A Good Read

I read this book this weekend and fell in love with it. It's kind of 'Gone With the Wind' meets 'True Grit' and has the sweetest love story. It was a good read and I would definitely recommend it.

Christmas Happenings

We spent Christmas Eve and day with the Merrell's this year and it was a pretty low-key- chill Christmas.

Chelsie and her kids were here from Italy for the month of December (and part of January) so it was fun to have the Christmas magic in the house again. Her kids were very excited for Santa to come.

Mike and I decided to buy each other presents this year, which was super fun for me. In the past, we have had a $5 limit which had forced us to get super creative. It was fun to get sneaky with each other's presents and we both had a lot of surprises for each other.

Mike got some awesome work boots which he wore around all morning... check out that get-up! He was kind enough to model them for me.

On Christmas Day, we started a puzzle which was just barely completed a week ago (In January). It was WAY hard. 

We are serious about our puzzles

The next day, we went to the Berry's for some delicious breakfast and to celebrate Rob's birthday. I was able to take the day off of work which was so nice! I was able to spend that day with people I love and was even able to take a nap! It was glorious! I love Christmas time.

Dresser Fun

When Mike and I moved into our new apartment in June, I was dying to get a new dresser for our bedroom. The one we had only had 6 tiny drawers and one drawer could maybe hold 2-3 pairs of pants. I'm not saying I have a ton of clothes, but that dresser just wasn't cutting it. I was looking on KSL and found an old looking dresser for $40 that I thought would look so fabulous if it had some new paint on it. I went to Lowes, grabbed a quart of primer and a quart of paint and that started a series of dresser re-finishes due to the fact that I enjoyed myself THAT much. :)

Now the lighting in my apartment is horrible so these pictures don't look that fabulous.

New Dresser for our bedroom. I loved the hardware so I just spray painted it brown. It reminds me a pretzels.

Since I already had the blue paint, I decided to paint the dresser (the one I was telling you about from earier) that doesn't fit anything in it. After that, I slapped an add on KSL and a family bought it from us to put in their little boy's room.

 This puppy sits at the end of our hall way. I was planning on selling it, but now, I'm a little more in love with this cream delight than I should be. The pictures don't look that great, but in real life... ahhhh.

Can you tell I'm really loving blue right now? This dresser was a piece of junk. I found it on KSL, and went to Nibley to check it out. I saw that it was not in good condition and that it was cheaply made, but what did I do? I bought it for $40 (way too overpriced) anyway because I felt completely obligated to buy it from this woman who probably didn't care if I did or not. Yeah, I'm weird like that. This one got a lot of love and after a tube of wood filler, some serious sanding and a $3 discounted quart of paint, she looked much better than when I found her. This dresser is off to the Banta's house where Trey and Jack can enjoy it.

This has been so fun for me to do on the weekends and has given me a little bit of a creative outlet. It has been nice to get a few hours to think about whatever I want and listen to whatever I want instead of work and other things that normally give me anxiety :) 

I just spotted a rocker for $10 that I'm hoping to make my next little project. It would be fun to reupholster and paint. Here's hoping it hasn't already sold.   

If anyone is in the need of a dresser/night-stand/table, you name it, re-model, you just let me know!

Peaches

Yesterday, I spent the day with my mom and Brooke canning peaches.

 I love canning with my sisters and my mom. I love getting to talk and having our little system of getting it done. We've been canning since we were little so we know how to get into the canning groove :) I'm sad Annie and Chelsie couldn't be there too.

Canning makes me excited that fall is almost here, but it also means that winter is close... which I'm not so excited about.

The gear 

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Yum! 

Lake Powell

In August it was, once again, the annual Merrell Lake Powell trip. It was fun, relaxing, wonderful, delicious, you name it.

This year Trent and Erin and their kids were able to come with us which was SO fun. I have missed them and it was nice to get to catch up with them.

Here are a lot of pictures!

Can you tell why it's my favorite place in the world?

There was a huge rainstorm while we were there and a flash flood came ripping through right next to our house boat. I have never seen that happen. Pretty cool!

Smores. Yum!

My cute parents

Crazy Mr. Jack

Trent, Erin and Ben- On our way to a hike in West Canyon

West Canyon- We went through a slot canyon where we were pretty much walking/wading in cold water the whole time. At the end we were up to our necks in it (so cold!) and we could climb through the canyon with feet on both sides of the canyon walls. Very fun.

 Love him!

Moved

The new owners closed on our house this week and we're officially back in beautiful Logan as of.. 2 weeks ago. We wanted to move before summer semester started for Mike and I'm so glad we did! We had a lot of help with the move and everything went very smoothly. It was very bitter sweet to move, but now, I'm so happy we did it.

Our Elders Quorum came on Saturday morning at 9:30 and they got everything onto the trailers amazingly fast. We were so thankful! I think we had 6 guys from the elders quorum, Mikes dad and two of Mikes brothers. With all of that help, we were in Logan unloading by noon.

 The aftermath in our new apartment

A week after we moved out, this wonderful lady and my sister Brooke came to the house to help me clean it for the new owners. I loved chatting with them as we cleaned. It was a delight.

She's the best!

Our sad empty house... :(

I was really bummed when I left after cleaning. I knew it was the last time I would ever be in that house. Kind of bitter sweet. We made a lot of good memories there and put a lot of work into that house. We also met some amazing people and I'm going to miss them all.

I'm excited to see what's going to happen in this next chapter. The last one was a pretty good one. :)

Eclipse

A couple of weeks ago, the big eclipse came upon us. Mr. Berry really wanted to see it and found out how to look at it without staring into the sun. He got a mirror and a piece of aluminum foil and cut a square out of the foil and angled the reflection onto our car door. We both though it was going to be stupid, but it actually worked really well.

You can see the moon kind of coming in over his left shoulder. We sat there for a long time just looking at the car. What weirdies :)

                                

 I just love this boy. He is the best and I couldn't ask for anyone better!

It was a fabulous evening laying on the lawn, eating popcorn and staring at our 97' Camry in all of its glory. I'm sure the neighbors thought we were a tad weird since clearly, none of them knew about the eclipse. Good times!