TED talks and "The Danger of a Single Story"

You may or may not have heard of TED talks, but they are awesome. I watched one yesterday for one of my classes, and it was fantastic. I loved it, and I especially loved the speaker...she is fabulous, and so beautiful! So, if you have 20 minutes, I encourage you to watch. It'll be worth your time, I promise.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween. Never been my favorite holiday, probably because I hate scary movies. Dressing up is fun, but I can never think of a clever enough costume. This year we were invited to a party, and so I wanted to find some sort of costume to wear. I was trying to just think of something easy, trying to get Marshall to come up with something with me. But we couldn't think of anything so I figured we would just go without a costume. Then, when I was at work, Marshall came in and said he wanted to be the old guy from Up (Carl) and then I could be the house. I laughed and said that was a good idea. I didn't really think he was serious. Then I came home from work to this:

Oh, whatt??!!! You were serious? Marshall, I'm not sure I really want to be a house. I didn't really think you were seriously going to do this. That was my mistake. If you know Marshall, you would know that of course he was serious. And of course this house was going to be legit. He's not going to build a half-hearted house. I think it took 3 cardboard boxes to make and a whole lot of construction paper (oh yeah, and a few hours). Here's the final product:

And me in it. The best is when we got the balloons from Smith's. We didn't tell the guy what they were for, but when he was blowing them up for us, the first thing he said was "who's going to be the old guy from up?" Apparently there had been several other bouquets of balloons he had blown up for people over the weekend. But I bet no one had such a legit house (or impractical--it wasn't exactly easy to 'wear') as us!

For Marshall's costume, we had pretty much everything except a bow-tie, suspenders, and thick-rimmed glasses. (Well, we had my glasses, which are kind of thick-rimmed, but Marshall couldn't stand to wear them for more than a few seconds because they're prescription). We went to the D.I. but it had been picked clean. So we thought, "who are the most hipster people we know?" and called them. It worked. We got what we needed. (Well, except the walker but we decided to let that one go because we really didn't have the time.) Here's the final product:

He is wearing my glasses in this pic, but we got other ones for the party. 

We were so excited to go show off our hard work! We took the house out to the car, starting loading it up--and realized it didn't fit. WHat?! No. Why did we not think of this? Didn't fit in the back seat, front seat, trunk, nothing! So we called my sister, Bec, to borrow the Tahoe. Except she wouldn't answer her phone (I called like eighty times). So we had to get the key from my brother Jon, go to the heritage parking lots, find the car (which wasn't that hard--it's a big car), steal it, drive back to our place, load the house in the car. It took forever and we were two hours late to the party, but it was soooo worth it. Even if I did only wear the house for a total of two minutes (it was not the most comfortable). Happy Halloween!

October and Conference

Ok I'm officially terrible at blogging but here's my attempt at catching up. October was great because of conference. My sister and I attended the Relief Society meeting, and we were lucky enough to get great seats because my mother was called to serve on the RS general board. We're so happy for her :) After the meeting we met up with my aunt and cousins and went out to dinner. Girls night is the best.

attempt to photograph my mom on the stand. How great is she?! :) 

The next weekend was conference, and I was so excited because my mom scored tickets for us so we could go! I had never actually attended a conference session before. Yeah, it's actually really hard to get tickets when you live in Utah. We went to the Saturday morning session and Sunday afternoon, and it was great. We also got to have lunch in between sessions both days with my family and the RS, YW, and Primary presidencies and general board members, so that was fun, too. 

A "pantry" for our kitchen

Yay for our new apartment! We have moved everything in (thanks to all those who helped) and I am determined to make our new place homey and looking nice. However, while our new place is much nicer, it is a bit smaller than our old apartment. At the old place, we had this huge pantry-type thing with closed doors, and all of our stuff and junk we didn't use much or didn't know what else to do with we just kind of dumped in there, and it was fine because it had closed doors so you couldn't see the mess behind it. Unfortunately we don't have a place like that in our new apartment. So we needed to buy a pantry for the extra kitchen stuff. And for cheap, because we're poor college students. Also, it couldn't be too tall, because the wall we wanted to put it against has this ugly, lonely shelf (that doesn't match anything else in the kitchen). We searched Wal-mart and Target, found bookshelves and pantries that would work, but I didn't like any of them. They were all between $60-$100, which I know isn't bad, but I could not spend that money for a crap pantry from Wal-mart. So, naturally, I turned to pinterest for ideas. And this is what we came up with!

First, crates from JoAnns. We bought nine but ended up only using eight.

 Next, we set up shop, taping garbage bags to the floor. We sanded each crate, and then vacuumed up the sawdust. One thing I loved about this project is I actually got to help do it. Normally when we do crafty things, I show Marshall what I want and he'll do it. He's got the artistic skill. I have none of that skill whatsoever.

 After sanding, we stained the crates. We already had the stain and supplies on hand since Marshall has more woodworking plans.

 I tried not to, but I splatter some stain on my legs. Lovely little brown spots all over, it looked like I had a disease. But they came off with some Dove soap and scrubbing.

 We set the crates outside to dry overnight. I'm sure other people outside the complex wondered who their new weird neighbors were with the crates outside their door. The next day, we decided we wanted to stencil it to make it more crate-ish style. We debated doing real companies, but I thought this would be more fun. Marshall created the stencil, and then we painted it on the sides of the crates

 Then we stacked them...

 And put in our stuff! We love how they turned out! I'm thinking of getting burlap sacks to put the potatoes and the pancake mix and stuff in to make it look better.

 Also, I have to figure out what to do with this random shelf and the stuff on top!

Out with the old, in with the new

We are so excited because we get to move out of our old, ghetto-looking apartment and into a nice, newish, close-to-campus apartment! Yee-haw. Our old apartment wasn't that bad, looking back on it, but we still don't want to go back. Here's the pics of the old place:

This is the outside of our old apartment complex. Doesn't it look like a ghetto old motel? You should see it at night, with the yellow flood lights. It looks even worse. hehe :)

Living room. Lovely carpet, right? Especially those stains...(they were there when we moved in)

Kitchen. It looks nice in the picture, after being scrubbed shiny clean! (thank you to momma)

Teeny bathroom with no counter space or drawers!

 So, I have to tell a quick story about cleaning the tub because I can't get over this. I wish I had a before picture, but just picture a tube with hard water stains around the drain area, the yellowish ring and grayish stains. Sounds nice, right? It was like that when we moved in. And for our cleaning check out, I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and it was not looking any better. So I just crossed my fingers and hoped it would have to do! But then the cleaning check out lady saw it and told me it wasn't good enough! I was disheartened. I told her I had tried everything I could think of and spent way too much time on this stupid tub. And then she tells me that toilet bowl cleaner (brand called Surprise I think?) and a magic eraser takes it right off. What the heck?! Really, who on earth came up with that combination and decided to use it on the tub? The cleaner smells awful (similar to a stinky toilet smell) but does the trick. So, if your tub has hard water stains, this will get it off! Even if it is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Here's the proof:

Pictures of our new place to come!

Furniture

Here are pictures of the beautiful bed frame that Marshall made for us. We're slowly outfitting our apartment with furniture! We started out with a table, bed, dresser, and a few end tables. Now we've gained a couch, coffee table, TV, and bed frame! and Marshall's made plans to make a TV stand a few other end tables. hopefully it'll all fit in our new apartment this fall :)

Pieces of April

 Here's an update of recent happenings in the month of April. I fully believe that blog posts are better with more pictures and less words, because "a picture's worth a thousand words," right? So here's some pics. Sorry that they are not super good quality, they were taken on my phone.

First was Marshall's birthday on the 9th. Although it was right before finals, we cleared the day to just celebrate for him and we also went to Rodigio's grill. yum!

 After Marshall's birthday came finals, ick, and then they were over, yay! On Saturday the 21st ( i think?) we were in Kaysville supporting my little sister, Becca. She is part of a group in high school called "Moonlight Singers" and they sing at an event at the high school with their jazz band. It's really fun, there's a delicious dinner and dancing, and they play 40's big band music. It was a super fun night!

That weekend I also learned how to long board! ha. not really. but sort of? Marshall, Jon, and Becca went long boarding/rip sticking down the hill on our street. Becca's been a fast learner on the rip stick, but got a nasty scrape on her knee. Not from falling off the board, but by tripping on her shoe after she jumped off the board. Pics are on my FB page if you haven't seen them already

Marshall and I also went to Color Me Mine, and made some coasters. (they're really just tiles, but we use them as coasters.) Here are some before/after pics.

Betcha can't tell which ones Marshall did and which ones I did! ;)

Before:

Marshall did pretty good, right? He really did free-hand that paint job. No joke. No stencils, stickers, etc.

After:

Unfortunately, the Mountain Dew one broke :( we have the pieces though, it's salvage-able. On the upside, we got a free piece to replace it and coupons for free studio fees. So we got to go again for cheap!

Finally, Marshall and I are slowly gaining furniture to outfit our apartment. We started with a bed, dresser, and table, donated to us, or which were borrowing from family. We bought a bookshelf, couch, inherited a coffee table, and Marshall has been working on making us a bed frame. This was when it was in-progress. It is now finished, but it's still at my parent's house, because we don't have tools or the space to build it here in Provo. So we don't have it yet, and I haven't even seen the finished product!. When I get pictures of the final product, I will put them up! I'm so lucky to have a talented handy-man husband.