A little clean up.

First of all, I have really enjoyed having this blog  and just wanted to say thanks to my family and friends that read it  : )  Its been a great outlet for me and fun place to chronicle our happenings and my thoughts.

So, I wanted to let you know I've been trying to do a little clean up here and there.

The first and most exciting one to me was adding the "labels" feature to my blog. It was always frustrating to me when someone would ask about what we've been doing lately to the house or something and I'd have a great picture to show them from the blog.. only to find out I couldn't find it because I'd have to scroll through a million posts to find the one I was looking for. Solution: labels. I went back and put a label on every post (all 131 of them - I passed my 100th blog post milestone and didn't even realize it!). So now if you are looking for posts about a specific thing like "Farming" or "Our Home", this will make it a lot easier. Maybe someday I can make it more detailed but for now that's great to me!

Second is I changed out the pictures on our header. Like?  : )  I wanted to incorporate an updated picture of Zeb that I love and a new picture of Kanyon and I.

Third, I went back and cleaned up our pages. Those are the different areas of the blog you can go to. See the box to the right that is titled "Pages"? I edited and added more to the More About Us page and just edited the Pictures page a little.

I'm working on adding a blog roll back onto my blog. I originally had one and then took it out because my Blogger Profile included one anyway but I'd like to put it back in.

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Hope yall have a great weekend! I am heading to Abilene in about 30 minutes. A couple of my best girl friends are leaving for long term mission trips in Africa and in South America. I'm so excited for them! That will make 4 of Kanyon and I's best friends living long term in another country for missions. Sweet.

So we are having a girl's weekend and a few of us are coming in for a fun weekend to say goodbye before they leave. Nothing fancy, just eating out, laying out by the pool and hanging out. Sounds perfect!

Guest Room

I have lately been eye-ing our guest room.
I'm really ready for a change.

And before you think I'm being wasteful because we just moved in and we just did that room - you can just calm down because nothing in that room is new. Every bit of it besides the bed frame, which is from my childhood room at my parent's house, is stuff that I bought in college. And I'm tired of it.

BUT I also am not looking to do a major over-haul. I want to keep the furniture (brass bed, cherry dresser, and vintage green chair) and the wall color. Because I am a practical person. And its still great furniture. And my mom would shoot me if I ever decided I didn't like the brass bed anymore because my granny gave it to me. Don't worry, Mom, I love it.

So here's what it looks like now.

The first thing that needs to change in this room is the lighting! The harsh white light make the room too bright. I googled "warm green rooms" and found this image from makefive.com:

This is much more the feel that I'm going for. Warm and rich. Not bright and juvenile.

The next thing to go is the window treatment (see above). Right now I just have a hastily placed denim curtain that went great in my college bedrooms. But it doesn't look great as a single panel by itself. I still don't know where I want to go with that. I am pretty sure though that I want to buy a curtain rod that extends wider than the actual window to make the window seem bigger. And what comes along with that is the closet "doors". Right now I have the same denim panels covering the closet as the window. The closet in that room was built on at some point and didn't have doors on it when we moved in. When you look at the above picture of the bed, look left and thats the closet. So I'll need some solution for that, too.

I really like this photo for inspiration from wellappointedhouse.blogspot.com:

I have thought long and hard about buying a white bedspread like the one above to tone down the rich colors in that room BUT as much as I like the picture above - I don't think I want to do a stark white bedspread. But I like this picture because it shows how great the wood and the dark colors on the wall decor look with the green.

So today when I was brainstorming about the room, I remembered that Mom had once let me have a bunch of fabric that she had loved but couldn't find a place for in her home. It has always reminded me a lot of these rugs that I love at Target::

The fabric that I have though, has more black and green in it, though. And I am a big fan of mixing black and brown. So the above design is my inspiration for this room. I think I want to get a tan bedspread like this, also from Target...

(sorry, this is the best quality picture I could get but.. its not like it has much detail anyway..)

And a pair of shams like this (again from Target)...

I think these will be a shade darker than the walls. And then make a few throw pillows out of the inspiration fabric and maybe a valance for the curtains. I'm thinking maybe some breezy curtians to hang under the valance?


P.S. I have been going back and adding "labels" to all of my posts. This will allow anyone (mostly me) to go back and easily find a previous post with out having to scroll though a million posts to find it. There will be a list of various subjects (like Our House, Zeb, etc) where you can click and see all the posts with that specific label. Its just taking a while though!
UPDATE: I finished the labels! See the sidebar on the right for a list of subjects you can go directly to.

Sunset in the Country

I love my fancy camera. It makes up for all my lack of knowledge of photography!

I love getting the chance to go to work with Kanyon. It usually only happens on the weekends because by the time I get home from work, I'll probably have something else going on. But on the weekends, I can usually jump in the truck with him and Zeb and go to the fields.

Last Sunday, we were in no hurry so we had fun finding beautiful picture shots while we were checking water. Its pretty hard to not take a great picture out here!

 I love this man.

 Winter wheat.

 Its so nice to come out here after being inside my office all day.

 The benefit of not having buildings where you live.

 His favorite spot in the whole world!

Finally easier on the eyes.

I have lots of beautiful pictures to show you from this weekend (ironically none of them have anything to do with Easter?) but first I want to show you some of my landscaping improvements!

My mom came last weekend for Kaitlin's wedding and majorly blessed me by getting the ball rolling on landscaping our back yard and a little in the front. I don't know why but I just didn't know where to start so it always stopped me. Now Kanyon's having to tell me to slow down!

I pruned the front flower bed of all the dead (which was a lot because of our harsh winter - at least that's what I tell myself) and raked out all the dead leaves and brush. I then transplanted some of the Dusty Miller around so it was more evenly distributed. Vaughn and I picked out bushes for me to replace the ones that had died and I planted those behind. Then my mom planted a few flowers here and there and bought me that plant to put on a shepherd's hook, which I got this weekend. Such a great idea, Mom. I potted some flowers and planted a few seeds in another pot for the porch but this picture doesn't show that. I'm really happy with how its turned out! Especially paired with the new trim.

 Those bushes in back will hopefully grow much taller to give some height.

The bushes in front have grown great and are really helping to shield that orange on the brick.

We were blessed to have three beautiful trees already in the front (as well as in the back) and I love this one. Its leaves are pale pink in March and go to purple and now bright green here in late April. Does anyone have any idea what kind of tree it is?

Of course, gotta sneak in a picture of Zeb..

 He loves when I work outside so he can play in the water. I really need to upload a video of him fighting with the hose. Hilarious!

Our front porch is probably the next thing to be fixed, although we're not sure when. Could be soon but could be next year, depending on how much it will cost which depends on whats going on underneath that crumbling cement top layer.

But we DID pick out and order a new storm door this weekend! We wanted one that would match the new trim and plus we knew we wouldn't be wasting a perfectly good storm door because we will use this one on Kanyon's leather shop. Speaking of his shop..

No improvements lately since its getting busy for farmers here again but I have a good feeling that when we get that new storm door in, Kanyon will not want the old one sitting around and will install the new door and storm door to the shop. We'll be able to scratch off one to-do on a long list for that shop. (When I say we... I mean Kanyon.)

(See some grass finally growing in?!)

Here is the new flowerbed that Mom worked on while I was getting ready for Kaitlin's wedding! I love how it looks and its already majorly inspired me to finish it out along the back of the house.

 That bird feeder and shepherd's hook its hanging on I picked up at Lowe's this weekend because apparently all the birds in Dawson County live in our tree. There's a ridiculous amount. We love the pretty sing-song birds but the black squawking crows.. they eat Zeb's food! And every time I replace Zeb's water, there are black feathers all in it so they bathe in his water. So I bought a bird feeder to try and deter them. Kanyon, though, decided we needed a more direct method..

Don't worry, he only shoots the annoying crows. Not the pretty, good birds. He got this new pellet gun this weekend specifically for this purpose. Its pretty fun : )

Here is the flower bed from farther away so you understand what I mean by finishing it out. We need a few more plants for it to reach the porch. We may not put anything within a few feet of the porch and just mulch it, though, because we don't know where our future porch will extend to and don't want to have to uproot anything later.

Here is a close up of my favorite plant Mom got us - its taken so well to the flower bed!

Kasha came and helped me mulch the bed and then gave me a plant from her flower beds: an umbrella plant to hide the passage hole to underneath our house. If you look in the pictures above, it sticks out like a sore thumb because its covered with plywood and a cinder block. But hopefully this umbrella plant will cover it up without making it too hard to get under the house if we need to. (This is an iPhone photo which is why the color is weird.)

And last, here is a picture of what the ground looks like on one edge of our backyard.. these berries fall off our neighbor's trees into our yard and I like the effect! That might annoy some people but I don't mind it since its in a part of our yard I probably will never landscape.

Also makes a cool picture ; )  Zeb has discovered that he can eat the pecans that fall off our pecan tree over in the same area so he is always snacking on them now.. Maybe he'll figure out he can eat the little blue things too?

Sink Excitement

Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest differences..

Kanyon and I were at Lowe's last week scouting out new doors, kitchen sinks, outdoor lighting.. mostly dreaming. But we did pick up a new sink faucet for our bathroom. And the difference has been ... probably more exciting to me than it should be.

The old sink faucet was silver and old fashioned. It spurted out water. You had to turn the hot water knob about three times to get anything. Not to mention it took 2.5 seconds for it to look dirty because of our hard water, which made the whole sink always look dirty.

The new faucet is oil-rubbed bronze. We even chose the most affordable one and its so pretty (to us).
It makes the whole sink look cleaner.. and it doesn't show hard water spots!

That was probably not exciting for 99% of you.

CRAZY week

WOW. This last week and a half was CRAZY.

Rewind to two weekends ago -
Friday night (the 8th), we had a fundraiser at the church I work at where Vaughn and I decorated some tables to host my church's attendees. Did that make sense? Anyway, I was excited for some of Kanyon's family to meet some of the people I work with AND I got to show off my dishes :)

I couldn't find a picture of the complete set with my salad plates in them and they are my favorite part. So here is a picture of the salad plate to give you an idea:

The fundraiser went well, from what I could tell, and everyone from our church enjoyed the program.

Saturday, our friends Britnee Mahan and Carter Brandt got married in San Angelo at the Stables at Fort Concho. It was a gorgeous wedding. The "stables" were more of a large barn. The white Christmas lights made the place look great. Tac, Kasha's 15 month old boy, had a great time dancing the night away on the dance floor! The only picture I have from the night is this one of Jessica Napper and I. You can see a little of the lights behind us!

That week, I had bible study on Monday like usual (I am LOVING this semester's study on John by Beth Moore, called Beloved Disciple) and then Tuesday night, I scrambled when I got home to get ready for a Pampered Chef party I was hosting! I have loved their stuff and my friend Danielle is a consultant. I felt like I was cheating PC because all I did was open up my house and make food and then they give me all this free product for hosting! Seriously, if you've ever thought about hosting on of their parties, do it. The rewards are ridiculously generous. I'll share what I ordered later when I get it all in but the party was a lot of fun!

For the food, I didn't have much time to prepare so I stuck with the usual easy party foods - vegetable tray, cheese ball and crackers, and Kasha offered to make something so she brought Mocha Brownies (a Pioneer Woman recipe, of course) and I made the simplest trifle dessert ever. Lemon pound cake, whipped cream, and assorted berries layered together in a trifle bowl. Looked impressive but took two minutes to put together (depending on if you bought or made the lemon pound cake - in my case... bought). Danielle, as the PC consultant, made a quick meal while we watched, showcasing all of her PC gadgets. She made ham and cheese calzones. Sounds kind of womp-womp.. but they were so good. Ham is one of the only meats that I don't love and I still loved them.

Wednesday and Thursday were business as usual. Church and getting prepared for the wedding coming that weekend.

Then Friday came and it was time for Kaitlin Lee to get married!!

 Kaitlin and her boy, Nathan.

Now her husband!

I don't know why, but Kaitlin getting married seemed much more surreal than my own getting married!

Kaitlin and I have been friends since we were 14. We met at the same church camp that I met Kanyon at, Summer Excitement! She was one of my bridesmaids in my own wedding and I was excited to be one for her. We had a lot of fun together spending lots of time together in the time leading up to the wedding. We got to have a couple of times to go to dinner and run errands but one night we rented a hotel room so we could have a full on sleep-over! Silly, I know, but it seemed appropriate at the time :)

The rehearsal dinner was at JB's Steaks in Brownfield and we had a good time getting to know all of the wedding party and sharing stories. And then Saturday, we spent most of the day relaxing, laughing, and getting ready for the wedding! Kaitlin was a very excited and happy bride. Early afternoon, we started taking pictures and everything started happening really quickly!

The wedding was beautiful. Can you believe that this is in Brownfield, TX?

The ceremony and reception were both held at the Fulford Barn in Brownfield. It was a beautiful venue. We've been there before for another wedding but it was a reception at night so I didn't get to see this view!

Here are the two newly-weds cutting their cake -

Don't they look great! Like I've said a million times now, it was a beautiful wedding. I cried. Twice. And I didn't even cry at my own wedding. I shocked myself. One of my favorite parts was the Father-Daughter dance. Kaitlin and her dad started out dancing to "Cinderella". Almost towards the end, though, they surprised everyone with a little something..

Whew, trying to catch you up on a week and a half is hard and I'm remembering a few things here and there I've not mentioned but I'll leave it at that. Tonight, some of Kanyon's family is in town. Actually, they are "in country" because they are missionaries in South America on furlough. So we are having a family dinner tonight with them after I do some yard work with Kasha. Pictures of the yard to come soon. It is much improved!