F+???

So it has only been a month since my last class. I guess I would have failed had it not been a self paced learning type of thing. I did learn how to post images this week! Week 6 wasn't too complicated, so I am including the link here: http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/sixthweb.html. Now you all can admire my lovely web site.

This weekend has been lots of fun! Saturday I spent most of the day with my sister as her assistant! One of her friends threw a portrait party and people could sign up and bring their kids for my sister could take their pictures. My sister has been taking pictures for years now, but is finally starting to get a photography business up and running. So I went to help with shading and reflecting and that sort of thing. It was a lot of fun and she did such a great job. Her pictures are really good! Take a look at her new blog: http://eastendportraitphotography.com/blog/ She'll have more pictures up soon and if you want to link to her personal blog, you can see all kinds of pictures of her daughter on it. She's going to do awesome!

Today we celebrated Mother's Day and my Mom's Birthday! We went to a great wood fired pizza place and it was nice enough to eat outside. We sat in shade, which was good because it warmed up to 90 here today! Then we went back for ice cream cake at my mom and dad's house. We had lots of fun watching little Violet run around with loads of energy. Now we're getting ready to have some dinner and unwind with the season finale of Survivor. Hope everyone had a great weekend and look for more posts soon. Maybe. If I have time!

Pictures!

So I haven't done my homework for the last two weeks. BUT I will try to do it this weekend. Luckily, no one is actually looking or grading my homework for my HTML class. It makes it a little easier to know that I can catch up on the last two weeks and no one is going to fail me for not doing everything on time!

We had an Easter egg hunt a couple weeks ago at my parents house. We all had baskets and we each had to pick up at least one egg (those were the rules). The best part about it was seeing Violet pick up the eggs and then alternate who she was giving them to. One went to her Daddy, one to her Mommy, one to Grandma, one to Grandpa, etc. It was a great day! We dyed Easter eggs and we all contributed to our Easter Lunch - a taco bar!! It was quite tasty and we all enjoyed ourselves some tacos!

Last week I was in Twin Falls for our Annual Board Planning & Development meeting. This year is a great time of year to visit Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls. These falls are actually higher than Niagara Falls - crazy, huh?? The pictures below are when I was there on Wednesday night - one is looking down the canyon and the other is looking directly at the Falls.
We actually got some more done in the garden this weekend! We bought some seeds and some starters for a few different veggies: peas, lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, beets and onions - green and yellow. YUM! So it will be interesting to see what does well and what doesn't. Everything seemed to be pretty easy to plant. We also planted a couple perennials in two pots out front. I think we might eventually plant them in the front garden bed, but we need to do a lot of work on those until we plant anything permanent. So hopefully these will do well in the pots until we get them in the ground. So that's what we have been up to lately. I think the days and weeks keep going by faster and faster now that it is warming up. I guess that happens when you have more to do! I think Mat and I have been hibernating for the last few months!

Fifth Week

I just finished my 5th week of my html class: http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/fifthweb.html. I think I am kind of getting the hang of it, but there is still so much to learn. I like the pace of the class because I don't feel like I need to spend hours every week learning and reading. So now that I have that finished, I am going to head out to the grocery store to get supplies for our Easter Taco Bar!

My family has decided to do a Taco Bar for Easter! I think it will be great and I am really looking forward to getting together. I can't wait to see our niece - she is growing so fast! So that's our weekend. We'll eat some tacos, dye some eggs and watch Violet hunt for Easter Eggs. And maybe Mat and I will hunt some eggs ourselves.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! I'm off to shop!

Square Foot Garden Boxes

If you don't know about Square Foot Gardening, you can do a search on Google Books to see a limited preview of Mel's book. It is an interesting book and I think it should be a pretty good way for us to do things. I guess we'll find out by the end of the gardening season!

Yesterday we built the boxes. Here they are in our yard, waiting to be placed strategically.

Today we mixed up the ingredients to make Mel's mix. This book says to make your own soil instead of trying to improve on what you already have. So we did exactly what Mel said. We bought a tarp and mixed up vermiculite, peat moss and compost.

We found places for the boxes and we started filling those bad boys up. I think they look nice and I hope that it will really help to cut down on weeds. Oh, I sure hope.

Oh and Onions! We planted these last summer and they are sprouting now. Hope they turn out tasty!

Finished!

So I finally finished my homework for this week: http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/fourthweb.html It took me awhile to read through the lessons, but I did get it up! One thing I don't love about this free class is that you have to click through a million pages. For example, you will be reading about font color on a particular page and then it has five different links within the article that you need to read to really understand that particular page. So it is a lot of back and forth, back and forth. I am learning html for free, so I really can't complain! I actually started this homework on Saturday morning, but then have been distracted all weekend by various projects.

My first project was part of a spring cleaning that will play out over several weeks. I'm all about organizing and having things nice and simple. I started with the bathroom, which desparately needed to be cleaned anyway, and I bought some drawer organizers from the dollar store and got everything in its place. You wouldn't think that it would take me that long, but I did clean the whole bathroom and organized part of the linen closet in our hall. The bottom half is for another day - it holds all our games and my crafty things. So I felt like I got a ton accomplished just on Saturday.

Sunday was spent getting our supplies together for our garden boxes. Mat and I are going to be Square Foot Gardeners! I have this book called Square Foot Gardening and it is a fun little book. It is all about getting the most out of a small space garden. I don't know how great it will work, but we're going to find out! We actually built the boxed on Sunday night and finished everything up today. I decided since we were lucky to have some great weather in the 60s that I would take a vacation day! WOOHOO! Today was so busy though! I think my next vacation day needs to be on a beach. :) We went to Costco, two grocery stores, made breakfast for the entire week, made dinner for tonight, mixed up our soil and filled our boxes. THEN we even went to kickboxing. My legs are tired. And I am tired. At least I know I'll sleep great tonight. But before I can do that, I'm going to put a separate post with some pictures from our new boxes!

Ladies, don't be sad that Mustache March is over. There is always next year.

Back Again!

Another week has flown by! Sometimes I just blink and the week is over. I'm always happy for the weekends and thankful that I have lots to do at my work. Not only does the time go by fast, but I don't worry about losing my job right now!

So this morning I tackled my third week of html. I know this is going to take quite a while to master, but at least I am really getting the hang of things. http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/thirdweb.html I just figure that everyone has to start somewhere. Websites really didn't just make themselves up! It is kind of amazing to think about how much work is put into a simple website and how much more time it must take to create a working, interactive website.

This weekend is probably going to pass without any gardening. Again. But the weather just isn't going to cooperate with us. We still have a while until it is time to plant Summer veggies, but I did want to get some Spring veggies in the ground. We're still slowly gathering everything we'll need to create our raised beds and the mix we'll be putting in them. I am just getting antsy and want to get started!

Tonight we are going over to Alana and Ken's house for a little SingStar, probably some Wii Sports activities and maybe even a board game or two. I'm planning to bring a snack for us and can't quite decide on a recipe. I was thinking that I might make this stuffed jalapeno dip that sounds delicious. I'll let you know what I decide! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

2nd Week HTML

This morning I sat down for my second week of learning about html. So here is the link to my new web page: http://www.geocities.com/gbldp/secondpage.html. Fancy stuff, huh?



It is pretty interesting learning about html and I look forward to doing more in the future. I am just going to take it nice and slow and learn a little at a time. Maybe someday I will even have my own website that I created from scratch!


For Mat's birthday this year, we drove about an hour outside of Boise to get to a tubing hill and went tubing for 2 hours! It wasn't too packed and we had a lot of fun. It was just as scary as I thought, but I still had a good time!


I wish I had a better lens to zoom in on Mat as he was flying down the hill. You probably wouldn't have wanted to see any of me screaming and clenching on the tube as I flew down the hill at warp speeds.

Hope everyone has a great weekend! I'm off to scan in some pictures from the pre-digital camera days.

HTML and Waterfalls

So I picked a different waterfall picture to enter in the contest! HA! I tricked you all. It was a last minute decision and I just thought, "what the heck?" So I ended up with this one:

So who knows? I probably should have gone with another one, but that's okay. It was really just for fun!

So I've decided that I am going to teach myself HTML. Or at least try. I'd like to at least somewhat understand it and it would be really cool if I could actually make my own website someday. I would imagine that it won't be that easy, but it is something I'm going to attempt. I found a free 10 week class on about.com to learn it. You really can't beat free! They suggest using geocities' free websites for your practice for your homework. So here was my first assignment: www.geocities.com/gbldp/firstweb.html. Pretty darn impressive!! The one thing I don't like about the lessons is all of the advertisements. But I get that is the reason the lessons are free, so I'll just have to deal with them.

In other news around our house, I'm getting that Spring Cleaning Bug. I want to go through all of our rooms and get rid of things and organize and tidy things up. It doesn't mean that I am actually going to do all that! It was just a thought. One thing I've been looking into is doing something with our closet. UGH. I can't stand our closets and I want to rip all the clothes into shreds every time I have to go get something to wear. So we've been discussing options to see if there is anything we can do to improve the efficiency of our closet.

Now I'm off to create a grocery list for tomorrow and maybe talk closets with Mat. Sounds like a crazy afternoon!

I Need Spring!!

This morning it is 22 degrees outside.  I think when March hits, I start to get really impatient for warm weather to kick in.  I want 60s and 70s every day for a few months and then I will gladly welcome the 90 degree weather for a couple months.  I'm just tired of being cold all the time.  I think it is supposed to be 50 tomorrow, but then cold again this weekend.  Which is just another weekend that we probably won't be working in the garden because it is cold.  We'll see though - maybe it will turn out to be nicer than we expected!

I haven't decided on a photo yet for the contest.  I think I might go with the waterfall picture because it might be different from other people.  I really like the beach one, but feel like so many people have shots of the beach.  I need to pick though, I think I have to enter this weekend.

I had to go to our kickboxing class last night by myself.  :(  Mat's back is hurting and his work sent him to the chiropractor yesterday and he has to go back again this afternoon.  I guess he thought that it wouldn't be a great idea to jump and twist and turn?  It is interesting wearing my heart rate monitor.  Our class ended up being about 48 minutes long and my average heart rate was 142 and my peak was 168.  So my monitor says I burned 673 calories.  I don't know how accurate that is.  They always say the machines aren't accurate at the gym, so who knows if I actually burned that many calories.  But at least I know I am getting a darn good workout.  I'm trying to remember now what my monitor said after our walk on Tuesday night.  I think it said I burned 275 calories on our hour long walk.  It was interesting on our walk because Mat's heart rate going up this hill was 108 and my was like 130.  He said that my heart rate is higher because I'm a girl and smaller than him.  I think maybe I'm just not in as good shape as him!  And I am older.  :)

I think it will be interesting to see if my heart rate changes as I improve in the class.  I already can tell I'm getting better because I don't have to stop as many times as I used to.  So I know my fitness level is improving.  I wish I would have had my heart rate monitor when we started.  

Guess that's enough of that.  It's Thursday!  Almost time for the weekend...

Help!

I need opinions please! Travelocity and Snapfish are doing a "Where would you rather be?" photo contest and you are supposed to submit your favorite winter getaway. The official rules state: JUDGING: Qualified Entries will be judged, in the judges’ sole discretion, on the quality, creativity and how well the Entry fits with the theme of the Contest. At the end of the Contest Entry Period, judges will review all eligible Entries to determine the Grand, First and Runner-Up Prize entries (“Finalist Entries”). Selection of the winning Entries will be based on the following judging criteria (“Judging Criteria”): (a) 40% Creativity, (b) 30% Photo and (c) 30% Composition. In the event of a tie, the tie will be broken based on the highest score in the “Creativity” Judging Criteria, continuing thereafter to Quality of Photo Judging Criteria, as needed to break the tie.

So I was thinking about entering a photo, but I can't decide which one I like. So I want to know what everyone thinks. It did say submit your favorite winter getaway, but it didn't specify anything else except that you can't include any identifiable people. Which is pretty funny because I looked at some of the entries already and there are a ton with people as the subject. Another mention - 80% are beach photos. So I only included one and it was a sunrise and not just a beach. So what does everyone think??

Mexico #1

Mexico #2

Mexico #3

San Diego Zoo

Waterfalls Outside of Portland

Yuck

Snow in March!  It's all melted now, but when I woke up the ground was a sparkling white.  It kind of made me want to go back to bed!  But at least it is Friday and I have the whole weekend to look forward to and enjoy!  Tonight Mat and I will go to kickboxing and then head home for a little relaxation.  I think we've decided to pick something up on the way home for dinner, but I don't know what yet.  

Tomorrow we'll be at Cory and Christina's house to celebrate Cory's birthday.  Probably play some games and have dinner.  I don't know what we'll do during the day.  I usually just find little things to do around the house that take up most of the day.  Sometimes I don't know how I do it!  I've been thinking about a little Spring Cleaning/Organization, so I might start on that.  We'll just have to see!

So that's us.  Exciting stuff!  

Still Kickin'

Here I am!  I know, I know.  It has been forever and ever since I blogged last.  My last post was after Thanksgiving!  Can you even believe that?  So I don't have many good excuses.  My main excuse is that December came and went in a matter of seconds.  With shopping, holiday parties, celebrating Christmas, it was like there wasn't even time to sleep!  And then I think it was just that I hadn't blogged in so long that it would take forever to catch up on the last month, so I kept putting it off.  So after some encouragement from a fellow blogger, I decided to get back into the game!

So here I am!  Mat and I have become devout kick boxers.  We started in the fall, but just went once a week for a month or two.  Then December came and the gym was basically abandoned for a good three weeks.  So starting the first of January, we made a commitment to our kickboxing class and have attended 3 days a week (with the exception of a couple missed days here and there) for the last 2 months.  We are so dedicated to our class that we bought our own gloves and we even bought heart rate monitors!  It's the hardest I've ever worked out before, but it is really getting me in shape!  Our heart rate monitors just came in the mail today, so I haven't even seen mine.  I do love toys!

So this morning I woke up around 4:30 to a strange clicking noise.  So I got out of bed to investigate and could hear something, but didn't know what it was.  So I got back in bed and kept hearing the noise.  It sounded almost like a drip, so I got back up to investigate.  I put my hand on the wall and sure enough, the wall was wet.  DANG!  So I woke Mat up and I felt bad because it was his sleep in day - he didn't have to work until 6am.  But he got up in the attic and looked around and couldn't see that the roof was leaking.  So now he is at home waiting for his dad to come check it out and see if he is missing something.  We're pretty sure it is not a pipe since it rained all night last night.  So I am keeping my fingers crossed that it isn't anything that is too hard to fix or requires us hiring someone to fix it.

So for all of you out there that enjoy recipes - Mat and I made one of our favorites last night: Quick Chicken Corn Chowder.  I found it on the cooking light website, which is where I get most of my recipes.  It really is a fast recipe, especially if you get a rotisserie chicken from the store and you don't have to cook the chicken.  I've been working on my personal cookbook, which is basically a collection of our favorite recipes.  This one is in there and we've made it quite a few times this winter.  

So that's about what we're up to.  I wish it was more exciting, like we were on a secret mission.  We did both have birthdays!  Mat threw me a kind of surprise party and it was the best Mexican Fiesta in the world.  There were chips and queso and salsa, tacos, taquitos, margaritas, mexican beer, and on and on.  I even had a pinata.  It was definitely the best birthday ever and Mat put so much time and effort into it.  He really is the best husband in the universe.

I hope everyone is wonderful!  I'll try to get back on here more often than the last few months.  :)

Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving this year. We had a great day and you can see a sampling of the food we had above. My sister and her husband have tried their best to give Violet as much organic and unprocessed food as possible, so we tried to do our best to stick with that for Thanksgiving. There were, of course, several things that snuck in that didn't fit the bill (like my parmesan artichoke dip or Grandma's chocolate pie!). The stuffing that Mat and I made came from organic whole wheat bread and we used organic celery, onions and parsley. The carrots were organic and the turkey was straight from a farm where he lived his days roaming freely. Overall, I think we did pretty good. I think we all ate too much, but what a great day we had. It was fun to celebrate our first Thanksgiving as a married couple with the people we're so thankful for everyday.

Salt Lake City

Last weekend Mat and I took a little drive down to Salt Lake City. Not only did we get to see our cousin on his birthday, we also got to spend a good part of the weekend with one of my oldest friends and her family.

Friday night we spent with Jeff since it was his birthday. His mom and dad came down for the occasion and we all went to his favorite sushi place. We had such a great time catching up and they dined on what looked to be delicious sushi! I had some tasty chicken and was quite pleased with my choice. I'm not much of a sushi girl. :)

The next morning we woke up and made our way to the Armstrongs by lunch time. My favorite - eating time! We went to El Taco Nazo - delicious! The kids seem to have grown so much since we saw them at the wedding this summer. Gracie is just running around everywhere and Sean is becoming quite the big boy. After lunch, Mat and I headed to IKEA while the kids napped and Sarah and Matt probably did too! We were desparately trying to find some cheap window coverings since we have several windows with nothing on it since our new windows were put in. We had a successful trip to IKEA and now we have some great Roman Shades.

That afternoon, Mat and Matt took a few trips around the block on a bicycle built for two. It was one of the best sites I've ever seen!
That night Sarah made us some delicious lasagna and Matt made some not so delicious OSU punch to drink as we watched the OSU game. Mat and I each had a glass of the punch and switched to beer after that! Some of their friends came over with their kids, so we had a houseful. The ladies of the bunch played SingStar and the men watched the game. We ended up singing until the wee hours of the night and noticed Matt was missing. It's hard work being a dad. :)

The next morning Sarah, Gracie and I headed out to do some shopping at the Park City Outlet Mall. She had a lot more luck than I did finding some Christmas gifts for family members. I ended up with nothing, but it was sure fun to look. Us girls had lunch at a bagel shop that was yummy! Mat went to meet up with Jeff and they went to a swap meet. I'm not sure what they were looking for, but I don't think they found it!

When we got back to town, it was time for a little ice skating. I haven't skated since I was probably in junior high, so it was basically like my first time. Mat had never skated before and neither had Sean. Sarah and Gracie cheered us on from the sidelines. Here I am on my one and only lap around the rink.
Mat did great and caught on pretty fast. He definitely wasn't as good as Matt who is a great skater. The two of them went around the rink many times holding Sean's hands as he got used to skating on the ice. By the end of our time there, Sarah had signed Sean up for lessons. He had his first lesson last week and loved it!


That night Sarah made us Fettucini Alfredo and again, dinner was delicious! We really appreciated the meals they made for us. We also got fresh lettuce from their garden that was yummy.

There are a few more pictures if you click on the picture above of Sarah and Gracie.

The next day we had to head out. But not before we had a quick lunch at a delicious burger place - Five Guys Burgers - or something like that. YUM! The fries were to die for.

We're already thinking about when we can come back. It's so great to see everyone and we had the best time! Thanks again for spending the weekend with us!

Saturday!

I'm so happy for Saturdays! I slept in today and now just did a little a laundry. I think I might make up a grocery list and then play with Photoshop a bit. I'm still learning the ins and outs of it - my sister loaned me Photoshop Elements to see if I like it. I haven't really done anything but start trying to organize my pictures.

So that's my plan! Mat is taking a much deserved nap and when he gets up, we'll probably go clean my work and then my family for some delicious mexican food. I've been looking forward to this all week!

I think I might run over to Linens and Things to see what they have left. They are going out of business (I think everywhere) and had marked down a lot of stuff. I found some great shades for our windows, but I only bought two because I wanted to test them out at home and see how I really liked them. So I might go back. It's not really something I want to spend money on, but I am kind of tired of not having blinds or curtains on most of our windows. I do like to have some privacy!

First things first, I better shower. Have a great weekend!

Picture Time!

I thought I might update tonight by posting some pictures from recent weeks. To start, you can see that our leaves our changing. It is officially fall here! You can also see why Boise is called the City of Trees. Mat and I took a little hike up to Camel's Back Mountain (which is really not even close to a mountain) to take some pictures. The capitol building is a little over a mile away from where we were standing.
The sun was starting to set, so we got some fun colorful pictures of the leaves. We're both still learning our new camera and this was fun to try different settings. I think we need quite a few more experimental weekends before we feel like we know what we are doing.

We did go visit our great friends in Austin a few weeks ago. I left my smaller camera there and Joy has to ship it back to me. What was I thinking? I did get a couple fun ones with our nice camera. This little rascal wouldn't stay put long enough for me to get a great shot. But Chapa sure was a cute little kitten!

This guy sat still long enough for me to take a picture at lunch.

Same with his wife!
And this sweet thing was the perfect model. How can you resist that sweet face?

We sure had a great time in Austin, but spent so much time talking and catching up that we didn't take hardly any pictures. Oh, I just don't know why I do that. I'm determined to take a million picures when we go to Salt Lake City in a few weeks. There are two VERY cute subjects there that I know like to have their pictures taken.

One week until the election! Mat and I are going to vote absentee this year. We're trying to support the counties' vote by mail that they would like to get passed in the legislature. Plus, it will be fun to look up things as we vote on the computer. We probably should get to that pretty quickly...

New Windows!

The windows are in our house! They look great and I can't wait to enjoy this fall weather with them open for the next few weeks. Mat said it took them most of the day to install them, but they were in by the time I was home from work. We have our big window open right now and it is lovely! The rest we can't open until tomorrow, I guess they want to make sure everything is totally dry and sealed. So that's okay - we've lived long enough without being able to open them! It's crazy how clean they are though. We've never cleaned our other windows, mostly because we couldn't open them. I never thought I would be so exciting about windows!

Dinner is cooking - we made a penne casserole that we really like. I'm ready to eat!

Not much is new at home. The windows are probably going to be our big story for the next few weeks. We are just way too crazy sometimes. :) Bye for now!

Composting Fun

Here is Mat, hard at work on our compost bin. Since we have decided to create a larger garden next year, we thought we would try our hand at a compost bin. Mat did a great job and created the largest compost bin I've ever seen. Maybe not ACTUALLY the largest, but it sure seemed big after he was all finished.

The boards off to the side actually slide in the front as we get more materials in the bin. You can see what we have already composting here:
Looks fun, huh?
And here is our lovely little pumpkin gradually turning orange. It hasn't grown much larger, so I guess it will just be a tiny pumpkin. It is still pretty cute though!

I'm back from my conference and I sure am glad. I'm not the biggest fan of being away from my wonderful hubby for 6 days! We're going to spend the next couple days together and then I'll go back to work on Tuesday. Until next time...

Happy Birthday to Justis!

Off to Idaho Falls

I'm heading out in a couple hours to Idaho Falls for a week of conference fun. I'm ready to come home and I haven't even left yet! I don't like the idea of not seeing my hubby for 5 days. :( Hopefully it will go by fast and I'll get home soon!

We went to a family BBQ last night, but I didn't have time to get any of the pictures posted. Maybe next weekend?

By the way, if you haven't received a link to our wedding pictures, it is probably because I don't have your email address. If you want to take a look at them online, just shoot one of us an email and we'll get the link to you. They are amazing! I am so happy at how they turned out! Now we just have decide which ones are our favorites. That will take quite some time for sure.

Hope everyone has a great week and had a great weekend. I'm off!