Home Sweet Home

FINALLY... I know (Dani & Katie)!!! With school being so crazy and with me also trying to finish up with some things around the house, I haven't had time yet to post about the house we moved into in January. Since both Nick and I's families are so far away, they haven't seen the house yet. They have been patient and have been waiting for pictures. So for family, personal documentation, and others interested, here you are! :)

First off, I thought I would VERY QUICKLY (so quick that NOTHING is even to scale... my teachers at school would NOT approve) draw up 2 floor plans of our house. It is a two story house and because my pictures aren't very good, and because I didn't post pics of every room, you can still get an idea of the layout of the house. Doors, windows, and not all furniture have been added... just walls and basic things, so that you get the idea.

First Floor

Second Floor

Our house is decorated in all black and white with accents of different colors in each room. I'm obsessed with black and white. I'm also in love with Damask print or a contemperary baroque style.

Guest Bedroom

This particular room was inspired by the artwork I did at Northwest College, in the Lower right-hand corner. Nick says I don't use my artwork around the house enough, so I decided this piece would be fun to use. As you can see two identical pieces are above the bed.

I plan to add other pieces of artwork to this room as well... of course ones that are the same type of art.

Guest Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bath

Living Room

Pretty sure that this is my favorite room in the house. First of all, because we're renting, I'm not allowed to put up any wall coverings, so for the damask print I wanted to do, I did the next best thing... stenciling!! (love the stencil?? I know just where you can get one!!)

Kitchen

Granite Counter tops, dark wood cabinets, and Black appliances (minus the fridge... did ya see that??) :) Wierd huh?? Remember we're just renting we didn't pick them out! :) I LOVE LOVE the pantry. Having room for food is amazing. Not to mention all the cupboard space... some of them don't even have anything in them! :)

Dinning Area

Well, there you go... what do you think? Thanks to my patient husband, this was able to be accomplished!! :) We have been loving living in a house and not in an apartment. I guess there is two things we miss from the condo we were living in before...

1. HOT TUB

2. Fireplace

...but its completely worth it all when you don't have to worry about hearing everything that crazy people do (like beat their wife.. and then hearing the cops pound on their door at least twice a month) so family... I know you like it so much your just dying to come see it in person aren't you?? The guest room is calling your name! :)

Cheap Date Day!!

(NOTE: This blog is not only a way to keep in touch 'visually' with our families, but is also a way to document the things we do together as a couple, so we can always remember them. The main point of this post is to remind us how simple things can be while still having a BLAST!!)

Have any of you seen this commercial?? It's a Sonic commerical, but it's really funny. Check it out...

Well, we LOVE this commcercial and it has inspired us to have 'Cheap Date day/nights' on mondays!! :)

(warning: we don't plan to have DAY LONG dates like this every monday, but we had 3 different things to celebrate... NO SCHOOL, Valentines, and cheap date day!!)

Today we decided to celebrate Valentines and also do our 'Cheap Date Day'. It started off by driving to Logandale... WHY? you might ask... well I am love with Marverik Hot Dogs. Ya, it may be sick and disgusting to some of you, but I LOVE them. I can't even remember the last time I had one. I also LOVE their pickles and banana peppers. Doesn't take much to please this girl!! Vegas doesn't have Maveriks, but Logandale does...

30 min drive+couple bucks for lunch=CHEAP AMAZING DATE!! :)

Look at this sign we saw on our drive... we're only 1/2 mile from home!! ;)

(for those who don't know, Byron is a small town not to far from our hometown)

We drove around Logandale for awhile, just relaxing and checking out the small town life. It was such a fun, relaxing day. It was also such a beauitful day, 70 degrees. :) Very very nice since its been raining off and on the last month. I've been looking forward to the sun!! :)

When we got back to Vegas, we decided it would be fun to go mini-golfing. It was open this time and we had a blast. We met a family from Wheatland, Wyoming... they were one hole ahead of us the whole time. We think we may have annoyed them a little because we have fun and tend not to care what people think about it! :) We started to get a little bored waiting for the wyoming family to move onto the next hole ahead of us, so we began making human obstacles for eachother to try and get the golf ball through. :) (You'll have to check out those pics!) On hole 16 I got REAL lucky and got a-hole-in-one!!! That's pretty good compared to the previous holes where it was more like a-hole-in-5!! :) I got my name on the "Hole in One" board... yep, just as excited as a 5 year old I know... once again very very easy to please.
I'm going to just put a slide show up of all our pics from the golf because that would just be too long. :)

To celebrate Valentines, Nick decided to end the date day with going to dinner at Olive Garden.
Obviously, not making it an ALL DAY thing will help keep the whole "cheap" idea in order. :) I am personally looking forward to these date days together. We're already sick of this semesters schedule and not getting to see eachother very often, so this is going to be great, cheap, and so much fun for us!!

King of Country

Nick and I may be George Strait's BIGGEST FANS EVER!!! :) I have ALWAYS wanted to see George in concert and knew that living in Vegas would HAVE TO present the opportunity to us!! When Nick and I were engaged, and he was here and I was still in Wyoming, George was in Vegas and we tried to make it work so that I could come visit at the same time... But of course that didn't work. I told Nick then that he couldn't go without me! :) :) Nick waited for me and said that George would come back to town another time and we could go together... that's how I knew Nick was a keeper! :)

Well, George came back to town on February 6, and we promised each other that no matter what, the next time he came to town, we WERE going!! So, we got tickets in advance and on Saturday night, we went to MGM to see George in concert. And we lucked out too, because Reba is on tour with him right now. Two of the best country artists in one night... you can't beat that!! Leeann Womack opened for them too, which was also great!! Either of us had EVER seen either of these artists in concert before.

Everyone must have been just as excited as us, because getting there was a NIGHTMARE!! Traffic and lines into the arena were just ridiculous. The place was packed tight full of random people too. :) Between Reba and George we went out to take a break and walk around, but we ended up standing along a wall and watching all sorts of different people walk around. 'People watching' is one of our favorite things to do. :) :) I kept telling Nick, "my dad would be getting a HUGE kick out of this", and for two reasons; one being that he also loves to 'people watch' and the second, seeing all the city-folk dressed up in their "cowboy gear". Nothing is funnier than seeing a bunch of brand new, never-worn-before cowboy hats, boots, and jeans... you know what I mean. However, we did see some people representing Wyoming via shirts, hats, etc. We wanted to get pics of them but they disappeared too fast. :)

ANYWAYS... back to concert, that was just one of the highlights of our night!! :)

During Reba's performance, they did the funniest thing... Are you familiar with the TV show, "Reba"? It's on lifetime and is a pretty cute show. Melissa Peterman plays 'Barbra Jean' on the show and is a very funny character. Reba and Barbra Jean have a love-hate relationship and right before Reba sang the theme song for the show, "I'm a Survivor", Barbra Jean runs onto the stage.... here is a clip of it...

(please ignore the annoying girls screaming in the background) :)

George Strait did an AMAZING job!! You know they are the real deal when they sound even better live then on the radio/cd. Since George doesn't have even ONE bad song, they were all amazing and it was so fun to actually get to see him. They did a close-up shot of him on the big screen and Nick and I looked at each other with surprising faces... the poor guy is getting old :)... hes been the "king" for years and years, but I guess I didn't realize how long it actually has been. We looked it up later and he's 58 years old! :(... but still one good looking guy who has the best voice and BEST music!! :) If any of you are country music fans, it is a concert you DO NOT want to miss!! Now I can cross a number off my 'bucket list'!! :)

HAPPY DAY!!!!!

Many of you know that I've been attending the College of Southern Nevada in order to complete the Interior Design program. I started this program the Summer of 2009 and have been working hard to complete it as soon as possible. In fact, I quit my job in order to take as full of a load as possible to complete as soon as I could. Thanks to my hard, hard working husband, this has been possible. However; there were a few things holding me back from completing it as soon as I thought was possible...let me give ya some background info before I explain this....

I graduated from Northwest College, (Wyoming) in May of 2008 with an Associates of Fine Arts and then transfered to UNLV thinking I would complete my degree in Art Education. Well, long story short, UNLV and teaching Art was NOT for me. So then I transfered from UNLV to CSN to complete the Interior Design program which I LOVE and it has been so fun!!

...SO back to "THAT THING" holding me back.... Transfering from school to school to
school, is a very LONG and sticky process. Most schools would transfer an Associates degree as a whole degree instead of breaking it up into individual classes, but CSN does NOT do this. Well, I got my Degree Audit from the Admissions office at CSN in October 2009, and it was broken down class by class telling me what they would and would NOT accept from both UNLV and NWC. It said that they would NOT accept 8 of my transfer classes. GENERAL classes, let me add... math, science, communciation, english...you get the point. SO instead of me graduating in MAY 2010, it would be more like May 2011. That wouldn't have been such a big deal to me if it was more interior related classes that I had never taken, where I would be learning more. But it was just taking the exact same general class I had already taken... VERY frustrating!!

So, I ended up calling my program director, almost in tears, and he reassured me that we would work together to get these classes passed, so that I wouldn't have to take them again. Between meeting with him, and a counselor who specializes in transfers, I wrote up 8 different sets of paper work explaining that "I have already taken this class", and so forth...We then turned in the paper work and it was sent to each program directors office for approval or denial.

5 MONTHS later, February 5, 2010, I recieved the results............

AND....

They APPROVED all 8 classes that I fought for and I WILL be graduating in 4 months,

May 2010!!!