Not in Hawaii

My parents are in Hawaii for 8 days (please tell me I'm not the only one who hasn't been there). It sounds like they have been having a blast.

While they're gone, Scott and I have crashed at their house to keep Luke company (aka making sure he wakes up on time for school). It has been a lot of fun, and I have loved having a two minute commute to work.

I'll preface this portion of the post by saying WE MISSED YOU ASHLEY! We had a lot of fun with our siblings this weekend and we were sad Ash was not in the mix since she's up at school.

Friday we went and saw Chipmunks 2. It cracked me up, I was a big fan of the Chipmunks cartoons when I was little, so I was not ashamed to pay $8 to see a kids movie :) I laughed a lot, it was cute and funny.

Saturday, we met up with JerMareClaire at Tucanos and ate a lot of meat. It is one of Scott's favorite places to eat out, and it was fun to take the others there for their first time! The Brazillian lemonades were good too. We were so full though.

Before and after dinner, we browsed the shops at Gateway. I almost walked out with one of these adorable monogrammed tea cups from Anthropologie, but then I realized I really didn't need one. I think it's good for me to practice some self control sometimes, I know I get what I want probably too often :)



We also visited one of our favorite stores Z Gallerie. If you haven't stopped in there before, it's worth a look! They have awesome furniture and paintings. I love that chandeliers are back in style! If I lived in a place with higher ceilings, I could totally go for this black one.


Saturday night, Luke stayed at our apartment. We all stayed up late playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii- I guess a lot of this weekend was about reverting back to childhood! Luke came to church with us Sunday and sat in Primary with me. We learned some new songs that were stuck in our heads the rest of the day.

Later, the three of us made some awesome dinner crepes that were so good. We're excited to make them for the rest of our family now that we know they work.

Hope you all had a good weekend, and here's hoping that we can go to Hawaii someday too!

Decor Project

After a year and (almost) a half of marriage, Scott and I have found that one of our very favorite things to do together is decorate our little home. Last semester Scott needed an art credit so he took interior design. He did really well at it and it was fun to work on his assignments with him.

Recently we did a design project in our living room I thought I'd share. We have an entire wall of shelves and until now they had books, movies, and mis-matched nicknacks on them. There wasn't a real rhyme or reason to them, so we decided to make it more cohesive.
Here's a picture of our blank canavas. We took colors from our living room to choose the color palette- orange, cream, and black. We also decided we wanted some glass pieces mixed in.

We bought some frames at D.I. (for .50-.75 cents each). We spray painted them cream, and also painted the base of some plants we already had.

The frames were a nice (and cheap) way to take up some space on the shelves. We didn't even end up putting pictures in all of them, some we left blank.

Here is a closeup of some of our favorite shelves. We got inspiration from the blog young house love. The jar in the far right corner is for postcards that we'll send home to ourselves from vacations we take. It should be a great way to remember fun times.

Another "memory" themed project are the jars on the lower shelf. One jar has ticket stubs from things we go to like concerts, plays, movies, sporting events, etc. The next one has mementos from vacations, and the third one has a bunch of odds and ends we collected on our honeymoon- rocks from the beach, a voucher for a free game of mini-golf we won, a bottle opener from the Grand America Hotel, stuff like that. We have six jars in all and are having fun deciding what to put in them!

One thing I knew I wanted was to have a few items on the shelves that were unusual; some things that almost don't belong. For instance, I picked out this little cake stand at Hobby Lobby.

Another thing we did was fill a glass jar (I don't have a close up picture of it) with pennies. The pennies are the perfect copper orange color. We have been picking pennies up off the sidewalk frequently, now that we have a place for them.

Our little hamster Belle lives on the shelves too. I think she likes her spot there. I love how she literally eats 'in' her food bowl. Too cute.

Anyways, here's the finished project! It was a lot of fun to put together.

We love having more of a theme in the room.

Sleigh ride together

Happy new year!

I ended up having the last half of Wednesday through now off of work this week. It was unreal! Scott and I did a lot of things with my family and we actually ended up with pictures!

My dad set up a horse drawn sleigh ride for all of us. Even my 10 month old niece and 84 year old grandmother came!






Claire was all bundled up.

Scott was excited to see these elk. This pic isn't zoomed in at all, they were really that close!



Earlier this day, Scott and my two brothers went snowboarding/skiing.

Christmas Surprises

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! From what I see on your blogs, it looks like everyone had a nice holiday. Thanks to everyone that sent us Christmas cards, we got excited every time one came.

This year we stayed with my family on Christmas eve. Christmas morning Scott was up at 5am ready to start the day. We made him go back to sleep, poor guy. Around 7:30 or 8 we woke up again :)

When we were all gathering around the tree, not quite ready to open presents yet, I heard a faint squeaking sound. I turned around and noticed it was coming from a big wrapped box in the corner. I got closer and put my ear to it and yep, there was definitely something squeaking in it!

I was curious, and I guess I finally just assumed it was for me. Without waiting for anyone, I opened the lid and peeked in the box. I saw a tiny furry thing run from one end of the box to the other and I threw off the lid!

Scott bought me the cutest little hamster for Christmas! I have wanted a pet for six months, but never thought Scott would want us to get one, let alone go and buy me one! What a sweetheart. (Scott, not the hamster. Well, actually she is too...) I was beyond excited and was so happy! We named her Belle.

I think I surprised Scott with his gift too. When we were in New York two years ago, he saw a shiny gray suit at a store in Soho and fell in love with it! He didn't buy it (partly because it was $400) and often says he regrets not getting it.

Well, gotta love Amazon.com, I found him an awesome shiny suit for less than half the New York price! I don't have a picture of him in it yet, it's getting hemmed, but this is at least a picture of the suit. Trust me, he looks incredible in it :)

Later that day we went to the Cutler Christmas party at my grandparents house, and it was so nice to get to see everyone.

On Saturday we went and saw Princess and the Frog with my family. It was pretty cute. More than anything, I was just happy to be seeing an animated Disney movie again.

That just about sums up the weekend. I'm excited to wrap up this year (which has been an awesome one) and start 2010 now!

P and E

I was so happy to be able to go down south this last weekend for my cousin Paul's wedding! His twin brother Matt was married on Valentines day this year. Paul found his perfect match Emily this summer and he has been so excited to marry her. I didn't get to meet her until the wedding, but I love her already! What a sweetheart. Both of these brothers found amazing wives, it is so fun to have new people come into our families.

As everyone down south could tell you...I was pretty sad that Scott couldn't make it :( He had to work this weekend. I still miss him quite a bit when we're apart for a few days. We were so excited to see each other again Sunday evening! I was at my parents house having dinner when Scott called saying he was on his way up. My parents hurried and set up two table settings for us and lit some candles to give us a 'romantic dinner' for two! It was too cute.

I have another run of Nutcracker this week, and need to squeeze in some Christmas shopping somehow! Violin and shopping seem like a good combo to me though, it should be a fun week.