The Trans-Siberian Orchestra Concert

First off, AMAZING!

So a couple of days ago, I was offered tickets to our company's box for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert that was last night. So I took my friend Trulie. We had a blast. The music was fantastic.

It wasn't quite what I was expecting. I was expecting a bit more orchestra with a little rock flair. But it was the exact opposite. Sometimes I couldn't hear the orchestra over the electric guitars.  

Those people are CRAZY talented! I never saw sheet music and they played over 20 songs. And I loved the storyteller's voice.

I think my favorite part of the whole show was everyone's hair. Yep. They ALL had long hair and kept swishing and flinging it all over the place. It looked so cool. :) And their outfits were awesome.

The stage was awesome too. I had a hard time with the strobe lights, but the fire (lots of it) was awesome. The flames were even different colors (blue/green/pink)--and yes we could totally feel the heat from them. Awesome. It's funny how pictures make it seem further away than you actually were.

I loved seeing people get really, really into the music. It was entertaining.

Here are some pictures. Super awesome. :)

 

I have a video of one of my favorite songs--Hall of the Mountain King, but I can't get it to upload. :( boo.

 

The concert was great.The seats were great. The free popcorn and soda were great. And the music totally rocked. *snicker*

Christmas Tags

This year I thought it would be fun to make some cute Christmas tags to attach to presents. Here are some that I made to go on the packages I sent to Erin and Jim.

 

Unfortunately I *thought* I was running really short on time (I thought the post office closed early one particular day...turns out they didn't) so I had to rush the last two tags, thus the perfect pearls are smeared. :( Oh well.

 

But I love the paper line that I used. It's called Handmade Holiday by Simple Stories. I love the rustic vibe to it.

Last of the Stockings

Last year I made new Christmas stockings for everyone in my family. They were adorable. But they were a lot of work and took way longer than I thought (yes, in case you're wondering that is 100% handstitched!). So I didn't get them all finished. This year I finished them. Yay! Now, at least I won't have to mass amounts of stockings, maybe one every year or two. That I can handle. :)

Here they are:

Jim's stocking:

 

Nick's stocking:

Caitlin's stocking:

Rachel's stocking:

What a cute little family of stockings. :)

 

I didn't get to mine this year (which is the same as Rachel's), but I don't really care--I can do it sometime next year. :)

But good news is that my house is all decorated for christmas! YAY!

Adorable Rachel

I was flipping through my phone and found a bunch recent pictures of Rachel. She is just soooo cute! :) I love her button nose! It's just like Erin's and all squishy.

 

I love her giant bright blue eyes!

 

She is so adorable! I love how excited she gets when I walk in the house. She just learned how to give high-fives and is super gentle when she does. Cait is really big about telling Rachel to be gentle when she touches things. So she is super soft when she gives high-fives. It's pretty funny. She also walks like crazy! And can climb up the stairs all by herself. Though she gets pretty tired and stops often to make sure you are behind her and giggles.

 

When I hold her and whisper, "one....two...(insert ridiculously cute laughter from Rachel here)....three!" she laughs so hard when I pause at two because she knows what's coming...either I fake drop her or toss her up. Cue more squeals and laughter from Rachel. And she's figured out how to play peek-a-boo. When I throw a blanket on her, she starts gasping with laughter. It's funny how everything makes her laugh.

 

She's also starting to talk. She says momma, dadda, and bye-bye with a wave. I'm not sure she knows what they mean yet, but she likes to say them. :)

 

And then when it's time for me to leave or her to go to sleep she waves good bye. It melts my heart. So cute! 

Countdown to Christmas Activity Book

In case you haven't noticed, for some weird reason, I LOVE advent calendars. I have no idea why. But I love the idea of counting down to something, especially Christmas. 

Yeah, I'm weird.   

Anyway, I came across a fun idea for an activity based advent calendar--in a binder. And since I already have too many advent calendars, I thought I'd make this one and give it to someone as a present. (Hello Erin!)

It's pretty straight forward so here are the pictures:

I think it turned out pretty cute and I kinda want to keep it now. hahaha. I won't though. I already have too much Christmas stuff. :)

Today I'm Thankful For...

My cousin did a list of 100 things she is grateful for so I'm totally going to copy her and do the same...except I kept coming up with things, so mines a tad longer. :)

The first 10 are in order, but then it's in no particular order.

So today (and always) I am thankful for....

      1.    Jesus Christ

2.    The Atonement/My testimony

3.    My Mom (like, totally freakin’ awesome!)

4.    My siblings, even the in-laws! :)

5.    My super adorbs niece, Rachel! She makes me so happy. And I don’t have to change her diapers (too often)

6.    My amazing friends

7.    My extended family

8.    Prayer

9.    Scriptures

10. Patriarchal Blessing

11. My grandparents

12. Temples

13. Rainy and windy days

14. Flowers

15. Mountains

16. The ocean

17. The stars

18. My education

19. My job

20. My callings

21. Sunshine

22. Chocolate

23. My birthday adventures

24. Snow

25. Facebook (so I can stalk, er, stay in touch with friends)

26. Memories

27. The talents I’ve been blessed with

28. The trials I’ve overcome

      29. My journals & scrapbooks

30. My health

31. Relief Society

32. The Priesthood

33. General Conference

34. Good Insurance (lame, but true) (oh man, does that mean I’m a real adult now?! Ack!)

      35. That I have enough money to support myself

36. Loomis

37. Rexburg

38. Nature

39. My intelligence (not that I’m super smart, but I can think for myself and function responsibly)

40. That I don’t have a workers’ compensation case (knock on wood)

41. My car

42. My blog

43. My desire to learn and grow

44. Books!

45. Can I say books again? No? Too bad, I just did. J

46. Organization

47. The people whom I’ve met just long enough to teach me something new

48. A positive attitude (most of the time)

49. That I’m a well-adjusted, functioning adult (the world needs more!)

50. The ability to choose what I want, whatever I want

51. That I live in the United States of America

52. That I can vote for leaders

53. Christmas Season! Yay!!

54. Springtime-I love it so much!

55. The colors of the leaves when they change in the fall

56. Baby animals

57. Inspiration

58. Glitter!!

59. Snail Mail (the good stuff, not junk mail)

60. My cell phone

61. My stick-to-it-ness

62. How excited I get about things—no matter how dumb it is (again: lame, but I do like that about myself)

63. Board games=Family/Friend time

64. My body and the way it functions—seriously-bodies are sooo cool!

65. Children’s stories

      66. Technology

67. Dreams

68. Law & Order (not the TV show, though that is pretty good)

69. Good leadership—in government, and in The Church

70. My baptism in to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

71. Time

72. Good people that do good things because they are the right thing to do

73. Hymns

74. 5:00pm

75. Office and Scrapbook supplies

76. The smell of pine trees

77. My sense of humor and that I laugh, probably too much

78. Fun (not mean) practical jokes

79. Creativity

80. Good communication

81. Religion/Institute classes

82. My eyesight (have you ever learned how eyes work? So fascinating!)

83. Intuition / Gift of the Holy Ghost

84. That I can read

85. Weekend getaways

86. My bed

87. That I’ve always had a roof over my head

88. Clear answers to prayer

89. Good, clean entertainment

90. Weekends

91. Truth (in all its forms, wherever it is found)

92. Long phone calls

93. The people that just get me

94. Friendships so strong that even if it’s been 6 months or 3 years since we talked, it feels like it’s only been minutes

95. Weird compliments

96. Computers

97. Sarcasm—and the people that appreciate it.

98. Holidays

99. Whiteout & Erasers

100.              That the world is colorful! I love color!

101.              Long vacations

102.              That I grew up on a ranch (as much as I hated it, I loved it more)

103.              The peace and happiness I feel everyday

      104.              Love

105.              Laughter

Count Your Many Blessings Banner

Seeing as it's November and Thanksgiving...though you wouldn't know it by the weather. It's 80+ degrees today. Blech. Thankfully it is going to change dramatically in a few days. Yay!

Anywhoo...I wanted to make an easy little banner to hang on my mantle. I settled on the phrase "Count your many blessings."

I need to remind myself to be grateful.

Somewhere online I saw a cute banner that I wanted to pattern mine after. And since I need to practice using my sewing machine, this was perfect. :)

For the "Count Your Many" part, I used my sketch pens to draw the words on the flags, one word per flag. I used kraft paper as the flags. I colored the insides of the words with the pen by hand.

These flags are wider and shorter than the "blessings" flags. After coloring them in, I outlined them with an orange glitter pen to help the words pop a bit more.

I used my cameo to cut out the individual flags, as well as the letters of blessing so there was a negative shape on the flags.

I inked around the edges of the paper using a gingerbread color chalk ink. It needed more pizazz so I went over the outer edges lightly with a sparkily gold chalk ink. Then I got a orange glittery peice of cardstock to attach to the back of each flag so the color popped through. I attached any necessary middle areas of the letters.

Once the cardstock was attached, I carefully stitched around each letter of "Blessing." Yeah, that's when I started having problems... The picture above is after I started pulling out the thread. It looked okay, though defintitely not even before I did...but then I flipped it over and found this:

Um, yeah, I have no idea what happened. Ooops!

So then I had to remake the L flag. Good thing it's easy. I decided that I didn't want to mess with my machine and try to figure it out so I just drew on thread lines. Much better.

 

I strung up the letters with jute string and put them up on the mantle.

Our mantle. It's so cute!

And here is our cute little scarecrow I picked up a few years ago at a craft store. I think I'll name him Frank. I heart him.