Another last...

Today was my last first day of a full year of college. That may sound silly but it's a big deal. Next year I will have one semester in the fall but it will be spent doing my student teaching in a classroom far from campus. So today was my last first day of school...ever. To make the whole thing an even bigger deal, Josh took my picture. 

I felt so much like a little kid. 

Like my headband? :)

Also, to start the school year off right I received a beautiful back to school blessing from Josh last night. It means so much to me to have a husband that is worthy to have the priesthood and give me blessings whenever I need them!

So long sweet summer.

What can I say, I was in a crafty mood

I was wandering around Facebook yesterday and I happened upon a picture that I have seen often...

Beautiful, right? Well, this is one of my best friends Alyson. I love this picture so much and I absolutely love that headband. I noticed a comment from alyson on the picture mentioning that it was her roommates and she bought it on Etsy. Next thing I knew I was browsing Etsy looking at all the fun things people make and next thing you know, I'm at Wal*Mart. I bought 2 plain headbands, a bunch of fun colors of fabric, felt and a hot glue gun. 

I cut the fabric into strips between a 1/2 inch and an inch thick and about a yard long and just start twisting and rolling around like a cinnamon roll (hot gluing along the way). And before you know it...

I have a whole bunch of these. I wanted to have a complete headband for the first day of school (tomorrow) so i just kept going. 

After I had a bunch that I liked i arranged them how I wanted them on my headband, glued them onto some white felt and cut the design out. Then I glued it on a headband and...

Viola! Pretty cute right? I'm super excited about what it looks like and I can't wait to get creative and try different kinds and colors! Yay for crafts! :)

Scrumptious

Here's what we had for dinner last night!

Doesn't that look so good? Well, at least for those who like Indian food. That is chicken tikka masala. It's super delicious and not too spicy. And it's a great meal for those of you who enjoy indian food but aren't gutsy enough to make it from scratch like me! :) The only thing you need is a Super Target! We love Super Target for grocery shopping for one main reason...Archer Farms. Archer Farms has the best food, including their Tikka Masala simmer sauce. So if you want to try it and you live near a Super Target look for this next time you're there...

I just trow some chicken in the crockpot with a jar of this and let it cook on high for about 4 hours. Then we lightly shred the chicken and serve it over white rice. It's really delicious. Another plus for this meal, Archer Farms naan. Naan is an indian flatbread. We just brush it with butter and toast it in the oven for about 3-4 minutes. DELICIOUS!!! And this time I served it with fresh green beans fried in butter. Heaven I tell you, heaven.

Flying with Shoes on

Here are just a few more additions to the house.

Josh and I made it to Target today and got a few last organizational items for our closet. The biggest issue with our closet was the shoes. Josh and I both own a lot of shoes and keeping them in a big heap has been an incredibly big hassle. So we bought this to help with the problem.

I'm so exited to have a more organized closet!

Also, we added this to our bedroom today.

In case you can't tell...it's a poster on our bedroom wall of the inside of a plane. Josh was given that today and told to study it because he's going to be flying on Tuesday.

For those of you that don't know Josh is in school to be an air traffic controller. He is majoring in Aviation Management and plans to attend CTI school after he receives his degree. This semester he has decided to get his private pilots license. It is quite the investment (both time and money) but I just know he is going to love it.  It has been fun watching his interest in planes grow and develop. I love hearing him talk about planes. Every time we see a plane he tries to name it :) It's really adorable. Anyways, to get his pilot's license he has to be trained and put in a lot of hours flying. It's just over 50 total. He will spend the first couple months with a pilot in the plane and then he does 10 hours of solo day flying and 5 hours of solo night flying. Yikes. He also has to do a 150 mile trip solo. Pretty scary, but he seems to be really excited about all of it. He will be flying in one of these...

Cute right? He goes to the Provo airport three times a week and gets to fly in this. I seriously laughed when I saw it. It's so tiny! It might look big in the picture but just to give you a better idea, it's 7 ft tall and only 24 ft long. I suppose that's a good place to start though :)

I am so proud of him!

Everybody shout HOORAY

because we're back in PROVO!!!


Am I excited? Yes. Only just slightly. But really...a lot. Josh and I spent the summer in the Carolinas. We spent the first half in North Carolina working and the second half in South Carolina living with Josh's family cleaning for their cleaning company. It was a long couple of months. We are incredibly grateful to the entire Titus family for everything! They really helped us out and provided us with work :) which = money! (always a plus) 


But now...we are back where we belong. Provo! Let me just preface this exciting post with this. Josh and I both agree that we don't want to raise our family here. Nothing against anyone who does, it's just not for us. But after a long summer away from our beautiful little apartment, the wonderfully non-humid weather and the breath-taking mountains we are so grateful to be home. Josh and I have been incredibly blessed to be able to live in one place our entire marriage. We love our little apartment and plan to stay here until we leave Provo (unless we get pregnant in which case we would need something a little bigger) but since that isn't in the plans for a while, we are here to stay! :) 


The last 4 days have consisted of unpacking and getting things in order for school (books, tuition, josh's flight school, etc.). Just now am I sitting down in a (nearly) completely unpacked house! And all it took was to get Josh out of the house for a few hours :) Just kidding. He has been a HUGE help this week. But we often work better when we're alone. We just get distracted too easy around each other. 


Unpacking always (which is just now because this is really my first time moving...) makes me want to redecorate. I loved our apartment just the way it is but when we started moving things back in we decided to do a few new things. 


First and most importantly, we cleaned. We spent the entire day on Monday scrubbing everything. It was quite the feat but we did it! 
Second, we decided on some better organizational ideas. Our closet is large but quite narrow so we are in the process of finding the best way to organize it. We have picked out a few things at Target that we think will work. 
Third, we lined all our kitchen drawers and cupboards. I'm not sure why this didn't happen when we first moved in. Probably because we were so busy being newlyweds and didn't care that our cupboards were bright green ugly leaves like this...

 But now they look like this...

Fourth, We decided we have too much stuff so Josh has started getting into Amazon. He has posted tons of things on there. We are also keeping more stuff in the basement since there is tons of storage room down there.
Lastly, there has been some rearranging and redecorating. Today I went to Wal*mart to look at fake flowers (inspired by my sister and her fake flower arrangements[see them here and here). Unfortunately their flowers were a little out of my price range but I seen some flowers outside of the Dollar Tree so I hit that place up next. Usually their flowers are cheap but I actually found some really cute ones! I was super excited. And with some spanish moss I think my arrangement turned out cute! :) What do you think?

So now we are finally all moved in and our friend's stuff is all moved out :) We are excited and ready to back in the swing of things (aka school). 

It's about time...

we went to the BEACH! 


We have been on the East Coast all summer and 2 days before we leave to head back to Utah we finally made it to the beach. We had been planning on taking multiple trips but somehow we were too busy. But we made it. And Josh's sister Kendal came along too which only made the trip better. The twins really wanted to come but unfortunately school started for them this week :( Total bummer! But we had a great day.


We headed out around 10 and got to Charleston around noon. We hit the beach first so we didn't end up there in the really busy hours. Also, that way we could see the market before it closed at 5. We spent a few hours laying out in the sun just enjoying some relax time....

But mostly...we swam. I must admit that watching shark week a couple weeks ago made swimming in the ocean pretty frightening but I still went up to my chin. I was so proud of myself. Josh, Kendal and I swam for a good couple hours. We just bobbed up and down like little booies while we talked! We made a ton of plans for next year when us, Kendal and Morgan and Jenn will all be living in Provo! We're so excited. 

When we were tired of the ocean/sand we hit the showers and headed into town. We actually went to the beach in Isle of Palms because there really aren't any great beaches in Charleston. Downtown Charleston is so beautiful. Josh and I were lucky enough to spend our anniversary there last summer and see more of the town. Today we just walked up and down the market and went in a few little shops. Then we were starving and so we found a great seafood place to have dinner. We got two appetizers; oysters... 

and calamari (my favorite). 

Kendal got a shrimp salad...

I ordered a shrimp pizza...

and Josh ordered Mahi Mahi tacos (Mahi Mahi is a kind of fish)

 I liked Josh's food the best! The fish tasted like chicken and it was really spicy and sweet at the same time! It was so good. I can't wait to eat the leftovers :) After dinner we walked back to the car and hit the road. It was such a fun little day trip. I'm so glad we got to go to the beach at least once while we were here. I just LOVE the Atlantic Ocean. It's so warm!! 

It's been a great day!

Greenville

 (park in downtown Greenville)

Two weekends ago after getting back from Utah, Josh and I had the chance to take a day trip to Greenville, SC. My dad lives in Greenville and since we have quite a bit of family here on the East Coast it was Josh and I, my sister and her family, my dad, my aunt Mary and Uncle Jeff and two of my cousins, Danielle and Lauren. It was a lot of fun. With our crazy work schedule we weren't able to take off more than a day so we drove there in the morning and drove back that night. While we were there we got to see a beautiful park, eat lunch, hit a fun little candy shop, go mini-golfing and spend time together as a family at my dad's house. And my personal favorite part of the day was shooting off fireworks in my dad's backyard. Growing up in Washington was great but I never knew what I missing when it came to fireworks. In South Carolina there are basically no rules when it comes to what fireworks you can use and when. It was the end of July and we shot off a ton of crazy fireworks.

It was a great day and we're glad we got to go and see everyone. It was a lot of family that we don't get to see often and so we were grateful for that.

I also discovered how to take slow shutter pictures on this trip so we took advantage of that!

Cool right?

lighting firecrackers

Taylor making a "T"

Taylor and I making circles.

Josh doing infinity.

Josh making circles around himself. 

Wizard Josh.

Shooting off 3  bottle rockets at once.

it's a star!

mini-golfing

crazy tree

Tommy's Wedding

On Friday Josh and I got to go to Tommy Dunn's sealing. He married a really sweet girl named Megan from Atlanta. But since the Atlanta temple is closed for renovation the sealing was in the Columbia, SC temple. We felt really blessed to go to their sealing and be a part of that special time. The sealing was beautiful and they looked so perfect! 

(the little boy is Megan's son)

On Saturday we drove down to Atlanta for the reception. Atlanta is about 4 hours away, so not too bad. We left around noon and got back at 2am. It was a lot of driving, but the reception was so worth it. And Josh was a groomsman so he had to be there for pictures. But even if he wasn't, we would have been there for Tommy. The reception was adorable and I got to take a ton of pictures! :) It was a great weekend! And the best part...Josh danced with me. Josh hates dancing because it makes him feel really uncomfortable but he danced all night with me. It was incredibly sweet and the best night ever! I just love that guy!!