Couponing!

I love a good deal and I love my money even more! I check http://freebies2deals.com/ every single day to see what kind of deals I can get that day. Now I can learn even more! Check out this amazing book!

I love that you don't have to read straight through. The first night I got my book I didn't want to go through all the coupon info so when I finished a chapter I chose my next "money saving adventure" and skipped to a later chapter about the best months to buy certain things. I'm excited to keep reading and highly recommend this book to anyone that loves saving money.

Catan Cupcakes

We LOVE Catan! My husband and I made these for my brother one summer and it was so fun!

A Bunch of Wreaths

I'm trying to record all of my projects somewhere besides my phone so here are all the wreaths I've made since becoming addicted to Pinterest :)

Spring

4th of July

Halloween

Fall

Christmas

Diaper Baby Carriage

We have a gal at work that is expecting a baby girl so we threw her a shower! I wanted to try a few things I found on Pinterest and gave it a shot. I started out just wanting to make the diaper babies, but the smallest diaper pack I could buy had 50 diapers. I only needed 6 so I went on to the baby carriage! This took a lot of different youtube videos and some improvising, but after a few late nights and multiple episodes of Call The Midwife it all came together. I was so excited!

I used this tutorial for the diaper babies http://phar-ma.com/diaper-babiesthe-details/ and this is one of the youtube videos I watched for the carriage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J9bCtSBqaE 

I used a rubberband to hold the rolled up diapers together and then hot glued them to the shoe box. I really wanted to diapers to be reusable, but tape just didn't hold up. This is purely for looks! Enjoy!

Viva Las Vegas!

To continue my traveling tales here are some stories from Vegas. We went back in October and it was amazing! This was my first road trip and it was everything I hoped for. We left friday night and drove to St. George. The bf, bff, Danny, and I watched episodes of Community before turning in for the night.

The next day was awesome and crazy busy! We ate breakfast at the Bear Claw (best breakfast ever!)that morning before driving another two hours to Vegas. So here's what we did:

1. Phantom of the Opera!!
2. Walked through the Wax Museum
3. Ceasar's Place shops
4. Bellagio Buffet
5. Bellagio Fountains
6. 50 cents worth of Gambling
7. Walked through the Paris hotel (you have to see these amazing bathrooms!)
8. M&M and Coca-Cola Factories
9. We tried some good and some REALLY bad different cokes from around the world

At one point a guy dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow pointed his sword at me and said "you don't have to be lonely anymore." We could not stop laughing! We came home on Sunday so it was a quick trip, but so much fun!!

This weekend I went to St. George with my parents. Aside from a great weekend of relaxation it was VERY successful. On our way down we stopped at Zion’s National Park. This is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve lived in Utah all my life and really haven’t seen any touristy places. Now I can check Zion’s off of my list.

What’s that you ask? Did we go camping?

Well, I’m glad you asked. Absolutely not!  You know me better than that.

We took about an hour and a half bus tour of the park which was great! We saw people camping and hiking in the 110 degree weather and I simply cannot imagine what would motivate someone to do this! I know I didn’t appreciate the scenery and layers of rocks like some people I know, but I think I got a good sense of what Zion’s is all about. You can only take so many pictures of rocks, but here are a couple.

Once we got to St. George we checked into our hotel. It was amazing!

Living room/Kitchen

My room

Our view of the pool

My dad received a tip about an “excellent” Mexican restaurant so off we went. In my opinion the food was less than mediocre and the music was just ridiculous. However, this totally made up for it. Forget fortune cookies! Introducing the Lucky Taco!

The next day my mom and I pretty much laid by the pool all morning. After we had lunch we went to the outlet mall. Talk about sales!! I am not a shopper at all, but the first store we went to Van Heuson had all of the types of clothes I love. The first item that caught my eye was a black trench coat. I’ve wanted one forever and here it was. Originally $170 on sale for $46!! I got 2 pairs of pants and 5 shirts. I couldn’t resist! Everything was so cheap! So I spent $170.66, but saved $337.53. I don’t think I’ve spent that much at one time on clothes. There was another sale at their sister store, IZOD so I went there and save another $90.

My cache of clothes

Best receipt of my life!

I’m not sure I want to make shopping like this a hobby, but I am definitely into amazing deal like these. This weekend was just chill and I had a great time exploring and hanging with my parents.

To Sew or Not to Sew

Once upon a time I took a sewing class. Our motto was "The darkest hour is just before the dawn." Many mistakes were made and at times I was sure I was going to fail the class. Thankfully the dawn would always come and everyone in our little group was successful in creating some decent projects.

Fast forward five years and there's me standing in Hobby Lobby with the sudden urge to be domestic and make my own clothes. I poured through the pattern books and found a cute and simple skirt design I thought I could do. I picked out the cutest fabric and was very proud of myself for figuring out how much I would need from the back of the pattern.

My mom was out of town that weekend, but I figured that with my sewing class skills I'd be fine... Thanks to half-day friday at work I was able to dedicate most of the weekend to this skirt. The thing with sewing is that a lot of your time is spent cutting and pinning. It took forever just trying to figure out which pieces I would need.

At one point I was having trouble with one pattern piece. I must have looked frustrated because one of my brother's 17 year old friends came over to ask what was wrong. After explaining my dilemma he told me something that helped the rest of the project, "Don't doubt the pattern Callie."  After that I just went for it. When I didn't understand something I just figured that the pattern must be correct so I'd keep going and everything turned out great!

Here's what I started with

It even has pleats! You guys should really be impressed now.

It also included an elastic waist and a belt.

The finished product! Topped off with an awesome necklace and my sweet red and black high heels.

Vancouver!

A few weeks ago I was able to get my passport stamped for the very first time! The purpose of the trip was to help my dad with some work, but for a couple of days we were able to do some sightseeing.

It was raining/misting most of the time, but everything was so green and gorgeous! I got my own hotel room which was wonderful! And possibly one of the best parts of the trip. :)Comfy bed, sweet television, awesome view, and really cool shampoo. It doesn't get much better than that.

Thursday night we went to the Vancouver Temple. The experience was great and I got some awesome photos.

One of the coolest places we went was the Capilano Suspension Bridge. Once you cross the bridge there's a nature walk and some smaller bridges connecting all of the trees.

We also did some souvenir shopping downtown. I got a fun 3-d puzzle of an owl (pictures to come), some Olympic mittens, and a great picture of me in a chair at NOOD - New Objects of Desire. It's basically as cool as Ikea and A LOT more expensive...

Here are some other cool pictures from my trip...

Blogging

So my attempt at blogging isn't working so well. My current project is trying to include pictures in my posts. Nothing seems to be working so... wish me luck!

Hello World!

Recently I was asked to write a little blurb about myself for my company's website. It went something like this, "Callie recently graduated from Brigham Young University - Idaho with a Bachelors Degree in Accounting." Unfortunately that was about all I had to say for myself. Since graduation I've been searching for things to do after work that are fun and interesting. The purpose of this blog is to track my progress and eventually discover any hidden passions I didn't know I had. How am I going to do this you ask? Well here's the plan:

Step 1: Brainstorm possible hobbies
Step 2: Try said hobbies
Step 3: Blog any successes and/or failures

I'm hoping that a few bloggers out there can help me with Step 1. Feel free to post any ideas or activities I can try and hopefully I'll find my passions along the way!