Sewing Project #2

Well, I definitely have not been good with updating this blog. Sorry about that. I guess it has not been on the top of my list of things to do. Plus, I don't think we have had very many exciting things happen lately.

Sam and I are SO over school at the moment. We will both graduate in May (although I will have a few classes during the summer) and we couldn't be more excited! It is definitely taking its toll on our motivation though. 

So I realized that I never posted my second sewing project on here. It's pretty sad, though, that I did this back in December. It is actually Sam's Christmas present. He wanted an apron, so that is exactly what he got. He is pretty much the brains behind the entire operation... I only did the sewing.

The apron is a little dirty because he had already put the apron to good use by the time I got around to taking a picture of it. Sam insisted on having the front made out of terry cloth (towel material) so that he could just wipe his hands on the apron... which is why there are stains on it. Unfortunately, the only colors of terry cloth we found at the fabric stores were pastel colors (which are super girly) so we decided on white... even though white gets dirty easily. We were originally going to make the apron a University of Utah apron (shocker!) but then we decided on this. The back and lining is actually little red and gray football helmets... so it still looks kind of like a Utah one.

Sam also wanted his apron to snap in the back and not have a tie, so this is our solution to that dilemma. Pretty genius, eh?

Sam's apron is definitely a unique one! When we were at Joann's getting the fabric cut the lady asked us what we were making and when we told her, she looked at us like we were psycho in the head. She actually wasn't all that nice to us and made us feel stupid about our idea. IF ONLY SHE COULD SEE IT NOW! Haha. The apron turned out great and Sam loves it. It was the perfect gift for him because he loves helping in the kitchen and is such a wonderful cook!

As a side note, my grandma officially gave me her sewing machine (after a lot of convincing on my part). I am stoked! I just need to find a new project now...

Christmas Stockings

Sewing project #2 = DONE. On Thanksgiving I made Sam and I's Christmas stockings. My mother-in-law, LuAnn, has made all her kids, their spouses, and grandkids such cute stockings that I decided I wanted to make Sam and I's stockings. LuAnn went with me to pick out fabric and helped me throughout the entire process... and I must say that I am SO grateful because I definitely could not have done it without her! I am still a beginner with this whole sewing business. It was fun to make the stockings though. They were not all that difficult and they turned out great!! I LOVE the fabric... neither are traditional Christmas colors/fabrics but I think they are super cute!

My stocking is on the left and Sam's is on the right.

My next project? A Christmas tree skirt. We will see how that one goes. Wish me luck!

Fall Fun

It is crazy how fast this year has gone by! It is almost over... which means that the semester is almost over as well. Thank goodness! Sam and I have really been enjoying the fall. We love the colors of the changing leaves, football season, going on walks in the crisp cold air, and snuggling up on the couch to keep warm. Hopefully the lack of continual snow holds up for a few more weeks! I am not holding my breath though...

Sam and I have done a few exciting things lately! Things that most people would probably think are really not exciting at all. A couple of weeks ago we decided we didn't want to sit at home (like we usually do) on a Friday night, so we ventured to Macy's. We still had gift cards from the wedding so we decided we would go see what we could find to spend them on :). We got a meat grinder attachment for our KitchenAid which we think is pretty sweet... AND, while we were there, I found this little gem... don't worry, I didn't buy it. I just thought it was hilarious.

For Halloween we really didn't do anything special, considering I had class the night of Halloween. We did carve pumpkins though... which I LOVE to do! Last year I pretty much did all the pumpkin carving myself and Sam tried to take credit for it (even though he hardly did anything). This year though, Sam will have you know that he did pretty much everything. The only thing I did was come up with what the pumpkin would look like. Otherwise, Sam did everything else.

Isn't it so cute? We love the little Utah mouth with the lonely tooth in it.

Just last weekend we had our niece, Lucy, over Friday night to hang out. She kept telling her parents that she wanted to have a sleepover with us and we would definitely not turn down an offer like that (since we are the favorite aunt and uncle after all). While she did not end up sleeping over, we still had a good time playing with her. We built a fort in our living room, moved the TV into the fort, and watched "Tangled." I had already seen the movie a handful of times but I would never say no to watching it another time... it's just so cute!

Cute Lucy in the fort waiting so patiently for the movie to start.

Last thing... I had been SO bugged by the completely bare walls in our room (seriously, there was absolutely nothing hung up) that I decided it was time for me to take action. It took a while for the project to get completed, but it is finally done! It is nothing extravagant but it is better than nothing! I am very happy with the finished product!

This is up right above our bed. I love it!!

Projects...

Once again, I have failed at blogging. Life just gets so busy sometimes! I really have been meaning to update this thing but just have not gotten around to it.

Nothing terribly exciting has happened around here lately. Just the same old school, work, homework, and (unfortunately) watching really sad Utah football games. (Side note: it is not fun watching your football team lose pretty bad game after game. The Utes need to get their acts together pronto!). We have, however, done a couple fun projects lately.  

For one, Sam and his brother Jon put bead board up on the back of our kitchen counter so it looks much prettier now!

One thing I did a couple weeks ago was make a cute Halloween runner for our kitchen table! And the coolest thing about it? I sewed it all by myself!! For me this was a HUGE accomplishment. I literally had never really sewed anything my entire life. Very sad, I know. Luckily I have a mother-in-law who is great at sewing and she taught me how to do it! Well okay, she taught me the beginning steps. She was very patient while I made the runner (probably took me a million times longer than it would take her) and let me/made me do all the sewing myself. For those of you who know me know what a perfectionist I am. This does not help projects like these go fast AT ALL. But I persevered and finally did it!

Isn't it so cute?! I must say, I am pretty proud of this thing. Hopefully my first of many sewing projects. (I am determined to learn how to sew well).

I especially like it with my cute pumpkin candle holder :)

As a side note, I just have to tell about something cute Sam did for me last week. Mondays I get home late from class and Sam is kind enough to make us dinner those nights. So... last Monday night this is what I came home to:

The picture doesn't do it justice (camera is still dead) but he bought me flowers, had a candlelit dinner, had romantic music on, and made some delicious food! Isn't that SO cute?!?! Seriously I was so happy I could hardly contain myself. I know I am a little biased, but I think I have the best husband EVER!!!!!

Our new kitchen... and other fun things

I am so sorry that I have failed, once again, at updating our blog on a regular basis. Sam and I have been so incredibly busy! On top of finishing another semester of school, we had two funerals on back-to-back Saturdays in July because there were two deaths in my family exactly one week apart... but on different sides of the family (my grandpa passed away and one of my cousins was killed), AND THEN we did some home improvement on our kitchen! The home improvement included: laying down 98 tiles, new cabinets under the sink, bruised knees, dirty clothes, about 20 trips to Home Depot, and an incredibly messy house just to fix a $7 part. And yes, you heard me right... only to fix a $7 part. What the heck?!

Here is what happened... a couple of weeks ago I went to the sink in our kitchen and right after I stepped in front of the sink, my socks were soaked. I looked down to see that a LOT of the carpet in front of the sink was all wet. And I could not figure out where the water was coming from. Awesome right? I showed Sam and LuAnn (Sam's mom) after dinner and they figured out that the water heater was leaking and somehow came into our kitchen. Luckily, all we had to do was replace the plug to the water heater and we were good to go (hence, the $7)! Except that somehow we didn't stop there. We pulled up the carpet with the intention to let it dry but then discovered that the tack strips were coming up with the carpet and that it was just a mess underneath the carpet. LuAnn had been wanting to tile the kitchen downstairs for a while (we live in her basement apartment) so she figured now was a good time to do it. She also wanted to get new cabinets for one side of the kitchen, so we replaced those too. Basically, replacing the $7 part turned into a huge project. Quite funny if you ask me. It was my first time ever doing a project like this so it was quite an experience. I enjoyed it for the most part though. And to see the finished product (well mostly finished product) it was all worth it!!

We didn't really take pictures before we started the entire thing (with all of the stuff in the kitchen) but here is what it looked like before we started tiling (with the new cabinets already in)...

We signed the last tile before we put it in...

 Us putting the last tile in...

 Tired and dirty after a long day of hard work...

So this is what our house looked like for 5 days. I did not love the mess. I do not handle messes very well. I was stressed out about it most days and just avoided the downstairs all together.

Our new cabinets!! Plus a little bit of the tile.

Our new kitchen! Don't worry, it's not done yet. The back of the counter has to be replaced and so does all the molding along the floor. But it looks so pretty! And is SO much nicer! We are loving the tile.

Just a few side notes, here is a little project I did the other day that took hardly any time at all. I have been wanting a cute centerpiece for our kitchen table so I stole this idea off of this blog and thought I would give it a try.

Not too bad right?! The lady got the idea from Anthropologie and let's be honest, who doesn't love Anthropologie? I know I do. But their stuff is way too expensive for me. I thought this was a cute idea and it really was super easy.

As another side note, here are some darling pictures that Sam has taken lately of our cute nieces and nephew that we adore:

Lucy Goosey (aka Lucy)

Whitters (aka Whitney)

 Chewy/Baby Matthew (aka Matthew)... he fell asleep in my arms... how cute is that?!