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!