Christmas

Doug and I spent Christmas with my dad in Reno, NV. I found some pictures on my camera. There are more than two, but I am only putting these up, because the other ones are very unflattering (is that a word?) So here is a picture of Doug and a picture of me holding up our stockings on Christmas day.

Broken Washing Machine

Doug and I went down to Reno for Christmas. We had a lot of fun. My siblings are getting sooo big! and my dad and step mom announced that they're having another baby! I'll be the 3rd oldest of 13!!! (Kassi's son, Cameron will be older than his Aunt/Uncle)
After we had Christmas with my dad, Doug and I drove to down to Tracy for another Christmas with my mom.
It was way fun to see them too. We had a fun Christmas and during the weekend we played lots of games and Doug and I got to go to the Jelly Belly Factory.
While we were planning our trip I totally made a goal to eat at all my favorite things:
In N Out (several times)
Vietnamese food
Strings
& Sausage Pancakes
Goal COMPLETED.
When we got back at about 1am on Tuesday morning, I immediately opened up my suitcase and threw all the whites into the washing machine. I woke up the next morning and went to switch the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer and found that the washing machine had stopped working mid-cycle. The thing was filled with soapy water. So last night Doug and I had to go to the laundromat and wash everything. Our dryer works though, so we took home all our wet clothes from the laundromat and took them home to dry. (not awkward at all...)
The landlords came down to take a look at it yesterday and he found the broken part, but he said the new part won't get here until next week. So we'll see how it goes.

We're Still Alive

I told you guys I'm a bad blogger. Today is My and Doug's 1st anniversary! It's been a really fun year so far. I hope next year will be just as fun! Doug and I made Salmon for dinner in remembrance of our first date. For our first date, Doug and I went to the winter formal at BYU-I. Before the dance we went over to Doug's apartment and he made me some delicious salmon. So we recreated the scene tonight. We didn't eat the top of our wedding cake, because... well.. it had already been eaten. We ate it on our honeymoon, it was just too good to not eat as soon as we could!
Doug and I really enjoyed our little date tonight. We're still in love as ever!
One year down, forever to go! :)

Pillowcase

I just finished a pillowcase! This one will go to Michaela.

Here are some close-ups of the fabric:

Don't you love it?

Baby Blanket

I finished a baby blanket! I'm thinking I'll give it to my nephew cameron for christmas this year. Here it is:

It's not perfect, but hey, it's my first blanket! I think it turned out pretty cute!

Here's a close-up. The blue isn't really that bright in real life. The entire back of the blanket is the green color.

Home Improvements

So I really hate my home decor right now. I've been researching ways I can spruce up a small space on a small budget and I've come across some great ideas, but now I just have to come across the junk to make it happen. If any of you come across any cheap deals on furniture, lamps, small decorations (mostly for hanging) OR if you have any good decorating tips please let me know!! I welcome any and all suggestions you have for me!

Some of the ideas I've come across (Mainly from http://www.allthingsthrifty.blogspot.com/):

1) If you don't have a headboard you can get a curtain rod and drape a nice quilt or thick piece of your favorite fabric over the rod and have that hang down the wall at the head of your bed. (way simple and fairly inexpensive depending on the fabric you choose)

OR another headboard idea is to buy a large piece of ply-wood (this would need to be measured with the length of the bed and however high you want it) and then again get a large piece of fabric and fold it over the wood- stapling it to the back of the board. Then just lean it against the wall and push your bed up against it.

2) Spray Paint is your friend. If you find a great lamp or some other piece of home furnishing that is great except for the color (anything from DI, pretty much), just buy some spray paint and change it! For lamps, there are spray paints that look metallic-y, so your guests can't tell you've painted over it.

Doug and I recently put up a couple new shelves in our living room to put our speakers on (surrounding the fireplace) I love how it looks now. It makes the hearth so much less crowded. We also got a fake plant to put on the hearth instead of the speakers and it really helps liven the room up.  We're just taking small steps right now. But hopefully it'll look much better soon!

Motorized Scooter

Doug and I are the proud owners of a Scooter. It's so much fun and we can park it anywhere. We found a great deal on craigslist.org and Doug's parents helped us get it. It's going to be a sad day when winter finally comes and we won't be able to ride it for a while. But it's definitely a great vehicle for getting around Rexburg.

The Drive-In

Sorry I'm posting so many all in one day, but I want to get all my old stuff out of the way so I can start posting new adventures I'm going to have!

Not too long ago, Doug and I (and a couple of our friends; Matt and Kayla) went to the drive-in theater here in Rexburg. It was so much fun! We watched TRANSFORMERS and THE PROPOSAL. The proposal is seriously one of my new favorite movies. If you haven't seen it, you must. I love the part where she's "chanting" with the grandmother and she starts singing, "to the window, to the wall..." Doug and my friends had no idea what that song was. I think that's the funniest part, because that song came out when I was like what? 13 or 14? It's definitely been around a while! Anyway, I loved the drive-in. We brought a cooler and had ice cream, chips and salsa (not all together) while we watched a movie outdoors.

Camping

This summer Doug and I went camping up at Cave Falls. No, we didn't get to see the falls. Apparently the cave had collapsed. But we had a great time camping. We only camped for one night and then headed home the next day. But we had some friends come visit us that night and they stayed up late with us and we ate junk food and hot dogs and played a few games on the picnic table. Doug took a few pictures on his phone of our first camping trip together:

This is me putting on my shoes so we could go on a walk.

Here's me after we got the tent set up. I was arranging our sleeping bags. (p.s. we have the best sleeping bags ever. They're definitely not easy to store, but man they keep you so toasty warm.)

And here is the campsite that we stayed at.

Halloween

Doug and I threw a halloween party this passed week. At the party we had a bean bag toss (pictured above; I made homemade bean bags), a cake walk, "pin the wart on the witch", and we had a doughnut on a string eating contest. (I lost) We also had tons of food. I made personal pizzas for everyone (I tried to make it look like a jack o lantern) and then homemade punch and dirt dessert cups.
I think overall the party was a success. It was fun to get to see some friends I hadn't seen in a while. Later that night we watched Arachnophobia, and let me tell you, even though it was made in like the 90's. That movie is still super creepy!

St. Anthony Bike Ride

A while ago, Doug and I went on a bike ride in St. Anthony, ID. Which is only about 15 minutes away from rexburg. The trail we rode on was a paved walkway and it was right next to the highway. There were tons of weird bushy plants and a river flowing next to the trail (which meant lots of bugs in the face while we were riding!) We even got to see a snake on the trail. I was not excited. I was in front, so I saw the snake first. I thought I was going to run it over and I screamed. Luckily though, I slowed down enough that I just barely missed it.

** You probably can't see it, but in the picture Doug's eye is totally red (a bug flew right into his eye as he was riding his bike)

Yellowstone National Park

So this isn't very recent, but over the summer Doug and I went to Yellowstone National Park (some friends of ours gave us a partially used pass, so we didn't have to pay to go) It was really fun. I had never been there before. Doug had been there once before with his family. We didn't go very far into the park. It was way crowded there the day we went. Traffic was terrible; there were people stopping in the middle of the road, getting out of their cars to take pictures of animals on the side of the road. Sometimes it was a cool animal like a bear, but other times it was just like a racoon or something. It was pretty lame. So we were pretty tired by the time we actually got out of the car. We didn't stay very long at all, but we saw the melting mud pots and we walked around all the small geysers and then finished up by seeing Old Faithful. I was surprised by just how terrible geysers smell. It's smelled like dirt and bad eggs mixed together and boiled at 1000 degrees farenheit.
This is a picture of what I'm not sure. I'm about 40% sure it's a geyser but the 60% thinks it's just a hot spring. I'll leave it up to you to decide for yourself what it actually is.
That little sign in the corner of the picture says "chinese spring," why it's chinese? I have no idea. But I loved how all throughout yellowstone there were these huge designs in the sand and in the rocks that were gorgeous colors. It was just from the hot flowing water and the fungus growing on top of it. It smelled terrible, but it looked great. There were all sorts of colors: red, green, dark blue, yellow, pink, orange. It was way pretty.
Doug and his camera. I have no idea what he was taking a picture of, but I thought I would put this one up on the blog, because when I think of Yellowstone I think of this sight right here. Doug + Camera.
I'm probably the biggest nerd ever, but I took this picture because to me it looks like the U.S. and how great is that? The first U.S. National Park has a hot spring in the shape of the United States. What a patriotic body of water! (if you can't see the U.S., it also looks like a big whale...)
Here's Old Faithful. It took FOREVER for it to finally shoot up. For about 20 minutes we watched it trail out of the hole like so. (the above picture) It was way boring.
Finally the smoke started to trail upward and it would tease us for another 10-15 minutes. It was more promising than the horizontal smoke though, that's for sure! Finally it shot up and it was HUGE. It didn't shoot straight up like this picture makes you think. It worked it's way up that high like a pot of boiling water. It started out small and then gradually got taller and taller. It was pretty fun to watch. It was very very hot water too. They make everyone stand pretty far away from the geyser, but even standing several yards away you can still feel the heat. (It was already a hot day, so the geyser wasn't helping much) Oh yeah, and it was stinky.

The Beginning of Blogging.

Doug and I don't do much, and we rarely take pictures. This blog may get pretty boring. But I'm going to try to keep you all as updated as possible. We'll see how it goes!

-Kendra