video of a year

this video is amazing and now Matt and i really really REALLY want to do this for our first year in Hawaii!

Work From Home

you know you work from home when "getting dressed" only means you put on a nicer pair of sweatpants and a shirt you didn't sleep in the night before.

more ornament making to do tonight!

Weekend

this weekend we were busy little bees around this house.

i spent my time doing more ornaments and plushies which will soon be in the two peas in a space pod Etsy shop!

woot woot!

if you've been wanting a certain themed ornament or plushie for a long time but just haven't been able to find the right one you should email me and i'll make it for you! 

we're mostly beyond nerdy at the moment. 

here's a sneak peek!

coming soon are ninja turtles, dr. who, mario, more star wars (of course), calvin and hobbes, yo gabba gabba, dinosaurs and more!

if you can ignore the fact that i'm dressed up in the best early christmas present ever ever ever, A PENGUIN ONESIE, then you can see the little ornaments all hanging on the tree including angry birds ornaments!

honestly, the best part of my weekend was getting that onesie!

thank you Amy and Chase!!

i am now the proud owner of 3 onesies but this one is by far the best!

i will be sleeping in style all winter long!

Matt was busy this weekend too being the best hubsy ever and fixing up my blog!

 did you notice my blog got a makeover??

i love it!

a thousand thank yous to Matt! you're the best!

creatin'

i finished my work really early yesterday and decided to do some creatin'.

i love when that happens.

i made some cutie little ornaments like this guy!

i'm thinking about making a whole bunch more like these and opening up my etsy shop again.
hmmmmm...
making these put me in the most christmasy spirit.
i've been listening to christmas music today and begging Matt to let me put up our tree and decorations already.
he said we can't until after thanksgiving but i'm sure i'll wear him down.
also...what is it about mint M&Ms that makes them soooo delicious that i cannot stop eating them no matter how sick they make me??
somehow the bowl finds its way onto my desk and then while i'm working i just pop them in my mouth ALL THE TIME!
no bueno yet SO bueno.

birthday pillows

lately we have been celebrating birthdays like crazy!

every weekend for the past couple months we've had a party to attend. it's insane!

i just wanted to show off the gifts i made for my niece and nephew.

Carissa turned 5 and is loving Hello Kitty right now so her gift was a Hello Kitty pillow.

and McKay turned 9 and is super into Captain America so here's his pillow.

both of them were a big hit!

Carissa told me she slept with her pillow and McKay was such a sweetheart and thanked me a million times for his.

i seriously have the cutest nieces and nephews ever!

and just for your viewing pleasure, Matt and i being nerdy.

pictures and such

we FINALLY started putting some pictures up on our frame wall.

Matt's new star wars picture he got for his birthday.

our favorite caricature we got in portland.

and the calvin and hobbes style cartoon Matt painted of us on a piece of wood.

i know it's not much but at least it's a start.

and it makes me so happy every time i see it!

oh and we learned an interesting tidbit last week.

when you put live plants into a fish tank you get snails even if you didn't buy snails.

strange right?

and it's not like you get one snail, no no, we have over 10 snails now and they just keep multiplying!

in a couple weeks the snails will probably take over the whole tank.

at least they're keeping it extra clean!

Matt is 27

Matt's birthday yesterday went a little different than planned.

we both had taken the day off so we could do fun birthday things together but then Matt said he was going to have to spend a couple hours at work in the morning.

then it became a couple hours in the morning plus lunch.

then a couple hours in the morning plus lunch plus an hour or two after lunch.

and finally he ended up coming home only an hour earlier than he would have normally come home on any other day.

so basically i took Matt's birthday off to watch a lot of Bones and make this guy.

isn't he a cute little Boba Fett?

can i call Boba Fett cute?

he probably wouldn't like that.

and at least Matt and i had a good birthday breakfast and dinner together.

he requested chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and my hubsy gets what he wants on his bday!

and he had to open his presents before he left for work.

(ignore the Christmas wrapping paper. it's the only wrapping paper we had in the house. ha!)

first he got Avatar.

he has asked for this movie for the longest time and i kept putting it off because he didn't just want the movie, he wanted the 3 disc extended blu-ray collector's edition.

he said he had absolutely no idea he was going to get that which made me so happy because i love to surprise him!

the next present wasn't really a surprise because he asked for it a couple months ago but it's way cooler than Avatar.

he asked for this print from Jame Hance's website.

how freaking incredible is that??

i love it more than words can say!

it'll make an excellent addition to our soon-to-be frame wall.

then for dinner we went to Chili's because it's a Matt and Nikki favorite.

(chips and salsa mmmmmm!)

and came home to watch Avatar because Matt just couldn't wait.

dork.

his birthday cake was the best part of the night in my opinion.

or actually i should say red velvet whoopie pies in a cake pan were the best part of the evening.

i couldn't eat them but they looked so cute and yummy!

and of course the Darth Vader candle is just perfect!

this boy loooooves red velvet!

so even though the day didn't go as planned we celebrated the crap out of breakfast and dinner!

happy 27th birthday Matt!

i wuv you!

dragons and unicorns

last week i worked my little bum off to make cute gifts for the kids in our sunbeam class because all of their birthdays were last week.

since the beginning of the year these kids have talked a lot about dragons and unicorns.

for every question it seems like the little boy will answer dragons and the twin girlies will answer unicorns.

what's your favorite animal?

what do you want to draw?

what kind of pet do you wish you had?

what kind of animals were put on earth?

what do you want to make with your playdough?

what animal do you want to pretend to be?

the answer is always the same: dragons and unicorns.

i thought i'd use that for their gifts since it's obviously very important to them.

i used this donkey tutorial as a starting point when i made the unicorns and then adjusted things from there.

aside from that tutorial being a little frustrating and confusing i think it got me on the right track to making these cute unicorns.

i didn't put the ears on my unicorns and obviously added the horn but everything else is basically from the donkey tutorial.

the eyes, the mane and the tail were the parts i had the most trouble with.

i'm not very experienced when it comes to working with embroidery floss.

we gave the girls their presents during church since they were the only kids we had in class that day and i was so happy because they LOVED the unicorns!

they got them out and immediately started running around the room making them eat things and run on the chairs and make funny noises.

it was so cute!

the dragon themed gift i went with was the dragon slippers i learned to make a few months ago.

when i made them before i modified them to be dino slippers though.

remember?

but this time i did full on dragon slippers.

we had traced the kids' feet a couple weeks before as part of our lesson so i kept the little boy's tracing and used it when i made the slippers for him.

i'm so tricky!

we took his present to his house and i think it's safe to say he liked them because he put them on almost immediately after opening them.

i made them a little big, like the tutorial suggests, so he can keep wearing them for a while.

we recently found out he's moving away to a place that stays cold longer than one month out of the year so hopefully those little dragons will keep his feet warm.

we're really gonna miss that little guy.

and now after all the sewing and present making i'm in the crafting mood.

what should i make next?

window treatments

next step of the downstairs remodel was window treatments.

we got roll down vinyl curtains which look boring right now but later i'm hoping to paint a pattern onto them or even switch them out for fabric but for now they're fine.

we had to put up valances because our windows have arches that can't be covered easily.

we really liked the idea of wooden valances but didn't want to pay a million dollars to buy some so instead we bought nice plain boring wood and cut it to size then stained it and made it awesome.

we drilled the board right into the wall which wasn't working too well with just me and the hubsy doing it so we called in reinforcements a.k.a. my brother Steven.

while putting them up we learned one very important lesson: don't use screws you bought at Walmart.

screw after screw stripped and made Matt super frustrated.

then we went to Lowe's and bought new screws that worked way better.

i hate when Walmart fails me.

but after Lowe's saved us the windows looked great!

i don't know why Padme is sitting all weird like that. she sat like that the whole time i was taking pictures that day.

we're going to cover up the screws with wood putty later but so far i'm really loving the wood valances.

we had the blinds up behind the roll down curtains initially but i didn't like the way it looked so we took them out.

i thought i would really hate to pull up the curtain and see straight outside which means people can see straight inside but i actually don't mind it.

it looks pretty good!

and our house has never been brighter!

farewell wall, i shall miss thee

in addition to our amazing wall construction we made another huge change in our house this past weekend.

one of the first things we did when we moved in was create our beautiful green wall.

it was the very first thing we painted in our house because we were sick of all the white walls and i love bright green!

then Matt made this tree design and sketched it out and we painted it.

no decals here!

it was the very best part of our house!

so very "us".

and the fact that people talked about our green wall made me happy.

one time at church i heard some people talking about how people paint the strangest colors in their house and they went on to describe how they had visited someone in the ward who even had a bright green wall.

they had no idea that i was in fact the person they were referring to and it made me laugh that my favorite wall made people think there was something wrong with me.

but Matt said it was time for a change so we took some pictures with our pretty green wall before it went bye bye.

this is Matt's "i painted that" face.

Matt said we had to look cool.

and then we started the process.

took down the shelves and plastered up the holes.

and then did the taping.

and said some more goodbyes.

and then it was time.

sad day.

my amazing green wall is gone and in it's place there is this.

boooooooring grey and a puppy bum.

we're going to hang stuff up and make it cool again but right now it's ridiculously dull and i miss my wall.