Progress... as Promised!

Over Spring Break I created a "Honey Do" list for us to use for our "free time"... We made daily trips to Home Depot for supplies and/or to return supplies. But... at the end of the week, we now have...

A functional dining room table - Ian took the base that we already had, cleaned it up with wood oil, leveled the top, stained a piece of wood, tacked it onto the base and put a large piece of glass over that!

A garden in the front yard- Ian put his new tiller attachment for the weed-eater to work and tilled the side border and the small "garden plot" in the front. We now have a much larger garden in the front yard. We are planning on planting some seeds and bulbs later this week. We had hoped to plant today, but the weather changed and started snowing, guess that was a good sign to NOT plant yet!

An awesome desk complete with file storage and shelves! We use the two two-drawer file cabinets as a base and bought a piece of laminated particle board which we had cut to match the depth of the file cabinets... then took the extra board cut so that we could make 2 shelves that run the length of the new desk.

A clean house- I spent most of the week cleaning house, doing laundry, putting clothes away and organizing. I spent a better part of the beautiful day yesterday in the basement moving my scrapbooking supplies from their tubs and boxes to the desk and shelves! Now we only need to move the bookshelves from their current resting place to a new spot in the basement... that will open up some floor space when we empty the boxes of books!

We only need to finish the painting projects in the kitchen (needs one wall primed and painted) as well as the one spot in the office above the door. Then install the backsplash in the kitchen and I will be a happy girl!!! We also plan on planting a garden in the backyard with flowers and food!!! With any luck we will have a beautiful house for the rehearsal dinner in July!!!

Pictures coming soon...

Big News!

Well this weekend and week have been busy for us! Over the weekend we got the BRILLIANT idea to have our rehearsal dinner at our house instead of at a restaurant. Why, you might ask, would we want to have everyone at OUR house just before our wedding????? Well, we are getting married in a remote location and there are only a few restaurants in the area that are nice, only problem is they all end up being too expensive or out of the way from the hotel. So... we thought we would just host the dinner at our house so we can show off our beautiful home as well as save money! This way everyone we love gets to see our house and what we have done with it and meet our children (Kodi and Buddy) as well as hang out in a comfortable setting. No worries about dress code, no worries about closing time, nothing, nada... We talked it over with Ian's parents and they seemed to like the idea, so now we need to get some catering quotes together and sent to his parents and this portion of the wedding will be complete! Ba-da-bing...

Other wedding related news. The Tulsa reception is coming together. I ordered the post-card invites on Saturday. My dad is getting too excitable about the plans, he has already arranged to have cakes made for the reception (he didn't like the idea of getting a cake from Sam's...) and wants to have food catered in. I don't know what has gotten into him, but alright! I got the cool customized cocktail napkins in the other day for the reception and book 2 (volume 3) of our photo books last week! I am working on making book 3 (volume 2- 2010) now so all I have left to do is our engagement book. I am planning on having the engagement book be our guest book so people can write whatever they want instead of signing on the line of a book that will never be looked at. We have decided on a caterer, we just need to call them back to confirm everything! We are still deciding what we want to do about flowers- order them from Costco and make our own bouquets/boutonnieres/corsages/centerpieces or have a florist do the bouquets, etc and us just make the centerpieces. My final dress fitting is this Thursday and then I will have my entire wardrobe together in one place minus the veil which Ian's mom will receive in May.

We have started working on details for two different bridal showers and I can only hope that Ian can go home with me in June so he can be apart of those (also so we can have a couples event too)... I am extremely excited about seeing everyone in June! We have received quite a few reply cards back in the last month and are up to 39 attendees I think. And of course, me being lil' Miss O.C.D. I have made a master copy of the guest list for all events... Ba-da-boom!

Since is it Spring Break and we are broke, we decided to spend the week together working on projects in the house. We have purchased the wood to put together a desk for me (using our pre-existing file cabinets as base support) so I can not only have my filing cabinets for organization but also organize and store my scrapbooking supplies in one spot! This will also free up a bookcase for books... and unload several more boxes! We set up our DVD shelves the other night and that made a huge dent in the room! Ian has also drawn up plans to fix our dining room table (stain the top piece of wood before adding the glass over it) and has that project going... with any luck we will have the table finished this week, my desk together and organized as well as our gardens started!

Gardens... yea... we are growing up... we bought a lawn mower and a tiller attachment for the weed-eater this week along with flower bulbs and seeds, soil conditioner and fencing... Ian worked like a crazy man yesterday raking all the "decorative" rocks from the border garden between the garage and sidewalk as well as in the bed beside the house... weather permitting we are going to till these areas, put up the border around them, mix in the soil conditioner and plant some flowers! I am super excited about this! We bought colorful decorative Indian corn, miniature pumpkins, miniature gourds, colorful cacti, along with an assortment of colorful flowers in the last two days!

I better run, I hear that it is time to start putting the shelves together for my desk! Pictures to follow sooner than later I hope!

Love and hugs!

Denver Aquarium

During Spring Break, Ian and I decided to skip town and head to Denver for the night. We made arrangements for Kodi to go to a local boarding/training facility and off we went!

We made it to Denver with very little to report, other than stopping to get gas in Edwards and finding out in Denver that the gas cap was dangling out the side of the door... just 100 miles later... Our hotel was pretty cool and in a great location! We were literally next door to Invesco Field and across the highway from Elitch Gardens and the Downtown Aquarium. We had an amazing view of downtown and the roller coasters from our room!!! The hotel, by any means, was not a 5 star, but it was cute and had character. For starters, it was circular, with a restaurant/bar on the top floor!!!

Wednesday afternoon we decided to visit the Denver Downtown Aquarium. Here are some of the pictures that I was able to take before my battery died in my camera! I will post more once Ian uploads his pictures...

Outside the aquarium... the underwater adventure begins!

I couldn't help myself when I realized that Ian was going to have too much fun taking pictures in the aquarium! At least he was able to play with his camera, something he hasn't been able to do for a while!!!

I was able to hold my camera just above the glass to get this little guy sticking his head out of the water to say hello!

My seahorse. I thought it looked so pretty in the red stuff!!!

Ian standing under the "dinosaur" remains...

The usual hold the camera out and take our own picture routine...

Ok so I started to (as Ian would say) "dork out" on the starfish! There were so many colors and sizes and some looked like they were bumpy while others looked fluffy and others still another texture! This one was a medium sized one in the massive tank.

These guys were sooo pretty! I don't think that the camera did them justice!!! The red was almost crimson and the blue, oh my goodness... it was a deep blue!!!

Ian under the bubble in one of the tanks... he's a goof!!! But I love him!!!