Christmas Baking

I love to bake, it is one of my favorite things to do. This year for friends and family baking was the easiest way to go about making affordable presents. We spent a weekend making different things and went to the dollar store to get the plates to put them on. We made muddy buddies (or puppy chow as some people call it which just sounds nasty to me) peanut butter pretzels dipped in chocolate, mint oreo truffles, rocky road fudge, regular fudge, 7 layer bars, cheesecake gingerbread bites, pretzel kiss things with m&m's, and peanut butter cookies with a reeses in them. It was all very simple to make. I will eventually post recipes for everything,

Lewis Is Old

I can't believe he turned 29 this year. Next year we will have to do it up all fancy for his 30th but this year was low key. We both worked on his birthday but we did go out to dinner. I also dropped off a gift basket I made for him and he loved it! 

I forgot to take a picture of the gift basket I made for Lewis but it was pretty simple. I included a few of his favorite things. A pineapple; this is because whenever we have a party or get together he always asks someone to bring one, it's weird but I love him anyways. A pepperoni stick, not like a little on but like a 2 foot one. A package of salami, A thing of brie cheese, some chocolate covered almonds, and I got him a huge happy birthday balloon. He was really surprised and he told me he has never had someone go out of their way to do that for him. I guess I made it really special without even trying. 

New Orleans

Okay, I'm a lot later posting this. We surprised my oldest sister for her 30th birthday in New Orleans. It was an amazing feat to pull off considering my family can not keep a secret to save their lives! We had such a good time and I even got to try on wedding dresses! It was so much fun!

Yes, that is a drag queen 

I asked Brittany to be my matron of honor, Tiffany to be my maid of honor, and Stephanie to be a bridesmaid while there. 

Didn't find anything on this trip but it was sure fun!

Oh Christmas tree...

I ma so happy with our Christmas tree! I put in a lot of hours making our tree skirt and a lot of the ornaments by hand. First off we were disappointed when we realized the permits to cut down trees in the wild were only for a small area about 3 hours away. It's pretty dumb, but we looked at the usual places for a tree and we actually found a beautiful tree for $30 at Sam's Club. 

It's actually really full and lush. It wasn't brown and dead like the ones at all of the other stores we went to!

Making this Christmas tree skirt was one of the most rewarding things ever. I definitely burned my fingers a lot and used about 50 glue sticks but it was so worth it. The end product is so beautiful and it look so much better than a store bought one. All in all it cost about $12 for fabric and about 8 hours in labor. I found the tutorial on pinterest (link here), it was really easy to execute it just took a lot of time.  I used 3 different fabrics, burlap with gold threads, a white and gold cotton thingy, and some off white fleece. The one on the tutorial looks so much better but I like that mine has character and was the fruit of my own labor. It is worth it to do a lot of your own projects in my mind. I love having that sense of accomplishment. I hope you love it as much as I do!

It really just does look so good under the tree, but I am bias :)

Palette Shelves

I am so stoked for these! I found a picture (link here)on pinterest for amazing palette shelves and Lewis made it for me! He is so amazing in all that he does for me!

It was so simple. He cut the palette into thirds and then used the scraps as the bottom to the shelves. 

They might be upside down but they are all different shelves. He ended up making 3. One has a small ledge on the bottom, one is a regular self, and the third is an open shelf. 

He even sanded them down for me! 

We are still trying to decide on how to hang them or what to put on them. We did end up staining them with a walnut color stain. It ended up making them look like reclaimed wood. The best thing about this though is they only cost about $1 to make. You can get palettes for free at any big box store usually and Lewis used screws to put them together. So far here's the work in progress. I would like to add pictures and other decorative things around the shelves to make it look more balanced. 

Thanksgiving

Okay so I am really bad at posting. Sorry if anyone reads this or actually cares :). So it has been extra crazy lately. I got a job working at the hospital and I have been busy trying to craft things for our tree and doing all that cooking for Thanksgiving was pretty hectic. It was also amazingly fun! M sister and a few friends came over, we played scatergories, and we made enough food to feed a small army (meanwhile there were only 6 of us). 

The menu was turkey, ham, green bean casserole, apple + cranberry stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, delicious grave, and 3 homemade pies. I love baking so I made a dutch apple, pumpkin cheesecake, and a regular pumpkin pie. They were so delicious! 

I also got a new iphone 6, so that means my picture quality gets better! yay! I hope everyone had as great of a holiday as I did! Now onto the Christmas decorating!

One LOOOOONG Weeked

This weekend was filled with tons of driving! Around 1700 miles actually. I have been having separation anxiety from all of my stuff that has been stored at my moms in California so we went to pick it up. We left on Thursday around 4pm and arrived at 12am (CA is an hour behind us right now because we don't have time change in AZ). My sister Tiffany went with us and it was a really fun trip. We hung out with my moms foster kids and the baby just loves Lewis. It is the cutest thing ever and makes me want children so badly!!

We also decided to visit my grandma while we were there. It was the first time she got to meet Lewis and she loved him. I wish the trip lasted longer but we had to be back to real life. On Sunday before we came home we had the best champagne brunch (Lewis and I couldn't drink because we took turns driving). When we finally arrived back home on Sunday night we were so exhausted and thankful to be home. Speaking of Thankful I can't believe we are a week away from Thanksgiving!! Where the hell has this year gone??? I can't wait to start decorating for Christmas though! I already have my Thanksgiving planned out, we are goingto have a few friends over! It will be great!

The explosion that is my stuff that we picked up from my moms

Skylar is just the cutest little baby out there!

Happy Halloween!

Well this past weekend was quite eventful! Starting on Thursday we carved pumpkins! That was a lot of fun. My sister and Stephanie came over and we all had a blast scooping out pumpkin guts and creating our designs. Mine was Oogie-Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas. We ended up having 3 pumpkins from that movie. The only person who didn't make a very festive pumpkin was Lewis... unless a 4th of July stars and stripes pumpkin is festive for October. I love him anyways though.

We had a Halloween party to go to on Friday which was a lot of fun, we left a little early and decided to go downtown after the party. We met up with my sister and some other friends. So the downtown thing started out fun, drinking 2 for ones and dancing a little bit. We then proceeded to get some pita pit because my sister forgot to eat dinner. She ended up not actually eating but it seemed to go
downhill from that point. Mind you it was probably only around 10:30 maybe 11 at this point. We decided to go to another bar, it took a little long to get inside and by the time we got inside I was getting annoyed. I felt old!!! My feet hurt (I was wearing boots, no heels just regular comfy boots) my back hurt and it was crowded as fuck. There was no sitting or standing room. I think we left downtown around 15 minutes later. It was a fun night but I was tired and ready to get home.

Then on Sunday it was time for our party. We spent all day decorating and baking goodies. I made caramel apples, cupcakes, and cookies. We made some Nightmare Lemonade (Lewis' concoction of beer lemonade concentrate and vodka...super deadly). We had a great time at the party. Around 20 or so people showed up and played beer pong and just hung out. For that night we dressed up as Mr. and Mrs. Smith. We wore all white and dirtied ourselves up. It was a cute costume. The night before though we dressed as Johnny Cash and June Carter. I don't think I have pictures of that but it was cute. All in all we had an amazing time! Sunday was filled with laying in bed and periodically cleaning up. It was pure bliss!

Christmas Crafts

I know I know! It's a lot early, Halloween hasn't even come yet! I'm obsessed anyways though! I have been making a lot of felt ornaments lately. I have this picture in my mind of a very rustic Christmas tree this year. I don't want to do any burlap garland or anything but I would love a burlap Christmas tree skirt that I am going to attempt to make one of these days. I also really want to start making my own felt beads so I can string them to use as a garland. I have a really cute pom-pom garland I made with fall colors that s adorning our tv stand. I just love that I can have it up now and all through out the holiday season. I will probably make a new one for Christmas though with a lot of white/off white/browns to keep with my rustic theme. 

For this ornament I printed out a general shape of a bird, cut out a cute fabric heart shape wing and sewed a button for the eye.

All I did for this ornament was cut out 2 different size hearts sewed one onto the other and sewed on some clear beads to give it a little extra pop!

I ruggedly cut out a snowflake and sewed it onto the heart cutout then added a bell in the center for some pizzaz!

This was my very first ornament. The one thing I did wrong was trace the snowflake to cut out in black which gives it a dingy look but all in all its not too bad!

This little reindeer is so cute! I made the pattern up on my own. I found a picture of an ornament like this and did a rough copy by hand. I sewed the antlers first then sewed them to the head. I added a button nose and some eyes, voila! 

Okay, so they might not be the most symmetric ornaments in the world but they definitely are rustic!
They were super easy to make and even my remedial sewing skills... they are rough around the edges but I love them. I can't wait to make more! I think I want to try to make all of the Christmas ornaments from hand this year. I really think it is fun to do and it gives me a way to waste some time. Yay! Okay well since it is Halloween tomorrow Happy Halloween! I can't wait to have some fun shenanigans. We have 2 different costumes and I can't wait for our party on Sunday! Until then... 

Birthday Fun

So I'm really bad at doing this whole consecutive posting thing. Things have been a little busy lately with job interviews and celebrating my birthday! Yup I turned the big 26 yesterday. It was such a great day! I woke up to flowers and balloons then Lewis made me some breakfast.

Next we decided to take Kodi and go on a family hike. It was a great time! After dropping Kodi off back at home we went thrift shopping for a few hours. We found a really hideous Christmas sweater and some ice shot glass things. It was a wonderful day and we ended with some grilled tri-tip, cauliflower mash, and some ice cream cake. It really was the most perfect low key birthday ever! 

On Sundays we always do family dinners so my sister and some friends came over to watch The Walking Dead and they sang to me! I love all of the people in my life! 

Notice the missing oreo... someone got a little cake happy

I will try to get better at posting I promise! In the mean time I am working not really on wedding things but holiday decor, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas! We have a Halloween party to host this weekend so I will be sure to take pictures of the decor and the costumes... stay tuned!

Our Weekend Project

Well on Friday I decided we needed to clean up and get more organized around the house. We had ordered a tv mount because I have always thought they look better way, i don't know, its a weird thing I have. Also I hate power cords and how awful they look when all jumbled and what not. Anyways I was looking for a new tv stand, kind of more like a storage cabinet thing to put under the tv for the boxes when I found a floating one I really liked! I was about to buy it for $130 but Lewis stopped me and told me he could build it! Whatttt... yea my man is handy as fuck! So we did this entire project for around $40!!! Yea Lewis is pretty awesome. 

This is what the original material started out as... a pile of wood 

So this is the before and after, yes it was a disaster before because I had all of my projects around it but it looks 50 million times better! there area few cords sticking out but we can paint them so they don't stick out too much! I love this new set up so much, plus it give us way more room in the living room! I just love it!

Wedding Board

 Like every other girl in the world I have a Pinterest "My Future Wedding" board but sometimes it's not satisfying enough. I like to touch and feel things to know that they can be real so here is my real like Wedding Board. 

This was super easy to create. Lewis is the manager of a local hardware store so he is my handy man! He brought home the supplies, which were just pieces of a dark color cork (like these)and a 2'x4' pegboard. With a little (okay a lot) of hot glue I attached the cork to the pegboard and then Lewis hung it up for me. I love it so much, I can use it for all aspects of the wedding and it makes a cute addition to the apartment. Plus we added some corner shelves in to keep my supplies on. I need to organize everything I have but I love my corner for the time being!   

Just a couple of wedding dresses that
I like so far

This saying is so prefect because it is true! Also looking
 at that color for the bridesmaids dresses

I love the colors of those flowers and succulents in the bouquet
Also my Grandma sent us this cute engagement card!

The banner is my favorite part of the entire board. I admit I cheated with it and didn't quite make it all myself. I used a banner kit from Michaels as well as some big gold letters  also from Michaels. I know most of the time it is easy to spend $3,000,000 at stores like that so I use lots of coupons. We don't really have a lot of crafting supply stores here in Flagstaff so it's what i'm stuck with for now.  

The Ring

Well I guess I should share this beautiful thing that Lewis picked out all by himself. Well I mean I did kind of mention what I wanted once or thirteen times. I am happy I got it back from being re sized. It is so shiny and sparkly I look at it every chance I get! 

Excuse my nails, I need a fill badly!

Oh, Lewis made sure I went and got my nails done the day before he proposed too!

 Lewis gets about 5 million pictures a day with me and the ring doing miscellaneous tasks. He says he loves it but i'm sure he has to be getting a little annoyed!

Really the pictures don't do it justice!! in all it's 1.05 carats, the center stone being .75ct. I don't think I could wear anything bigger. I't already pretty weird getting used to wearing a big ring on my finger after not wearing rings ever. I am always catching it in my hair and on blankets! I swear anything that it can catch on it does! It doesn't help that I am clumsy either. I'm sure it takes practice wearing it to get used to it but it is perfect in every way!

Engaged

Well... Lewis proposed! It was amazing, the most perfect story of us there is.

Lewis proposed we go to Fossil Creek (AZ) with some friends because he has never been and the water is crystal clear beautiful. Not to mention the amazing waterfall. Naturally I wanted to go and invited my sister Tiffany, our friend Stephanie, and a bunch of other friends. We went on a Sunday 9/21/14 (our 6 month anniversary actually).

We start the trip to the creek at about 10 am, it takes around 2 hours or so to get there so I was anxious to be on the road. We caravaned with 2 cars and made it about half way through the trip when we lose the second care due to a dog throwing up. We had to wait for them to clean it up and by that time I was annoyed. I tend to get annoyed at small things like this that set back plans. Ask any of my sisters or even Lewis. If something doesn't go the way we planned it I tend to be the biggest bitch ever.

So after losing them off the highway and finally meeting back up with them at a gas station we are back on the road and back on schedule. We finally made it to the 13 mile dirt road turn off just to realized that the road was closed a couple of miles ahead. By this time i'm super Bitch and just want to scratch the plans and go home. Lucky for me that I have  Lewis and he can diffuse me like a bomb in most situations (As my mom puts it). We waited at the road closure for about 45 minutes before they actually opened the road up again. It was closed because there were so damn many people at Fossil Creek on a damn Sunday day! I was so annoyed by this point in the trip that I decided to ride in the back of the truck with the damn car sick dog and the other girls decided to sit back there as well. Now this was not a light decision that was made to sit in the back of the truck. We were on a dirt road, like non graded fire road status with huge rocks and potholes...oh and did i mention it was 14 fucking miles long! To top it all off the dick driving behind us thought it would be fun to tailgate us on said dirt road nearly hitting us about 30 different times. I wanted to throw something at his car! 

With dirt in every orifice of my body from that shitty dirt road we finally get to a parking area. The road was closed off again so we decided to say fuck it and walk the rest of the way. We see a guy in a park ranger uniform and politely ask how fucking long it is going to take us to walk to the god damn waterfall. He was very sure it was about a 3 mile round trip and wouldn't take us very long to get there. Boy oh boy was that man wrong... 3 fucking miles round trip turned into being 3 miles one damn way!

By this point in the tri I am even more that Super Bitch, I don't even know it was more like the Hulk status of being a Bitch. I was sweating more than a pig and out of breath from hiking to this damn waterfall. Oh the best part... it was so fucking crowded with families. Not nice picture perfect families, no these were straight up dysfunctional Chucky doll for kids families. We saw forest service confiscate a damn bbq from some of these people! I was dying on this hike and here these damn people are bringing grills and fucking tents like they are camping at this day use area!

I finally looked back at Lewis and told him if the waterfall wasn't 100ft in front of me that I was just giving up and finding a spot of my own. Of course being the man he is, he calmed me down enough to keep my ass hiking. I was just about to give up when we finally made it to this damn waterfall. Only about 3 1/2 hours after we left Flagstaff, no big deal. Not caring about anyone but myself at this point I strip down to my bathing suit, abandon the others and jump in. I swear if there is a heaven it will be equivalent to jumping in that cold clear water after struggling hardcore on that hike!

Hulk Bitch Courtney simmered down after that cool water. I was finally relaxed just hanging out with everyone and having a good time. So Stephanie and I are swimming around in the water and get the brilliant idea to float downstream a little bit. There is a little waterfall and I wanted to slide down it. Not such a good idea as it turns out. I scratch my ass up in the process. At this point I noticed that most everyone is on the opposite side of the bank of the river including Lewis. Wanting some sympathy for my dumb decision to get my ass all scratched up I decided to seek Lewis out. 

I walk over, get my desired sympathy short of him kissing my ass in public when he tells me he wants a picture.

"Sure why not" but then he throws my shirt at me and tell me to put it on. What?! Why the hell would I want to put on my shirt?! I mean i'm not skinny but i'm not necessarily fat, yea I could stand to lose some pounds but are you really that embarrassed by me? I fought him so hard on that, not seeing a reason to put on my damn shirt!! Finally, being a good girlfriend, I  gave in I put that damn shirt on. I'm pretty sure he was annoyed with me a little bit at that point and he just puts his shirt into my hands and that's when I felt something. A hard tiny square that could only be one thing.

"No fucking way!, No fucking way, You have to be fucking kidding me" I repeated phrases like that while he got down on one knee and proceeded to tell me he wanted me to be his wife. Not the most ideal thing for my to say or to respond but that's me.I love that he made it a complete surprise and he hired a friend to take pictures of the entire thing.

I found a quote in a wedding magazine that completely summarizes what I was feeling. "I don't remember what he said, but I know it was perfect." I really don;t remember what he said but everything about the way he proposed was perfect. I am so very lucky to have met Lewis Palmer! 

It is my complete and utter favorite story of us that there is. It is so perfect in every way. So now here I am. We have set the date for 2016 and now i'm excited/anxious/stressed/overjoyed to plan this wedding. We chose 2 years from now so we could save up some money because these things are damn expensive. I have a venue chosen and I can't wait to get all of the details hacked out! Wish me luck!

 These are just a few and my favorite pictures of his surprise proposal. I can't wait for the road ahead!