4 Years, Not a Single Disagreement (wink, wink)

Yesterday we celebrated 4 years of marriage.

In early November we revisited the beautiful spot where Paul proposed (see here for previous proposal story) in Provo Canyon

shown here.
Yesterday was a good day; time at the park with beautiful weather with Paul & Taya, and a nice little night out while my wonderful sister-in-law took the kiddo for us.
Happy 4 years Loaf!

Okay, Okay, I'll explain 'Loaf' now and not keep you just that perplexed. Paul & I sometimes call each other 'Loaf' because while we were engaged we were around our 2 newly wed friends (Friend are you reading this? Do you know who you are?) who kept calling each other 'Love' as a pet name; Paul thought they were saying Loaf at first and so ever since then, that is the closest thing to a pet name in our relationship (joking yet oddly endearing). Like it? Me too.

TWO $350 VALUE GIVEAWAYS!!!

Seriously. A giveaway worth $350 (and two of them!). I am so excited about this!

Here is the deal:

As a Classy Closets Designer, I have received permission to give away 2 Classy Closets gift certificates worth $350 each here on my blog! (I can see your eyes just got big. It's a good Giveaway huh?) You can use the $350 for our set design $350 Closet Special, shown below (applicable to 6'-8' wide reach-in closets) or you can use it as $350 credit toward any design of your choice! In order to enter you simply have to leave a comment in my comment room on this post and you will be entered in the drawing. You can also choose to email me at breanneclosets@gmail.com instead. All names entered as comments on this post or emailed to me by next Monday, January 19th will count. I will post the results on Tuesday, January 20th (I will also notify you if I have a way to contact you). NOW, I want to encourage you to spread the word and not keep this to yourselves, so please let any parents, cousins, siblings, friends, co-workers, etc. know if you think they would be interested at all! You can give them my blog address, my breanneclosets@gmail.com email address, or you can even enter their name in the comment room for them. I want as many people possible to have this great opportunity!

Conditions are: One entry per household & you must live in the Phoenix Valley. This is a permanent and custom installment, so homeowners only please. (Family members of me and any other Classy Closets employees are excluded).

Here is a quick sketch I did with the overhead view & elevation of our $350 Closet Special with an average closet size (6'-8'), just to give you an idea in drafting form.

Make sure to check back here for the results next Tuesday, January 20th. There will be two very lucky winners!! (And of course this drawing will be done at random).

GOOD LUCK!!!

I'll save the apologies for a delayed post.

Does anyone else miss Christmas already?

There are parts of it that are good to see go of course, but overall, I am a little sad every year when I take the tree down. It seems like Christmas just disappears come January 1st every year.

This is my Enjoying the Christmas Season Part II.

I have this syndrome: too many of my own pictures are cute or interesting to me, esp. when it comes to pics of Taya. C'mon, you know what I'm talking about (well, you definitely know when you see how many pics I'm posting here, I can hardly weed any out for the life of me! I know I'm not the only one. So just skim our pics if you want, or not. And if one catches your eye, then that's wonderful.
This first set of pictures is our own little photo shoot in which our wonderful friends, the Bandas let us borrow their camera (digital SLR camera; life changing equipment I tell you; or at least it will be blog-life changing one day down the road when we purchase one). I've been working & learning photo shop a little bit when I have the time, and love it! I could see Taya wear this dress everyday if it was possible, I love the dress, I love red on her, and of course - I love her! I bought it last year at Children's Place on super clearance after the holidays. I think I'll bust it out for Valentines Day too if it still fits her. Anyhow, back to the pictures!

Setting up for Christmas Eve Dinner at our house, with my parents & Paul's parents (Paul's parents stayed with us over the holidays, Thanks again for coming Skip & Julie!)
Love the hat too (it makes me laugh though too); but this is the longest she would keep it on; good thing it was just over a buck. Can you hear a British accent coming out of her (if babies could have accents, can you imagine baby babble with some sort of British accent to it?)

Christmas morning.

Amazing Christmas Dinner hosted by Bret & Candy (my oldest brother). Looky there. That is a crown pork roast, cored apples stuffed with corn bread based stuffing, mouth watering salad, and you can't even see the huge shrimp they brought back from Rocky Point. See? I told you it was amazing.

And no Christmas season would be complete without a trip to the LDS Mesa Temple Lights. They are BE-U-TI-FUL.

As usual, it was a wonderful Christmas season; I don't care what is going on in my life or how bad the world around me can seem; there is always happiness, meaningful times & sacredness to be found at Christmas Time. I believe there is a reason for that.

**********************

Stay tuned for a HUGE Giveaway!! Seriously .. in the next day or two (although I'll warn you, it only applies locally, sorry long distance friends!).

Does anyone else do this?

Do you ever go to tell someone something about yourself or how you do something and realize just how funny or quirky it is? I have these moments frequently, I mean frequently (italics & repeated words may not always be trusted, it is possible that they are only used for attention getting, theatric's sake, and exageration).

This was mine this morning. I went to comment on Sara's post this morning and realized how funny this habit is:

(Insert not-so handy-dandy little picture of spray bottle here, the one that photo bucket is NOT successfuly downloading for me)

Paul & I almost NEVER iron anymore. What do we do instead? I bought that Downy Wrinkle Releaser once a long time ago, and the ironing game was OVER then and there. It was a breeze! Now we just use water bottles (doesn't work quite as well as Downy's Wrinkle Releaser) so as to save money. It started with trying the new product. And Paul would ask me in the mornings to 'Spray Him'. Soon enough, he would take position (arms out like a scarecrow and legs apart) while I would spray him up and down, front and back and he would walk out the door to work or church. Now he doesn't even always have to say 'Spray me', we just know. He comes up, takes scarecrow position while I grab the water bottle and start spraying.

So to learn from the Spray Wrinkle Releasing Masters, I will share my tips with you today, and only today (this just in, you can access this post later on? Oh golly gee willickers, that takes the glory out of it. My message of help just got cheapened).

TIPS:

Husband (can be wife sometimes, but never the mailman): Take scarecrow position, give wife the all knowing look.
Wife: Start spraying nice even strokes, er sprays. That spray CANNOT be a squirt! I repeat, it must be a nice even spray. Beautiful. If it's a squirt, forget about it!
NOW, here is the secret. You cannot just spray, the other salesman will tell you that you can, but it just doesn't do the job 100%. You must spray, then press. Press with your hand nice and flat, nice even strokes, all the way around. If your strokes aren't even, you will create stripes of wrinkles. So you must find the art of the hand press stroke.
Last but not least, do it with a few minutes to spare before sitting down if you can, otherwise your moisture will set into the sitting wrinkles that you create.

And there you have it. The most useless, I mean useful post ever.

(I keep letting my other post ideas that I haven't gotten to keep me from posting, things like how I was just listed as 1 of Top 8 blogs on a favorite blog of mine - yay!, or how I love my new header that my talented husband created for me, or how our Christmas & New Years went and the pictures we took with a borrowed camera, or how we visited the coolest antique store I've ever seen last weekend in Cottonwood, Arizona, OR, OR...)

The funnest part of this post: Using the term Golly Gee Willickers. Not sure if I even spelled it right. But I liked it. If only you could hear the voice that comes along with that phrase in my family. I'll give you a hint. It's sarcastic. It turns Ron Howard in The Andy Griffith Show in an instant.

Just enjoying the Christmas Season...

Here are a few pics of what we've been up to while enjoying this Christmas time ...

Holiday dress with front yard-holiday tangerines!

Snow day in our local neighborhood!

Not necessarily Christmas related, just cute :)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

You know how there is always that one house that is super decked out at Christmas time like this one?

Well those decked out houses don't even compare to this decked out house I came across in Scottsdale on Friday. This house has a full on Palace facade, snow machines (yes, making real snow), bubble machines, light machines and the lights are all timed to Christmas songs played on speakers. I have never seen anything like it from a homeowner - doing it for fun - like this before. I was so entertained - because of the effort put into it - it was crazy! I wish my video of it would work on Blogger so you could see it, and see the kid in my video yelling 'It's snowing!' when the snow machines turned on. My jaw was dropped the whole time.

That's all for now!

Stuffed!

It's 10:45; we ate our Thanksgiving FEAST at 4pm & I am still FULL.

That's how good our Thanksgiving was.

(I'm thankful for holidays centered around killer, top-notch, everything-made-from-scratch FOOD!!!)

Your Choice (if it's a good one)

WHAT SHOULD I NAME MY BLOG?

I would like to change the header name on my blog from Johnson, Johnson ... & Johnson to : ??

Your Choice (if I like it ).

It can't be too cheesy, too serious or sappy; just clever, free of my last name, a little funny, and better than all of your headers - you know, so I can surpass the Jones'. Okay, now GO! Tell me! What's my new title?

----------------------------------

***Okay, so I'm going to add that I'm definitely enjoying my MapCluster I've added there at the bottom of my blog. It shows me how many hits I'm getting and where in the world they're coming from. But now my curiosity is getting the best of me. So this is the thing: Not to make my Saudi Arabia friend feel awkward, but would you like to show yourself? I am trying to think of who in Saudi Arabia would possibly find my blog (I have my blog so that it cannot be searched through google or blogspot). If you are someone I'd like to become pen pals with, leave me a comment! Suggest a new name for my blog! Pinch Taya's cheeks even! Or if you know me, leave me a comment! Suggest a new name ...... Okay, you get the point.

And I bet I speak for all bloggers when I invite anyone else who periodically takes a peek at my blog to poke their head in and say hi.***

---

I'm getting even more excited for Thanksgiving (my excitement began when October started - my entire family is having it together out here in Arizona). I'm helping to plan our Thanksgiving menu - I'm looking up fresh produce markets to buy our goods at, and I'm writing my posts in Thanksgiving colors, how excited are you?

Taya's Halloween 2008

Here is a bit of catch up on Halloween pictures of Taya. We had a blessing and baptism of our favorite niece & favorite nephew (don't worry all 26 of our other nieces & nephews - you're our favorites too -especially when you draw us pictures and give us candy) in Las Vegas that weekend, and we were able to leave at lunch time on Halloween to make it to Las Vegas just in time to trick or treat with all of Paul's family. We finished the night off with chili & cornbread and dug into Taya's candy :) (the only year we can do that)

(This is funny - these people weren't home & Taya just hopped on their tricycle sitting on the front porch - we snapped a pic before we took her off - should we leave a copy of the pic in their mailbox?)

It was a Happy Halloween!