Smiling's My Favorite

Christmas time is heeeeeeeeere!  I love Christmas.  You know when they start playing Christmas music in the middle of November?  Yeah, I LOVE that.  It makes the season last so much longer!  I don't forget about Thanksgiving, I just consider all of November + December as one big happy holly jolly holiday full of food, family, and glitter.  And now that I'm actually eating chocolate out of my advent calander,  I couldn't be more holly or jolly. 

Christmas craft time!  Since I've discovered Pinterest.com, I've gotten into a crafting craze.  Whenever I make something, I'll pop in a movie and forever when I look at that item it immediately reminds me of that movie.  Anyone else do that?  Anyway, this wreath will always remind me of Die Hard  ("Now I have a machine gun.  Ho Ho Ho").  All it is is a hanger and dollar store ornaments (btw if you want to try it, get twice as many ornaments as you think you'll need, the hanger fills up quickly!).  It's my pride and joy at the moment.

The rest of my "crafting" isn't really crafting.  It's just stuff we had + stuff from the yard + gold spray paint.  Nathan's Grampa made some grape juice from his own grapes (So good!) and once the mason jars were empty, I used them for decorating!  Thanks Grampa Taylor!  And Nathan's brother Adam and his wife Joanna's yard provided us with perfect pinecones and twigs.  Thanks family!

I wonder if my old roommate Rikki will recognize the red wooden beaded string in the mason jar... :)  The gold vase was a fun project.  I just wrapped rubber bands around a plain glass vase and sprayed gold paint on it.  Rubber bands come off and voila!  Easy peasy.  Thanks again Pinterest! 

Our Christmas tree!  We still don't have a topper for her.  We've just been using a pretty clip on bird I got from my lovely friend Sarah Bock.  I've had plans to make a tree skirt that I've never gotten around to.... I'm tempted to just buy one... but that's no fun!  The dolly at the bottom is from Nathan's aunt.  She had a doll collection and after she passed, we aquired this one.  I think she's gorgeous!  I named her Giselle, since I thought she looked like the Disney Princess from 'Enchanted', but most people (Taylor, I'm looking at you) think she's creepy.  I think she makes the tree look old fashioned, in a good way... like when girls asked for dollies and ballet slippers and boys wanted firetrucks and sleds.  I want to do more decorating, it looks so bare!  If I had the materials I'd deck our house out like Buddy does to Gimballs in 'Elf".

One more thing (sorry, instead of short blogs every day, I seem to just be doing long ones every weeks or so...)  We're making friends!!!  This may not be a big deal for most people, but for us it's huge.  We've moved around so much it gets annoying to make new friends.  We get to a new place and just wish we had our old friends and didn't have to make the effort.  The first few months in our new homes have consisted of me missing my old friends (Salisbury, Provo, Florida, England, or wherever they've all moved to) and Nathan just feeling sorry for me.  Waah.  And I'm a very "come to me and I'll love you forever" person, not a "hi, will you be my friend?" person.  Sad, but true.  Anyway, we hung out with some couples from the ward last night and it was a blast.  So that plus Adam and Joanna equals happy Kelsey.  Now all I need is a job! 

Thanksgiving

Taylor came to visit for Thanksgiving!  I love when people come to visit me, since I seem to be somewhere different every year.  We went to my new favorite place, Zions National Park.  And she taught me a teeny bit of guitar.  I miss her and our jam sessions.

Oh deer!

Walnut Canyon

Yesterday Nathan and I drove down to Flagstaff.  As the crow flies it should be about 3 hours to get there, but there's this pesky thing called the Grand Canyon in the way, so it ended up being a 5 1/2 hour drive.  Just one way.   Reason?  Enrolling in a masters program in the UK allowed Nathan to avoid taking the GRE test, but now that we're back in the states applying for a PhD program, the GRE crept back into our lives.  He could have talken it right here in St. George, but they didn't have a testing date until later, and he needed to take it sooner.  Thus: Flagstaff, AZ.  Luckily that 5 hour drive looked like this:

I did some research before we went so I'd have something to do while poor Nathan took his 3 hour test and I came across Walnut Canyon.  It was a beautiful spot off of Route 66 20 miles away from the testing center.  It was a short hike into the canyon to see cave dwellings where Native Americans used to live.  Cool huh?  And only 5 bucks. 

 I was absessed with the tree above.  I took a million pictures... it was just so cool and knobbly.

                              My first snow (and maybe/probably last) of this fall/winter!

 I propped the camera up on a rock and set up the self-timer.  Hiking alone isn't as lame as I thought it would be.  It's pretty zen.  And I'd pass other people every 2 minutes or so.  And  I heard an animal sniffing around.  Hopefuly it wasn't a cougar...  but I guess it was full because it didn't bother me.

 Can you see the dwellings in the cliffside above?  It's identical to the illustration below.

                                                        I'm in a cliff dwelling!!!

I got my kicks.... you know the rest. :)

Lady Blazer

Liz Lemon

 My cute niece Lydia really enjoyed her first real trick-or-treating experience!  What a cute little Lady Bug :)  I especially love her shoes!

My sister-in-law Joanna and her little Bug :)

Anglophile

 So I'm really excited about yestersay's purchase :)  I've been waiting to get this vinyl wall art for weeks now.   I came upon a 50% off coupon at Robert's craft store and got it for 7 bucks!  Thriftiness teaches patience, methinks.

 The London Eye (the ferris wheel thing on the left) and the tower bridge are in the wrong spots... but oh well.  We only noticed because we've been to London a bazillion times (braggy braggy).  Anyway it turned out better than I'd hoped with the size and everything.  Yay!

St. George

 St. George is the guy killing the dragon in the painting (we saw this in London in the National Gallery).  I think St. George, Utah is named after George Washington.  But why add the Saint?  Who knows.
So we live here now.  It's beautiful!  I love the red rock and LDS church history here.  I especially love that I feel like royalty here just by sharing a last name with one of the city's founders.  We never expected that we'd be back in Utah so soon after leaving Provo a year ago, but St. George is different enough to feel like a new adventure.
We've been so blessed these past few months.  Nathan's parents got a new car and were kind enough to pass on to us their no-longer-needed Saab!  Their kindness also extended to letting us stay in the house they bought for their retirement.  Since Dr. Snow isn't retired yet, we get to occupy the basement of said home.  Upstairs still resides the original owner of the home, a nice old lady named Laverne that's renting the space from the Snows for the moment.  She's such a sweet lady with much lighter feet than our old neighbors...  Nathan has found a job!  A good one too!  He'll be the technology teacher at Springdale Elementary.  It's just been one blessing after another since we've arrived.
Since I haven't found employment yet, I've been in a craft craze.  We've never had this much space to fill, so it's been fun thinking of ways to fill it!  I'll now give you a tour of our new home :)  Starting with the view!!!!

 When you first walk in, there's a big empty space to your left, then our living room!  Hanging from the ceiling is a cute oragami mobile Nathan made for me (with assistance from his sister)!  There's a fireplace (gas) and an area rug (it really pulls the room together... movie anyone?)  Again, it looks pretty bare now because we have next to no furniture.  Our attempts at decorating look more pathetic in the pictures than they do in real life :)

Find the hidden Mickey!  :)

This was a fun project.  It's just fabric hot glued to cardboard mixed in with our Primark London pictures.  About $9 to do!

 This is our media hallway.  The Movies are on the left an the posters are on the right and around the corner is the comic book display.  This was the most fun to arrange/alphabatize.
 I have high hopes for the kitchen in the future.  Right now it's pretty bare.  I'm wating for my teacups and teapots to come in the mail to kick off the kitchen decor.

One thing I'm pretty proud of is my frame/mirror art.  I got the idea from the $698 Anthropologie piece.  I saw it and thought... I bet I can so that for less than 700 bucks.  So I drug Nathan to DI and got 4 frames and a mirror for about 7 bucks.  Booyah!  I picked up some scrapbooking paper, some of which was on sale (yeah 50% off  99 cents), cement to glue them together, and oven cleaner to remove the silvering from the mirror.  Less than $20!  And the dried flowers were already in the little frame, I just gave them a different background.  Between the oven cleaner, cement, and smoke from burning the scrapbooking paper, I inhaled lots of chemicals I'm sure.  Worth it?  Yes!  (Not to worry, I was in a well-ventilated space Mama).

I especially love to frame with the roses on it!

I also beaded the little chandelier thingy.  That was mind-numbing...

Nathan gave it a story about a Victorian ship's captain.

 Welsome to our bedroom!  Above the headboard are wodden letters that spell our "Snow".  Below is another cheap project :)  I just covered two cork boards with fabric I already had and stuck all of my jewelry on it.  Bada bing bada boom.  Practical art!

This is our "poop art".  It's made from toilet paper tubes squished and cut into circles.  I've been adding to it every time we go through a roll.

 

Last but not least, the view from our bedroom!  When the Snows move in I'm sure they'll make it a really sweet patio/garden thing.  Currently it's the awkward area where every morning we hear men speaking Spanish and re-doing the stucco on the exterior.  Every night we have to make sure the blinds are shut or else it'll be muy embarrassing.

So that's our home!  We love it and we love that Nathan's brother, wife, and baby live about 10 minutes away.  Too bad mia familia is still muy far. 

Nathan's calling me.  He just got a magical package in the mail.  He's being cute and waiting for me and I'm being cruel and writing a long blog post :)