The Loft Life: 2012

Thursday, December 6, 2012

It's beginning to look a lot (more) like Christmas...

Nathan has been crazy busy with finals. And tonight I went crazy too. I added four things to our holiday decor. :) And the best part about it, I already had everything, so it was really cheap. Meaning free. And I like free. First..I had these cute little embroidery hoops, and some black canvas. So I made them into little "chalkboards." I wrote "joy to the world" in them, and hung them above our kitchen sink. Then I cut out snowflakes out of printer paper, and clothes-pinned them to the lights. (the clothespins are tiny, and are from our wedding reception and open house.) This is where the give thanks banner was hanging. Third, I realized that we don't have a nativity set. So I made one, out of a piece of wood and some paint. It's really simple, but that's pretty true to the real story right? Then fourth, I turned our fridge into a snowman! I used some black felt for the eyes and smile, a nike shoe box for the nose, and wrapping paper for his scarf. (Nathan got me that giant mustache last year for Christmas.)

There ya have it! And I'm pretty sure when we have kids, I will go crazy. I'm so excited, and will probably start planning Christmas decorations in July. It's just so fun!

joy to the world

snowflakes

Nativity

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Annes Visit and Christmas is coming!

Nate and Al 10:10 PM 0

Lucky us, Anne came to visit for her birthday! We had such a great time, and it was so good to see her again. Nathan and I took her to The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner, The Chocolate for dessert and Nickel City for some fun. And tomorrow we're going to a Jazz game with her and Aaron & Rachelle (her brother and sister-in-law.) We're all pretty excited, then sadly on Tuesday Anne will head back to Washington. But we will be there shortly! We're going home for Christmas and will be there until the 31st. The 31st, we are flying down to California to visit some of Nathans family. We fly back to "the Tri-Cities" on the 4th. I put that in quotes because we have a lay-over in SLC on the way home. We might accidentally miss our flight to Washington and have someone drive our car home. I'm excited for the holidays and the time we'll be able to spend with friends and family.

Anne got chocolate cake!

She also won the bonus of 100 tickets on a game!

Showing off our prizes

This is me...trying to be Nathan.

Even though we will be gone a lot of December, I still wanted to make it feel like Christmas around here. We got a mini fake, pre-lit tree and made some ornaments to decorate! The top right (white) is our thumb prints, they are supposed to make a heart. Maybe I will paint it in red. The middle right (brown porcupine) is a cinnamon ornament. These smell SO good. We used our woodland animal cookie cutters and have a fox, moose, squirrel and or course a porcupine on our tree. The bottom right photo has two, we didn't make either of them. But the stick ball is from a potpourri mix. I picked out the little ones and hung them up! Then the pretty swirled glass one is one we bought on our honeymoon at the Tacoma Museum of Glass. (also, in the photo on the left, you can see a twisted red and straw stick. It's actually a candy cane turned sideways, we also bought that on our honeymoon from this little Mexican lady at Pike Place.)

I made these two little paper trees tonight. They are toilet paper rolls, sliced and made into cones. Then I used book pages(the same ones from my Give Thanks banner) and glued them on! I think they are pretty cute. And the bottom photo is a gift from my mom several years ago. She made them, and I love it. So our little apartment feels Christmasy, especially while we watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. If you haven't watched it, it has beautiful music and a wonderful message. Click here!

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

DIY Give Thanks Banner

Nate and Al 9:42 PM 2

During my time on Pinterest, I've seen a bajillion cute Thanksgiving decor ideas. Here's a couple...

from here

(this one is a printable) from here

But I wasn't satisfied to do either one of these, even though they are both cute. I've been loving bunting lately. So I took the rustic feel from the first one, and the banner/phrase from the second. And came up with this!

And here's how to do it!

1. Start with an old book.

2. Rip out as many pages as letters. Then cut into triangles. I typed up the letters, printed them out. Then just hand drew my letters, some are a little sloppy. But I like it. Adds character...right?

3. Lay out the letter triangles on burlap, and cut out a triangle in the burlap. Obviously make it bigger than your letters or you won't see it.

I used the same triangle as the template for all of them. (Although I don't think any of them turned out the same size.)

4. I just used tacky glue to stick the letters to the burlap, then the burlap to a ribbon. I put the corners of each letter together.

And I wish I had a fancy mantle to hang it from, but our window will suffice! It was fun, and it's helping me remember to slow down for Thanksgiving, instead of skipping to Christmas. Even though other parts of the house say it's Christmas. For example, exhibit A...the fridge.

And exhibit B...next to the fridge. The laundry.

But that's why people say Happy Holidays right? They don't want to say Merry Christmas too early, but they can secretly say it by saying Happy Holidays. Because that includes Thanksgiving...maybe...

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

The Really Big Cooking Show

Nate and Al 7:00 PM 3

Friday morning I woke up happy and realized that the next day was November 3rd. This was a very important day. Why you ask? Oh, only because I got free tickets to The Really Big Cooking Show. What's The Really Big Cooking Show you ask? Oh, only the the coolest thing I could have done on November 3rd.

It was at Thanksgiving Point, in Lehi. About 500 people attended, and the guests/stars/presenters were some of my new favorite people. My friend/old roommate Kayla came with me. There were booth set up, some samples, sweepstakes, etc. Then the show started. They each did a cooking demo, and talked a little bit about their cooking style.

It started with Karen, the creator of the 365 Days of Slow Cooking Blog. I don't use a crockpot very often..ok let's be honest. I've used it once. But she gave some awesome tips on how to use one without getting dry chicken, soggy food and also how to make oatmeal in there. So I may have to bust mine out and see what I can whip up!

Next, the lovely ladies (and sisters) at Favorite Family Recipes. I LOVE this blog, AND I have their cookbook. Their most visited recipes are their restaurant copycats. (which are bomb) They gave some good tips on figuring out a restaurants recipe. And I bought what I need to make their Nothing Bundt Cake copycat recipe. :)

Third was Valerie Phillips, who is the author of a soup cookbook called Soup's On. I felt bad, her quick and easy soup demo didn't end well, the burners didn't work and her soup didn't get hot! I'm not sure I'll really use her recipes. (at least the ones she showed) They both had a whole block of cream cheese in it!

And last was The Food Nanny from BYUTV, Liz Edmunds! She was so great! She talked about her plan, which is actually pretty awesome.

Sunday: Traditional
Monday: Comfort
Tuesday: Italian
Wednesday: Fish
Thursday: Mexican
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: Grill

So it's a plan, but not strict. She explained that the hardest part of cooking dinner is coming up with what to cook! I find that to be SO true. I actually enjoy cooking, but when I get home from work and haven't thought about what to eat, I get discouraged and just want to eat cold cereal. When you have a "genre" of food to choose from, it is automatically easier to decide. AND another thing she does, which I want to start doing. You plan meals for two weeks, and go shopping for those two weeks. You'll have everything you'll need, nothing goes bad and you have your meals planned!

I feel inspired and am excited to try some new things! Happy cooking!

Sunday, November 4, 2012

All Hallows Eve...or something

Nate and Al 6:02 PM 2

First and foremost, my job is awesome. Just thought I'd throw that out there. And work is part of what made our Halloween fun!

We were having a Halloween lunch, and trick or treaters come later on in the day, so we were supposed to dress up. And as many of you have seen...I dressed up as Flo from the Progressive Ads. It was fun to see everyone's reactions when they realized who I was. And since I'm new at work, I'm pretty sure I will be forever known as Flo.

We had a potluck lunch and ate too much candy. We also played Mafia. Yes, at work. Then I picked up Nathan and he joined me for the trick or treaters. Everyone at work brought in their kids, and we decorated our offices and passed out candy.

My favorite costume of the day!

Nathan at my desk. Doesn't he look like he's working hard?

Mayhem & Flo

So that was fun, and we got to give chocolate covered pretzels out to cute little kids. After work, we didn't have anything to do. Pretty cool. We picked up dinner from Guru's and headed home. We ate dinner while we watched Charlie Brown's The Great Pumpkin. We then changed out of our costumes and carved pumpkins while listening to the Halloween Party station on Pandora. We had a lot of fun, even though we didn't go anywhere.

Nathan concentrating on his pumpkin

my guts were green!

Our finished pumpkins

My spider lit up

Ghosty lit up

And we (meaning I) roasted the seeds!

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Cornbellys!

Nate and Al 8:57 PM 0

One thing I've come to love about Utah is KSL. We found a bunch of furniture, a couple jobs ;), sold our random stuff AND deals. Deals is a section of the website where...you guessed it...they have great deals for local stuff. I found tickets to Cornbellys for 50% off! And they included a free pumpkin, zipline ride, "last ride", AND a free bounce back pass. Pretty awesome. What's Cornbellys you ask? Oh, only the coolest Harvest Fair out there. (or...the only Harvest Fair I've been too)

Nathan and I went around 5. We picked out our pumpkins first. Nathan got a pretty boring orange one. And I got a super cute white one! Just kidding Nathan, your pumpkin is cute too.

Nathan and his slightly less cute pumpkin. :)

We ate dinner and walked around. There was a ton of things to do, especially if you were a 6 year old. Later on we met up with one of Nathan's mission companions (Andrew Wilkes) and his date. We watched a pig race, and then went on a bunch of haunted, scary stuff. And...it was scary. Nathan said I should learn how to do my scream on cue, and work in the haunted house to scare people. Is that a compliment? Probably too scary for me, but it was kind of fun. We spent the night screaming, eating kettle korn and laughing. Thanks Cornbellys!

oh these? these are my halloween socks.

I'm a farmer!

Waiting in line

We tried deep fried oreos. I'm not the biggest fan. PS like Nathans new shirt? Target.

We're pigs! Get it...hog wild? I laughed.

I need an explanation for the picture below. This was called the last ride. You get in a coffin, and it tells some story and bounces you around. The most fun part is there's a camera on the inside, and you can watch the person getting scared. Nathan's the only one that went, he said it was lame. But judging from the photo below...I don't believe that.

Just kidding...it was really lame and he was pretending. (and he said it smelled bad)

AND...this is my pumpkin I carved!

Okay so I lied again. I didn't carve this. It was at Cornbellys. We're planning on carving pumpkins this week, and I'll post pictures of our real ones. (They won't be as cool as this..but maybe just go back and look at this one and pretend we did it.)

And just have to say...the scary stuff really did scare me. I woke up in the middle of the night after a terrible dream, and I was so stinkin' scared! I made Nathan turn on the light and say a prayer. I fell back asleep and slept in until 9:18. New (recent) record! I love fall, and Halloween is ok. But really I just love this season!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Wilde Oaks

Nate and Al 7:44 PM 0

Last weekend, we took a little trip. Valerie's family has a cabin outside of Fairview, and we were invited for the weekend. It was such a blast! There were 4 couples. Jacob and Valerie, Danna and Josh, Jenn and Morgan, and of course Nathan and I. Plus the babies. Jack, Elliot and Jane. So cute, but that would require another whole blogpost to explain the cuteness of those three. ANYWAYS...

It's beautiful up there, and felt so much like fall. We played board games, ate great food, rode 4-wheelers and had a murder mystery party. Thanks everyone for the great weekend!