Favorite Date

Ok, i admit it, i am kind of a home body. i like to go out but since meeting Joe, i love to stay in. wanna know what my favorite date is? it's this.

A bottle of Martinelli's Sparkeling cider, water crackers, a wedge of smoked gouda, and my hubby. 

it doesn't get any better.

Thanksgiving

This is my Thanksgiving contribution. Grandma Buck and Mom did everything else but i made these.

Nothing beats a good pie!So I made 6!

2 pumpkin, cherry, apple, and 2 lemon meringue.

Happy Halloween

Having studied costume design in college I LOVE Halloween. In recent years I've been a Leprechaun, the Wicked Witch, and Judy Jetson. When I met Joe I had the fun new challenge of couple costumes. Joe and I have been Jack Skellington & Sally Stitches, Mario & Luigi, and Orville Reddenbacker & the Morton Salt Girl. This year we've been hooked on a series called 'Merlin' based in Camelot. I made our costumes as Prince Arthur and Gwen.

See what you think.

I need to take a picture of the dragon I sewed onto Joe's tunic. You can't see if in these pictures because he has the chainmail on but it's a gold dragon. It looks totally sweet!

Here's the pumpkins we carved too.

 Oogy Boogy

Sally Stitches

 Yeah, if you can't tell we love the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Also, here's some pics of the costumes from years past for your enjoyment.

My last college roommates. Yes that is electrical tape around my tights.

Mario and Luigi (and Spiderwoman!) for free bowling!



Judy Jetson was one of the funnest ones i've ever made.


By far my favorite was Jack and Sally. it just fell into place and i loved how it turned out.






I think this one was pretty obvious who we were, considering we carried around the pop corn and salt containers, but people kept getting confused.

I miss Greenbriar Trick or Treating. This was a

 super fun year right after my mission.

Painting the Pig

My husband and I love to do projects together. We feel it's a good opportunity to to something constructive,  spend time, communicate, and be creative together. This tradition started when we were dating. We had a two for 1 coupon for Color Me Mine. If you've never been there, go! It's so fun! Make sure you get a coupon cause it's a little pricey. We love hot chocolate and picked mugs to paint. We spent hours working on them! It was fun to see design ideas come out (including joe's amazing taping job to make perfect lines on the mug, while i wanted mine to have a stippled texture), talk about color, chat about the music playing, laugh at mistakes. It was awesome. Here's an old picture of that.  

[Aside: We chose JH as our theme because we had just gotten engaged and were excited we'd soon have the same initials. We now use these cups all the time. Our favorite is after a long day making some hot cocoa and adding a spoonful of Nutella. This is dangerous though because once you have it with Nutella every other cup of cocoa is not as good. ha ha. Our other favorite is hot apple cider with a spoonful of caramel. Also dangerously delicious.]

Another time we were at the dollar store for something and saw this silly pen shaped like a Sea Horse. I don't have a picture of this one but we painted all the lines in the seahorse a different color. It came with 5 colors! We couldn't just paint it yellow and be done! It's hideous, but amazing. I think i may still have it somewhere. 

Now to the present! On our Marathon Date we found ourselves at Dollar Tree again, this time with a goal of buying something we didn't need and a night to fill with fun stuff. We found this ceramic pig. 

We knew this would be an awesome project.

That night our date was fun of other awesomeness so we didn't get to paint it. We saved it for another date night.

 This was us on that date night.

Happy painting! ha ha, we look tired.

Joe gets very focused. 

 We had a night/day theme. 

Joe painted a night sky with constellations,

 I painted a daytime fall scene.

  

Happy little piggy!!

Baby Sleeper

My beautiful sister Emily Allen had a baby September 25th. Reese Avarette Allen joined our family and as tradition, i like to make something for my neices and nephews. Here's how the projects turned out.

This is the first one I made,  it's a sleep sack. Good for new babies cause it has no feet and makes changing fast and easy.

Then I saw this monster fabric on clearance and loved it! I put the feet on this one cause i realized the weather is turning cold and it might be warmer.

I decided to send him the monster one, and I gave the sleep sack to a friend who is having a baby in December. Doesn't he look adorable? 

Peaches

I love peaches. I could eat them all day. Canning peaches is an important part of my year.
I get seconds from Allred Orchards on University Ave. You can't beat the price, and their fruit is amazing! Buying seconds, i get a mix of whatever peaches are on at the time. This time I got Lemon Elbertas (my favorite), O'Henry, and Angelas. I canned the elbertas since they are so pretty in the jar, and made the others into pie filling.
 

I love when my kitchen looks like this.



I got 10 quarts of pie filling and 4 quarts plus 4 pints of peaches. I have a dozen quarts of peaches leftover from last year so I didn't need to can as many this year. Next year though I'll be canning more.

Marathon Date

Backstory: We'd been drying pears for 3 days. I borrowed food dehydrators from a friend and my aunt and we would fill them, and wait, then empty them, wash them and refill them. Kelly got the pears for free so we were super excited.
Saturday came and Kelly had to go home so Joe helped me dry the last of the pears. After that we really wanted to get out of the house. Joe said "Julie, lets leave and not come back till it's late". So we got out our planners and made a list of fun and random things to do that would keep us out the rest of the day.
Here's our list of things we could do:
Fly a kite
Rent a tandem bike
Disc golf
BYU Swing Dance: 7-8
Spend old wedding gift cards
Bowl or play Pool
International Cinema 5:45 and 7:30
Buy something we don't need
Try on silly hipster clothes we would never wear and take pictures

Here's what we ended up doing

Buying something we don't need: silly huge sunglasses

we also bought a kite here, but when we went to fly it there was no wind. this will remain on the table for further dates.

After Dollar Tree we went to Gen X Clothing. They don't have hipster clothes, but they do have crunk stuff. we decided not to try them on and take silly pictures cause we were afraid a big black bouncer looking guy might come out of the back and kill us. ha ha.

We had some gift cards to spend so we went to Kohls. Unfortunately, neither of us are good shoppers so our gift cards went unspent. 

We wanted to get outside so we played a round of disc golf. Joe is great at getting action shots.

This is the closest i got to an action shot.

I call this one "Joe's broken arm" picture. i have a talent for taking pictures at just the wrong moment.

Me looking cool. ha ha.

Then we needed a snack so we stopped and got some 99 cent tacos!!

We rented a tandem bike. This was an exercise in marital trust. Learning to ride a tandem bike requires a lot of trust! Everyone knows how to balance a bike, but when you get two people on there, there's a new learning curve. It was so fun though!

The path was smooth and mostly flat so it was good for learning.

After biking we went to Chalk the Block. I forgot to get a picture, which is a real shame. It's an event at the Riverwoods to benefit a school for autistic children. they bring in local artists who each get a parking place and they make chalk art in the space. It was amazing!

This is a pic from another Chalk the Block so you can get an idea. 

After that we went to dinner at Happy Sumo. We got sat and then no body talked to us for 20 min so we had to complain. They brought us a free appetizer so we felt a lot better. 

Free food makes us happy.

By the time our food came we were starving so we inhaled it. Here's what was left when i remembered to take a picture. 

From there we went to campus to the international cinema, dancing, or games center. 

By that time the movie we were interested in at the international cinema was already started. Darn.

We walked by the ballroom, no one was holding swing dance that night. Darn.

So we decided to play pool. 

I took more videos than pictures of this. but here we are, and it's dark outside. 

we played two games, then were tired so we thought it was about time to wrap up the date.

Home we went, but we made a quick stop at Smiths for caramels and a redbox.

Joe set up the movie while i melted the caramels and poured them over a delicious honey crisp apple fresh from the orchard.

We rented Sherlock Holmes, Game of Shadows. Blue Ray! we used the computer hooked up to the TV since we don't have a blue ray player. 

Marathon date? Yup. 

Adventures in marriage? Always.

DIY Experiments

So we're back in Utah again. yay!
Joe has started school and i'm working again.
It feels good to be settled for a while. We love our new apartment and having so much space is wonderful! With more space we of course need things to fill it right?  Ha ha.  Our extra bedroom is now half a study area for Joe and half sewing area for me. It's so nice! So we've been on the hunt looking for more furniture for around the house. We went Craigstlist crazy! (also freecycle, which is an amazing site) We got a coffee table, a chair, two bar stools, a desk (free at a freecycle sale, awesome!) a bookshelf and an end table. The end table we got at a yard sale for $5 but it was kind beat up. This inspired our DIY fever. We sanded it down and stained it and put a nice coat of polyurethane on it. It turned out beautiful! I wish i had taken a before picture but here's the after.

(looks new right? yes!)

We also got some paint and turned this ugly dirty books shelf 

Into this great new shelf. It has a new life!

(sorry pictures are sideways)

We learned a lot in these projects. First, latex paint stays sticky for a LONG time. We let it dry over a week and it's dry, but still sticky. After doing some quick research online i learned about a phenomenon called 'blocking'. It is that latex paint is dry to the touch but will stay sticky for months. booooo. If we had painted a wall this wouldn't be so bad, but since the purpose of a bookshelf is to put books on we had to find a solution. You'll notice in the picture we had to put talcum powder on the shelves so they books wouldn't stick. Living and learning. 

Also we learned in staining our end table you should sand the whole thing at the beginning. When we started we cleaned and sanded the top and stained it. Then realized the legs weren't going to be the same color. we had to wait for the stain to dry then sand the legs. Then clean the whole thing again. Then stain the top with the second coat and the legs with the first coat. Then wait for it to dry. Then stain the second coat on the legs, and let it dry. Then add the polyurethane and wait for that to dry a few days before setting anything on it. wow. What we thought could be done in a day took over a week. Lesson learned, don't underestimate small projects.  

It was a lot of fun doing these projects together. More apartment pictures to come! Now everything is settled and ready for another year. Let the good times roll!

Together Again

i got to go to my family reunion this year. it's been about 10 years since my Jackson side had one. not only did i get to see many of my wonderful cousins (and missed those who couldn't come) but i got to be with all my siblings. 

this isn't something i really appreciated when you are kids. everyone bumping into each other in our little house, trying to get along, and play nice. Now that we're all grown up it's like the best day ever when we're in the same state! Kelly has been living in Idaho, but now lives in West Jordan, Joe and I are in Provo so we see each other once in a while. it's sad how just 20 miles between us and we don't see each other every day. Em and Brad were in Utah, but now live in Portland and get to see Jim who lives in Springfield once in a while. Man i wish we were all living close again. It's so much more fun to be adults together. To talk and learn about each other, and so silly things.
I love my family, and i'm so grateful they are wonderful to me. They are my built in friends. I'm so happy we will always have each other. One weekend a year may not be much, but i'll take it to get to hang out with this handsome bunch!

Glaciers with Willie

I'm getting behind already but at least i can post picture of our trip.

Joe's little brother Bradford (who we like to call Willie) was here for a week so we took him to Glaciers National Park. It was amazing. I wish we could spend every day there. There are so many hikes and things to explore. we only had one day so we mostly just drove the Going to the Sun Road and saw the sights.

Lake MacDonald. 

Raging river just before Avalanche Creek.

First mountain goat sighting!

Then they were everywhere!

The view was breathtaking. Literally, i looked down the cliff we were driving on and lost my breath.

The glacier! sorry it's so bright, the sun does reflect off the ice so bad. we heard a tour guide say the glacier is receding so fast in 25 years it may be totally gone. 

we stopped several times to skip rocks. 

When we first got to this lake we walked down a very overgrown path to the water. I saw something move in the grass and immediately thought it was a snake! Then i saw another. and another. they were ground squirrels! a whole colony running into their holes to get away from us. it was hilarious. 

This is St. Mary's Lake, at the top of the Going to the Sun Road. I skipped a rock successfully for the first time in my life! it was awesome!