Fall, Fall, Fall!

Autumn is my most favorite time of the year! I love the colors, and the smells, and the weather and just everything about it. I have been loving the weather that we have had so far this fall. I've noticed that everyone has been posting what they're grateful for on FB everyday and I love seeing how many of us are truly blessed. I decided that I wanted to write my gratitudes here.

Nov. 1 - I am so incredibly grateful for Jared! I could never have asked for a better guy to have for forever. He is so kind and patient. He is so willing to watch all the crappy shows that I for some reason just love to watch. He always gets those dishes washed (eventually)! And I know that all he wants is to make me happy. - Sap done.
Nov. 2 - My parents are the greatest!
Nov. 3 - I have a job that (for the most part) I love, and helps us pay for the bills. Those kids crack me up pretty much every single day.
Nov. 4 - I have some pretty amazing and fantastic friends who have stuck by me through thick and thin! There are those that I know I can go to with anything and they'll be there for me.
Nov. 5 - The gospel!! Where in the world would I be without it!
Nov. 6 - A place to live. (Even with it's yucky couch. I'm grateful to have something to sit on besides the floor.)
Nov. 7 - Food to eat. And boy do I.
Nov. 8 - The opportunity to have an education and to (hopefully!)continue with my schooling.
Nov. 9 - I am so incredibly grateful to have in-laws that I absolutely love. There are no terrible, horrible, no good, very bad in-law stories from me! (And thank goodness!) They are always so supportive of us and completely and totally loving.
Nov. 10 - This is going to sound really weird but birth control. Holy cow. I look at it as a miracle drug! I look forward to the day when we will have kids, but that day is not today.
Nov. 11 - Just the time period I live in, in general. Look at all the technology that we have! I don't know about you, but I am feeling super pampered today what with my car, and my microwave, and my movies. . . Yup. Technology is the best!
Nov. 12 - Blankets!!! If you know me, you know that I love blankets! I don't know what it is exactly about them but I love just wrapping myself up in any one of my many blankets at any time of day and just feeling that happy warmness. And the funny thing . . . Jared is the exact same way! If you've never seen anyone get giddy about blankets, you are missing out.
Nov. 13 - Books, books, books. I can never get enough of them. I love to read and I am so grateful to have so many talented people out there who can just reel me in and keep me for hours. Books are my escape and there is nothing I would love more than to win a ten thousand dollars just to spend on books.
Nov. 14 - Jared wanted to include something he was grateful for. "I am grateful for my wife. I am grateful for Emilie. I love her." Awww!
Nov. 15 - Jared's too! "I am so grateful for both of our families."
Nov. 16 - I have got some really good visiting teachers. Sometimes I get really annoyed because I feel that they're just trying to get it done and that's it. But mine don't seem like that. I got a text from one of them asking how I was feeling because of my brother heading to the MTC. To me, that is sincerity at it's best. Love them.
Nov. 17 - I am so grateful to have a younger brother who is someone that I can completely look up to. We took him to the MTC today and I could not be prouder of him! He is going to do such a great job!
Nov. 18 - So grateful to have a husband who holds the priesthood and can give me blessing when I need them. Today was definitely that day and it helped me so much! I love my Jared!
Nov. 19 - All I can is . . . HALLELUJAH!! I am so grateful today that the GRE is done and done! I'm very grateful that we had the means to be able to pay for it and that my studying seems to have paid off.

I'm pretty sure 30 days won't be enough to contain all that I am grateful for, but another reason I love autumn is because this is when gratitude comes to the forefront of our minds. Thanksgiving is a time for thanks then we get Christmas where we focus our gratitude on Christ. I love it!

~*~Reliving the Honeymoon!~*~

"Our memories of the ocean will linger on, long after our footprints in the sand are gone." - Anonymous

For the Madsen family reunion, my grandma rented some houses on the beach in Newport, Oregon and we all got to go and spend a week on the coast. Jared and I were extra excited because it's the same area we went to on our honeymoon and we got to back and see and do some of the things we didn't get to while we were there the first time. We also got to do a lot of things we did get to do but loved so much it was worth doing again! What made it special for us as well was not only was it the same area we went on our honeymoon, but we got to be there on our 2 year anniversary as well.

We headed out a little bit later than my family did since Jared still had to work that Saturday. Our first night we spent in Winnemucca, Nevada which really wasn't all that exciting except for getting to park next to a camaro at the hotel. The next day we made it to our first stop in Klamath, California. We got to go through the Trees of Mystery which are the trees that are in the Guinness Book of World Records for being huge awesome redwood trees. While there we got to ride the sky trail which is a little box you sit in and ride up over the trees. This was Jared's favorite part. He loves how humongous the trees are.

Riding in the Sky Trail

Jared standing next to the trunk of a tree that had fallen over. It's huge!!

As we headed north we stopped at a zoo that we played at on our honeymoon. We really like it a lot because the animals wander around and we get to play with some cool baby animals. This time we got to play with lion and tiger cubs. They were adorable!

5 week old lion cubs

3 week old tiger cubs

We made it to Newport and then spent a lot of our time going to the different lighthouses in the area, going to the beach, and getting shopping. One of my favorite activities though was when we went deep sea fishing. I've done it before but it was Jared's first time . . . that's when we found out Jared gets seasick apparently. Poor Jared spent a lot of the time in the cabin keeping his head down. In the meantime I caught 5 big sea bass! The crew we were with is going to be on an episode of Big World Little People. They were hilarious. I also got to be the hooker while on board. (I got to hook the crab pots and hand the rope off to the strong men to pull them up.)

Our beach house. The inside was gorgeous as well. It's what I want to do with my house one day.

On the Misty, getting ready to set sail.

Heceta Head Lighthouse

It was such a fun trip and we loved getting the chance to spend a week away from the real world together. I'm ready for the next trip!

Graduated!

Well, on Saturday I graduated from Utah State with my degree in Psychology! Unfortunately, I woke up incredibly sick that morning and was worried that I wouldn't be able to make it to the ceremony, but I decided to tough it out and just go. How often does one get a bachelor's degree? So my plans for life now are to just work and start applying for graduate school this year. I want to get into the school psychology program and then we'll see where I go from there. Now we're going to work on getting Jared graduated asap!Savannah giving me a big hug after the ceremony!

I'm graduated!

~Mod Podge Blocks~

Here are the instructions and steps I followed to make the mod podge blocks that I did for my familia and friends. I put up a couple of pictures so that you can kind of see what I did, but it's all really easy. You can make things up as you go, use different materials, types of paper and pictures, etc.

1. Get the blocks that you are going to use. I worked with two different sizes and they both worked really well. I did like the 3 x 3.5 inch blocks a little bit better than the perfect cubes. It made it easier to have more space for the pictures on the size. This is just a preference though. The ones I used were sanded and had the edges rounded off.

2. I painted all the edges of the blocks the color that I wanted the base to be. Let dry.

3. Not all of the blocks I used were exactly the same size so I made sure that I measured each block then the pictures and papers that I was going to use to those measurements. I just used different scrapbook papers. I found that the thicker kind worked a little bit better and were less prone to wrinkling, but the other kind works as well.

4. Put a layer of mod podge on the block and lay the paper/picture on it. I rubbed them down thoroughly to make sure that there weren't going to be any bubbles underneath. Make sure that you don't go super crazy with the mod podge because you don't want the pictures or papers to wrinkle.

Here you can see the painted edges, an example of a paper, and picture.

5. Once you've done this for all of the sides, make sure that everything has had a chance to dry. Put a final layer of mod podge on the top of the pictures and paper. I used the matte pod podge for the bottom layers and the paper, but used the glossy mod podge for the top of the pictures. It doesn't really matter what you use, I'm just very particular about what my stuff looks like. Both matte and glossy look good for everything.

6. For the letters I just bought some of the foamy 3-D letters to put on, but I imagine you more crafty people can think of more creative ways of doing letters or whatever you're doing with them.

This is one of the blocks for my sister in law and her family. I cut out the stars from the same paper that I used on top.

7. You can add whatever you like to them. Some people's I used stickers, some I cut out thick, glittery paper for stars and flowers, and others I used little, fake flowers.

This is the one I made for my family.

This was a really fun project for me. I'm not a particularly crafty person although I would like to be. It took a little more time than I anticipated, but then again I did end up doing about 52 blocks in a couple week period. But they're really easy and really cute. (If I do say so myself.)

~Tis the Season~

On December 12 another one of my very best friends Mandy got married to Dan Gordon who is also one of my very good friends. I love weddings and theirs turned out beautifully. The weather was so dreadful that day but the bride was beautiful and the reception was beautiful and it was all just a ton of fun.



This year we spent Christmas Eve with Jared's parents in Richmond where everyone got a chance to speak to his brother Brett who's in Fiji on his mission. He'll actually be coming home on January 7th and everyone is very excited to have him home. I'm excited to have the chance to get to know him, since I only got to meet him twice before he left on his mission. We each got to open one present from Jared's parents, we watched most of 'Up' (which is such a good movie), then went home where we stayed up until 6:30 Christmas morning while I finished everyone's homemade Christmas presents I made this year.

Jared being the donkey for Mary and . . . the other Mary.

I had been working on these mod podge blocks for weeks, but somehow got behind while in school and going to work still. Rachelle's husband Shane helped me out by cutting and sanding around 30 of the blocks that I used. What I did was get enough blocks that I could have one for each letter of each family's last name. In the end I had 52 blocks total that I made. I don't think I really realized how big a project I was undertaking but it was totally worth it. I will post instructions that I used for them later.

Christmas time really is my most favorite time of the year. I just love having a break to be able to spend time with my family and most importantly with Jared. The presents are pretty fun too. I love that both of our families live here in the valley and it's so easy to get together with everybody. Santa was very good to us this year.

Christmas Morning!! (On a lengthy 3 hours of sleep.)

For New Year's we spent most of the day at my parent's house. My dad was out of town which sucked, but we did get to play with everyone else. We spent many hours watching sports and America's Funniest Videos. In fact, over the whole break I think I watched more athletic events then I have ever watched in my life. They're pretty fun though so I enjoy them. We went home about 1 am from my parent's house and stayed up until about 6 am watching Grey's Anatomy. How many husbands would spend hours upon hours watching such a silly yet entertaining show with their silly little wives? I guess it's only fair though. I watch hours upon hours watching sports too. Ha ha!

One of the days Jared and I got to go to Salt Lake to see all of the lights on Temple Square with two of our best friends Shane and Rachelle. This is one of my most favorite traditions even though I know it's something that pretty much everyone else in Utah does. I was really worried that we weren't going to make it this year, but luckily we got it to work and we had a blast. It was prety cold and pretty snowy, but so beautiful. We ate dinner at Applebee's and spent the whole way home talking their ears off. Jared and I can't seem to control ourselves sometimes. I am so grateful for such good friends though.

Jared and I posing like models by the temple.

Anyway. It's been such a great break. Thankfully I'll be graduating this Spring and I can have a tiny break of just working before I get into grad school (which hopefully really does happen). We actually have tons of plans for the year 2010 . . . but that's another blog for another day!

Happy New Year!