Girls Trip 2010!!

That glorious time of year has arrived yet again - the 6th Annual Ladies Soiree! We are meeting up in California this year and I'm SO excited. It's been hectic the past few weeks and I am so looking forward to spending a few days in the sunshine with my besties.

We are staying in the infamous (you're not just famous, you're in famous...) pink bedroom at Kate's grandparents house. We will read mags by the pool, eat on the pier, spend time on the beach, shop at fashion island and laugh until we cry. And BOY will this trip be documented! So, so many pictures...I fly out in just a few hours, so I must dash. California, here I come!

The Summer Wind

Summer has arrived! And with it tons of craziness. I feel things have been going nonstop. Here's a touch on all the goodness that has been keeping me way too busy:

Cache's preschool graduation! This evening was so fun, Miss Melva was a fantastic teacher. It was hysterical watching all the kids sing their songs and recite little poems.

Cache loved Miss Melva and he loved school! He did so well, he keeps talking about how excited he is to go to his 'big school' next year.

The Utah Valley Marathon! We are idiots. The Fire Chief challenges the firefighters to run this every year and this year he thought it would be a great idea if the wives got involved! Like a fool, I agreed. I only ran the half, mind you...and that was enough. I was in SO much pain! For DAYS! Turns out you should train for those kind of things. Here we are at Brick Oven the night before for our carb load. Do you see the look of fear on my face? Aside from the misery of running, it was freezing that day. It was rainy and windy and miserable. My feet were frozen and soaked...miserable. But hey! I finished and got a medal. Cody ran the full and he was just as soggy as I was. We vowed that we'll never do that again. Ever.

BK Update! With the craziness our remodel has slowed down some, but Cody found some time to get drywall on the ceiling and around the kitchen. Do you see this little gadget? Worth it's weight in gold. We rented this little drywall-putter-upper for $20! No holding it in place, no tired arms! This thing was awesome. Next we need to tape and mud and sand and mud and sand. It's coming along! Slowly but surely...

Strawberry Days! I love Strawberry Days. We took the boys to the carnival (best people watching ever) a couple of times, look how serious Cache is about his motorcycle form?

Cody and the rest of the Honor Guard at the start of the parade...

Rodeo!

Cache had a snow cone almost every day, we ate many cups of strawberries and cream and we had a big BBQ at the department after the parade on Saturday. I just love it all. I love that we live here.

And finally? Girls Trip 2010! We are going to California this year and I am SO excited! I have been working on the packets and I think they turned out great...pictures will come soon! Our trip is THIS WEEK and I have so much to do before I leave.

Today is officially the first day of Summer, but with all the craziness I feel like I've lived through an entire Summer already. Hopefully things slow down a smidge so we can really relax and enjoy the season. Sounds like I should get a snow cone today!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

What am I loving?.....

Shopping days with my Mom. Every now and again my Mom and I will get together for a day of shopping at some local treasure troves; Tai Pan, The Gatehouse, Planted Earth, Gardner Village, etc. We recently discovered the Hobby Lobby and came home with some great finds!

We started by lunching at Rubio's. D. Lish! Mmm, it was so good and we were deep in chat before realizing we needed to get to the shopping. I should mention that we normally begin our Halloween shopping in July (just like everyone else, right?), but we found a few things during this June trip that had us longing for spooks. For example - we hit the back corner and were flipping out over the darling (and huge) doll houses and all the mini trinkets you can put inside. Then we thought, "...dude, we could make Halloween houses. Decorate them all spooky!!" There may have been squeals, I don't really remember.

We purchased this little model and have plans to cover the walls with our own wallpaper (Halloween scrapbook paper), bought some wee books and plan to thread them with wire to make them look like their floating across the room, a candleabra that is floating down the staircase...right?!!? So great! We are so totally excited. This is the beginning of a mania, I can feel it. (PS - how great if we had movie themed houses? 'Nightmare Before Christmas', 'Young Frankenstein', 'Clue'....). I will keep you posted on the progress, so exciting!!

Hobby Lobby was having a ginormous sale and I bought these fabulous black cake plates for a STEAL - two for $20.

At one point we were looking at some glass domes and my Mom said, "Ooh, those would be perfect on a table with a head underneath." I nodded in agreement..paused...then asked, "Is there something wrong with us?"

We grabbed a quick dinner and drove to The Chocolate in Orem. Have you sampled their goodness? The wee, sweet bakery is in this little restored house (so cool) and is filled with decadent desserts. Not to mention these gorgeous glass cake plates...I need one in every color.


My slice of chocolate cake was super tasty and I'm already planning on having my Birthday celebration there. Save the date!

We spent more time at Hobby Lobby than we had anticipated, so that was our only stop. Spending time with her is so much fun, it doesn't really matter where we go. A lovely day out with my Mom, it doesn't get better than that.

Whoa, wait! I need to mention that my sister and her family were in town over Memorial Day weekend and we had a ball as per the usge. My Mom, Andrea, Jess and I drove up to Tai Pan and made out like bandits! Here are some of my treasures:

Those wee little jars? With those lids?? Fantastic. We all fell in love with the square-based candle sticks. The carved one I intend to turn into a lamp. Any suggestions on what color I should paint it? Mustard yellow, perhaps?
Speaking of painting, could you DIE over this frame? We all got one. I'm in love with it. Again, planning on painting it.

Jess introduced us to the most fabulous consignment store up in SLC called Emilie Jayne (if you want to go, I will SO go with you). I am all a gush-gush about this place, it has the coolest stuff from super old light bulbs to luggage to end tables - and it's all priced so well!

I only got a few trinkets - the tin pattern box and these great little s&p shakers. Another thing? They have their store organized by color. Brilliant. I will be back! Halloween is coming up, after all.

BK Update

I feel like I'm camping. Last week we removed the kitchen cabinets, countertops, sink and dishwasher. I have no kitchen.

I had the bright idea to list our cabinets on ksl.com. Since the uppers were already gone, I thought, "Hey! I'll just list them and that should give us a few days to get things in order before we remove the base cabinets". Well, they sold in 20 minutes. A guy called from Brigham City and said he could come down and pick them up in two hours. Perfect! We were stoked! As we started to clean out the drawers I asked Cody, "So, will the dishwasher just slide over right next to the sink?", he replied, "Yeah. Well....wait, we'll need to remove the sink cabinet...". "Oh...Oooh....". We then sat there. Silent. For about 6 seconds. Then I finally said, "We're kind of screwed, aren't we." Cody's response? "Yes. Yes we are.".

So the cabinets came out. Here I am sitting where the sink used to be, realizing that we'll be eating off paper plates and washing any dishes in the bathroom sink (although I think I'll find a washing storage tub to keep outside...).

What do we eat? Lots of sandwiches, fruit...sandwiches. We have our grill, so hamburgers and hot dogs are on the menu this week. We do still have a microwave so we can cook some things in a pinch. Our friends Marc and Jessica took pity on us and invited us over for Sunday dinner. If you're feeling generous, we're now accepting meals!

Our new wall is up! It was a lot of work (mostly done by Cody) and I LOVE it. We moved the East wall into the living room by 10 inches. Doesn't seem like a big amount, but we're going to gain some serious space in the kitchen because of it.

I'm loving the pony walls - we love how open it feels.
View from the piano...
See that beam? I helped install that beam! It was heavy and a pain, but I did it.
The lame dropped ceiling...I have no idea why these were popular. Rather than go up in the attic and try to move all the insulation out of the way, we just decided to tear down the ceiling and let the insulation fall.


It was a dusty, fuzzy, ENORMOUS mess. It took us 4 hours and 20 (twen.ty.) garbage bags to clean it all up.

Our new ceiling!...sort of. It makes the kitchen feel so much bigger.

Don't let anyone tell you that light placement is easy. I thought for sure we knew where we wanted our can lights to go until we actually had to install them. We kept changing our minds and then changing them again. We'd install 3 of them and then change where the next 2 were going. Ugh. But we did finally get them all in! Huzzah!

Cody worked on the wiring last night and will probably finish that up today. We're hoping to start hanging some drywall today and maybe (fingers crossed!) we'll get the ceilings finished up this week! Then we can refinish the floors...and THEN we can install our new kitchen sink and dishwasher.