all hallow's eve

not sure I've ever loved a Halloween as much as this year's.

we were fred, wilma, and pebbles flintstone!

enjoy some photographs of our festivities:

 

 

this was at our ward halloween party,

the week before the actual holiday.

aren't we the cutest?!

Jeremy even put on his costume without a fight!

Amelia was a little in shock with the chaos,

and we had to leave early.

but we did win a yummy apple pie from the young men/young women's auction!

 

the following Sunday we carved our pumpkins that we grew from our love garden.

Amelia jabbered the whole time we were carving;

she was so interested in what was going on!

this was the first year I carved my own pumpkin start to finish,

and I smoked Jer on time!

oh ps. we're wearing matching shirts from the spooky 5k the college of nursing hosted!

 

here we are on acutal halloween night.

Jer did make me beg a little before putting on his costume this time...

we went trick-or-treating at ah-ma and ah-gong's house

before heading over to the party at grandma and grandpa bodtchers'!

they fed us dinner...

 

and we played some games!!!

(have you seen "just go with it"?)

these pictures look a little inappropriate,

but jeremy and I kinda had a height disadvantage on everyone!

 

 

here is a group picture of the costume participants.

thanks for such a fun night, everyone!

 

a note on the costumes:

 

I started on Jeremy's costume early this summer (before Amelia was born),

everyone thought I was crazy for starting so early,

but you know me... can't procrastinate!

it was some intense sewing by hand!!

 

 

see what I have to put up with?

 

 

I did start on Amelia's costume a little later,

because I had no idea how big she would be in October

(she was still wearing newborn sizes in September!)

 

and my cute mom made my white dress.

and this, is actually intense.

and legit. because I will we re-wearing this dress often.

Jeremy says it looks like a wedding dress... ha!

 

 

 

anyways,

so glad we dressed up as a family,

Amelia will appreciate this when she's a bit older (I hope).

 

last year for halloween,

we moved our giant brown couches in our new home,

and only a handful of people knew I was pregnant!

 

this is my favorite time of the year...

when all the holidays creeping up on top of each other!

so excited for Amelia's first thanksgiving and first christmas!

proof

i know we moved into our home last november,

and i still haven't posted any pictures.

i truly have been insanely busy,

mainly with school and work and growing a babe.

anyway, i finished my last final yesterday

and had a huge surge of energy to get things accomplished.

seriously, i cleaned a huge hunk of my house,

and got started on making our home actually looking like one.

it's kinda a work in progress

but I promise more pictures will come.

this is in the front room, where we have a red wall,

beautiful couches my parents gave us as a housewarming gift,

and after jeremy repaints,

we will put my old piano in,

along with a wingback chair I am going to reupholster with red&white paisley material!!

this banner is above our kitchen sink,

a room where we have a ton of projects to work on:

hanging our pot hanger from the ceiling over the kitchen island,

repainting our table legs, chairs and benches,

repainting our garage door and patio door blue <3,

hanging our flatscreen,

and getting our office finished, so I stop using this space as my work area!

this wall is also in our kitchen,

mirroring the banner and our sink.

the room to the right is the master bed.

I did this wall last Christmas break (it was about the only thing I did ha!)

the top left sign says "write your hurts in sand, carve your blessings in stone"

which is a beautiful way to life, i'm working on it.

bottom left is a shadow box with tickets (movies, games, trax, etc) that Jer and i have gone to together.

it doesn't really match the blue theme we've got going on in the kitchen/family room,

but I still like it. :)

this is the master bedroom!

Jeremy has worked so hard painting our rooms

he is such a perfectionist that it takes forever to get the walls mudded and sanded.

he also has repainted our ceilings and molding white

before he adds the pretty colors

and seriously! such a big difference in the rooms he's repainted.

we just finally moved back in here last night!

anywho, just a picture of our side wall that I want to fill up with frames.

pretty much a shrine of our marriage. :)

we still need to:

hang curtains,

find an orange ruffle bedspread (suggestions?)

convince the hubby to put up shelves with orange ankle brackets,

and we're done!! with one room, at least :)

I made this for our master bed.

no idea why I'm obessessed with cute patterns for wastebaskets,

but here we are!

Jeremy has also repainted our master bath, which is a beautiful shade of light(er) green :)

this is in my walk-in closet,

right next to our shower :)

love this idea to hang/differentiate towels,

even though we share all the time. :)

anyways, i'm thinking of posting pictures from start to finish

of before and after for each room in our house.

............when we finish.

haha.

the great thing about summer vacation is all this time to get things accomplished!!!

the downside is that i've got a little ball in front of me sucking up all my energy.

who needs to work out when you're cleaning/decorating the house, right?

trusting

yesterday, I finally finished and gave Jeremy his valentines present!

today, I can't help but feel that events in life always fall in place.

disappointing things that don't make sense always end up for the better.

like,

how we didn't get our house, and that was so hard to accept,

but two months later we bought our enormous home in a great location, that was already babyproofed.

If we had gotten that house,

we would have already been running out of space with our new addition to the family,

and we would both have to deal with university student traffic everyday.

like,

how I applied a million times to primary children's hospital, but never even got an interview,

but I got to keep my job with a flexible schedule that worked with my school schedule

and I got to meet this one cute guy I know...

like,

how my bestest friend in the entire universe and I hardly talked for over year and I thought I was going to die from loneliness,

but I got to grow up and stand on my own

and then I got to get to know a new best friend who asked me to marry him.

sometimes I'm confused as to why we were chosen to be parents.

why am I not going to peru this summer for nursing study abroad?

why can't I finish out my senior year without extra responsibilities?

why can't I get my graduation trip and tour around europe, like I've dreamed about my entire life?

why can't I work for a couple years and apply to graduate school?

why do I have to learn to be a constant example for my babies?

I know it's a selfish train of thought; all of these questions revolve around me.

it scares me to death to love somebody this much and not even know her.

it's days like these when jeremy has to clean up the bile I threw up in our bed and tells me he'll have the baby room painted by tomorrow even though he works all day long, and he compliments my behind before he leaves, that things don't have to make sense.

it just comes down to one thing:

trust in the Lord

sundresses mean summer

as some of you know,

I've always wished that I could sew

and make my own sundresses

(and etc.)

fortunately,

I have a very good friend, Michelle :)

who sews wonderfully

and is also a great and patient teacher.

on a dreary sunday night,

when Jeremy worked an awful grave shift,

we labored from 8 until 4 in the morn,

and produced this:

I don't think I've ever been

so excited and so tired

at the same time.

Who woulda thought

little miss liana

can now make her own clothes?

crafts much?

it's christmas. and it's been a great day. a great couple of days. :) it never ceases to awe me how Jer keeps surprising me with everything. yes, I married the love of my life. keeps me on my toes and in love. :)

okay, so everyone who knows me well, knows that I love crafts. I love doing things with my hand... knitting, crocheting, gluing, arts, pottery, etc. etc. so recently I developed a new interest in plaques. yes, strange as it sounds... yes. plaques. so anyway, I felt like making plaques for the family as a Christmas gift. I was pretty excited when I started off... but as time when on and it didn't seem like I was ever going to be done and I couldn't talk to anyone about it (except Jeremy), I got more and more frustrated (like I do with all crafts that take too long).

so here's just a quick overview of the process:

Jeremy helped me sneakily obtain scrap pieces of boards late one night, and the very exciting craft project began! I ripped up pieces of old notebook paper and glued them on all of these boards.



then spray paint (of course) came in the picture. I really do love this blue. However, Jeremy didn't really like it that it was done in our kitchen haha. it's okay, it made us both realize that I need a concrete crafts room in our dream home. :)

 then came the writing. I went through 3 different black sharpies to write on these boards. the Chinese character is a symbol for "love." (for my parents, if you didn't catch the drift haha). I also asked all the couples (well girls) on Jer's side what their song with their hubby was.

Collette and Travis's was "You and I" but Ingrid. one of my favorites :)

I got pretty frustrated with all of this work and had to take a lot of pictures in between. so hence... all of these pictures. Randy and Julie's was "If you leave me now" by Peter Cetera. Josh and Emily's was "this kiss" by Faith. Melissa Ann didn't give me one, so I put one of my favorite love song lyric for them... "faithfully" by Journey. and Kellen and Melissa's was "Smother Me" by the Used. the last empty square on the bottom was suppose to be ours. but, as I said... I was pretty exhausted. There was many double trips to the stores, and mod podge is now officially NOT my favorite thing to do.

I also made one for one of my best friends, Jessica and her boy Aaron. and their song is "untitled" by interpol. yes, this was also one of my favorites.

this was my parents and xmas eve. :)

Jeremy helped drilled holes in all of the plaques and I put ribbon through them...

and here they are all wrapped for the cute fam!

the end! well, now I know next time I embark on a craft like this, to plan for more time. I seriously finished wrapping these the night before Christmas!!

anyways. more about our Christmas to come!

love love love.

ps. merry xmas!