Christmas Decor

I was pretty excited to decorate for Christmas this year. I guess it's because it's my first year to decorate my own space. I've always been in an apartment (or at Kara's) and headed home for Christmas. So this year was exciting. Here's some of what I did for decorating:

My first real Christmas tree!

Paper star from a Pinterest DIY.

Gold pinecone (and I collected all the pinecones!)

Cinnamon ornament (Pinterest, of course)

I have a mantle this year!

Wreath - with bows and pinecones!
First attempt at making a wreath, it turned out well, I thought. 

Balcony garland - I had no idea what I was doing, but it looks ok.

Crazy, Wonderful Life

So, most of you know I got married this summer. Yay! I've been meaning to write posts about the bridal showers, the dinner in Utah, the wedding and reception in Atlanta, and the honeymoon. Yeah, hasn't happened.
Mostly, I'm just crazy busy with work and work and married life and spending time with Chase's family (his brother just left on his mission - quality time was required before that sad day!) and making food and trying to get to bed at a decent time (Chase does not share my views on appropriate bedtimes). When I do get a few minutes to sit down and write, I usually figure Thank you notes are more important. But I don't want to work on them today, so here's a tidbit of a blog instead.

Aunt Kara hosted a bridal shower for me on May 11, 2013. Mindy even came down to celebrate!

Chase and I flew out to Utah on May 30. I went through the Logan temple to take out my endowments on June 1, and that was followed by a big family/friends dutch oven dinner. (For which the food was fabulous and the decorations just amazing).

All of my loving and supportive family and friends at the temple.

The wedding was on June 21, 2013 at the Atlanta, GA temple. We had a wonderful photographer, Holly Jones. I loved her work!

My wonderful bridesmaids: Kalie Larkin, Erilyn Heintz,
Alyna Briscoe (MoH), and Sarah Hafen

The reception that evening was at a historic park nearby, Heritage Sandy Springs. (Did we get pictures?)

We went on our honeymoon to a cabin belonging to a Smith family friend in the North Carolina mountains, near Cashiers. It was beautiful and cooler and had lots of waterfalls nearby!

Tidbits

I haven't blogged in quite some time, not because my life is boring, but because there's too much going on and I don't feel like I have the time to share even the big, important events. So now I'll just share little tidbits about a smattering of topics (kind of inspired by Lisa and Lindsay's recent blogs).

Work has been difficult lately - lots of co-worker tension and even a reprimand/warning from my boss. I've been considering finding a different job, but don't really know what else I would like to do. Or how to go about getting one. Luckily, it's smoothed out a little lately. My goal is to make it past Jan 15, my one-year mark at Bartlett.

Sugar maple leaf

I love fall, fall in Georgia, and Georgia. I can and I have written long lists of things I love about the fall season (leaves change colors, cooler weather, soups, apples, pumpkin pie, sweaters, etc). I did get the opportunity to be in Utah for fall colors there, which was fantastic and beautiful. But I love fall in Georgia. It gets nice and cool at night and usually is warm and sunny during the day.  Working outside is downright pleasant! There are more species of trees to turn colors. I went to an apple festival with Kara and Christina.

Fall in Provo Canyon

I feel like I've really been in the South now - I've had a deep-fried oreo at a fair. It was incredibly delicious and so not good for me.

Kara and I love making dinner together. We're always looking for new interesting recipes to try out. We recently tried pumpkin corn chowder, sweet potato enchiladas, and quinoa-stuffed poblanos. It's the majority of the time we spend together in the last four months, and always very fun. I feel like I'm a pretty good cook now, except when it comes to meat because Kara's vegetarian so we never cook any. 

I now have a boyfriend - Chase Smith. We've been dating for almost two months now; that's an impressive feat for me. He's a mechanical engineering student, we met at the YSA ward, and Kara approves of him.

Me and Chase at Blaine and Christina's wedding

My good friends from the ward, Christina and Blaine, got married this past weekend. I was a bridesmaid, which was stressful. Blaine and Chase are brothers, which added a fun twist. I loved my bridesmaid dress, which was a first ever. I have two more friends who just got engaged last month - Diana and Omar. I'll also be a bridesmaid for them in January. I feel like the movie 27 Dresses.


 That pretty well describes the major points of my life lately.

Gibbs Gardens and Antiquing

I finally had a Saturday without work, so Kara and I went to Gibbs Gardens up in north Georgia. It was kind of drizzly, but it rather added to the charm of the gardens. And there wasn't as many people.

One of my favorite parts where all of the bridges. Lots and lots of bridges.

There weren't really many flowers in bloom. Apparently July-September aren't very good months for that. We'd like to go again in the spring. Apparently they have a stunning daffodil festival in March. There was, however, a really adorable kitten really wanted to be petted.

After mediocre lunch from the garden cafe, we went down to a couple of antique stores on Ponce de Leon Ave: Paris on Ponce and Kudzu Antiques. The two couldn't be more different. Paris was over-crowded with some really weird/creepy things.

 Exhibit A:

Woman chasing her head.

 Exhibit B:

Creepiest looking dog statue imaginable. 

Exhibit C:

Gopher goes mid-century bling.

Like I said, some weird stuff.

Kudzu, on the other hand, was large and had lots of things nicely displayed. There was an old, sterling silver necklace that I loved, but it was $110. Not really in my price range. But I did get a never-been-worn semi-formal dress for $15.

I want this table for my Japanese room. When I have a Japanese room.

So, it was a really fun day.

P'tree Road Race

Yesterday, to celebrate the Land of the Free, I joined roughly 60,000 other people and ran 10K under the hot, Georgia sun.

Ok, it was actually only about 58,000 people, and it was mostly overcast until about mile 4 (although I have no idea what time that is on a normal clock). Still, it was an interesting way to spend the 4th of July. I've never participated in a race that big, and it was an Experience.

I didn't really want to get out of bed at 5:30 on my day off and wasn't really in the mood for running (oh also, I haven't gone running once since my last race, the ten-miler. Oops. Not good training. Again). Getting ready, etc, blah blah blah... It took a lot longer to get to the start line than we expected, so I didn't start with my assigned wave (D) but with wave G. Which I was actually good with, because I was nervous about starting with such a fast wave. There were something like 25 waves, and several thousand people in each wave. So crazy. 

I entertained myself for the first four miles by waving at people and watching the crowds of runners. I liked to try to get people to cheer for me specifically. It was nice and hot, but luckily for everyone, it had rained nicely the night before and cooled the city down. By mile five, I was just going into running zone mode. And trying to keep my pace up enough that I would finish under an hour. The sixth mile seemed very long, but that's mostly because they didn't have the mile marked, and it just went straight to the finish line. It got very hot once we finished at Piedmont Park. Lots of sweaty people and no air movement.

Overall, I am very pleased with both the experience and my performance. I met my sub-hour goal with a time of 58:01. I bet I would do better if I actually trained though.

Something Like Spring Break

Since it's been about four years since I've had a spring break, this past weekend was a fun little experience for me. Some friends from church really wanted to go to Savannah or Charleston for the weekend and invited me. It ended up being me, Maurine, Christina, and Holly.

Maurine, Holly, me, Christina

SO MUCH FUN!

We drove down on Friday evening and came back Sunday afternoon. 

Some of the random fun things that added to this memory were: each of us brought a bunch of snacks to share - mostly sugar, I discovered Zaxby's for the first time (chicken fast food place, but very different from Chik-fil-A), a bunch of college kids also on spring break, a fire alarm going off at the hotel.

Saturday was packed with all sorts of goodness:

Going to the beach

 Flying kites

 Getting rained on

 Walking down River Street in Savannah

Exploring the candy stores 

 Eating at The Cotton Exchange (fried cheesecake!)

Walking around Forsyth Park

It was really pretty with the rain/mist and the Spanish moss hanging off the live oaks. I love this city.

Sunday we drove back after watching the morning session of conference at a nearby church building. Could a weekend get any better?

A Simple Existence

This past week my life settled into a very simple little routine. Which left room for very little else.
5:30 (ish)AM Wake up and get dressed. Eat breakfast and pack lunch.
6:45 AM Work.
5:00 PM Home. Collapse onto my bed for a few minutes before getting up to shower. Check email, etc.
7:00 PM Dinner.
8:30 PM Get ready for and go to bed.

Eat, work, shower, eat, sleep. Simplistic, right? It's been kind of nice, not to have other things to worry about, and to be going to bed so early. Who needs a social life, anyway? I do have some time on the weekends to do other things. Friday night I went to a church dance (not so fun, actually. But I was being social!).

On Saturday morning, Kara and I ran in a 5K road race, which was pretty fun. I haven't run a 5K since high school, I'm pretty sure. I've only done longer distances, which makes the 3.1 miles seem almost laughably short. However, I haven't been training very well (a big surprise to all of those who know my training habits...) and really had no idea how to pace a 5K. It turned out ok. My mile splits were: mile 1 - 9:00, mile 2 - 8:27, mile 3 - (about) 8:00, last .1 mile - about 0:44. For a total time of 26:11. Not a PR, but it is up there with my better times from high school. Cool, eh?

Other things that spice up this life are the weather - it's hit 80 degrees, but now we're back down to a high of 45. I've been informed that this has been a remarkably mild winter. Lots of rain, a little bit of sunshine. Friday night brought a huge storm including several lightning/thunder combinations that woke me up in the middle of the night. Spring is definitely here, whether it's supposed to be or not. We've had daffodils and magnolia blossoms out for several weeks now, as well as more subtle signs like silver maple blossoming, leaf buds swelling and even breaking, especially on sweetgum. More recently it's been obvious, including redbud trees blossoming, cherry trees, red maples flowering, crocus, hyacinth, and tulips, and the viney yellow jasmine. I love spring and all the spring flowers!

I'm sure I'll have more spring flower pictures to post soon!

Stone Mountain Morning

This morning, Kara and I went to Stone Mtn - Atlanta's resident mountain. Which is actually just a "quartz monzonite dome monadnock" (Wikipedia). It's a big rock, which counts as a mountain here, since it's the closest thing to it for at least an hour.

The weather was supposed to be sunny and clear, but chilly (aka, 45-55 degrees). We planned to hike/run on the 4.something trail around the mountain, and then decide if it was warm enough to have a picnic lunch. 

As it turned out, it was absolutely perfect weather for a nice jog through the woods. We took it nice and slow, with plenty of time to appreciate the weather, views, and the fact that running across slanting rock is not actually a good idea. It took about an hour and a half to go around the mountain on the non-extended Cherokee trail. I took a lot of pictures.

I was told the straight hair and pigtails look makes me look sporty and Swedish. 

Perfect for trail running.

Slanting rock that has water running down it. Not the best for running.

Absolutely gorgeous running next to the lake.

Cool old-style building with a water wheel! and bridges.

After the run was over, we decided the weather was beautiful and we would have a picnic. Honestly it was just like an idyllic morning of exercise and outdoors. I'm hoping to spend a lot of my time in Atlanta doing stuff like this. 

Getting to Know the Neighborhood

I'm slowly becoming more familiar and comfortable with the neighborhood and major roads in our area. We live off Briarcliff, which doesn't seem like a big road until you realize that it goes from the northeast corner of inside the perimeter and not take a turn off until you pass the south perimeter. It's long. Which is good, because just about anything I need I can find on this one road. I'm also pretty good at HWY 85 and the belt route (aka the perimeter) 285.

I don't use the gps to get to church, the DMV, or the Rick Case car dealership (I know - crazy fun, right?). I'm also pretty sure I could get to work and back without a gps, as long as I go on one of the more simple routes. So, progress!

I really love this area of Atlanta because of all the houses. There's all sorts here, ranging from tiny old brick houses to new huge houses, with everything in between and lots of variety. This picture is of some houses on our street, just to illustrate the point.