ahhhh.

One day I will stop doing so many crafts.

Ok, thats a lie.

so today I randomly did a few things that I have been meaning to do.

First, this is my bedroom, its coming along!

This is part of my bathroom, its pretty much done. The white vase is something I did today.

I got the vase at a contemporary store that was going out of business so I got it for 2 bucks. I added the brown ribbon around it, added some sticks found at the park and there ya go!

This was my dresser before my project. oh and my unmade bed, eeks!

This is after! again those vases were 2 bucks, i may add some orange ribbon around them, or I may not. got some sticks from the local park, I already had the candle tray I just added the green ribbon around the candles.

I painted the tops of my dressers white because our nightstands are white and it ties them together.

one of these days I plan to spray paint the sticks I just dont know what color, I may do silver! OOOOOO!!

my purse did not go so well. eeks.

the body of it came together nicely, but I did one of the steps out of order on accident and I need to figure out how to fix it! wish me luck with that.

I have so many projects, crafts, sewing projects and whatelse saved on my Tumblr its ridiculous. I love it!

If you don't tumbl and you love crafts, you should start tumbling.

here is mine so you can see what it is.

It so nice to be able to save any website and picture with the click of a button and not have to write it down, or copy and paste it into a file.

my biggest long term project is to make a headboard.

one day!

cleaning

I haven't finished my purse, actually I havent even started.

BUT a friend asked me how I keep my apartment so clean.

So I thought I'd share my secret. sshhhh...

First of all, I clean as I go, most of the time. If I am cooking, I clean and put things away as I go so there isn't a mess. when I finish eating, I put my plate away in the sink and rinse it off. When I do laundry, I put it away, when I get undressed I put the clothes in the hamper etc.

But we all know sometimes this doesn't happen and now you find yourself in a messy, dirty, unwelcoming, overwhelming dwelling.

So now what?

here is how I have always thought about it. If you walk into your place, look at it, and think to yourself, I have to clean this whole place its so messy, then you might start to cry. Its so overwhelming!!! so I do it in 4 steps. 4 steps!!

Step 1. I gather all the dishes and put them in the sink. I go to every single room and ONLY LOOK AT THE DISHES. don't look at anything else in the room, just get all the dishes.

good job

Step 2. I gather all the clothes, dirty or clean. obviously dirty clothes go in the hamper, I put all the clean ones on the bed in a pile.

Step 3. I gather all the trash. papers, wrappers, mail , soda cans etc. obviously throw it all away.

now for Jason and I, clothes dishes and trash are the majority of our messiness. for you it might be different, toys, tools, dvds etc. substitute your own. so by this point my apartment is almost done.

Step 4, the finish. this is where I wrap it all up. I load the dish washer, hang up all the clean clothes, load the washing machine, put away anything that is left, take out the trash, and then get out the chemicals ( omg which is totally my favorite part) and CLEAN everything. I don't consider a place clean, till its been sanitized with chemicals. Jason's idea of cleaning does not include chemicals and to me that is just picking things up and putting them away, not cleaning. also in step 4 is vacuuming and sweeping if they are needed.

pretty much step 4 is my favorite because it is what makes your house clean and makes you feel tons better about it, and by that point all the hard, not fun stuff is done.

so basically the idea behind my strategy is to focus on one thing at a time, and seriously only focus on that. I am telling you, it works.

now here is a cleaning project I am continually doing.

you know those spots in your house that are so crammed full of stuff you have no idea what is in there but you know that you don't need half of it you just saved it cause you didnt think you should throw it away? yeah we all have them and I am tired of them.

so I have a list of all those spots.

Sock drawer-done

Hallway closet-done

Pantry

Fridge-done

Laundry Shelf

TV dresser

Junk drawer (duh)

above the sink

under the sink-done

so this is my list of areas in my apartment I want to go through, and purge all that I dont want, and then organize it. I am almost halfway done, when I have nothing to do or am feeling in a cleanie mood, I pick something from the list and get it done. It really helps to feel organized and clean when you open doors to clean closets that aren't busting at the hinges with junk.

good luck!

I hope to get my purse done today. ;-)

today...or tomorrow.

Today(or tomorrow) I will be making one of these.

I am quite excited.

I am practicing on practice fabric, but I like the fabric so if it turns out well I will just keep it!

wish me luck, it seems like a difficult pattern.

finished product

I finished my table!!

before I reveal my table I have 2 other projects to show.

I added barn stars to my wall of canvas, you can't really see the 3-Dness of the stars, but they are 3-D.

I love em.

This is a frame that I got from our wedding and decided to revamp it since it doesn't match our place.

so here it is!

I was about to take a picture of my table when Jason took my camera claiming I am never in pictures, so here I am! the skirt makes me look like I have love handles, I may be throwing that skirt out! lol

here is my table!

its exactly what I planned, it just took a while to get there. the blue paint isnt quite that bright, FYI.

I love my centerpiece. :-)

Bottom line, I heart crafts.

there seem to be a lot of craft days....

But thats OK.

I had another craft day.

and it was emotional.

My task at hand was to paint my table. I bought the paint, got the supplies and braced myself for an irreversible start.

Here is a before. Ugh.

The paint went on great! so great and it looked exactly how I pictured.

then came the clear coat.

UGH.

I bought a spray clear coat to put on the top to protect the paint. It did not go on even at all even though I sprayed it on even.

I am thinking its possible it looks so weird right now because the paint underneath it wasn't dry, so I am waiting for 48 hours to allow everything to completely dry. If it still looks bad, I will have to start over.

The after picture will come later.

:-(

Simple craft I also did was to our lamps in the bedroom.

I added some color to our lamp shades to keep them in line with our color scheme.

possibly in the future I may spray paint the base a different color because its a little too dark, I just don't know what color to do that wouldn't look tacky and will go with the cream colored shade.

Any ideas?

I will keep you posted.

I bought these plates at the DI for about .50$ each, for a special project that I have been waiting for the right idea to do.

So, Before....

AFTER!

I haven't quite figured out if I like the placement of them on the wall, but if you enlarge the picture you can read the scripture that I used.

I love it.

This one is another favorite Re-Use craft.

I got these 2 metal art hanging things from our wedding, and I felt obligated to hang them cause I didn't know where to return them, and I just thought they had potential. The original color was a teal, which is NOT in my color scheme at all.

so at first I just hung them in my bathroom and said oh well.

but today, I re-used them!!

Before.

After!!!

I painted them, used scrapbook paper, ribbon and whatever else I had laying around to revamp these lovely things. Do more expect less is something Bishop Packer told Jason and I when we got married and its a phrase that we love in our household. Do more for others, expect less for yourself.

my next project is a headboard that I am making from one of the decorations at our wedding reception. we will see if it works out or just looks weird.

Other than crafts, there isn't a lot going on with us. I quit that job I started I told you about, the lady I was working for was PHYSCO. Seriously, she was absolutely crazy. She never paid me, I had to file for unpaid wages to get her to finally give me the 3 checks she owed me. So I have spent my days being Jason's full time wife. :-) which I love. There is nothing better then taking care of our place, getting dinner ready for my husband and making sure his life is absolutely perfect when he comes home is just such a great reason to wake up in the morning. Love it.

Oh how I love craft days.

today was another craft day at the Powell house.

:-)

my lovely bestest friend, Bequi, came over and we had delicious home made pizza, along with her adorable baby Sarah.

then she watched me cover golf wiffle balls in fabric. :-)

This is my new table center piece.

The fabric will change based in the season or holiday coming up.

so I have started with Fall. :-)

Jason was kind enough(after 5 minutes of me begging him) to take a picture with my center piece. :-)

I heart him.

my dining room is the room I am currently working on revamping.

do you recognize the square holder?

hmm

from here possibly?

I originally bought the bamboo holder thing for my wheat grass plant. which, was SOO difficult to keep alive and looking pretty. so I am re-using it as my center piece with balls. :-) If at first you dont succeed , try try again!

next I am painting my table.

Wish me lots a luck!!

let me give you a piece of advice for crafts.

Never buy supplies for what they were intended for.

I needed balls. My first instinct was to go to hobby lobby or Michaels and buy Styraphome balls to cover in fabric. well, for about 12 balls it was going to be 4-5$. which, you think is reasonable right?

So I was at wal-mart when it dawned on me to try to find a substitute, because after all I was going to cover them in fabric anyway. It was between ping pong balls, or golf practice balls. I opted for the golf balls and got 15 for 1.83$ SCORE!

so, try to always think outside the box with crafts, and avoid buying supplies from crafts store because unless its an awesome clearance sale, it was always be more expensive.

Next I am also making Bequi and cute trash container for her car.

provide me supplies and I will make you something too!

new hair...

It was definitely time for a hair change. a trim.

remember back from here that my hair lacks personality. major.

lucky for me my hair person is home.

Thank goodness.

BEFORE

AFTER!!!

The long hair isn't really different, as I am trying to grow it out, but the bangs were cut drastically and good thing.

I like it.

it will take getting used to, and a little more time in the morning to get ready.

but I like it.

Craft Day!

Today was craft day at the Powell Pad.

and it was oh so fun.

Here is the project I told you I was going to do.

It was very easy for my first official sewing project. it took about an hour and a half and 5.18$. I highly recommend this for a first sewing project.

Here is the project I am most proud of and transformed my opinion on my dining room.

my chairs.

My mother in law bought us a set of 4 chairs, they are nice except the fabric did not match our decor.

See?

So I fixed it!!

I spent an hour at the fabric store trying to pick the perfect fabric that both Jason and I would love.

I found it.

The flash makes them look a little weird, and doesnt do them justice, cause now they look great!

Its a blue paisley print and I oh so love it.

next I will be painting our table, cream. :-)

Today!

Today I am going to make one of these...

Because as of now, all of our grocery bags that Jason uses for lunch bags, are stored under our sink.

unorganizedly.

if thats a word.

wish me LUCK!

Random picture post!

Can I be frank?

Of course I can its my blog.

there are 3 pictures that I have taken over the last month or so that I would like to share with you, and encourage you to laugh with me at them.

Picture number 1.

Ok, this picture is for an educational question. In my personal opinion, I feel that these pants are too long to be capris, and too short to be pants. SO WHAT ARE THEY?! am I just crazy to think capris shouldnt go past half calf?

COME FREAKING ON!!! K this is a horrible picture cause I was really trying not to be obvious, but this chick is wearing UNDERWEAR as shorts! WTF?! who does that? I seriously had to keep myself from gagging. wanna know where she was? WAL-MART. Surprised? didn't think so.

Now this one is just funny, no one was wearing these shoes, I simply came across them at foot locker. Jason and I had a contest to find the ugliest pair of shoes in the store, and I won, with these beauties.


MALL TRIP!

So Jason had an errand to run at the mall, invisashield thingy for his phone.

While he did that, I did this.

:-)

Now let me start these pictures off by saying they are all at Forever 21, and I was trying out the hippie retro look to see how I liked it.

let me know what YOU think, please. :-)

The blue shirt was just my shirt that i never took off, FYI. So dont pay attention to it.

oh, and those are my new american eagle artist jeans, that I LOHUHUVE. FYI

This red one i liked, but I kinda wanna try and get away from shirts that I HAVE to wear an undershirt with because of my G's.

Despite the yawn, I actually liked that shirt.

I also really liked this blue one. It has a tie around the waiste that you cant see very well probably cause I didn't have it tight enough.

This one was too long for my taste and looked like a maternity shirt.

I would have loved this one, if the top wasnt such a weird shape.

haha , this one was just plain fun. It was extremely comfortable

lol I didnt mind this blue one. I think it was like 6 bucks so had I actually been in the market for clothes, i would have gotten it.

I did not purchase any clothes this time.

not because I didn't want to, because i just got a new outfit last week. :-(

gotta have some control!

So what did you think of the modern hippieish look?

is it me or no?

8 days later

Camping!

oh it was quite the week.

We camped for 8 days, had lots of fun with Jason's family side, took a few pics, caught some ZZZs, and made sure to get in plenty of laughs.

This is Jasons mom teaching him neck stretching. lol

This is my father in law scared of my axing ability, WHICH I might add, I learned how to do from Titanic. :-)

This was our first morning, we had the camp ground ALL to just me and Jason. It was lovely.

Our own little night together. :-)

We had a good time.

Things I won't miss:

Getting dressed in a tent
Sleeping on an air mattress
pretending bears dont exist
washing my hands with cold water
not washing my hair for days
getting dust in every part of my body
asking,"anyone wanna play shang high?"

Things I WILL miss:

asking," anyone wanna play shang high?"
getting to know more about all my in laws
meals together with his brothers
the one and wonderful nap I took the whole time
cuddling with my husband cause it was so cold
cuddling with my husband cause I was so scared!
saying," I wonder who that is" every time a car pulls in.

:-)

I am WAY glad to be back though. I missed my bed oh so much.

Did you miss me?

bet you didn't know I was gone.

good news and funny stories

Ready for the funny story?

Good.

So I get home the other day, and go to the bathroom. I decided to multi task and brush my hair at the same time. Weird I know. as I am brushing my hair I feel something fall, hit my leg, and fall in the toilet.

What was that?

so I look.

wanna know what it was?

Part of my wedding ring!!

UGH!!

So I realize its the bottom support piece to my bucket that holds like 25 of my diamonds, great support piece huh? anyway, I call Jared's and this is how the conversation goes.

Lady: this is Jareds blah blah blah

Me: hi, you are about to hear the dumbest question you have ever heard. ready?

Lady: HA HAH HA!!! ok I am ready.

Me: a piece of my ring fell off into my toilet full of urine and I need to know if you need me to get it out, or if you can just get a new piece so I dont have to put my hand in my own waste.

Lady: ah ha ha ha!!!

Me: ....

Lady: HA HA HA HA!!!

Lady: BAHAHAHA!

Me: ......

Lady: um, ha ha ha, I think you can go ahead and flush, we should be able to find something to replace it with, ahahahhaa!!!!!

Me: WHEW!! thanks.

Lady: ha ha ha yep, just come on in.

Me: Ok thanks!!

As I go to hang up my phone I can hear her STILL laughing.

honestly though, who wouldn't?

I will let you know the outcome of the situation.

***UPDATE***

They do not have the piece to my ring, and they probably can not order it.

:-/

Which means they will have to replace my ring.

Which means it wont be THE ring.

THE ring I picked out.

THE ring we had custom altered so it was 1 of a kind.

THE ring he proposed with.

THE ring we took all 3 of our engagement sessions with.

THE ring I spent 8 months adoring.

THE ring that sat in a little white box on Oct 18th in the temple waiting to be put on my finger.

THE ring that is in all my wedding photos.

THE ring that I have NEVER lost!

It won't be THE ring. It will be A ring.

A ring.

Not THE ring.

rubbing off

Does anyone else notice yourself becoming more like your spouse?

I do.

and it slightly worries me.

I also see Jason becoming more like me, which also worries me. Jason is a really shy timid person, and I am quite the opposite, at least I used to be. Since we got married I have become more reserved and shy. It worried me when the other day we went to a ward softball activity, and the only person I really talked to the whole time was Jason. It made me feel worse when Jason pointed out that I was being shy.

I am not a shy person, at least I didn't use to be.

I know that when you get married, you learn and grow together, evolve into better people, but how do you keep from losing certain qualities that make up who you are?

advice?

Home sick :-(

Well today I am home sick from work. I woke up at like 5 am with major cramps and well...OTHER problems.

I will spare you the details :-)

which is so unlike me.

I did use this day as a productive day-

*I got my oil changed

*got my hair trimmed

*whites in the washer

*the dishwasher going

*and have picked up our apartment.

speaking of which! I am so proud of Jason and I, we have continually kept our apartment clean for almost 2 weeks now!! YAY! If you know me, and my husband, we are messy people, not dirty and gross, just messy and unorganized. ya know, clothes everywhere, papers everywhere, that sorta thing. well a while ago we completely cleaned our apartment from top to bottom and have managed to clean in at the end of every night, or each morning and its been clean!! It hasnt been hard, just annoying. but yay!!

lets talk about my hair. UGH!! as you all know, my hair person is out of town, well I was in serious need of a trim.

SERIOUS.

As scared as I was to venture from Jami, I went to great clips, cause I wasn't about to pay 45$ for just a trim at some fancy shmancy place ya know? So I went to my local great clips, sat in the chair and braced myself. It wasn't that bad. She was kinda, I don't know, over the top on her makeup for my taste, lispstick everywhere, caked on fondation you know what I mean, but she did what I needed and convinced me to change my shampoo. I have been using Tea Tree shampoo and conditioner, and she told me that it dries out already fragile hair. Which I totally believed because my ends were HORRIBLE! they are so dry and just horrible, split ends, breaking and I have noticed it since I started using tea tree. I only bought it cause Jason loves how it makes your scalp tingle, so he can keep using it, I won't. its back to Biolage for me. I also bought K-Pak treament, which I used when I died my hair black, ugh, and I really liked it, so I am using that again. I am actually sitting here with it on my hair and a shower cap as we speak.

Tonight is....don don don....HARRY POTTER! I love the harry potter movies, and I will be honest I have never read the books, but I can still love the movies! which of course I do. we are going with Jason's parents to see it at 8 tonight. I am way excited.

We got a new TV for the bedroom, Jason is very excited about that lol. It was

kind of a random decision, it was an awesome deal, so we said what the heck. it arrived yesterday, w

e set it up, rented a movie, snuggled up in our bed and enjoyed our night. Its a 32'' HD flatscreen thingy. When derek comes over and he and Jason play PS3 all night, I will have a big nice TV to go watch in my room! before we had a 20" huge big box TV so this is an upgrade for sure.

Camping is soon, and I still haven't decided how long I am going to stay, they go for 9 days and I just don't know if I can hack that. But I also don't know if I could stay home alone with out Jason :( I could do it just fine if one of my friends stayed the night with me, but I don't know who would that could so I am screwed. :(

crafts. I have completed my craft that Derek got me for my birthday, and I love it!! Its a magnet board, I painted it, used scrapbook paper, leaf ribbon and a few flowers. I also made the magnets with pebbles and scrapbook paper. We use this, instead of our fridge, because I think using a fridge for this stuff looks tacky. Sorry. We have our grocery list up there, wedding annoucements, home teaching assignment, basically anything you would put on your fridge. :-)If you look on the right, there are sharpies and a pen that I hot glued magnets to so we always know where they are. Why did we do sharpies you ask? good question.

For this!! we bought this deep freezer a month ago, we bought tons of meat to fill it with, pizzas, otter pops, and other things that we just couldnt fit a lot of in our freezer. We bought ziploc bags, lots of meat, individually packaged them, and we needed to write a date on them so we knew what to use first, but we had no sharpies!! So I bought some, glued magnets to them all, half are on our magnet board, and them some are on our freezer for easy access. Genius right? I know. Its really an obnoxious big white appliance in the corner of my dining room, but I sacrifice lol. It saves us tons of money because I can do couponing and stock up on stuff I wouldnt otherwise be able to due to lack of space.

We are doing great and can't believe we have already been married for almost 9 months! It has gone by so fast! It is crazy how fast time flies when you are in love and happy. We are loving our new apartment, soooo loving it. its so close to both of our works, its such an amazing and nice ward, we seriously love our ward, to the point that we are actually going to the ward activites! we have never done that lol. We love you all and hope everyone is doing well!

where to start!! a couple weeks ago on a nice hot sunday Jason and I went hiking at doughnut falls. its a pretty short hike and elevates about 500 ft, it was pretty nice. I am never very talkative or excited during hikes because, again, I am in it for the workout, not the scenery. So when we got to the end it was pretty cool! the water was too high from all the rain lately so we weren't able to cross the river and go up to the top, but the bottom of the fall was still cool.
I took zero pictures on the 4th of July. seriously, I suck. oh well. on the 4th we, hmm, I think we went to lunch with Jason's parents, and I can't remember what we did during the day but we cooked a brisket and ate dinner with Derek. It was SOOO delicious. I really think brisket may be my new favorite meat, except its so fatty. luckily all the fat is contained to one spot so its really easy to just cut it away. After dinner we walked over to Sugar House park, cause we live that close. :-) we met our friends there, Jordan and James. Played uno, talked and watched the fireworks. All in all it was a pretty good holiday, I could have done with some more sitting by the pool, but eh.

my husband is the sweetest cutest thing! the friday before the 4th he went golfing with his brother and I went to layton and hung out with my parents at their pool. around 6ish we both started heading home and Jason called me to tell me he had a suprise. AW! he is so fetching cute. so I got home and he told me I had to find my suprise, I went in to the bedroom and there were two big boxes on each side of the bed, he got me nighstands!!!
before we used a box on one side, and an old night stand on the other. I love them and him for being so wonderful. there is one of those on each side obviously. Jason and I are starting to buy new furniture slowly so that when we buy a house, we will actually have nice stuff to put in it. next is a dining room table set, a TV console and a dresser set. :-)

Jason finally cracked and told me where he is taking me for our anniversary! SAN DIEGO!! I am SOOOO excited. we went there on our honeymoon and I absolutely loved it! he booked a 4-star hotel and its so ritzy. I am so excited I can't wait. When we were there last time I wanted to go to the san diego temple, but the only day we could go was on a monday, so we just walked around, but this time we will do a session! YAY!

there really isn't much else to update ya on. Work is less stressful for Jason and more stressful for me, I guess there has to be a balance lol.

OH!! my coupon shopping!!! I learned how to do it. here are a few tips that I have found helpful.
1. you have to be willing to stock up. which is hard because in our apartment we dont have a ton of space, but so far it hasnt been an issue. 2. get the idea out of your mind that wal-mart is the cheapest, its not. well, sometimes it is, it just depends. 3. stop going to the store once a week to get the items you need for 7 dinners, even if they aren't on sale, thats bad. You will be going to the store about once a week doing couponing. 4. the way you do it, is you match sales with coupons. example. my Kashi go lean cereal is regularly 5$, if you bought ten, albertsons has each one for 2.49$, I had a 1.50 off coupon with makes it 1$, but albertsons also had a twice the value coupons in the paper for up to a dollar which means, it was FREE!! Had I not matched the sale with the coupon, I would have gotten the cereal for 3.50 with my coupon alone, compared to free. sweet huh? Jason and I order the sunday paper, just for the coupons and they have already paid for themselves for a year with how much we have saved. I have done it 3 times so far, once I got 90$ worth of food for 44$, 60$ worth of groceries for 12$ and 52$ worth of groceries for 10$ thats 196$ for 66$!!! I gotta tell, I am not complaining.

there ya go!!