.home tour

So... we are moving. There is an opportunity to help Dan's parents fix up their duplex that we didn't want to pass up. I am sure that there will be plenty of posts about that in the future :)
I thought that since I had some nice pictures of our townhome that we took for the rental ad, I would post them for posterity.

{Entry}
*any wall that is NOT white, we were lucky enough to paint ourselves.

{Living Room}
*we sold our couch... looks empty without one.

{Kitchen}
*dan built all of the wood trimming, columns, installed the tile backsplash & the lights above the bar.

{Loft}
*dan built the desk, which is yet again a built-in one that stays with the home.

{Laundry Room}

{3rd Bedroom}
*in the 5 years that we have lived in a townhome with 3 bedrooms... we have yet to put this room to good use. dan installed the ceiling fan.

{The Boy's Room}
*we painted, dan installed the chair moulding, the ceiling fan. The toddler bed is from walmart, the crib we found on ksl and painted it black (and uninstalled all the dropside hardware to make it stationary), the rocking chair we got for free from one of dan's coworkers and we painted it black (still needs to be upholstered), the dresser we got from my sister (still needs to be painted black), and dan did all the built-in shelving in the closet... it was/still is a project!

{master bedroom}
*we painted, dan installed the ceiling fan, and he built every piece of furniture in the room and the massive/awesome picture frame above the dresser.

{Basement}
*dan did everything- framing, electrical/lighting, hvac, drywall, flooring. Still needs trimwork, blinds & doorknobs.

To be completely honest, it took a little while for me to really love this home. It will be a hard to leave so much hard work and a little peice of ourselves here, I really do love it now.  :)
Which makes me happy that we are not selling, and that we will be renting it out.

christmas lights---> temple square 2010

Everyone in Utah goes to see the lights on Temple square before Christmas... I LOVE it. We could have stayed all night talking pictures. In fact, it was December 2004, when Dan and I were seeing the lights that we had become offically engaged. :)
My favorite part was seeing all of the nativities from around the world. It inspired me to want to start collecting them for my home! Wouldn't that be a fun tradition? *hint for dan...

new shoes & studio

Yesterday we spontaniously went to the Nike Store and bought the boys some new shoes. It was a blast! Easton actually needed a pair of new shoes, and poor Nixon will never actually "need" a new piece of anything ever, because he is exactly the same size/season for his age as Easton was... the poor kid will have live with the hand-me-down's. At least most of the time.

Easton- shoe size 10                                   Nixon- shoe size 4


2011 & resolutions

As the begining of a new year opens, I am happy to share that I have achieved my goal for 2010 to loose the baby weight. I am not writing this to boast... because I know that this is only temporary. Age, and the hope of being pregnant again someday will change my appearance and I'm okay with that. That is how life goes. I am writing because how many times in a girl's life can she say that she is actually at her "happy weight"? (not that I couldn't stand to go to the gym to tone up, which should be my goal for 2011) That in and of itself is worth a small pat on the back, right? I also wanted to share with everyone what worked well for me. I wont go too much on a soapbox, because I could go on and on about it... I started with weight watchers, and even though I didn't stick with it I really believe that it helped me get a good base and to really pay attention to everything that I ate (and am eating). The key to really helping me to loose the extra weight (I lost 14 lbs total) is going off of dairy completely. I have been working at going dairy free for 3 years now. I started with milk, my family drinks rice, almond and coconut milk now. That was the easiest switch and I haven't looked back since. It was just that for about a year, mostly to get Dan and our budget adjusted, I then switched to a dairy-free butter, and stopped buying yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream... which wasn't too bad either. The killer- was and still is: CHEESE and the "hidden" milk in pretty much everything processed. I can't lie and say that I didn't cheat over the holidays, because I did. But that is also how life goes, and I plan to cheat every once in a while. But I now feel sick to my stomach everytime I do...

Here is a link that is helpful for anyone wanting to try it out.

What do you do with your picky eater?

Nixon is his very own person, and anyone that knows Easton also knows that I have NO experience in the "picky eater" category... these pictures were taken before he would even take a bite to TRY it, everything is automatically assumed yucky.  He is also loosing weight, because he really wont eat until he is absolutely starving... which is also effecting my sleep.

Things Nixon will eat everytime:
bread
bananas

and anything that I don't approve of him eating.