a panoramic view

A panoramic picture Matt took at my parents house Christmas morning. I think blogger compressed it quite a bit when uploading though so it looks a little blurry on here. =(
Oh well, but we will definitley be using this feature more, its fun!

Merry Christmas!

My favorie time of the year. Lots of time with family and friends, tons of yummy food, music, christmas movies, and plenty of wine and hot butter rum drinks. Here are a few pics I captured with the new camera.

We spent Christmas Eve with the Whitfields and went to church. Had a huge dinner and some festive drinks, and even watched some christmas movies. Even though we are all pretty much adults now... Santa still brought all of us new PJ's on Christmas Eve.... =)

Christmas day we made our way over to Snohomish to spend time with Matt's family. More good food and drinks, good company, and I have to say I think I made friends with Dennis & Chris's (Matt's Aunt & Uncle) dog Walter...maybe next year will be the Christmas we finally get a puppy ... hehe.

New Camera

Matt and I got a new camera for Christmas this year from my parents! We are super excited to start taking more fun pictures and improve our photo skills before Egypt this year.

After doing a bit of research, Matt decided the Canon PowerShot SX 20 IS would be a good one for us. It is not quite as complicated as an SLR (still a "point and shoot") - but still has a great lense, tons of zoom and some other cool features... and I really wanted one with the screen on the back which flips out and angles in all directions.

I tried my hand at some photos today for Christmas and will upload some soon. Also hoping this will get us to start updating the blog more often... =). Yay!

Mexico - part 2

A couple more great Mexico pic's I got from my Mom.

Happy Birthday John! Celebrating John's 21st birthday in Mexico. He was a good sport, and took those tequila shots like a pro! =)

My goofy husband.

Mexico

So much catching up to do... I'll start with the latest. Over Thanksgiving Matt and I went with my family (Mom, Dad, John, Sarah, and Sarah's boyfriend Kieran) to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. It was so nice after a busy couple months at work to just relax and enjoy the warm weather and time with family.

We had LOTS of mexican food, margaritas, guacamole... even Fajitas for Thanksgiving day dinner. =) A great time, we can't wait to make a tradition of Mexico and using my parents time-share every couple years...

Harvest time

We planted 3 tomatoe plants this year and they grew like crazy. We got quite a few tomatoes over the summer, and we just picked our final "harvest". Since last night was supposed to be the first freeze of the year (possibly hitting 32 degrees over night...booo) we picked all the tomatoes that were left... and the green ones are suppose to still rippen if we wrap them in newspaper inside the house, we will see. Time for some caprese salads and pico de gallo!

Bathroom remodel

So, we decided to remodel our spare bathroom on our main floor off our Office. It was a 2 weekend project that became a 2 month project, haha, typical for us. We are really happy with it though, and glad its finally done!

The bathroom before had old linoleum that was peeling up at the edges, country themed wallpaper (a strip around the middle of the wall), and a toilet from the 70's. =)

We pulled up the floor and put in new tile, painted the walls brown, and put in white wainscoating. We also got a new eco-friendly toilet and some new light fixtures at ikea (the new lights still are not in yet). We almost did small white octagon tiles that we thought would fit with the 1919 age of the house, and then at the tile store changed our minds and got brown stone tiles which I love! Glad we changed our minds, I think they look great with the white wainscoating and brown walls.

Before pics:

In Progress (after I pulled off the wallpaper and painted)

And then after the floor was pulled up...

And after!

What Matt's been up too...

Matt has been busy busy with work. Here is a picture of one of the elementary school's he has been working on, getting close to being done. It will not be dull and beige... =) Quite colorful in fact.

While not designing school's... he is still studying and taking his exams to be a "certified" architect, 4 down and 3 to go! Hoping he will be done with all of these before Christmas. Then we can really relax and celebrate when we go to Egypt in March!

Kir & Tim's wedding

A beautiful wedding on Lake Coeur d'Lene, Idaho... August 1st. Kirstin was such a beautiful bride! We had a great time, had never been to a wedding on a boat and it was so fun. A pretty setting for a wedding. It was also great to see old friends we dont get to see often!

Kirstin's bachelorette weekend

My good friend Kirstin (a sorority sister from AXO) had her wedding this last weekend in Coeur d'Lene, Idaho. The weekend before that we girls got together to celebrate for her bachelorette party in Walla Walla. We dont' get to see each other often as we all live all over the state of washington now... but whenever we are together it is as if it was just yesterday that we were living together. It was a blast, lots of wine tasting, hanging out, dancing, and celebrating. Can't wait to see all the girls again soon!

Here is my montage of random pics that I took. Crystal's pictures are much more professional looking =)

Happy Anniversay!

So this is a little late.. our anniversary was July 18th, but wanted to post a few thoughts and pic's anyhow. I can't believe it has already been 1 year since Matt and I were married, it has flown by! I feel so lucky to have him as my husband, he is so thoughtful, patient, adventurous, and caring. Love you Matt! Looking forward to the years to come!

The Closet

So, we have finally been getting going on a few "smaller" house projects again. About 6 weeks ago we decided we would finally get started on the closet in our Office on the main floor. The closet was super old, with plaster walls that were chipping/falling apart, and pipes in the closet that get in the way. Long story short, this ended up being a much more complicated project than at least I had imagined.

6 weeks later though, the inside walls of the closet are re-built with wood, and the pipes are closed in so you can't see them anymore. Matt also reframed the outside of the clost with wood/moulding. There was a drawer from the previous closet which was also re-built and put on sliding tracks (the orignal one we found was made out of an old fruite crate, probably from when the house was originally built in 1919, and really was not use-able anymore). Finally we also put a door on it. Matt did much of the hard work, and I helped with some caulking and all of the painting.

We are very happy with the result though, and so relieved it is done! =) Now... on to other projects.

I wish I had a good pic of the "before" of the closet. Unfortunately most of our "before" pics of the house right now are on the harddrive of our old computer which need to be moved over still to our new one. Here are the pics of the new closet, and just imagine something 100 times worse for the before. =)

The old closet drawer.

Spring catch up

Som catching up here as its been almost 2 months I think since I've posted. Lots going on over the last 2 months. Plenty of travel for work, and lots of fun stuff keeping us busy.

Around the 3rd weekend in April I went to Coachella this year down in Palm Springs/Indio, CA. It was an amazing time! So many great bands, fun friends, and lots of sun! Some of my favorite bands included The Killers (of course!), Paul McCartney, Fleet Foxes, Franz Ferdinand, and DJ AM & Travis (so good!).

The week after I got back from Coachella, we got the chance to go see the Killers again in Seattle! It was a blast of course, they are one of my favorite bands. I now have all 4 or 5 of their albums on Rhapsody, and constantly listenting to them while cleaning the house on the weekends =). Can't wait to see them again someday.

Besides these couple fun trips/outings, I've been doing more travel for work. A few trips to Denver in April/May and a trip to Chicago, now I'll be heading to Denver next week followed by Milwaukee. It sure gets tiring sometimes... but at least I am getting air miles.


My last fun update is that I just got back from a weekend trip over memorial day weekend to Austin, Texas. I had never been to Austin before an absolutely loved it! If Razorfish could just open an office there.... I would jump on it and drag Matt with me, haha. It was much greener and hilly than I imagined, and nice and hot. I headed down there with 4 of my girlfriends to visit our friend Caroline. We got to see the restaurant "Oasis" overlooking Lake Travis (from the song I've got friends in low places"), checked out the fun bars downtown Austin, did a Wine Festival, and got some quality pool time with the girls. Overall it was a fantastic time with friends and much needed trip for some relaxation. I'll hopefully post some picture soon... =)

Whistler

We just got back from a fun 4 day weekend in Whistler. Its been a few years since I had been up there (and it was Matt's first trip) and I forgot how much fun it is! We went up with Matt's friend Matt Wiggins and his girlfriend Stacy, and also friends Andrea, Frank, and Stacy's brother Steven.

I had a cold most of the trip which was a bummer, but we still got up for some snowboarding saturday and monday, and the snow was great. We even rode the downhill run on Whistler which will be for the winter Olympics next year. The new "Peak to Peak" gondola was open, and we tried that out taking us over to Blackcomb, it was crazy how high up in the air you are!

The 2 days we weren't snowboarding, we did lots of walking around, shopping, eating, trying out the local beers, and just hanging out. Matt and the gang even took some time Sunday and tried out the tube park. =) It was a much needed relaxing weekend away, and already can't wait for the next one.

SheSpeaks

Hi friends... for any ladies out there... this is a website I discovered at work about a year ago I think (a client my company did a partnership with them), and thought I would share with you all. The idea is that brands/products want to test things out and get feedback from "influential" women of all ages. You fill out a somewhat lengthy survey about yourself... and then they will match you with products and send them to you for free. All you have to do is agree to then come back to the site after you get the product and write a review. Its a great way for brands to get tons of feedback from women on products, and for some products before they go "mass market". So far I've gotten nail polish, magazine subscriptions, chocolates, random stuff, its kinda fun though. (I have heard if you have kids there are a lot more Mom and kids products that get sent out).

Anyhow, thought I'd share. Sign up if you have some free time and you might find yourself getting some fun surpises in the mail. http://www.shespeaks.com/