life lately

One of my best longest friends Annekah came up to Utah with her newborn babe Theo!

"let me take a picture of you in your new suit!!"

my lil sis shayna sent him that tie from ukraine

sunday selfie

hedgehog selfie FAIL

visiting noma (my german grandma) in the hospital when she had pneumonia

my parents were out of town, and dustin was so sweet - he skipped his night class so he could drive down to american fork to visit her with me.  

superbowl/birthday party for donna (dustin's mom) at the harpers' house!

sad day since we were all cheering for the broncos.

we went out with some friends from our ward

dancing (as in ballroom/salsa dancing) & coldstone

such a good time!

went to a jazz game with shrude! (my boss, harp teacher, mentor, friend..)

we had awesome 3rd row seats!  sadly the jazz lost that game.

midway ice castles 

with our friends the jensens & the ostlers 

we like kissing each other!

now for a quick trip down memory lane...

three years ago we went to the ice castles for one of our first dates!  ahh we were babies!

three years ago - february 2011

it's fun to look back and think about when we first met, and how easily we fell in love and how quickly i knew that i wanted to be with him forever.  it always felt so right and easy and it still does!  

that one time we made a headboard

I have been wanting to make a reupholstered headboard for a looong time and it finally happened last month!  Dustin wasn't too thrilled at first - he was anti-headboard because he hates how they typically bang the wall any time you get in bed or move in bed.  I somehow convinced him to help me make it anyway, and now he loves it just as much as I do!  And it does not bang the wall at all.  :)  Success. 

It cost us less than $100 and only took a day to complete!  Actually less than a day since we just worked on it off and on between other things we had going on that day.  My kind of DIY project. 

  

Sooo we have a king size bed and therefore had to buy a pretty decent sized piece of plywood - never occurred to us that it might not fit in my car!  It barely fit as you can see when we took off the headrests.  Still, Dustin (who is always really concerned about safety) was not going to let us drive on the freeway to get it back to our home in Salt Lake.  He told me that if we were rear-ended our heads would be chopped off by the plywood.  :$  So we took it over to my parents' and my brother brought it up to us in their truck the next morning.   

Dustin screwing the plywood into the 2x4 frame.

Ready for batting!  Dustin didn't believe me when I told him batting was a real word haha.  The next step (stapling the batting and fabric to the wood) gave us the most grief.  The staple gun was not the best and we pulled out a bajillion crooked staples and became a bit frustrated with the gun and each other before we realized that we could just hammer the crooked ones in and then they would go down flat and be just fine.  

Upholstered and ready for some decorative trim! 

Hammering in the nail head trim.  With this stuff you only have to nail in every 5th one so it is pretty foolproof!

Finished product.

Please excuse the terrible lighting, and weird cream-colored cinder block walls but I am so happy with how it turned out!  

hello 2014

Happy New Year!  I love the feeling of the start of a new year.  It feels like a fresh start, another chance to set new goals and improve yourself and make it a better year than the last.  It was fun to look back at this post and cross off some 2013 resolutions that I feel I achieved, or mostly achieved.  I am excited to see what 2014 brings.  Dustin will be graduating!  We will have a {somewhat} normal Utah summer.  We will both be busy working and our sisters will both be coming home from their missions!  Can't wait. :)

2014 resolutions:
-Read the Book of Mormon.  (I am following bofm365 on instagram - everyday they post the scriptures you should be reading to finish it in a year.  It's only about 15-20 verses a day - totally doable!  So far I am on track!)
-Create a harp website.
-Build muscle, lose fat.
-Pay off my car.
-Save money.
-Do good - find more ways to serve daily.
-Attend the temple twice a month (once with Dustin, once on my own).
-Take a trip to Europe!
-Cook 3 {healthy} meals a week.
-Be more proactive and make things happen.

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. 
- Oprah Winfrey

"best of" christmas 2013

• Christmas shopping date at City Creek!  I love living 4 minutes away.
• We sent out Christmas cards for the first time.  
• Quinn fit in perfectly with my woodland creatures Christmas decor.
• Humongous, as in 7 feet tall, gingerbread house at the Grand America.
• We saw The Hobbit.  It was ok, not my favorite.
• Lots of Christmas classic movies including White Christmas, Elf, Christmas Vacation along with the cheesy Hallmark romantic holiday comedies that I kind of love.
• Christmas Adam celebration with just us two.  We went out to dinner then opened presents from each other.  Dustin got a new blue suit. He totally surprised me with a little blue box.
• Santa came to my grandma's on Christmas Eve!  Sadly I was *not feeling well* and missed him. ;)
• Skyping both of our sisters!!!  Shayna in Ukraine, Korinne in Idaho.
• Christmas get together with some of my best friends, and their husbands, and precious babies!
• Lots of time spent with each other and our families.  

guess who? 

(yes i was santa! i was volunteered! no one else wanted to do it! the littles never knew it was me though haha)

last year                                                                          this year

i LOVE these girls!

harpy christmas!

December was crazy for the hubby and I!  He had intense finals, projects, papers, and presentations, and I had a bajillion harp events, concerts, gigs, and church performances.  Dustin survived another semester of business school with all A's and one B!!  And I survived another harp Christmas season.  Though it was a lot of work learning new music, having 6am rehearsals, and moving the harp everywhere in the snow, we both loved the spirit of Christmas that we felt in our hearts because of the music.  Music truly is powerful and can lift hearts like nothing else.  I am so grateful for my talent and the many opportunities and blessings it brings to both mine and Dustin's lives.

holiday diamond party!  i was hoping i might get paid with diamonds but sadly no ;)

harp & bells christmas concert.  

my students played with 4 other teacher's students totaling 40 harps on stage!

 seven harps! 

we accompanied the salt lake vocal artists on their two christmas concerts

 me and my boss/harp teacher/friend/mentor/wardie ShruDe

 a few of us accompanied the salt lake choral artists again at their assembly hall performances

my best harp mover husband 

fall photos

A few weeks ago we had some pictures taken of us by my friend Emilie!  In honor of our second anniversary, in honor of fall, in honor of winter...mostly I just wanted some updated photos of us. I love how they turned out!