Happy Fall!

I am always sad to say goodbye to summer, but fall is fun too! Mandie and I get together to do crafts/hang out on a regular basis, and it was SO great to have Shay in town to join us. We ended up just talking for three hours, so I finished this craft on a different day, but it was so great to catch up and spend time with two of my favorite people ever. I am so grateful to have Mandie and Shayly as friends--they are as good as they come! Happy Fall!

Snap Shot

• Coming home from a morning run to my little cottage surrounded by trees makes me so happy. We feel so lucky to live here!
• Sam's parents are letting us borrow their upright piano, and we are loving it. Lately, we have been playing a 1/2 hour each every night, trying to work our way through the hymn book and marking off the ones we know. I love having music in our house.
  
  

• We still make homemade pizza about once a week. My favorite dough recipe is based off the California Pizza Kitchen dough recipe (tweaked from here). It is best with white flour but also really good with 100% whole wheat flour. I think what makes it really good is that you make it the day before and then let it sit in your fridge overnight, giving it a better texture and flavor. 
  

• Our go-to easy, fast, and healthy meal is chicken stir-fry with vegetables and brown rice. We buy the big bags of frozen chicken tenders and stir-fry veggies from Costco along with their Yoshidas  teriyaki marinade. Defrost the chicken in the microwave for a few minutes, brown it in a frying pan until mostly done, add frozen veggies and sauce, put lid on pan and cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve over brown rice. We eat this 2-3 times a week. 
• Everybody Loves Raymond is our favorite show. We've been working through all the seasons on Netflix since last fall. 

• We love rice krispie treats and make them way too often.
• After reading through this post, I think I could sum it up by saying we love good food. I love to cook and we both love to eat. Yes, we love food a lot.
• We saw this little duck family on campus and thought it was just about the cutest thing ever...

Home Sweet Home

We are getting all settled into our house and just loving it! I am worried I am never going to want to move...I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!

Anyway, during out little break in between semesters this past week, Sam and I have been cleaning, organizing, and working around the house. It feels great to finally have enough time to find a place for everything. Here are some pictures of our little house:

Master Bedroom

Before:

During:

After:

Guest Room

We borrowed a cute twin bed from my parents, so we officially have a little guest room. Come visit! :)

Pictures of the rest of the house to come...(I need to make it presentable first :))

MLK Weekend

I have the best schedule this semester! I have no classes or work on Friday, so Friday equals the following: sleep in (or get up and drive Sam to school, so I can have the car), read, run errands, clean, laundry, homework, groceries, nap, etc. It is so great to have a day to just relax and get stuff done before the weekend really starts, so I can just enjoy Saturday and Sunday. This schedule is even better when we have Monday off--4 day weekend? Yes!

We had a great long weekend, which really started on Thursday night. Sam is taking music 101 this semester to cover a general and is required to go to several concerts on campus, so Thursday evening we went to some sort of dramatic opera singing competition. I will be the first one to admit that I have a serious problem laughing at inopportune moments, and this was one of those occasions. Humor aside (it really wasn't that funny, I'm just immature and find humor in the silliest things), it was a great concert. It was so fun to just sit and enjoy the music.

Friday, Sam went to school, and I stayed home and cleaned/organized our house. It's still a work in progress, and I am having so much fun arranging things and trying to decorate. I love it! Here are some of my favs from Pinterest. Don't you wish you could just magically make Pinterest pictures come to life in your house? I do!

Friday night, we went and did some exchanges and then went to dinner at Mimi's Cafe with a gift card from the wedding. Neither of us had, had a great experience there in the past, but we both ended up liking what we ordered. We went home and ended up playing Super Nintendo for way too long. (We still haven't set up internet/cable, so our entertainment is limited. Donkey Kong Country on the old Super Nintendo is just about the only video game I'll play, so that's what we do. Haha.) We couldn't beat a certain level and refused to quit until we beat it. I felt like the biggest nerd, but it was so much fun!

Saturday morning, we went up to Salt Lake with Sam's mom and dad to meet Grandma Jean (Penny's mom) for lunch for her birthday. She is the sweetest lady! We were ordering, and she insisted on buying our food (Sam and mine) even though Penny and Fred offered to buy everyone's. So cute. We went to Greek City Grill, and the food was so good, for sure the best gyro I've ever had.

After lunch, we stopped at JP furniture to look for some stuff for our house. It was so much fun!

Here is what we ended up getting:

Saturday night, we went to JDawgs with my dad and brothers (a.k.a. the boys ate JDawgs, and I went next door to get frozen yogurt--no matter how hard I try, I can't do hot dogs) before going to the B.Y.U. game. I am a die-hard frozen yogurt eater and will even eat it when it's below 10 degrees outside.

Sunday was really relaxing. We went to church, hung out, read, and napped. Then, we made dinner (soup and rolls) and had both of our families over for dinner! It was so much fun! We borrowed tables and chairs from the church, and it worked out great. I wish I had some good pictures!

Monday, we went to the rec center to work out, then got ready and headed up to Salt Lake to do some returns and go to IKEA. I also forget how much fun IKEA is but also how long it takes to get through there! We ended up getting a cute pillow and some good organizational stuff for our house. When we got home, we headed to Pizza Pie Cafe with my parents and siblings for dinner. Yum! I have only been there twice, but I'm really starting to love that place! We ended the night by watching the Bachelor (me) and doing homework (Sam). It was a great weekend!!