Christmas Lists!!!

For anyone racking your brain on what to get us this year....here are a few options:


Alyssa's List-

• Spiral Bound Hymn and Primary Books
• Piano Music- anything semi-easy, or any of my favorite artists; Regina Spektor, The Fray
• I Pod Adaptor for Car
• Church Clothes- dresses and skirts
• Church Shoes
• Nativity
• Curling Iron- I think 2"
• Scrapbook Stuff- I love the big books of paper vs. just sheets of paper, ABC stickers
• Canvas'- As in painting canvas. Pretty much any size is good.
• Shirts

Jake's List-

• Air Compressor
• Nail Gun
• Shop Heater
• Herb Grower
• Jumper Cables
• TV for bedroom
• Tool Set- wrenches, screw drivers, ratchets (Alyssa would prefer some with a tracking device so he can't lose them.)
• A Remote control car....not the battery kind, the real kind, as in uses gas and you have to put it together and stuff.

OUR List-

• Kitchen Timer
• Cooling Racks
• Board Games
• Anything for our food storage
• A China Set -min. of 8 people. We like simple designs and silver is good-no gold.

The Pantry

Yep, just showing off my amazing husbands handy work again. This last week we did a complete over-haul on our pantry. I didn't take any before pictures so for those of you who don't remember or never saw what it looked like let me just describe it a little bit. You open the door and it was about a 16 in. step down onto a cement floor. There were shelves on two of the walls- if you can call them that. They were basically scraps of wood all put together at random to make what looked like shelves. We have recently decided that we really need to be more gung-ho about food storage and that seemed really hard to do when that is what we had for a food storage room. So we tore out all the shelves and painted the walls with some left over paint we found. Then we built a floor so that it is even with the rest of the house and Jake put a trap door so that we can store luggage and other things under the floor to utilize that space as well. Then we bought some new shelves and set them up and now it is just beautiful! I love LOVE love it now! It is so clean and organized and I can't wait to fill up all our shelves with food storage. (If any one has suggestions on how to do a great food storage let me know). I would just like to thank my very talented husband for all his hard work. This was a pretty frustrating project because as we have found in old houses nothing is straight. Not to mention that the shelves we bought were pretty stupidly designed and he had quite a time putting them together. Thank you Thank you Thank you Jake!!!

The now even floor, so you don't kill yourself when you walk into the pantry. (We love stick on tiles-so easy and they look great!!)

You can't even see the trap door, just the String to pull it open.

The trap door.

And my mostly empty (at the moment) shelves!

Halloween Party

The Monday before Halloween we had a Halloween party at our house with Bobby and Emily and Landon and Mike and Meagan. It was a ton of fun. We had a pizza, a pumpkin carving contest, Disney Scene It, and pumpkin cake and hot apple cider. We all dressed up and it was so much fun.

Our pumpkins: From left to right--Jake & Alyssa, a skeleton, Mike & Meagan, a cat on a broom in front of the moon, Bobby & Emily, a witch on a broom stick in front of the moon. Bobby & Emily won first place followed by Jake & Alyssa followed by Mike and Meagan. We had our neighbor judge the pumpkins and although we didn't all agree with his decision that was the out come and I am just glad we all had so much fun doing it!

I dressed up as Dorothy from Wizard of Oz and Nala was Todo (or Toda because Todo is a boy).

She didn't like the basket very much, but I don't really blame her.

Landon and Uncle Jake having fun during the party. I hope we can keep this tradition going, it is soo much fun!

Nala

This is the story I wrote about my puppy. (Inspiration from Allyson-thanks!) It is intended to be a children's book with pictures so just use your imagination!

This is Nala. She is my dog. Sometimes I wonder if she is really more than that.

Sometimes she pounces on things just like a cat does. Maybe she is related to a lion!

Nala can run really fast, just like a cheetah does! And when she starts to slow down she hops like a bunny rabbit.

She always has her tongue flicking in and out like a snake. She just loves to give kisses and lick everything she sees!

Nala must think she is an elephant. When she gets a drink of water she tries to drink it through her nose. Doesn't she know she doesn't have a trunk?

When I'm watching TV Nala sits on the top of the couch with her paws on my shoulder. If I were a pirate she could be my parrot!

If Nala gets scared I pick her up and hold her like my baby. She holds on tight- just like a monkey!

Nala must have the memory of a fish. She gets so excited to play that she forgets where the ball is!

Nala thinks the grass is a tasty treat. She eats it just like a cow does!

I love when Nala gets really excited. She tries to wrinkle her nose and she snorts like a pig!

My silly puppy can't decide what she is!

Dog, Lion, Cheetah, Rabbit, Snake, Elephant, Parrot, Monkey, Fish, Cow, Pig.
Whatever anmial she chooses to be is fine with me because she will always be my Little Princess!

Fall 2009!

On Wednesday (10/21/09) Jake and Nala and I decided to take a walk up Provo Canyon by Bridal Veil Falls to see the beautiful fall foliage. Here are some pictures we took along the way...

Jake's Latest Project

My mom has had this antique buffet in her dinning room for a very long time. It was already an antique when my step dad bought it and then it went through 5 kids and well, it looked pretty bad. A few years ago they decided they wanted a china cabnit, however, those can get pretty pricey so they decided to just build shelves on top of the buffet. It turned out ok, however it never got finished because it would be a very time consuming project. Since my mom didn't have the time to do it and knows how much Jake likes to refinish things she asked him if he would like to do it for her. Of course he said yes and I'm glad he did because it turned out Beautifully!

Only Jake can take this....

...And this...

...And give you...

THIS!!!

TA DA!!
He added display lights...



And we painted and stained everything.

(same technique we used on our kitchen cabnits)

And he did this beautiful tile work.

Needless to say my mom is very happy and it looks beautiful in her dining room.

The only problem? She doesn't want to put anything on it!

Outdoor Coffee Table

Jake's latest project has been this beautiful coffee table. We got the idea from a table we saw in Lowe's and decided that we could do better. It is going to go outside under our gazebo/canopy after we find some chairs to go with it. And in the winter we can bring it inside and it will look great in our front room. Here is the table in the beginning stages:And here is the finished project:

Jake's beautiful tiling job:

I love it! Jake is so talented!!

Nala

Jake and I decided that it was time to give Nala a hair cut. She always looks like a completely different dog after she gets one. Mostly because we just have them pretty much shave her to get rid of the tangles and so that we don't have to take her in every month, which you probably should with silkies. Below are her before and after pictures:And after the hair cut: a brand new dog (who can actually see!).

A little bit about Nala (because after all she is my only baby and most people like to blog about their kids and stuff)....

• Nala is about 2 1/2, almost 3 years old. I have no idea when her Birthday is because Jake doesn't have a clue. He thinks he bought her in December of 2006 so my guess is she was born in Sept- Nov.
  
• She is a very VERY hyper dog (maybe a little ADHD but we're not sure if you can test for that in dogs). We don't mind too much, though, because it's always a good feeling to come home and have someone SUPER excited to see you, even if you only went out to check the mail and come back.

• Her favortie thing to do is lick. Lick, Lick, LICK!! She licks anything and everything! This is a picture of her giving my brother, Issac a bath (and boy does he need it)!
• Nala runs really, really fast! When she needs to let out energy she runs from one end of the house to the other about 20 times, non-stop. I think she also does this for attention because it happens a lot when we have guests over and they get a kick out of it.
• Nala is more than just a dog. Since we've had her we have discovered that she is a lot of other animals in one. Such as:
• She is a lion. As you might have guessed she was named after a Lion and there is good reason for it. She pounces. Like a cat. I have never seen any dog pounce on things like she does.
• She is a pig. When she gets really excited she likes to make a grunting noise like a pig, weird.
• She is an Elephant. For some reason she thinks she has a trunk, not a nose, and tries to drink from it. She coughs almost everytime she gets a drink of water because she gets it up her noes. Duh!
• She is a fish. I don't know if this is a scientific fact or not but they say a gold fish only has a memory of about 10 seconds. Nala might be worse than that. Partially because she gets distracted easily and partially because she just can't remember where that ball went.
• She is a cow. I know it is normal for dogs to eat grass every now and then but she seems to do it a lot and every time we're in the backyard playing we have to remind her that she is not a cow and to stop eating the grass.

So far I think that is all the animals we have discovered inside her. No matter what though we love our little princess. (And she really is just as spoiled as a princess)!

Our Other "Pet"

This is our other not-so-nice, not-so-cute, don't-want-to-pet-it-or-even-look-at-it, sorta pet. It has no name because it doesn't deserve one and no gender because I'm not getting close enough to check. This is A Hobo Spider. I say A instead of THE because just now I saw 4 in the yard. This is the only one I got on video. Scratch that...I just looked out the window and saw another one, I'm going to get in on video too.
Anyway....For those of you who have never heard of a Hobo Spider let me tell you a little bit about them, besides the fact that they are a spider....They are huge, ok maybe not like a triancula huge but still pretty big. I'd say the average size if you were to draw a circle around one would be like a quarter. They are either a brown or gray color and have a sort of stripe down their back. And the worst feature of all, in my opinion, is they have buggy eyes, or what look like eyes but really they say that hobo spiders can't see very well so they will often run towards you before they run away from you. VERY SCARY!!!
Also, it can be very bad if they bite you. They say that they only inject venem 50% of the time but I still don't want to be in that 50%. Most people have heard of Brown Recluse....Hobo Spider's bites are pretty close to that. You can get a big ugly blister like thing from it that I'd imagine hurts pretty bad and it can take anywhere from 1 month to 3 years to heal depending on how bad it is. If you want more info here is awebsite I would recommend looking at...http://hobospider.com/info/index.html.

And now the videos...

Our New Pet

As some of you may remember when we first moved into our house we found out we had a snake living in our back yard. This year we've seen at least 3 snakes (a mommy, daddy and a baby) and found out they live under the house. The other day we were fortunate enough to find one sun bathing and got some pictures before Jake scared it back under the house (he tried to pick it up). Because you can't really tell in the picture I thought I should let you know this snake is probably about 18 in. long and maybe an inch thick. The baby snake is only about 1/4 in. thick and maybe 6 in. long. You might be surprised to know I love snakes so I was very excited to see the ones I've seen and excited to now have a picture to share with you all. P.S. His (i hope this is the boy) name is George, Jake named him. I decided that the mommy snake will be Georgina and the baby is Georgie. Yes, that's right, George, Georgina, and Georgie. :)

Jake is now 28!!

Jake's Birthday was on Aug 24. For his birthday I took a teddy bear holding balloons and a card to his work that day. That evening we went with my family (my dad & cece and the kids and aunt suzette and her kids) to a very yummy restaurant in SLC called the Asian Star. If you haven't been there I recommend you go! You will love it! We had a really good time being with family and eating food :). On Tuesday we got together with some friends and family and went out to eat at the Olive Garden. Afterwards we went to Trafalga for a little mini golf, go carts, and arcade games. It was a blast. Afterward we were going to eat cake but everyone ended up leaving at different times and I guess we were having so much fun we just forgot about it. However, it was specially made for Jake by one of my good friends and I figured since no one got to see the cake but us I should post some pictures. I think she did an awesome job!

Piano

As most of you know, Jake bought me a piano for Christmas. A very old piano. He had to wait until the weather warmed up and then he stripped it and refinished it. It has been done for awhile but since we didn't have internet when it got finished I couldn't post about it and forgot until now. Here are some pictures of the beautiful job he did. I just love it. I'm not sure how old it is but our guess is that it was made in the early 1900's. It could be around 100 years old! And it plays beautifully. The seat still needs to be recovered but I just found the fabric I wanted and will be doing that this week. (You should have seen the 4 layers of fabric we pulled off...it was like looking back in time and you could tell exactly which time period each of the previous fabric's came from.) The top is glass so that you can see the strings and everything inside. It is very unique and it makes it look so antique. I love it. I also thought I should put up some pictures of our 100% finished fire place. I put pictures up from right when it got done but now it is all decorated and everything and looks even better.

Bear Lake

Recently Jake and I got to take a trip up to bear lake with Bobby and Emily and Emily's family. It was a blast! We spent a lot of time on the lake. Here are a few videos and pictures I thought I'd share...

Emily, Debbie, and Carly getting ready to take off on the banana.

Buddy enjoying the wave runner/water bike/sea doo/ whatever you want to call it.
Jake the boat driver.

The "oh, so wonderful BARREL ROLL!" (by Bobby)

I have a video of Emily, Debbie, and Carly going for a ride on the banana only it is really long and taking a long time to upload so I will have to put it on later.