why yes,

i did make the wreath shown in this picture and my previous post. i may have stayed up until 2 am a few nights trying to get them done in time, and i may have burned blisters on half my fingers, but i love how they turned out. (especially the yellow one) i found instructions for making the roses here and decided to make wreaths instead of the round balls. super fun and cheap project.

december daily 1-7

i have always wanted to do a december daily album like ali edwards. of course i don't usually plan far enough in advance to complete an album ahead of time...but i figured i could at least take a picture and write a little bit about each day in december. i know it's cliche, but december is my favorite time of year. and this year is the best december EVER because it has been completely stress free. (yay for no finals)

december 1: i went for the traditional red and green christmas tree this year. unfortunately, tai pan ran out of the big red ornaments that i bought, so the tree looks a little lopsided because there aren't enough ornaments. but i'm really excited we have a pre-lit tree that stands straight...our hand-me-down (thanks becky!) tree was great for a couple years, but we love our new one. *

december 2: finished our christmas stockings. still deciding if i should hand-stitch our names on the top?

*

december 3: coco has tried her hardest to leave the shiny ornaments alone. this is her favorite spot to sit and stare at them. *

december 4: finished our christmas table runner. is it bad that i used the machine instead of hand-stitching the binding? *

december 5: for the first time ever, the annual allen party wasn't held at my grandma's house. since she is in the nursing home, we celebrated there. i love the tradition of reading the christmas story and receiving a visit from santa. we are lucky that my grandma is still with us and her health has improved a lot in the last several months. *
december 6: worked on another little project but ran out of red paint.

*
december 7: i may or may not have been listening to this music for a couple months now...but here are some of the songs i'm loving this year.

project overload

i feel slightly guilty that while mike is spending all evening on campus, i get to stay home and play. i have used the lonely nights to complete several projects....

1: pillow. i will definitely be making more of these. it's made from felt (CHEAP!) and the flower clusters down the center are made by pinching about 70 3" circles in the middle and hand sewing each circle on. make sense? i'll try to find the tutorial i found on etsy for making this. it was fun.

2: give thanks. a little paint, a little paper, a little mod podge, a little ribbon, and ta-da!

3: shelf. mike's friend ben built this awesome shelf for us when we got married. we couldn't hang it in our apartment, and when we bought our house, it was one of those things that we always talked about finishing but never did. so 3 years later, it is painted and hanging on the wall, just waiting for the perfect accessories to go on top of it. 4: christmas throw. this one turned out a little retarded. my sqaures don't match up AT ALL. if you look at the front and back at the same time, well it's quite embarassing. but i love the pom pom trim and i learned that i will probably not be making any blankets/quilts in the near future. too much cutting, pinning, and measuring for me :)now that i've finished some projects, i can dive in to my christmas fabric stash to make soft trees, stockings, and a table runner.

another project

we have some friends in our ward who are expecting their first baby and they aren't going to find out what they're having. i think it's awesome because no one does that anymore (especially with their first), but it has been quite difficult to find a gender-neutral baby gift.

i saw the cutest sock animals ever -- seriously, go look at how cute they are -- on this website and knew i wanted to make one. i can't decide if i love the elephant, though. and we are having a debate about the blue and red. mike things it looks too girlish with the red, i think everything looks quite boyish because i used a lot of blue. what do you think?

i can sew?

i gave a church lesson on sunday about being healthy and balanced in all areas of life. i'm feeling a little hypocritcal because for the past five days, i have been living a very unbalanced life with only one thing on my mind: sewing. i can't help myself. i had so much fun making these goodies for my sister-in-law who is expecting a little boy in september. and it's a good thing i know so many pregnant people, because i already want to make several more boxes just like this one.

let's look a little closer... here are some blocks and a ball, all with little bells inside-
a very simple bib made from my favorite fabric ever-
and my favorite project, cloth baby shoes. how cute are these?!

they are lined with fleece and have denim on the bottom. don't look too closely because my sewing is definitely imperfect. and other than the fact that one shoe is slightly bigger than the other, i'm very happy with how they turned out. maybe baby kropf will be born with one foot slightly bigger than the other and they will be perfect :)

ETA: ball pattern found here, bib pattern found here, cloth shoes pattern found here.

today, my mary engelbreit calendar told me "believe that you have it, and you have it." i seem to be repeating that to myself a lot lately. self confidence has never been one of my strong points. even my high school choir teacher noticed this, and told me once that i wasn't confident enough to play the piano. it didn't really hurt my feelings, but i did purchase some crest toothpaste that promised to increase my self confidence if i used it a few times every day. then i played the piano at a church choir event he attended and he gave me a half compliment/half apology for his doubting my abilities. anyway, there's your motivational thought for today. believe that you have it, and you have it.

i've been pretty productive so far this summer. finished a couple books. first, atonement by ian mcewan. i didn't like it at all. i really wanted to like it because i thought the movie looked really good. but the book wasn't great. the writing was very arrogant which made it hard for me to read. did anyone see the movie and enjoy it? i also finished love walked in by marisa de los santos. some times it really irritated me, but i loved how it ended. so i give it my approval and thought it was pretty cute. i added my favorite quote to the sidebar.

i've also been working on some scrapbook projects. here's a few pictures from my this is me journal-
and a few pictures from our best two years album. (when mike saw the cover, he was stoked because he thought it was about his mission. i had to remind him that his best two years have been the two years we've been MARRIED.)

this old house

our time lately has been consumed with three things:

1) watching season 1 of 24.
2) finishing the patio.
3) painting the bedroom and bedroom door.

first priority was finishing 24. we probably should have waited to start the season until we had the other important projects done, because once you start, you can't stop. but we didn't, so in between painting, rearranging, pouring cement, and moving rock, we had to find time (24 hours worth!) to finish what we started. the first season was excellent, although i must say that the show has come a long way since season 1. i'm glad we've finished it because now we can go to bed at a decent hour and i won't have nightmares anymore. although much to mike's dismay, jack bauer is usually there to save me in my nightmares....

we started the patio project last summer and quickly burnt ourselves out. our soil here is so rocky that we (and by we, i mean mike) had to pick axe every scoop of dirt we wanted to remove. ugh. it didn't help that we started this project in july, the hottest month of the year, so we got pretty tired of it and never finished last year. the area we poured started looking very much like this overgrown mess of weeds-
but with a little man labor- (thank you dustin and karl!)
tada!
the cement is ready and waiting for a patio set and pots of flowers. now if we can just find a cute/cheap patio set.

and our final project, before and after:
we only painted two walls so that it's not too dark, but i'm really happy with how it turned out. amazing what a little paint and new pillows will do for a room! we were apprehensive to paint the door, but thankfully it looks brand new and cost half as much as buying a new door. before being white, the door was a washed out grainy brown color, straight from the 80s.

so a few projects are now checked off the never-ending list of things we want to do around the house. soon to come, a new and lovely garden planted where roses infested with trees and morning glory once grew, chalk paint in the kitchen, and wallpaper removal/new paint in the laundry room.

Thanksgiving Festivities

A few pics from Thanksgiving with the Allens....My parents are amazing cooks. I of course ate too much. That's what Thanksgiving is for, right?What would it be without a cheesy picture? My favorite sisters-The Christmas Countdown is on. Good thing I finished the advent calendar this weekend. We always seem to be so stressed the first two weeks of December with finals that I wanted to have daily reminders to remember what Christmas is really about and enjoy the season more. I think it turned out cute (thanks to Annette who supplied the clipboard and did all the sewing)

I wish it was still the weekend

Friday we babysat my sweet niece, Holly. She is the happiest little toddler I know. She could have stayed outside all night and was thoroughly entertained with pushing her baby stroller up and down our driveway and sidewalk.

Mike and I had salad from Cafe Rio for dinner and she loved the ranch dressing. She stole the tortilla chips from the top of my salad to dipped in the dressing. Then she said "picy!" and kept on dippin'.

Annette, Camille, and Lisa came up to Logan on Saturday so we could have our monthly scrapbook get-together. I think my room with the orange wall is the perfect place to scrapbook. Who knew that my little house could hold four crazy scrapbookers and all of our scrapbooking loot? Good thing the dining room table expands. Here we are in action:


This ledge on my porch was just waiting for us to sit on it and take a picture:

Thanks for coming up, ladies. I had lots of fun! And here's proof that I actually did get something done, and I'm almost finished with my wedding book. Yay!