Justin + Juli

Michael has a totally awesome old roommate named Justin that he is friends with.

Michael and Justin cuddling on our couch.


...I'm gonna get in trouble for posting this one...

Over the course of our relationship we have had a ton of laughs and memories with Justin and his girlfriend Juli. A few months ago they (finally) decided to get engaged and are set to be married in the Salt Lake City Temple on December 20th. ::Hooray::

There have been some weird uncontrollable circumstances that keep throwing a hitch in them solidifying their plans and consequently they STILL don't have their invitations out. They will be moving the reception to January to give people enough notice, but since they are still in a pinch I told them I'd help them out and design their invitation. This way they can use a quick turn around printer that I have used and get their invitations out asap. Their colors are black, gold and red...so after talking to Juli about what she wanted, this is what I came up with yesterday evening.

Chore Chart

"Come my little friends as we all sing a happy little working song
Merry little voices clear and strong
Come and roll your sleeves up - so to speak - and pitch in
Cleaning crud up in the kitchen as we sing along
Trill a cheery tune in the tub as we scrub a stubborn mildew stain
Pluck a hairball from the shower drain to that gay refrain of a happy working song"

Doesn't that song always make you feel happy and like cleaning is so fun and easy? Too bad in reality there aren't a bunch of critters who will come and clean my house for me while I look cute and dance around.

Recently Michael and I decided to make a chore chart for our home. We have gotten so busy lately and are good about surface cleaning everything, but keep letting the deep cleaning fall to the wayside. So to avoid allowing this as a perpetual habit we listed all the chores we need to do weekly and monthly and split them up as fairly as possible. The end result is supposed to be a sparkling home even down to the baseboards. And I have to say, so far it is working. We had to do the monthly + weekly chores this last weekend and boy howdy was that awful. But it shouldn't be that difficult again considering the fridge hadn't been cleaned out since JUNE! The idea is that by keeping on top of this stuff each month we never have to do a really nasty spring or winter cleaning.

Anyways, since I am a complete aesthetics snob when it comes to my house, I couldn't allow our handwritten piece of notebook paper or even a typed up word document to permanently hang on the side of our fridge. So I made this simple, 1950's inspired chore chart, printed it on card stock and glued magnets to the back. Thought I'd share it.


C'est magnifique, no?

Je Suis Une Chaise

This is a text message conversation I had with an old roommate today.


It made me laugh and happy because of the following reasons:

1) I love picking over the DI and thrift stores and it is scarily amusing that someone who knew me for two months pegged this so easily.

2) If I were a piece of furniture I'd TOTALLY be a recovered vintage chair. Or a sofa...depending on how lazy I'm feeling at the time.

Harvest the Valuable Pieces of Doctrine....

The months following conference are my absolute favorite for visiting teaching because there are so many awesome talks crammed full of amazing stuff that you can pick from to share. I personally fell in love with the "Forget Me Not" talk by Uchtdorf in the Relief Society session, but since EVERYONE probably loved it as much as me I am having to refrain from using it. I still have a few of the talks I want to re-read before I settle on which one I will share with my girls this week.

I did however finish my handout for this month. I saw a handout idea on another site that said to "Harvest the Pieces of Conference" so I just rephrased it a bit and put my own flair on the handout to go with it. So it's a two part handout, it has the cute little saying and then a page of key quotes I liked from this past conference. So here it is for you to use and enjoy! It's intended to be printed as a 5 x 7 and given with a box of Reeses Pieces...get it? Harvest the "Pieces". ::wink::

::Happy Birthday:: Card

I've had this design itch recently that I just can't seem to scratch. Hence my visiting teaching handouts and the one soon to come for November. So when a friend's birthday was coming up I just had to make the card myself :) Here it is for all to bask in it's glory and use if you would like. If you want to print it card style then do the page set up landscape with the image on the far right. Then print, fold, trim.

All Hallows Eve

I have always loved Halloween. As soon as late September hits and I start seeing all the purple, black and orange in the grocery stores I start to do little cartwheels in my mind. My mind rejoices over the familiar smells from cheap synthetic fabric, fog machines and the aroma of all your favorite candies marinating in one bag. Plus Halloween always meant that my birthday was just around the corner.

This year I lacked a yard to put fake spider webs in and we don't really have a front porch for a carved pumpkin, so I was feeling unusually unfestive. So when one of my dear friends Amanda told me she was having a Halloween party I left her a voicemail insisting it be a costume party. And guess what?! She decided to make it a costume party! It probably was of her own reasoning, but I like to think it was the persuasive devices I employed that brought about the final decision.

I was so excited to get all dressed up and Michael and I had the perfect idea. Mario and Luigi! We wanted to do this costume last year but our old singles ward said it was "cross-dressing" and wouldn't allow it at their party! Boo! (no-pun intended) So this year, we were all over it. I went a few weeks before Halloween to the DI to find some overalls for our outfit. After Amy supporting me through nearly an hour of painfully searching the DI for overalls and costumes all I had to show for it was a pair of womens overall shorts. I don't think Michael would have been too happy with this even though he told me to get whatever I wanted and we could dress up however I wanted. So sparing my husband's thighs from that public humiliation, I resorted to picking through the costume section of DI and I actually found a gem. It was a pink, black and white womens pirate costume for only $8! Anyone who knows me knows A) I love to thrift and B) I LOVE a good deal. So of course I was all over that. I also found some weird leather/netted hat thing for Michael and figured we could piece the rest together.

Unfortunately I figured out my costumes so far ahead of time for Michael and I that I forgot about poor Toby. The little guy's costume was thrown together only an hour before the party. I had a bee costume that he had worn when he was smaller. This is a picture from Halloween of 2009 when he was buzz-tacular in his little get-up:


When I put Toby in this costume this year the little stinger was like 2 inches away from his butt...a wee bit too small, but it still fit. So I was like, sure this will work. Easy and done! However when Michael came to see what I was doing his face turned all twisted and weird. And he said "Get him out of that! He looks miserable! Look at him!" Toby, ears back and tail tucked, looked up at us and stood awkwardly as if trying not to touch the costume even though it was on his body. He refused to walk anywhere even when a treat was dangled in front of his nose. Michael was absolutely mortified and said Toby looked "pathetic and ridiculous! He doesn't even resemble a bee! Where are his antennas?!" The scene suddenly evoked childhood memories from the movie "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie is forced to put on that humiliating pink bunny pajama outfit and his Dad is outraged.

I could just hear us as Mr. and Mrs. Parker in my head:

"He looks like a deranged insect!"
"He does not!"
"He does too! He looks like a black and yellow nightmare! Toby are you happy wearing that?"

So we decided to go an alternate route and make Toby a rapper. Our inspiration was Nelly. Michael was much happier with this idea. I don't think it turned out too bad considering how quickly we threw it together. And Toby seemed to feel a lot more confident as a tough rapper dog ::wink::

The party we went to at Amanda and Jared's was a ton of fun. They always know how to put together a good shin-dig. I even made a pretty intense pumpkin roll to bring that was a hit. Jared and Amanda (after years of persuasion and a little bullying) finally dressed up as Pam and Jim. Overall the night couldn't have been more of hit! Here are some pictures to wrap it up and show off all our awesomeness.

It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To

Birthdays are always great, but I have to say that my birthday this year "takes the cake." This year my birthday fell on a Saturday which meant I didn't have to go to work or partake of any non-birthday, normal routine-ness. We had the whole day to celebrate ME! ::wink:: What really made this birthday exceptional though was everything Michael did from sun-up to sun-down.

There is absolutely nothing better or more nostalgic than waking up to the smell of delicious bacon frying in a pan somewhere within the confines of your home. That was the fantastic aroma that floated into my room and forced my eyes open on the morning of my birthday. Michael fixed me a yummy breakfast of all my favorite breakfast items. Cinnamon toast, sausage with syrup on it, bacon, scrambled eggs and orange juice.


He asked me if I wanted my gift now or later, so of course I said "Now!" So he took out his phone and showed me the cutest pair of boots. He had taken some pictures I had on Pinterest of boots I liked and searched all over the mall to find ones that were the most similar. My jaw hit the ground almost immediately. Michael doesn't just hate shopping...he loathes it! It is the vain of his existence. So to find out that he had spent a couple hours doing nothing but searching every store in the mall for womens boots was the best gift of the day by far.

Michael then forced me to go take a relaxing shower and get ready while he cleaned the entire house. It was amazing!!! When I finally exited the bathroom my house sparkled and smelled so clean. It was like I had some super awesome self-clean mode on my house....or a really sweet husband who worked really hard :) Then he had me relax and watch TV while he cleaned the bathroom and shower and got ready himself.

Next, we went to the mall and I had the sweet gratification of getting the boots my little heart so desired without having to do all the work and annoying searching. I also got a new pair of flats for work because it was buy one get one 1/2 off and Michael was very persistent that I must need a second pair -lol-

(These are my beautiful new boots)

After that he took me to GameStop and I got to pick out a new game for the Wii! So I picked Epic Mickey. Equally easy and artsy...equaling a very Sarah-esque video game.

(notice the paintbrush in his hand?...like I said, it's a very Sarah game)

He was very cute about the whole thing. He wouldn't tell me where we were going when we were inside the mall. He just kept looking at the mall maps and pulling me along. He would even fake me out by passing a store and then yanking me around back into it really quick. Then we got me some new lotion from Bath and Body Works and afterward went to the coolest candy store ever. I can't remember the name, but they have all these fantastic candies I remember from when i was a kid like Milk Maids, Root Beer Float Barrels, those Caramel and Creme German candies and every other kind of candy you could ever imagine. You take a little basket and put however many of each candy you want in the basket. Then when you're done they weigh the candy and you pay per oz...kind of like all these yogurt places nowadays, but with CANDY!

For lunch we went to Jamba Juice which j'adore or for those non-French speaking readers, "I adore". Then I played my new video game with Michael for a couple hours whilst we sipped away on our smoothies. I even wore my new boots the whole time because I didn't want to take them off! Once I got the hang of it and was okay to be left alone Michael slipped off into the kitchen to make my surprise dinner. I wasn't sure what he was concocting in there but I knew I smelled Worcestershire sauce and garlic, which you can basically put on mud and I'd be a fan of it. But of course, being the magnificent chef that Michael is, the meal was way better than mud. We had delicious steaks, lemon and garlic asparagus and herb roasted potatoes + sweet potatoes. It. Was. So. Yummy.

I was then forced to continue playing my video game and to pick a movie to rent while Michael cleaned up. Knowing the chances for me to watch a chick flick without hesitation are far and few between I picked "Something Borrowed" for us to watch. After going to Red Box to get the DVD we came home and put candles on a tiny carrot cake Michael got for me (my favorite), sang Happy Birthday and ate our cake with Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream.


I don't care if everybody else in the world thinks those things are disgusting together, but I enjoyed every bite because they are my favorites!! The movie was surprisingly good and if had Jim from The Office in it so of course Michael and I were fans. In the middle of the movie I got one last birthday surprise which was my favorite snack in the entire universe...homemade guacamole. Mmmm. I think I gained about 5 lbs on all the stuff Michael fed me all day, but it was so totally worth it.

I know that was a very long and rambling blog, but the jest of it is this. Awesome husband = Awesome birthday. The best part was that he had thought out every little part and that's what I really love most. Is telling that someone really thought about you. Thank you dear for the best of all 24 birthdays I've ever had :)