Vacation

On Sunday during work, I decided that I would fight the hard battle of getting someone to cover my shifts for a couple of days while I went on a family vacation. At first I was annoyed to be on it at all due to the fact that I would end up losing hours at work and not get paid as much. And that is never a good thing...but I'm so very glad that I decided to go.
After complaining about how camp spaghetti usually tastes, I earned myself the chore of cooking it for the whole compound camp.  It was really good though, so I'm not complaing anymore!
This trip is to a tiny potato town called Weiser, Idaho. Every year, they hold a national fiddle competition (what's the difference between the violin and the fiddle? There isn't a difference in the actual instrument. Fiddle refers to the style of music played on it.)

We go there and camp in the sticks behind these big buildings that used to be a college or boarding school (there's a big huge history to the area, but I can't remember. The buildings are big and old, that's all that really matters.) All week we play music until all hours of the night and throughout the day making new friends and reuniting with old ones.  This year just so happened to be really cold at night, so we folded down the sides of the wall tent and turned on the heater to jam. Unfortunately the heat got the best of everyone and they started sleepin on the job...

But some people managed to stay awake long enough to keep the jam going. It was probably around 12:00 am when I took this picture. Somehow, the later you stay up, the better the jams get.  But we could just be getting more immune to how crappy it can be sometimes.












The best part of Weiser is playing music with your friends that you don't usually get to see. The second best part? Yard Sales. Seems how this town is pretty small, this is the biggest week of the year for them. There's so many people from out of town that it's the perfecft time for a yard sale. These signs are just the beginning. There were more on the corners of most streets and signs were stapled to half the powerline poles. Needless to say, I had some awesome finds.

This the best used book store ever. I can't even believe how many printings he had from the 1940s and earlier. It's really cool to see.

This is the MINATURE MASTERS contest. They give really excellent musicians tiny instruments and ask them to play them. The kid in the yellow shirt was camp by us. He and his friend drove all the way from Ohio just for this contest. We fed them some pancakes and lent them phones and made friends with them. That's the best part of these things. Music brings people together :)

And that was my family vaction!

Return To 29!

Well, I'm back from the desert again. This time the trip was a little bit different. First of all, I actually got some pictures. I'm going to warn you now, I'm taking this lovely little medication that I do believe is making me gain weight. I've gained ten lbs. in about...a month. And I'm lucky enough to carry it right in my belly, so I look nice and 4 months pregnant. I assure you, I'm not.
So, we jumped in the car around 06:00 and I took the first shift of driving (my first "long distance" drive!) and I drove us all the way to Cedar City. A whopping 3 and 1/2 hours from our house...Then I passed the keys on over to big sis and I let her drive the rest of the 6+ hours to our destination. It wasn't a bad drive, we made sure that we were prepared for it. I made us tuna fish and we brought plenty of good stuff to drink and snack on. Last trip, we just at McDonalds and stuff and felt real sick the whole time.


We pulled reached Las Vegas aroun 1:30 (we made really good time with my sister driving) and don't worry, we got a picture of the big tortoise on the freeway for you!  I suck at taking pictures with my phone.  So when I was tasked with taking this photo in the moving vehicle, I was very nervous, but never fear, I got the job done.
The nice thing about reaching Las Vegas, is it means that you're almost there. Once you hit Primm (The little town with the huge outlet mall and Whiskey Petes off I-15) you jump off the freeway and start into the Mojave Desert. That, my friends, is kinda scary if I'm being completely honest. Luckily though, it's the home stretch!



So we finally arrived and got all cleaned up and ready to go when we received the call that it was time to go pick up the Js (same name remember?). So we started our drive to the base and I got all excited when we finally drove through the gates. Even though I had seen him the weekend before the last it still felt like the first time in a century. Because there isn't much to do in 29 Palms and the pool was closed :( we had to think of other adventures. There was a gate ajar in the back of the parking lot, so we ventured through it and climbed a mountain and spotted rabbits and coyotes. Not a big deal.  The thing about the mountains in this god forsaken place, is they don't really look like mountains...I live in Utah in the Salt Lake Valley which means there's gigantic mountains all around me that are green and covered with snow from November to June so hiking up this mountain made me feel like I was on a different planet. But we got some kinda cutish pictures? See? 4+ months pregnant...not cool.

We also ventured into the town of Joshua Tree and went to a Flea Market (we saw a tortoise!) and a thrift store. And you know how I love thrift stores! The cool thing about this one, was it seemed to be in an old bank.  So there was  a vault in the back with clothes in it. It was kinda awesome...
But that pretty much concludes my trip to see my Marine. We had a wonderful time together and I miss him already.  The worst part? I haven't a clue when I'm going to see him again...

A DI Kind of Day

Today, I took a trip to a couple of different Deseret Industries stores. Known to we Utahns as the DI. For those of you who don't know, the DI is basically a secondhand store that is run by the LDS (Mormon) Church. It is a non-profit store that takes any and all donations. They have tons of clothes, appliances, furniture, house wares and basically anything under the sun that you could thingk of. They have it.

I went with intentions to find things to decorate at my wedding with. It might sounds strange to shop at the secondhand store for something like this, but I think it's smart!  I found myself exactly what I was looking for. I didn't really intend to buy 22 Mason jars...but I did. Each jar was only $.50.  I couldn't help myself.  I gave myself some rules before I left to shop. (1) I wasn't allowed to spend more than $30.00 and (2)  If I couldn't fit it all in the box, I couldn't have it. Lucky for me, I'm really good at packing stuff into a box : D. I ended up with jars of different sizes that will look great filled with stuff and painted and all cute...I'm so excited about it!

Also, I found these wicker basket deals that you put your paper plates on so that they don't dump your food off of them. I got 10 of them for $5.00. I'd call that a good find!  I'm planning on putting the jars on the wicker plates with hot-glue after decorating the jars with different things inside and out and putting something cute on the plate. Then I'll have these adorable little hand made center pieces that won't cost me more the $30.00 to make!

I feel very accomplished with my outting and I also feel like this DIY wedding is going to be possible. I'm so excited to start making and buying more things that are going to make our wedding special.  Oh, thrifting, how I love you!

Wedding Planning

I believe that I have a blogging problem...
In my other blog (Doing what you shouldn't is half the fun) I pretty much keep things about life lessons and thing I learn about myself and the world around me, where as here, I feel like I can talk about my life in a more...specific manner. There, I keep things vague and just explain what I learned from some type of experience. So I just made a really short story long. Basically, what I'm saying is, I'm blogging for the second time today just because I want to talk more about my life.  Weird huh?

Now that we have orders and we know that J isn't going to be a million miles away, I actually feel comfortable beginning the planning of my wedding. We want to shoot for sooner rather than later, of course, but we can only do what we have the time and money for.  I've been to my share of expos. And I have a dress that just needs to be altered. And I definitely have ideas of what I want to do, but I want to do it...inexpensively (When I say that, I mean cheap, but I don't wanna sound like a redneck...)

So tomorrow, I'm going to go thrifting. I don't know if I just made that up, or if people actually say that, but I want to try and get some inspiration for things we can do to make our wedding special, but inexpensive.  My basic idea is that if we kind if do things little by little and spread out our spending, it won't feel like we're spending a lot (AND if I discover that I'm a pro thrifter, then we really won't be spending a lot).

Neither of us are made of  money, and seems how we don't want to wait forever to get married, we have no choice but to make it pretty DIY. But, I've got a crafty family and a lot of fantastic ideas due to the ever fantastical Pinterest.  I think that is going to be fun! I'll definitely post again tomorrow about how I found awesome stuff. I'll post pictures. Don't you worry.

If you happen to be reading this and you're a military spouse (or going to be one), or just happen to know stuff about weddings, and you have information that  might help make my life easier in the planning process feel free to share!

Thrifty

I, like most women these days, have an obsession with Pinterest (<-----That's my page)I'm allowed to be on it at work between calls and I pin like crazy!  Most of the time though, I don't actually do the stuff that I pin or use it. But I always think, One day, I'll be so glad I pinned this. And some times that is totally. Sometimes they're simply pipe dreams (I mean, come on, I'm never going to plan meals every sunday night and post a menu on the fridge...).


Today, my sister, my mom, and I took a stroll through The Quilted Bear (It's a store filled with home-made stuff that people sell i.e. home decor, jewelery, etc.) and there were so many cute things that I thought were so cute and I'm so sure that I could make with my brain tied behind my back. Seeing all this stuff made me think of all the crafty little things that I have seen on Pinterest and how I should be using the knowledge I've gained from it to actually do some of those things I pin and want to try sooo badly.

So, we went to Savers, The Desert Industries (The D.I.) and the overstock stores and looked around for things that we thought we could "up-cycle".  I decided on buying an old jelly roll pan that had been all burnt and used for one too many Totino's Pizzas that was completely perfect no bend or imperfections and I bought it.


J has some strange hate for fridge magnets. But I LOVE them. I think they're cute and I buy one pretty everywhere I visit. I have magnets from all over. He says that he want a stainless still fridge and NO MAGNETS. When I saw these little magnets boards I thought, Perfect! He never said anything about hating magnet board magnents! 


So I brought it home, found some fabric I had laying around (I opted for fabric because the pan was pretty beat up and I didn't think that spray painting would look as good or last as long) and I began working away. I just sorta winged it.

First, I fliped the pan over so that if I was cooking a pizza it would be all wrong and I started gluing with some fabric glue. Basically, I wrapped it like a present and I got glue EVERYWHERE. I've got some work to do on my crafting skills but this was a start and I'm so proud of my finished product!

I'm so excited to put  my own spin on other craft ideas I discover from other pinners. I'm so happy with how this turned out. :)