A place that i have been

Havasu Falls
Grand Canyon

My family used to take a trip here every year. It's been at least 4 years since my last one, and i can't wait to go again.

day 4: a habit you wish you didnt have.

a habit that i wish i didn't have is....


BITING MY NAILS!

but guess what?
after 20 odd years of doing this
I have gone a month and a half
without one chew!

this my friends is a big deal
be proud

a picture of you and your friends

well maybe I'm lame but i don't really have a group of friends. just one here and one there.
but this is my best friend Kaylee. we have been friends since we were 13 or so. that was from my 21st birthday party

day 2 the meaning behind your blog name

my blog name is

"One life to live"

i was going to put this under it:

"livin it my way"

because thats how I feel about it. I don't want everyone else's ideas and values to dictate my decisions in my everyday life. I want to look back and know that we made our own decisions for our own reasons, regardless of other's judgements.

I haven't added the second line
because i just haven't.

bits of our home

Here are some of my favorite parts of our house. It's all a work in progress. Mike has done some amazing things, and I am just trying to add a little of my style and ideas to the place. We love where we live. These pictures area ll of the main level only. None yet of the loft, or basement.

Here it is:

Oakley city recently got some recycling dumpsters. We tried to recycle before, but since we take all of our trash to the dumpsters, instead of it being picked up, we hadn't been too regular about it. the nearest place to drop it off would have been in park city, or heber. I KNOW we should have just done it. It wouldn't have taken much effort, but we suck, and we didn't.

NOW we have a recycling dumpster just down the road! Yaya! so i bought these awesome burlap recycling bags from World Market (love) don't they go great in our kitchen?
do you love the corrugated metal???

We didn't have enough room in any of our cabinets

and I'm really pushing for more open storage around here

to make the room look bigger

so I hung the pans

to show mike how great

open shelving and storage

really is

as well as to make more room in the only under-counter

cabinet we have

for uglier things like cookie sheets

and rice cookers.

our lovely mix of jarred goods, and antique kitchen accessories

I must have forgotten when taking the pictures

how amazing our antique grinder is

that is attached to the end of the counter with a vice-like device.

you can almost see it there in the corner.

I'll have to put a picture up later

One of my very most favorite things in our home

is this lovely old white Norge, which is really a vintage

washbasin.

My mom found it at the dump a while back

and gave it to us recently

because it is SO perfect for our cabin

the lid comes off, and it has drains in the bottom

maybe someday we will convert it into our kitchen sink?

Our little old stove

which will probably have to go someday

but i'm trying to convince mike to just get it rewired and such

because I love it

even if mike says it's not big enough for a turkey.

(how often does a person cook an ENTIRE turkey?)

And the custom shelf mike built

when i said the glasses needed to be next to the sink.

Love him!

Yet another thing my mother gave us

this beautiful rocking chair

on the underside it reads

made in slovenia

plus the chalkboard mike made
as well as daisies

because I love em

Disclaimer: i did not clean to take pictures

so the couch looks shabby

an dthe coffee table cluttered

but Mike built the couch

and coffee table

so they needed to be featured.

I toldya he was handy

Our deck. I love our table, and our view. Don't you?
we will be getting some new chairs, when the perfect ones come along.

I've been eyeing these beauties from the sundance catalog

The highest point on our cabin.
Mike built these awesome storm doors for the window.
Isn't he great?

The Ladder to our bedroom
which will not always we our bedroom
It will someday be a kids room
and if we do the remodel we've been talking about
then it will be the entertainment room.
The border around the ladder was the first project we did together. we were originally just going to do rocks and wood rounds, but then I spotted the spare tiles sitting by the door and decided to bust them up with the hammer. Then mike had this little love token sitting in a bowl of knick-knacks. It's my favorite part of the project.

except maybe where we carved our initials in before it dried :)
we still have some trim work to do.

The old sewing machine table my mom gave me, and dodee's sewing machine, which is just a temporary fixture. I borrowed it to do some projects, but it looks great there. The Dave Matthews band poster and Ikea lamp are also temporary, as well as the green colored wall.
The kitchen sink, we have a few of those antique apothecary bottles throughout the house for flowers. I think daisies will be a permanent thing. We both love them.

day 1

day 1- recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself





1 I hate popcorn.
2 I play the trumpet
3 Im getting married in like 12 days
4 I've never been to an event where there are churros, and not eaten one, even if I had to beg someone else to buy it for me. yeah, they are that good.
5 In the winter I have to snowmobile to and from my house every day.
6 My mom's middle name is Kae, and my Dad's is Lee = Kaelee. thats how I got my name
7 I can sleep through just about anything, especially my alarm.
8 I am hopeless when it comes to budgeting. I love to spend, and can justify most any purchase. Im working on it.
9 I really really really hate cleaning. It's a problem.
10 I love sleeping outside, but get a little scared just about every time.
11 I want to be very athletic and outdoorsy, but just never have been.
12 I don't like being told what to do by anyone.
13 Last night i saw a mouse. I hate mice!
14 I have a hard time saying no when I'm asked for help, whether it's by my friends or to fill in for someone at work, or work extra hours. most of the time it's a good thing, but soemtimes....not so much.
15 I never had wisdom teeth

30 day blog challenge

Here's a cool Idea. I don't really intend to post everyday since i will be leaving on a trip in ten days. I may skip some of them also, just because some of them don't seem so fun.

day 1- recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
day 2- the meaning behind you blog name
day 3- a picture of you and your friends
day 4- a habit that you wish you didn’t have
day 5- a picture of somewhere youve been to
day 6- favorite super hero and why
day 7- a picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you
day 8- short term goals for this month and why
day 9- something you're proud of in the past few days
day 10- songs you listen to when you are happy, sad, bored, hyped, mad
day 11- another picture of you and your friends
day 12- how you found out about blogger and why you have one
day 13- a letter to someone who has hurt you recently
day 14- a picture of you and your family
day 15- put you ipod on shuffle: first 10 songs that play
day 16- another picture of yourself
day 17- someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why
day 18- plans/dreams/goals you have
day 19- nicknames you have and why you have them
day 20- someone you see yourself marrying or being with in the future
day 21- a picture of something that makes you happy
day 22- what makes you different from everyone else
day 23- something you crave for a lot
day 24- a letter to your parents
day 25- what I would find in your bag
day 26- what do you think about your friends
day 27- why are you doing this 30 day challenge
day 28- a picture of you from last year and now, how have you changed since then?
day 29- in this past month, what have you learned
day 30- you favorite song

Mike

I'm getting married
to a wonderful person.

He loves me for who I am
deals with my shit
and takes care of me.

what else could a girl ask for?
nothing
but I forget that sometimes.
I ask for a lot
and I don't need it
and haven't earned it.
I'm learning.

here's the basics on Mike, just so ya'll know more about him
he's super strong
motivated
and a hard worker.
he has worked at the canyons for like 17 years
Making snow, driving snow cats
and doing lots of skiing.

in the summers he built ski lifts
which is a crazy hard and dangerous,
but super cool job.

now he works for basin recreation
as a trail manager
He's never really had a full time year round job
with benefits until now.
He loves it.
sometimes he gets paid to ride bikes,
which is pretty lucky.

he also works for a cat skiing operation
called park city powder cats
on the weekends in the winter.
they take people skiing just a few miles up the road from our cabin,
in Weber canyon
and it's better skiing than at any ski resort
he took me once.

He's super handy, and is a total
do it yourself-er
and he's good at doing things himself.
He can weld stuff,
build stuff out of wood,
and he can run pretty much any machine.
he can even operate cranes.

He used to be way into dirt biking
like crazy dirt biking.
when he was a kid, he lived in Maryland
and played soccer.
he even went to Europe in some tournaments.
He's always been an athlete.

He really loves dogs
especially his old guy whoka (hookah)
who died this spring.

Mike looks tough
but he's a total softy
(sometimes)
and I can't wait to marry him.

motherhood

I went to my brother josh's the other day to spend time with kristy and ella.

Of course I brought my camera

I probably took 300 pictures

and deleted 280

But I did get some good ones.

This on is my very favorite.

It's a great picture of kristy, just being a mom.

And some more pictures of little L

Mike and I call ella elephant
so when I saw this rocking elephant at world market
I knew she had to have it
but mike said we had already bought her so much stuff
which we had
so i called everyone in the family to tell them about it
and my mom bought it for her.
She loves it!

adventures in babysitting

Loving

Summer days at the splash pad

These boys

this hair

and my new camera!

new stuff!

the last few months have been full of wonderful new things. Im not sure if ya'll know this, but I Love new things!

first off, our computer crashed, so we got a new one. It works SOOO much better than the old one.

Then mike surprised me with a new mountain bike! New bikes for both of us, and we have been doing so much riding!

and third, we bought a new camera. A Nikon d3000. I don't know anything about photography, but the new camera makes it easy to get a great picture. Mike took some photography classes back in the day, before digital SLRs, so he knows quite a bit about photography, so we are both learning a lot with this new camera. Hopefully it will mean lots and lots of wonderful photos from our wedding/honeymoon trip, and our party :)
I took this picture of our doggie Uintah with it.
Isn't she the cutest, most perfect dog in the world?
You'd think so if you knew her.

lastly, I had a wonderful wedding shower yesterday at Grandma Perkin's house. It was so much fun and im so grateful to everyone who came. I got some pretty kick ass stuff, like a rice cooker, an awesome 3 way grill, the pans I wanted from world market, and a few other great things for our home.

BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE ASKING

What Mike and i want for our wedding gifts and such, and I hate not knowing what to buy someone, and sitting at the store wondering what they would want/need, I'm just going to make it easy for you. now, we will like anything you give us, and don't feel obligated to buy anything on this list. as a matter of fact we'll like you if you don't get us anything at all! This is just to help you out if you are wondering what we would like.

We have a house that mike has lived in for 6 years, so its fully furnished and we have a lot of the stuff we need already. It's a cabin, and when we are done with the re-decorating it will have off-white walls, and dark stained wood. we have some cool vintage old farmhouse looking stuff in it, like galvanized buckets and old metal milk cartons, vintage glass bottles, shabby furniture with paint chipping off of it, stuff like that. just to give you an idea of the kind of look we're going for.

of course we would always appreciate everyday things that we spend $ on every month. also, Kitchen, Bath, or Queen sized bed linen. good colors of anything for our house are white, dark brown, tan, light blue, and light green. maybe a little splash of yellow as well. Baskets in all shapes and sizes for organizing around the house. We've been really really wanting a Big white or cream colored shaggy rug, like a 5 by 7.

We just got new mountain Bikes, so anything pertaining to that, like water bottle holders, sweet mtn. bike gloves/attire would be tight. other outdoorsy stuff like headlamps, camelbaks, a 2 person all season tent, any sort of climbing gear, camping gear, or snow gear. basically whatever is at REI we'll like. one thing we can ALWAYS use, living where we do, is a nice pair of smartwool ski socks :)

These are the stores we shop at most often:
Home Depot
World Market
Ikea
REI

I also have quite a few sewing projects around the house I have been meaning to do, so like a gift cert to JoAann's would be good.

here's a list of some specific things I have been eying

World Market:
Bath towels, the tan ones with white leaves
Pans with a removable rubber grip so that they can transfer from stovetop to oven
this cute trivet, in either color

IKEA:
Ribba Frames in dark brown or silver, any size. we will need frames for our wedding photos!!
these little vasesand a few of these ones.
here are some great pantry jars we would love, in any of the sizes
these sheet sets in off-white or light brown would be great

etsy:
this is a beautiful quilt, something like this would match our house perfectly.



So I hope this gives ya'll a better idea, and if it doesn't, you are totally allowed to ask me questions.

planning

So, I hate to admit it, but like most brides to be I have been a little preoccupied lately with wedding blogs.

kind of a waste of time, I know.

Nevertheless, you do stumble upon some pretty neat ideas.

all of our plans are really coming together

here is a sneak peak of some of what we are planning:

I just hope it will look as great as it does in all of the pictures.

YES!

We are getting so much done for our wedding and party and i am getting SO excited! everything is coming together perfectly!

I wish i had pictures :(

but I don't, so you'll have to wait and see what we've been up to.