the last bits of summer

The last weekend before school started we did a few fun things. We made it to the State Fair and were able to spend some time with my brother Jon and his wife Tonya. Tonya's family has dairy goats and Rebecca enjoyed petting the goats.

We also got together with Dan's family for supper and went to the park afterwards. It was hot, but lots of fun.

Weekend at the Lake

We enjoyed a great weekend at Lake Rathbun with friends and my sister. We had great weather too - the humidity moved out for a few days and we were very comfortable. I didn't seem to get very many pictures of the action in the boat, but we did a lot of things. Dan and I both like to ski and we are learning how to wake board. We can both get up on the wake board pretty well and are learning how to stay up :) We also did a fair amount of tubing. Rebecca also likes to ride on the tube with me as long as we go slow.

This is by far the best picture of the weekend!

6th Anniversary

We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary this past Saturday on the 24th. We knew we wanted to spend some quality time together, but didn't make plans until the day before :) Rebecca spent the evening with some friends. We went out to eat at Johnny's Italian Steakhouse. It was the best food and service we have had in a long time - a very relaxing meal. After dinner we went to Grays Lake thinking we would just walk around the lake, but then we saw the paddle boats and for $5 for a 1/2 hour, we couldn't pass them up. Here are some pictures from the water.

After we got off the water we decided to so check out the new pedestrian bridge over the Des Moines river. The bridge has a really cool design. It was nice to just stroll on the bridge and enjoy looking at the river and skyline.

We are thankful to God for another blessed year of marriage!

I'm finally here!

I finally made it to Viterbo University. I have been working on my masters degree for the past 4 years and this week I am graduating! This is also the first time that I have been to the campus which is in La Crosse, WI. Here are a few pictures of the at campus and by the river.

I miss being home with my family so much! But I'm glad to have gotten this far and can't wait to be all done later this week!

Have some fun in your drawers!

I got this simple idea from here. Although these drawers don't get much traffic so I used craft paper instead of fabric and did not protect the paper with anything. This was so simple, it took me all of five minutes to measure, cut, and tape. Most won't ever see it, but it will make me smile ever time I open the drawers.

Before and After (2 & 3)

Here are a few more of my projects that I have been hard at work on. The first is something that I have needed/wanted for over a year now. The more sewing projects I do, the more thread I accumulate. So here it is...

Before

After

The next project was a little bigger. I repainted our bedroom. Most of the things in our room were going to stay the same so I had to go with colors that would go with the quilt and curtain and also blend with the furniture. I love how it turned out!

Before (this picture is a little embarrassing because I didn't really clean at all before taking it. All I did was make the bed and toss the quilt on the bed so you could see it better.)

After

I bought the paint from Menards and decided to go with the higher quality (aka more expensive) paint plus primer because I thought I would have to do less coats since the color was so dark. It was worth it. I only had to do two coats. I remember when I did the red wall in our dining room I had to do about 5 coats! The darker wall is "chocolate kiss" and the lighter walls are "lama brown."

These shelves are a new addition to the room. I got the idea for these shelves from another crafty blog. They are so easy to put up. Simply loop ribbon and screw into the wall and then put a thin board through the ribbons. Still not sure what to put on the shelves. All these items were taken from other places in the house and after the picture I put them all back.

Chicken Saga

So the chicken saga continues this summer. Last summer we had a great time with our three chickens until a raccoon attacked! This summer we reinforced the cage so that no wild animals could get at our four chickens. I guess we didn't plan for domestic animals though! The neighbors two dogs got out and one of them nudged open the egg door latch and snagged a chicken. It then proceeded to run down the highway with the chicken in its mouth! So now we are back to three chickens. Rebecca didn't seem to care much that a dog took off with one of her chickens.