And the winner is..

Jill Strobelt! 

Thank you so much for those of you who participated in this give a way!

If you're still interested in the bows, you can buy them from me for just a dollar for 2 bows

Jill, go ahead and send me either a message or an email at nikkibuell@gmail.com to let me know which colors you want, and where I should send them

Thanks again!

#100!

Not blog posts like some might think, but 100 books read.  

Yeah

100 books!

Since halfway through January

Not having a job all year has been awful for my bank account, but my library card is sure getting a work out

I knew I was reading a lot, so I decided to keep track of what and how many books I was reading

I was surprised when I saw the number. I knew I was reading a lot, but didn't realize just how much

Kirk tells me I have a problem when he sees all the books I've brought home from the library

stacked up against the wall in the family room

If reading to many books is a problem, then I'll be the first to admit I have a HUGE problem

*I was actually supposed to post this a couple days ago..I'm up to 105 books now

Bowling date take 2

You know how I told you the other day how I got two bowling Groupons? Well last night we used our second one..and let me tell you it did not go as well as the first time (although the scores say otherwise). I tried to get the same lane we had last time in hopes of getting those 4 throws per turn.  Sadly we couldn't get that lane but the one we did get gave us points we didn't really earn.  The first frame Kirk only knocked over 3 pins, and it gave him a strike. So not fair.  But, in all fairness he did get a strike that it didn't count. Sucker.  I did get a couple random points so, that's better then nothing. I felt like we were both so bad this time!

I'll let you be the judge of that.

Kirk:

First time  *108     98     89

*that includes MY strike that they put on his score

Second time 90     81     109

Nikki:

First time    *53     91     55

*that does NOT include my strike

Second time  51    69     90

We both got a couple strikes this time, which was awesome.  It really was a fun night, but we probably won't be getting invited to join anyones bowling team anytime soon.

Who likes free stuff?!

I sure do!  Last night Kirk and I went to Bodins after a trip to REI (I’m getting new Merrill hiking boots! Yay!) and we were there while they were doing their closing routine.  One of the employees came over to us with bags of rolls and asked if we wanted any of them.  I thought she was trying to get us to buy them and I told her we were ok, to which she replies “Well, if you don’t want them I’m just going to throw them away”.  Well in that case!!  We got 2 bags of free rolls! I learned a lesson last night…which is Always go to Boudin right before they close and you can probably get free food. Hooray! 

All that glitters is gold

Or in this case silver…as in silver anniversary.  My parents are getting ready to celebrate their 25^th, or silver anniversary.  Holy smokes that’s a long time!  In celebration of this milestone we decided to throw them a surprise party.  It started in February with the planning and everything and it ended this past weekend with an awesome party.  

On Friday I went to my moms house to paint her nails, then headed to Uncle B’s house where the party was happening, and we started setting up the tables and things.  Saturday we finished decorating and I went to my parents house to do my moms hair and make-up.  My brothers and I gave my mom a locket from Origami Owl (check it out here) (thanks Misty!!) so she could wear it to the party.  The evening turned out better then I could have asked for! Uncle B smoked chicken and tri-tip, Nana made potatoes and green beans, Grammie made baked beans, and we got rolls from Uncle T at Genova bakery.  Grandma Stone made a cake that looked like it was out of a magazine and tasted so DELICIOUS.  It was a smaller party with close family and friends and it was perfect.  I can’t believe that my parents have been married for 25 year, and wow is that such an example to me.  

Being the oldest child I think I remember the majority of their marriage and I know they’ve gone through a lot and have had a lot of ups and downs but they’ve worked it all out and have made the best of things, and have made it to a quarter of a century.  I know we live in a time where a lot of people get divorced with things don’t go how they want, or when things get hard and it’s such a blessing to me to have grown up seeing the hard work and perseverance they’ve put into their marriage.  

It gives me hope that if my marriage isn’t going the way I want, or when I feel like its to hard, I know I just need to push through it and work things out and that eventually we’ll get through it. 

  I love my parents so much and am SO grateful for them and all they’ve done for me and my brothers.  Happy 25^th Mom and Dad!

Dear Unnamed Friend,

I would just like to tell you how much I love that you feel comfortable enough with our relationship to send me a text with "It's TMI time".  I love that you can count on me to read your texts that no one else would read, and also that I know I can send you those same TMI texts and you won't block my number.  I know it's been a while since we've seen each other and even longer since we've lived close, but I'm so happy we're close.

Love you!

Lets have a Give-a-way!!!

Hello Friends!

I am so excited to be doing my first give-a-way! 

I started making these adorable baby bows for a friend

 and think they are adorable!

They're also super fun for me to make.

The winner of this give-a-way is going to get 

10 bows in 5 colors of your choice!!

To enter this give-a-way you just have to do 4 simple things

1. Follow my blog and leave me a comment saying you have

(If you already are, just leave a comment saying so.

You can also follow by e-mail)

2. Vote in my poll then comment that you've done that

3. Post this give-a-way on your Facebook or blog, and leave 

a comment when you've done that

4. Go follow my friend, awesome blogger

 and adorable mama-to-be Tausha over at The Wierlos

That's 4 easy ways to get some pretty bows!

The poll and this give-a-way close next Thursday, August 30 at 5 pm

 and the winner will be announced by 7 pm

Thanks so much friends!

The bows are on small alligator clips, and as of right now come in these colors.
If you're interested in purchasing bows and would like a different color, that can be arranged.
You can contact me at nikkibuell@gmail.com

Date night brought to you by the letter 'G'

'G' as in Groupon, that is.  A few weeks ago they had an offer for bowling at West Lane Bowl (which if you know where we live, and where the bowling alley is, you'll know it's a whole minute from our house) for 3 games, shoe rental, and a 5 dollar food voucher for 12 DOLLARS! Holy Smokes!  That was such a good deal there was no way I could pass it up.  Not only did I get one, I got 2. That's 2 date nights, for 24 dollars!  Kirk and I don't frequently go on dates, so I didn't really think twice about this deal.  

We used our first one last night and let me tell you, the universe was totally on my side.  We got a lane that the sensor must not have been working super great one, but that was great for me.  I used a lighter ball, and I guess I don't throw very hard which meant I could bowl 3, 4, or 5 times a frame! What?! After Kirk and I figured out what I was doing oh so very wrong, I was able to do a little better.  I even got a STRIKE!  Unfortunately that was one of the times it was going to let me bowl more than once, so Kirk went and told the people that it wasn't working right, and they manually input the score...under Kirks name! DOH!  I did get 2 more strikes, and a few spares. One time on my turn it didn't set all the pins up and Kirk asked if I wanted him to go have them reset it, or if I was just going to bowl.  Are you kidding me?!  I threw that dang ball, and it counted the pins that weren't there as ones that I knocked down. Thanks you, thank you!  The last frame of our third game, I was sucking so bad that even though I got to throw 5 balls I hit all the 0 pins.

 Yikes.  

Kirk was a super awesome bowler

Best picture we got..

I'm not sure what this look is, but it's one that
 I've gotten on more then one occasion.

*On a side note.. To all those people at the bowling alley who thought it would be a good idea to bring your kids (read infants and toddlers) to bowl at 10 at night, IT'S NOT!  Especially not with those pitchers of beer you were drinking.  I mean seriously, if you want to go bowling that late at night, either don't have kids or get a flippin' baby-sitter like responsible parents.  Come. On.

Craft Corner

As most of you know I don't have a job, and thus I sit at home all day long and try to figure out things to do. I saw this project on Pinterest (my bff) and thought it looked easy enough that I could give it a go.

I made the green and grey one first, to match our bathroom.  I used spray paint and I guess I didn't press the tape down enough because it bleed under the tape A LOT.  I didn't like that, so I decided to improvise and paint the lines in with the light grey to cover what I didn't like.  It turned out alright, but I was convinced I was still going to 'get it right'.

Michael's had canvas packs half off so I decided to go again.  This time I used acrylic paint for the black and red one that matches our kitchen.  The black didn't bleed nearly as much, and what little bit did bleed I was able to clean up with a q-tip and water.  The lines aren't perfectly straight, but I think it turned out a lot better.

Which one do you like better?

This one is in our kitchen

This one is in our master bath

Pinterest Night

My sister in law was having a ‘Pinterest Night’ with a couple friends from church, to which I was invited.  I was excited, because lets just admit, any excuse to eat and craft is great.  One of the other girls was doing the craft, so my SIL and I decided we’d do the food.  I made a Mexican Lasagna (here) and she made a Fruit Salsa (here). YUM!  The Lasagna was gooey and falley aparty, (probably due to the pan I used) and the Salsa that the SIL made was DELISH. All fruity goodness, with butter cinnamon tortilla ‘chips’.  Holy smokes it was a good dinner.  We made scarves from t-shirts bought at a thrift store. Kind of like this one.  We found out that some shirts work better than others, but it was still fun to meet some new girls, have a fabulous dinner, and get crafty.

You know that one friend…

That you had in high school (or longer) that was just your best friend ever, and for some reason you just went your own ways after graduation? Well I do. I have more then one of those, but recently I had the opportunity to have lunch with one of those friends.  I’ve known Miss S. since I was 3 and she was 4.  We were in primary, young womens, seminary, and high school together.  We were basically inseparable in high school but for some reason after I finished high school, and the year later she finished high school we had just kind of stopped talking.  Kirk and I went out to eat at the place she works, and she was our waiter and I told her we should go out to eat.  Weeks later, I decided to follow up on that, and we decided to get lunch.  I was a little nervous since I hadn’t really seen or talked to her in about 7 years, and we are both very different now than we were 7 years ago.  I was surprised and not at the same time that once we started talking and catching up, it was like no time had passed at all.  She was still mostly the same person I was best friends with at 16.  Of course we’re both different now, and have both have a lot of experiences that have changed us, but it felt like we were back in high school chatting.  We met for lunch at 12:30 and stayed till almost 3 talking.  We tried to think of why we stopped being friends, and while neither of us could think of anything we did decide that we shouldn’t wait 7 years to see or talk again.  I’m so glad I got to see her, and remember why she was my best friend.

“Aren’t dancers supposed to be graceful?”

Yeah, I got asked that question a lot when I was dancing, and my answer was consistently “I am when I’m dancing”.  For those who really have spent a lot of time around me, you’ll know that I am a VERY clumsy person.  I’m always getting bruised and banged up.  (I’m pretty sure I was about 2 seconds from breaking my ankle yesterday.)  A few weekends ago my SIL was spending the night at our house with her little girl and unfortunately our office/guest bedroom was nowhere near clean enough for her to stay in.  We set up an air mattress in the loft and I decided I was going to hang up a blackout curtain to try to cut out the sunlight some.  I grabbed a folding chair and I was in the process of hanging the curtain over the rod and I shifted my weight on the seat and the chair kind of collapsed under me.  I fell and hit the tv stand (and the tv! yikes!) pretty hard. As a result I was left with this lovely bruise. 

Now this isn’t the worse bruise I think I’ve ever had, but it’s up there.  I’m going to be in trouble, and debt if our kids are as accident prone as I am!

Visit from family

Kirks aunt and uncle and 2 cousins came out for a visit from Minnesota which was a BLAST for us! They (minus Kirks uncle) came out for our wedding, and we didn’t get to really visit with them which bummed us out.  We were so excited to be able to spend some time with them. We got to go visit them the day after they got in, and we got the watch the 49ers v. Vikings preseason game (San Fran v Minnesota) and have dinner.  It was an international night, nachos and Chinese food. Ray made texas sheet cake, and I made a raspberry peach delicious thing. 

Miss soph and I weren't really into the football thing so we played games.. Guess Who? has never been so much fun.  The Saturday they were here, Kirk was going golfing with them, but I’m not really a golfer.  I decided that maybe miss soph would rather have a girl day instead of going golfing.  Of course she was excited to go shopping instead of golfing.  Aunt A had a bunch of Kohls cash that was getting ready to expire so we got to go spend it all!  First we looked for things for miss soph, and she found a couple shirts she liked but then she insisted we look for things for me, sweet girl she is.  After we looked around for a while I ended up with a cute pink/purple floraly shirt, an adorbs grey/cream chevron maxi skirt, and mauve faux-suede LC heels to die for!  We had 70 dollars worth of Kohls cash, spent 71.05 and saved 177.24!  Can you say STEAL?! That’s sure what it felt like!  We had lunch at Moo Moo’s and ran a few more errands.  We came back to our house and had frozen chocolate dipped bananas (which she’d told me she’d be wanting) and blasted The Phantom of the Opera soundtrack while playing foosball.  I’d say it was a pretty fun and successful day!  Aunt A and Uncle K came over and they got to see our house for the first time, and more foosball ensued.  Hopefully sometime soon we’ll be able to go visit them, and visit the Mall of America!! Hooray!

(a video about shoes? hmm...)

Music in the Park

Last Friday we were invited to Music in the Park by a co-worker of Kirk.  Mr. S sings with a barbershop group here in Stockton, and his group was singing as the intermission act.  We frequently try to support Mr. S and go to things he and his wife are involved in.  They’re pretty awesome, and Kirk has been working with him for a long time.  I made some delicious sandwiches that were like Podestos but better, and some homemade potato salad (my MILs recipe).  We packed up the ice chest and the wonderful camp chairs we got for our wedding, and headed over to the park.  We enjoyed our dinner while I enjoyed the music.  We got too listed to Mr. S and his group sing some fantastic patriotic music, then got to chit chat with Mr. S and his family.  The weather was good, the company was good and it was so nice to be outside in some super nice weather.  

Siegfried Engineering night with the Ports

Every year Kirks work has some sort of bbq for the employees and their family, which is always a lot of fun.  This year they decided to go to a Ports game with dinner before hand.  Siegfried did some of the civil engineering for the Ports stadium and when the event was booked, that little fact slipped to the booking agent and Kirks boss got to throw out one of the first pitches.  That was pretty exciting.  One of Kirks co-workers has a baby that’s about to turn 1, which I got to spend most of the night holding and playing with.  She is so absolutely adorable.  She was getting restless sitting with us, so I decided to go for a walk.  We sat and played on the grass for a while which was fun.  She was crawling all over the place and was just fun to watch.  I figure if I can’t have my own kids yet I’m going to enjoy playing with other peoples kids.  Let’s be honest. I didn’t really watch any of the game, but it was a super nice night and it was fun to see people that Kirk works with, and be apart of his work family for a while.

Compliments

It feels like I’ve been getting quite a few of those lately, (I'm not at all trying to sound snobby or anything) and I’ve been really grateful for that.  Things haven’t been super around our house lately as I’ve been pretty distracted and upset about some stuff, and the compliments make me feel a little better.  I started feeling more comfortable in my primary calling when people started telling me I was doing a good job.  I’m not as sad about not having kids when people tell me how good of a mom they think I’m going to be (I just hope I can live up to that).  Mostly I enjoyed making dinner last night when Kirk told me the Creamy Shrimp Pasta I made tasted “As good as gourmet.  Like something you would get in a nice restaurant”.  Thank you Pinterest!!  Thank you to those of you that have shared little compliments and nice words with me.  You’ll never know how those nice little things help bring some happiness into my life on those days when maybe I’m not feeling so super.  You guys are awesome!

I like to laugh

Last night I was watching a little of Americas Funniest Home Videos.  There was a video montage of people watching those youtube videos where it’s nice and then a scary face pops up on the screen.  Holy smokes was that hilarious.  I mean it’s funny to watch one of those videos on-line, but to watch like 15 of them in a row…I was laughing so hard I was crying.  Who wouldn’t love that?!  I wish I had a tv that could rewind. I would have watched that over and over again. Seriously.  You know you would have done the same thing.  

Kinda like this...

Weekly 5

It has been a LOOOOOONG week...

1. Kirk has been sick since Tuesday night.  He came home from work and said he didn't feel well, then he came home from work Wednesday morning.  He's had a fever of a hundred or over since, and is on a regular tylenol/anti-nausea medication to be able to eat.  He's still not eating much, and when he requests food, and I bring it to him, he eats like two bites then he's done.  Last night was the first night since Tuesday that I was able to sleep more then 4 hours at a time before being summoned. He's going to be home from work for at least a few more days.

2.  This week is offically one year since we started trying to start a family.  It's been a long, relativly uncessful year.  Lots of unanswered questions, and unsolved 'issues'.  My last set of blood work came back normal, so we're back to square one again.  It's frustraing and it hurts and I know it'll happen when it's supposed to, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier.

3.  I made rolls! Homemade dinner rolls. They were just ok to me.  Kirk liked them, but they were better with jam.  I was just happy that I didn't kill the yeast.  That made my day.  I'll try a different way next time..when we get a bosch.  Our poor Kitchen-Aid motor just wasn't doing so well. 

4.  I hit 90 books read this year (since Jan 12th).  I know some people are just like psh...only 90 books? Lame. I'm pretty proud of it though.

5. Today during primary a 4 year old kept waving and winking at me.  Then on his way out his older brother was giving him a piggy-back ride and said "Oh..I have to carry my baby" and the little boy looks at me and says "I'm not a baby... And I love you".  At least someone does!

New blog design!

I have literally been trying to get this design to work on my blog for over a year, and just got it to work.  That makes me very excited, because I love this pattern.  Let me tell you why.

The day Kirk and I got engaged, I already knew I wanted our wedding colors to be yellow and grey.  I didn't know it was going to be trendy, I just like the way the colors looked together.  Thankfully Kirk went along with it without any hesitation.  At any point of time, he could always tell someone the wedding colors, even if he didn't know anything else that was going on.

Before my bridal showers I decided I wanted to see if I could find thank you notes that were grey and yellow, so off I went to target...where I happened to find the PERFECT thank you cards.  The cards were this exact same patter, and I fell in love as soon as I saw them.  I went to 3 different target stores, and bought everything they had!

A month or so after our wedding, my aunt sent me a link with this blog design in it, saying that she notice it was yellow and grey so I might like it.  I think I screamed a little when I saw that it was the same as my cards.  I tried that day to get it to work, to no avail. So I tried again and again, and never got it to work.  Tonight I thought I'd give it a try again, and success!

That just makes me so happy.