A Family Wedding

This lovely dress below was the bridesmaids dress I got to wear for my brother-in-law and new sister-in-law's wedding. It was a beautiful day with considerably good weather, considering it was the end of November. It was such a lovely ceremony and such a great day! I'm so happy for the both of them and so happy to have a new sister, who is honestly amazing.

CONGRATULATIONS SHELDON AND AUBREY!! 

The dress below can be found on Amazon and you can find the direct link below. The shoes (which are my new obsession) also have a direct link! This is the first outfit in a long time that is all new stuff that you can actually buy! I will also have the usual widget at the bottom of the page, but with other maxi dresses that I personally would love to have. Enjoy!

Also, these photos were taken from my brand new Samsung Galaxy S4 . I love the quality of photos it takes! I didn't even edit these at all! Hopefully I will do a post with an official review of my phone and what apps are my favorite. Stay tuned!

Dress: Amazon, Cardigan: Target, Shoes: Kohl's

My Broken Ring // My Proposal Story

So on the day exactly one month from my one year anniversary of being married to my amazing husband, I'm at work, as a janitor, and what happens... a diamond falls out of my ring and is lost forever.

And I am devastated!! 

I looked around for a while but it's a tiny diamond and I had just vacuumed a huge area, I didn't know exactly when it fell out or where it could be, and I just stood there staring at my ring and wanting to cry!

Yes, it may be a tiny diamond and not very noticable, but this is my ring! My most favorite possession in the world! Literally the only time I take this ring off is when I'm showering and then it immediately goes back on. I have been wearing this ring for a year and a half and I'm so incredibly in love with this ring and even the tiniest problem with it breaks my heart!

I told my husband and he, being the amazing hubby he is, immediately know just how sad I was and did everything he could to comfort me. We're going in to the jewelry store tomorrow to see how much it will be to get the diamond replaced, but we're incredibly poor right now so if it's too much we'll have to wait. But that just makes me so sad!

So here is the worst picture of my hand ever (it looks super swollen or fat and also red) that shows how the diamond fell out.

Oh my gosh, my hand looks awful! But you see that black spot on the left side? That's the missing diamond. Super small right? But it's still killing me! I'm just so depressed!! I want to cry!!!

So let's reminice back on the day I got this ring, back on November 3rd, 2012.

Picnic for my birthday.

Here's your present, some beautiful earring, why don't you try them on? 

But wait, what's underneath...

The proposal!! And one of my most favorite pictures in the world! Thank you Chris for having my family hide and take this picture!!! 

Jumping up for a hug because I was so excited! 

This was such a long, tight, wonderful hug.

And the first kiss picture we ever took together. 

I really like this picture too. 

And finally I got to put on my ring! 

So many pictures of my butt. Good thing I was wearing my favorite red pants. 

This is me in shock that my family was walking over. 

Such a happy moment!! 

Then Chris painted my nails because I wanted a picture of my hand and the ring but my nail polish was messed up so it needed to be fixed. I married a guy who will paint my nails, totally the right thing to do. 

The first real picture of my ring!! (And Chris's nail painting job, which isn't much better than mine, but really makes me want to paint my nails black again...)

Making fun of all the cheesy photos like this. My goodness I want to be that skinny again... 

A slightly pregnant looking photo, but really is just an engagement announcement photo. 

And then I started doing cartwheels out of excitement. 

Seriously I was amazing how warm it was that day, this is November in Utah! 

Jumping for joy! 

It's amazing to me that I love him more now than I did then, I didn't think I could love him any more. 

Chris examining the ring to make sure he did a good job. 

Finally, one from my engagement session with Amy Bennion Photography. (She did a fabulous job and was such a nice person to work with, and I won the engagement session so it was all free!!)

Well, one of the main reasons for all those pictures is because I honestly don't think I've shared the whole proposal story with pictures before... and I'm too lazy to go searching for it. So this post turned into my proposal story. 

Anyways, I'm very upset about my broken ring and I hope we can get it fixed soon and cheap. 

THANKS FOR READING!!! 

Welcome to September!!! (and August in Review)

Welcome to September everyone!

I always like September. It's when (in Utah) we can pull out our boots and scarves. I can wear jeans and not be sweating like crazy. Things cool down. People get too excited about Halloween coming up. The leaves begin to change colors. It's the first full month of school. The weather is perfect. My brother turns 18 (actually, I don't want to think about that, he's way too young to be turning 18). September is a beautiful month and I am so excited for it!

I set the bar incredibly high for myself last month by writing 42 blog posts... 42 in 31 days? Crazy! And while I would love so badly to beat that number this month, I'm almost positive I can't, because I'm focusing a lot on school. So if I seem MIA for the next... four years... it's because I'm being a good student.

So this is also my August Review post (with pictures!!!) and I'm just going to talk about all the crazy things that happened to us this August. 

So end of July/beginning of August we were in Jackson Hole! My family goes there every year and it was so great to have my husband come with me this time! We visited Yellowstone and Old Faithful, like in the picture above, and just had a fantastic time there! I absolutely love going to Jackson!! 

So this is a picture of the inside of a car (and it was taken in July, but works for these purposes). Chris's car broke down this month. It was awful. However because of that, Chris's parent's brought up a spare car for us to use, and now that Chris's car is fixed, we have two cars! Which is really nice. The spare one is for Chris's brother, but he's on a mission till November so he doesn't really need it right now. 

We both got Pell Grants this year from the government to help pay for our school! I was super excited! Even though they still messed things up and dropped my classes and I still had to pay money, getting that money was exactly what we needed. 

This month I started a goal to read one book every month, which is also my new Book Club. I'm pretty sure no one has joined my book club yet, but that's okay. I know that it'll be a little rough in the first few months, and I'm fine with that. For September we'll be reading Beautiful Creatures. So if you want a goal to read a book a month, you can join my book club, it's absolutely no commitment. And please leave comments of book suggestions! Thanks! 

I first discovered this trailer in the month of August, and that's why it's in this post. This commercial honest gives me chills and makes me smile. I can't explain it. Bravo on making an awesome trailer! I'm super excited to see this movie! This movie is based off of a short story by James Thurber and I hope to read it before the movie comes out. But we'll see. Maybe I'll add it to my book club. 

I became a crossing guard this past month. Ha ha. It makes me feel old or something. Anyways, I'm just an alternate, so when the other guards are sick or on vacations they call me up. I've only done it once since school started (besides my training) so it's not steady income. But I get paid $2 more there than at my regular job, so doing it every now and then is fun. Plus I get to talk to little kids, which is always fun. 

I also got my janitor job back at the student center. It's not exactly what I wanted to do, but I absolutely love my boss and the kid I'm partnered with, Todd, we're real good friends. It's a fun job and I'm actually really good at it. It's just sometimes, we find nasty things in the bathrooms as we're cleaning them, and I'm not too fond of that part of the job. But it proves that I work hard to get my money. 

My best friend got married this month! I'm so happy for her and I loved spending the day with her! She looked so beautiful and so happy the whole day! CONGRATULATIONS LAUREN AND TREVOR!! 

For Lauren and Trevor's wedding gift I made them these mugs! I was super proud of myself! If you would like to know how I made these mugs, leave a comment below! It's super easy, but I'd love to make a tutorial for you if you want one. 

This mountain near our home caught on fire! My camera did a fantastic job with this picture... I'm amazed. (PS, these pictures are not necessarily in order)

But for me, the biggest thing about this month was that I started college again, after taking a year off of school. I had a fantastic first week and although I have tons of reading homework already, I'm so excited for this semester! I'm just so happy to be back in school (even though I have no idea what my major should be anymore, help me!!). 

Well this is my August Review post! I hope you enjoyed it! August was a crazy month for me and I had a major breakdown in the middle, but it ended perfectly (with my dad's birthday!) and I loved it! I'm super excited for September (and my brother's birthday!) and to continue on with this semester, but keep in mind I am a full time student and a part-time custodian so if I don't post a lot it's because I'm either doing homework or catching up on sleep. Please forgive me. 

Thanks for reading!! 

A Cinderella Story

It's an exciting moment in your life when you realize your wedding dress looks awfully similar to the dress in A Cinderella Story. I think my favorite part about my dress that it was so different from all my friends. It had feathers, it had a giant skirt, and I was the first person in Utah to buy it!!! :) Yay me!

Anyways, the main point of this post is to tell how much I love the movie A Cinderella Story! My roommates and I used to watch it on a weekly basis. We would quote it daily. It's just so fantastic! So while my husband is fishing with his friend, I'm busy watching A Cinderella Story, because it makes me smile.

2:51 AM

It is currently 2:51.... no wait, now 2:52 AM. I am not sleeping because my stomach hurts and my mind is a buzz with all the things I have to do tomorrow. I'm also stressed. Very very stressed. But what ever would someone who is a newlywed and unemployed have to worry about??? Unemployment.

Everyday I just feel like a failure. I've been applying for jobs for two months and have nothing to show for it. I haven't even been getting interviews! I've had one interview during this whole process. If I was getting more interviews, at least, I wouldn't feel like such a failure.

I've always been good at finding and getting jobs but this time around things are not going in my favor. I've just been sitting at home, applying like crazy and getting fat. Okay, not fat, but I have gained a lot of weight since my wedding. There's no way I'd fit in my wedding dress now. I'm working on that. I've started working out again and it makes me feel better.

But I only wish I could find a job soon. It's causes insomnia. It might be the cause of my stomach issues right now (I doubt it, but we'll go with that for now). And it causes my self-esteem to drop WAY low. And it doesn't help that every day I have someone asking me, "Have you found a job yet?" Nope. Because I'm a failure.

But here I am at 3:00 AM filling out job applications online because I can't sleep. Because why not cure my insomnia by applying for jobs? Sounds logical to me.

___________________________________________

So, I can't let this whole post be depressing!! Today I had a wonderful relaxing Sunday with my husband. Sundays are always for movies! We watched a lot of movies today. We watched Up, Despicable Me, The Amazing Spider-man and Captain America. I love all these movies very much! (Notice that we went in order from child movie to adult. Also, notice that I linked all those titles to IMDB. This is because I LOVE IMBD! One of my favorite things to do in my spare time is go on IMDB and look up one of my favorite movies then go to the "Trivia" on it. I've learned some very interesting and amazing things by doing that.)

We also went on our traditional Sunday walk. I love our Sunday walks because we hold hands and walk around and enjoy each other's company. Today we found a secret pathway!! We'll go back and I'll get pictures because it was very cool! We saw a pheasant and goats and an adorable wind-mill thingy and it went past a river (that's not really a river) and it felt like trespassing but it was so much fun! I'm definitely getting pictures next time.

I always enjoy Sundays being married. We get to be lazy and no one judges us because it's a "day of rest". :) Good times, always good times.

Oh! This week I'm throwing my best friend a bridal shower and I will have lots of pictures to show for that when it's over. Today I made a really cute decoration for it and I'm very excited! It should be really great! Lauren, start getting excited!!! :)

Thanks Bridesmaids!!

I know it's been a month, but I wanted to publicly thank my beautiful bridesmaids for being there for me on my very special day! I love you girls so much! You mean everything to me and I miss you so much right now! I can't wait to be there for your special day!

THANKS MICHELLE, LAUREN, LINDSAY AND KRISTINA!

My Wedding Dress

So I had a lot of posts leading up to my wedding dress. But I couldn't ever show it because I couldn't risk letting Chris see it before the wedding. And I'm so glad he never did, because that moment that I walked out and he first saw my dress was magical. The look on his face was priceless. He made me feel beautiful. I loved my wedding dress!!

I shared many stories of the events leading up to my dress. But everything was worth it for that moment. So here's a picture of my dress, the very first wedding dress that I tried on back in November.

I fell in love with that dress immediately and I knew it was the one for me. Even after trying on ten more dresses, I couldn't stop thinking about that dress. So finally we bought it. I wanted my dress to be modest so sleeves had to be added. That was a whole fiasco but everything turned out for the better. Because I got my big poofy, princess dress, and I had never felt more beautiful in my entire life.

Note: This post may be edited when i get all my wedding photos back and have access to my bridal photos. I currently just have photos taken by friends and family.

Why Being Married Is Fun

While Chris and I spent our day doing boring "adult" activities, today was a really great day in our marriage? Why? Because we're starting new lives together and we're doing everything together! Here is the basic schedule of today and why it was so fun.

Working out.

Chris and I did Jillian Michael's Six Week to Six Pack workout DVD this morning. It was really fun struggling, sweating and accidentally hitting each other during the video while also working towards healthier and fitter bodies. 

Going out to lunch. 

We went to Paradise Bakery for lunch! I don't think I've ever talked about Paradise Bakery on here before. I love Paradise Bakery!!! My favorite thing there is their Cheddar Broccoli soup. It is so dang good! Their cookies are also amazing! If you like coconut, get their chocolate chip with coconut, but the plain chocolate chip is good too. All their cookies are good. And usually buy one get one free (but don't get mad at me if that's not true for you).

Starting a new bank account.

Chris's friend Ben works at Mountain America and helped us start our new bank account! We got to deposit all the checks we got for our wedding. We have money now! It was a fun experience to share together because it's like we're really starting a new life together. We share a bank account now! 

Make wedding returns and purchases.

We had to return a few duplicate gifts and we received in-store credit. We had a buy a few things for our apartment but also some fun things for us. 

Cleaning Chris's car.

I think it's so funny cleaning Chris's car. He always tries to spray me with the thing. His car was filthy inside and out, and there's still paint permanently on the tires from our wedding. 

Cleaning the kitchen.

I've finally got Chris trained to help clean the kitchen (that's a joke, but he is good at helping out, much better than the week we moved in here). And I like working together to get the dishes done and the counters cleaned. 

Now reading through this you're probably like, "What the hay? That's not fun! Those are all chores!" So let me explain. I love Chris and any time that we get to spend together always ends up being the best of times. Today was fun because I got to spend it with Chris. More than that, we were truly starting an "adult" married life together (adult in quotations because we won't be acting like adults for a while). We have an apartment that we get to pay bills on and buy things for, and I love it! It's those little things that make marriage fun to me, because we're changing our lives so that we can be together forever. I love married life! 

Tomorrow is our one month wedding anniversary! Wa hoo! I'm so happy that we're married! I'm so happy that we're together! Our lives have changed in the greatest ways in the past month and I'm so happy that I have eternity to spend with my new husband! :) 

My Honeymoon!

So I want to write all about my wedding day, but I don't have all the pictures yet, so that will have to wait for a little while.

My honeymoon was INCREDIBLE!!! ...except for the beginning.

So we spent our wedding night at The Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City. Everyone at that hotel is so nice. They gave us chocolate covered strawberries, sparkling citrus lemonade and a gift certificate to come back on our anniversary. I wish I had pictures, but unfortunately my brother had my camera. We had to meet up with my mom the next day to get my camera, but it's okay because when we met my mom she gave us more of our wedding cake (which was the most delicious cake of my life).

Then we drove to Chris's parent's house, or, my new in-laws. It was Mother's Day and we were able to talk with Chris's brother Sheldon (who is on an LDS mission in Michigan) on Skype. It was really cool to talk to him. I've only met him once and that was before Chris and I were even dating. I'm very excited I'll get to officially meet him when he gets home in November.

So then Chris's parents drove us to the airport so we could catch our flight to California! So we go through baggage, security and we sit at wait for almost two hours and then they announce that our flight is cancelled. What? When does that ever happen? Seriously? In the winter that happens a lot, but not on a bright sunny day in May!

So the airline arranges a new flight plan for us, but it left 11:00 AM the next day, went to Seattle, then to Portland, then it landed in California at 7:00 PM. We called the airline and talked to them about that. The guy on the phone told Chris "Wow! They have you going across the whole country!" And then he changed our flight to the same time the next day. So we were stuck in Utah for another day.

My new mother-in-law got us a room at their time share in Wolf Creek (thanks again Michelle!). We were able to use the hot tub and just relax. It was really nice. The next day we drove to Ogden and went to the Dinosaur Park!!

After that we were dropped off at the airport again and this time, our flight was not cancelled!!

So we landed, rented our car and drove to our hotel, which had this beautiful view... of DISNEYLAND!!!

Yep, the tall building on the right is the Tower of Terror!! So we settled in and ate at a delicious place at the Garden Walk in Anaheim (but I'm writing a whole other post about all the delicious food we ate on our trip).

The next day we went to Huntington Beach. I was very upset because I wanted to go there so I could specifically go to Dwights, but it was closed. :( But I do love Huntington Beach. It's absolutely beautiful!

So we did lots of playing in the water, burying each other and soaking up the sun! Then we got some food and enjoyed a Farmers Market going on and did some shopping. I absolutely loved it! I'm a huge fan of beaches! Why I live in Utah where there are none, I'm not sure! But I just love going to the beach!

That night we went to see The Great Gatsby. I'm a huge fan! The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books and I'm beyond excited to teach it when I teach high school English and I found the movie to be very good!

The next day was DISNEYLAND!!! Chris surprised me and got us these fabulous matching shirts! We also went and got these "Just Married" pins at the Disneyland City Hall. If you are going to Disneyland on your honeymoon, I highly suggest doing this. All the workers, and lots of other Disneyland goers, would congratulate us and we ended up getting three fast passes because of them! Totally worth it.

I cannot say enough about Disneyland, I'm in love! I would go there everyday if I could! It just makes me so happy to be there!

We spent the next day in California Adventure and had such a great time! The new Cars Land is incredible! It's so authentic! The rides are awesome and the food is great! We were in love with the ice cream cones! I got one everyday! We also loved the Radiator Spring Racers! Best ride ever, and  the only rides we went on twice in a row, thanks to a generous man who gave us his fast passes!

I wore my Perry the Platypus shirt at California Adventure and the guy on the Phineas and Ferb parade float pointed at me and said over the microphone that he like my shirt. I felt very special. :)

Yep, they really were pointing at me. The next, and last day of our trip we had a park hopper ticket and visited both Disneyland and California Adventure. However, it was a Friday, and incredibly busy. We hardly got to go on any rides and waited forever for the few rides we were able to go on.

But we just loved being together! Oh! And watching the Jedi Training Academy! Because we both love Star Wars!!

Chris was just upset he wasn't allowed to participate. But it was okay because we enjoyed watching the little kids. They were so adorable! And were so great at defeating Darth Vader and Darth Maul. ;)

The next day we had the best meal of our life (information coming soon) and took our flight home.

Overall, it was literally the best trip of my life! I loved every minute of it! I loved being with Chris 24/7! I'm so happy we're finally married! I love being married to him! He is my best friend and the most important person in my whole life! I can't wait to take another trip with him! Especially if it's to Disneyland!! :)

PS, on the day I wore this shirt to Disneyland, I saw at least 20 other women wearing this shirt. Apparently it's really popular. And I totally understand why, $8 at Target? Totally worth it!