Flip Flops & More Picture Frames

R.I.P. Favorite Flip Flops 

(about 2010 - July 19, 2012)

Today my favorite pair of flip flops died. They totally came undone. I tried to put them back together but they still kept coming apart. So, I guess it is goodbye. They were the best flip flops ever! They had polka dots and they were so well worn  that they were almost like a second skin. They were just wonderful! I miss them already. Luckily, I had a back-up pair of flip flops ready to go...but, they just aren't the same and they're just not quite as cool. But, I suppose I'll survive...somehow. 

Today, I also made more picture frames. Andy and I have been married for 5 years now and we still haven't hung up any wedding photos. So, I decided maybe if we had picture frames we just might get around to hanging some up. Plus, I just really wanted to make picture frames again today. I must say that the frame I made the other day turned out sooooo well. But, the frames today were just O.K. Maybe it was beginners luck. Nevertheless...I can't really complain I got them at the Dollar store and if I really end up hating them I can always make new ones. Here are some of them. The lighting is not the greatest so you don't really get the full effect. They look better than their pictures.

This one is spray painted white.

You can't really tell from the picture but the inner rim (right around the glass) is textured with dots.

This one is also spray painted white. 
Then I took glitter glue and made swirls all around it.

This one I spray painted white and then took glitter glue and made hearts in the corners. 

But, the one in the top right corner got kinda smudged. Hopefully, once it's on the wall it you won't be able to notice it.

This one was a disaster. 

It was supposed to be white glittered. 

But somehow, it just turned into a goopy mess.

I also have a couple that are silver glittered. Those turned out so I'm not sure why the white glitter didn't work. Sometimes, I'm not the brightest and I didn't realize the fumes from the spray paint would be so strong. So, I spray painted them in our apartment. I didn't even open the windows or doors or do anything for ventilation. Then, when Andy came home he kinda lovingly scolded me. So, I did what I should have done in the first place...I went outside and finished my last few frames. I spray painted those frames grey. Luckily, with both our doors open and the air conditioner on the fan setting it didn't take too long for it to get rid of the fumes. But, seriously, I don't know what I was thinking. 

Being Crafty!

I'm on a crafty kick right now. Today I decided that our bathroom needs some decorations. So, I made this. In case you can't tell it's a picture of a guppy. The reason that Guppy is spelled "Gu-pee" is because Andrew and I have this little thing we say when we have to pee. Instead of saying something like "I've gotta pee" we started saying "Guppy" so I made a play on words for the picture. I made the frame from a Dollar Store $2 frame. I took Mod Podge and mixed it with glitter. Then I covered the frame in the Mod Podge/Glitter mixture and let it dry for a few hours. I also had the Guppy picture printed off at Office Max on their glossy cardstock and then had the mat cut at Hobby Lobby. I know it sounds like a lot of work for this one little project, but it kept me busy and satisfied my need to: a. decorate our bathroom and b. make something cool.

Top 10 List for When You are *Temporarily* Confined to Your Apartment/House

10. Update Your Facebook Status as often as you can stand with creative ways of saying "I'm sick, feel terribly awful and stuck at home, oh and by the way I'm bored. Please feel sorry for me."

9. Try to sleep (when your cough allows it)

8. Text your friends and family who are not always on facebook to see what they are up to. And, to let them know that you are still sick, still bored, and still want their sympathy.

7. Watch the Morning News, the Noon News, the Evening News, and the 10 o'clock News. Take Notes. Compare the notes to see if they're all keeping their stories straight (and if the weather changed its mind for tomorrow or the weekend)

6. Since your stomach feels yucky and nothing sounds good. Eat lots of Jell-O. But, only when you have to eat. See how many interesting kinds of Jell-O you can create and keep track of your weight to see if you could create a so-called "Jell-O Diet".

5. List semi-high ticket items on eBay. And by semi-high ticket I mean, $5 or more because anything more than $5 probably wouldn't do well at a yard sale. Unless, it's much to big to ship. Then, it very well may do well at a yard sale.

4. Check the mail *at least* TWICE a day to make sure the outdoors still exists. Also, to get some fresh air and to get some exercise while checking the mail. Once in the morning to see if the mail man was early and then once in the afternoon to see if you really just *didn't* get any mail.

3. Update Your Blog with random nonsense.

2. Price stuff for your upcoming yard sale.

1. Check your sister-in-law's blog and smile while looking at all the cute pictures of your nephew! (And, enjoy reading random stuff that your sister-in-law writes about because it makes you feel like you're both pretty normal)

If You See the Frog Who Stole My Voice: Grab Him & Show NO Mercy!

Above I've posted a photo of the Frog who stole my voice. Please if you see him go ahead and grab him and show NO mercy! This is getting really OLD!
My temperature was at 100.3°F this morning. ACK! Also, I thought my voice was coming back. By this afternoon I was almost sounding somewhat normal, a bit groggy but at least somewhat normal. I had a couple of phone calls I had to make, so I made them. But, by the end of the last one my voice was super awful. Then, when Andy came home I tried to talk to him and my voice was all but gone. So, now I am back to whispering. My temperature is at least under 100. At last check it was at 98.8°F. And, at this point, I'll take it. I'm starting to wonder when my voice will officially come back. I don't know how much longer I can stand this. I mean, I really don't like coughing and I don't like feeling light-headed or queasy. But, the thing I can't stand the most is my lack of voice! I'm not as elegant as Ariel from the Little Mermaid, nor am I as cute so it's not quite as precious a sight when I'm lacking my vocal abilities.

In other news I've been using what time I feel up to it to go through stuff and get it ready for our yard sale that we'll be co-hosting with one of Andy's co-workers in a couple of weeks. I'm pretty excited for it. I just forgot how long it takes to go through and price everything. But, the excitement of making money really makes it seem worthwhile. Also, his co-worker's daughter is going to be selling lemonade during our sale so hopefully, that will also drum up some business. She's a cute kid. And, who can't resist cute kids and their lemonade stands? Hopefully, it will be a nice warm, sunny day, but not a scorcher, because that might discourage shoppers from taking to the streets.

That's about it for today!

98.4

That's the highest my temperature has been today. Most people wouldn't even bat an eye at that, but to me it's a low-grade fever. My temperature is usually in the 96's. something range with occasional excursions in the 97's. But, anything above 97.5 is extremely rare. Even when I go to the doctor's office and I'm feeling super lousy it's almost always in the 97's. So, Andy and I have determined that I'm sick. I've been coughing since Thursday. Last night I hardly slept because I was coughing so much luckily Andy must have been so tired because he said I didn't keep him up. I would have gone out to the living room. But, we were staying at a hotel. Thursday I was just feeling somewhat crummy and I thought I was getting better by early Friday. So, I decided to attack the mold in our window sill (our apartment complex does not have double paned windows and it's been a very wet fall/winter/spring so I found mold a few weeks ago growing there and ordered a good mold cleaner and it finally came - it's the only time we've had any mold there in the 4 years we've lived here so, I figure that's pretty good). Anyway, I attacked the mold but I didn't realize how powerful the smell was going to be. I did it early in the afternoon and opened all the windows and put on the fans and tried to air it out, but still a few hours later it was making me sick and light headed, so I figured if it was doing that to me, it would be worse for Andy. So, we used a free-night's stay reward we had earned from one of our credit cards. Since it was last minute we couldn't get the best place, but even so, it was so much better than breathing in fumes all night. We returned today to a nice aired out apartment!

I always thought that the absolute worst part of being sick was when you can't breathe and you're all stuffed up. Well, I think I might have found something that rivals it - Losing your voice. I've completely lost mine. I've been close to losing it before but I've never completely lost it. I mean, I don't even squeak. So, I have to whisper. I've tried everything I can think of to bring it back and nothing's worked. So, finally as a last ditch effort, I looked online and one of the suggestions was to use a humidifier. So, I went out and bought one. Luckily, we had a $10 off coupon for Shop-Ko. That was sweet. But, Shop-Ko, didn't have the stuff vapor stuff that you put in it to help it work better. So, I had to go to Wal-Mart...on a Saturday! ACK! I came home exhausted. I'd go to bed, but even this afternoon when I took every kind of cold medicine with everything possible in it to knock me out I was only able to sleep for a short while. So, I don't want to go to bed until it's my more "usual bedtime" because I don't want to wake up every hour like I did last night.

Well, that's pretty much it for today. I just whispered over to Andy if he had anything to say for the blog today and he said "No."

Friday Foto! At Last! ...and Other Tales!

I have decided to start doing a Friday Foto! Cheers to Angela for the idea! I often find myself copying Angela when it comes to all things Blogging! But, they say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right? So, Angela you should feel very special right about... *NOW*!

Now, on to the photo. Again, with the copying Angela trend - I decided to post an engagement photo. However, this is not the "official engagement photo. We had several photos taken by one of my friends and although they were all nice enough, I really only liked one of them and that's the one that became the "official photo". I hadn't looked through them in a long time and I thought maybe just maybe I was being overly critical at the time, but I still think the one we chose was the very best one. The one I'm posting today has several flaws and I don't think I could even call it a close second but since I'd already decided to use one of our engagement photos I had to choose a one that wasn't going to make me cringe knowing people were going to be seeing it on our blog. Well, that wasn't going to happen. I'm still going to cringe. But, not as much as I would have with most of the other photos. Andy is very photogenic. However, I am not. In the other photos it was not Andy's fault that we couldn't use them, but rather mine because without fail one of the following is going on in them: my eyes are closed, my smile is weird, my expression is weird, I'm not looking at the camera, my hair is in my face, my hair is doing something funky at that precise moment, my shirt is bunching up something fierce, my vampire fangs look like they're going to take someone out at any moment, or my closed mouth smile makes me look like I'm in pain.

So, here as promised is one of the photos we did not use. Andy is sitting on a tree swing in my friend's backyard. Just remember every time you view it you are making me cringe. Nevertheless, please enjoy it (the photo, that is!)!






















NOW FOR SOME OTHER TALES
As of last weekend we have revamped our money system. We re-evaluated our budget and changed how we work some things. It's actually a much better system for us. It probably wouldn't work for everyone, but so far it's working great for us so I thought I'd mention it.
First of all, we switched our cell phone provider to save money. That was a no-brainer. Then, we evaluated how much we need for our normal monthly expenses such as electricity, internet, satellite, tithing and other such items which gave us amount A. We then figured out how much we want to save which gave us amount B. And then, we took all of those items and added them up with the amount we want to save each month which gave us amount C. Then we took the least amount we bring in each month (amount D) and subtracted amount C from amount D which gave us amount E. So, for right now amount E is $500. Then, we took $500 and divided it by 2. So, both of us gets $250 a month to spend on whatever. Now, when I say "whatever" I don't mean "WHATEVER" I mean, things that were not taken into account when we came up with amount B. The reason we left out a lot of things in amount B is to give us more flexibility. So, whatever is actually things like: Gas, Food, Clothes, Household items, Entertainment, Dining Out, and Fun Money. The reason we didn't include gas and food in amount B is because these items are going to be going up in price and also, we both buy them, we have a lot of food storage that is getting old that we need to use up, I want to learn more about using coupons (for items we need), and for us knowing we only have $250 each it makes us talk more about money. For example, say there's a large purchase we need, now we do more research and say it's going to be more expensive than one of us wants to allow for our "personal budget" then we need to involve the other person and say "hey can you spare this much $ for item X?" It also helps us to make sure we really need certain groceries before we go to the store. When I was cleaning out our pantries, I found tons of stuff I didn't know we had on hand. We'd had it for 2 or 3 years. But, it was stuff we'd always go and buy figuring "oh well, even if we don't need it, it will go into food storage." The problem is...eventually a lot of stuff EXPIRES! Now, the key to the system is this. You actually have to keep track of how much you're spending. The reason we didn't go to a cash only system is because Andrew likes to use the credit cards because we get points and he likes to pay them off in full each month. And, that's ok. But, every couple days. Sometimes, every day even, we ask each other "Where are you at?", meaning "What's your balance?" And, what's really sweet is that the other day we were at Fred Meyer and he bought me a pair of tweezers with his budget... Don't ask me why but it was so romantic. We got up to the register and he said he'd get it. The other cool thing about it is that I'm learning to make more food from scratch. The other day I made spaghetti sauce from scratch! It was really good. I'd almost go as far as to say it was better than a lot of the store brands! I would never have done that before!

Andy Joins the 21st Century...and other tales!

Andy aka "Boo" has finally joined the 21st century. As of Saturday
19 March, 2011 20:39 MDT Andrew's Android phone has been active. He has now joined the ranks of those who can talk, text, and surf the web from that small little device called a cellular phone, or cell phone for short. He is the proud owner of a LG Optimus S. We switched him over to my plan with Sprint this weekend. It made more financial sense to do so because we were paying for 2 different plans and I had 2 phones (one on each of them). But, now we just have one and it's with Sprint. Since ) we get a really good deal. We get 1500 anytime minutes to share between the two of us (yeah, we're never going to need that many!), unlimited text, unlimited calls to any cell phone on ANY network (SWEET!), and unlimited data. WOO-HOO! Can you say CHA-CHING??!!

Here is a photo of Andy's phone.












Here are some other random photos from the last couple of days. Andy with his new phone. Look at how happy he is! Also, I made corned beef and cabbage tonight! It was delicious! I found a new recipe. It was similar to the one that one of my FHE brothers used when I was at BYU-Idaho. His version of corned beef was the BEST I'd ever had! This one had a nice glaze made from dijon mustard, honey, and brown sugar and you boil it for a couple minutes, simmer it for a few hours, then bake it for a about 20ish minutes and then broil it for just a couple of minutes. It was fantastic. Andy's not a fan whatsoever of corned beef and even he was raving over it! He protested when I told him I was going to make it this year, but when I asked him if I could make this recipe again next year, he said without any hesitation "yes". I guess that means it's a "WINNER!". The pictures of it didn't turn out as well as I'd like. But, trust me, it looked a lot nicer than what the pictures show and it tasted phenomenal!








I also decided to start a few of new blogs.

• One for Cooking called - The GREY Cook
• One for Fitness called - Cookie's Fitness Quest
• One for Asian Cooking called - Wok Wackery