Crested Butte Vacation Day 1 and 2

This year we were once again blessed to be able to go on our family vacation to ski in Crested Butte, CO. We left early Thursday morning (Jan 12th) for the 8 hour drive to somewhere south of Pueblo, CO, to stay the night at a friend of my parents.  They built a beautiful house up in the mountains to retire in.  Must be nice, although I don't think I could handle being so secluded day in and day out.

Our first, and thankfully only hiccup, of the trip came when we tried to get up this small hill en route to their house.  Our car was so loaded down in the back that it couldn't quite make it on the icy path.  We tried three times and finally just had to call Paul to come and get us.  After we unloaded our car a bit, we were able to make it up with flying colors!

That evening we had beef stroganoff with real heavy cream for dinner.  It was pretty good, but I prefer it made with sour cream. 


The next morning we loaded up and headed back out on the road.  By 10am we had made it to Canon City and stopped in to by some wine at the Holy Cross Abbey.  We bought the Syrah and the Reisling.   By 12:30 we had met up with Eric and his entourage at the Gunnison airport to pick up Brian. We all said our quick hellos then had lunch in downtown.  Afterwards we made the 30 minute trek to Mount Crested Butte and our house for the next 4 days.

On our way in, we got our first real look at just how little snow Crested Butte has received so far.  It was really weird.  Lots and lots of brown grass.  And when you looked at the mountain it was especially wierd.  Grass, then snow where the run is, then grass again, and then snow where another run is!  I though to myself that skiing on that was going to be interesting.

So, after we unloaded the car, we loaded back up and headed to the ski resort to rent our ski boots and skis.

 A closer look at the mountain and the snow and it didn't look too bad....Tomorrow is the first day of skiing!!!

We have Curtains!!!

We made an impulse buy but a great buy the other weekend.  We went to Lowe's to get a light bulb for our living room.   That is all we needed, but as with most trips to Lowe's, Stephen suggested we just walk around a bit and see if there was anything else we 'might' need. 

So we walked through the dishwashers and ovens dreaming of the possibilites of upgrading in the future.

Then we walked through the garden area to see what cool stuff we could possibly need.

We looked at getting some more spray paint, but can you believe Lowes' didn't have any flat white spray paint! 

We looked at the shelving units and organization stuff for closets and kitchens and decided we definitely wanted to upgrade our pull out drawers to better quality metal ones. 

Then we finally made our way to the front of the store by way of the clock and curtain aisle.  We almost bought a huge decorative clock to put on our big wall into our kitchen, but it was scratched and we were not going to pay $50 for a scratched clock.

We then browsed the curtains and I said "oh this one is really pretty" and Stephen said " hey, yeah, that would look great in our office" and  I was like "oh my gosh, you're so right!"  So we bought them.

It has made a huge difference in the overall look of the office and the room looks so much more "complete" now.  I can't believe we've gone almost 3.5 years with no curtains in our whole house except for the living room.  Now, I'm totally inspired to find curtains for every room!

Christmas two-zero-one-one

Okay. I know. It's nearly three weeks past Christmas.  Too bad.  I'm still going to post about it.  I just had to add pictures to it and I couldn't do that until I had a new camera!

We had a really good Christmas this year! We made WAY too many sugar cookies and ate WAY too many of them!

We gave Janet "Just Dance" for the Wii and I wish we could have played it more while we were there!  We may just have to get it for ourselves now...

 Stephen and I received this name frame which I am super excited about.  I've wanted one of these for about 3 years!  Thanks to my parents for finding it at the State Fair....and get this, all the pictures were taken in Oklahoma!  That's even better!  It will hang above my fireplace just as soon as I get a nail in the brick.  Not an easy task.

Stephen's best gifts were probably the complete set of Calvin and Hobbes comics.  I can't even tell you how many birthdays and Christmases he's asked for this.  He also got an apple tv which he is stoked about, oh...and slippers! Brian got him this really cool wooden wall hanging with a picture of the OSU stadium at night and filled with orange...it's pretty rad.

I got a wireless mouse and keyboard from Stephen.  Our old mouse was really dirty and wouldn't scroll down anymore no matter how many times or how well we cleaned it.  I'm quite enjoying free range of scrolling right now. I also got really bright orange nail polish and really dark purple nail polish from Brian.

As for our combined gifts, we got a wood rack and a small leaf blower (which I was probably too excited about).

I also can't wait to try out making my own mozzarella cheese!

I can think of another project we can do to further procrastinate the bathroom remodel

Let's see, January 1 will be one year that our master bathroom has been partially gutted. It's so sad.

Today we made some slight progress. Stephen took out the old vent! Woo hoo!

Anyway, in accordance with avoiding the huge undertaking of a bathroom remodel; we did two other rather large projects instead. I know right... It doesn't make sense to me either.

We built two 3'x9' raised garden beds and put in a garden path around it in the spring. All summer we tried to keep our awesome veggie garden alive to no avail. We did however reap in the bounty of our basil. Seriously it was like a bush.

Then this fall we decided to take down our shed. If I hadn't lost our camera I would have a true picture of the before. But since I did, you'll just have to imagine a seriously dilapidated, vine covered, dirty, rotten shed. It's been there for many, many years and obviously was not taken care of. It was on a 10'x12' piece of concrete slab that was 3" thick! We debated leaving it there and putting a new shed on top but we decided it too had to go. It was really messing up our water shed and creating muddy puddles on each end.

Stephen rented a jackhammer and went to town! But first, he went to YouTube and watched people using a jackhammer so he could see what he was getting into! He's going to hate me for saying that on the interweb. Oh well.

So there you have it. Two bigs ways we procrastinated on our remodel. But if you think about it, these other projects had to be done first because of the good weather and stuff. But really, the bathroom remodel is next!!!!!

Pathetic

Don't worry I'm not sick. I just wanted to share the most pathetic picture I have of me being sick. This was in July when I actually missed work for 2 days because of a fever of 103 and a really, really sore throat. I had a severe viral infection and was so miserable I actually cried.

Anyway, Stephen took the picture because he thought it was funny.

Pinterest challenge

I was looking for something cheap, easy, and a little fun to add to my nonexistent fall/Halloween decor. It's funny, Fall is my favorite season and I don't decorate for it at all. Oh well.

Anyway, I pinned this a long time ago, probably August, and thought "I am so doing that". So, I saved my milk jugs and pretty much copied it exactly because I'm not that entirely crafty to come up with my own version.

I set it up the weekend before Halloween and was giddy with excitement!!!! I couldn't wait for it to get dark enough to see my little ghosts light up!

Skinny jeans

I'm posting about my skinny jeans because I really didn't think I could pull the look off. I posted a lot of inspiration outfits on Pinterest with skinny jeans and tall boots trying to convince myself that I could make the look work for me too.

Well one day, I just decided to bite the bullet and go shopping. I didn't allow anyone to come with me to shop for the skinny jeans because i knew it would be boring and frustrating for them. As it was I went to 5 stores, grabbed a bunch of jeans at each one and tried them all on. It took me 5 hours before I found two pairs that would work, and ultimately 1 pair from New York and Company won me over.

The jeans are more like leggings because they are pretty stretchy, but from the outside they look like denim.

The first day I wore this outfit, I felt really out of my comfort zone because it's not something I would normally wear. But I'm used to it now and don't feel so out of place, just a little bit "country".

The boots are from Jcpenny and are the brand Olsenboye. The jeggings are from New York and Company. Both tops are from Jcpenny.

*Sorry for the grainy pictures...they were taken with the iphone.