Life in the fast lane

Our life has been a little crazy lately but I wanted to let everyone know we are alive, well and enjoying life! As you will see in the next few posts we have had a fun time celebrating the season with family and friends as well as moving into our new house! We have had a few bumps on the road with our house, as well as my car majorly breaking down, and Dan's car breaking down (needing repairs 4 times within the last week or so)....not to mention our crazy school life...but we are PROUD TO SAY that the semester is over! Yay! And now that finals are out of the way....Christmas shopping and unpacking has begun! We probably won't repeat moving into a home the week before finals ever again but we survived and are excited for this new phase in our lives! In case I don't blog again before Christmas....we just want to send our love and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

Christmas Party

This past weekend I helped Julia host a Christmas Party in return for her helping with my Murder Mystery Dinner. We had lots of yummy food, a white elephant game, and a timed gingerbread house making contest!

Team #1- Amber & hubby

Team #1- full mansion including a gummy bear family consisting of red mom, yellow dad, and orange baby.

Team #2- Chantel & Hubby

Team #2- The Church

Team #3- Michael & Date

Team #3- The licorice machine gun

and.....

smiley face to top it all off

Team #4- Us (The team with the MOST issues...ironically enough the sideways picture fits our gingerbread house that was determined to fall to the ground!)

Team #4- Refurbished house....only 5 minutes to spare when it crashed and for some reason this Eiffel looking tower thing decided to hold!

Team #5- Mike & Julia (the other gingerbread house challenged team...lol)

Team #5- Their house at least had spikes on it!

Team #6- Seth & Deborah

Team #6- Graham cracker lawn and all (I mean who seriously has enough time for something like that??? We couldn't even get our walls to stay up!)

Team #7- Jordan & Date

Team #7- Flat roof=good idea...they actually finished their house!

Team #8- Lindsay & baby Flint (daddy was working on finding a bottle)

Team #8- Wins the prize for creating a house with one hand that actually stayed up and looked great!

Moral of the story---some people were born with spectacular gingerbread house making skills and then there were those, like us, that had a great time despite our obvious handicap!

***Ignore the sideways pictures...I had issues with getting this to post!

Thanksgiving

So this year for Thanksgiving we decided to start some new and fun memories of our own! The last 3 years Thanksgiving has been a little random with our turkey catching on fire the first year, Dan being deployed the second, and us making a quick stop for a Cajun Thanksgiving last year on our way to a weekend getaway/half marathon on the beach. So this year we decided it was about time to have a traditional Thanksgiving (although I totally missed having cajun fried turkey and the warmth of the beach!!!)

The morning started off with the Crandall boys playing football, winning 3-0.

We decided to be crazy enough to host Thanksgiving at our house this year (we hadn't even moved in yet...my mom and I just packed up her dishes and went to town cooking! We are proud to say...we ended up with entirely edible food despite a oven neither of us knew how to use!)

My mom's awesome Turkey plates that she has wanted for years and purchased just in time for the feast (and she got a great deal on them too!)

Dan's family joined us as well.

I had to put this picture...it just made me laugh. I have no idea what Gabe was eating but this picture just cracks me up!

My grandpa (far left) joined for the day as well!

Gabe has food in his mouth again....lol.

It was fun to have it at our house for our first Thanksgiving back in Utah! The only bad part about the whole day was our water heater wouldn't work. Boiling water to washes dishes by hand for like 3 hours is definitely a memory we won't forget! Thanks family for making it such a special day and helping make our house feel like home! We are so glad you all could come!

House

So....hopefully better late than never is the way to go! We closed on our house on November 12th and do to totally craziness in life the blog has been horribly neglected...but now that finals are over with (yay!) I have a little more time on my hands:)

Due to some complications at closing we didn't officially close until almost a week later. So the Saturday before Thanksgiving I set out to majorly clean the house. I was glad Dan had a few hours off from work to help as well as my parents who graciously spent a portion of their day scrubbing.

I know the next picture is gross...but I had to take it to prove why I spent like 8 hours just on the kitchen alone. Between just total grossness, burnt/moldy top ramen in the microwave, and the ledge pictured below (they kept plants on top of the ledge and would water them up there I assume...there was basically lots of wetness, mold, and rust)...it was a project! But in the end, we have a very clean kitchen!:)

Our Front Room

The front window/door

Looking from the front room into the dining

Dining Room



Dining room looking down into the living room

kitchen (and my sweet dad helping with some of the kitchen grossness! The previous owners tried putting this plastic strip on the top of the countertops for some weird reason to cover a teeny gap and it looked awful. When we pulled it off there is this glue that is everywhere that has to be removed...my dad spent like 2 hours cleaning just a couple feet of it with solvant. So...the kitchen is going to be an on-going project for awhile but it will be worth it in the end)

The kitchen pantry and my retro green contact paper installation

Bedroom #1

The funky fan (we have a blue one too!)

Bedroom #2

Master Bedroom

Walk-in Closet

Master Bathroom

Main bathroom. We re-did the floor before closing and plan on doing the same floor in the master bath.

Overall, so far we LOVE having our house:) Life got a little crazy with finals, cars breaking down, etc but we finally got a little unpacking done this weekend! When we first moved in we found the shower curtain and that was about it! Now you can actually walk into the bedrooms without tripping and our clothes are now on hangers! More pictures to come in the future when we get rid of the sea of boxes!

Murder Mystery Dinner

So I am a little behind, like usual! My friend Julia and I had been talking about having a Murder Mystery dinner for months but never actually got to planning it. About a week before Halloween I decided I was SICK of my life being totally revolving around homework and I wanted to throw the party last minute. Luckily Julia was totally up for it as well as all our guests!

Julia and I had lots of fun decorating and thanks to her excellent spider web skills it turned out quite spooky too, especially with the lights dimmed.

The Murder Mystery was centered around the death of Hal O'Ween...and this is where his body lied (It must have taken us quite awhile to solve the mystery because he looks quite dead...lol).

The dinner table. We used a black table cloth with spiderwebs all over with clear classes to accent it all. It looked really cool...but will probably not repeat it. Eating spiderwebs for dinner didn't go over so well:)


We even had witches brew (other menu items included fingers and toes for appetizers, brains and eyeballs with bloody witches fingers for the main dish, and death by chocolate for dessert, oh and we had a monster mash drink as well)!

The murder takes place right before a cast party for the filming of "Gouls Just Want to Have Fun". We are all members of the cast and discuss the murder over dinner at the cast party. The one murdered, Hal O'Ween, was the main character in the movie.

Mike was Ace Filmer, the filmer and Julia was Kat People, the starring actress.

Deborah was Carrie Coffins, an up and coming actress and Seth was Watt Madaxman, the carpenter.

Katie was May Cup, the makeup girl and Jared was Moore Bodies, the film director.


Hunter was Dawn Ovdee-Zombiz, the writer and researcher and Jordan was Gore Underfoot, the special effects specialist.


Cami was Diane Screemin', the actress with the loudest scream in Horrorwood and Andrew was Drake Yewlarr, an actor.

Natalie was Elle Razor, Hal's Secretary dressed as a vampire, and Mike was Franke Stein, an actor who plays monsters.

Dan was Adam Family, the owner of the Haunted House where the movie was filmed at and I was Eve L. Dedd, an aspiring actress.

Each round everyone was given lines to say as the game progressed. We all had a lot of fun playing our parts, which all got quite ridiculous (and embarrassing for me! I would NOT have chosen my character had I known who she would end up being!!!) at some point in the game. Andrew especially liked playing his part!

After much contemplation, almost everyone was SURE that Natalie was the murderer....and Jordan tricked us all as we learned that he poisoned Hal to death!

After the party I made Dan take a picture with him just smiling instead of trying to bite me...he had WAY too much fun being a vampire:)

A smile from Mike and Natalie as well!

Another picture of Mike and Julia.

and one more of the murderer and his date....

Overall, we had a lot of fun! I love Halloween so it was nice to get to celebrate it this year. I think I have finally found my substitute for trick or treating. I love dressing up and never get to anymore so this was perfect! Thanks everyone for coming and especially Julia for all your help!