I like to think of myself as a do-it-yourselfer. I often see nice things and think, “I can make that”. Then I’ll try and it won’t look nearly as good. But with my newest effort, I think I did a pretty good job.
My felty pillow case is made from Value Village canvas drapes and blue and gray …

A little book I made for my mom’s wedding. Book making has quickly become one of my favorite crafting projects. Especially when you can reuse or upcycle materials to make it. The cover of my little book was from a quite hideous leather coat I picked up from Value Village. Now it’ll be used t…

Just a couple of turkey heads for Thanksgiving.

If only working from home afforded such luxuries…

Oh well, I still get really excited when it snows—must be a Pavlovian response!

Our setup for our Christmas card this year!

It totally snowed inside our apartment! Whoa, crazy!

Soon to be my old home office. I’ve begun working from home, in Walla Walla, to ease into the transition of working remotely full time from Seattle. So far so good, but it’s only been one day. Although, in this one day I’ve figured out how to do some excellent SSH port forwarding tricks givi…

Northwest Apartment! Apartment! I’ve had NW Apt. by Band of Horses stuck in my head all day! Woke up this morning with one agenda: pack up what little I can fit in the Subaru and head over to Seattle to sign the rental agreement and get the keys to our Northwest Apartment!

I’m so excited!!

So, you all probably didn’t even notice, I mean, we really don’t even notice, but there were a lot of spam comments on here. Sheesh. I think I’m going to need to do some development on my ink app.

I need to create a way to guard against such spamalicious a…

Today is the first Monday that I haven’t had to work in…a long time… I’m excited (see picture for proof). Here are all the things I’ve been able to get done today:

• Laundry
• Vacuum
• Cleaned half of the bathroom
• Burned 20 copies of the last bit of my prison project
• Facebooke…

No, not Twilight the movie—actual twilight before movies, books and vampires gave it such a poor reputation. Though, admittedly, my wife seems to love those films. I, however, enjoy the natural sort. I’ve always been fascinated with night-time-ish photography: streams of light across deep bl…

For the (nearly) last and sweetest leg of our journey, we said “adieu” to my Uncle Mike and Aunt Paula in Meridian, Idaho and headed (nearly) due north to McCall, Idaho and the home-sweet-home feel of Camp Ida-Haven.

We spent New Year’s Eve and the rest of the weekend up there, just hangi…

I’m Leaving Las Vegas; Lights so bright; Palm sweat, blackjack; On a Saturday night; Leaving Las Vegas; Leaving for good, for good; I’m leaving for good; I’m leaving for good

Sheryl Crow

Well, I don’t know if we left it for good, for good, but this song was playing on the radio…

As I mentioned in the last post, we saw some amusing signage on our voyage through Nevada. I think my favorite is still “…Butt Harry Reid”, but that is definitely letting my adolescence show.

Not to worry, kids: There’s always vacancy at the Shady Motel. Come on in!

The last one read…

Mmm…Nicole and I love perusing around the clothing and housewares boutique Anthropologie. More than that even, we really love getting gifts from there. Nice stuff but a bit pricey.

Anyway, a lot of their tidbits of furniture used to display their housewares are some of my favorit…

After our stint in southern California, we headed out on the open road to Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m not going to lie, we put some money into those infernal machines and never saw it again :(

We did have some fun during the one full day we were there, however. We drove around the strip, and I…

While down in southern California for Christmas, we went to see the lights of Mission Inn.

It was actually on our last night there, the same night that Nicole’s cousin got engaged—while taking a carriage ride around Mission Inn, no less. It was actually Nicole’s dad, Dan, who suggested we…

While down in southern California for Christmas, we visited a lot of Nicole’s family and friends from when they used to live in Banning (or Beaumont, wherever it was).

One such family we visited was that of Ojechan and Obachan (Japanese for grandma and grandpa, I believe). They live wit…

On our way from BOI to DEN, 7-something in the morning, everything covered in snow: gorgeous!

Dallas

For Christmas this year, Nicole and I got each other our new 27" iMac computer. We’ve been eyeing one ever since they came out and we’ve been saving and saving and it was finally time.

We thought we had bought it with plenty of time for it to arrive just before we left on vacation for the…

This is what I’d like my office to eventually look like…

n

So…a lot has happened in the last 7–10 days. Quite a lot indeed!

Nicole has been creating decorations for her cousin’s wedding for months and months and that all came to fruition on Sunday, Sept. 6 in a cute little park in Wallingford / Seattle. Unfortunately it rained so the would-be out…

Actually, we just haven’t written anything in a really long time and our friends are traipsing through Europe right now with tons of deliciously beautiful photos to show for it, so we’re really just feeling lazy, poor, and jealous.

But, we make the most of what we’ve got. We’ve …

Show your true appreciation for America: advance to 2:50 and honk like you’ve never honked before!

Dallas

Nicole and I just received a Save-the-Date in the mail today. I am reminded of the impending wedding season to come. I wonder how many more wedding seasons we will actively be a part of until either all of our friends and family have gotten hitched, or…maybe we’ll just have kids of our own a…

And that has historical been a bad thing—mostly for me. I despise Mondays. Sorry, Monday, you’re just a victim of wrong-place-wrong-time. For some reason I woke up feeling rather chipper this morning. I don’t really know why. I didn’t achieve as much as I think I should have yesterday. Nonet…

This is what I’ve been doing with a good chunk of my time. Some friends of mine from Seattle have started a clothing company called Le Grand Cru. I have been helping them set up their blog as well as develop their designs into the working, functioning, fun-looking specimen it now is. …

I first heard Bon Iver’s music from the website Virb.com (which is currently undergoing its 2.0-idness). He was a featured artist on there for months and months and finally I just gave in—if he’s the featured artist for that amount of time, he must have something going …

I was going to post today. A nice, fat, juicy post with pictures and everything. But due to a lack of time and preparation and due to some disheartening circumstances I didn’t.

Or did I…

Dallas

I was cyber-tagged by Bruce. I haven’t filled one of these things out since the glory days of MySpace. I am sure I will be removing questions that I feel are either ridiculous or provide little substance (such as “Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?”—my wife? yes. obvious.)

…

One thing that Dallas and I decided was a very “adult” thing to do is to make our bed every day. Well, this last Saturday before heading off to church, we decided to not be adults and to do the very opposite of make our bed, which is jump on our bed (in our sabbath clothes none the less). We…

The weather here has been characteristically unpredictable, but I think we’ve finally reached Autumn, just in time for holiday season.

To celebrate le saison, here are a few pics from around Walla^2^. And no, it hasn’t snowed yet, we live across the street from an ice-skating rink, so the…

This past weekend was Parents Weekend at Walla Walla University. My younger sister, Danielle, is in her fourth and final year at Walla Walla and my older sister, Rachel, lives in town with her husband and their two adorable little girls. With all three of the children living in Walla W…

I cannot believe that it has already been over a month since I wrote that post about “Thank You” notes. The good news is that we have our thank-you cards and soon (here’s hoping!) you’ll have one of them too. Right in your mailbox.

I also cannot believe that Nicole and I have already been…

Nicole is getting on me about designing our “Thank You” cards. It is definitely a necessity, but I would much rather play around with this stuff (“this stuff” being our blog—which you are now reading). I’m not entirely sure what photo I want to use for the “Thank You”s, or how I want to desi…

To celebrate our nation’s independence, Dallas and I headed up to Yakima to see my dad, so Dallas could play in a tennis tournament and to hold a yard sale and get rid of a bunch of our junk. Of the three, all were pretty successful.

Both my dad and Dallas played in the tournament. Dalla…

Dallas and I spent our honeymoon or «lune de miel» at the Oregon Coast. Gold Beach to be exact, which is right here. We stayed at the Salty Dog, a rental house right on the beach. We could tell by the decor and contents of the house that the owners were very patriotic, liked all…