Life

My pictures did not load in any sort of order, so I'm just going to describe them as they came up.

I needed some crafty stuff to do to distract me from my writing for a while. This bunny was for my friend, Tia's first baby who's name is Marty and my kids have now decided to call it Marty. :) I was proud of how it turned out. I made up the clothing mostly from my head.

I made another doll because my kids liked Marty so much. I didn't put ears on this one. I think I'm going to attempt hair because there are so many cute doll hair tutorials on pinterest. The hat was another present for Marty (the baby). I saw the pattern for the baby "turban" and I couldn't resist. So adorable!

I made another turban and four of these headbands -- two for Marty and two for another baby shower I was invited to in our ward. I enjoyed learning to make the flowers. They were both super easy once I figured them out. The yellow one took three attempts because the instructions for the pattern on that one were written, not just in another language, but in the Cyrillic alphabet, so I had to follow just the little line drawing and pictures and it was confusing.

Here is another picture of my hair. I wasn't loving it, like I said. It wasn't terrible, but I didn't feel pretty in it. So on Thursday I got it cut again and colored. You can see the new cut in the picture from our date below. I'm probably going to get it lightened even more, but I'm much more happy with it.

On Monday morning, I got up at 6am and went to the Provo temple. It was a beautiful morning and I got some great shots of the sun rising behind the temple before and after I did a session.

I picked up some flowers from the dollar store and made flower bows out of them to go with the headbands and to have for my girls. I think they turned out pretty.

My neighbor's birthday was on Friday. She's a new mom and her husband was going to be gone overnight for work, so I bought some Costco flowers and arranged them and brought them to her. I remember being a new mom and being so disappointed in how mundane birthdays were, so I try to do something special for new moms if I know it's their birthday.

Steve and I went on a date Friday night to a place called Taste. They make their own chocolate, so we got a tour of their facility and tasted 9 gourmet chocolates, 5 gourmet vinegars and 2 gourmet olive oils. I was surprised at how much I liked the vinegars. I tried taking apple cider vinager in the mornings a while back because I've heard so much about the health benefits. I lasted one day because I almost threw it up on my first sip. But these tasted more like syrup with a zing. I'd put them on ice cream or marinate meat in them any day.

It was a beautiful night, so we walked a few blocks after the tasting to Steve's favorite game store. While there, I found this poster for USAvengers and almost laughed out loud at how much this guy looks like a younger version of my dad if he were a superhero. Even the red is rather appropriate. :)

Saturday we worked in the yard a bit, but Steve and I weren't feeling well, so not nearly as much as we would have liked. We think Steve had a reaction to the vinegars and I've been fighting a cold. In the afternoon, we drove up to Salt Lake to look at some couches. Our current one has been through the ringer and was a cheapo couch to begin with. Then we went out for dinner and then went to Ikea to get some bookshelves to organize the kids' play room. Everyone was super tired by the end of the night. Cecily fell asleep like this:

This coming Friday I get to go to a writing conference with Steve and I'm excited. Conferences are a fun change of pace if nothing else, and this one I have a lot of friends going to, so it should be a great weekend.