Sewing!

I made this little gem recently. It was an adaptation of the last apron I made, which was entirely too long. So, this time around, I just cut off a bunch on the bottom, and it turned out well! I really think this fabric is super cool too, and wish I wasn't giving this apron away. But I am. :)

Maybe I'm on my way to being Martha Stewart after all.

I am obviously NOT Martha Stewart.

Not only do I NOT engage in insider trading, but I am also a hopeless home decorator. So, dear readership, I am turning to YOU to help me figure out what the "aitch" to do with my living room.

I will first tell you a few things we WANT to do with it, and then post some pictures showing you the space we have to work with.

1. We want a picture of Jesus Christ somewhere in the living room. (Oh, and does anyone know of any cool pictures of Christ that shy away from the Greg Olsen/Simon Dewey genre?)

2. We want a framed "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" somewhere. One idea I had, which I am SO willing to change, is to do a framed Family Proc. with different size pictures of our families all around it . . . any ideas on how that would look?

3. We want some curtains up. Our pervasive living room coloring is brown, dark brown, and more brown, soooo . . . maybe something with some kind of color?

4. We have a "Carper, est. 2009" tile hanging up & a drawing of the temple & our marriage certificate hanging up that we want to keep up, but are also willing to move them.

So, that being said, here are the pictures!
The back wall of our living room is a gigantic built-in book shelf. We have several empty shelves that we could potentially put frames on.

This is the "Carper, est. 2009" tile. It is currently hanging next to the front door.

The temple drawing & our marriage certificate. They are currently on this small wall right next to the stairs.

The big empty wall that we want to put SOMETHING on. It extends all along one side of our living room. We have nothing over the piano or on the wall in between the couch & the TV. Ugh. You can also see a corner of the front window that we want to put a curtain on (on the far right of the picture next to the TV). Maybe red? Floor length or window length? I have no idea!

The other half of the long wall with nothing on it! Bah. We are also open to moving our lamps around, FYI.

So there you are! Put on your decorating caps and help a hopelessly un-crafty sista' out! HELP HELP HELP!

** Also, those of you who use blogger, how the heck do you post pictures easily? Every time I want to insert a picture, it puts it at the top of my blog, instead of where my cursor is. So, I have to drag the picture all the way to where I want it. ANNOYING! Any tips?

Eat your Veggies!

We're growing tomatoes! Which is interesting, because neither Ben nor I really like tomatoes, so we will give a lot of them away. Maybe I will attempt to make fried green tomatoes, just for the heck of it. . .

And we actually managed to grow a few potatoes. Our potato plants were being eaten by bugs and looked awful, so we pulled them up the other day to throw them away. We were pleasantly surprised to find that we were growing some potatoes underneath them after all! We still pulled up the plants, because they were choking out other plants, but I think we will try again next year, only we will plant them in gigantic pots instead. The little red potatoes were too small to eat, so we left them outside on the back porch and they were GONE the next morning! Certainly the work of our very own backyard chipmunk that has been slinking around in our garden this summer.

Camping!

We went camping last Friday night at Tar Hallow State Park, about an hour south of us, out in the middle of no-where Ohio! Here are some pictures!

We never went camping as a family growing up, so the only camping I ever did in Ohio as a kid was diabetes camp and girls camp, most of which was done in cabins. I really caught the camping bug when I lived in Utah, and would occasionally go with my friends up one of the canyons near Provo. So, the majority of my tent-camping experiences have been in Utah. Ben does NOT like camping, but was so nice to go, just because I like it so much! Thanks Ben!

Fast forward to last weekend in Ohio, when we went camping with some friends of ours from our ward. We have our own tent, and lots of camping supplies, so we were all set in that sense. What I was not prepared for were the vast amount of flying insects that reside in Ohio! Oh my! The buzzing sound at night was horrifying (luckily I brought ear plugs), and the outhouse we used was covered in spiders and egg sacks and flies. Ew. Also, a member of our party got stung by a swarm of bees! Granted, he was trying to chop down the dead tree they happened to be living in with his axe so we could use it for firewood. And by a swarm, I mean there were about 6 chasing him, and he got stung 3 times. But his arm totally swelled up like a log.


Oh, how I missed the relative insect-free camping in Utah. There ARE bugs in Utah, but not like this. I'm positive it is because there is so much vegetation & water in Ohio. I'm grateful that it makes everything green and pretty, but it makes camping a lot more interesting.

But, despite all the insects, it really was lots of fun, and the park was beautiful! And, we had tasty tin foil dinners, s'mores & campfire eggs for breakfast! Mmmmmmm.

Next time, if there is a next time, I will come prepared with much more bug spray, and stick to using the bathroom in the woods and not in an outhouse where you are confined in a small space with all sorts of bugs to which you have to expose your bare bottom!

Eight Months & Vegetables!

Hurrah! We've been married 8 months! And it has been fantastic!

Also, those green beans are from OUR OWN GARDEN!

And, we harvested our first two carrots!

And we've got tomatoes growing!

Summer Fun!

We went to the beach! Well, to a man-made beach at a man-made lake, actually, but still, it's the best we have out here! Last week the temperature was in the 90s, ALL WEEK LONG, and by Saturday we had had it up to you know where with the hot weather. So, we drove 20 minutes away to Alum Creek State Park and romped in the "surf". Ha! I tried to get Ben to throw me about in some sort of graceful manner in the water, like a synchronized swimmer. But, it turned out more like the Miss Piggy synchronized swimming bit in The Great Muppet Caper. Like, the part at the end of that bit. Where she falls in the fountain. Not. Pretty. :) It was blissfully cool, though and a very nice end to a sweltering week! (P.S. In that picture, it kind of looks like the dude behind us is naked, but I zoomed to make sure this post was family friendly, and I assure you, he has swim trunks on.)

It is MUCH cooler this week, and the humidity is even giving us a little break, so that has been a nice change.

We've been kind of busy, last week we hung out/helped out our friends who have just moved here with their kids. I went with them to the zoo in the middle of the week, and then we baby-sat for them on Saturday night. Their children were fabulously well-behaved, and we were introduced to the wonderful world of Barbie Princess movies and Blue Clues (the host on that show is a little creepy, btw.) The baby went to bed super easily, and the older girls were adorable. Fun, fun!

This weekend, we are going down to Tar Hallow State Park for an overnight camping adventure with some friends of ours. We're leaving Friday afternoon and coming back Saturday afternoon and hope to do some hiking, camp-firing, and swimming in between.

And now for the boring stuff:
7 day avg: 181
30 day avg: 177
% In range:45
% Low:7
% High:48
Estimated A1C: 7.14

Hardest Thing:
The hardest thing this week has been not over-treating lows and having a resulting high rebound. Ugh. Blerg. Eck.

Most Positive Thing:
I'm having trouble having positive diabetes thoughts today, so I will say that one of the most positive things about having diabetes has been some of the lasting friendships I've made. I have several friends I met at diabetes camp many years ago who I am still in contact with (one of whom is having a baby soon!). And then there's obviously the Nish (Nick & Trish) factor, who I know I'd be friends with even if I weren't diabetic, but I think diabetes had a lot to do with why I became friends with them. I first met/saw them testing at a ward activity once, and immediately plastered myself on them, never to let go. Any who, I'll hold on to those positive diabetes thoughts this week, as I try to keep positive about the big "D".

Toodles!