Furniture make over

When we first got married, my parents were so kind to give us their old bedroom nightstands. The only problem with them was that they were this (no offense mom) ugly peachy pink color.

But they've always just been in our room where no one ever sees them so I never thought to do anything with them. Then I came across this blog http://www.allthingsthrifty.com/ I believe it's some woman that lives out here in UT and she re-dos, makes-over, and re-upholsters old furniture. Some of her stuff is a little too much to handle but she has some great ideas and is super talented. So I decided that since I'm out of school now, Oh yeah, I graduated from hair school finally but I'll get to that later, I'll re-do our nightstands and eventually get around to re-doing our dresser. I spent all morning today sanding, priming, painting, and glazing. And here is my process of it and final outcome.
Freshly painted with an "Almond Satin"

Here is the glazing

And here is both finished nightstands, still a bit wet though.

Now, I'd like to say that this was the most fun project I've ever done, but to be honest, I think I hated it. It was too hot outside, the paint stinks, my back hurt from bending over, and the glazing was the biggest pain in my butt. But I guess it's worth it to have cute furniture and only spend $20 to achieve it. Maybe someday I'll get my dresser done, but don't count on that any time soon.

Now for this whole graduating school thing. I finished up the last of my 2,000 hours on Monday. It was such an awesome feeling to be DONE! Done with school, forever!!!! I will never ever, ever, ever have to go back to school to get a degree (unless I want to but a BA/BS won't get you very far these days unless you've got some sweet hookups, which I don't but I'd be willing to take if anything came up :) )So now that I'm done I guess it'd be time to get a "real" job right? Well, that would be the case if salons were actually hiring! It seems that the only salons that are hiring are booth rent, or they want you to have years of salon experience and a full clientele. Kind of sucks, but I'm hoping that an opportunity will open up soon. Keep your fingers crossed and in the meantime, if you or anybody you know, needs to get their hair done, my prices are super reasonable!
That's about it over here. Peace!

Sparkling Strawberry Slushie

These have become our new addiction

The hubby works long, hot days, 6 days a week. So when he gets home from work the one thing he craves is something cold to drink. Ice water started to get boring so I decided I should make some sort of flavored iced drink. So I went to the freezer and saw a bag of frozen strawberries and some ice. I threw it in a blender with some sugar and added some sparkling water to it, and what happened next was magical...it was like an explosion of deliciousness. And it was super easy to make and literally took no more than 5 minutes to make. So I thought I'd share this wonderful summer drink with all of my many many readers :)

Sparkling Strawberry Slushie
Serves 4
3/4 cup raw brown sugar (or white, whichever you have on hand)
1 1/2 cup water
Half a bottle of sparkling water
10-15 frozen straweberries
A few handfuls of ice

Throw all ingredients in a blender and blend it up. Pour into 4 glasses and drink up. Pretty easy right?

As for our weekend, our 4th of July was pretty uneventful. I spent 10 hours at the Freedom Festival for school doing up-dos on gross, dirty hair. I learned that apparently personal hygiene isn't practiced very often in other households. Every head of hair that I touched was either un-brushed and extremely knotted or greasy and smelt of who knows what. So please, if you ever go to get your hair done, whether it's for free or going to the salon, make sure it's somewhat clean.
Then on Sunday we had a nice brunch that consisted of hummus and rice crackers, scrambled eggs, some kind of chickpea salad, and this South African sausage that I can't spell or say.

And for dinner I made homemade chicken tacos with fresh pico de gallo, cheese, lettuce and black bean salsa.

Hope you all had a great 4th!

"Yes I can...get sick now"

My brother-in-law showed this clip to me and it's hilarious. Just thought a few of you would enjoy this :)

And here's a sneak peek at my cheer squad...

It's still no where near where it needs to be, but we'll get there...slowly but surely.
Sorry, still nothing to update about :(

Cheerleading!

Do you remember way back when, when I did a post on how I wanted to coach cheer? Well, I am now! I'm so excited for it. Last week was my first week and I'm in love! It's super early in the morning, but it's okay, because my squad is awesome. They make it easy to be there at 6:00 am. I didn't really know what to expect of the girls when I started but they've impressed me so much. Everyday I just become more and more surprised with how good they are, not just talent wise, but attitude wise. It's a breath of fresh air, seeing as how all I knew was Hart cheerleaders, and well, I don't think we had the best attitudes, especially towards coaches...so I'm really relieved they don't treat me the way some of my old cheerleader teammates responded to our coach. We have a few girls that are newbies but are working their butts off and doing great. This is will be their first year competing and so it should be interesting and exciting. They do things a little bit different up here than what I'm used to, so I'm learning to adjust but seriously, loving every minute. I'll keep you updated on our progess :)

But besides keeping myself super busy with that, I've decided to change my hair. I decided that I really wanted to do a block color, so I did. And here's how it looks...

Just kidding, sort of. This was the beginning process of lifting a section of my hair to the level of lightness I wanted it. I was SHOCKED when I saw this color on my head. I just about had a heart attack when I looked at myself in the mirror. It was NEON ORANGE! Not like a subtle orange,but it was like someone had poured some sort of toxic waste on my hair and it was glowing. But we put a few colors in it to tone it down and it looks a lot better. There's still one little area that's a bit orangey, but I haven't had the time to tone it down yet. Anyways, so that's what's new with me. Hope everyone is having a great Spring/Summer season, because apparently where I live, those seasons don't exist. It will be Winter forever!!!!

It's movie time

Just a quick little update on what's going on. For school, I've been given the opportunity to work a full feature film called "For Robbing the Dead." Now, the only thing I really know about the movie is that it's about a grave robber from 1860 named Jean Baptiste (pronounce with a French accent). And then there's some older lady whose daughter dies and she's not taking it so well, and some how it ties into the whole grave robber thing. SO anyways, there's actually a few "well known" actors in it. Jean Baptiste is played by an actor, David Stevens, he played some character in Punch Drunk Love (never seen it). And the old lady is played by Margot Kidder who played Lois Lane in Superman with Christopher Reeve. And the other actor that seemed to be familiar but I have yet to meet/see is the old guy who plays the Grandpa in Gilmore Girls. Some of the other girls working on the film say he's not so kind, but I haven't meet him yet. Anyways, I'm really excited for this movie to come out. It's been a lot of fun but also kind of stressful not knowing exactly when and how long we'll be needed for. They've been filming at the LDS Motion Picture Studio and up in SLC. We have about 2 weeks of filming left and then I have no idea how long it actually takes for the final product to be released. So that's it for now. And I'm also on a Glee kick right now. I LOVE the show and watch it every week and for some reason, I've been obsessed with listening to them for the past few days. Just thought I'd share this video because it's amazing.

The big 2-2!

It's official, I'm over the hill. I turned 22 at the end of April and I can already feel the aches and pains :) So for the big day we decided to do 2 things, first thing was, talk to a jeweler about getting a scissor charm necklace made and the second thing was go out to dinner at a new restaurant. We went to a little Italian restaurant called Gloria's Little Italy. And oh my gosh! It was soooo good. All the food was made from scratch, fresh, everyday. If you're given the chance to go there, do it! It's one of our new favorite restaurants for sure. And to top the night off, I made a fruit pizza for dessert. All in all, it was a gooooooood birthday! I only have a few pictures but hopefully they will suffice.
In front of Gloria's

The in-laws and us at dinner

And for dessert, fruit pizza!

I also got into another one of my "Martha Stewart" moods and decided to embrace my inner fabric florist.

This is a belt that I made and I can't wait to actually wear it! I also made some super cute necklaces. I sent these ones to my sister for her birthday and I'm in the process of making myself a powder blue one. If you guys are interested in one let me know, I'll give yah a really good deal :)



In other news, not much else is going in our lives. Except for the hubby finished school about 2 weeks ago and is now starting back at his dusty, yucky job next week. And I just hit 1,650/2000 hours last week. I only have 350 left to go! Ah! I'm kind of freaking out. But so excited to be done. Sometimes it angers me though, because if were to be living in CA I would have been done with school 150 hours ago. Ugh, Stupid state that I live in. Oh well, I don't know if I'd feel quite ready if I were to have finished a month and a half ago. Anyways, that's about it for now. Peace, love and happiness!

2 years of marriage...what?!

Can you believe that we've been married for 2 years?! It's crazy to think that it's already been that long. It feels like I just got married yesterday. So to celebrate our 2 year anniversary we spent the day at Gardner Village in West Jordan. It was the cutest little place I've ever been to. It had all of these old shops and restaurants, which we ate at and it was AMAZING! If you are ever in the area I suggest you stop there, you won't be mad, I promise. We also stopped at our other favorite little shop in Sandy called PirateO's. They import foods from all over the world and sell them here and I think I could honestly spend all over our money there and not even be mad about it.. We stock up on all of our favorite "English/South African" goodies. But they don't last very long in our house... Other than our splurging on food, the rest of our celebrations were pretty low key. We just saw a movie and hung out. And those are definitely my favorite kinds of nights. Here are a few pictures of our day together

Here is us infront of the Protea Shop

And here is the hubby with his super long hair at Archibald's (the yummy restaurant at Gardner Village)

So that basically sums up our 2 year anniversary. Lots of food and lots of time together, wouldn't have it any other way :)
Now, do you notice how long the hubby's hair is? Well all of that came off today! He finally let me cut it off. He's been growing it out since Thanksgiving and it's been driving nuts ever since! He came into my school today and we played...mwahahaha.


And now it's short and beautiful! Pictures to come at another time.
And one last thing, for Easter this year hubby and I decided to make homemade ribs. We both have never cooked ribs before so it took some planning to get the job done. After 4 hours of cooking they were finally ready to serve. Here is the final product...

We had 3 HUGE racks that we spiced, cooked, and basted...all from scratch! We made a homemade rub and homemade bbq sauce. And they were delicious! Best ribs I've ever had, and not just because we made them, but because they were just that good :)
Anyways, that's it for our update.