Vote For Lily!

Well, we finally entered Lily in a baby contest--the prize of a year worth of free diapers and $1000 gift card to Buy Buy Baby was a nice incentive to enter.  After much debate, Adam and I decided to enter her Team Edward picture--since every parent is going to enter a cute picture of their kid, we decided we needed a gimic--therefore we're hoping to benefit from the immense popularity of Twilight.  If you want to vote for her, follow this link and click on the Lily D. thumbnail to pull up her picture.  http://www.963wdvd.com/Article.asp?id=1245267

The contest rules allow for 1 vote per day per email address---I happen to have 5 email addresses.....I'm just saying. :)  The first round goes from today through April 3, so we'll let you know if she makes the cut!

My Fossil knock-off

One of my favorite pasttimes is online window shopping--I look all I want, but seldom do I buy.  I suppose it's a sickness, really, but I just can't help myself.  If I have one weakness, however, it's for jewelry.  Fossil is one of my favorite places to look for cool and unique jewelry, and about a month or so ago  I found a necklace that I absolutely loved.  I wasn't even remotely tempted to try to find a place I could sneak it into our budget, though, as it cost a whopping $130. (!)  As it was mostly comprised of strand beads, I thought I could attempt to do my own take on it.  I first went to a little bead shop down the road from us and causually inquired about jewelry-making classes.  I didn't want to pay the $40+ for the instruction and supplies, however (plus I'm not really into the kind of jewelry they make in those things), so I figured I'd just wing it.  First I did a little reconnaissance by visiting the Fossil store in our mall so I could see the necklace in person, then I began to collect my materials.  I had quickly scratched off the bead store as the source for my supplies as each strand of beads was around $100!!  Lucky for me, Michaels has an extensive collection of strand beads, and I had access to a bunch of 40% off coupons. :)  After about a week or so of daily trips to Michaels due to the coupon stipulation of 1 coupon per customer per day (and a succession of returns and exchanges), I had all of my stuff.  After much trial and error on the technical side of things, and making constant changes to the artistic side of things, it was done.  Is it as nice as the Fossil necklace? Certainly not--the materials are cheaper, the crafstmanship a whole lot shoddier, and I'd trade it in a heartbeat for the real thing, but it was kind of fun to make, and a heck of a lot cheaper.  It's definitely not an everyday necklace, but I think it's a fun statement piece (and yes, it's kind of heavy).

Our DIY Project

Okay, maybe assembling some nightstands from IKEA isn't the most challenging do-it-yourself project, but it's about as complicated a project as it's going to get at our house for now. After a long day of running a errands on Saturday, Adam and I went to work putting together the night stands we had purchased. They were very much needed because up until this point I had been using a couple of plastic storage bins stacked on each other as a make-shift nightstand, and poor Adam went from using an overturned diaper box to nothing. Thankfully IKEA has nice, easy-to-follow directions, for the most part. It didn't take too long to assemble them, and it made me feel pretty handy.

Me, hard at work.

Adam, hard at work.

The finished project.

As for Lily--she tried her hand at helping (translation: hindering), and gave us (translation: me) a fright when we couldn't find a screw and thought she might have swallowed it. Luckily we later found where she had stashed it in the living room where she had been playing.

Valentines Day

I was in charge this year for planning what we would do for Valentines Day. Last year was comprised of taking our 3 month old along with us to a sushi restaurant, so I wanted to try for something a little more romantic this year. We had a tight budget to work with, so I decided to surprise (or attempt to surprise) Adam with a picnic dinner at home--and since it is February and freezing outside, our picinic was held in our living room. :) It was rather difficult to keep it a surprise since Valentines was on a Saturday and he was home all day. All I told him was that we were going to have an awesome dinner at home. Our menu was comprised of a cheese fondue with a hint of apple cider to sweeten it up a bit, along with squares of french bread to dip in it, a nice green salad with candied walnuts and apple slices, a rotisserie chicken, and blueberry lemonade to drink. Now, I have never actually done a cheese fondue before, but have talked about doing one for a long time. So the day before Valentines Day Adam was like, "You're going to do a cheese fondue, aren't you?" At first I was like, "Wrong! (short pause) You suck! How did you guess that?!" Well, after that, I began to see the fruitlessness of trying to keep it all a secret, especially since he was at the grocery store with me when I bought the stuff for the remaining courses. I banished him to our room while I set everything up, since the picnic aspect was about the only "surprise" remaining. I tried doing candlelight for ambiance, but it was way too dark, so I turned the hall light on--how's that for romantic lighting? :) As you may notice, we do not own a proper picnic blanket, so an old comforter from college had to suffice. I also hope you appreciate the large mixing bowl containing the bottle of blueberry lemonade on ice. That was a last minute idea, so I worked with what I had on hand.This was our dessert--molten chocolate surprise. It was so good that I made it again the next night. My excuse was that it was Valentines weekend, so it was okay to have such a rich dessert two nights in a row. The best part was that it is so easy to make--the whole thing takes about 15 minutes from start to finish. If anyone wants the recipe, here's a link for it: http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/molten-chocolate-surprise-74129.aspx As mentioned, we were on a tight budget this Valentines Day, so we agreed that we wouldn't get each other presents, and I made Adam swear he wouldn't get me any flowers. What a strict, romance-hating wife I am! Little did I know, however, that Adam had already bought something for me in January, the little cheater. He got me a bottle of one of my favorite perfumes--I actually already have a bottle of it, but I dropped it a few months ago and the nozzle broke, rendering it unuseable. I was so upset about it, since the bottle was still mostly full, so I was definitely surprised at his thoughtfulness. As for me, I made him a card. I would say this is an accurate comparison of Valentines gifts. It's the thought that counts, though, right?

And just because I can't have a blog post without Lily in it, here is a recent picture of her looking coy.

One!

Okay, I started this post over a month ago, but I've obviously been quite lazy about blogging of late, so I'm forcing myself to finish it, thereafter to take another blogging sabatical, and you can all read all about Christmas sometime around Valentine's Day. ;)

Lily's first birthday was on the 14th (of November), and we celebrated in grand style. We made a new play area for her in the office and she enjoyed playing with her new Little People sets.

We went to the airport later that morning to pick up Adam's sister, Ashley, who had flown in just for the occassion. We went to a kid's play cafe for lunch and Lily had a blast!

The birthday hat didn't go so well--she kept pulling it off and finally the elastic band snapped and whipped her just under her eye, poor kid. I managed to snap these prior to the near blinding incident.

Lily had a mountain of birthday presents to go through. Ufortunately she was not up to the challenge and got rather distracted by whatever she had just opened to go onto the next gift, so we had to help her a good deal.

And finally the cake! The pictures say it all.

Happy Birthday Lily!

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween, and didn't even have to traipse around local neighborhoods panhandling for candy. Ok, so that actually sounds like fun to me, but we'll have to wait until next year.

Normally Tiffany is not a fan of bugs in the house (understatement of the year), but she didn't seem to mind when this rather large (or small depending on your perspective) ladybug showed up.

We had a couple of friends join us for dinner and a rousing few games of Catch Phrase. I pretty much rocked it, but not so much for Tiffany. After that we enjoyed watching a nice Halloween movie, "The Others." We even had a decent number of trick-or-treaters come by. My personal favorite was the 40-year-old lady with no costume, no kid and a plastic bag in her hand. She asked for some candy for her and her granddaughter. Hmmm.... I gave her the vanilla Tootsie Rolls.

This being Lily's first Halloween we took a ridiculous amount of pictures, but we'll spare you all those. Here are some of our favorites from the evening.

Autumn Activities

Fall has come and gone in Michigan--or at least it sure feels like it has. Just a couple of weeks ago the leaves were at their peak colors, the sun was warm, and the air was refreshingly brisk. Now the bitter chill of winter has set in (hopefully only temporarily, but I'm not holding my breath). Inspite of this, I have been thoroughly enjoying autumn. We're making the most of what Michigan has to offer--for example, apple orchards and cider mills are abundant in this party of the country, so Lily and I have visited a couple of them. Let me tell you, cider donuts are pretty tasty. A couple of weeks ago we went to one orchard that also had a pumpkin patch as well as a huge play area and a petting zoo.

A friend of mine from my mission, Lynne Johnson, came out to visit us for a week, so we had a lot of fun visiting some beautiful sights and taking in all of the fall colors. Now that it's absolutely freezing, I guess that means it's time for Halloween. I'll try to be a bit more prompt posting pictures of Lily in her costume lest I am forced to endure more "friendly reminders" that several of you have been so kind in bestowing. :)