Gingerbread House

It's finally FINISHED!! As some of you know the Cohoon family had a Gingerbread House building competition. It was between Jake and me, Mike and Meagan, and Bobby and Emily. The deadline was Christmas Day and we had some of the neighbors come over and judge, that way they wouldn't know which was which. Jake and I got the "Most Edible" prize. Bobby and Emily got "Most Original" and Mike and Meagan won "Grand Prize"!

Front View

Back/Top View (that's a lake on the side)

Close-up of Top Side View

Our idea. It's a building somewhere in Russia.

Mike and Meagan's Gingerbread House. I haven't got any pictures of Bobby and Emily's but I will soon.

Family Time

This is our lovely Christmas Tree. You can't see the ornaments very well but that's ok, and don't worry we now have an angel on top.

On Wednesday Jake and I had my Dad, Cece, Mandy, William, and Mason over for dinner (Kayla had YW and got to go to temple square instead - we missed her). After dinner we were all just hanging out and I realized I don't get to see my siblings that often which is why I don't have many pictures of them and they get bigger every time I see them! William has a loose tooth and Mason can rollover now! Oh, and Mandy's taller than me (no fair!). Anyway, I got the camera out and here are some of the moments I captured:William Reading Cute little Mason Just Chillin'Mommy and MasonMandyAnd last but not least, Nala (our dog-for those of you who don't know....just kidding aunt suzette)

Kitchen

So my last post stated how messy the kitchen was and how I couldn't stand it. It was true. Not even 24 hours after that post I went crazy and cleaned the whole kitchen, cabinet doors or not. I organized my cupboards, cleaned out the fridge, swept, mopped, everything. It stayed clean the next day and then the day after that got messy again because we started painting some more. It's ok though because now it's clean again and the cabinets are all painted. We still need to paint the walls but I am so happy to have the cabinets done I had to put up some pictures.Jake's fabulous idea for painting the doors without having to put news paper everywhere. He put things under them (by things i mean boxes of cake or pasta, Tupperware, tool boxes, whatever he could find really. So we had a row of doors in our kitchen. It worked out pretty good and I only had to scape a little paint off the floor. TA DA!! CLOSE-UP (It's a little discolored in the picture)

Messy Kitchen

We are painting our kitchen cabinet's. What we thought was a cool idea we saw in the store turned into a big head ache and now a big mess. We saw a bathroom vanity in Lowe's and I fell in love with it so we decided we should paint our kitchen to look like it. Pretty easy right? That's what we thought. We still haven't figured out how they did it but there are a few spots on it that look "crackled" so that it is antiqued. No, it's not crackle, it doesn't look the same. Then Jake got the genius idea that they burned the paint with a blow torch and it dried really fast and that's what made it bubble. It was perfect and we decided that's exactly what they did. We went home and tried it...nope. It didn't work again. So after reading books, looking online, testing over and over I decided I didn't like it as much and we should just paint and stain them and forget about the stupid crackle. So that's what we did. It's been 4 days of painting here and there and we're only about half way done. Which is just fine and dandy except as many of you know I tend to be a clean freak (not that my house is always perfect but I try my hardest) and I get anxiety when things are a huge mess. My kitchen is a HUGE mess.
Our laundry room (below) aka cabinet painting station.
My fabulous idea of how to paint all the drawers at the same time and not have to empty them or have them spread out all over the house. I was very proud of myself for thinking it up.

Turkey Bowl!!

"It's Provo Sizzler vs Orem Sizzler. This is Huge! It's bigger than the Super Bowl or Daytona 500!" Says Jake Cohoon before he played in the Turkey Bowl Thursday morning.

For those of you who don't know, Jake works at the Provo Sizzler and Mike, his brother, works at the Orem one. Organized by Tim (another Orem worker and friend) they decided to see who was really the better Sizzler. Both teams gathered their best players and held two practices earlier in the week. I wasn't there for the Sizzler Turkey Bowl but the winning team (to Jake's disappointment) was the Orem Sizzler with a 3-0 score. Jake hasn't talked much about it but when I asked he said "We got slaughtered". After the big game others joined in the fun and that's what I got pictures of. They aren't great because it's hard to focus on people who are constantly running from side to side. It seemed like everyone had fun and I was glad that Jake said it was worth it because he's been in pain ever since.

Update of our House

So on Tuesday we decided to paint the living room (again). We bought the new couch and decided to do a blue accent wall behind it. After some time and thought and an unnecessary comment from a visitor to our house we realized it just wasn't the right color. Also, the new couch might have been a better choice because of size but it was in the wrong spot and the room was way unbalanced. We finally got up the courage and tackled our big job of painting the whole room and moving the entertainment center and other furniture, not to mention all the dolphins. (I was going to take a picture but I forgot, the dolphins were laid out on the table during the move and lets just say you couldn't even see the table...it was all dolphin.) We think it looks a lot better and it opens up the room a lot. Just for those of you who don't like it...It's our house and we like it so keep your opinions to yourself. (I was hurt, seriously some people need to learn respect.) And now for pictures!! P.S. It's a lot better in person, come see for yourself!

Sorry, this one is really dark. I'll try and fix it later.

My Jakey

I was tagged by Cece to answer the following questions about my husband, Jake.

#1. Where did you meet your husband?

We met at Dudley's house for a blind (sorta) date.

#2. How long did you date before you got married?

Does that include being engaged? If so, 3 1/2 months. We were engaged after dating 3 weeks.
#3. How long have you been married?
From today (11-20-08) it's been 1 year, 3 months and 11 days.

#4. What does he do that surprises you?

Cleans. Most men don't help out a lot with cleaning the house, and if they do you just have to re-do it. Jake actually does the dishes and laundry (that doesn't including putting it away) and he doesn't mind vacuuming the living room. He'll sweep and mop if I ask him too but I'm picky about it so he usually just let's me take care of it. Oh, and he makes pretty much every meal. If he's home to cook it, he'll cook it. I hardly ever make food for myself - his choice. I'm spoiled.

#5. What is your favorite feature of his?

His eyes. They're pretty. Actually, when we first started dating he had blue contacts so his eyes were a dark blue color. The first time I saw him without contacts I about died. He has the most beautiful brown eyes I've ever seen. After that I told him he wasn't allowed to get color contacts. I hope our kids get his beautiful brown eyes.

#6. What is your favorite quality?

Like EVERYTHING! haha, he is just so sweet to me all the time. Even when I'm not in a good mood he tries his hardest to make me happy.

#7. Does he have any nick names for you?

Too many to list. There's the usual, honey, baby, sweety, beautiful, etc. And then there's baby-waby, lyssy, and I think it's cute when he calls me baby doll, I'm not sure why.

#8. What is his favorite food?

PIZZA!! He could eat it for every meal, every day, and he was until he met me and I made his switch it up a bit. We have pizza every monday night and of course he has to have his frozen tostino's pizza's every now and then, oh and mini pizza pockets, and pizza hot pockets.

#9.What is his favorite sport?

To play or to watch? To play it would be hockey, even though he hasn't played for a long time because of his knee's. To watch it would have to be football - I'm learning to like it...or at least tolerate it.

#10. When and where did you first kiss?

Haha, it was the night we met so sometime in April of '07, at Dudley's house, on his cuddle bag.

#11. What is your favorite thing to do as a couple?

We like to eat out a lot. Sometimes on dates with friends but usually just by ourselves. We go to Ruby River a lot for our date nights. If you were to ask him this question I think he would say we like to fix up our house. Which is fun but personally I think eating out is more romantic.

#12. Do you have any kids?

Just our puppy Nala. Maybe we'll have kids in a few years...a FEW...that means 2 or more, just so you all know.

#13. Does he have any hidden talents?

He really likes to work with wood. He likes to build and refinish things and they always turn out beautifully. Oh and he is very funny. A lot of people don't know it but he can do amazing impersonations of Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler, and a few other people but those 2 are my favorites.

#14. How old is he?

He is 27 (and just for those of you that know how old I am and don't want to do the math, it's about a 6 1/2 year difference. It just makes it fun because we grew up in different times.)

#15. Who said "I love you" first?

Jake. And he reminds me that every now and then. He said it after about 3 days, I think it was. I said it back almost a week later. I just wasn't as sure as he was I guess. Plus, his was sort of an "accident". He said it when was saying bye to me on the phone one night and then text me right after "Do you realize I just said "I love you"?" It was so cute.

#16. What is his favorite kind of music.

He likes country but for some reason hasn't listened to it since we've been married. He also really likes Metallica, which was a big turn on because that's what was in his car the first time he drove me somewhere. When he's in the car by himself he just listens to what I call "Blah" aka 1160 AM talk show stuff.

#17. What do you admire most about him?

How he is so caring and loving, to everyone. He loves his family so much. He gives the best hugs and my moms love it (maybe cuz I don't hug them enough, I don't know) and I love how sweet he is with my little siblings and his nieces and nephews. He is going to be a great dad, which I am so excited for (but that doesn't mean we're having kids soon!).

#18. What is his favorite pass time?

TV, watching TV, oh, and did I mention TV? As he would say "It relaxes me". I'm not a big TV watcher, I just get bored. He could watch it all day long and be just fine.

#19.Will he read this?

If he does it will only be because I'll tell him I updated the blog and he has to look. He's not as into the whole blogging thing. I like the computer, he likes the TV (which is fine by me, more time on his lap top for me!)

#20. Who do you tag?

I am going to tag.................Emily Mason and Allyson.

Nala Baby

Because we love our baby soo much I decided to make a slide show dedicated just to her. Be sure to watch to the end...the last pic is the best one!

Purses!

This post is just to show off my mom's purses. For those of you who don't know, my mom makes purses. If you are interested in any of them or would like one custom made let me know. Also, you can check out her website floresdesignstudios.com (it's still in the beginning stages). Enjoy!
(p.s. Thanks a TON, Allyson!!)

Our House

Allyson has requested that I put up some pictures of our house, I thought it wasn't a bad idea so here you go...

Our Fire Place, in the front room. It won't look like that for too much longer, hopefully. We are planning on covering it with sheet rock, the brick isn't as nice as it looks.


The Front Door and one of my favorite things about the house, a bay window. I've always loved them and now I have one! Just a side note, when we first moved in we made this room "The Lighthouse Room" because it went with the ocean theme and my mom and Mandy made some cute pillows with lighthouse's on them. I loved it at first...now i'm thinking the whicker furniture idea wasn't a great one and after we do the fire place it won't be the lighthouse room anymore.


The Dining Room, which contains my favorite piece of furniture...


The Table, this is my favorite piece of furniture not only because it is beautiful but because it only cost $25. It used to look awful and have a leg broken off, we picked it up at Savers and Jakes dad was so nice to take the time to fix it up for us. He did an amazing job and later we got the chairs as a gift from Jake's parents.


Half of the kitchen....


Other half of the kitchen...yes, we need a new stove...ok, Jake needs a new stove.


Dolphin Haven...AKA the Living Room. This room was hard to photograph so there are lots of pics of this room.

The cumfy couch, we sold Jake's old sectional because this fit the room more and it's so cumfy. P.S. the painting is an Alyssa Original.

Jake's Shelves. Jake designed and built these really cool shelves. I love them.

Jake's Table. Jake took a plain old, falling apart end table and turned it into this. I love it. The box in the top has sand and sea shells and lights up. So cool!

The Master Bedroom. Pretty self explanitory.
Well, that's it. I didn't take any pics of the laundry room or either of the bathrooms but I will eventually. The batteries in my camera died. Hopefully soon I'll have the "after" pics of the front room, living room, and kitchen. We're planning on re-doing all of them.

It didn't work.........again.

.....cont. of cry for help. Thank you for all your comments.....when my internet finally decided to work long enough for me to do something i tried the photobucket. it seemed to work....i copied the code, the preview looked right so i pushed "publish post" this is what came up at the top of the page...

Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not closed: < embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" src="http://w11.photobucket.com/pbwidget.swf?pbwurl=http://w11.photobucket.com/albums/a177/AKimball/Purses/963d4770.pbw" height="360" width="480" >

what???? so now what? that's what it was saying when i tried the slide show from slide.com too. i know i posted the right code, i've done this before on other websites so why wont it work on this one?

Cry For Help!!!

This is a cry for help! I thought I was pretty smart when it comes to computers and stuff but for some reason I can't make it work! A lot of you have things on your bloggs that show pictures in a slide show. I thought I knew how to do this but for some reason it won't work. Maybe I picked the wrong program. Please Help! Thanks.

Six Random Things About Me

So, I guess I'm really bad at reading other people's bloggs on a regular basis (oops) and Emily Mason tagged me to say six random things about me. Here goes:

1) I love the show House but I can only watch half of it.
And I don't mean I watch 15 min and then turn it off, I mean half of it is really good and the other half is all blood and guts and needles which make me queasy. I have to watch it with Jake so he can tell me when to open my eyes after all the blood and gore. And the other weird thing is that the show is sooo predictable. We can't look at the clock anymore when watching it or we know exactly what will happen. I don't usually like predictable shows cuz it's like what's the point? and yet, I'm obsessed. Crazy I know.

2)I'm mad at the Library.
Some of you have already heard this story and for those of you that haven't here it is: I checked out a book from the library (duh) and I loved it. It was one of those books where you feel every emotion, happy, sad, scared, ect. After I finished it I realized that it was a series of 4 books. So I went back and got the next two. Read them, loved them. Went back for the last book and....it was no where to be found. No, it wasn't checked out. No, it wasn't in the wrong place. No, it was damaged or lost or anything else. THE LIBRARY DOESN'T EVEN OWN A COPY!!! What I would like to know is how the person who orders the books thinks its ok to order 3 books out of a series of 4???? I talked to one of the librarians who had me fill out a request paper. 6 months (give or take) later still no book, and i've asked about it every time i've gone in. I'm guessing you might have read the Twilight series? (I haven't but eventually I will) How would you feel if no one had a copy of the last book? wouldn't it just drive you NUTS!! Well, that's how I feel.

3) My new obsession is books by Madeleine L'Engle.
I never read any of her books in school and never planned on reading them. Then Jennifer convinced me to check out "A Ring of Endless Light" and I reluctantly started reading it...and found out it was amazing! Then I read "The Small Rain" also pretty good. So I went back to library and checked out 5 more books by her. She is an amazing author and makes me want to be a writer. I wrote down a list of all her books and I am checking them off as I go...I have a lot more to read but I plan on reading them all. If you haven't read anything by her you should. Good books.

4) I'm a little OCD.
I know most of you already know this but i'm running out of random facts about me. The biggest thing effected by my OCD is my closet. ALL the hangers HAVE to be white. Not metal, wood, colored, WHITE! And all of my clothes are organized by color. Its fun to watch Jake do laundry and have to figure out what goes where in my closet, he's getting a lot better at it though. And no, I don't make his closet be in color order.....it would drive me crazy because I know he wouldn't keep it that way. I'm OCD with a lot of other things too but that is the biggest one. The weirdest is probably....the spice rack. All spices are in ABC order.

5) I love music.
Ok, not very random but I've found that for some reason people are shocked by the kind of music I listen to. (not that its like really bad music) I guess they just don't know me very well and don't think it fits my personality. Crazy but I've actually been told that a lot. I like to rock out and concerts...rock, alternative, some techno, a little hip hop, NO country!!! And the louder the better!! I think if music were a form of drug I would be addicted. I do everything while listening to music (yeah, it's on right now) I even read while listening to music.

6) Dream job.
I have a dream jobs that I doubt I will ever do. I want to be a wedding planner. I love to plan and I love weddings. I help my mom run her wedding flower business. I would have to move to another state to actually be a wedding planner because Utah is so "self-reliant" that they don't' need a wedding planner, or they just couldn't afford one. And there aren't really any wedding planning classes I can take here or a wedding planning business I could work for, unless I went to SLC maybe. However, I do know a lot about weddings and have a lot of wedding planning stuff so if you know someone getting married that needs help I am totally willing to help, for free.

I tag....Jennifer and Cece

Happy Halloween!

This wasn't our first Halloween together but it sure seemed like it because last year neither of us had the night off. This year we went all out. I decorated the porch and we both had fun dressing up. I was a purple spider witch and Jake was a scary skeleton guy. He wished we would have had more trick or treaters to scare but I guess we don't have very many kids in our neighborhood. It was still a lot of fun, I hope we continue to have halloween night off every year. Now that we know how much fun it is, it would be really sad to miss it.

Update

For those of you reading this that don't know a lot about us or what's going on recently here it is:

• We just had our one year anniversary August 9th
• We bought a house in Provo
• We have a silky terrier named Nala (and she is all the kids we need right now)
• Alyssa got a new car....finally
• Jake works at the Provo Sizzler as Kitchen Manager
• Alyssa works at a care center doing Housekeeping
• This summer we went on vacation to Oregon in May and Lake Powell in August
• Jake's Birthday was the 24th...Happy 27th!!
• Mason Steven Kimball was born June 26th (alyssa's brother)
  

Those are all the BIG things that happend this year, so far. Right now our main focus is our house. We just got a new couch and painted the living room. Jake is Really into building and refinishing furniture and stuff like that. Since we've lived in this house he's made: a shelf for our room, shelf for the guest bedroom, really pretty shelves for the living room, a coffee table that lights up, and an end table for the living room. We live a couple blocks away from the D.I. so when we have the money and a day off we go there to see what he can find to refinish. It's amazing too because if we go there with something in mind it magically appears. (The coffee and end tables for example). We also got very lucky the last time we went there. We went to look for a very small end table and found a magazine rack that would look perfect....and we found a set of 4 chairs in really good condition, that were the exact chairs we have with our table...who knew, we needed extra chairs...not that we have company too often, but at least now we can accomidate.

Another exciting (more like freaky) thing recently...we've started to find a lot of these really big ugly brown spiders that chase you...so we looked them up online. Hobo Spiders. Turns out they really are as scary as they seem. They are huge for one (maybe about the size of a quarter, legs included) they're eyes bug out so that's just gross. And their bite is pretty bad. You get a sore that turns into a boil that's all red and sore around it and it's about an 18 month healing process. I wouldn't be so worried about it but like I told Jake "Usually, they say 'it's more afraid of you than you are of it' well, Hobo Spiders will chase you so it's more like 'it's NOT more afraid of you than you are of it'." SCARY!! So what are we going to do? Not kill the other spiders first of all (internet said pestisides were bad because it kills off their enemies) and get sticky spider traps. I guess that works pretty well. If we still find a lot of them we will call the bug killer guys, the professionals. That's $90 for them to spray/fog, whichever, and put out traps. 3 month guarentee. I'm pretty freaked out so it might be worth it. Other things you can find in our yard....frogs (we hear them at night) snakes (garden and water...we're close to a river. Jake found one about 2 1/2 ft long, spiders, and birds....in our attic. I can't tell you how many dead baby birds we found over the summer. I was so sad. We tried to save one but our efforts failed. Having our own house is so much fun!! I can't wait to see what the winter brings.

Well, I guess that's a start. I'll try and keep things pretty updated. I'll post some pictures below of some of the things I've mentioned.




Jake and Alyssa in the kitchen






Lake Powell. Alyssa made a picture in the sand while everyone else played water volley ball.






Our baby, Nala. She never looks at the camera.








HOBO SPIDER!!! (it looks scarier up close)