Merry Christmas!

Today was an awesome Christmas and I'm so glad to have spent it with friends and family. We spent the night at my parents house last night. Christmas doesn't seem to be the same if you aren't able to wake up and see the excitement on childrens faces. I guess that's why I can't let go of the tradition of sleeping over at my parents house. I just don't think we can get that same feeling by waking up alone in our condo. We took our queen size air matress and put it in my parents spare bedroom. We spent most of Christmas Eve eating a delicious honey-baked ham and watching The Nativity Story. It's one of my favorite Christmas movies. We woke early this morning to the sounds of children running up and down the hallways talking about their new toys. My nephews got a few Nerf guns so, we had to keep running from them to keep from getting shot at! Crazy kids.

Howie got me a few gifts including a gift card to Massage Envy. I am thrilled about that because I absolutely love to get professional massages! I can't wait to use it! I got more gifts from friends and family. I'm so spoiled!

I got Howie a highly anticipated case for his iPhone that increases the life of his battery. He's been wanting one for quite some time. He's hard to shop for because he's one of those guys that is content with what he has. I also got him a passport cover because we recently got him a passport (his first ever!).

Anyway, we ate a ton of good food over the past two days and I don't think my tummy will ever be hungry again! I'm so thankful for my family and for holidays like Christmas that bring us closer together. I'm thankful that my Grandma was able to recover from her blood-clot episode and be here for Christmas. She'd been in a care center for the last 20 days so, it was really nice to have her back. I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas's!

The Forgotten Carols

Monday night we went to see The Forgotten Carols with our friends Eric and Alyssa. I've had the soundtrack for quite some time and know all of the songs, but I have never seen the actual play. We liked it a lot. It had a lot more humor in it than I expected so, that was a pleasant surprise! I'm hoping to make this a yearly tradition. I think my parents would really like it, too. We'll have to take them next year. I know the following picture is reminiscent of my pictures I shared of the Kurt Bestor Concert, but again, I only had my iPhone on hand. Here is a picture I took during one of the songs. The guy they had singing the lead was Jordan Bluth. He had a pretty neat voice.

Before the concert we all went to eat at Famous Dave's. I love that place and it had been forever since I'd been so, I was loving every bite. Yummy. I should've taken a picture of me stuffing my face. Wouldn't that be fun to see? It was a great night out. This was actually the last festivity we planned for the holidays. Guess we'll see if anything else pops up!

A Kurt Bestor Christmas

Yesterday afternoon Howie and I attended A Kurt Bestor Christmas Concert at Abravanel Hall. Kurt Bestor is a well known Utah-based composer and performer. He is very talented. We enjoyed his show very much! I ended up buying a CD of his. It's The Best of A Kurt Bestor Christmas. They gave me an additional free CD just for buying one, so...score!Here is Abravanel Hall before the concert started. (I only had my iPhone on hand)Here it is during the concert. You can see Kurt there on the massive TV screens. Very cool concert. Kurt usually has a guest artist for each of his shows. His guest artist for this show was a guy named Jonathan Butler. His voice was amazing. He sang a version of O Holy Night that nearly brought me to tears! He received a standing ovation from the crowd! He's from South Africa and has been performing since he was very young. Here he is:If you want to hear his amazing voice, you'll have to visit www.jonathanbutler.com . I tried to find a YouTube clip to share, but I can't seem to embed them on my blog. :( Anyway, we enjoyed the concert and hopefully I can talk Howie into going again next year!

It's patched!

Just a little update on our massive hole in our wall. My in-laws were nice enough to come over and patch our drywall. Hooray! We repayed them with pizza. They still have to come back and mud some more and then sand it down, but then I can paint over it and pretend like it never happened. I love having family that can do stuff like this.

Festival of Trees

Last Saturday we went to The Festival of Trees. This is a fun tradition that my family has done for years. Two years ago I volunteered to work for the festival. It was so much fun! My best friend and I were assigned to work in the gift boutique. We were honored to do it. They offer all of the volunteers an opportunity to take a tour of Primary Children's Medical Center and see what they're all about. That experience made me cry! Did you know that they have a special gathering every year for families that have lost a child at PCMC? They get to watch them release one butterfly per child that has lost their life. What could be more fitting than a butterfly? The symbol of hope and freedom. Howie and I have decided to make it one of our traditions to attend, too. We love getting a special treat when we go. This year we got the same things we got last year. Some Oreo's dipped in chocolate and a green apple smothered in hot carmel. Yummy. Howie's favorite part is the gingerbread houses. They had some pretty impressive ones this year!

We had a lot of fun even though it dumped snow on us on the way back to our car. We love The Festival of Trees.

Temple and Trolley Square

Tonight we went with our good friends, Steve and Genelle, and hit the town. First we went to dinner at The Spaghetti Factory in Trolley Square. Then we headed over to Temple Square to see the beautiful lights! We had so much fun. I absolutely love downtown at Christmas time. The only thing thats missing is the candy decorated windows at ZCMI. We absolutely LOVED going to see those when we were young. Ah, memories. Lucky for us the boys didn't whine too much. They were afraid it was going to be too cold. What a couple of sissies. This evening was absolutely perfect for walking through Temple Square.

Favorite Childhood Christmas Gifts

I read a recent blog post from a friend of mine (Julia!) and decided to share some of my favorite childhood Christmas gifts, as well. There are so many, but these are the ones that stick-out to me the most. The first would have to be our McDonald's Drive-Thru. Yes, one year Santa brought us a McDonald's Drive-Thru to share.It had a cash register, fake food, an opening drive-thru window and even a patty "burner" that made sizzling sounds. We all loved our McDonald's Drive-Thru. I found these pictures on Ebay. They are advertising this as a "Vintage McDonald's Drive-Thru Set". Hahaha.

Vintage indeed.

Next on my list would have to be our Barbie Camping Tent sets. They came with sleeping bags and pillows, too. You can kind of see the tip of mine in this picture:Don't I look so excited? :) I believe Santa had my Grandpa help him with these. My Grandpa used to reupholster furniture for a living so, he was pretty handy when it came to stuff like this. We used to take our Barbie tents with us every time we went camping. We loved them!

And last, but certainly not least, my She-Ra get-up! I was so excited to get this!

My brother had a thing for He-man so, naturally, I had to love She-Ra! Dang, look at all those Christmas presents! I was so spoiled. What can I say, Santa loved me. This was a fun trip down memory lane. I encourage everyone else to post what some of their favorite Christmas gifts were!

Getting Ready!

We put our tree up on Saturday night and had a lot of fun! Last year I did it all by myself so it was nice to have Howie help me out. He got to put on the Santa topper.Voila! Our beautiful tree for the Christmas season. We've already had to kitty proof it by putting tin foil around the bottom, but oh well. Onyx is a climber so it was to be expected. We just don't want them tipping the whole thing over and getting hurt or breaking something. I love our little tree! I also love that it's pre-lit. Nothing sucks more than untangling a bunch of crappy lights and having to string them onto a tree. We have quite a few activities planned for the holidays (yay!) so I'll be blogging a lot this month. Hopefully, you all think that's a good thing!

A Candlelight Christmas

Last Friday night Howie, my Mom and I took all of my nieces and nephews to A Candlelight Christmas at This Is The Place Heritage Park. The kids absolutely LOVED it! Just look at all the fun they had... They had every house lit up with Christmas lights and inside they got told a different story about why we do different Christmas traditions. Like why we hang a stocking by the fireplace, etc. We told the kids there would be a train ride and they could not wait to go on it. We walked up one row of houses and they were bugging us the whole way "When do we get to ride the train??" We finally got on the train ride and then they were all complaining about how cold it was! Haha, oh well. You can't always win when it comes to kids. One of the houses had 5 different crafts for the kids to do. I made a Christmas Spider. There was a story they told in one house about why we hang a spider from the Christmas Tree(?). We never did that growing up, but far be it for me to deny anyone else the fun of doing it. We now have our very own Christmas Spider.They had a live Nativity Scene to go and see, too. I felt so bad for Mary and Joseph because it was SO cold!To top the night off, the kids got to watch a puppet show about Angels. They laughed through-out it because one of the angels kept accidently eating their halo. It kept falling off the puppets head and going into it's mouth. It was quite comical. We headed over to my Mom's house afterwards for some hot chocolate. Perfect ending to such a fun day!

New Moon Necklace

Howie and I have tickets to see New Moon tonight(YAY!), so I made a necklace to wear that would be appropriate. I have just named it my "New Moon Necklace".I was hoping the bead store would have something that said "I Love Edward" on it, but all they had was "I Love Jacob" or "I Love Bella". So, I went with "I Love Jacob" because New Moon is mostly about him anyway(even though Edward holds a special place in my heart). Here are some close-ups of the beads:Yay! I found an apple charm!
It's so fun making jewelry. A friend of mine sent me the link for a lady that sells her jewelry on her blog. She also puts up recipes once in a while. http://savvygirlcompany.blogspot.com She has some super cute stuff and some stuff that I would never wear, but her items are unique and one of a kind. It was fun to browse her posts and get inspiration. Thanks Lisa! It got some ideas going for me.

Latest Creation

I received some inspiration from a necklace I spotted at Wal-Mart. Here is my replica of it: Okay, okay, so it didn't turn out anything like the one at Wal-Mart, but I still love how it turned out! It's my favorite thing I've made so far. I did earrings to go with it, but they don't picture very well. I guess I'm going to have to get a better camera if I'm going to start selling my creations online. Well, at least that's what I intend to do someday. I've already reserved a spot on a website. I just have to make enough items to open it. I'm very new to this so I feel like a lot of my stuff is very rookie. But, the more I do it, the better I get at it. It's a very fun, but expensive hobby. You almost have to start selling your stuff otherwise you have no way of funding what you love to do. C'est la vie.

Who Doesn't Like Free?

Thinking about making up Christmas photo cards to send to your friends and family this year? Well, I have the perfect deal for you! If you visit http://www.seehere.com/, you can create 50 Free Photo Christmas Cards w/Free Shipping! All you have to do is use this code during check-out: freebies4mom-1109. You can make either 5x7's or 4x8's. Whatever you want! This offer is only good until November 30th.

Now, I haven't tried this myself yet, but I got an email from a friend, who got it from a friend, etc. who tried it and it worked. She got the entire order for free.

I went to the website and kind of played around a bit. They have some cute templates or you can design it exactly how you want it! We'll probably be doing one this year so, keep an eye on your mailbox!

UPDATE: A co-worker of mine tried this and was not able to do the 5x7's for free. Just the 4x8's.

Sundays at Tiffany's

This book was...interesting. I've never heard a story like it before. Did you have an imaginary friend when you were little? Did you ever hope that they could, somehow, someday become real? Well, Jane did. And this book is all about her and her relationship with her imaginary friend, Michael. Michael was her imaginary friend until she turned the age of 9. When you turn 9, apparently, that means that your imaginary friend has to say goodbye. You have officially become too old for one. Michael tells Jane that she'll forget all about him, but for some strange reason...she doesn't. She remembers everything about him. She, coincidently runs into him 23 years later and hopes that the same feelings still remain between them. Again, yes, Michael is imaginary. That's what makes this book so weird! If you're in the mood for a weird read, pick this one up. I actually listened to this book on CD so I got to listen to all the different kinds of voices the reader gave the characters. It made me giggle in a lot of parts. Oh, and you'll love the other guy in her life, Hugh. He's a real keeper!

Our Scary Story

Do you like hearing about home-horror-stories? In light of this scary Halloween holiday I thought I would share our scary story. Last night Howie and I were watching TV and I kept hearing this constant "tick-tick-tick". It somewhat resembled the sound of a ticking clock. We ran through every option of what the noise could possibly be. A really, really loud clock in another unit? A bomb? A metronome? We both sort of shrugged it off. Around 10:30pm I decided it was time for bed and I shut off the TV. "Tick-tick-tick". There it goes again. I thought it would be a good idea to investigate the bothersome noise. To my surprise, when I put my ear to the wall of our laundry room I could hear the noise the loudest. I went in to the laundry room and found a small stream of water running out of a hole in the wall that was put there to accomodate a hot water pipe that hooks into our water heater. Great, we have an internal leak. I put my hand to the wall and I could tell there was water damage to it. The drywall was mushy in some places. We initially thought it was our neighbor's (above us) water heater that was leaking. We woke them up to let them know. I'm sure they didn't appreciate a rude awakening at 11 o'clock at night, but we felt it was an emergency. There was nothing visibly wrong with their water heater so we had to take matters into our own hands. I didn't really know who to call about it so I called the first person I could think of. Dad. Unfortunately, at that hour he was completely asleep. My second thought was a plumber. I got a hold of one and they said there was not a lot they could do at that hour and told us to just shut off our water for the night and they would come check it out in the morning. So, we did. This morning they came to take a look at it and in order to find the source of the leak they had to cut a gaping hole into our wall. See...They even had to go up into our ceiling. What they found shocked me. Apparently, the pipe that was the culprit behind our mushy wall was RECALLED and BANNED from use in the 1990's due to a major class action lawsuit that was filed. The reason for the lawsuit? Well, these pipes have a great susceptibility to leak. AND LEAK IS WHAT IT DID! The guy that cut into our dry wall said the wall was very moist. Who knows how long this leak has been happening. The only reason why we heard it in the first place is just because of how the water just so happened to be dripping on another pipe and making the loud noise. Otherwise, we would've never known.

Here is the kicker...I call the president of our HOA board and tell her the situation. She tells me that if our unit is the ONLY one effected as a result of this, that it's our responsibility to pay for the damages. So, Howie went down to talk to the people that live below us. They are two single bachelors. They let Howie take a look in their laundry room and they found a small drip in their ceiling. And not only that, but their ceiling was buldging down! Their water damage must be worse than ours. So, I go back to the president of our HOA and let them know the unit below us is also effected. She says she'll get back to me. Her answer wasn't exactly what I was looking for. We have now found out that because the pipe directly services only our unit that it is OUR responsibility. And not only are we responsible for our damages, but for our neighbor beneath us, too. Terrific. We are responsible for the shortcomings of a pipe that was recalled and banned from use in the 1990's but yet overlooked when our condos were refurbished just LAST YEAR. Am I crazy or does something seem not right about this?

Twilight Woods

Bath and Body Works is coming out with a new fragrance and it is YUMMY! I haven't liked a lot of their new stuff so I was excited when I smelled a sample of this and loved it! They only have trial sizes of everything now, but the full line comes out November 2nd! If you like Bath & Body Works fragrances as much as I do you should check this one out!

Ah, Fall...I love you.

It's Fall! My favorite time of year. On Saturday morning Howie and I took a quick drive up Millcreek Canyon before meeting my brother and sister-in-law for brunch. Unfortunately, this canyon isn't a very well lit one, especially at 9am, but we still got some pretty pictures in. Hopefully you can see the pictures. This is my first time attempting a collage in Picasa.Then on Saturday evening I went to Gardner Village for their Witches Night Out! That was so much fun! It was me, my sister-in-law Cheryl, my niece Chauntay, and some of Cheryl's family. It was really neat to see how people got so creative with their costumes. These pictures are from my iPhone so I hope they look alright. Here is a hula-hooping witch.
Here is the Witches Square. This is where most of the people gathered to dance and socialize. This is also where they announced the winners for the drawings.This was my favorite witch! "Witchy Poo"! She was on the toilet in an outhouse. Very clever. We all dressed up like witches. My costume was probably the most dull. I just threw on a black robe and a black witch hat and called it good. If I end up going next year I'd like to have a better costume. Some people got REALLY into it. Holy cow. I wish I would've taken my normal camera, but all I had was my iPhone to take photos. :( Oh well. Here are some we took with my sister-in-law's camera...

Catching Fire

Love, love, loved this book! I've been done reading it for a little while now, but have just decided to blog about it. This was the second book of The Hunger Games series. I cannot wait until the third and final book comes out! Suzanne Collins is the type of author that likes to leave you hanging on a cliff at the end of each chapter and each book. This book was no different. I have no idea when the third is due out, but I can't wait! Even Howie has gotten into this series. I read the last part of this one by myself though so he doesn't know how it ends. I told him he'd have to read it himself, but maybe i'll just summarize it for him. Again, if you're looking for a good read and you like book series, definitely pick this one up. I can totally see them making a movie out of this series someday. I just hope it isn't too graphic. Hopefully, if they do decide to do a movie, they will tone it down. This series can get a little violent. Anyway, the characters definitely make it worth the read. Suzanne Collins is an excellent author.

Colbie Caillat and Howie Day... and...David Archuleta?

On Friday, October 2nd, Howie and I went to the Howie Day and Colbie Caillat concert. I was so excited to see her show because I've been a big fan of hers ever since her first album came out. Howie Day isn't bad either. After buying tickets to the show, I went on to Colbie's fan website for tour information and found out that you could sign up to win a "Meet & Greet" with Colbie. Only 9 lucky winners would have the opportunity to meet her that night. Well, as it turns out, I was one of those lucky, chosen 9! We won two tickets so, Howie and I were both able to go backstage and meet her. Here is Colbie on stage during her performance.Howie and I enjoying the show.Howie Day rockin' out! He was actually a really good performer. I'm going to have to look into getting his CD's because I really liked his music. He's got a great voice.After the show, people who bought one of Howie's CD's got to get an autograph and talk to him for a bit. We got close to the table to snap a picture of him.Here was our ticket backstage! They gave us these stickers to wear so everyone knew how V.I.P. we were.Here is the blessed picture! Me, Colbie, and Howie. They had us meet & greet in a dark, dreary room. Seriously, it was something out of a scary movie. They had a table set up with hot dog buns, beer, and some potato chips. That wasn't for us. Apparently that's what the band had before the show.I was so excited when I found out that we'd be meeting Colbie that I decided to make something for her. Since my recent hobby has been to make jewelry, I decided to make her a necklace and earring set. I found these cute pink beads and this dragonfly pendant and made this set for her...I put it in a little red mesh gift bag. She was so thankful for it! I told her "I have this little hobby of making jewelry so I made this set for you" and she goes "Oh thank you so much!" and hugged me. I think she appreciated it. I had to get an autograph so I took my copy of her new CD in with me and had her sign it.This has to win for the most random moment of the night. So, we're standing in line to meet Colbie and I hear a girl behind me say "OMG, that's David Archuleta!" and all I could think was "That girl is crazy. Why would David Archuleta be here? She must be mistaken". Then, I look where she's looking and I see, none other than, David Archuleta at my Colbie Caillat meet & greet! Haha! I told Howie "Oh, we are SO getting our picture with him!" Unfortunately, the guy in the striped shirt was ushering David out as we were walking up to him. The guy said to David "Uh, you're wanted outside." I think he was afraid that David being there was taking the attention away from Colbie because all these little kids ran up to try to get pictures with him. So, this is the only picture I got of him. Bummer. Maybe next time, David! I wanted to tell him that he and I went to the same High School. We had so much fun at the concert. I'm really glad we both enjoyed it!