my winter wreath

My crafty friend KC and I have decided that after our successful creation of our fall wreaths that there would be many more seasonal wreaths to be made. This season is winter, snow, Christmas, and New Year season. So we decided to take on the ornament wreath as our next project, which turns out to be super simple to make and guaranteed to look fabulously festive. All you do is get a wire hanger and bend it into a circle, twist apart the top, hot glue the tops of the ornaments on so they don't come apart, and string on the ornaments! Perfect.

 Also, I cut out paper snowflakes during work at opinionology  the other day to prevent me from cutting myself (joke, sorta :)) and that got me in a festive mood yesterday when I found them in my coat pocket so I decided to decorate the little I could in our tiny apartment.  I put up the paper snowflakes.

Then I remembered that I had a nativity set and dug it from a box in storage and put that out on the bookshelf.

And strung some candycanes on a red ribbon above our window.  It looks a bit more Christmasy  now, but I wish we had room to put up a tree... now that would be magical! 

 

thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I have so much to be grateful for.... first, my wonderful, sweet, gentle, loving husband. This what he does every morning when I have to go to work. He gets up early with me and if it snows, he brushes off the car, if there is frost or ice he scrapes it, or he just warms it up for me and drives me to work. That's just one of example of the many many ways I am grateful for him.

Good friends to play games with, make french fries with, and share Thanksgiving with.

Family. My parents who raised me right and taught me to know the truthfulness of the gospel. My sisters who are such great examples to anyone who knows them and that I look up to more than they will ever know. And my brothers, who I love and miss so much, they teach me to love completely, and have such sweet spirits.

In-laws. Because without them I wouldn't have Kyle, just the way he is. Our families shape who we are and who we become, the traditions we love and the values we keep and I am grateful for Kyle's family and for their love.

happy thanksgiving!

winter wonderland

i just have to start out by saying how incredibly grateful i was to get to enjoy fall in Rexburg this year! it was beautiful, the weather, the trees, the smells, all of it was perfect, i do wish, however, that kyle and i could have spent more time out enjoying it, but nonetheless i still loved it. this morning as Kyle was about to go scrape the frost off my car that has been a pretty regular occurrence lately (such an amazing man and husband), called to me to come outside... in that instant i knew... snow.  so beautiful, big, chunky, crisp, white flakes falling from heaven. ugh! i LOVE it SOOO MUCH! snow literately makes me ecstatic... especially when when there is a big snowfall overnight and you go outside and everything is quiet and white and perfect and sparkly and clean looking, its amazing. well that was at about 8 a.m. before i left for work and i didn't think it would keep up or stick, but it is still going strong now at 4 p.m. and covering the grass! it's very wet and slushy, but i am still super excited for the sparkly peaceful quietness that snow brings. aaand i can't wait to take more pretty snowy pictures! :)

root beer and soup

friday, our friends Kate and Braiden came over and brought root beer! we supplied the ice-cream and had delicious root beer floats and played dicecapades, which happens to be way more fun when you play with real life people, besides Kyle and i that is.  things i learned during our night of fun... i don't know much of anything about the real world, but i know who Linus on Charlie Brown is, Kyle knows that Flava Flav wears a clock around his neck, Braiden doesn't know his alphabet, but can do anything, as long as the opposite is required, and Kate can't do real life push ups, but can draw a hecka good t-shirt with her eyes closed.

then on sunday i made soup and i think it turned out good, i'm not for certain though because i was feeling pretty nauseated all day and let Kyle finish mine.  I felt better later though, when i ate some chocolate, but who wouldn't feel better after having 5 snack size candy bars? normally i wouldn't, but last night, it cured me.

good hygiene

dear employees of the other place where i work,
i want to take a moment and applaud the large majority of you for your good hygiene, part of that is keeping your nails trimmed and clean, good job.  here is the problem i have with your attempt at that good hygiene... when you insist on grooming yourself (clipping nails) at work, then so kindly leaving a nice neat little pile of your long overdue, dirty nail clippings on the desk for the next innocent, miserable employee.  i quite literally almost chucked when i saw the pile left for me.  it's a nice thought, but please be kind and groom at home.
sincerely,
-mrs. gillespie

that is how my day started.  then i was trying to get people to take a 20 minute long post election survey, when i finally got this man to take it... he had basically no opinions one way or the other, but it was a survey so i was chugging through it.  then, about half way through this 20 minute survey, after 30 minutes of coaxing him through trying not to lose my patients, he begins to fall asleep and I'm pretty sure he was snoring, prbably a narcoleptic, i couldn't revive him, he was gone gone totally gone. then i got scolded for taking too long of a break... i work at the most dreaded job in rexburg! i'm pretty sure i deserve a 30 minute break from hell, thank you!

I once had a man tell me to go to hell. Why, thank you sir, but I am already there :)

dear halloween

i've never been your biggest fan, but this year i found that when you have someone to get excited about it with it is so much more fun and although our brilliant costume idea came "unraveled" after an hour of getting ready, we still went with it and turned out to be a big hit!

we... obviously, but in case you couldn't tell, were MUMMIES for our ward party! we got the idea from one of Amanda's cute halloween decoration while we were visiting... Kyle's idea i should say, he's brilliant.  so we got tons of muslin fabric, torn it strip and there you have it. this is the pie eating contest... no shocker that Kyle won.

limbo... BIG shocker when Kyle came really close to winning

me with smartie pants Kate

oh aaand we won Most Scary costume... duh.
and this is us with our winnings :) of course they revolve around food, it's a great motivator.

dirty money

Your dirty money turns my pretty, clean fingers black and makes them taste of metal.  I guess no one can really control the cleanliness of their money, but still it is discusting and to think of all the germ infested hands it has passed through and where it has been to get so dirty.  I get black coins, green coins, coins with sticky somethingness, coins with gunky junk, and everything else imagineable, today I even got a dirty quarter sized not quarter something that I found at the end of my shift... rude.  Everytime I work at Dollar Tree, two hours into my shirt my fingers are black, so I wash my hands on my break and watch in amazment as the dirty money water runs off my fingers, clean once again for a whole five minutes and then it's back to work.

vacation

Last weekend was our mini size vacation. Kyle and I went to Utah to visit Amanda and David for a nice relaxing time off from work.

It was the perfect weekend too, the weather was nice and the trees are all sorts of colors... Amanda was looking nice and pregnant :)... perfect for taking pictures, which is what we did on Friday morning.  Isabel and Brigham were being such punks being very skilled at avoiding my camera, but nontheless I think I got some cute pictures.

 And Brigham didn't even take too long to warm up to us this time... he was holding my hand across the parking lot at In 'n Out the first night we were there and again at the park :) Such cute kids.

We ate at In 'n Out one night, I made pumpkin soup another night (which was a success), and David and Amanda made yummy ribeye and mashed potatoes the last night.  We got to play a little BANG with them again and just relaxed and talked a bit about childbirth and that whole process.  I learned quite a bit I think... for one thing... I can definitely wait to go through all that, I'll just work on being the best wife I can be right now and see how that goes first.

Aaand yesterday we went to the haunted straw maze with Josh and Trista and had a good time scaring Josh and watch Josh get scared and watching Josh and Trista be secret agaents through the maze. Then afterword we got ice-cream and I just might have discovered my new fave... pumpkin pie blizzard... delicious!

saturday

Got a call last night from Steve who told me not to come to work tomorrow morning because there was no work... so this morning I slept in, made lunch for Kyle and I, went and got a facial from my friend Kate at Evan's, which was delightful and quite relaxing, then I moseyed around Porter's for a bit and after getting a bit down because everything was so expensive... I discovered the clearence section and got some super cute stuff for super cheap.  While I was getting my facial and discovering clearence at Porter's, Kyle was out golfing 9 holes with Josh one last time while the weather still permits.  Then when we both got home we went to the movies and saw inception... which is Kyle's new obsession, had root beer floats for dinner and took a walk around Porter Park... and now I will be put to bed early so Kyle can have his earlier mentioned xbox brother play date.

change

the time for growing green is gone
as cool creeps through the air
leaves all change and fade away
and the colors make us stop and stare
enjoy the crimson colors as they come
enjoy them as they fall beneath your feet
enjoy their every sounding crunch
as walking lovers talk as they meet  
soaking in the last warm days
to remind us when the warmth is lost
that soon warm rays will return
and pierce the freezing winter frost

Kyle and I went on a picnic yesterday morning. We made sandwiches, he a peanut butter and honey, and I a peanut butter and homemade peach blackberry jam, we also packed a jar of homemade applesauce, and made a bag of popcorn, put it all in my bike basket with the blanket and rode to the nature park.  It was a lovely day for a picnic.

And then of course I took pictures, because I haven't in a while.  As you might also notice, aside from our obvious good looks and charming smiles, I have finally, just barely, and not even completely, yet enough, achieved length enough for my hair to be put into a sort of wimpy, pathetic ponytail! woot woot! Even though it isn't really even a ponytail because ponytail are relatively straight and hang in a downward way, mine... well, it's more like a pom pom or a cotton puff, or something more like that, either way, it's exciting.

And tomorrow we are going on a date because Kyle feels the need to give me some "extra lovin'" as Andrew put it because he has an xbox date with the bros again.