two point five. YEARS

This happened two.five years ago (as of yesterday). 

We totally both forgot that it was a special day. 

I realized it while we were climbing, which was perfect because... 

we were on the climb that Dave proposed at the top of. 

All that matters was that we were together, enjoying being with each other. 

I love this man so much. 

He truly does complete me. 

A Quality Marriage.

Can we just press repeat and live the weekend all over again? 

I always tell Dave that my favorite moment of the whole week is Friday at 5 pm. 

Don't get me wrong, I love my job but I love spending time with Dave the most!

This weekend was no exception. 

We had a fabulous date night at our favorite Gainesville Restaurant, Chuy's. 

We went to the local Art's Festival Saturday and got the best Mother's Day gifts!

And.. 

it was General Conference weekend!

Seriously every time the last session ends, I am so sad. I just want it to keep going!

In honor of one of my favorite weekends in the year, 

I am dedicating the blog this week to my favorite snippets of conference. 

Because boy, I sure did love it!

This was one of the BEST talks on marriage I have ever heard. 

You can watch it here. 

I am so grateful for the gift of marriage.

This talk gave me a renewed determination to serve my husband.

And to put him first always. 

Because

'A quality marriage is OUR gift to Him.'

First Floor Please.

This is the post where I tell you how much I love our new place. 

If you still live in a small apartment, I suggest you don't read this. 

You will want to move immediately. 

We moved into a town home over the weekend. 

we LOVE it. 

Double the space. 

Dish washer. 

Washer and Dryer. 

bath tub. 

basically the works. 

Now time for a tour of the downstairs...

yep, we have stairs now!

 I am so proud of that table, craiglist for $150 and they delivered for free!

 This is my new favorite rug. $50 at Rugs USA!

 The entire basement is tiled which is so great for the heat in Florida!

I love this picture of the temple. Costco- $50. Best deal ever. 

 Our landlord even put cute mirrors in the bathrooms... what middle age man thinks of that?

All new cabinets in the kitchen!

(Yes, I am still in love with my Kitchen Aid)

 I love the window in the kitchen, it makes it feel much more open!

The best part is

we can finally have people over!

I know it might seem small to you

but the whole down stairs is the size of our old apartment! 

And I even washed my dishes in the dish washer today! 

Life is good. 

Will YOU be my Valentine?

So I never told you about our love day. 

It was pretty great. 

We both were busy all day but I surprised Dave in the morning 

with a heart attacked mirror. 

And a little gift. 

Remember my datevitation giveaway? 

Dave totally scored his own. 

He LOVED it. 

 We enjoyed a lovely evening. 

Chuy's for dinner. 

Which is seriously one of my favorite Mexican Restaurants now. 

Sorry folks, not in Utah. 

Then Dave took me to see Safe Haven. 

Typical, I know. We loved it. 

I read the book and I always enjoy Nicholas Sparks' books. 

Our Love day was fabulous. 

Low key is always a good thing. 

I hope everyone had a happy LOVE day. 

just pretend I am not two weeks late telling you about it. 

DIY Valentine's gift.

I am certain you have probably seen this project all over pinterest. 

I made this for Dave 2 years ago and I love it. 

It was such a simple, inexpensive DIY gift but it is really thoughtful too. 

Here is the how to:

Supplies:

Construction paper

1 desk of cards

Directions:

First, think of 52 reasons you love your significant other. 

Mine were anywhere from:

'You love me for who I am'

to

'You always give me a smile when I look at you'

to 

'You make me laugh at least once a day'

You can write these or type them, 

I typed mine up and printed them all out on a piece of off-white paper.

Second, I glued that piece of paper to another piece of red so I could add color to it. 

Then I glued that piece to each card. 

Last, make a front and back cover. Hole punch each card and put a ring through the top left. 

It turned out to be a fun little flip book of reasons I love Dave. 

Happy LOVE month!

Valentine's Date Ideas

It is crazy to me that this will be our fourth Valentine's together. 

As you can tell, I love Valentine's Day!

I really just love any reason to celebrate something. 

I thought I would share with you what we have done to celebrate each year, 

in case you are in need of some great ideas...

1. For our first Valentine's together, we each planned our own date and we celebrate two days in a row.  I loved this because we each got to surprise the other with our date idea and we got to extend the holiday. Dave came down to Provo and took me out to a nice restaurant and then we went wedding RING SHOPPING! It was the best surprise ever. We definitely went ring shopping many times after that and we didn't get engaged until the end of July but our very first time was on Valentine's and I loved every minute of it. The date I planned was for Sunday night. I made a delicious homemade meal and homemade sugar cookies. I love decorating sugar cookies so I made some delicious homemade lime frosting and Dave hated it... fail. Don't get me wrong, he was still very nice about it but he didn't like it at all! haha. Valentine's doesn't have to be perfect.

 2. Our second Valentine's together was our first 'Married valentine's'. I made Dave plan this one because I love seeing what he comes up with. He took me to a fun little Mexican restaurant close to our house that we had been wanting to try. He bought me some adorable red toms which I had been really wanting and he got me carnations.... This is where the fail came in. For some reason I really don't love carnations and I totally cried! Hilarious I know. I guess I really just expected him to get me roses, but he didn't. And I was really emotional for some reason?? Who knows... Anyways, he did buy me these beautiful roses a few weeks later.  Once again, Valentine's doesn't have to be perfect.

3. Last year for Valentine's, instead of getting gifts for each other we decided to go get a couple's massage. My heavens, it was AMAZING! We went to Massage Envy and they have some re-occuring deal where you can get an hour long couples massage for about $100, I think. Neither of us had ever had a body massage before so we loved it. Then we had a delicious homemade meal of BBQ salmon and key lime pie-- he even liked the lime too. The even better part... we didn't have a fail last year :)

As for this year... we haven't really decided what we are going to do yet. We love movies and I read the  Nicholas Sparks book 'Safe Haven' so we might go see that since it comes out on Valentine's Day. And maybe a delicious dinner somewhere in town too. We are still thinking of ideas. Does anyone have any good date ideas for me???

Our Love Story.

First and foremost.
The winners of the FIRMOO giveaway...
First place: Amanda
Second place: Krista, Veronica, Sierra, Ashely, Ja Nae
Look for an email from me soon, lovely ladies!

This week is going to be all about LOVE.
So if you don't enjoy cheesy love quotes and stories and ideas.
Then stop now. . .

I shared a little bit about our love story over at the 14 days of love last week.
I love it so much that I want to share it with you too.

Love is one of my favorite things. 

I love reading about love. 

I love listening to music about love. 

I love watching people fall in love. 

But most of all, I love our LOVE story. 

Be excited, because I am going to give you a short little synopsis of how it all played out...

The beginning of July 2009, I had just said goodbye for two longs years to a boy I had been dating. I was determined to wait until he got home to see if things would work out between us... little did I know, three days later I would meet my future husband. We met at a Pina Colada party, awesome I know. He was a very attractive blonde boy, a rock climber, recently returned missionary and he made me laugh. I saw him every night for the next four days and he finally got my number and asked me out for a date the following Monday. We went rock climbing...

We texted each other every day and hung out almost every night for the rest of that Summer. I was the first to kiss him at the end of July, again awesome I know. I thought he was a fabulous guy, he kept taking me out to dinner (which for a poor college student was awesome!) but I was nineteen years old and totally not ready to put someone before me... I was selfish and wanted to enjoy my college single life.  And I was headed back to Provo for school. I tried to tell him I wouldn't see him as much and things probably were not going to work out. He was VERY persistent and came to Provo every weekend except for the weekends I came home. 

My young mind was definitely fooled at this point. I liked this boy but I certainly thought it was just for fun and I knew I wanted to see that one other boy when he was going to be home in two years. Then things started getting more serious. By December, I felt like I was in love with him. He was truly everything I wanted in my future husband and he treated me like gold. We starting talking about getting married around February of 2010. There were a lot of major family events that year for my family so we decided the end of the year would be best. On July 30th, he popped the big question... while we were rock climbing. 

We were married on December 27th, 2010.  It was the best day of our lives. 

Now let's rewind. 

One of my ABSOLUTE favorite things about love stories is that everybody's is different. 

And no two love stories will ever be the same. 

Our love story is filled with a lot of rock climbing, laughter, tears, date nights, tickle fights, burned dinners, vacations, cuddling, dirty dishes, moves across country, arguments, bike rides, even more rock climbing, and so much more. 

As you can see, our love story is not perfect. 

And I am so incredibly grateful for that. 

Happy 14 days of Love.

I hope you will stop by and visit. 

Wedding Series: Wedding!

Love is one of my favorite things. 

I enjoy reading stories about love. 

I enjoy listening to songs about love. 

I enjoy watching people fall in love. 

But most of all I enjoy talking about our love story. 

In honor of LOVE month, I want to post more about our wedding. 

I started posting about our wedding in December for our anniversary. 

You can read more about the proposal and look at our engagement photos 

but this post is dedicated to our actual wedding. 

We were married for time and all eternity in the Salt Lake City Latter-Day Saint Temple. 

It was one of the happiest days of my life. 

We were surrounded by so many people who love and care about us

and I have never felt so much LOVE at one point in my life. 

I was so giddy and happy all day long. 

It truly was the best day of my life. 

I hope you enjoy a few of my favorite pictures. 

Compliments to Duston Todd Photography

Don't forget to go check out my guest post over at  The Meaningful Pursuit today.

I am so excited to be apart of the 14 days of love....

My kind of memory book.

 I am very passionate about keeping track of memories. Before I married Dave, I was super good at writing in my journal at least once a week. Now I keep a daily journal that I love but it is just a simple little paragraph about my day so it isn't for detailed memories. We also have a family journal that we put major family events in, like anniversaries and such.  However, none of the these things include pictures. I really enjoy taking pictures and I try to take my camera with me when we are out doing anything exciting. 

Luckily, our anniversary falls on the last week of the year so it makes it easy to connect the year end to another year of marriage. So I came up with this fabulous idea to do a photo book with every year of our marriage. I only have two so far but they are both about 40 pages and make it a great way to keep track of all the fun things through the year. The even better part is that Shutterfly offers fabulous deals during December/January so I get it for 50% off and free shipping! I usually try to start working on it during the Fall because it can be daunting but I really love it so much and I know these books will be something we cherish forever. This one below is from our first year of marriage. I love it!

Right now Shutterfly is offering a 40% off coupon for photobooks and calendars.

It is good through tomorrow and the code is GIVEHEART.

You should definitely try it, such an easy way to preserve photos!

nope, this is not a sponsored post. I just REALLY love shutterfly :)

 

Husband.

When I was in High school, I made the LIST. Don't act like you don't know what I am talking about.  You know the LIST, the one where you write down every little thing that you want your future husband to have. I wrote a list like this several times in my few young single adult years I had before I got married. I was always adding things to it and taking things away. As I became more 'mature' or closer to getting married, I started to really look at my list and think about what really mattered to me. Did it matter that he loves watching sports? Did it matter that he was a BYU fan? You know what I mean. . .

Well let me tell you. My husband is meant for me in every single way possible. He is the most handsome man I know. Is he a brunette?  Nope. Does he love watching sports? Nope. He has all the things on the list that really matter to me. He loves me for who I am and doesn't try to change me. He has a strong testimony and has a close relationship with God. He loves family. You know, all the important things.

One of the things that was so important to me in my future husband was a man who lifts me up and encourages me to be better. A man who would Inspire me always. Dave does that very thing. He is always inspiring me to be a better person. Work harder. Play more often. Live life to the fullest. Love everyone I meet. Laugh at the little things. You name it, he is always so encouraging and inspiring. He does this for me by being that way himself. He is incredible.

This very day is this incredible man's birthday. I love him with all my heart and I am so thankful for the inspiration he is to me. Happy birthday Dave, I love you!

Don't forget to stop by Elisabeth's lovely blog to see what inspires her this week...

Happy LATE twenties!

Guess who's birthday is this weekend?!

My husband is officially in his LATE twenty as of this coming Sunday. 

And I remind him about this everyday. 

I love you Dave. 

Thanks for being the BEST husband ever. 

Yearly Memory Jar DIY

One of my favorite ideas I found on pinterest was a memory jar.

We started ours at the beginning of 2012.

I found a basic sized mason jar and labeled it 2012

with a bunch of sticky notes and a pen close by. 

Throughout the year, we would write down little moments that we wanted to remember. 

I loved the idea because it wasn't an every day thing which made it stress-free!

I think it would be fun to read through all the memories on New Year's Eve

but we were in Utah and I forgot to bring our jar. 

So we went through our memories last weekend when we got home.

Here are some of my favorites from 2012:

-We went jet skiing in bearlake... Dave drove us straight into a wave!

 We basically went fully under water while on the jet ski.

-'I am handsome because you are beautiful! 

And two ugly people can't be together'

Quote from Dave

-SarahJane did her first v6 ever and flashed it.

She took first in the Ogden Front climbing competition. 

-Dave ordered a German Chocolate Shake at Shivers...

took one bite and threw it away in the 711 trash, where he bought a slurpee!

-The Leprechauns came and turned out toilet water green

and made us green pancake mix!

Happy St. Patricks Day!

-We had first row tickets to the University of Florida vs South Carolina game!

And we were on Sports Center!

-SarahJane passed her NCTRC Exam and became 

a certified recreational therapist!

-Dave got a full Teaching-Assistantship to Florida, 

Gainesville here we come!

There were many more fabulous memories of 2012 that we shared with each other. 

This was such a simple way to record fun events throughout the year.

We will definitely be doing it in 2013!

Two Year Anniversary Celebrations

 We had a fabulous, low-key, two year anniversary last week.

We are saving up for our week long celebration in March but that is still a secret...

so we decided to do a simple celebration on the 27th of December. 

As I was telling one of my friends about our celebration, I noticed a common theme:

I was at my parents house and Dave picked me up with two dozen roses. 

We went to the dollar movie theater and watched Taken two.

We went to two of my favorite places to shop, the Rack and City Creek. 

I bought two things at every store I went to.

(I love having Christmas money to spend)

We went to our favorite Salt Lake Restaurant, The Blue Iguana

and we each ordered Two Chicken Enchiladas Verdes.

Then we went to our favorite Frozen Yogurt spot, Top it

and we got two bowls of frozen yogurt. 

We ended the night cuddling by the fire, watching The Odd Life of Timothy Green

Just the TWO of us. 

Did you notice the common theme of TWO? 

Kind of silly but it was our two year anniversary and all.

It was a treat to spend the night together reminiscing our wedding 

and the story of how we fell in love. 

What is your favorite thing to do to celebrate your anniversary?

happy love day!

we had the most amazing valentines ever.

we were able to go get one-hour massages at Massage Envy

one word.

incredible.

They focused on our upper body and it couldn't have been better!

apparently climbing has put a lot of strain on my pectoral muscles...

random?

anyways. we came home and had an incredible candle lit dinner.

bbq salmon.

green beans.

lemon rice.

and key lime pie.

this dave, commanding me to stop taking pictures and let us eat already.

delicious dinner.

best. easiest key lime pie. ever.

this is our cute treat bowl.

we made it at color me mine together when we were dating.

you can always count on it having yummy holiday treats in it :)

i also made delicious sugar cookies on sunday.

they had cream cheese frosting on them.

dave had never had cream cheese frosting.

weirdo? yes. result: he didn't like it.

he is a plain joe kind of a treat lover.

anywho.

i wouldn't trade my valentine for the world.

I love you with all my heart dave.

thanks for making each day such an adventure

filled with giggles, cuddles, and love.

get stoked for the weekend:

we have a four day camping trip in st. george!!

wooohooo!