Fall in Florida...

...is beautiful, sunny, and 80+ degrees! Hello convertible weather!

And un-luckily there was a very convincing saleswoman at the Avis counter in the airport so we that's exactly what we ended up with.  A bright red 2013 Ford Mustang Convertible.  Look how shiny.  We kept the top down the entire time.

I guess I should take a step back here.  This past week Eric has a week long break from school so we decided to go on a another trip.  My brother, Alex, is currently stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in Fort Walton, Florida - right on the Gulf of Mexico by Pensacola.  We packed up and headed down for some fun in the sun with Alex.

As soon as we got to Florida all I wanted to do was get to the beach.  As quickly as humanly possible.  And with a beach that is as gorgeous as this can you really blame me?

We stayed directly in Fort Walton but we spent all of our beach time over on Okaloosa Island.

I totally fell in love with all of the birds hanging out around us on our first day there.  It was fun taking pictures of them.

And while I was having fun with the birds Eric was spending his time just as enjoyably with his DS3 and  rocking some Mario.

Check out this sand.  It was like a fine, white sugar.

I convinced Eric to play around in the sand with me.  We dug tunnels and made a little turtle.  His name is Timothy.

One of the days we went over to Destin Beach.  They have a little area with shops and restaurants called Harborwalk Village. While there I had the best Starbucks Vanilla Steamer I've ever had and we spent an hour on a wave runner out in the Gulf of Mexico.  The wave runner was probably the coolest experience of the entire trip.  We went out into the gulf where the water was completely clear and incredibly warm.  While we were riding around we came up on a full pod of dolphins - about 12 in total.  There was even a baby dolphin.  It was so cool!  We got to idle up right next to them and ride along in the middle of them.  We were able to stay within 3-5 feet of them for about 10 minutes. Amazing!

On Saturday we met up with Alex and went back to the beach. This is the only picture I could get with him.

He then took us to an armament museum and he taught us about the planes he's jumped out of and the mines/bombs that he is learning to dis-arm.  And Eric got to sit in a flight simulator for an F-15!

As a perfect ending to our vacation Alex took us to play indoor volleyball with some people he knows from church.  We ended up playing for 3 hours.  It was fabulous.  We had a great trip.  We loved the beach, the food, and seeing Alex.  Can't wait to go back!!

xo,
Carly

5 states...4 days...1,500 miles

Our labor day weekend in a nutshell!  Eric and I decided on a random road trip to celebrate labor day this year. Not sure why but I've had a hankering to see Coeur D'Alene, Idaho since I was in college.  I planned out a route, rented a car, booked some hotels and off we went! Our route made a circle up through Oregon/Washington and back home through Montana.

Our drive up to Coeur D'Alene was spread out over two days.  We made it to Boise on Friday with a pit stop in Twin Falls for dinner and to see the Twin Falls temple.  It was a pretty little temple.  Gorgeous grounds and a perfect evening to walk around and look at everything.

Did I mention that we took Daisy with us on this trip?  It was a trial run to see how she traveled...and to see if she can swim but we'll get to that later.

Day 2, Saturday, took us from Boise to Coeur D'Alene with stops in La Grande, Kennewick, and Spokane on the way.  In La Grande, OR we took a break for Geocaching (it's on Eric's bucket list to geocache in all 50 states) and for lunch.  I packed enough food to feed a small army so we had a great picnic lunch at some random park in town.  It was sunny, green, and right next to a river.  A thoroughly enjoyable break for all of us.

Daisy even took time to pose for us next to the river.  Look how pretty :)

Our stop in Kennewick, WA involved walking around the Columbia River temple.  This was Eric's favorite temple of the trip.   It is small but has some really great architecture.

Total stop lasted about 20 minutes before we loaded back up and headed on to Spokane.  Neither of us had ever been to Spokane.  It's quite an interesting little city.  I loved the old buildings and the wonderful park/river in the center of town.

We were lucky enough to show up on the night with a food fair in the park.  They had booths, funnel cakes, ferris wheels, and live music.

We thoroughly enjoyed the few hours we spent walking around.  We did some geocaching, looked at bridges, and Daisy made a new friend.  Look how cute!

And we got to see the temple in Spokane.

After close to 11 hours of travel on Saturday we finally made it to Coeur D'Alene.  The area is absolutely stunning.  Tall trees, lots of green, and the magnificent lake.  The water was so clear...and cold!  We went on a hike around the lake the next morning to explore more of the shoreline.  On the hike we were able to get my favorite picture of the whole trip.  I love my little family.

One of our main goals for the trip was to see if Daisy could swim.  We've always wondered if her legs would be strong enough to hold up her body since they're so little.  I was told about a test you could do with dogs.  If you hold them over water and they start paddling their legs they should be swimmers.  We'd tried that with Daisy and it worked so we were confident in her abilities.  We put her down into the water and amazingly she started swimming!!  Not very well, and not for very long before she jumped out but she swam!

The pictures aren't the greatest but I promise you she was swimming.  The water was freezing and wavy so she didn't spend much time in it.

We loved our time in CDA.  It was relaxing, beautiful, and just what Eric and I needed as a refresher.  At least until both of us got food poisoning.  We didn't take any pictures on the last day and a half of our trip.  We spent Sunday night stuck in our hotel rooms.  The 10 hour drive home from CDA to Centerville was one of the longest days both of us can remember in quite a while.  We try not to think about it too much.

If any of you have a chance to visit Spokane or CDA we highly recommend it.  Just don't eat the food :)  On that happy note we'll leave you with a few more pictures from our trip.

xo,
Carly

Yummy Yummy Cupcakes

So Eric and I teach the 15 - 18 year old kids in our church.  We have a deal set up with them.  A week before our lesson we send out a text with a scripture reading assignment.  If they read they get a treat.  Last week they requested chocolate cupcakes. That was perfect for me because of something I had recently posted on Pinterest.  It shows different frosting tips and the design they make.



I've never really tried to do anything remotely fancy with cupcakes but I thought this was the perfect time to try.  I found a beginners set at Joann with some icing bags and a few tips then got to work.

For my trial run Eric picked out the flavors - chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting.

I forgot to take a picture of filling the cupcake liners but I have to share a tip with you.  My grandmother recently taught me to use an ice cream scoop to fill muffins/cupcakes.  Some of you may already do this but, if you don't, let me tell you...greatest idea ever!  It makes it so much faster and easier to fill the cups evenly.

Anyway, they looked so good coming out of the oven I had a hard time not just eating them right then and there.

Look at all of that chocolatey, cupcakey goodness.

The frosting recipe I used was from Food Network. It was a basic Vanilla buttercream frosting.
I used the large star tip and made swirly things and some spikey flower-looking things.  Obviously going with official terms here.

For a first attempt I think they turned out okay.  Nothing professional but definitely good enough for me and our sunday school class!

YUMMY!!

xo,

Carly

Connecting the Wires

Another Saturday is upon us and I had a project that needed to get done.  Our new home has network cables in the walls and many rooms have a network jack ready to go.  The problem with all that is those cables didn't actually connect to anything!  In our laundry room we have a box that has all of our network/phone/cable/satellite cables, a lot I know.  So today was the day to change all that.  My dad graciously came over to help me out as he has a lot of experience having wired their home.

The box that was installed doesn't have electricity and if we were going to connect the network together it needed a switch which needed to be powered.  After a quick trip to Home Depot, we had the necessary electrical wires, box, outlet, and screws to get everything in place.  The box was removed to and we drilled a hole through a stud and tapped into the breaker box to give us power to the electrical outlet.  It was nice because we didn't need to remove any drywall which was something we had been dreading.  I don't have an original photo with the wires in the box but it was a mess.  Essentially all the wires you see in the picture below were just all smashed in the box.  We cleaned it up a lot.

With the outlet in place all that was left was to put the connector ends on the cables and plug in the switch.  The trick with Cat5 Ethernet cables is that there are two types, a normal Ethernet cable and a crossover cable.  In a crossover cable the wires at the end are wired differently and we needed them to match to get a normal Ethernet cable.  I unscrewed the plate under my computer and looked at how it was wired.  We decided it was a type B cable and so we wired accordingly which is White-Orange/Orange/White-Green/Blue/White-Blue/Green/White-Brown/Brown, just in case you wanted to know.

Every cable needed to be wired as such and with that done we simply needed to plug it all in and clean up.  Testing all the ports showed that we did it right and firing up the Xbox gave me an open NAT.  I am very pleased.  I've had a Moderate NAT forever since I was sharing Internet from my laptop to the Xbox but now it has a direct connection!  Awesome.  This house just gets better and better.  Thanks to my dad who, once again, had all the tools and know-how to get the job done quickly and right.

First make it possible.  Then make it beautiful.  Then make it fast.

Eric

Pinterest Project Party

Let me begin by offering my apologies.  This post is about 3 months overdue and is the story of 4 friends that got together one day in April to be crafty and creative together.  As I have mentioned in previous posts I follow the wonderful John & Sherry of Young House Love.  Once a quarter Sherry and her friend Katie have a pinterest challenge where they stop pinning and start doing!  I wanted to do the same thing with my friends so I invited Heather, Amy Jo, and Ashlee over and we all went to work.

We brought out the cutting boards...

And the ironing board...

And the glitter...

And our sewing machines.

I think we ended up with some pretty great projects.  Ashlee worked on a plaque for her mother.  She used acrylic paints and Heather's cricuit to cut out the vinyl.  She also fancied up an old pair of black heels with glitter.  They looked so cute!  Like a brand new pair of pumps.

 My project was a cafe curtain for our kitchen window.  I picked a bright yellow fabric to bring some color into what is otherwise a pretty neutral room.  I used a spring curtain rod and clips so I didn't have to sew any tabs or pockets.  The sewing itself went pretty quickly but I did have to make a second trip back to Joanns to get more clips.

I like how it still lets in a lot of light but allows for enough privacy when needed.

This beautiful blanket was Amy Jo's project.  She made it for a friend or a cousin (I can't remember) who was having a little baby girl.  She made the entire thing in the one day we were working on things.  I wish I could sew that quickly and still have something turn out so nice.

Everyone raved over Amy Jo's blanket and she's already been commissioned to make blankets for all of us when we have our own little babies!  Our friend Kaley has even picked out her colors already...gray and pink.

Heather had the great idea to make a throw pillow from a famous Audrey Hepburn quote - "Paris is always a good idea".  I really like how it turned out.  Simple but still more interesting than a normal pillow.   

We ended up with some really great things and I know that I had a great time with the girls.  I actually think I'm about ready for another one!  There are plenty of projects that I need to work on.  I guess I'm going to have to gather up the crafting troops again!

So is anyone else completely addicted to pinning but lacking in the motivation to actually start doing?  Any fun pinterest-inspired projects out there?

xo,
Carly