day I actually weighed at Curves it was only 2 because I think it makes me want to work harder to keep the lower weight.

I'm planning on starting the Curves Weight Management Plan on Saturday. It's free and supposedly works really well. All it is is a certain way to eat foods and combination of foods and stuff for 6 weeks to give you a boost at weight loss. It's at 9am though--on my day off... ugh.

It'll be cool when I can actually SEE differences. Yeah, I lost 5 pounds. But I wish it was like, RIGHT off my stomach or something! :) Like whack, 5 pounds off your stomach. Oooo, or my thighs :) ...But no.

Trevor and I have been pretty addicted to Jello Sugar Free Snacks. They're little pudding cups that are like 60 calories and have no sugar. They also have jello cups that have 10 calories and no sugar I think. Super good. But they have a new kind--Rice Pudding--with only 70 calories and no sugar. Mmmm.

America's Conception Day

I took absolutely NO pictures over the Independence Day weekend--that is SO not like me. But it was kind of nice not stressing out about catching every moment. I guess we'll just have to live.

My weekend started on Friday with a trip to Macey's, of course. I had to pick up all the neat stuff we were going to eat over the weekend :) Then I CLEANED and tried to make my apartment nice. Sort of got messed up because just 1 day in our apartment translates into 1 week in cleaning days. I cut A TON of fruit and vegetables over the weekend! I cut a giant watermelon, 2 cantaloupes, 1 pineapple, some celery, carrots, tomatoes, red and green peppers. Probably more. I really really hate cutting watermelon.

Friday night we tried to go see The Proposal but it was really packed so we saw Ice Age 3 instead. It was pretty good. Pretty funny, with only a touch of potty humor (seriously... WHY?) I don't really understand why they got Queen Latifa though...

Anyways, Saturday at 1 we had a barbeque hosted by Trevor's brother and his girlfriend at our house with some of Trevor's family. They made ribs and baked potatoes--oh my gosh... it was good. We watched The Office and vegged out. Then at 5 my family came over and we had another barbeque with a bagillion hot dogs and a butt-load of salad. It was really nice to see everyone :)

I made my families answer trivia questions about America and made them look at pictures of the presidents and identify them :) It was a really easy way to tie in Independence Day--even though I'm a really huge history buff, I always have a hard time thinking about the REAL reason for July 4th when I'm eating my hot dog and lighting bombs in the street. So we had a little review of some awesome little tidbits about America.

Did you know that only 2 people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776? And it was nice to review that July 4th is a celebration of the day the Declaration of Independence was signed--sometimes patriotism in general gets all muddled up in the reason we have the 4th celebrations--but really, it's all about the day we declared independence from Britain. It's not even about America becoming an actual nation--which didn't even happen until YEARS later.

Ope, I lied, I did take a couple pictures of the trifle I made. The bowl is frosty from the fridge.

It had brownies, sugar free pudding turned into sugar free moose, blue and white whipped cream, and strawberries. It was my attempt to be festive :) It turned out SO MUCH better than the last trifle we tried to make. It seems trifles are supposed to have big chunky thick layers, mmkay?

Anyways. We did fireworks in our apartment complex parking lot with Trevor's family after it got dark. I've never purchased so many fireworks on my own before--it was a new experience walking into Macey's and picking up the big package of fireworks and checking out :) I got a $10 off coupon too, so I didn't feel like I was being as extravagant as I could have been; although fireworks are HUGELY overpriced.

So we spent the evening lighting fireworks that all did the same thing and enjoyed every minute of it. Trevor's brother turned on some patriotic tunes and we had an amazingly timed grand finale that SOMEHOW managed to sync with The Star Spangled Banner blasting from his car. I KNOW it only worked out because we were urging the little sparks to keep going just a little longer, haha :)

During fireworks, someone mentioned A Goofy Movie, so we obviously had to go back inside and hook up our VHS player to the big screen with all the cords so we could watch it classic style. It was a lot of fun eating popcorn and having rootbeer floats (ick, not for me though), and watching Goofy and Max drive their way to insanity to reach Powerline and the fat lady who sings with that crazy voice in the electric circle all so Max could impress a chick. (Interesting to note that the Green boys found Roxanne to be highly attractive when they were little.) My favorite parts are when the sidekick guy shows Max his rad leaning tower of cheese-a, and when Big-Foot does the "ah ah ah ah stayin alive" dance. That movie really is one of the best :)

Needless to say, the apartment stayed dirty until Sunday, when we mostly vegged out and did nothing because we were so tired from the day before.

OH! I didn't even mention that Saturday was Trevor's FIRST SATURDAY off since he started working at Rent-A-Center 9 months ago! It was REALLY FREAKISHLY AMAZING to have him home for 2 days in a row with me :)

Trevor's Dealy-o

Trevor started a blog :)

http://trevorsdealy-o.blogspot.com/

I started a new blog.

http://somanybirthdays.blogspot.com/

If you're in my family, ust go there to see the first post. I'll smooth things out later :) This blog is for helping my family remember each other's birthdays, get to know each other and celebrate being alive. Yay!

You are invited to ask my permission to read it if you are in my family or extended family. So please do! I won't add you unless you ask though.

Fabric Frames

I've been having a good time getting a ton of projects done that I've been contemplating for a long time :) This project, especially, has been bothering me for many months. I tried doing it with paper, styrofoam, and ribbon to save money--but it just wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to. SO, while I was at IKEA, Trevor and I picked out some fabrics we liked and found these AWESOME frames made for this kind of thing for only $5 each. Plus their already-cheap-fabric was on sale. This project was simple--but it took a lot of hammer-work.

It takes about 5 minutes to make each frame--you have to screw them together, and since we only have a screwdriver and not a drill or anything... Trevor did it :) He's so nice.

Next we just positioned our fabric the way we wanted it, flipped it over, and nailed the four sides down in the middle.
The corners were the tricky part. But still pretty easy. There's this way of tucking and folding that gives the frame flat corners like painting canvases. It looks COMPLETELY professional :)

Like I said, a lot of nails. But the frames come with all the hardware you need (well, not the hammer and screwdriver, but you know what I mean). I think each frame took 15 minutes ish. It got easier with each frame.

Crazy picture, but this is the first finished frame.

Then we just put them on the wall--after we make them straight--which we didn't quite do for this picture...

I LOVE them! I think total, we only spent at most $25 on frames and fabric. And they are SO COOL :) If you wanted to save money on fabric, you could buy from their remnant section. They have almost every kind of fabric in there. Today they didn't have the right sizes for us though.

ReUpholstered Dining Room Chairs :)

All I can say is YAY! I finally just put my mind to it and reupholstered my dining room chairs. I tried to do it about a month ago and when I got the fabric home, I'd cut it too small :( That is SO something I would do. I found a fabric that I am in love with at IKEA. It matches all the green we have going on in our house, and it's very modern but classy too, I think.

So here's the before... I think they're nice chairs, even if they are plain.

All I had to do was unscrew 3 screws underneath the cushion to get the chair to come apart.

Then I just fitted my fabric over the existing fabric and cushion, in case I ever want to take the new fabric off or something.
It would have been a lot easier if I'd had a staple gun or something--but tiny nails and a hammer work fine to just nail the fabric down on the under side of the cushion.

And then I just folded the corners nicely and nailed them down.That's pretty much the end of the hard part. I think it took me like 5 minutes to fit the fabric onto it. SO easy!Then I just cut the extra fabric off, and voila :) New cushion!To put the cushion back on, you just rescrew it to the bottom. Trevor is doing it in the picture, but only so I could take a picture. I did the second one, and it was SO easy; no man required.NEW CHAIR!And here's the set. I'm so excited!