Broadway Street

Our little apartment has been really nice. It's only a one bedroom but it has a lot of storage space.  

We live on Broadway which is kind of fun when people ask our address. Plus it's a step up from telling people I live on Gudgell Court  a.k.a. good sale, gud shell, gud gull, ...etc.   Plus it's in a great location and we're only a short walk from everything downtown. 

Our little bathroom with no outlets in or near it. We also have the outside corner apartment so our bathroom window is right by the back door and bike rack. We can hear people very clearly when their outside so no doubt they can hear us pretty well too...

I took this on a day i was feeling cute. Our little kitchen!

It's not always this messy.
We just have some rearranging to do since putting up the Christmas decorations. 

Our little manger for Christmas along side our Bonsai, a little ruin from our cruise and a candle of mine. It's on our bookshelf in the kitchen. You can kind of see the cookbooks on one side and my reading/school books on the other. 

Our little christmas wreath! We used to have a christmas clock on the wall next to it. It was the kind that would play a Christmas song every hour. It was obnoxious so we kept that feature off. BUT. hahaha. I turned it on on my way to class last week when I knew Dallon would be getting home from work in an hour or so. What I didn't know was that he would fall asleep on the couch, be violently woken up by the music and then proceed to rip it off the wall and take the batteries out. I got a good laugh out of it when he told me but now we can't find the nail it was hanging on. No more christmas clock but at least he didn't break it!

Setting up the tree!

Our Christmas Presents

We talk a lot about what we'll do when our lease expires but we both really like this little place. The only really bad thing is the radiant heat. It used to be too hot and our apartment was burning up the whole time, but now it's cold all the time! Not to mention the banging. The kitchen is the worst. It's like there is someone with a hammer trying to get through our pipes.

I'm also getting super excited about Christmas. I did most of my shopping yesterday and the house looks wonderful. I just put a pine scent in one of my scentsies and it smells fantastic! School is practically over too! It's going to be so nice to see everyone so soon!

Open House & Honeymoon

We flew out to Texas the sunday after our reception and wedding. It was the second time I have ever been on an airplane! I didn't think it was that bad but Dallon said it was one of the shakier flights he has been on. He also slept most of the way while I watched the inflight movie.   

After our honeymoon we had a s mall open house in the suburb area where Dallon's parents live. It was super cute! I guess someone in the ward had done a brown and yellow reception not to long ago so they had the chair ties and a couple other very fitting decorations. Sylvia put soo much into it to make it so cute! She made almost ALL the food pictured above as well as the center pieces and a couple other decorations around the room. Not too many people showed up and most who did didn't even know Dallon (he only lived in Texas for a few months). I think everyone had a good time though and I ate like 6 chicken salad sandwiches. 

A friend in the ward did my hair. It turned out really cool. Just a bunch of braids all intertwined. 

the family! It was so green and it seemed there were water canals everywhere!

Another friend in the ward went out with us and took some nice pictures. 

My bouquet smelled amazing!

The cruise was awesome! It's amazing how much they can put onto a big boat! It was like a mini floating vegas. They even had the casino placed strategically so that it was the easiest way to get around the ship. There were fancy shows that we went too. One was this vegas style magic show that was completely insane. I also could not get over how intimidatingly ripped all the on board dancers were... There were also shows where they used the guests to make a fool out of themselves, they were really entertaining as well. 

On the fancy stairs in our matching shirts.

On the outside deck under the life boats. They were really large and were supposed to hold a ton of people. There is also a night where you dress up fancy. Some people looked really extravagant. I borrowed the dress from one of his sisters. haha. 

Dallon ate TWO steaks every night. 

We bought a light up miniature ship! Just kidding! This is Dallon holding the Disney cruise that passed us on our last night on deck. 

Mexico was so amazing! Now when I see pictures of those beautiful white beaches with crystal clear water I can actually understand how amazing it is there. All the beaches we passed were so ideal it's strange that things like that are so natural and everywhere!

This was on our first shore excursion. A fresh water spring that was so clear and beautiful! There were fish in there that would nibble on your feet if you let them soak. The only bad thing is once I got out of the water I never dried!

So picture perfect I promise it's not photoshopped! 

Our dune buggy! We rode in a caravan of these for our second shore excursion! Dallon hit all of the puddles along the way soaking us and another couple we rode with in white salty water.

To cliche to not take a picture.

We went snorkeling! It was cool to see some of the fish and other things in the ocean but the water was nasty. You know how you see fake snow on movies and the people are fine but all you can think about is how unbearably cold that would be? Now I feel like that with salt water. All those movies with beautiful beach scenes and all I can think about is "Don't get that in your mouth!!!" I turned sideways to look back for Dallon while snorkeling and got a mouthful. It was soooo nasty. 

We had a wonderful time! I know Dallon already wants to go on another cruise and I just want to go stay on a nice beachside resort somewhere tropical. I'm so glad we got this experience it was such a good time!

October 5th

Thanks so much to everyone who was able to come out to the temple or to our reception. It was such a wonderful day and everything turned out so perfect! We could not have had more beautiful weather or a more flawless day. People often share their wedding disaster stories but I honestly can not think of anything that went wrong. (Though after the reception I didn't have a toothbrush and neither of us had a real change of clothes. From the hotel in Manti to my parent's house to the reception- I had lost clothes everywhere!)

We had our luncheon at the Manti House. 

The fish were an interesting idea. They initially started as a joke because I had heard of people doing fish as a center piece at a reception. We decided to go for it anyway because it would be fun and feeder fish are inexpensive.... well.... let's just say we had A LOT of little fish die. I almost feel bad. So if anyone is wanting to do fish at their reception just do betas and then give them to people when it's all said and done. We didn't give the gold fish away in fear that they would die and make the little kids sad. I did really like how they turned out though and I'm glad we did it!

Wedding cake, which I found on pinterest. We literally shoved 2 sunflowers in the top for the cake topper. I thought it was a really beautiful cake!

The guest book started out as a joke as well. I didn't want a fancy scrapbook because I didn't want to put it together- since, lets be honest, I probably would not have looked at all that much. And I didn't want just a signature book because I hardly remember names. I was looking at scenic Utah books and we were contemplating a temple book but just could not find anything we liked. Then, Dallon suggested a joke book! He wasn't very serious but we all loved the idea and found this book on amazon! People even asked if it was meant to be a signature book since it worked out so perfectly! Before the wedding we read through most of the jokes and got a good giggle over them. Dallon also made the little vase with the pens in it in his ceramics class and I glazed it!

All the yummy bread at our reception (which we didn't really get to try) with apple juice and hot apple cider.  Dallon's friend and relative, Julie Jones,   did the breads, cake and the backdrops- We could not have had all this good food without her! 

The jams were such a hit! I cannot believe how much everyone loved the jams. I loved them too. My mom might have said that WE made them but really SHE made them, all 300. I helped with the apricot (and burnt a batch). They turned out so good! We ate them leading up to the reception because we knew that we had made a little too much. I'm glad everyone was able to take a jar (or 5) but we did not actually get any :(. I'm only sad because I wanted to keep a cute jar for display or something. We can always get more jam next time my mom makes some and I think she kept a few cute jars too. 

My cousin, Sarah, along with Dallon's cousin McKaylee played the piano through the entire reception! I was so glad to have live piano music I think it added so much!

Is the first dance as awkward to watch as it was for us to dance?? And thank you to Brenda Bigelow, she did the ceiling with the tool, lights and leaves. That made everything so beautiful. 

Dallon does not look please about the decorations on the car.  

We had a wonderful reception and so many people came! I was so glad it was so loud and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

Thanks again to everyone who came and helped make our day special! We started on thank you cards and by started I mean we've done about 30 out of 100 or so. Being married is fun too and we had an amazing honeymoon on our western Caribbean cruise, I'll post about that another day!

On their way

The announcements are out! No more going back! To be honest, I didn't really think too much about how sending out the announcements finalized things so much- I figured things were already very final. But I was surprised at the reaction I got when sending them out. I really like how they turned out-- Sarah took our pictures and I made the announcement. It actually started as an cute online freebie and then morphed into this to fit what we needed.

We printed 550! 300 were sent to Dallon's mom, and the other 250 were to be sent out from here. I was so surprised we only have about 10 spare announcements on our side and I think Sylvia sent out almost all of hers too! That is A LOT of people, and A LOT of thank you cards...
But we are so thankful for all the love and help we are continually receiving from everyone!

Things are stressful though- neither Dallon or I have got a job yet and it is starting to really worry me. Plus I decided to take two CW classes (upper division writing/communication). Which just means a lot of reading and writing. It's fun and interesting, but I have 7 books between the two classes... I am really enjoying my Family Violence class though- it is probably my favorite class this semester. Very enlightening and I feel like I am learning and growing the most from it.

I finished the wedding slideshow-video thing. Dallon was soo cute. These are his better hairstyles through his life:

The Mullet

Bleached Tips, He is STILL very proud of how cool he looks here. 

Sarah took my bridals the other day! They are cute. I was also able to take pictures in my mom's dress and my grandma's dress. Both their dresses fit me perfectly and it is such a special thing that I could take pictures in their dresses too! Dallon still hasn't seen my dress so I won't post any revealing pictures but here are some cute ones:

Pinterest Nails

I found an easy way to decorate your nails here on pinterest.
Of course I am a huge pinterest fanatic (you can follow me here), and my new goal is to actually try some of the things I have pinned! (and I have tried a few!)

These actually worked and i was pretty excited! I struggled with them because I'm not very good with nails in the first place and you have to have pretty good fine motor control to deal with all the pieces of tape that stick to your fingers. BUT they still turned out pretty good!

What you do is paint scotch tape, let it dry, then cut them out and stick them to your toes. Simple enough. The only issue I had was that the tape stuck to everything! And you only get one chance to get it on your nail in the right position.
They kinda peel off easily but I also didn't get them on too solidly.
Too much fun!

The Date & The Ring

I called the temple the other day and reserved our time and date :)

Dallon and I will be sealed for time and all eternity in the Manti temple on Friday, October 5th 2012 at 12:45 p.m.

I was so excited after getting off the phone with the people there and am still super excited just typing this up!! 

And
I LOVE my ring. Which I should because i picked it out, though it was Dallon's favorite as well.
Strangely enough I found this ring online, but when we visited Fred Meyer's I didn't see the ring in the store. We then visited Rocky Mountain Jewelers, which was somewhat awkward- especially when I got my finger stuck in the ring sizer and after he stared at us for a while said, "I have some windex in the back if it won't come off" (though I would recommend them if you want something simple), but we didn't find one there that quite stood up to the one I found online. We then went back to Fred Meyers, showed them a picture of the ring, and went on an all out man hunt to find it in the store. It WAS there, in one of those revolving case things. After trying it, and a couple other rings on, we decided this was it.

the online picture with the wedding band

I'm still not used to wearing it though and when i take it off because it feels uncomfortable, but it feels even more weird to have it off the few times I forget to put it on before I go out in the morning. It does have it benefits though:

• Self Defense: I have scratched Dallon multiple times and well as jabbed him with the diamond prongs. (both intentionally and unintentionally) Hey, he's the one who prefers to hold my left hand!
• Great for gardening: NOT.  Luckily, I do most of my weed picking with my right hand anyway.
• Scrubbing potatoes: I was washing off a potato with my hands and the back of the ring works great for running over the rough parts. 
• Great for going out in down town Salt Lake: Considering the jeweler herself said she stopped wearing her jewelry to work because she was threatened her first week while working down town. (I'll admit, after the [attempted] drug bust on my small street and the stabbing at the Smith's I so fondly visit almost every day, Salt Lake became a little scarier.) 

But all joking aside I do love wearing it. While in public, I'll find myself doing things with my left hand more often hoping that someone sees it. Plus not only is the ring beautiful but the reason I wear it. :)

It's silly and cheesy, I know, but oh well.

Engaged

Engaged! Sooner than expected, but not unexpected.

After we got a  late start, stopped by my mothers work, and realized we only had four dollars and eighty-something cents (it costs $5) we made it to huntington reservoir. It was a beautiful day and since school was still in and it isn't quite warm enough for water activities we practically had the whole place to ourselves. We packed a picnic and were both pretty hungry so we ate first. We then made our way to the freezing cold water- and we splashed around for a bit. Well maybe not splashed, more like waded ankle deep and talked about how cold the water was. When we got back to the picnic blanket we decided to read out patriarchal blessings to each other. This was a suggestion from my mother (since we had already decided to get married). It was a wonderful experience. After we finished reading his he pulled the ring box from his pocket, told me he loved me, and said "would you be my eternal companion?" My response? (almost talking right over what he was trying to say) "I bet the ring isn't even in there, you're just fooling me." But it was in there and I was so excited. So of course I said yes. After we only had one small little kiss (because my mom will probably read this) we decided to take some adorably cheesy scrabble pictures- even though we didn't have time to actually play scrabble.  What a lovely and wonderful day!!

A couple explanations: 
I thought he was fooling me because I knew he had the ring and I knew he was going to propose on our picnic. We had previously joked about him faux proposing with an empty box. 
So, yes, I did know this was going to happen. Though we already had the ring I wanted to tell/talk to a couple more people before we were officially engaged. But once we picked up the ring and I tried it on... I decided he could propose to me whenever. :)