So Long 2010

Today is the last day of 2010 and it makes me just a little bit sad because 2010 was an awesome year for me and I don't know how 2011 could top it.

In 2010 we bought our first home, we got married, I quit my job and started one that is 100 times better and then Danny quit his job for one that is 100 times better.

I think new years resolutions are dumb and as I sit here trying to think of stuff that I want to accomplish in the coming year I am totally stumped! 2010 was too awesome and I am totally content with what we have and where we are in our lives. We have been way too blessed with loving families, friends that are too awesome and fun for words, a home that we absolutely love, two puppies that we adore and about a million other things that we are lucky to have.

So, instead of making a list of things I want to accomplish I have decided that in 2011 I am going to live better and show more love to the peeps in my life. I also would like to lose 6 pounds and start preventing wrinkles on my face in 2011.

So there you have it, in 2011 I will Live, Love, Lose and Lift. That has a nice ring to it.

Hope everyone has a rockin' NYE!

Ollie Turns Two!

On Saturday our little Ollie celebrated his second birthday and some of his favorite people came over to help celebrate. He wore his best party hat and we all sang to him before he dug into his new bone.
Ollie has really turned into the best dog with the cutest personality! We love him so much and can't wait to celebrate many more of his birthdays.

The Caped Crusader

Well, I gave up on making Danny a scarf. It was actually looking pretty decent but I decided that making a scarf was going to take me way too long. My main mistake was that I made it too wide so it was taking entirely too long.

Instead, I decided to turn what I had into a capelet for Oliver because, you know, every dog needs a capelet!

I think Ollie looks pretty dashing in it. Danny said he looked like he was going to Hogwarts. I am gonna go ahead and take that as a compliment because I LOVE Harry Potter.

What do you think?

I think it will be just what he needs for walks on a cold winter night!

If anyone else needs a dog capelet just let me know. I am an expert at making them and these things are going to take the dog fashion world by storm!

Bob the Builder (aka Danny the Builder)

I have a pretty awesome hubby. He has all sorts of tools and saws in our garage and actually knows how to use them to build stuff and tackle home improvement projects.

He redid our entire kitchen when we moved in turning it from shab to fab!

In a few weeks, he will be ripping out our master bathroom to give it a major overhaul. I didn’t want his building skills to get rusty so about a month ago I asked him to build me one of these.

I thought it would be the perfect addition to my craft room but I was not about to pay $300 for it and Danny and I think we can DIY anything. So, Danny got to work and built me one for $30 instead.

The benefit of having him make it for me, besides the money saving, is that he customized it for what I needed! The one from PB was only wide enough to fit the small wrapping paper rolls. That was not gonna cut it for this girl so he made mine extra wide so I could put my extra long rolls up there. Also, mine doesn’t have drawers on it like the PB version does. That is actually because he ran out of wood and I was impatient and told him I didn’t care about them so I could get that baby up on my wall but it worked out nicely because the spaces that would have been drawers are the perfect size to hold my glitter and craft paints.

So, with $30 and an awesome husband I have a new wrapping/craft station just in time to wrap all those holiday gifts!

He also built me this fabric shelf a while back that I love!

6 months

Today is our 6 month wedding anniversary! The past 6 months have seriously flown by so quickly and have been so much fun. So far I can't complain about married life. I love coming home to my best friend every day.


Danny thinks it is dumb to celebrate this anniversary but I made him do it anyway!

We started our special day out at church followed by lunch at one of my faves, Big Shucks!

Then we headed downtown to the opera house to see the musical How the Grinch Stole Christmas. One of Danny's coworkers had 2 extra tickets and offered them to us. We ended up sitting front and center and the show was really great! Such a fun treat!

We planned to go out for dinner, but once we got home we decided to take the dogs for a walk and just have Whataburger for dinner instead.

So we lit a fire, got our burgers and sat down in front of the TV to watch the Cowboys game. I insisted that we drink champagne out of our champagne flutes we used at our wedding so we had smores and champagne for dessert!

A pretty perfect 6 month anniversary night at home if you ask me (minus the part about me having to watch the football game.)!

6/12/10

12/12/10

Crocheting It Up

So, I picked up a new hobby. Anyone surprised? I have decided that I will learn to crochet.

I was totally inspired by the Lullaby Lubbock circle scarves. They are beautiful and I have even put one on my Christmas list (crossing my fingers Santa comes through).

Anyway, last Thursday night I forced Danny to come with me to JoAnns so I could get the supplies to start my new hobby. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that starting a crocheting hobby requires minimal start up costs (unlike candle making which I seriously considered a couple of months ago, I know I am totally bizarre). We skipped out of JoAnns $12.32 later with two things of fluffy yarn and a snazzy teal crocheting needle!

I got home that night and got straight to work by watching a few you tube videos. I decided that my first project would be to make Danny a gray scarf with some maroon in it for the Aggies. After unraveling my project a few times I finally got a pretty decent looking few rows of stitches but my fingers got tired so I stopped.

Then, one night this weekend, I made a rookie mistake and left the dogs inside the house while we went to hang out with some friends and we came home to find this:

The number one suspect is this guy:

According to Danny, he was very intrigued with my yarn earlier in the day and Danny had to tell him to leave it alone. I am not sure why at that point Danny didn’t move my yarn and project to a higher place where the dog couldn’t get it but whatever.

So I started over on the scarf and as of today I have this nine inch masterpiece!

I think I am going to need a lot more yarn and a few months before this thing gets finished.

Danny suggested I turn it into a sweater for Oliver since he likes yarn so much but I feel the same way about crocheting as I do about sewing so I only do things that require straight lines. Basically, the only thing I can crochet is scarves and the only things I sew are curtains and pillow covers.

Once I am a little more confident in my crocheting skills I will try make myself a circle scarf or I will decide I am over crocheting and find a new hobby.

Shellie’s Bowling Birthday

My sweet best friend Shellie turned 27 years old yesterday! To celebrate her big day, a group of us got together and went bowling on Saturday afternoon and had an absolute blast!!!

Nothing is better than the four B’s (birthdays, beer, bowling and buds) on a Saturday afternoon.

The girls had a great time laughing and chit chatting throughout our games while the guys tried to keep us on track so we could get in as many games as possible in our 2 hours there. We did speed bowling on our 3^rd game of the day and tried to have 10 people finish a game in 15 minutes! That totally did not happen but speed bowling was surprisingly super fun (this totally could have been due to the number of pitchers of beer we had consumed at this point).

After we finished bowling Shellie opened her bday presents and we called it day. It was so fun getting to hang out with everyone, especially the bday girl since she has been out of town so much for work lately! We love you Shellie and hope you had a wonderful 27^th birthday!

P.S. Danny has now declared bowling to be so fun that he thinks it would be the perfect date night for us. I told him I don’t think I could bowl for two hours straight on a date night because it makes me tired. He then told me that it was ok because he would bowl for me if I got tired and I could just watch him. Um, yeah, because that is exactly what I want to do on a date!

A New Addition!

Meet the newest addition to our family, Evans.

Evans is the child we now sponsor from Ghana through Compassion International. For $38 a month we are able to help provide Evans with educational opportunities, medical treatments, life skills training and development in a place where he gets to hear the Gospel and grow in his Christian faith.

I heard about Compassion International a couple years ago through reading other people’s blogs and mentioned it to Danny. Ever since then we have been saying that we are going to sponsor a child but just never sat down together to actually do it. Finally, a couple of months ago, we were on the way to a Young Life fundraising dinner and talking about what we donate to Young Life each month. One of Danny’s best friends is the Young Life leader in an area close to where we live. Ministering to high school kids is his passion and he is so great at it! I love that we support him and what that ministry does but I felt like we needed to be doing more than just helping out a local ministry because we had a connection to it through a friend. I immediately thought back to Compassion International and told Danny we needed to get on the ball and sponsor a child this year. We even decided that this year for Christmas we were not going to get each other gifts because sponsoring the child would be our gift (I did cheat and get Danny a couple of small things though, shhh).

We decided to sponsor a child from Ghana since Danny may have to travel there for work in the future and we thought it would be neat to have some common ground with our sponsored child. A couple of weeks ago we got our Compassion packet in the mail with our first picture of Evans and some information about how and where to send the letters. We plan to frame his little picture and display it proudly in our house and we can’t wait to write him his first letter so he can get to know us!

I am so happy that we finally decided to do this. We have been blessed with so much and it was really time for us to sit down and figure out how to start giving back. This is just a small step but hopefully it leads us and Evans to bigger and better things!