happy halloween, beaches

So... I thought our costumes this year were quite adorable, but I'm a little biased because I made them. Yeah man, that's right.. I MADE THEM. To be honest though, I only had to make three things, but I still technically made them. Here's the story. Chad and I really wanted to be Curious George and the man in the yellow hat for Halloween this year, but we were having the hardest time finding yellow pants and I had no idea where I would find a grown lady monkey costume.. so that was pretty much a complete bust. So for the next few days we Pinterested and Googled for cute couple costumes and most of them were weird and others were slutty and.. I just won't go into details. We finally narrowed it down to three and went with the easiest (but still cute) one-- Mickey and Minnie. 

Here is the low-down on the DIY. If anybody needs a last minute costume, this would be a quick, cute and easy one. The tutu was really easy. I bought rolls of tulle and an elastic waistband from Hobby Lobby, cut the tulle into strips about 18" long, folded them in half and did the weird loopy knot thing around the waistband. I wanted my tutu to be really big, so I scooted the knots really close together to make it full and fun. Bam.. alliteration. Any-who, The ears were surprisingly easy to make too. I just traced a cup on foam sheets (About three times for each ear), stacked them and then hot glued them together and onto a headband. For the bow, I just sort of free-handed and hot glued it onto my ears. 

Just a close up of our faces...

We went to two.. count it 1,2, DOS parties this year! It's like we are really popular or something! But not really.. One was a family party my mom's side throws every year and the other was a smallish get together with a bunch of people from our apartment complex. Both were super fun and all I gotta say is that this year's Halloween was a success. 

Have a happy November and thanks for reading!

xoxo

wedding bells and all is just swell

So this post took a lot longer to do than I originally thought it would. But hey, better late than never right? I was totally ready and super stoked to get this shizz done, but then a psychology test, family applications paper, finding a sub for our sunbeam's class, cleaning and getting ready to go down to Salt Lake to visit my parents all got in the way. It's all good though. So may I present to you, our wedding day.

We got married on August 9th, 2014. I wore a white dress, he wore a blue suit, and everything was magical. Honestly, that day was a very vivid blur; a magical, magnificent, blur.

It was

.g r a n d.

I have several favorite memories of that special day, but one of my very favorites was sitting in the Celestial room with Chad before we were sealed. We were one of the first couples sealed that day, so the temple was really peaceful and quiet. The whole experience of waiting to be sealed, holding his hand, looking around at how beautiful God's temple is, and knowing that what we were doing was sacred and right was an amazing experience that I will always remember. I didn't really recognize it at that moment, but the Holy Ghost was bearing a witness to me that Chad and I had made the righteous decision to marry in the temple and have a forever family. If that isn't cool, then I don't know what is. 

So... now onto the pictures and details of the BIG day. 

We were pretty stoked to finally be married. It was pretty much the best feeling ever.

 This is my favorite picture... love is  g r a n d .

The pictures shown were just some of the ones that I thought highlighted our wedding day pretty well. My bro did an AWESOME job as our photographer.

We had two receptions, one in Salt Lake in my grandpa's backyard, and the other in Boise in Chad's parent's backyard. We had awesome turn outs at both of the receptions. To be honest, we didn't really get to enjoy the SLC reception, but we heard that the food was pretty good. After the SLC reception, we honeymooned in Newport Beach and had a fun day in the magical Disneyland (BIG thanks to the Pulley family!). Disneyland was seriously MAGICAL. I pretty much ate that entire experience up. It was perfect. We would also go cute little walks on the beach and spending that quality time with Chad was so much fun. Our honeymoon was so much fun! After the honeymoon, we had to haul butt up to Boise for our second reception. We didn't get in until midnight, and we were so exhausted from just flying into Utah and then having to drive 6 hours to Boise. The struggle was real. But the reception turned out great. Kevin and Susan (Chad's parents) did an awesome job and the Cheesecake Factory cheesecake was YUM. Both receptions were fabulous! Our wedding day was truly memorable... but the life after the wedding is wayyyyyyyyy better. Being married is the greatest thing ever. I love everything about it.