DIY Pendant Lamp

Hello blogging world! 

I am not dead.

And with that intro, let's move on. For Christmas, my husband found this amazing vanity at the D.I. We started redoing it almost immediately, so I didn't quite get a chance to snap a before picture.

Here it is in the process of repainting.

And here it is, finished! BEAUTIFUL.

However, in order to do my makeup, I needed a light source. We had an old pendant lamp from Ikea, but I didn't like the shape of it. Here's what I came up with instead:

To start, you need the basket from a hanging planter, spray paint, a wire crystal garland, and a pendant lamp kit { I think you can find them at home improvement stores}.

First, spray paint your basket. If you like.

Then, take your garland and just haphazardly wrap it around the basket however you like. You could use anything you wanted to wrap the basket- rope, pearls...get creative!

Then, we just zip-tied the light to the top of the basket. 

Amazingly simple.

I can't believe I get to do my makeup & jewelry in front of this!

Halloween 2013

Does it make me nerdy because I like the fact that "Halloween 2013" is a rhyme?

Let me tell you, we had sooooo much fun this Halloween! It wasn't hard to beat last year though, with Chris working and me not doing anything. 

We sure turned that around this year!

 

We decided to dress up about two days before this. That's kinda how I roll though, I'm not excited, not excited, not excited, then suddenly within 2-5 days before Halloween I suddenly catch the bug and go all "LET'S DO THIS!" 

But, I think our costumes came together pretty dang well for such short notice. 

We started off the night with a minor candy crisis. You have to understand, since we've been married, we've never had trick-or-treaters. First we lived in a college town, in a basement: no trick-or-treaters. Then, we moved up north, again into a basement: no trick-or-treaters. So obviously, once we moved into our house, what reason had we to expect any different?

Except....

children overrun the ENTIRE neighborhood here. ESPECIALLY on Halloween. 

There are over 150 kids JUST in our ward.

So 5:30pm rolls around, and I can't figure out why our doorbell keeps ringing.

When it finally clicked, Chris & I shared a mutual look of horror. We had zero candy. We frantically dug through boxes, kitchen drawers, and backpacks to finally come up with a half-bag of airheads. Chris used those while I ran to the store and picked up 3 more bags. We were only going to be home for about 45 minutes, or as long as it took us to get our costumes on, and then we were going to Chris's mom's for some homemade chili. Mmmm. So of course I figured that 3 bags would be more than enough. 

{Do you like the skeleton photo-bomber?}

Well, in the short half-hour it took us to get ready, we ran through ALL. THREE. BAGS.

Holy trick-or-treaters batman.

At Susan's house we enjoyed some delicious food, and tried to avoid getting detention from Professor Snape.

Next in line for the night was a dance at the U of U. We met up with a couple friends and their friends, and danced and shouted and put our hands up like the ceiling couldn't hold us. 

{see what I did there?}

But really, it was so much fun. 

After a few hours of music madness we hopped over to visit my brother who happens to be attending school there. And then finally, at about 1am, a very tired mad hatter and her king of hearts crawled into bed and called it quits.

It was a great Halloween!

Bright & Sunshiney

Happy Anniversary to us! 

Our official anniversary is on May 29th, but because it fell in the middle of the week this year, we decided to celebrate the weekend before by taking a much-needed vacation to California. And it was fantastic!

We started off with the San Diego Safari Park.. 

They have this awesome train that takes you around a 100-acre preserve full of animals! Besides that, you can walk around the rest of the park and see a ton of other exhibits. 

My feet were incredibly tired after that day.

That was about as adventurous as we got. The next few days we planned to do nothing but beach.

Corona del Mar is gorgeous.

That was our first beach. After chilling there all day, that night we headed over to a cousin's wedding.

Sorry, we we were too busy dancing to take any pictures. {true story.}

The next day, we decided to try Laguna Beach. We spent the first half of the day walking around the hundreds of little shops that surround the beach, eating eclairs and cream horns from a sweet little bakery.

And then it was just beach and more beach.

With the occasional pause.......

....to enjoy the water.

And then we found this awesome lookout point and wanted to get a picture. But since the only people to ask were a homeless man and a hippie doing a drug deal, we decided to improvise.

Not bad. 

All in all, we got sunburned, ate too much food, drank too much ginger ale, got to play with my aunt's two crazy dogs, and had a great vacation.

 

Three years, and we're still pretty much in love {pretty much}. 

Love Week: DIY

I LOVE DIY.

I don't know that much more needs to be said.

I love DIY dishtowels.

I love DIY maxi-skirts.

I love DIY refashioning.

I love DIY gifts...and DIY decor.

The DIY possibilities are endless!

I've redone end tables, re-purposed an old sweater, repainted thrift store frames, and refashioned everything from new knit fabric to oversized old tees.

DIY is FUN.

You really ought to try it sometime. As my husband always reminds me, the worst case scenario is that you might have to DIY again. 

Three Years Ago....

This happened.

Yep. Those are real flames, that's my real husband, and indeed it does say, "Will U Marry Me?"

December 17th will always have a special place in my heart. 

And although we couldn't do a whole lot of celebrating regarding the day we first met and a year later got engaged on, we still toasted our luck with some late-night sparkling cider, admired my wedding ring {never gets old!}, and reminisced about our past four years of friendship and two and a half years of marriage.

We decided we really don't have it all that bad.

For those of you who swear the first couple years of marriage are the hardest, well....sucks for you.

They were pretty grand for us. 

DIY Leg Warmers

Okay, this idea has been all over Pinterest, but it really only just clicked with me. 

You can take an old sweater, cut off the sleeves, and turn them into leg warmers! 

And guess what? THEY ACTUALLY KEEP YOUR LEGS WARM.

Who knew??! 

Just cut the sleeves to the length you want, take them in to fit, and then hem!

Now, my legs are deliciously warm ALL the time. 

Amazing! 

Part 2 {Hawaii continued}

And now we're on to part 2 of our Hawaii trip.

Wednesday morning my brother dragged himself out of bed and went with my parents to the wedding rehearsal. 

There he is, pushing fake grandma in her fake wheelchair.

Chris & I, however, had the morning to ourselves. So where did we go? 

The open-air, four-story mall of course.

And since we were in a high-class mall with stores like Cartier, Kate Spade, and Juicy....

....we had to go to PretzelMaker.

Then we met up with my brother and headed to the International Marketplace while my parents enjoyed a night to themselves for their anniversary. 

Thursday we woke up BEFORE the crack of dawn to get on a bus that would take us to Pearl Harbor.

This turned out to be a terrible idea. What would have, in our car, taken us maybe 20 minutes, took us 2 and and a half hours on the bus. TWO and A HALF hours. With commentary from the bus driver.

Once we got to Pearl Harbor, we taught the pigeons tricks, walked through the museums, and took a ferry out to the memorial.

It's a beautiful memorial. It makes me sad to think of how many people died and are still trapped on the ship even now, decades later. 

There's a spot on the Arizona that still leaks oil, even today. 

After the harbor, we headed back to get ready for the main event--the WEDDING.

{i love weddings!}

The leis were in honor of the groom's {and my mother's} parents, who have passed away. 

It was lovely. The beach, the sunset, and the gorgeous, eloquent ceremony. My mom totally cried.

Then we headed inside the GIANT {ridiculously expensive} hotel they were staying in {seriously, they had a dolphin pool in the backyard}for dinner and dancing. 

Kim, the bride, is a nationally-renowned dancer, so she performed a dance just for her husband. 

{awwwww.}

The next day was BEACH DAY! We started out with a submarine ride.

Which was pretty cool for everyone. Except Chris. Who apparently gets mad motion-submarine sick.

But he did recover.

There's totally a turtle in that last picture. 

Then we squeezed every last hour we could out of the sun and enjoyed the beach to its fullest. 

It's so great to be a sibling.

Then we had a crazy-good dinner at this suuuper high-end restaurant. Like the kind of restaurant where you get teeny  tiny portions because the food is so good.

Saturday we packed up our hotel rooms and went out for a last breakfast with my uncle and his {now} wife. They're cool like that.

This is what Chris had:

Yep. That's a burger. 

{granted, it did have an egg, hashbrowns, and bacon on it...but still.}

Then we caught a bit of a parade, went shopping again, and found the best shave ice stand ever.

Then we spent the last of the afternoon on Waikiki beach, watching crazy people jump off the boardwalk into water clear {and shallow} enough to see the rocks at the bottom.

Oh, and Santa was there. No biggie.

Moral of story? Hawaii is awesome. 

One day I'll make it back.