Gingerbread house!

Over Christmas break we made this ridiculously awesome gingerbread house. Well at least I was impressed by our skills. It started out with Daniel, Anna and I assembling one of those gingerbread house kits. The creativeness just went from there....

Daniel decided to make a car, which turned into a snow plow. Meanwhile Ethan and Tiana were making sugar cookies. We used a few of their bear sugar cookies for our house. We have a bear driving the snow plow, we also have a bear as Santa Claus going down the chimney- equipped with a bag of toys, a beard, and a red hat. We put the snow plow in the front yard and even used powdered sugar for snow.

After that Daniel and Anna skillfully put a huge sugar cookie christmas tree in the front yard. Surrounded by chocolate presents. Unfortunately i didn't get a pic of the tree, but i know it took a lot of frosting to hold the thing up.

Anyway, here are the pictures of the amazing house. It definitely beats the graham cracker ones i used to make in elementary school!

Here's Daniel with the beginnings of the snow plow.

Anna= frosting expert! And Ethan in the background making cookies!

Here's everyone at the table (minus me, taking the picture, but i promise i helped!)


Here are the 3 of us... the master minds behind it all!


In the process... that duck looking thing on the front is supposed to be a snowman.


And here is the finished product! cute, huh? i did mostly the lights/candy decorations. If you look close you can see the Santa in the chimney too.


And here is the front. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture after they put the tree up in the yard. I know you're all impressed :)

Birthday pics

I decided I would put up a few pictures from Dan's b-day...


Here is Dan making a wish. He wanted a pie instead of a cake. We put 2 candles and then 6... for 26!



Here we both are. We were actually both sick on his b-day. So we pretty much just stayed at home and played this board game I got him. Finally around 8:00 at night we decided to go out and get some dinner. This is us later back at home.


Here's Dan with the balloons I got him. I put them on the table and tied his favorite candy bar to the bottom. I got these balloons at Smith's the night before and no one knew how to blow them up, so I did it myself! Luckily I had lots of practice from back when I worked at Dick's Market. Unfortunately a couple of the balloons died that day.... I had to hide them in the closet the whole night, that could have been why. They still looked good though!

Oh and did I mention I also got Dan one of the Guitar Hero games for his b-day? It's pretty much all he wanted. Yup, best wife ever :) One day when I am feeling really nice, I may even play it with him!

Happy Birthday, Dan!!!

Today is Dan's Birthday! Yay! And can I just say, he is the BEST husband ever???! Seriously, here is just a small example....

Monday morning i woke up at 4 am and was really sick... Once Dan woke up he took care of me. He went to Smith's and bought me medicine, gatorade, and crackers. Now, i'm sure you are all thinking, "well that is what he is supposed to do!" Which is true, but it gets better. So he had to go to work, but he came home early, just to take care of me.

He first watched Gilmore Girls with me as i was dying on the couch. He then did chores all around the house for me. He washed all of the dishes, he did the laundry, he hung up all the Christmas decorations I wanted to put up, but was too tired to do so myself. And then he did other handy man things around the house that involved a hammer. He then played games with me so I wouldn't get bored and he sang to me and played the guitar. He didn't even expect me to make him dinner or anything. After that he watched HGTV with me the rest of the night. Even though I'm sure he would have rather watched football. What a great husband! He spent the whole afternoon with me making sure I was comfortable and happy.

Then Tuesday I woke up still sick, but I had a presentation I had to do for one of my classes. So i went to school. I then came home and took a long nap because I was exhausted. I had a night class later, so Dan left work early to pick me up just so I wouldn't have to walk to school. Once my class was done he asked me what I wanted for dinner. The only thing that sounded good was Jamba Juice. So that's what we had for dinner! haha...... and nothing else, just Jamba. It was great. I made sure to get an immunity boost too.

That is the end of my "best husband ever" story....... but he does stuff like that for me every day. Anyway, Happy Birthday, Dan!!! I hope you have a great day! I love you!!!

My wife is the cutest and the best!

Have you read this blog? Wow, I have the best wife in the whole world! She is just so cute! But I'm sure all of you already know that :)

Love you honey!

-Dan

twilight review

i liked twilight... i didn't love twilight. i definitely went in with high expectations though. it makes a better book than it does a movie... which is usually the truth about most books made into movies. i've talked to a lot of people and everyone seems to have different opinions about the movie. i actually really liked the characters for edward and bella. most of the other characters were pretty good too. i also appreciated the fact that they followed the story quite well. i think i want to see it again some time. all in all it was a good movie. i think dan even liked it.

shows we love

I have never been one to watch a lot of tv. But lately Dan and i have our shows that we watch and we love them! First and foremost is Gilmore Girls. Some of you may be thinking this series has already ended, which is true, but ABC family plays reruns every day in order. It is so great! Luckily we have a DVR and can record all of the episodes. I used to watch Gilmore Girls every week when I was in high school, but once i came to college i got busy and stopped watching the show. I never saw the last 3 seasons, so i am now catching up! i love it because with DVR we have no commercials and we get to watch it every single day. i no longer have to wait each week for it to come on. we are currently on the sixth season. some people don't like this show and are annoyed at how fast the main characters talk, but really they are quite witty and the story line is great! they always leave you with an ending where you want to know what is going to happen next, some nights we end up watching 2 episodes! and no, gilmore girls in not just a show for girls. every guy i have talked to that have actually sat down and watched more than 5 minutes of an episode like it!

next show... Survivor! Oh man... sooo good! Dan and i are hooked! We can hardly wait for Thursday nights to come! We always record it and then watch it without commercials later that night. (we also record the Office... not my favorite... except the Jim & Pam parts). See one night we were bored, so we started watching Survivor (it happened to be the first episode of the season), from then on we have watched it every single week! if anyone else out there watches it, we'd love to discuss what happens. we always sit there and talk about it afterwards. last nights' episode was hilarious!!! and we were sooooo happy Randy finally got kicked off. we love the strategy and all of the alliances the people make. it's crazy! i'm not sure who will win... my vote goes to Bob or Sugar, although i used to like the professional gamer, Kenny, but he's getting a little kniving... i guess that's what the game is all about. I'm sure it's a lot more interesting if you start from the beginning and see all of the episodes though, because then you get to know all of the characters and find which ones you hate (which is most of them).

lastly, i am sorta addicted to HGTV. the whole channel. i like everything they play. i can turn it on at any time of day and be entertained. it's the home and gardens channel. i love watching them redecorate homes. i think it's so fascinating! they do so many cute things! i almost wanted to change my major to interior design after watching this channel. it's bad, but i think i could watch it for hours. i also love the shows where people go shopping for new homes. because i like to see what kind of homes are out there and how much they pay. this channel is seriously the greatest. Dan will even watch it with me sometimes. I get all of these ideas and i really wish i could paint our apartment! But i can't, so instead i just think about one day when we will own a house and what i will want to do with it. the only problem is they make home decorating look waaaay easy... although i'm sure it takes tons of work! you'd be amazed at what they can do to a house for $2000.

anyway, those are my addictions for now. plus it's bonding time for me and dan :). can't wait til january when the apprentice starts. and then summer with so you think you can dance!

as a side note, this sounds like i really watch a lot of tv. i actually don't.... i'm always busy with school or cleaning the house or work or other things.... these are just the shows i watch when i really have nothing to do!

Twilight!

I would just like to announce that we got our Twilight tickets last night!!! I am so excited! Dan even agreed to go with me :) I told him there were some action parts, so he should be fine. Luckily when it comes to movies, my husband is very easy to please. And i love it! Pretty much anything we watch he likes.

Let's hope Twilight is good! Now you know where I'll be Saturday.... Oh and did I mention that I also have coupons for FREE popcorn??? And we are going to the brand new theater in town, should be good times!

life in Provo

I'm blogging about our weekend. Cuz weekends are usually the time when we break out of our school/work routine and do something fun! However, this weekend drove us both a little crazy.

Ok Friday night we decided was date night. We went to pizza factory for dinner and ate those delicious bread twists they have! After dinner we were planning on going ice skating at the peaks. We always say we are going to go ice skating because Dan used to play hockey and I am bad at ice skating, so I figure I could used a lesson. Well... after dinner my stomach started feeling sickish-- ice skating = bad idea. So we went home and watched Gilmore Girls and YES, my husband does watch Gilmore Girls with me... I know, I know, i truly do have the best husband in the world :) we also worked on this puzzle I got at Smith's for $2.99. Lately we have been big into puzzles. I think they are so fun! Especially when you put a lot together... you totally feel great about yourself! It's a fun thing to do together too. So we did the puzzle (as a side note, we finished that puzzle Sunday and bought another one yesterday!)

Saturday night I decided that we might as well go ice skating since we didn't get to the night before. Dan and I started to drive to the rink (about 1 min. from our house) and we realized we did not have our buy one get one free coupon. So we turned around, I ran in and got it and once back in the car realized it was only good april- october. Lame! We get to the peaks and the parking lot was full! So Dan parked in basically the last spot in the whole lot. We started walking towards the front door and i realized how cold it was outside and how i didn't want to be cold! haha... so i told Dan i didn't wanna go ice skating anymore! (yep, pretty sure this is the part where i started to drive him crazy). He was patient with me though and asked what i would like to do instead. I threw out some ideas and we decided on bowling.

Neither of us have been bowling since last December, for Dan's birthday. So we went to the Wilk at BYU, but the parking lot was full, again! Apparently some dance show was going on, so there was no where to park. Dan wanted to go park a few blocks away, but i was too lazy to walk that far (remember it was COLD)!

So we decided to try a different bowling alley, Miracle Bowl. We got there and the lanes were full. The man said we could wait about 10- 15 min. We didn't really want to wait, so we thought we could play pool at the tables in the corner. Apparently to play pool you have to give a $10 deposit... in cash... well we didn't have cash. So we left!

Both of us were pretty sick of looking for places to go at this point... but we really didn't want to go home. So we drove down State Street and ended up at the Nickelcade. Which surprisingly was not packed! We played all the classics (including my favorite, Dr. Mario). Nickelcade has always been a favorite date spot of mine. So yay for the Nickelcade, saved our Saturday night!

Anyway, Dan and I came to the conclusion that Provo just doesn't have enough things to do for all of the students in the area. So either Provo gets more fun stuff to do or we move to a big city that always has something going on!

turkeys!

Dan and I made these cute turkeys a few weeks ago and I wanted to put a pic of them up. They are fun to make and great for Thanksgiving! My old roommate, Melissa, taught me how to make them and we made them every year in November for people we knew. I wanted to carry on the tradition, so this year Dan help me with them and we took them to a family dinner.

They are really easy to make too! I figured I'd share on here, in case anyone wanted to try them. All you do is make the recipe for rice krispie treats (i threw in some coco krispies b/c Dan had them and i figured turkeys are brown). Instead of putting the rice krispies in a pan, roll them into balls. It's easiest if you put oil on your hands, so they don't stick. Then take an oreo and split it. With frosting (i use chocolate), put half of an oreo on the bottom of the turkey body (so it can stand) and then the other half on the back of the turkey. Stick candy corns (feathers) in between the rice krispie body and the oreo that is on the back of the turkey. Once this is done you can also use the chocolate frosting to attach a candy corn for the beak. Then i use black frosting to make little eyes. They turn out really cute and are full of sugar!

catching up

It feels like I haven't blogged for a long time. I always thought that I had an interesting life and that I would have tons to say, but I usually don't even know what to blog about! So here are some random thoughts/updates on what we have been doing....

I have found that I am kind of obsessed with changing my blog background. There are just so many cute ones! I can hardly wait til Christmas comes so I can put up a Christmas one... I'm waiting until after Thanksgiving to do so, although I will admit that I am currently listening to Christmas music! Oh and I decided that I want to learn how to make my own blog backgrounds, anyone know what program the blog background maker people use? It can't be that hard, right??? I've been wanting to make a header for my blog also, so it's not so boring looking, I've got to figure that one out too.

Last weekend Dan and I went on a date! And it was fun! I love going on dates (which we do regularly)! We decided to try out this Mexican restaurant that we always see in Provo on Center Street. It's called Joe Vera's (Dan, did I get the name right???). It was actually really good! And my favorite part was they put the salsa in this cute little bottle. We also saw Dan's ex-girlfriend (little did we know, she works there). I made sure my gorgeous diamond ring was visible at all times :) After dinner we went and saw the musical, "Aida". My work gave me free tickets, so we figured we might as well! We were on the 2nd row and VERY close to the action... it ended up being pretty good. We weren't all that impressed with the music, but the story was good. Although the main characters who were supposed to be in love had probably a 15 year age difference, which made it harder to believe.

I'm excited because I think I have school all figured out. I was planning on graduating in April without a teaching certificate, but then I found out that I will probably be able to student teach in the summer! So I can graduate in August, which works out perfectly for us, because our housing contract is up in August and we don't really want to sign for another year. Then we can just see where Dan's job takes us. I'm really excited because if I do get to student teach during the summer, it will most likely be at the BYU kindergarten! How great is that? Then I don't have to drive far away just to teach. I'm hoping it works out! I think I found out in January or February.

And last news for the day.... I lost my umbrella this week... and it's raining right now :( I brought it to school Monday, but must have left it in the library or something. I am really not looking forward to walking home in the rain.... oh well!

not so haunted house

For Halloween we were planning on going to the corn maze, but it started to rain, so we decided against it. Instead we chose to do something free, and that was the haunted house up on campus. We got there and had to wait in line an hour! Once we went inside, we realized how dumb we were for waiting.

Basically there were a lot of hung up sheets and nothing really scary. Only one guy jumped out at us, and it was after we had passed him! It was sort of ridiculous and i'm kind of embarrassed to say we even went, but we did. Oh well, at least it was free!

After the haunted house we went to a party in our old ward. It was good to see about 4 people we actually knew! We then went and ate caramel apples- my favorite part of the evening!

Here are some pics from the night:



Dan and me waiting in line... forever....


Noelle and me taking pictures to pass the time.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone!!!

Spooktacular

So last weekend Dan and I went to our ward Halloween party. Here are our costumes....


Peter Pan & Tinkerbell!

Here was the decision making conversation for our costumes:
Me: "Dan, I want to be Tinkerbell for Halloween. That means you should be Peter Pan, because it would be so cute! Ok, honey?"
Dan: "Ok honey, whatever you want."

Such a great husband! :) Anyway, i think our costumes turned out pretty good and luckily on Dan's behalf, no green tights were involved.

After our ward Halloween party, we rode the haunted Heber Creeper in Provo Canyon with our friends, Kevin & Rachel. It's pretty fun. You get to ride this old train up the canyon, see weird things out the windows as they tell ghost stories and then the train suddenly stops and all the lights turn out (that was the creepiest part). Then all of these crazies in costumes get on the train and scare you! It was a fun Halloween adventure. Luckily we had a buy one get one free deal though, because I don't think it was worth the full price.

Here we are on the train...



And here are Kevin and Rachel. They were obviously very scared!



And that's the story of our spooktacular weekend!

Birthday weekend!

So i have been meaning to post these all week, things just got busy!

Yep! Dan got me DDR and we LOVE it! We now have 2 pads though, so we don't have to switch off. It's great! I have the best husband!

As for the rest of my birthday weekend, we went to Gateway on Saturday (my favorite place to shop). Dan said he'd buy me clothes, but I couldn't find anything I wanted! We did however, get that one game where you put the velcro mitts on your hands and throw the ball to each other. We played it in our living room that night :) After Gateway we went to Cheesecake Factory with Joel and Becky. I've never been there before, it was pretty great! Besides the hour long wait... I do recommend the lemon raspberry cheesecake though, so good! On Sunday we had family over for a dessert night. It was fun to see everyone! On Monday, my actual birthday, I went to school and work-- blah! But after work Dan gave me DDR and then we went to dinner at Chilis (my favorite!). After dinner, Dan took me to the Quilted Bear- one of my favorite craft stores! And i bought some cute things for our house :) What a great weekend!

Pictures!

I demand that Michele post the pictures of her new birthday present :)

Happy Birthday Michele!!!

You're 22, woo-hoo!!!! Hope you have the best birthday yet, honey!!!

Love ya!
-Dan

2 fabulous months!

It was our 2 month anniversary on Thursday. I really can't believe we have been married 2 months-- it's gone by so fast! I came home from school and Dan had gotten me a bouquet of flowers (they were so pretty and he said he wanted them to match the table cloth- he did great!)

I decided to make Dan his favorite chocolate pie. I even called his mom for the recipe. I can guarantee it wasn't as good as hers, but i think it turned out fine! I could have done better on the crust... i'll be honest, i threw out the 1st crust i made and this was the 2nd one! Also, i was trying to hurry and surprise Dan before he got home from work, so i was pretty much running around the kitchen and it was a mess! But the pie tasted really good! I am definitely going to have to attempt another pie for thanksgiving though, until i perfect the crust. Anyway, it was a fun night!

popcorn....

So the other night i was driving home from the store and i was totally craving popcorn! Dan and i were planning on watching a movie that night anyway, so i figured it would be perfect :) we got this new popcorn popper for our wedding, so i was excited to try it out.

i got home, pulled out the popcorn popper and the popcorn that came with it. i've never used popcorn like this, because it came with oil and apparently was "just like the movie theater". so i poured it all in the popcorn popper-- that is, kernels and oil. i then plugged it in anticipating the delicious buttery popcorn, but no... suddenly smoke started rushing out of the popper! i sorta freaked and was like "i don't think it's supposed to do that!" so then Dan bravely unplugged it!

well apparently you are not supposed to put the oil in with the kernels... who knew?! i guess i should have read the directions beforehand. so anyway, we had a smoke filled kitchen, a mess (oil everywhere!), and no popcorn :( i was in complete distress.

luckily i looked in our cupboard and found microwave popcorn! i was so happy! as i was unwrapping the package i saw the expiration date... april 2008. gross! expired popcorn! so i threw it out!

needless to say, we ended up not having any popcorn that night. and now i have a broken popcorn popper. not really sure what to do with it. any suggestions???

The completed sign!

So i just completed this sign for our house and i'm really excited about it, so i wanted to put a pic up of it! I really wanted one of these "est." signs for our wedding, but we didn't get one, so i decided to make it myself! I think it turned out pretty cute :) Dan even helped me, he sanded the board and did a great job!
I don't know if anyone out there is interested in making a sign like this, but the lady that helped me with the vinyl lettering was great! I just ordered it through her online and she was so helpful! Plus i think her prices are pretty reasonable. I'm even planning on making more signs in the future!
If you are interested, her website is: www.defineyourspacevinyl.blogspot.com
She was super helpful and gave me exactly what i wanted! She also has some really cute ideas on her website, so check it out!

temple and ice cream night!

So last night Dan and I went to the temple and did sealings. It was really fun, because it was my first time back to the temple since we got married. And I was soooo excited we didn't even have to wait! For those of you who have done baptisms in the Provo Temple, you know you wait at least an hour! But it was great, we walked right in! Once we were done, I was in the dressing room changing and i had this great idea, that we should go get ice cream! I walked out of the dressing room and as we were leaving the temple (which just happened to be at the perfect time- there was a gorgeous sunset!) i turned to Dan and said "i have a good idea!"
He responded "go get ice cream?"
I was like "YES!!! How did you know???"
We both must have been inspired :) He then asked if i wanted to try out Subzero, which is so funny, because that is the exact same place i was thinking of! Yep, made for each other :)
So we went to subzero and it was good! If you haven't been there, you should try it. See, they stir up the ice cream right in front of you and then they freeze it with liquid nitrogen, it's kind of exciting. It's sort of like cold stone, where you pick your ice cream flavor and your mix in. I got marshmallow creme ice cream and brownies, it was delicious! As an added perk, wednesday means 25 cent waffle bowls! I love waffle bowls! We also used our starving student card, meaning we got a buy 1 get 1 free deal- i love our starving student card!
So anyway, we decided it's gonna be a new tradition-- the temple and ice cream once a month. i'm so excited!

Halloween Decorations

Ok so, Tuesday night Dan had a volleyball game and I didn't really want to go (due to an earlier incident of being smacked in the face), so I decided that I would go get my Halloween decorations while he was at his game! Such a good idea! I figured I would see what I could find at some nearby stores. This is how my shopping went:

First I went to Shopko, but there wasn't much there and most of it was expensive or not cute.

I then decided to go to the dollar store because it was right around the corner. Everything at the dollar store was ugly or smelled weird (which i should have expected of the dollar store anyway).

I then went to ANOTHER dollar store (not sure why, it just happened to be on the way) and still there was just junk.

So my last stop was Smith's the grocery store, because I had noticed a halloween isle there while grocery shopping. Anyway, at Smith's a sketchy man was in the Halloween isle and he was yelling at someone on his cell phone, so I pretty much avoided the isle.

Needless to say, my shopping trip was completely pointless and i was kind of upset. What a waste of time! I then picked up Dan from his game and I think he was surprised to find out that i had spent $0!

But don't worry, this story does have a happy ending... last night, Dan and I decided to go to a REAL craft store to see if we would have better luck. Since Robert's Craft is fairly close to our house and I had a coupon there, we decided it was the best place. So we went and they had tons of isles of Halloween decorations! And they were CUTE!!! I was soooooo excited! I kept on grabbing things from every isle (it was Halloween decoration shopping heaven!)... and the best part is that all of the decorations were %50 off! So we got lots of cute decorations and put them up in our house! Yay Halloween! So for those of you wondering where to get Halloween Decorations, I highly suggest Robert's Craft!

And thank you to my fabulous husband for funding the trip :)

October!

so basically i love my birthday (October 20th)! i pretty much celebrate it the whole month. just ask Dan, i have been talking about it for months and finally October is here (tomorrow)! anyway, i love pretty much everything about october- my birthday, halloween, conference, fall leaves, carving pumpkins,-- it's all so fun! i can hardly wait to do tons of halloween things this month! i've been wanting to decorate for halloween for the past month, but Dan told me to wait until at least October 1st. so i already told him, tonight we are buying decorations so we can put them up tomorrow! i love it! thus the birthday countdown has begun... :)

Awesome Honeymoon!

I figured i might as well put up honeymoon photos too! :)

mini golf

So yesterday afternoon Dan and I decided to go out and do something fun. We have this starving student card that we bought which gives us all these deals at different places in the area, so whenever we decide to go out, we always have to look at the card. I searched through the card and found this place called "Liberty Land." Ok, so... we've seen this place off the freeway (it's hard to miss a replica of Mt. Rushmore) and we've always thought it looked really lame, but we just had to try it. Just so in the future when we drive by we could say we've been there.
After driving for a while and taking a few wrong turns, we found the place. We looked around and it's really just an amusement park for little kids. I'm pretty sure we couldn't even fit on any of the rides. But luckily there was mini golf and our card just happened to have a buy one get one free deal.
Honestly, Dan and i seem to go mini golfing a lot. Which i'm not really sure why, because i'm pretty bad at it. We've even had to stop taking score, because i get sick of hearing how much i've lost by. And usually Dan just cheats for me and puts my ball in the hole just so we can move to the next hole. But alas, we played mini golf again. Oh and every time we go my ball always ends up in crazy places off the green... you know, in the water, in the rocks, across the park by the merry go round.... yup, that's my hot pink ball! And then my awesome husband always chases it for me because i'm too embarrassed to go running after it myself. Yesterday was no different, Dan was nice enough to run across the park to retrieve my ball for me! Anyway, the course was pretty fun (you even get to golf inside mt. rushmore) and i'm pretty sure we tied :) oh and the jamba juice afterwards really completed the fun saturday afternoon!

Wedding slideshow!

Day 1 of the blog...

So i decided to start a blog. I don't really even know what I am doing, but all of my friends have them and i think they are so fun to read! So i had to join the crowd.... i'll try and make it interesting. Thus far Dan and i have been married 6 weeks and it has been great! i love having a husband! Especially since my husband is the best ever! I figured to start off i'd put up some cute wedding photos. I think they turned out so good!!!