Kitchen project

As most of you know, all of my kitchen appliances are pink. Before I married Jonathan I already had the stand mixer, the blender and a lot of smaller miscellaneous items, in pink. Then for our wedding we got TONS more pink stuff, like the hand mixer, the stand up ice cream maker, the toaster, and more small items. Jonathan knew this of course, and he said it was fine that my kitchen be pink, as long as we could paint the walls brown. :) We were noticing a couple weeks ago that the wall in our basement and the wall border above our kitchen cabinets had grooves in them that would make it perfect to stripe the walls because the lines are already there for you!! Here's an example :

(I hope that's not really hard to see!) So Jonathan got this BRILLIANT idea to stripe the kitchen pink and brown.. I love his ideas sometimes!! Here are the before and afters! Tell me HONESTLY what you think. I'm sure I'll hear a lot of, "well, I never would have done it in my house, but it's cute in yours!!" :)
Before:

After:


Close up:

Recipe help

Ever since we got married, cooking has been a whole new adventure for me. No longer can I just cook whatever I like, whenever I want it. I have to figure out what Jonathan likes, and have them prepared in a timely manner when we get home from work. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE doing this, it's just new. I find myself spending a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table just looking through different cook books for things that look delicious, and realistic, for me to prepare. For the past couple weeks I have only made things that I've never made before. It's definitely an adventure. You never really know how your food will turn out. There have been some really good things, (keepers, as we call them), and some things that we might never wanna try again :) I was actually just getting on the computer to find a good pasta salad recipe on BHG.com (love that site), and I thought I'd check the blog while I was on here, and now here I am writing to you guys to seek some thoughts from all of you! Of course, we all have our favorites from Mom: chicken enchiladas, beef stroganof, roast and potatoes, chili, well, you all know. But I was wondering what other favorite recipes you guys have that I have been missing out on! Kirsta has given me a few that we tried and LOVED! Although, I made one of them wrong so we'll have to try it again, we didn't give up on it! So, fill me in on your favorite dinners so I can try them Please!! If you don't wanna write down a whole recipe on here you can email it to me at Karigustav@aol.com. Thanks!

Kirsta "tagged" me to do her post, so that means I HAVE to do it!! :) It's gonna be a tricky one because you have to answer all the question with only ONE word. Here goes..

1. Where is your cell phone? Idk (abreviations are one word)
2. Where is your significant other? office
3. Your hair color? blondish
4. Your mother? Inspiring
5. Your father? Calm
6. Your favorite thing? Jonathan
7. Your dream last night? Vegas...
8. Your dream/goal? Motherhood
9. The room you're in? Bedroom
10. Your hobby? Scrapbooking
11. Your fear? Death (of loved ones before I'm ready)
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Outtahere
13. Where were you last night? Home
14. What you're not? Pregnant :(
15. One of your wish-list items? Tiffany's
16. Where you grew up? Junction!
17. The last thing you ate? Stir-fry
18. What are you wearing? Pink
19. Your TV? Lame
20. Your pet? None
21. Your computer? Favorite
22. Your mood? Content
23. Missing someone? Parents
24. Your car? Clean
25. Something you're not wearing? Ring
26. Favorite store? Shoes
27. Your summer? Packed!
28. Love someone? Duh
29. Your favorite color? Pink.. And Kirsta, I can't believe yours is PINK! What happened to you??
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? Jonathan

NOT camera shy

In case any of you are wondering what that picture is of, it's all the pictures we just developed at Sam's club of Hawaii!! That's right folks, all 606 of them!! I got this really great idea that instead of trying to plan out every scrapbook page i wanted to do, and what pictures to put on them, I would just print EVERY pic that Jonathan, me, Kirsta and Elsha took, and just scrapbook whatever I wanted! Well, if you also have that same great idea, you might wanna look through them all first. There are a lot of just scenery pictures, about 200 of Pearl Harbor and 200 more of PCC. It was really funny when I got home and they were all laying on the table. I couldn't believe just how many pictures I actually just developed. :) So, I organized them all in piles by event. Here's a side view of the piles:

From top left: Turtle bay, Temple, PCC, sporting events (golf, volleyball, tennis, water polo), condos, random baby pics, Dole factory, duplicates, International Market Place, swap meet, Waimea Falls, random pool or beach pics, Pearl Harbor, the Ranch, scenery pics, family pics (JEEZ there are lots), shave ice, and last Pali lookout.

Wow, I'll be scrapbooking for a year with all this!!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday, I just wanted to send a little "shout out" to him. He is the best Dad in the world, and I don't care what anyone says :) I love you Daddy, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

My favorite Neice in the whole world!

Just to let you guys know, Kalena is definitely my favorite neice. That means you all better start having more girls so I can't pick just one!! Here's some of my photos of her in Texas.








There's my tribute to Missy Kalenas. I love her. :)

Texas Trip

Jonathan and I just got back from a wonderful long weekend in the great state of Texas! We left on Friday night after work about 6:00, to arrive at Elsha and Brian's house around 4:00 am. Although it was actually the middle of the night, or morning, you wouldn't know it showing up to their house. Elsha and the baby greeted us with smiles at the front door, Brian was chillin on the couch with "Friends" playing on the big screen tv, it was like it was 4:00 in the afternoon! I guess life changes when you have a baby that wants to start her day at 4 am. We got the grand tour of the house because we'd never been there and then Jonathan and I crashed out til about 10 the next morning.

Saturday was Elsha's birthday. Happy 26th Elsha!! We hung around the house and opened gifts and then went out to lunch at the classic Midland favorite Rosa's. I just love that place!


That night Brian cooked Elsha's requested birthday dinner of steaks, baked potatoes, shrimp with cocktail sauce, and artichokes. Yum Yum. It was a feast!! After, or before, during, AND after that we played a game of 90's edition trivial pursuit. Elsha and Brian came back on the last pie and beat us! grrrr.
Sunday morning we went to church and then Lisa and her family came over for Double Dave's pizza. It was good to see them and introduce Jonathan to the other side of the family. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of anyone :( We'll have to store that memory in our head. :) That night we played Phase 10. Pretty sure Elsha won. Surprise, surprise.


Monday we kicked it around the house for a while and then I took Jonathan up to the Bed Bath and Beyond that I used to work at. We ran into lots of associates and managers that I worked with while I was there so we had a good chat with them. That night we took the 4 of us out to a Mexican restaurant called Abuleo's. It was really good food and atmosphere. That night Elsha introduced us to a game called Blokus. It was awesome. We had a great time, and by the I mean we all hated each other and the end of the game. We'll have to play again sometime soon!!

Tuesday it was time to leave :( We got up early and left for Lubbock, where we picked up Brian and took a mini tour of the Texas Tech campus. Then we met up with cousin Jason and went to go see his new house. OH MAN it is pretty!! We hung out there for a couple hours with he and his wife and kids who happened to have the day off school. We had a great time catching up! It's really good to get to see family that you haven't seen in a while!

A picture with Vanessa and kids


A picture with Jason and kids

After that we continued our long, boring journey home. We were so grateful for the opportunity to go!! Love you guys!!