Our New Home

After a suburban full of stuff, a couple days of hard work, and several trips to Target, Justin and I are finally all moved into our apartment. I'm pretty fond of it. I'm so excited to be able to have a little home of our own. Here are a few pictures of our new place.

Our table and TV stand

The kitchen/hallway?

The Bedroom

The bookshelf is still a bit of a mess, and we do plan on putting pictures in the frame...don't worry.

and we do have a bathroom (surprise right?) but apparently I have no pictures of it yet, but it's swell.

HOORAY

WE'RE MARRIED!

...as of a month ago. and it is FANTASTIC! I finally decided I had better blog about it!

There's really not much to say except that the day was absolutely perfect. The wedding was wonderful and the reception was beautiful. I have such a great family for pulling it all together. Being married is great! I am so happy that I get to be with my prince charming forever and ever...I mean...how cool is that? very.

Mrs. McKell

So... I'm married now... and I have a different name now...it's weird...but great.

I'm sure I'll blog more about this later.

International Pirate Day

Last Saturday, Justin decided it would be fun for us to go on an adventure. We rented a canoe from UW and paddled around Lake Washington for a bit. It was a perfect day, with beautiful weather. Lake Washington is a lot of fun because there is lots to see, we were able to see a ton of boats, an argosy cruise, a blue heron, and a float plane taking off. After canoeing we went down to Alki for a picnic on the beach. We ate from a restaurant called spuds which is famous for their fish and chips....I got chicken. It made me feel a little guilty eating my greasy chicken and fries while watching a bunch of marathon runners around the area..oh well. Alki is such a great place on a sunny day and an ideal place for people watching, which I always enjoy. After we got back to the FW we of course had to make a cake to celebrate IPD. It was altogether an awesome day.

DIY

Since I have an apartment to furnish and about zero money, I've been looking around at thrift stores and garage sales for furniture that I can repurpose. Here is my first project! I got this sweet corner table at a thrift store for $8, paid $8 for a quart of paint (and probably used about 50 cents worth of the paint), and a glass knob for $4. So I was able to make this not so cute table, super cute for under $20.

BEFORE

AFTER

so...

I have this teensy problem entitled "I'm getting married in 53 days and still have no job"

it is not fun.

Blogggggging

I have lots and lots to blog about. Here are all my crazy adventures in no particular order.

I went to conference...twice...it was excellent

Stephanie came from South Dakota to visit me and I get to show her all the fun adventures in the pacific northwest...including...

The Vancouver temple open house...Canada is great.

Portland and eating Voodoo Donuts (apparently it's an awesome portland thing)

and of course...Seattle

and last but not least...

...I'M ENGAGED. And I'm pretty dang excited about it. We're getting married on July 9 and it's going to be the party of the century...I'm 99% sure.

Festival of Colors

This weekend Stephanie and I, once again, went on a weekend roadtrip. That seems to be the theme of this semester. This weeks destination was Spanish Fork, Utah for the Holi Festival, or Festival of Colors. We met up with Justin, Keith, our friend David from Las Vegas and his friend Andrew. This is pretty much an Indian celebration where you throw colors at each other to welcome the spring...or something like that. At the festival they were explaining the origins...something about burning babies..I'm not really sure. Anyway, you buy bags of colored powder and throw them at eachother..it's a lot of fun. You are supposed to wait for a countdown and then you start throwing colors at each other. At the end of the countdown everything literally went black from all the powder in the air..you could hardly see the person next to you. by the end we were covered from head to toe with powder and my throat was full of incense scented chalk (yuck). Afterwards we all headed to Denny's in Provo. We were afraid they wouldn't let us in..but they did. The whole festival was a ton of fun and SO crazy... once again...another excellent weekend.

BEFORE(ISH)

AFTER

Justin's Homecoming

This weekend was fantastic! I was able to go home for a few days for Justin's mission homecoming. He has been serving in the Mexico, Monterrey East mission and returned home last Wednesday. I hadn't told him that I was coming home, and he was definitely surprised. It was so fun to be able to spend the weekend with him and go to some of our favorite places like dash point and...seatac mall? On Sunday he gave a fantastic talk, and I'm still amazed at the fact that he currently seems to know spanish better than English. Justin has been such a great influence on me these past two years while he has been serving the Lord. It was great to see him again!

partying it up in Utah...

So...this is a week late, but I'm over it. But last weekend I went to Utah. It was great and grand. My friend Stephanie had to go down for a Zumba certification class, and didn't want to drive by herself, therefore...ROADTRIP! So Stephanie, my old roommate Sara and I hopped in the car and headed to Sandy to stay with my other old roommate Callie. It was so much fun seeing her and so nice of her to let us stay over. While Steph was at Zumba, Sara and I went to The Gateway to do some shopping, then headed over to Ikea after Callie was done with work. They were having dollar meatball meal weekend..it was glorious. Later on that night Stephanie and I went to Provo to visit Adam Lee and Katie, two of my good friends from home. It was SO much fun. They decided to show us what people do at BYU on the weekends. So we started out at the Nickelcade. Ok..this place is AWESOME! It's an arcade but everything is in nickels. We got a little addicted to gambling (Vegas was a bad influence) with some of the games...we just really wanted to get lots of tickets. Also we played Deal or No Deal..we ended up with the suitcases holding 2 tickets and 200 tickets...we were offered 101 tickets...and we chose NO DEAL. Worst decision ever...we ended up with 2 tickets. So after the nickelcade ended with disappointment, we went over to the bell tower where apparently you are supposed to be able to roast marshmallows on the giant lamps. Unfortunately, the rumors are wrong and the marshmallows only got slightly warm...but it was a ton of fun...we celebrated by drinking martinellis and eating popsicles in the freezing cold outside. After that we wanted to go dumpster diving for donuts. They throw out the donuts (in the box) at Krispy Kreme after the store closes, people sometimes go dumpster diving for them. I was a little hesitant but we went anyway. Once we got there the store still had employees..we parked...they looked at us weird...we then decided to spy from a neighboring parking lot. Evenutally we ended up leaving before we got any donuts...but it was hilarious...guess you had to be there...

Utah = great weekend trip...good times.

Staying at Callie's

The bling rings we bought with our tickets from the arcade

at the belltower...the light burned my retinas...it was great.

These guys are fantastic

ERNESTA DAY!

HEY EVERYONE!

so..my roommate is writing a paper about ERNESTA DAY!! She needs some memories to write about...anyone have any??

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

On saturday Stephanie, her friend Hannah and I decided it would be great fun to go to Mesa Falls since it was a beautiful Rexburg day. After driving almost all the way there we realized that they don't plow the road all the wall to the falls...so it would involve either a snowmobile (which we did not have) or our feet (which we did not want to use).I swear I've been there this time of year before...but apparently not. So instead we just decided to make it a nice drive. We ended up driving out to Island park, which was super pretty...but not much there. And then we drove back through Ashton and ate at a sweet rootbeer drive-in place. We chatted it up with the waitresses while drinking our floats. We felt pretty legit. Then we headed back to Rexburg.

I love exploring Idaho, it's fun going that direction because I get to see trees. I love trees. So moral of the story...don't go chasing waterfalls (we also rocked out to that song...the cherry on top to the perfect day).

forest= trees, Jennifer= super excited

hooray for car pictures/ double chin
jumping picture after failed attempt to Mesa Falls

Stephanie thought it would just be easier to lay down on the highway and give up the ghost

What Happens in Vegas...

...Obviously doesn't stay in Vegas..because I'm posting it to my blog...right now.

For the three day Presidents Day/ Valentines Day/ Chinese New Year weekend I went with three of my friends, Stephanie, Courtney, ,and Erin, to Vegas. A lot happened...so instead of writing it out, I'll just narrate the events in no apparent order through photos.

Chinese food picnic breakfast at St. George temple

Valley of Fire, one of my favorite places

getting bored/crazy/ crazy bored in the car...resulting in an unheard of amount of temporary tattooos

tattoo parlor with our sweet new tattoos

Classic sign picture

getting excited with memories of Rafferty and the Seattle Sculpture Park

Throwing pennies into EVERY fountain we saw

Meeting our new friend David (Courtney's from Vegas so we got to meet some of her friends...good times)

Having car problems/ receiving anitfreeze as a valentines day present from stephanie (she said she got me coolant since I'm so cool)

Walking the strip

Las Vegas Temple/ seeing SO many palm trees

Top Ten...

...Reasons I am not ready to grow up.

1. I will only eat gummy vitamins

2. I don't think it's inappropriate to have a coloring book in college

3. I threw a temper tantrum when my nerf gun broke...last week

4. My shoes have velcro

5. My chicken nuggets are in the shapes of dinosaurs

6. I sleep with a teddy bear...or two

7. my favorite game is "Don't Break the Ice"

8. I love the park

9. my nails are all ridiculous colors

10. I keep temporary tattoos in my glove compartment

I'm 99% sure...

That there is something wrong with me. The past few days I have been hungry. Like...always. It's not the kind of hungry where you eat something and think "hmmm...maybe I'll eat some more...I think I might be hungry" . No...it's the kind of hungry where you eat something and then 45 minutes later you're hungry again. The kind of hungry where your stomach feels like it is going to eat itself if it doesn't get food right away. For example, I just ate a bowl of cereal like 15 minutes ago and I can already feel my hunger pangs coming. Is there no solution?

This just doesn't seem right.

on another note...I kind of want to go to Las Vegas this weekend. My friend Stephanie has never been and we have a 3 day weekend. Just trying to outweigh the pros and cons. Currently we're at a 60% chance of going...that just doesn't seem high enough.

life.

So I have nothing in particular to blog about....but..I haven't blogged in quite some time AND I have an hour before church. So I'm just going to blog about life.

Life is good.

the end.

ok...so maybe there's more to it than that...but that's a good summary. This semester has been just really great. School hasn't been quite as stressful as it has been in the past couple of semesters (still crazy busy...but somehow not as stressful). I love the major that I chose and I'm starting to get close to all my classmates and professors..the fact that I see them everyday is a lot of fun, and it's pretty much a constant party.

Another thing I've been doing a lot since last semester is going to swing dance every wednesday night. When I started going last semester it was mostly because my roommates would always go, and I honestly wasn't a huge fan of swing dancing. But now I go almost every week and I love it. It's such a good break right in the middle of the week and I get to see all my friends. it's great! Dancing is such a good break and stress relief for me so I try to do as much of it as possible. Unfortunately I can't do quite as much as I would like because I'm busy with my classes. But I'm at least taking a bronze international latin class ( I basically took the same class with PBD...but I still love it). I also went to ballroom this friday night and it was great fun. It was actually the first time going this semester but I think I'm going to have to start going more often because it's great....but my latin heels are almost dying...so that's not great.

hmmm...There really isn't much else exciting with my life...just

school and playing. so here's an assortment of fantastic pictures of my life.

Erin, myself, and Sara partying at swing...Erin's eyes are red and I look sweaty...but that's ok.

Last weekend I went with a group to Chiles in Idaho Falls. it was fantastic and delicious. I've only been there once before, and if I've learned anything from The Office I've learned that Chiles is the place to be. Afterwards we went to see "When in Rome" which was pretty cute, I was just excited because it had the pie maker in it.

Another thing I've been doing a lot of..making crafts! Sara, Stephanie, and my roommate Lindsey spent practically all day making cards and watching pushing daisies last Saturday. I also made a wicked sweet frame.

Last night Sara invited me over for a pizza party. Lindsey and I made some delicious mississippi mud pie! I finally got to use my awesome cook book I got for Christmas. It was sweet...we even youtubed how to make chocolate curls! Glen loves pie and he also loves jumping into pictures.

After pizza (which was AMAZING) we played catch phrase. My friends are silly.

I like them.