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 :)

Ze City of Love

We went to Paris.  Ahhh, l'amore :)  It was our last Europe hurrah before coming back to the states.  Looking back at my last few posts made me a little weepy.  We've been back in Les Etas Unis for almost two months now, and my heart aches for friends and our Haunted Maison.  Le sigh.  In the next post, though, I'll catch y'all up on our new little home sweet home a la St. George, Utah!  Until then, Au Revoir! (Our cute taxi driver that took us to our hotel in Paris was trying to teach us French and he gave us a mini lesson about "au revoir" and how hard it is to have a drivers license en France.)

Our "Pets"

All squirrels have gotten the name Veruca, just like all the Jay birds that we see are named Jay.The Mysterious Aesop. He's our fox :)
The newest member of our family: Feival! He has since taken that hunk of cheese into his little home.

Happy Saturday!

The word of the day today was "jerk". Chicken that is. Today was the St. Paul's Carnival in good old Bristol. It's in the part of town that people have told us not to venture into, but today it was full of all kinds of people celebrating the Afro-Caribbean culture. There were rides, food stands, and a parade that had huge mardi-gras style costumes mixed with energetic dancing. I forgot my camera (not true, I didn't bring it because I didn't want it to get stolen haha) but this should give you an idea:
The highlight was the food. It was also the reason we ventured to the festival. We got jerk chicken, hot wings, rice and peas (aka rice and beans) and cole slaw and it was DELICIOUS. The food tent was a family operation, and you could tell it was really authentic. And the home made hot sauce was perfect and H-O-T! We weren't quite brave enough to try the curried goat... maybe next time :) We enjoyed it so much, we went to the store and got some jerk sauce to put on chicken for tonight's dinner. It wasn't as good as the real deal, but it was still pretty darn good.
Here's a funny picture of Adam and his new friend, the fan:

I work all night I work all day...

To pay the bills I have to paaaaaaaay...
Work is starting to get reaaaaaaly monotonous now, especially since i've given them a definite end date (August 20th). All I can seem to think about is coming home. *sings* Coming home, I'm coming home, tell the world that I'm coming home.... :) After Nana and Popi left here, I really got homesick again. I wish I could go back after Elizabeth's visit (three days from now!!!!) but Nathan has this silly little paper to write. Who cares about a thesis anyway? ;)
So, yeah, next step in our little adventure is getting closer! And it may start off with sky diving. WHAT???? I haven't said yes yet... we shall see. Hoo boy. I wonder if peopl have actually barfed whilst falling. It'd be like spitting out of the window of a moving car. And your poor tandem guy... Nathan's mom and I talked about it (she's going... I can't be outdone by my Mother-in-law, now can I?) and we decided we really want handsome instructors. So, you know, if we die it'll be in the arms of a cute guy. Yeehaw.
I've decided I'm going to try to blog more. Even if they're not long. I've just become a lazy blogger after getting more hours at work.
Oh, and BTW we're going to Paris before we come home. Just fyi :)

They Shoot TV Shows, Don't They?

After work today we came across the shooting of a TV show in Cabot Circus. It's hosted by one of the biggest celbrities in England. I'd read about her in the gossip magazines we have in the break room, o I thought I'd take a peek. Her name is Katie Price and she used to be a nudey model, but now she's one of those celebrities who's famous because of her relationships and her issues. She's a big ol' mess, but a rich big ol' mess. Nathan and I were more interested in what was going on backstage than the actual show, so we stood where there was less of a crowd and watched the director and crew do their thang. She walked out, we saw her, then left. Excitement of the day!

Birthday Post!

This was my birthday present from Nathan! It's a Cath Kidston bag, which is big around here! It's the Vera Bradley of England. I'd seen them around the city (and there's a shop near our house) and I thought they were they cutest thing! And Nathan secretly got me one! With a matching wallet! I feel so chic now. My work friends were impressed :) And now when I go back to America I can say, "Well they're ALL the rage in the UK."

Nathan found the coolest cake for me! It was/still is very tasty.
Since I had to work all day, I told Nathan that I just wanted to order a pizza and chill out. So we did! We ate pizza, Doritos, and cake and watched "The Emperor's New Groove". Perfect! We're going out on Wednesday with some friends for more celbrations at our favorite restaurant, Cosmo!

I was off work on Saturday, so we spent all day out in the beautiful sun! I wanted to take advantage of the sunny skies (it's a good thing we did, it's raining again) and I'm so glad we did. We brought reading material, but we really didn't need it. We spent three hours in two different parks just talking about everything from the future to the history of cartoons. And we have a nice glow to show for it (I was hoping to get a little bit of a tan, and I did!). If it stops raining, I want to do the same thing tomorrow! After we see X-men: First class with my movie gift cardfrom chris and Yuki, that is... :)





Oh and we saw Kung Fu Panda 2! It ws good! We both agreed it wsn't as good as the first one, but it wasn't bad at all. I think we just liked the first one better because it had more funny one-liners. This one was more touching and sentimental than the first. It was still very funny! Favorite line: "Why didn't I like pants?" :)
Here are some songs from a band I've come to love: The Fleet Foxes. They're very folksy. I love when their songs come on at work, it's the highlight of my day :)