Easter Wreath

I've had my mind the past couple of weeks on making an Easter egg wreath for our front door. I finally got it started the other day and then ran out of eggs.... so I finished today! 

I think it's probably my favorite craft I've made.

My cute husband pretending to knock .

While going through my camera I discovered some older pictures I've never posted. Here's one of Nicole, Juston, and Austin during our visit to Utah over Christmas. We went to this bounce place for my niece, Jennilyn's, 3rd birthday. It was super fun. Tons of adult siblings acting like 5 year olds again racing through bounce houses. Seriously. We made teams and then did a relay race through these inflatable things. 

I'm pretty sure everyone there, including other children, thought we were crazy.

 Jayden driving a car.

 Celebrating Curtis's birthday back in January.

 He must have blown out all the candles in one blow since he's so excited.

This was my Valentine's craft this year.

 And these babies just came in the mail today! We ordered snorkels for our trip to the Virgin Islands in June. Seemed to make more sense to buy them, then to rent them everyday. 

As you can tell, I'm pretty excited!

Randomness

Nothing incredibly profound to say. Have had a hard time feeling motivation to update the blog over the past month or so. We've been really busy, but with nothing important or cool. (Although we did go to Rascal Flatts on January 21st but I didn't get any great pictures.)

I really just wanted to change my background on my blog since we haven't had a winter wonderland at all this winter. It has been absolutely W.O.N.D.E.R.F.U.L.! Everyone talked about how Columbus gets ice storms and I wasn't too excited about that. But it's been a very warm winter like most of the country has been. Only two or three days where we got an inch of snow and I think I probably had to scrape off my car a dozen times. INCREDIBLE. Have had tons of rain, it's raining as I type. Makes for a "cozy on the couch and read a book" type of evening. I'm reading President Thomas S. Monson's Biography. (He's the Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.) It's amazing. He has lived such an inspirational life. Read it if you get the opportunity. I love reading his life stories and thinking about how incredible and supportive his wife is... Such an example to all of us.

On another random note, I booked our first hotel/place to stay in the Virgin Islands for June! We haven't bought our plane tickets yet, but this place only had two spots left so we had to get it quick. It's this Eco-friendly resort place in St. John. In other words, they're upscale tents!!! We're super excited. Click here to check it out. We decided that since we had a short honeymoon in August when we got married, we would go somewhere when Curtis had a break in June. Alright, I think that's all the randomness I have for today.

Christmas Decorating

Growing up my parents gave us Hallmark Ornaments in our Christmas stockings every year. 

I had a bunch of ornaments that needed a new home this year, so we got a live Christmas Tree!! 

 Our Christmas star. It has lights that plug into the tree lights. Thank you Grandma!

We made some ornaments for our tree too. I think these ones have to be my favorite. We made some home made modpodge and cut up some sheet music and glued it around the ornament ball.

 Rudolph is pretty cool too. I shredded brown construction paper to put inside of him.

 For this one, I used some of those rhinestone things that you fill flower vases with, 

and glued them all around it. It's super heavy, but looks pretty cool on the tree.

 Modpodge on the inside and then glitter.

 Attempt at painting on the ornament. I had planned to paint on more of them, 

but after attempting an "H", I decided I'll stick with simple this year.

Our first Gingerbread house together. Next year maybe we'll try to make gingerbread, 

but for now we'll stay with the pre-made kit.

I found this guy on Pinterest. 

Everytime I would look at it, I just laughed. 

So when Curtis was at school studying until midnight, I decided to make him. 

I still chuckle every time I look at our fridge.

I think he's staying up until May.

 And this is my last craft of the season. It's hanging above our mantle.

Merry Christmas!!!

 May we remember the real meaning of Christmas and the gift our Savior gave to us all.

Hocking Hills State Park

We decided to go camping last weekend. We got some camping gear for our wedding and we were excited to try it out! The leaves here are starting to change colors so we went to a state park about an hour away that a friend had recommended to us. We got there just in time to set up our tent as it was getting dark. It had rained all day Friday, so it wasn't as packed as we thought and we were able to pretty much have two sites to ourselves. It was perfect!

Curtis cooking his s'more.

Curtis loves that our air mattress fits in the tent. And yes... we used it. Best sleep camping I've ever had!

This is our dutch oven that Brian gave us for our wedding. We made apple crisp. Our coals ended up being a lot hotter than we thought and it cooked WAY faster than we thought it would... so we may have burnt the outside of the apple crisp, but the middle was delicious. :)

Saturday we went to the trails to do some hiking. Our 3 mile hike turned into a 6 mile hike when we realized half-way that we took a trail that looped around and half of the trail was closed...so we walked back the way we came.

The first thing we saw were some beautiful waterfalls.
Who would've known these were in Ohio?!?!?

This was a beautiful lake that we encountered on our hike. We loved how the clouds reflected in the water.

How cool is this??

Old Man's Cave

These pictures really don't do it justice of how incredible these rock formations were.

Lesson learned: Make sure to look at all camping gear and clean it before leaving home. Our pizza maker had rusted on the inside and we didn't realize it until opening it up to make dinner.... so this is the result...Curtis using a pan to cook pizza sandwiches! Good thing we were prepared and brought a pan and utensils! They actually turned out to be really yummy.

This was probably one of our favorite weekends we've had since being married. It was so nice to get away and just enjoy being together without any schedule or to-do list. We spent hours in the beautiful outdoors and were reminded of the many incredible creations that Heavenly Father made.

Columbus Temple

A week before the wedding, I went through the Columbus Temple. My family came in town for the weekend and everyone stayed at Curtis's condo... we totally took over the place. It was my parents, Nicole, Juston, baby Austin, Andrea, and my Aunt Betty and Uncle Ron. It was super fun to have everyone here.

 The Columbus Temple

 My family at the temple

This is a cute bridge near the Temple that goes over a little stream.

Catch up... Josh Groban!

August 5th Curtis and I went to Josh Groban! Curtis LOVES Josh Groban... probably almost as much as he loves me! He was able to get discount tickets with OSU, so we were super stoked! Josh started off the concert like 50 feet in front of us. He had a stage in the middle of the crowd and was super close!

We had a blast! It was a really nice concert and he's super entertaining.

My Surprise!!!

No, it's not the puppy that I tried to get Curtis to buy me at the pet store... (By the way... I don't think he'll ever go in a pet store with me again! haha) If you're reading this Curtis I'm just kidding... I didn't really want that puppy.

But this is better! About two weeks ago Curtis texted me and said, "Let's celebrate! I'll come over at 5:30 and make you dinner". I thought, "Wow, that's incredibly sweet of him!" So he comes over and he tells me we have a box in the car that we should open up from Bed, Bath and Beyond. This is a normal occurrence these days, so I didn't think anything of it. We opened up the box and inside he found a piece of paper and he handed it to me. At first I thought it was just the receipt that went with the box, so I gave him a funny look but I opened it up. It was Keith Urban tickets! I'm psyched about this and asked when it is. His reply... "7:30.....tonight...." By this time it  already 5:45 and we had to leave in an hour. We quickly ran inside and while he made dinner, I went and got a quick shower. I was SUPER excited! We had talked about going to the concert months ago, but opted not to since we're going to a Josh Groban concert next Friday! It was such a sweet thing for him to surprise me with.

Standing by his poster before the show!

 In our seats anxiously awaiting...

LOVE IT!

I'm not really one of those concert goers who likes to stand and dance the whole time... I'm sure it was pretty boring for Curtis, but he was very sweet about it and just let me sing along and dance in my seat. Ha ha. 

He sure treats me like a princess!! Thanks Curtis!

P.S. I guess this is a little late, but I made it to Columbus!!! It's been crazy busy.... more to come!