Christmas Day

We had a great Christmas Day. As usual my Mom, Bob and Taylor came over to our house. This time they came over around noon because we don't have any anxious children awaiting their Christmas gifts ;) We all figure we might as well take advantage of the easy going Christmases before they disappear in a few years.

Anyway, there are no pictures of me here because I was the one taking all of the shots :P Some of the highlights of my gifts were a new Cricut Expression machine, the Sims 3 computer game, Seinfeld Monopoly board game and a cashmere sweater!

Below is a run down of some of the other highlights of Christmas Day ;)

Here is Chris with his Butt Station tape dispenser :P

It's a tradition in our house to put all of the bows on Bob's head. This is just the start of it.

Chris is opening a board game from one of his best friends. It was wrapped in a movie poster.

Taylor got a new computer - built just for gaming and built by Chris. Taylor loved it!

Ramin and Babak look deep in thought. Babak is reading about Chris' new board game. Ramin got some Florida Gator gear.

Mom got a Chia Herb Garden from "Santa" - she's laughing so hard because it matches the SpongeBob Chia pet Bob got from Chris ;)

When you have loose ribbon it can't really stick on your head, so it went on Bob's wrist :P

I got some Terracotta Warriors straight from China for Chris. He was super excited about them!

Ramin opened his Millsap jersey I bought him. Go Millsap!!

And mom's gift from me was the finale of the day. I'd already given her some smaller frames with pictures of the family in them and this was the icing on the cake :)

Also, as a side note, I got the exact same 16x20 frame and put the same picture of the family in it as well and I hung it up near our picture wall. So now we have the same picture in our houses :) I'll take some pictures of the picture wall soon so you all can see it.

Remember the Letterpress?

So remember the Letterpress I posted about a few weeks ago? (Just scroll down a bit)....well now they are GIVING one away for free!! So I'm totally entering the contest.

Here's a link to their awesome blog: CLICK HERE

Wish me luck!!!

Big Snow in Utah

It snowed pretty much all day today. I snapped these pictures earlier in the morning when the snow flakes were gigantic! I don't think I've ever seen snowflakes as big as the ones that fell this morning. AMAZING! We had a good couple of inches are our house today and it was so cozy watching the snow fall while I listened to Christmas songs on the stereo. Cheezy I know, but it was fun. I especially loved listening to The Nutcracker Suite.

Anyway, I think we're slated to get more snow tonight and tomorrow. I'll take more pics if it's good enough ;)

Christmas Time!

I only have one more day of class left for the semester! Wooohooo I made it through my first semester of Grad school :) I just have one paper to write but I don't think it will be too difficult. It's MAJORLY cold in Utah right now. When I was driving home last night the car temp read 7 degrees outside. YES, 7 degrees! We have lots of snow and it's super cold but it seems rather ok. I'm saying that now of course, I'm sure in a few weeks I'll be sick of the snow :P

Anyway, on to the happenins. Over Thanksgiving we had the chance to babysit a dog for one of Ramin's friends. This friend actually was the one who gave us Belle and he watches her sometimes when we go out of town, so it's only fitting that we watch their dog. OH MY GOSH - this dog was the cutest, cuddly little thing alive! Her name is Kitty and she's a Shih-Tzu. Keeeee-utest thing ever! I LOVED watching her cause she cuddled with me ALL of the time. I got some cute pictures of her before she left our house. Ramin thought she was ugly but I don't care what he thinks, she's super cute.


Also, I'm not setting up my tree this year. I'm just not into it I guess. It's just so much work and I don't think anyone really cares hahaha...it would be one thing if we had kids to decorate it with and they could have it for memories, but with just us (me, Ramin, Chris and Babak) there's really no point because all of those guys really don't care and I'd have to do all of the work so I just didn't feel like it. BUT, I did do something, I decorated the entrance table and I did put some lights outside around the door and railings. So I did something and I feel good about that because it's all we really need ;)


So next week I'll officially be DONE with school - not that I have much to complain about. This semester has infinitely been the easiest semester of my life and I have no idea why. Possibly because the work was actually fun and they give more leeway to grad students? I dunno.

Oh yeah! Ramin and I are going to Dubai in mid-March!! His cousin is getting married there and a lot of Ramin's family from his mom's side will be there too! We are both super excited for this!! In preparation for this, I have been on a strict diet for the last 3 weeks. Well I'm in my 3rd week now. I started it the week of Thanksgiving (crazy I know)...but so far I've lost 4 lbs which is 2 lbs a week. My goal is to lose 10 lbs a month until the trip. I could go all into my plan for how I'm doing it but I won't right now. Just know that this time it's working and I'm super pumped and excited because every day I make a little more progress!!

Ok thats all for now!

Project: Closets

I was busy this weekend. I was totally in an organizing kind of mood. For the past few weeks I've just dreaded every time I had to go into my closet because it was such a mess (in my opinion :P) Clothes everywhere and shoes all over the place. So I cleaned it out by going through every piece of clothing and deciding whether it should stay or go. I did the same with my shoes too!! I actually threw away my most favorite pair of shoes EVER! When I inspected them really good they were totally falling apart and definitely wouldn't be good to wear next spring/summer - so they're GONE!

So here are the before and after pictures of my half of the closet. Ramin's side is pretty good, although it could stand to be gone through as well ;)

BEFORE

AFTER

So I cleaned our bedroom closet on Saturday and I was so proud of myself that I decided I should tackle the office closet because it's gotten out of hand as well. I keep random office supplies and all of my wrapping paper/tissue in there. If I had the extra money, I'd put better shelves in there to organize things better, but seeing as I can't really do that, I have to just deal with what I have. I think I cleaned it up fairly well. A lot more stuff was thrown away from this project than the bedroom project ;)

BEFORE

AFTER

Saturday while I was cleaning the closet Ramin was watching some sports on TV and decided to curl up with Belle - they were so cute together I just had to snap a picture ;)

And then while I was cleaning out the office Lady was in the doorway keeping guard for me ;) She always likes to be wherever I'm at - she loves me :)

Update

Just wanted to post a quick update while I'm up at 5 am (woke up around 4:30 am and couldn't fall back asleep).

Thanks for the birthday wishes this week. I didn't have a chance to get in touch with everyone because my birthday happened to fall on Tuesday which was full of work and school. I was at school until 8 pm or so and when I got home all I wanted to do was eat some dinner and watch some TV for a bit before going to bed. It was a good birthday but I totally do not feel 28. Well wait, sometimes I do feel 28, like when I'm exhausted from a day of work and school :P Good thing I'm getting this school thing over with before I'm 30 ;)

Other than that I don't really have anything new to report. I'm getting a new boss at work shortly, so that's kind of exciting and scary at the same time.

It is supposed to start snowing finally sometime this weekend. We've had such a good long run at fall that I'm kind of ready for the snow. How weird is that?!?!

We're still doing the photography thing, only I'm trying to take more of a backseat role because of time and school pressures. Jill can handle most of it now that we've got things up and running. So I'm excited to have a little more time for myself so I can read and study for school, things I sort of have been putting off because of my involvement with the business.

Here's a picture of my latest obsession - although I've had this obsession for the better part of a year now. I've been waiting and waiting for this product to come out and it finally has just in time for the holidays:
It's a Letterpress machine. I would so love to get this, even if it was my only gift for Christmas. This can get me going with my invitations and cards and such. They have a website and blog found here:

Website
Blog

Their blog a really cool video that shows how easy it is to do the process. If you know what a real letterpress machine is and looks like you'll understand how this is so awesome. Old time letterpress machines are antiques and HUGE! They cost thousands of dollars too! I'd love to have one someday but this will suffice for now ;)

Potions & Spells

I made some additions to my Halloween display this year. I found these cute ideas from another blog I visit a lot and I decided to adopt some of the ideas for my own house! I went to the DI (Deseret Industries, which is basically like the Salvation Army only it's run by the LDS church here in Utah) and found some cool glass containers and then Chris and I also went to the Antique Show a few weekends ago and found some cool old bottles! I think I'll start trying to collect cool old bottles so my collection will really look old and complete next year!

Anyway, I made the labels and then created each bottle/jar in it's own way. The labels speak for themselves. For the Fur of Werewolf I just cut some of Lady's scruff from her face and put it in the bottle :P Let me know what you think if you like them! I think they're super cute!

New Family Pictures!

So before you ask, yes I'll be sending these out to family - they will probably come along with our Christimas cards. So don't worry about printing them out for yourself, if you are family I will be printing out a lot of these with a professional printing lab. Also, I deliberately saved some of the pictures because I plan to frame some and give them as Christmas gifts. So think of this as a taste of more to come ;) Hope you like!!!

This is Halloween!!

Yay! October is finally here! I love October because I love Fall and I love Halloween! But, we've already had our first snow!! Yesterday, the last day of September is snowed up in the mountains and it even snowed down in the valley (it didn't stick of course). I'm hoping winter doesn't come too soon because I really want to enjoy the fall colors! This weekend we're going to try and do family pictures up in the mountains with the colors everywhere - hopefully the weather will cooperate for us!

Last weekend was crazy busy but super fun! Jill and I headed up to Idaho to do a photo shoot for our friend Niki and her new salon! If you haven't already seen them, visit the Atmina Blog to see how awesome the model portraits turned out! I really hope we can do that some more because it was so much fun! But it was exhausting too - a 3.5 hour drive EACH WAY! But it was well worth it :) We also got to do pictures of Niki's little family as well and lemme tell you, her daughter is SERIOUSLY cute! Hopefully I'll get those pictures posted by Friday evening or something.

Anyway, as is the custom, here are pictures of this year's Halloween decorations. I actually have some new stuff this year!! I didn't buy anything new last year and this year I bought a few things and my mom gave me stuff as well. Super cute!

I also threw in a picture of my blooming delphenium and some pics of Lady and Belle ;)