Mourning

This week I put in 19 hours of (fun) difficult labor to make 75 Halloween sugar cookies for a friend's party last night. I made 25 bats, 25 spider webs and 25 jack-o-lantern pumpkins. They were OH SO CUTE. I even did a photo shoot of them before I wrapped them up in their treat bags so I could add them to my cookie portfolio.

Then today, oh the sadness...I found that the pictures had been deleted from our camera. Oh Brent, I know it was an accident, but it pains me so.

My only consolation is that I have this picture of the sugar cookies I made for my niece's duck-themed one-year birthday party.

I do have quite a few leftover "duds." Bats, webs and pumpkins where the frosting job didn't turn out quite as I had hoped...I suppose I could take pictures of those. Anyone interested in seeing them?

By the way, I LOVE making sugar cookies. If I could, I would work in a bakery and decorate sugar cookies for a living. My problem is that as it stands now, mass producing cookies is a problem area for me. How in the WORLD to bakeries do it? I spent 13 hours alone frosting the darn things. I've GOT to come up with a better method for frosting.

This time I didn't charge for the labor, I just asked for reimbursement for the supplies. Comes down to $0.40 per cookie. That was $30 for this order. But imagine, if I had charged for my labor as well, at the rate I currently get paid at Starbucks, I would have gotten $190. $190 for 75 cookies? Who's gonna go for that? I MUST get faster before I start charging.

Thanks for listening. It means so much to me. :)

Surprise! I Chopped Off My Hair!

So last week my beloved Brent and I were separated while I served my sick sister and her kids in Seattle while HER husband was out of town. I left Brent looking like this...

...more or less. When I arrived home yesterday, I looked like this:

(I'm sure I could have found a better place in the airport to take a video of myself talking about my husband's coming reaction to my haircut, but after spending a week caring for two kiddos, my brain was in a fog. A bathroom stall seriously seemed like the best place at the time.)

Here is the video of my love's reaction. I spotted him from afar, so bear with the long video.

Yes, he loved it. He couldn't stop talking about it yesterday...how cute I looked...how different I looked...how much he was crazy about the new do.

And yes, he did arrive to pick me up at the airport with a dozen roses. Be jealous.

:)

Brain Lapse

Question:

Where was my head the other night when I was putting away the leftover Chicken Broccoli Casserole?

Boy, was that rank the next morning.

Our Birthdays

Check this out. I won 2nd place in Lukas's trash-the-dress contest! Brent and I actually get to do it! Woohoo! I feel so honored!

Needless to point out, there is a desperate need for me to update my blog. It feels like I haven't blogged all summer, which is sad, because it's been an extremely eventful summer with lots of blogworthy occasions and occurances. I'm going to attempt to catch up, one past summer event at a time, and hopefully regain your interest in this sad excuse for a blog.

I'll start with the celebration of Brent and my birthdays. Our big days are only 10 days apart from each other in July/August so Brent's family offered to host a big birthday bbq with my family in celebration of both of us. So kind of them. :)

The bbq was on a Sunday, so our plan was to go to church and then have everyone meet at the Tylers' home at 2:00. Or so I thought was the plan.

For some reason I didn't wake up to my alarm that Sunday morning, so I ended up waking to Brent urging me to get up and get ready for church. When I looked at the clock and saw that no matter what we were going to be late, I told him we should just go to the second service and keep sleeping. He protested and begged me to get out of bed and throw some clothes on for church. It was an ironic situation because usually I am the one struggling to disturb Brent Bear out of his hibernation on Sunday mornings. :) It was a true role reversal.

Anyway, he eventually convinced me that something was happening that was important enough for me to get out of bed, throw some clothes on and go get to the car. So I did! Except I stopped short on the way to the car because, upon opening my front door, my sister (who lives in Seattle) was sitting in the hallway outside the door. I shrieked because I was spooked (I'm easily spooked), then I started laughing.

Heather and Matt and their girls were supposed to arrive in LA for vacation like five days later, but it was a surprise for me that Heather and her newborn were flying down early to be a part of the birthday bbq. :) Such a loving sister.

Heather kidnapped Brent and I from going to church and swept us off to a birthday breakfast at Chocolatine.

Here we are gawking at the pastry case...

I'm not usually allowed to have coffee because it might cause the awful painful episodes in my gut that I get sometimes, but for my birthday breakfast Brent offered the go-ahead to get a cup of the liquid bliss. I chose a cappucino.

I ordered a quiche for breakfast...it was the closest thing to breakfast food they had. And it was so good.

Brent got a panini.

And Heather? Heather opted for the chocolate cake. For breakfast.

Ok, so she can't eat gluten, and there were no breakfasty-items that didn't have gluten in them...except for this flourless chocolate cake. :) Oh, so hard to have to live without gluten.

Brent and I ordered some truffles after we ate our meal. I got the passionfruit truffle...

And Brent went for the all-time favorite: the chili pepper chocolate truffle.

Later that day, we met the rest of the family at the Tyler home. I snuggled my Livie-niecie-poo, and she just thought it was tragic thing to have to put up with. Or maybe she was just hungry.

These pictures make me smile every time. Our little Liv is gonna be SUCH a drama queen!

My other niece was bright and cheery though. She looked so darn cute in her purple outfit!

A little later Olivia got fed and was a little more content to be with me.

So Rita and Larry had planned about ten games for us to all participate in. Not so much games...but individual races against the clock. They had gotten their inspiration for the games from a show called "A Minute to Win It." Brent and I had to win every one of them in order to earn our birthday gifts.

First, Brent had one minute to separate a bowl full of M&M's into five different mini bowls according to their color. He failed to organize them all within the time frame, so it was determined that there were too many M&M's in the bowl to begin with. Some of them were removed, and Brent tried again. He made it with just seconds to spare.

I tried, and I don't think I made it the first time. The judges were gracious though, and I got to open one of my gifts along with Brent.

Anyone else who wanted to try any of the games could; I think my brothers Harrison and Hunter both tried this one.

One of the other games involved faces and oreos. Each person had to start with their oreo on their forehead, and in one minute finagle it down to inside their mouth. Most of us opted to just fling the oreo from our foreheads with a quick flick of the neck and then catch it in our teeth on its way down. After a few tries everyone eventually got it. The attempts sure made for funny pictures too!

My sweetheart husband had me open his gift to me in front of everyone. He made sure to get my reaction on tape.

The trip to see the last space shuttle launch is especially awesome for me because when I met Brent, I had only like two months before made the decision to discontinue my pursuit of a career as an astronaut. I was/am a NASA nerd and have ALWAYS, always always always wanted to see a space shuttle launch in person.

So, my reaction to his awesome gift could have been so much more animated...however, I get a twinge of guilt every time I watch this video. The reason is because I remember that the only thing I could think of at the time was "HOW can we afford this?" I wish I had just trusted my husband who has proved time and again to be a faithful and wise steward of our finances. If I could rewind the tape and open that up that sweet, sweet card for the first time again, I would have jumped up out of my chair, jumped on Brent, smooched him big time, and laughed and laughed and laughed, with maybe a few joyful tears. :)

Here is a video of another game we played. We had to pair up and use these toys to throw a ball to each other, and make three successful throws/catches in one minute. It turned out to be pitifully easy once everyone got the hang of it.

For the game in THIS video, in one minute we had to take these stack of cups and with one hand build a pyramid with them, and then stack them back down again. DIFFICULT! I don't think anyone completed this task.

This next one was surprisingly more challenging than it would seem to be. We were given a stack of cups, one of them red-rimmed and the rest of them white-rimmed. In one minute we had to rotate the stack, one cup at a time, so that the red-rimmed cup would go from the bottom of the stack to the top and back down to the bottom again.

Oh my. I think I hated this next game. It would be more fun with a better squirt gun, but the lack of the squirt gun's efficiency might have been the point. We paired up against an opponent and had to be the first one to wipe out each of the candle flames with just the piddly little splatter from the gun. Oh goodness.

This next one should be a science experiment. I feel inspired to research WHY this works. There were like five drinking glasses filled with water lined up on the edge of a table, with paper plates on top of all of them. On each of the paper plates there was a toilet paper role, and sitting in each of the roles was a fresh egg. In one minute we had to flick a broomstick against the paper plate and grab the broomstick in time for the plate and the toilet paper role to go flying, and the egg to fall gracefully into the cup full of water. This video isn't the best example of this phenomenon because it was the last contestant, and by that time the paper plates and roles were soaked, skewing the results. However, everyone else who tried it scored a hole-in-one with each egg! Amazing!

And the last game I have to show you is where we had to dip our noses in vaseline, then dip our gooped-up noses in cotton balls, run across the yard with them still on our noses, and transfer them to another bowl. I think we had to get 6 cotton balls in one minute. Pretty easy, but it was still fun. :)

In conclusion, I believe this post demonstrates the fact that I have the best sister in the world, the sweetest and most thoughtful husband in the world, and the most creative and best in-laws in the world!

A Letter to a Photographer

Dear Lukas,

I was beyond excitement upon stumbling on your announcement that you were holding a contest for one blessed couple to receive a FREE underwater trash-the-dress session. Every time I think about the possibility of winning the session, I get little butterflies in the pit of my stomach. I hope this letter catches your attention.

My husband and I were married over a year and a half ago, on January 3rd, 2009. (Your sister did our photography - artistic talent runs in your family!) Even before our wedding, Brent and I determined that we wanted to invest in a post-wedding day photo shoot in our tux and gown, because we wanted artistic photos of us in an unorthodox, striking location in our wedding day get-up. Unfortunately, since we've been married we haven't yet found the money in our budget to hire a photographer (you) for such a session. :)

So I'm supposed to tell you why you should choose us. Hmm, well, since you asked:

• I used to be a nationally competitive synchronized swimmer, and I think my synchro skills would give an intriguing and artistic dimension to our underwater photos. I'm thinking of all these really pretty underwater ballet positions I can get into and maintain in my wedding dress, with me in the background and Brent in the foreground...it would be so lovely. :)
• My wedding dress would be gorgeous underwater. It has a lacy, transparent and slightly sparckly train that will flow so beautifully in the water and will make a breathtaking picture when rays of sunlight shine through it. I didn't get any pictures of my dress that showed off the beauty of the train, and photographing it underwater would flatter it perfectly. Here are two pictures where you can get a better look at the lacy train. (In the second one, it's been bustled.)

• Over the past year and a half Brent has taken hundreds of pictures of me, and yet we have like TWO pictures together from the same time frame. That's an exaggeration, but it illustrates a point: I need artistic pictures of me and my handsome hubby TOGETHER!
• Ok, I don't think this will be possible, but I thought you might give me a point for creativity for mentioning it. Brent and I honeymooned in Hawaii, and snorkeling among the tropical fishies was of course a high point of our trip. It would be SO FUN to have pictures of us in our tux and wedding gown underwater among lots of tropical fish! Snorkel masks and fins would complete it! Hehe! Again, tropical fish in a pool isn't possible, but it's a cool thought. :)
  

Thank you for this amazing offer Lukas! We would be so blessed to win! And no matter who gets the fabulous prize, I'll look forward to viewing the photo shoot on your website!

Eagerly anticipating Tuesday morning,

Hayley Tyler

DRESSERS!!!!!

So like I told you all before - if you were paying attention - I've been working on refurbishing our bedroom dressers that I've owned since before I can remember. Well...that my parents owned from before I can remember, and then they let me take them when I got married. 1 1/2 years of marriage proved too long to have those dressers in our bedroom in the shape/style that they were in, so I went about the task of whipping them into good looks. Those babies have now been through rigorous cleaning, sanding, five coats of paint, and knob replacement. And they now look FANTASTIC! Here is a before picture, again:

Cleaning the dressers before sanding them down was quite a revealing activity. It brought to mind the fact that never - NEVER - in the course of my relationship with them have they ever been cleaned, other than a dust here or there. Before my eyes, the dressers turned bright white in areas I always gullably believed to be *ivory*. Stains of various colors that I had always glanced over came off easily with a little soap and water, and made me a bit guilty that I had never thought of cleaning them off before. The girl who helped me clean the dressers even suggested that they didn't need repainting, they had just needed a wash, the difference was so dramatic! Watching all the years worth of dirt and grime come off the dressers before my eyes has made me feel icky every time I use my bare fingers to touch the old knobs I still have on there that I haven't yet scrubbed...need to scrub them asap!

So before I show you the after pictures, I need to fill you in on one detail. These aren't really "after pictures" at all. I'm not quite finished with them yet, and I've been waiting so long to post the pics on my blog because I was holding out for the day when they would be truly and completely finished. Not much more needs to be done with them, all I have to do is scrub with metal cleaner the pulls that I left on the drawers. Having scrubbed one of the pulls I know the visually pleasing difference a good scrubbing makes, so I wanted my real after picture for you all to have scrubbed pulls, not 20-years-worth-of-grime pulls. Also, I wanted to wait to post pictures until I was finished decorating the areas around the dressers and my bedroom was perfectly clean, but I'm realizing none of those goals are going to be reached anytime soon, so I'm making you settle for less than "after" pictures. Sorry.

Now, here are the long-awaited after shots:

Cuter-than-cute knobs from Anthropologie:

More cuter-than-cute knobs from Anthropologie:

So because the spacing between the holes for the pulls is an outdated two inches, I haven't found pulls that I like that have the spacing for the screws that I need. And I don't feel like drilling new holes and gumming up the new ones. However, the old pulls don't look half bad now that the paint job and the other knobs have been updated. So I'm keepin' 'em. In the following picture, the knob in the upper right corner is the one that has gone through one round of good scrubbing. You can see the difference it makes:

Even the small things, like brass-colored hinges instead of the old white hinges, make such big statements and help to make the dressers so classy:

And the grand view of the bedroom!

Voila!

(Re)Decorating

My entry way has been in need of a little love and attention. So the other week, I gave it some.

Entry way table before.

Entry way table after.

Now, I wouldn't usually be one to place enlarged portraits of myself in frames and adorn my home with them, but things get a little different when you live with an adoring husband. (I came home from a busy day out once to find my coffee table COVERED in printed black and white photos he had taken of me...the least I could do was frame one of them. :)

So basically, I didn't change much here, but the things I did change/add gave the first-view-after-you-enter-my-home a HUGE pop (I think). Much more mature looking. Kept the black and white kissy photo, took away the blue-hued kissy photo (that photo/frame under the red flower balls made it look mismotched in a bad way), kept the vase with the red candle but added blue flowers to the vase (you'll see why in a minute), and added the cute little bride and groom figurines (favors from the wedding we were in recently).

Paperwork shelf in entry way before.

Paperwork shelf in entry way after.

So, I know, I didn't fix the heart of the problem: hiding the messy paper work. Unfortunately, this is literally the only mail/paperwork filing "cabinet" we own...even though our mail/paperwork sticks out of it. We'll upgrade when we really feel the need to I guess.

Anyways, redecorating the top of the shelf REALLY makes a difference, making that part of our entry way feel like part of our home rather than an office. I moved the blue kissy photo/frame over there to complement the blue shelf, put a little shaded candle next to it with some blue ribbon around it to tie in the blue, then mixed red and blue hydrangea flowers in a pink vase. The pink vase makes the pink ribbons on the flowers balls look less lonely, the blue flowers complement the photo/frame (and the blue flowers in the vase on the other table tie that tabletop arrangement to the shelf arrangement), and the red flowers tie the shelf arrangement to the red flower balls.

I haven't yet found a home for the wrought iron candle holder I removed from the wall though...he looked so lonely and forsaken sitting over there without any candles in him, but now he looks even more depressed laying on his backside in my linen closet. Maybe he'll find a permanent home in my bathroom...I'm redoing that room next.

Grand view shot before.

Grand view shot after.

In case you were wondering, one of the many reasons my posts have been so few and far between is because I've been busy refurbishing my bedroom dressers in my spare time. This is a before shot of one of them. These were my childhood dressers; my parents let me take them when Brent and I got married. We were thinking that we would have them for a year or so and then buy our own bedroom set...but yeah...that ain't happening any time soon. So I'm doing the best I can to make them look like classy married couple's bedroom furniture...not 4 year old girl furniture. I'm 95% done with the painting, then I get to go to Anthropologie and pick out the perfect knobs! Stay tuned for results!