Scott's Moment of Zen

Unfortunately, I've neglected my Moment of Zen responsibilities of late, so here is one that, hopefully, will make up for my slacking off. I love these commercials!!!!

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Christmas Lights Clark Griswold Style

Scott and I discovered these crazy Christmas lights on our way to the grocery store one night. These homes are intense. The lights to the house on top is timed to music that they broadcast through their own radio station. If you look closely there is a video of Santa in the top window. We knew something was up when we pulled onto this street and realized that we were behind 20 cars. It was pretty cool to see, but I feel sorry for their neighbors. I don't even want to know what their electricity bill is. After I discovered this house I tried to tell a couple of people in my neighborhood about it, but they all looked at me like, Duh! I guess they have been doing this for years and EVERYONE knows about it. If you want to see a video of this scroll down to the bottom of this post. I guess some people love Christmas a little more than the rest of us.

Blog-Dissed

Our good friends Marianne and Bryan had recently invited Scott and I over for dinner last week and the subject of blogs came up. I mentioned what a blog stalker I am and my problem with blog envy and Marianne told that I had blog-dissed her.
"What?" says she, "Do I have to do to earn a mention on your blog?" I guess I had previously mentioned we had dinner with friends but didn't state the names of said friends. I was then informed that I had been shown up by some stranger that Marianne just met who had put her on her blog.
This got me to thinking, have I been unintentionally blog-dissing all my near and dear ones? Do my faithful readers (ha ha) wonder when it is going to be their moment of glory, their time to shine per se with their own special feature?
This grievous, although unintentional, error had to be corrected, so I decided to dedicate this blog to you Marianne and 10 reason why you are my friend.

1-You make awesome Christmas cards (see top photo). Receiving your hand crafted letter pressed card this year was very exciting.
2-I admire Marianne's (and Bryan's) economic, green, conservationist ways. She puts me to shame by listening to NPR, not having cable, gardening, sewing and going to the library versus buying books. I always feel like I need to try better when I leave her house.
3- I can call Marianne anytime and stress out for 30 minutes about paint color choices. Thank you for helping me to decide if I should go with creamy yellow or yellowy brown. I think I can pretty much stress about anything with you, thanks for listening.
4-Related to #3 is that Marianne and Bryan bought a house a few months before us. It is about the same age and we are both remodeling. It is fun to have someone to share this with and discuss the ups and downs of home renovation.
5-We can talk until 1 AM (which is really late for me) about almost anything.
6-We were in art school together. I loved school. I love everyone who did art school. I think I loved everyone in my classes. Yay photo department!
7-She is honest.
8-I admire her convictions and her choices for her career. She loves her job teaching photography and I love that Marianne still does cyanotypes. It makes me miss school.
9-We both love to read.
10-We were neither very sure about each other when we first met. I'm so glad we still became friends after our initial uncertainty.

-Oh, and I decided to throw in a #11,
11-Marianne and Bryan always send thank you cards in the mail after we have dinner together. I love receiving things in the mail and makes me feel special that she took the time to write a card.
-Oh and I just thought of a #12,
12-Marianne comments on my blog. I love people commenting. It is nice to know that my blog is actually read.

Domestic Goddess I Am Not

Since buying our house I have decided to introduce some much needed domesticity into our lives. Our cooking habits have previously been abysmally poor, our clothes to be ironed are neglected for months and I never, ever clean in the bathroom with a toothbrush. Having recently discovered our latent nesting instincts; however, it was time to start working towards a long treasured goal of mine-Domestic Goddesshood. To begin, I bought a frilly apron, reaquainted myself with my cookbooks and made my first pie. I was so extraordinarily proud of my pie that I began thinking I was well on my way to domestic bliss domination-a pie is after all the fast-track option. Alas, how soon I realized how low I had sunk in the year and half we lived at Scott's parents house. After weeks and weeks of complaining about our new dryer just not drying anymore, Scott discovered the problem. Yep, that is 4 months of compacted lint. Silly things like the lint catcher (does that have a proper name?) have completely escaped my notice. I'm sorry to say that not only did I never remove the lint from Lynette's dryer when we lived there; I even forgot such a thing existed. I'm not sure if proper lint removal falls under the Domestic Goddess's duties, but I'm sure it is part of her managerial skills as in, "Scott, remove the lint!" Although newly humbled, I have been proud of my few success-crepes suzette, an apple pie, carrot cake...and that is about it so far. I take comfort in the fact that they tasted pretty good. Family is coming over for the holidays and if that is successful I think I can remove my training wheels and move onto more complicated tasks such as sewing and learning how to use our meat thermometer.

Temple Lights

This past monday Scott and I went to see the temple lights with Dan and Tara (Scott's brother and his wife). It was cold and crowded, but still fun. We stopped at Settebello first-a definite favorite-and then headed over to Temple Square. I always love seeing the lights, it reminds me of being a kid and being so excited about Christmas. It was also nice to just hang out with family. Thanks to Scott, Dan, and Tara for being patient while I stopped and photographed. Kudos to Tara as well for her princess Leia earmuffs-they were sweet!

Happy Holidays!

So here is the Christmas card I sent out this year. It is a little redundant to post this on the blog because if you are reading this you probably got a card as well. I haven't done Christmas cards in years, but in my many attempts this year to maintain a personal life I decided that it would be a good thing. It was my first time designing a card so it was a fun, new challenge. Merry Christmas everyone!
P.S. Marianne your post is coming up-you know what this means.

Finally

Here are some images, finally, from our house. So sorry that it took me so long to post these Taryn and Kelli! We are proud to present our new couches as well. It it a little weird not sitting on the floor. We feel all grown-up now. The blue room is our dining room. It is so small it was hard to get a good shot of the whole room. The brown is the kitchen. The whole thing looks so different from when we bought it. I know I never posted any of the those, but just imagine white walls and ceiling fans.

2 Guns, a Teddy Bear and a Box of Clay Pigeons

Every Thanksgiving the Stewart's hold their annual Clay Pigeon Shootout. It is a long standing tradition in the Stewart family to get up early Thanksgiving morning, drive straight west to the middle of nowhere and shoot guns for a couple of hours. The event holds no suspense for me...Surprise! I missed all of my shots in the first round and I'm out. For the men in this family it means something so much more. It means that the winner gets a stale Reese's cup purchased at the gas station on the way home and bragging rights for a year. Testosterone driven, the males fight it out-trash talking all the way. This year I brought my camera and that proved to be much more exciting for me than shooting with a gun. It was a really beautiful cold day and I had fun capturing all the nail biting action and male bonding.


I'm bored.

Typical Stewart male bonding.

So pretty, sooo cold!


I'm so anti-gun, it's weird to watch Scott shoot one.



Triumphant Bruce!


Where are we again?





The official family videographer.


This sad, mangled teddy was found abandoned in the field. It was strangely amusing to see the teddy bear get blown to smitherins.





Dan, Scott and Bruce praying to the Clay Pigeon Gods.