Bullet List

I feel like I've been out of my blog mojo lately. But I think it's more because I haven't taken very many pictures lately than the fact that I haven't been doing anything. Because life's been is crazy.

Sidenote: I am going to stop saying that "life has been busy lately" because I can't remember the last time I couldn't say that about life. I really envisioned a less busy life when I graduated college. Because I had so much on my plate back then.. usually taking 18 hours so I could graduate early, a (measly) job, a Young Life leader (pretty much a full time job), and involvement in a couple clubs. Oh, and I had friends. Oh, and a boyfriend/fiance. But we never saw each other till the weekends cause he worked like a dog. (He actually liked putting in full-time worthy hours on top of school ---> weird.)

Anyways, I have no new pictures for this post. I mostly just wanted to fill everyone in on what has been going on. We'll go with bullet form, shall we?

• The guest room renovation and the leather shop are not finished and have not been touched since the last post about them.. Who's surprised?

• I have several of my favorite people in my life pregnant right now! (That sounded like I got them pregnant, which makes no sense, but I'm just gonna leave it.) AND I'm throwing my first baby shower (actually first shower ever..) for Kasha in a couple weeks! I've been planning it for a while now. Not because I'm stressed about getting everything done but because I'm excited about it! I would show some inspiration pictures but I don't want to spoil it. Ya know, since I'm going to blow everyone's minds with the decor that no one has ever seen before. (Not.)

• Kanyon, Kalith (father in law), and Dan (uncle) are about to start harvest! I love this time of year. I need to go out and take pictures of his cotton, though he may not want me to do that being this is a drought year, i.e. super weak cotton. Here's an (ugly) picture of where we're at from last year:

• My brother is living in South America at the moment and I'm yet to blog about it. That needs to be fixed. He is a mountain man. 

• This weekend, Mom and I are meeting in Fredericksburg for our 2nd Annual Girl's Weekend (capitalizing it makes it official). Last year, we went to Cloudcroft, NM. This year, we decided to go to Fredericksburg since she had never been (I think?) and I've only been once and want to go back. Its a perfect mid-point between Welch and Clear Lake, too. I am so excited!

• Camille's wedding is in a few weeks. I finally decided on a dress (we got to pick out our own dress as long as it was green) and made my appointments for nails and hair, etc, and it is coming up so fast! I can't wait! It's going to be such a sweet wedding.. I feel so good about this marriage. They're great people.

          This is the dress I got (click here to go to J. Crew page):

       Super excited to wear it. Love that gorgeous green.

• Kanyon bought another gun on Sunday. He decided a while ago that he wants to collect guns so he's been researching and reading up on them. He already had a few but he loves learning about them and going to gun shows and finding a great deal on the really good ones. I'm happy for him that he gets so excited about that. This one he was particularly excited about. His dad has the same gun and Kanyon says its an amazing gun but it was discontinued. Well, after reading up on them and finding out their worth and usual asking price, he went to this gun show with our friend Mason on Sunday with the intention of finding one (they're rare these days) and actually found it and got a great price for it. As he walked away to meet up with Mason, three people asked him how much he wanted for it in the course of ten minutes and a few salesman congratulated him on a great purchase. Needless to say, he was pumped.

• Our new secretary at work started last week. It is so nice to hand back to her the secretarial tasks I have been keeping up with while we were interviewing and hiring her. It has made a significant positive impact on my work life! She is excellent and life is pretty great at work again. It got so busy for a while that I felt like I was drowning in my to-do list. You never would think that churches could be like that but believe it or not, a church can be just as busy as any other business.

I feel better now that we've caught up. Have a great Thursday!

Monday pictures.

Not much too exciting happened last weekend. Friday, I skipped out on the Dawson football game because I had basically only been home to sleep in the last week. They won, though, so great job, dragons! My friend Kaitlin just started making customized newsboy caps with your favorite team on them and I ordered a Dawson one. I'm excited!

Not much to talk about Saturday either. Kanyon went to an auction and I to a baby shower, then we ran errands in Lubbock and had dinner. Then watched the games (Texas Tech and Texas Rangers) at our friends Megan and Mason's house. And Sunday was the regular.

BUT don't worry, I have some pictures to show you.. of puppies! Ha. Troy and Sue's dogs had another litter. They are Zeb's full blood siblings and they are so cute!

So here's all I have to show for my weekend:

These Australian Shepherd puppies are a month old. ARE THEY NOT ADORABLE?

Sorry, I'm kind of crazy about them.

The chocolate colored one in the last shot was cracking us up. He kept barking at his siblings everytime they laid down like he was wanting them to play with him. He was so agitated!

Last night.

First, this blew my mind.

A couple miles from Welch...

Driving into Welch..

It looked like a brown cloud had descended from the sky and then landed on top of Welch. Once it hit, it got immediately dark. Love those sand storms.

After my bible study, last night, Kanyon and I discovered the humor category on Pinterest. We stayed up entirely too late crying from laughing so hard looking at things like this:

HAHA this is so what I would think!! 

 And my personal favorite:

Oh, man, I'm having a hard time keeping a straight face at work.

Kanyon's Leather Shop

No, its not done, but that's okay. Its coming around the home stretch!

Well, I am finally giving you an update. I feel a little squirmish about showing you some of these pictures because there are some changes that still need to be made that will add to the "easy-on-the-eyes" approach that I am going for and that Kanyon (shockingly) has no care for. We'll see.

First a before:

YIKES. And that is after Kanyon replaced the roof! Just imagine a horrible roof for me.

Now, here is where we stand at the moment:

The exterior looks very basic but so much better! I'm very proud of how much work Kanyon has put into this little shop. We plan on painting the door the same blue our front door is and adding some metal decor (probably a Texas star - how original!) to the right side of the door, centered. Also, Kanyon is going to build a door from leftover metal from the roof over the closet on the left. 

A close up of the window. It is such a major improvement. Kanyon had to totally gut the trim and replace it.

Again, this is where we will have a metal door the same color of the roof. We think we are going to put Zeb's bed and a heat lamp for him in there.

And the inside - still some more to do, obviously, but the truth is - this is a shop, not a living room. The floor is a rubber material, which will be great for Kanyon having to stand for long periods of time and also for absorbing the thump-thump-thump of the treadmill when we're running on it. Kanyon is planning on building some shelving and other stuff we haven't worked out yet. But it is functional finally, and that is great!

 

 (where the treadmill will go - Kanyon doesn't think I'm strong enough to help him move it .. psh)

If you noticed above, there is a hallway off the front door. Kanyon is going to build some wall to wall shelving on the right and back wall. He will also replace that A/C unit. That closet on the left is a large one and we store lots of stuff in there. I moved all our Christmas stuff out of the guest room closet and Kanyon moved it all out there the other day. So nice to have all those boxes out. Now the leather gets to move out of the closet soon, too! Yay for re-claiming our closets.

Also, those white sheets are covering a trundle bed mattress, which will replace the treadmill in the office. So that means I get to buy new bedding ;)

Have a great Monday!

Look what I did.

I am not a crafty person. I would love to be one. But I don't think I have enough patience and I am not at all detail oriented. So I am really proud of myself today.

As you've probably forgotten since its been a while since I've done anything for it, I am re-decorating the guest bedroom. I really needed something for the window. It was such a small window, I needed it to look a lot bigger. So I searched Pinterest for window treatments and decided to do something I never thought I would have before - a valance.

These were the pins that convinced me.

Source

Source

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I saw this tutorial on In My Own Style blog for a box valance and I decided I would try it.

I had to modify some of the instructions because I wanted mine to be wider than her's, which meant I had to attach two pieces of foam together to create the face. But here it is in all its bad-iPhone-picture glory!

I'm very happy with how it turned out. It makes it look a lot bigger and you can't see it in the picture, but I added upholstery studs on the ends. I love it!

I've got some plans to finish up this room soon so hopefully I can be done!

Conglomeration

First of all, I know that I kind of left my guest room updates and the leather shop updates hanging. But that's for a reason.. because I haven't been able to do much since those updates. But Kanyon and I walked through the shop last night and he told me what all he has left to do. And I am getting materials today for a project for the guest room. So updates will hopefully be coming soon?

In other news, now that I've gotten two of the bigger chunks of our weekend in Houston told, I think this is going to be a conglomerate of the rest of the weekend!

Friday night, Kanyon and I flew in to Houston about 8:00, about the same time as my cousin Emily, who flew in from OKC after work. That night, my family all just hung out at home, ate a great dinner from Mom and just relaxed.

 Dad playing with his new wine decanter/big boy toy.

Saturday, though, was busy busy. We woke up and headed to downtown Houston for Micah and Emry's birthday party. We got home from there around 3:00 or so? When we got home my family was watching the Oklahoma State game and we had time to sit for a little while.

From there, we headed to a nearby neighborhood to take some family pictures with our friend Megan, who is a photographer! Here is a link to her blog post about our session with a sneak peak of pictures! She had a hand in helping us surprise our parents since we knew we would be going pretty much straight from pictures to the surprise party, where she also took pictures for us.

Love this picture of all of us.

After a really late night after the surprise party visiting with friends and family, we woke up for church at my home church the next morning. I was particularly excited to go this Sunday because they had just moved into their new location. Well, really, they had mostly moved out of the building we had been in for about 10 years and are currently meeting in the YMCA. I've been so excited for them. Moving out of that building was going to be a major load off of them financially and it was exciting to be starting a new chapter. It was great seeing all the new faces that meeting at a YMCA brought and the excitement of something different.

After church, Mom and I skipped going out to lunch with everyone because we were helping host a bridal shower at our house in a couple hours! My best friend Camille from high school is getting married! I don't have a single picture from the shower unfortunately (I'm sure someone else does..) because at that point, I was running on fumes.. but she had a great shower and I enjoyed getting to meet a couple of her aunts that I hadn't really ever met.

I really had trouble deciding which picture to show of Camille and her fiance, Jacob.. because they are all so beautiful! Are they not a gorgeous couple!?

 (Photo by When It Clicks Photography)

After the shower was over and we finished visiting with friends and cleaned up, it was about 5:00. I think I was on my second fifth wind or something because I don't know how I stayed in the upright position the rest of the night.

For dinner, we just took all of the leftover food out of the fridge and had a mostly Italian but also some other stuff meal. Kalum and Ashley came over - wait .. quick picture of Kalum and Ashley from the surprise party..

You're welcome.

Anyways, we had a great dinner (Dad and I ran to the store and bought some really good olives.. something I had to drive to Lubbock for them to be uncanned or jarred.. Kanyon is rolling his eyes, I'm sure). And we got to eat some more of the awesome cake that Kalum and Ashley got for Mom and Dad's party.

And then Rachel, one of my best friends, and Jeremy stopped by! Jeremy is from Texas City and Rachel just got an internship in the area after she graduated this summer so she is really close to my parent's house! She got a puppy for her birthday and brought her over.

Elly was a teensy bit nervous around Holly Belle but she got over it pretty quick. It was so good to see Rachel and Jeremy. I don't even remember the last time the four of us actually sat down together. 

Another late night, got up early and headed to the airport and then worked that afternoon! It was a great weekend.

Now, just because I found this in my phone from last week and its too cute not to share..

Mr. Tac. Kanyon put him up on the hat rack at Emmaus. Look at that cheesin'.

Have a great Tuesday!

Micah and Emry's B-day Party

I love little kid's parties! It doesn't matter what kind of cake there is, what present they open.. the whole day is about them and they love it! And the adults that love them love it, too.

We got to celebrate our neices' Micah and Emry's birthday on the same day. The best day for Kyla and Alan (Micah's parents, and whose house the party was at) happened to be a weekend that Kanyon and I had already planned to be in Houston! We were excited we weren't going to have to miss this one like we have to with so many. We missed Sena and Daniel and the kids that day!

Here are the birthday girls blowing out their candles! Emry, on the left, turned 3 (though she talks like a 25 year old) and Micah turned 2!

At the beginning of the day, Micah was still saying she was 1, but after blowing out candles, she told me she was 2! I guess she needed some sort of closure to her first year before committing to being 2 years old. ;)

Sorry about the iPhone photos.. my point-and-shoot broke a little while back and I haven't gotten around to replacing it..

Kyla is so talented at making birthday cakes. Obviously I could take a few lessons from her considering Kanyon's cake this year.. ha.

There was lots of family in attendance since several family members have moved to the Houston area in the last few years!

 Uncle Kirk with his super cute grandson, Braylon!

Ben (Kanyon's cousin) and his wife Becca with Braylon again.

Opening presents!

 The birthday girls with their families. I think Emry's sneaking some cake :)

I'm so glad we got to come to this birthday party and get time in with both sides of our family this weekend!