A Quick update

Well again it has been a long time since I have posted, and a lot of things have been going on.

First school has started here at Montana State and that means a lot of work for Doug (my boss) and I. Practice for everyone was in full swing last week, which means that our hours in the weight room are 11-14 hours a day. We also get in 8 hours on Saturdays for home football games and another 3 hours for football lifting on Sundays. Oh how I love football season.

Dan and I are doing great! We are going to try and hunt this fall for deer to get some cheep, lean meat. Our friend Eric is helping us out, two people who do not know much about hunting :)

We also bought Carhartt jackets this last week and made a trip up to Highlight (a mountain range and lake near town) to break them in. It was a blast, we made a fire for smores and watched the stars come out. It was a blast.

Well I have to get going now, I have a few athletes that just walked into the weight room. I will right more soon :)

My First piece of Furniture

This is the first piece for furniture I have ever made. It is made of plywood, some molding, and a piece of wanes coding we got for free. I still don't know what to call it, I know it has a name. It is a bench/coat rack with storage for hats, gloves and scarves below.

I made the design with some of Dan's ideas and pictures of similar things online. So I did not follow a pattern, I made it up. I am so proud of my self, I have built other things, decks and help with building a house, but I have never made something from scratch. Here are all the pictures of the progression of me making it. Oh Dan picked out the colors, well not picked them out, but gave me the idea of using the colors of a rug I bought for the entry way. It worked perfect, he is so smart :)

This took me about 2 weeks to make after work every day and one weekend. It cost under $100 to make with all the materials, that is buying a hammer, paint brushes, screws, plywood, paint, drop cloth, molding and hooks. I think most things like this cost about $300, so I think I did pretty well :)

These are my drawings of what I was going to do (I don't know if you can read it)

As you can tell I did not have much space to work, but luckily our hall way and entry room were big enough to work :)

this is the bare bones of the bench. It is made out of mostly 3/4 inch plywood and some 1/2 inch screwed together for the sides and bottom support.

This is after I put the seat on.

Now I am putting the wanes coating on to make it look fancy.

I know this is a great picture of me :) Dan snapped it at the right time.

Now I have gotten the molding and the shelf at the top on and wood brackets to hold it up.

Then I primed it all and part of the drawers (I ran out of primer).

Then the first color on and being messy about it :)

Then I put on the dark brown and taped off the molding with electric tape. I did not have painters tape and I didnt want to spent the $7 a roll for it. I already had the electric tape and it worked fine.

I also started to paint the drawers on the inside and bottom.

Then the final product with the front molding painted with out the drawers. Some of the hooks are a little crooked, but you can barely tell. There are going to be coats on it anyway :)

I decided to paint the front a totally different color so the green drawers stood out more.

And now when we come home from work we can kick off our shoes and hang our coats up on something I made. Thanks Mom and Dad for all the skills you gave me to make this. Now Dan is telling me we need a shop for me when we get our own house, I say YES to that :) I love building thing

Our New House

Here are a few pictures of our old apartment. It was a one bedroom with a small living area and one bathroom.

This is our old living room :(

This is our old kitchen, dining room, office area :(

This was our bathroom area :(

And our bedroom :(

Now we have a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house with a huge kitchen, living room, entry room, laundry room, walk in closet and a little yard (not fenced). We love it! We can actually relax when we get home rather than trip over each other on our way through the door :) And we can have people over because we have 2 queen size guest beds.

This is our kitchen.

This is the other side of the kitchen and you can see part of the dining room.

This is the laundry room, which has another door the outside behind the hamper.

This is the door off the living room.

This is the living room, with the free entertainment center we got off of craigslist again.

Here are the curtains I made for our front and side doors. They let light in, but do not let anyone see in:)

This is our extra room in the front, this is all that is in it besides my new piece of furniture I made, tools and leftover wood.

This is was an old cork board we got for free from craigslist with a queen size bed. It was pretty beat up, so I decided to cover it up with fabric and put some ribbon on it so we can put up pictures and cards we get.

Here is the view from the front door looking into the kitchen before we moved anything in.

This is looking at our front door before we moved anything in.

This is a head board we got for free also with the bed and I reupholstered it. Before it was a mustard yellow velvet form the 70's, it was ugly. I found some cheep fabric and changed it. I have never had a head board before, it looks like we have a real bed now, even though it is on the floor :) Dan and I tried to have it up on just a metal frame, but that lasted about 5 min. Just lying in bed if you moved your head or hand it squeaked loud. So we took the bed apart in the first few minutes after getting in bed. Some day we will get a real bed frame :)

This is our master bathroom! I think with this and our walk in closet together it is as big as our old bed room :)

Well that is our new house. Dan and I love it so much and are so comfortable now, it is a million times better than our apartment.

Scottish hammers

I have been wanting to get these pictures up for months, I just found them and decided it was about time to put them up so here they are.


My heavy hammer is painted like a bomb, black with the handle like the fuse. And my light hammer is painted like a dragon, ready for flight :)


I was really fun to paint them and it was Dan's idea to do it, he is so creative. Now my hammers have a little flare and they are one of a kind :)

Strawberry Salsa

This last week Dan surprised me with making me strawberry salsa for my chicken. He decided it would be a nice thing to make something for me for a change, so he went out and bought everything for it and came home and made it for me :) I was super happy to try something different for a change. Dan found this recipe in Sunset magazine, which I really want to get, when he was on break eating lunch at work.

Here is how you make it:
Toss together 1 cup diced strawberries, 1 tsp. finely chopped jalapeno chile, 1tbsp. chopped cilantro, 1/2 tsp. lime zest, 2 tsp. lime juice and salt and freshly ground black pepper to tast. Let is sit for 20 minutes and serve with chicken or any flaky, white-fleshed fish.

I think this is about good for 2 pieces of chicken (I of course, used it on one), so you can double it for more. It is so great though, I loved it. I made more later in the week and put it on a spinach salad with chicken, walnuts, tomato's, cucumbers and a little bit of balsamic vinegar. It was great! It is sweet, but has a little spiciness with the chile, I suggest you give it a try if you want a change.

Enjoy!

M hike

Here is the "M" close up if you can tell?

Here is a video from the top of the "M" which is a hiking trail straight up a mountain to the giant "M" that you can see from town. I have done it a few times, but this was my first time in over a year and it was hard. I went up the hard side which is almost straight up and I got it in 21min, which my volleyball girls did it in 20minutes the day before. That makes me feel good that I am just a minute behind athletes that are 10 years younger than I am. I will try and catch there time before the summer is out :) What can I say, I am a competitor :)

Here are a few picture that I took also, it was a perfect day out :)

This is a picture from the top of the "M" looking down on Bozeman. If you look really close off in the distance to the left you can see a white speck, that is the Fieldhouse where I work :)

This is the trail on the way down.



this is the trail even farther down. There were a tone of flowers out which made the walk wonderful :)

Weekend in Spokane

Kerri and I at lunch :)

This last weekend I went to Spokane Washington to watch my thrower Krystle throw and to visit one of my best friends Kerri. I had a great weekend, first it was great to get out of Bozeman for a few days and Second to see a good friend. Kerri and I went out to eat on friday night going to one of my favorite places Wingers, Yum, Yum! It reminds me of college, good times :)

On Saturday Kerri and I went to Krystle's track meet at Eastern Washington University. Before that we ate breakfast at the Rusty Moose, it was filling to say the least :)

Krystle and I after her amazing throws

We met Krystle there with her parents and she was ready to throw. It took us a bit to find out where to go to throw, it was an open meet so there were a lot of people competing. She threw discus first and threw amazing. We have been practicing since February and it showed. She got in her chair and got after it, she ended up beating her old PR, she set 2 years ago, by over a meter. This is the video of her best throw and you can tell it is a good one by the look on her face after :) I am so proud of her :) Krystle'e Javelin did not go as well as we hoped, but she had to throw 5 min after her disc so sh did not get much rest. She still threw an average throw for her which was great for 5 min rest :)

On Sunday Kerri and I went on a nice little walk and I got to throw the ball to her great two dogs, Sophi and Katie. They are great dogs and make me really want to get one, but I need a space for them first:)
Kerri, Katie and Sophi on our walk.

After a great walk Kerri took me to Cabellas which I have never been to, it was amazing!!!!! I just wish I had more money and time to go camping and fishing. I had a great time and it was a good get away before I had to start working early again 6am-3pm this summer. My only regret was that I had to leave Dan behind to work on Saturday. I am sorry babe :(

All in all it was a great weekend and I cannot wait to do it again :)