I know that I haven’t blogged in a long time. And this time I have a good reason. As most of you know I have started my own wedding coordination, design, and decorating company called Simply Stunning Events by Cierra. And for my new company website I do a weekly inspiration post, so generally I spend the week slowly working on my new design board for that. And to make things worse I’m trying to get a business blog going as well. So honestly I just get blogged/interneted out. From now on I’ll try to continue with this blog, and if worst comes to worse your can always check out my business blog to see what I’ve been up to!
Justin has been wanting fish for months now, so I finally gave in! I got the aquarium while he was at school and surprised him, it was in our house ALL DAY before he noticed it (it was in our room), I eventually had to ask him to go get “scissors” for me… and he said NO…. so after a few tries and a lot of begging he finally went in to our room to get them for me and saw our tank.
We got a 26 gallon bow front glass aquarium. Then today we went to PetSmart and Petco and chose out some fishies. Here they are:
Domino (an Angel fish)
Pongo (She’s a Dalmatian Molly)
Satsuma (He’s a Molly, I’m not sure what type)
Clementine (She’s a Sunburst Platy)
Valencia (She’s a type of Platy)
I love them all. I got to name Valencia, Clementine, and Satsuma (I named them all after oranges haha) and I also named Pongo. Poor Justin only got to name Domino…I let my fish naming get out of hand and ended up hogging them all.
We’ve been living in Salt Lake for about 2 months now, and so far we both love it. So here are some pictures or our place. My mom and sisters have been wanting me to post some for a long time, but things have been crazy!
If I had been on top of the picture taking earlier then the left side of the lawn would be a lot prettier! We recently had some serious plumbing issues, the main pipe burst because the pipes were old and corroded. The back part of the basement that we don’t rent (thank goodness) actually flooded! Luckily our side of the basement is a few inches higher and the water didn’t raise enough to come onto our side of the basement. They actually had to cut the back of one of our kitchen cabinets out and cut about a square foot of wall out in our bathroom to get to the pipeline, but we’re glad that they handled it and they were really nice and helpful about it all (they even bought us bottled water!).
This is our creepy staircase. There always seem to be big creepy spiders whenever I am least prepared for them. I’m really nervous about the winter turning this into a death trap.
This is our living room/dining area. Right now its all decked out for Halloween.
This is our kitchen. I love my kitchen. We have a BIG dishwasher (hooray!) and the cabinets and tile are pretty new. It’s much bigger than our kitchen in Tucson was, although the fridge and the oven are much older here. And they aren’t level!!! A lot of our floors seem to be a bit slanted which is apparently common in basement apartments. It can make cooking a little complicated when I’m using the stove because everything gradually slides to one side of the pan!
Our bathroom is way fun. It’s totally growing on me. It’s pink, with a tiny bit of blue. It is a bit of a pain only having one bathroom (we had 2 in Tucson) because I always have to make sure it stays clean so that people can use it. There also isn’t any counter space, and there’s just the one cabinet. It’s starting to get to the point where the outrageous tile makes up for all that though, it just makes me happy!
This is our bedroom. The door in the second picture leads to our laundry room, which as you can see is also my walk-in-closet. I absolutely love having such great closet space. Poor Justin, he got stuck with the tiny closet in the guest room.
This time we put Justin’s desk in the guest room, which works a lot better because then if he is pulling an all-nighter I can still get some sleep! It’s a little cluttery right now. Pretty much anything that doesn’t have a place ends up in here eventually.
And now for some HALLOWEEN pictures! I am way excited to finally have some holiday decorations, my mom ended up with duplicates of a bunch of her Halloween stuff (because she had one set for the Utah house and one for the Nevada house that they’re selling) so I absolutely SCORED. I was so excited that I wasn’t even capable of waiting to put it up, I decorated for Halloween in mid-September.
While I was watching the little girls we decided to do a fun back to school pool party. I have to say that pool parties are my favorite, the kids stay in one place and don’t make a mess, they have a ton of fun! I let all the kids invite one friend, but Ry and Chan opted out on account of them being too cool, so Chloe and Alyse both got two friends instead of one. Our party turned out great!
McCall and Alyse helped me make the paper chains, and Chloe helped me make the pom pom’s. We filled containers with matching candies. And we had a kid friendly meal: hot dogs, potato salad, 7-layer salad, fruit salad, and chips.
And here’s the girlies on the first day of school! Chloe was really mad at me because they were a bit late and I still made them stop and pose for a picture. The older kids were late too and they drove with Alexa so I don’t have one of them, but they looked pretty adorable too.
My parents are hunting in Africa this month so 5 days after moving to SLC I came here to Kanab to help take care of all my siblings. When I get back up North I plan to blog about our new place, but for now that’s on hold. I’ve been having a lot of fun with all my little siblings in the past two weeks. It’s great to be home and I’ve definitely missed them. My mom emailed me the other day and asked me to blog about all of the kids. So we went out and we took photos to show to my parents. Sadly the oldest kids are all too cool to spend the day taking photos with us, but I plan to really try to take pictures of all the fun things we do. We already went to see Annie at the Tuachan, we went to Danna’s baby shower, we went off roading with Alexa across John R and up to the TV towers…Alyse got car sick and threw up, and we have done some little crafts as well.
Here are some more pictures of our “dream home”. We still aren’t sure whether or not we’re going to be able to rent it…. probably not. I’m still trying to think positively though!
Nice Bathroom
Living Area
BIG DECISION
As most of you know Justin and I have been considering moving back to Utah for quite a while. The unemployment here is almost 10% while in Salt Lake City it is only 5%, and here in Tucson most jobs also require you to speak Spanish. Aside from that the tuition here in Tucson is just too high, $21,000 this coming year alone (S13,000 with our grants), we wanted to try to tough it out so that the following year we could finally get in-state. We had heard that in-state was hard to get, but thought that we had a pretty good chance since we are married, and because so much of Justin’s family lives in the are. We assembled a pro and con list, with a primarily pro SLC list, but we were still torn. Then we discovered the small print: A student who moves to Arizona as a college student CANNOT ever qualify for in-state. The only person Justin ever heard of that did had a letter of recommendation from the Governor of Arizona. You have to drop out for a year, and then get accepted again. So our decision is made. We plan on moving to SLC at the end of the month, Justin is already enrolled at the U of U, we set up a Uhaul, and bought packing boxes. Part of me is so excited for the move: we’ll be near family and so many friends, we’ll have less stress financially, jobs should be easier to find, and it won’t be so HOT. Another part of me is also sad: All of Justin’s relatives live near by here in Tucson, and Justin’s grandpa has cancer that has moved to his spine and he may not live through the year, I am really really sad about moving away from them. Despite all of the sad things though we’re confident that we made the best choice!
APARTMENT SEARCH
We are hoping to find a place that we would WANT to stay in for a number of years. So we are focusing our search mainly on 2 bedroom basement apartments in SLC, we have been looking for about two days now and haven’t had very good luck! We found two decent options but they are both TINY, we would have to trade living room furniture with Chelsea, and we would also have to get a new bed frame, and we couldn’t fit our dressers (we wouldn’t have enough clothing storage space without them) or kitchen table.
One Option:
Outside
Great Updated Kitchen - No room for our table!
Adorable Bathroom
Living Room
Tiny Bedroom
We found one AMAZING place that I absolutely love. It is 1,024 square feet. And it is BEAUTIFUL, the carpet and paint is all new, the kitchen has granite countertops and all new appliances, it’s right next to the U of U bus line, and utilities are included in the monthly fee so although it is high we could work with it. All in all it is my dream place, I could actually imagine living there for 3 years or more! The issue is that they do not want to allow cats, they worry about the new carpets being ruined and the place smelling. Lucky is actually a VERY GOOD cat, she has had no accidents in the past 6 years, she doesn’t scratch walls or carpets, she is also very quiet usually, but we have to try to convince them of that. The woman who is renting it seems to like us a lot, and I think that she wants to rent to us, but her husband doesn’t, when we called her today she said that it was a no, but after talking to Justin for a while she asked for the contact information of our current landlord and said that she would talk to her husband about it some more. So EVERYONE cross your fingers and pray for us!
Beautiful Dream Place!
Drool Inducing Kitchen
SECOND BRIDAL SESSION!
Our wedding was almost 6 months ago, and we have FINALLY received the photos from our second bridal session. We had two sessions done because we ran out of time during our first and weren’t able to switch locations. I love all of these, and I like the softer more romantic look, I feel like I ended up with a perfect combination of styles that represent Justin and me.
Nick Adams Photography did our photography for our engagements, bridals, and day of, plus they did a family portrait for us as well, Nick Adams and his wife Signe work together, he takes the amazing shots, she handles the posing and contributes her creativity as well. They are absolutely incredible to work with, and I would recommend them to anyone!
Here is one of the family photos taken the day before our wedding:
I’ve lived in Tucson for about five months now, and getting settled has definitely been a process. I am by no means done (we still need curtains in a few rooms, and I have a bunch of photos that haven’t been hung), but I am posting pictures anyways!
Entry:
I decided to cover our pantry cupboard with a curtain, instead of installing a door, so that I could choose something fun and colorful… Opa (Justin’s grandpa) thinks I am crazy, and asks if I want a door installed every time I see him! The cabinet is WAY too big for the hallway, but we neeeeed the storage space.
The photo’s were a wedding gift from the Carter’s, they are absolutely beautiful, Chris’s dad took them!
Kitchen:
The kitchen is the first room in the house that I got settled into, and it is my favorite place! The knick-knacks and rug were Christmas gifts from my mom. The black appliance is the Worlds Tinniest Dishwasher, but I still love having a dishwasher at all!
The whole inspiration for the color scheme of the kitchen is from the apron hanging on the fridge. When we first moved in I had NO IDEA what to do with the kitchen….every thing was white EXCEPT the fridge, it’s cream, and this bothered me, me being OCD, but then I realized that my new apron (a bridal shower gift from the Gardner girls) had cream and white on it as well, and they had also given me a matching picture frame! So my kitchen colors became yellow, pink, blue, green, cream, and white. I plan on hanging the frames eventually, with vintage pictures of my grandma Crosby, grandma Heather, and Justin’s great-grandma Irene.
Dining Area:
BEFORE: The walls were a magical color that would change depending on light (adobe orange, bright orange, salmon pink etc.), and for the first month and a half we had that fold up table and chairs.
NOW: I painted the walls a light golden cream color. I love it! It is a lot richer in real life, and it matches the gold in the painting perfectly. The painting was a wedding gift from Justin’s grandparents, his grandma painted it! The cabinet beneath the window is a hand-me-down from my mom, it belonged to my great-grandpa on my dad’s side, and it is beautiful! The plants are Justin’s, I am NOT allowed to touch/water/etc. because he thinks I will kill them…a legitimate fear!
Living Room:
Before: Once again the magic orange. For a month in a half all we had in our living room was that leather chair, the cabinet from our entry, and Justin’s realllly old TV. It was actually a lot of fun, we would watch movies on the floor, or bring in folding chairs from the kitchen.
The couch and chair are hand-me-downs from my mom, we LOVE the couch, it is so big and comfy, and because it came from the Goodfellow house it even has that strange smell, some of you know what I mean, and IT WILL NOT GO AWAY, despite all the Fabreeze I still catch little whiffs of it! But it actually makes me a bit less home sick. Eventually I am going to hang our wedding photos and maybe a clock above the couch, and since taking the picture I have hung some green curtains from Target.
The book shelf and table are both hand-me-downs, the table was actually supposed to go in our kitchen, but it is too rusted underneath to extend anymore. Chelsea lent me the luggage case and flower photos. The pictures in the book shelf are the ones I plan on hanging.
The giagantinourmous TV belongs to my parents, they may eventually want it back, but for now we get to keep it. We absolutely love it (especially Justin), and it has been especially great since we try to save $ by not to go out to do anything: we play x-box and Wii games, and watch Netflix.
Guest Room:
Our guest room is totally girly as you can see! The bedding was a birthday gift when I turned 17. The bed frame belonged to my great-grandma, Chelsea is lending me the curtains, and Justin’s cousins’ mom lent us the beautiful desk. The chair was $75 from the bestest store in the world….Home Goods! The guest room is actually “my room” it doubles as my office I keep all of my wedding junk in there, and I have also taken over the closet.
Guest Bath:
BEFORE: Boring and WHITE. It also had some pretty bad carpet stains around the toilet, and the tub took hours of scrubbing, pumice, and bleach (refer to Housewife post.)
NOW: The colors look much better in real life! The green is not so strong and yellowish. Anyways, I love this bathroom, it is the first room I ever painted, and it was a pain in the butt (The sample paint was different from the quart, and I painted almost an entire wall with the sample!). I hung the curtain purely for aesthetic purposes, our guest bath only has a tub, no shower, but I think it’s cuter than nothing. The curtain, rug, towels, candle, and soap dish were all wedding gifts.
Our Bathroom:
Curtain, Rug, Towels, Soap dispenser, etc. were all wedding gifts. The lavender above the toilet was a wedding gift as well, Lucky (our cat), climbs up sometimes and tries to eat it!
Bedroom/Justin’s Messy Desk Room:
I didn’t expect to love our bedroom, the bed spread was kind of a compromise between Justin and I (I wanted something a bit more flowery of course!). I love the bedding now though, my mom let me choose it out for a Christmas gift, the bedding is from Crate and Barrel (on sale baby!), and the pillows are from target. I found the green glass lamp at Target too. Eventually I want to hang pictures from our Japan trip along the wall!
My dresser. Sometimes I feel very guilty: the night stand is mine, the dresser is mine, and I take up the entire guest closet…I kind of have a lot of junk! Lamp from Pier One, Candle Holder from Target, AND my mother-in-law got me a clock (not pictured) that looks very similar to the candle holder for my birthday that is there now!
We totally splurged our tax refund on Justin’s desk, I wanted something that had enough drawers, shelves, and cubbies, that I wouldn’t have to see all of his junk! We found the desk at Ashley’s Home Furniture (where we also got our bed frame, night stand, dresser, and kitchen table).
That is the end. All in all between Justin’s grandpa giving us a good deal on rent, hand-me-downs from my mom and Chelsea, and wedding gifts, I think that we absolutely lucked out! We love our apartment (aside from very temperamental plumbing, occasional mold issues, and being so far from Tucson) and I feel totally lucky to live somewhere like this (my mom told me that their first apartment was a studio the size of my living room!). And I want to say that we appreciate all of the people who helped us make our apartment a home!
Today I came home, walked into my bathroom, and saw THIS:
Lotion, Deodorant, Hairspray....Pam.
Yes. That is Pam.
I don’t even remember doing that, which is terrible. It’s one thing to ALMOST do something like that, but I walked from the kitchen to my bathroom, put it there, then apparently walked back to the kitchen and finished cleaning up. Clearly I am losing my mind, but fortunately I am not yet to the point of mistaking it for hairspray.
(I also recently put the milk in a cupboard, at least it was a kitchen cupboard, but that does mean that this may be an ongoing issue.)
