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!

'Tis the Season

I love our card this year. Seriously, it looks so. good. 

Happy Holidays. 

Love, Us

Still Adjusting

I love Christmas. Like, looooove Christmas. 

In past years, I've dragged Chris with me to all sorts of Christmas-y things: the Festival of Trees, the Tree Jubilee, Temple Square to see the lights, ANY park to see the lights, sleigh rides, walking down Main Street in Cedar with cups of hot chocolate....

I'll take almost anything, people. 

But this year, with Chris working every night and me working most of them, I've realized we won't get the chance to do the Christmas things I love so much. 

And it will be a big adjustment for me. 

I miss a lot of things from our life in Cedar. 

I miss our giant Thanksgiving parties.

I miss seeing people I know around town.

I miss the cute cafe's that are open late.

I miss being able to get a freakin' scone. {SERIOUSLY. What kind of city doesn't have a good scone place??}

I miss the random late-night hangouts with friends.

 I miss friends, period.

I miss going through the drive-thru on Taco Tuesday with ten people shoved into the car. 

I miss the un-plowed roads in the winter, the cops who have nothing better to do than bust up our bonfires, and I even miss ducking my head to avoid my professors in the grocery store {because what can we possibly have to say to one another, anyway?}. 

But I suppose this move has given us a few things, too. 

I like being close to family. A 45-minute drive is immensely better than a 4-hour one. 

I like not having a bunch of single, loud, pretending-they're-not-smoking guys living above us.

I like learning to explore by myself. 

I like developing closer relationships with the few people we do know here. 

I like not having I'm-falling-off-the-edge-of-the-world gutters on every street.

And just as of a couple weeks ago, I like having my first-ever calling that does NOT involve playing the piano {i've literally only had piano-involved callings for the last TWELVE. YEARS.}.

So I guess I'm not really complaining, but I'm not really celebrating, either. This move has been full of lots of ups and downs, and I suppose I'm just going to have to learn to live with it. 

Because hey, c'est la vie.

{those four semesters of french weren't entirely wasted.}

Christmas Week: Part 1

I love Christmas. Like, loooooooooooooove it. 

It used to be because I loved the excitement of opening presents. {that hasn't entirely faded...}

But nowadays, its a mixture of the absolute joy that always seems to hang around, the celebration of Christ, the family get-togethers, the endless hot chocolate and candy, and most of all, watching other people open the gifts I got them. 

{Yay!}

Since Chris & I travel up north to be with family for the holidays, we open our presents to each other before we leave. This year, we decided that instead of opening them all on one day, we'd create a new, beautiful thing called......

Christmas Week. 

{Yaaaaay!}

We open one present a day, every day this week. 

Day #1:

I got a scarf, Chris got a Green Lantern shirt. 

Day #2:

I got BOOTS, Chris got a wrench organizer. 

Day #3:

I got a hot chocolate maker, Chris got a Hand Reflexology Kit. 

{He's already pretty amazing at it...I swear it makes my headaches feel better.}

 Oh yes. That's fur-lined on the inside all the way down.

I love the spirit of Santa. :)

The First Day of December Joyfulness...

Let the Christmas month begin!

Fittingly, it snowed today. 

Yes, I know the days are wrong. But they were right when I took this picture!

Baby, it's cold outside!

Ho-ho-holidays!

New razor!

Chris got me....tools ?? Sigh.

Christmas is always such a wonderful time of year, and this year we got to spend the holidays with our three lovely families! Christmas Eve we attended the Diepeveen annual party, where we played games and stuffed our faces. Christmas Day we split between the Robbins and the Goodwins, ending the day with a 3D viewing of Gulliver's Travels (pretty good, btw).

Grenade headphones! He's....excited?

But he also got me boots!

We definitely had some fun opening all our presents--not to mention watching everyone else open our gifts to them! We felt like we did pretty good: we got my parents a digital camera, his mom and Bart got handmade ceramics from Chris and magnets with our faces on them from me, and his dad and Rikki got a Dutch porcelain nativity set.

The cats also enjoyed themselves!

Fiyero figured out how to be King. Once Skimble climbed under the box...Fiyero sat on it! Poor Skimble was trapped under there for a while. Chris and I were laughing too hard to push Fiyero off.

 For our Christmas dinner, we ate prime rib! Yummo. And Chris was officially nominated by my mom to cook it (she admitted to being slightly scared of the giant-ness of the meat). He was a pro cook!

After it snowed on Sunday we decided to do something we hadn't done in a while--go play in it! We started off making a snowman, but my brother and Chris decided that having a snowball fight would be better. So we turned our snowman balls into forts. At least, Chris did. He managed to build a fort as tall as he was and 3 times as wide in the time it took me and Jace to build a waist-high mini wall. As Jace put it: We were screwed. Had anyone kept score, I'm sure we would have lost miserably! But we had a grand time doing it.

After that, we decided to bury Jace. Such fun.

To sum up our holidays: we played, we slept, and we ate WAY too much!

Two Holidays--One Blog.

Well aren't the holidays just awesome (And I mean they really are).

Chris & I had a rockin' night at the Fall Ball here at SUU--we got to dress up and get dinner for free! The dance was a lot of fun--and who knew I married a man with such...unique...moves? ;)

The Sunday before Thanksgiving we threw our annual Pre-Thanksgiving party. We deep-fried a TWENTY-THREE POUND turkey! Phew. We also managed to squeeze 22 people into our kitchen! It turned out to be oodles of fun and I was so grateful for all of the wonderful friends who came to spend time with us!

Here are all the pies/desserts we had...so good...

I had to wait a couple hours after dinner was over before I even had room for any! So much food!

And just this past Sunday we decided to have a 'hot chocolate party' and hand around some gifts we'd bought for our friends. We had a pretty good time watching the expressions on their faces as they opened their gifts. Russell got a baby launcher...Matt got an 'Awesome' pin....Mario got fry sauce...haha they were all pretty random! After that we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Definitely one of my top Christmas movies! 

Happy Holidays y'all. :)