Our Happy Home: Living Room

 Even before Blake and I were engaged we started going house shopping. When you know, you know, and we definitely knew. 

After looking in a lot of different areas, we found a Condo located in Eagle Mountain called, the Community was called, Rock Creek and immediately fell in love with the layout. Unfortunately the one we had our eyes on sold before we could make an offer. We then found another Condo up for sale with the same floor plan and we jumped on it! I am so glad we did because I have never felt more at home, than I have in our lovely little Condo.

The living room was a nice tan color but the baseboards were painted black. It gave it a different, edgy look, Blake liked it, but it didn't really appeal to me. The black baseboards only had the front painted. The edges just had flicks of black on them, like someone took a roller to the front but didn't bother finishing the job.

BEFORE

A couple weeks after Blake and I got married I convinced Blake to let me start painting. We searched Pinterest frequently trying to find a style that we both loved. In the mean time we started painting the baseboards white, since I didn't love the black color. 

DURING

We finally decided together to paint one accent wall brown, and leave the rest of the walls the tan that was already there. There were so many holes in the walls from pictures, and their tv that was mounted, we needed to get some of the tan paint to paint our patch up work. When we started patching all the holes I found out we purchased a whole gallon of the wrong finish. Even though it was the same color the paint we bought had a little more gloss to it. We ended up repainting most of the tan so it would all match. Which wasn't to hard. 

Blake already had a TV, TV stand, and Love Sac. At the moment that was our only furniture. A couple months after we were married, we started going furniture shopping looking for couches that we both loved. 

We finally found a couch and love seat that were perfect!

Blake and I are both the worst at measuring and hanging things. So without going into to much detail I will let you know hanging these curtains was an adventure. 

I found an accent chair on sale and ordered it. When it arrived it was not the right color and I was pretty bummed about it because I had looked for a chair like that for the longest time. We ended up just retuning it and I kept up my search. A few weeks later I found a chair very similar to the first one which I actually ended up liking more! 

OLD                                       NEW     

Next on the list was an entertainment center. We couldn't find anything we liked for less than $300. We looked and looked, finally one day we went to the Furniture Row and at the very last store, in Ikea we walked past an entertainment center on sale for under $70! We were so happy! The drawers are a little crooked but not even noticeable, and totally worth the steal!

Over the following months we slowly added some decorations, an accent rug, coffee table, end tables, lamps, and Blake and his father Steele made the most beautiful 90 Gallon fish tank stand. 

AFTER

 I promise sometimes the Orchid is in bloom, just not at the time of this picture. :)

I am in love with how everything turned out. I feel so at home every single time I walk in the door. We are so blessed to live in the home that we own, and it has been fun piecing the whole room together. 

Valentine's Day 2015

Oh how I love Valentine's Day. This was mine and Blake's second Valentine's Day ever. It feels like I have known Blake forever, and it is hard to believe just a two short years ago, a week after Valentine's Day, I ran into the man who would be my future husband. 

I love going to sleep and waking up to the love of my life every single morning. 

When I got out of bed I found that Blake made a heart out of sticky notes! On each one is a reason why he loves me. I couldn't stop laughing while I read them, he always knows how to make me smile. 

For breakfast we had the traditional, or starting this year traditional heart shaped pancakes. 

In the late afternoon we drove down to Payson Canyon. My co-worker Nico, had told me about a nice little hike to a small waterfall called The Grotto. The hike usually only takes 10 minutes one way but because it is Winter the road to the Canyon closes father down, and cars can't get past. Hiking up the paved road added about an hour each way. 

It was an absolute beautiful day! Even with the snow it was the perfect temperature for a hike. 

For dinner we ordered Chili's-to-go and since the wait time was 30 minutes we stopped by our favorite fish store and looked around for a half hour. One of our fish Abigully, unfortunately is killing the other ones so we have to get rid of her before we can get a new fish. Since we haven't had time to catch her we just browsed the shop looking for fish we might someday like to have in our tank.

Now, a little back story, for the month and a half before Valentine's day I was desperately trying to win a Valentine's Day Dinner at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium. Fox13 news was doing a raffle for a romantic dinner for two in front of the shark tank "Kisses and Fishes". I just thought that would be amazing, so I had all my friends, family, and co-workers enter it to make my chances even that much more to win. Unfortunately it was not meant to be and honestly I was devastated, but bounced back quickly. I wanted to surprise Blake but when I found out I didn't win a week before Valentine's Day and that the actual dinner would cost $150, I just ended up telling Blake that was my master plan for V-day failed and what it had been.

After picking Chili's up we went home and Blake set up a card table in front of our 90 Gallon fish tank. I just thought that was the sweetest, most thoughtful thing in the world!! How did I get so lucky!!

We finished the night off by watching Crazy, Stupid, Love. Which is one of my favorite chick flicks. 

Sorry for the cheesiness and I know I say it over and over, but I mean it more and more every time. I am the luckiest girl because I have the greatest guy. I have never been more happy, supported, loved, or comfortable in my life. I am just grateful to his mother for raising him to be such a gentleman and such a saint. 

The Great Salt Lake: Spiral Jetty

A few weeks ago I started getting antsy for a trip! We hadn't been to a State Park since November! I started doing my research and decided we should go to The Great Salt Lake. After looking up all the things you can do there, I realized we were limited by the winter season, I decided we would go to the Spiral Jetty.

For those of you who don't know the Spiral Jetty was built by Robert Smithson in 1970.  It is made of mud, salt crystals, basalt rocks, and water that forms a spiral in the Great Salt Lake. It is 1,500 feet long which is so crazy. Some people go above and beyond for their art. :)

Me not knowing the exact location told Blake we could just stop by one Sunday on our way to his parents house in Bountiful. See, in my head The Great Salt Lake was 30 minutes away. The Spiral Jetty couldn't be much farther of a drive. Boy was I wrong.

Turns out the Spiral Jetty is on the North-Eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake and that is pretty much on the other side of the lake from us.

I have said this a million times, but Blake is such a good sport! Even though the drive was going to be 7 hours, round trip he was willing to do it for me. That is why I love him so much! 

All of the blogs and websites I read about going to the Spiral Jetty said a high clearance, all wheel drive vehicle was an absolute must. Since neither of our cars met either of those requirements we decided to rent a car. We had such a good experience renting when we went to Arches Nation Park and Blake always loves the idea of not putting miles on our cars. 

We picked up a Jeep Cherokee, Trail Hawk addition, and got on our way. To get to the Spiral Jetty you drive all the way to Corinne, Utah population 700, and head West out to the middle of no where. Eventually you pass a rocket building and testing facility which is really random and also pretty cool. 

Farther along the road in the middle of no where you pass the Golden Spike!  Which of course united our great country from sea to shinning sea! My great, great, great, great, grandfather,  Richard Todd Brown was actually there in 1869 the day the golden spike was nailed into the track. We didn't stop and look at it because you had to pay an entrance fee, and we are cheapos, but we could kind of see where everyone was standing which I am assuming was where the Golden Spike was. :)

At this point the paved road turns to dirt as promised in all the blogs, and I was ready for some rough terrain. To start, it was perfectly packed down with no pot holes in sight, and to be honest it stayed like that the whole way! I don't know if they just re-did the dirt road or if all the websites are terribly out of date but it was smooth driving the whole way!

Finally we turned a bend and there was the spiral jetty! I was surprised at how busy it was since it was so far out of the way. We passed a handful of cars leaving on our way in and there were a couple groups there still when we arrived.

It really is huge when you are out on it. Sometimes it is covered by water but right now the water isn't even close to it. We thought it would be fun to walk out to the water. It took a while but we did get to it.

 Up on the hill over looking the Jetty it was pleasantly cool but out on the Jetty and walking to the water it was FREEZING. The wind was blowing so hard I could barely see due to the hair in my face or think because my brain was literally frozen.  It was pretty crazy though because instead of walking through sand it is just crystalized salt that looks like ice. 

When we made it back to the shore we had to recharge and heat up in the car before we could get out and take pictures. After we warmed up we hiked up the hill a little ways and took a few pictures. The wind was blowing like crazy so it was hard to keep my hair out of my face. Sorry for the pictures overload but here are some of my favorites. 

The hillside was covered in basalt rock. It was beautiful with all the different sized boulders. 

When it was time to leave we started driving away and right as we were passing a Jetty left by oil drillers a long time ago (not the Spiral Jetty) Blake said he didn't want to waste the awesome car that we rented so we drove down a pretty steep hill, drove on the lake for a second, and drove back up the steep hill. It was kind of lame that we didn't actually need the car but it is still always fun to drive something new. 

On our way home we stopped by Costco in Bountiful. We have been talking about getting a new TV for a long time. After comparing prices we found that Costco was having killer sales on their TV's thanks to the New Year and the Super Bowl. So we picked up the TV we had our eye on up while we had a larger vehicle. While we were at Costco we also had dinner. I absolutley love their pizza!

It was such a fun day trip with my guy and I am stoked that I can cross another Stake Park off my list.