Into the New Year

Hope you all had a nice weekend friends! I have a hodgepodge of pictures to share with you. Matt and I both took a few days off to celebrate the New Year. One day we used a bunch of coupons to get all this food for free! Matt was in heaven!!!

We were pretty tired out from all of our celebrating over the last month so we kept it really low key on New Years Eve. We headed over to our neighbors' house for a fun evening. They got a new game, Power Grid. We were all worried we wouldn't be able to stay awake until midnight. But that game kept us occupied for hours! 

We rang in the new year with confetti throwers and champagne.

We barely made it in time to celebrate because no one could get the champagne bottle open!!

Matt has been helping one of his relatives, Blair, build us a china hutch. It is finally finished and now nicely displaying our china in our kitchen! 

I love it so much!! Who wants to come over for a fancy dinner and cocktails?!?

I found a few more projects for Matt to work on. We have been working on cleaning out our closets in the house and moving things to the garage. The empty boxes found their way up to the attic and the extra space was filled in the garage cabinets. He also hung up our folding chairs and tables.

And built a shelf to hold more stuff.

No worries, he had fun. So much fun in fact, he felt he deserved a new tool set!

While he did that, I enjoyed a day at the new OdySea Aquarium with Jenny and Abby. We had so much fun!

At the aquarium, they built an enormous tank that allows anyone (that wants to pay for it) walk around in the water with the fish and sting rays. It looked super cool!!

We got to touch all of these things! Jenny and I were scared, and Abby just liked splashing her hands around in the water!

So many Nemos!!!!

The jellyfish tank was also really cool!

My favorite part was a ride we did towards the end of the day. It reminded me of the moving carousel at Disney World. You sit in a movie theater style auditorium, and then move around in a circle to see four or five different displays. Well instead of learning about imagination and inventions like you do at Disney, this was the place to see all the big sea animals! We started by talking to one of the divers in the first tank.

Then we moved on to see the sea turtles. They liked to stay towards the top so it was hard to get a good picture.

Then we moved over to the sea lions. They looked much more athletic than the ones we usually see lounging at La Jolla Cove!

And we ended with the sharks!

We had such a blast and ended our afternoon at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory! A perfect day!

Month of Projects

October is flying by! We have had a busy month of completing more projects. Matt worked hard to refinish our security door. It had rusted quite a bit on the bottom.

We also had some paint left over from our other projects. Our entry table had some paint that was chipping so we also refinished this. 

I found a cute tutorial for making pinata pumpkins! The link is HERE in case you want to make some for yourself!!

A couple Saturdays ago we were out for a little workout and found this park with a huge area for flying RC planes. Matt was in heaven!!! We went back again this past weekend to watch some more people out flying. Matt has continued to ask to go back there four or five times.

One of my clients gave me a pumpkin carving kit so we got our pumpkins and got to decorating!

Here are our finished creations! I forgot to take an after picture of our door, but you can catch a little of Matt's handiwork! :)

I also found a project to do with some of my older kids. I practiced them first on my own, and here is the finished product. We also picked up an extra little table which now sits by our kitchen.

Sunday we set out for our first hike of the season. It was so nice to get back out there! 

We headed up our favorite spot, South Mountain. 

As the rest of the country heads inside, the Phoenicians are ready to spend more time outside.

Hope you all have a great week! I plan on sharing some new recipes soon as well so stay tuned!

New Projects

Matt and I have been working on a few projects so I thought I would update you! After 10 months we finally got a rug for our living room. I guess that didn't require much crafting on our part, but it did take us a while to decide on one!

While we were in Nebraska we found a few projects to work on.

This will end up being the headboard in our room at the lake.

We will also add this cute little rocking chair.

I also found this piece of wood...

and was able to finish one project while at home.

Another headboard!

We had it finished in time to put it up the night before we left!

Back in Arizona, we found a love seat to put in our living room. As we were driving back from picking up the love seat, we saw this. As you probably know, the back of the window says, "Need a pickup?"

Well no, we do not. We have a convertible...

Yes, it was an embarrassing few minutes as we were transporting the love seat. I think it looks much better in our house than in the car!

Those are our big projects so far. Don't laugh at our redneck! We will keep you updated on any new projects.

Good weather, good fun

It is pleasantly warming up here. I got in the pool today for the first time since we've lived here!!! I told myself I was waiting until May, but I dipped my toes in and felt I could handle it. I think we are going to have a magnificent summer! Here is what we have been up to lately.

Last Saturday we headed to Verizon to update our phones. That is right ladies and gentleman, for the first time in his life Matt has a smart phone!! I think he is loving it. I really enjoy getting snapchats from his desk all day long! :P 

It was prom for my sister so I got some great snapchats. Here's one.

I was able to watch walk up via the #cube on my laptop. Here is my cousin, Creighton,

and Jadyn. It had a little echo, but other than that it worked out great.  

We went out for supper after that which I think was the first time we had gone out for supper just the two of us in our home city in a long time. I want to say two years, but I know that is a bit of an exaggeration. Then we walked through Hobby Lobby and I couldn't have been happier! :)

We decided we wanted to work on our backyard a little bit. We felt it was an easy enough project for us to tackle. Our plan is to add an open patio to put a table on so we can eat outside. It's so gorgeous here at night I want to eat outside every single day! So we put some plans into place and started tackling the project. Matt started last weekend. He found a rose he had to share with me.

The rose bush has since been torn up. He said he will replace it...We'll see...

I was able to help out with some of the work this weekend. On a trip to Home Depot this weekend I saw they had a big sale on flowers. I decided to try my hand at planting a few. I'm not expecting miracles, but we did add a little color to our front yard.

Matt felt it was necessary to buy a tamp on Saturday. He checked out his favorite shopping center (Craigslist) and saw someone had just put one up. He went to go get it, and the couple had just moved into a house previously owned by a Husker fan. The guy noticed Matt's license plate and decided we needed to also buy this flag from him. Matt was overjoyed. It was up all day Saturday, and we have already gotten some comments on it.

Also did you notice our walk way now has lights?? After six months, I felt it was necessary to add some lights to our front yard.

Well I am sure you have had enough of the front yard when the back yard is the project we are tackling. It doesn't look so great right now, but we are making progress.

We are ripping up the grass and moving the rocks back. Here is what it looked like after our first full day.

We will see if it is done before summer is over! :)

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!