Nearly Christmas

I can't believe it's almost Christmas. Time keeps passing quicker and quicker and I wish for just once it would go slow. As children we want nothing more than to be 'older' so we can drive, and date, and so as we wish. If I could go back, I would say "SLOW DOWN! Enjoy it while you can. You're never going to get this back. Ever." That's my philosophical version coming out! Ha

Speaking of Christmas... We are going to have both sets of families, both our grams are coming too, over to our house on Christmas Eve for dinner and gift exchange - it should be a great Christmas. Our first married and the first in our home. 

As I sit here and think back on 2012... Man, it has been an amazing year. Started the year off engaged, bought our first home, a wedding and a new last name, and oh yeah - a diploma! I am finally a college graduate - Maren Nelson, B.S. HE. What a long time coming. There has been blood, sweat, tears, and more foul language directed at school than I can count. I am grateful for the chance I had to go to college. So many people don't for any number of reasons and all I can say is, why?? Your education is something no one can ever take away from you. It's yours. And when is it a bad thing to be educated? I look forward to continuing on with this academic journey and I'm excited to see what Grad school has to offer me. I am currently up in the air a little bit about what program I want to be in. I want it to be something I will and can use here in Idaho. Since Scott and I don't have any plans on leaving, I need it to be something I can find a job with here locally. Wish me luck.

Other things going on in the Nelson home... Scott got invited last week to go on a private pheasant hunt in Utah with his company, so he was pretty jazzed about the opportunity to go. Sounds like he had a great time doing some manly bonding outside of work. While he was gone, the boys and I stayed at my moms house. I think she enjoyed the company, we haven't had a sleep over in a few months :) One night while I was there, someone plowed into her neighbors recycling bin and then into our mailbox. She was so mad and there was nothing I could do about it to fix it at the time so I did my best and taped a note onto it for the mailman! Haha. We ended up having to put it in a bucket with rocks and sand.. Cant do anything with the concrete till it warms up. It busted that sucker off right at the base! Some people really suck.

Hope everyone is doing well! 

Merry Christmas friends, hope you all have time to be with those you love and cherish the most.

-M 

Landscaping

I never shared with you all our finished landscaping!

Diesel loves the camera... Serious. Ruger, not so much.

Diesel, he's purdy :) 

We have one last project we still have to finish before we can call the front yard a success for this year. We still need to finish the 12 foot area at the top of the yard and finish our berm. I don't think we'll plant anything in the area until spring. We just need to get the fabric down and set the rock before the snow flies. Scott just finished I-86 this week so he won't be working 7 days a week at 70-90 hours + anymore (thank goodness!!). Now he gets to have me to him to work on the house! I'm sure he's thrilled :) 

Fall Explosion

I decided I better catch up a little on my blogging since I've been a slacker since the wedding.

I've always wanted a big porch to decorate for the holidays, and with this house I got it. So I've been going Pinterest crazy trying to find some decorating ideas. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, but a little creative inspiration never hurt anyone, right?! :)

So this is what's been going down at the Nelson house these last couple months, inside and out....

Pinterest template? Yep.

Front porch, pumpkins, corn stalks, and mums..

A fall staple

Dollar store glow-in-the-dark skeleton wreath

Made for less than 10$!

Extra burlap from the wedding?

Why not make pillows after being up 23 hours straight from the CU concert :)

Out on the porch (So cute i think!)

Dollar store spider webs, sure why not?!

I really luck out that Scott is so easy going with my decorating. He doesn't mind a bit what I do, and to my benefit, he almost always compliments how nice everything looks! He's a gem :) Having a house of our own to decorate and go crazy with has been a dream and a curse. Why can't I just have everything I want, right now?! Oh yeah, these goods are a pricey little commodity...! 

But, slowly it is coming around. Not just with the holiday decorating, but with everything in general. We've finally got some things on top of out cupboards in the kitchen and filled a few empty walls finally.  

I found a 36$ topiary on clearance for 10$ the other day and snatched that thing right up! It's probably 2 foot high or so, and that's going to go up here too. I'm on the look out for old antique things as well - a scale and things of that nature. I used the spud baskets from our wedding and the milk bottles as well. That window, it's actually a cupboard door someone didn't want. (I don't blame them, see through glass?!) came from the wedding too. I'm thinking about blowing up some of my Grandma's old recipes, framing them and then hanging them up, but with the 12 foot vault, I think they may get lost. So we're still playing with options! 

This is in our hallway to the bedrooms. Hilairy and her husband Tyler made this for our wedding. It's just been sitting in our formal since June and it was such a shame! It was so heavy and the place I wanted it has the stairs going down, so I didn't want Scott killing himself to hang it. So he finally got it taken care of for me and it's such a statement coming in through the front door. This picture makes it look small on that wall, but it fills it nicely!

Since Sierra's is closing, I wanted to hurry and get a picture from our wedding matted and framed. It turned out SO AWESOME! The matting looks blue, but it's a really light gray color. It's beautiful. This image was one of my favorite from the wedding. The look we have for one another is priceless. Like there was no one there at that moment. It melts my heart every time <3 nbsp="nbsp" p="p">

Well, I hope this finds you all well.

Until next time,

-M

Concert Bender 2012

If there is one thing I am totally in love with, it's concerts. I LOVE them, can't get enough really! The vibe, the surroundings, the energy, the people, the music! I could go on and on. 

This year, I'll be hitting up 3 different ones. Two years ago a few of my girl friends and myself went to Jake Owen, well he was coming back around and I was most definitely going to get a look at that eye candy again. So me and Marianne went to Filer and saw him in September. He is fantastic!

He was crazy fun! He sang "Jump!" and was all over the stage, jumping out the drum podium... He is a fabulous entertainer, we'll continue to go see him when he's close! Can't wait till he actually gets a real tour - he deserves it! The concert venue actually had to turn the lights on because he wouldn't stop singing. He was going to keep the party going all night! And even after they did... he kept going for another couple songs!

Our second concert of the year we such a funny story.. so I'll start there. I was having dinner at my friend Hilairy's house, probably before I got married, and we were talking about what concerts we wanted to see. She has mentioned Carrie Underwood hundreds of times, and that was still on her list of "I want to see..". So we are sitting around visiting and I get an email on my phone from TicketMaster...advertising presale tickets for CARRIE! I basically started hyperventilating in excitement and told Hil her wish was about to come true! We called Marianne, told her what was up, she said yes and less than 12 hours later we were concert ticket holders for Carrie's concert in West Jordan.

This girl is amazing... Wow! I mean... WOW! She is such a natural beauty. And she can sing, holy toledo! Wednesday/Thursday were long days, but it was so worth it! We had a blast.

Wolf pack :)

Hunter Hayes... Love him!

She changed outfits 5 times. Each was more beautiful than the last...

Floating stage!

Blown Away

Finally, the last artist we are going to go see is this hunk-a-hunk-a-burnin' love....

Oh my my.. Eric Church. It's no surprise I am literally obsessed with this man. Even Scott knows it :) He finally got a tour he deserves this year! He will be coming to West Jordan with Kip Moore and Justin Moore in November. I am through the roof over it! I am going to make a sign I've decided... I don't know what it will say, but it will be good! I stalked his web site for days, joined the fan club, and waited rather impatiently for presale tickets to open up so I could get good ones. And I got great ones! Haha. Marianne, myself and our husbands are going to be attending this one. It's the same crown who drove the 12+ hours to Cheyenne just so I could see him open for Toby Keith last year. Remember folks, obsessed!! 

Can't wait to share pictures from that concert with you all too! It should be a GREAT one!

Hilairy Jayne Photography: Maren N.- Bridal pics

Hilairy Jayne Photography: Maren N.- Bridal pics:                                                      
The boots were the perfect accessory :)                                     ...

My very best friend in the whole wide world took some bridal photos of me after the wedding to work on her portfolio. The link is above, check them out :)

Hilairy is a local photographer and is seriously talented. I'm not just saying this because she is a great friend either. She has such a eye for detail and her model shoots are to die for. If anyone is looking for a photographer, check her out. She is reasonably priced and is very creative in her shots.

Continued

Our sweet Diesel dog had his own role in the wedding.

Worst feeling ever not being able to include Ruger, he's so

hyper and would have been in everyones lap. 

 Giving his baby away

 Love

 You may now kiss the bride

 Mr. & Mrs. Scottie Kay Nelson

 3 Generations

These two lovely ladies are our only remaining grandparents.

And ironically, they are both our father's mother's.

 One of 12 centerpieces

6 were similar to this

6 had tall vases and lemons/limes inside

 One of these images were on our Thank You cards

 First dance (hope you listened to our song!)

 A twirl

He's such a happy little guy, isn't he?? HA!

I'm sure you can image, I have literally a thousand photos to go through. So these are just the highlights and some of my favorites I wanted to share with you all.

Hope you enjoy.

Until next time

-M