Christmas with the Clarks

So this is coming a bit late, but I wanted to report that we had a fabulous 1st Christmas together. We were able to spend some time together and open presents before Dellas got his first page to go to work.
We thought Oakley would have big fun helping open gifts, but instead he quietly enjoyed his bone...but of course, right in the middle where he's center of attention ;)

After opening my presents and getting a Wii from Mom & Dad Vance (!Thank You!) Dellas sent me on a scavenger hunt for my last present from him. He hid about 10 clues around the house and I had to solve them until I found my pretty little heart necklace around one of my snowmen decorations. It was lots of fun, and very creative!


After present-time we met over at Ned & Renee's (Del's aunt & uncle) to enjoy Christmas dinner with them. Luckily, Dellas was able to spend majority of the day with us; only leaving once for about an hr on a call. After getting rowdy playing their Wii and eating entirely too much, we hung out and tried out Ned & Renee's new hot tub! It was the perfect end to our 1st Christmas!

Oh, The World of Tiling

For those of you who actually enjoy our home improvement updates, here's another! It's time to redo the master bath and Dellas got right on it! Just on Day 1 he removed the nasty glass shower door, ripped up the old vinyl and sub-floor, removed the toilet, and tore out the baseboard. I came home from work with it looking something like the following! (Please ignore how dirty the tub is without the shower door!)




Day 2 Dellas picked me up on my lunch hour to go to Lowes to check out tile. We found a great deal on this tile (below) and thought it'd look just fine...especially for $.79 a tile. But once we got one in there, we decided it wasn't quite right.
So I took another trip back to Lowes that night, while he was at work, and found this tile (below), got it home and liked it much better than the first one (even though it's a little pricier) It has more color, more dimension and definitely fits our "color scheme" better. So today Dellas finished laying the last of the backer-board, bought 54 tiles, mortar, spacers, and other necessary tools to start laying the tile tomorrow!


However, he won't be able to get it grouted until Monday since he gets to work starting tomorrow night all the way through Sunday. Oh well! At least after 24hrs or so of being laid we can walk on it, we'll just be careful until he can grout it.
Anyway, its been fun for me coming home every night and seeing the progress! I like this whole "Dellas-not-having-class-during-the-day" thing. :)

So, opinions? Did I pick the right tile?

Let it Snow!

Now that the winter season has hit, Dellas and I thought it'd be fun to get away from Boise and head up into the mountains to McCall, ID. My family has a cabin near there so we packed up the car and pup and stayed up there for a night. I think it's probably safe to say that one of the main reasons we both wanted to go was to get breakfast at a place called The Pancake House which has AMAZING sourdough pancakes and a fun Christmas charm.

They had quite a tree set up in there and I had to beg Dellas to take a pic with me...he reluctantly agreed :)

The valley where the house sits didn't have too much snow yet, but it was still beautiful!

Oakley checkin things out

We had a fun quick trip and the night after we got back into town the snow decided to visit Boise. We got a little bit last Sunday night which led into a week of lows below zero and highs around 20 at best; followed by a few more inches of snow the past couple of days. Luckily, it's going to "warm up" this week to around 40...(3 wks til Mexico, 3 wks til Mexico...)
Oakley loves to go out and play, but when he's done, he whines to come inside and warm up!

This is him waiting to be let inside...he runs with his nose buried in the snow, haha, couldn't resist a picture.

One more exciting thing (to me) is all the Christmas lights around town! My parents and I started a tradition, when I still lived at home, of visiting a house near us that sets up lights that go along with xmas music which you can enjoy from your car via a FM station the home-owner designates.
I was bummed that I wouldn't be able to join in the tradition this year, but my mom researched and found out about a home here in Meridian that does the same thing. As Dellas and I were driving to that house one night, we drove passed a subdivision where I saw this house! It does the same thing but has quite a crazy setup! I caught a picture as ALL the lights were on at once.
In order for it to be a good display, it HAS to include music from Trans-Siberian Orchestra, my FAVORITE! Just to get an idea of what I'm talking about, here's a link on YouTube that shows a pretty cool example. Also, this one isn't as crazy, but it's another good song :)

Well, I hope everyone is staying warm and safe!

Finished Guest Room Unvailed

So, it has been done...we finished the guest room last week. I finally picked a color and a "theme" and went with it. I ended up going with some "western" touches, but it's not much right now. As I find cute things I'll add them, but for now it works. Mom and Dad Vance were the first guests to break it in when they were here for Thanksgiving and it held up just fine ;)
Dellas even replaced all the sockets and face-plates for the switches and outlets. We plan to do that throughout the house, but we started in this room.

Del installing wooden blinds (also installed a set in the master bedroom--now the house is fully equipped with them)

The finished product - new blinds and a fresh coat of paint on the molding!

How it looks from the doorway

Showing off the small hint of "western decor"

Now we move to our master bath...we've been itching to get rid of these horrible 15 yr old faucets...

So we did! We bought these new ones at Home Depot for a good price...they'll last until we either replace the whole vanity or move out. :-P

Have to put a picture of our lil helper...this is what he does while dad works in the background ;)

Happy (late) Thanksgiving!

Happy late Thanksgiving to everyone! Dellas and I have had a busy couple of weeks; working on the house & yard, chasing after puppy, working, etc. My parents also came into town this past Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving with us. We had a great time catching up and giving each other a hard time...especially mom and Del ;)
Thanksgiving day was spent out in Homedale, ID with much of the Vance family. Dellas was luckily able to join us to eat and hang out for a couple hrs and then had to get back to Boise to work. But, given that we thought he wouldn't make it at all, it was a great surprise! It was wonderful to pig out and listen to the "old men" exchange stories from back-in-the-day...many of which had me in tears laughing! It's always a great time listening to their old farm and cowboy stories :) I'm proud to have come from a good ol' country small town family! Haha...if you want to call it that.
Now that Thanksgiving has passed, I jumped right on getting decorated for the Christmas season; my favorite season of the year! Mom and I went shopping last night for a tree and found one at Target for $25 (one of their Black Friday doorbuster deals)! We got it home, set it up, and got it all lookin' pretty :) (Picture below) Now I just need to work on Del's holiday cheer...he can be kind of a grinch! I guess it's not "cool" to have fun with Christmas stuff.
Well, sorry for the lack in updates lately, I'll try to do better. :)

Del & Me on Thanksgiving

Dad, Mom, Me and Del

Our lil family with our tree :)

Brighter pic of us

Meet Oakley!

So...we got a puppy today!!! Puppy Oakley came to be part of our family when I made Del call in response to a Craigslist ad today. (Seriously people, I think we solely keep that website going!) The ad said they had 1 male yellow lab and 1 female black lab. We'd decided before our puppy search started that we both loved yellow labs, so that was our goal. When we called, the family said they had just the 1 lil guys left so we HAD to take a look! We were definitely skeptical and didn't quite expect to bring one home with us so fast! I must say, the most cynical of the both of us was Del, telling me all morning not to get my hopes up and blah blah. But of course, the minute they handed the lil guy over to us, Dellas fell in love and said "he's a stud! How can you not want to take him home!?" Needless to say, we had to bring him home.
Oakley's story goes as follows: he's from a litter of 12 whose mom was unable to nurse so the family had to disburse the bunch to people who were willing to nurse the puppies by hand. The family we bought him from had hand fed him, and 3 of his siblings, since they were 5 days old and he's now 7wks. Both of his parents are labs and he looks like he'll be a big guy!

Havin some fun in the leaves!

Runnin!

Too much playin' tuckered him out

He did very well his first day here; no accidents or breaking anything. At bedtime he whined for only a few minutes and then must have known it was time to sleep because when I peaked in on him he was already curled up asleep!
We've been having a blast watching him and playing with him. I think Oakley will bring us many adventures to come!

Home Sweet Home!

Well, time for another fun-filled update! This time it's not about the wedding or wedding pictures ;) It's about our house!

We've slowly been putting more and more work into the house that we bought at the end of August. As the weather has turned to fall, I've taken to trying to put finishing touches into the main living area so that I can call it good and move into the rest of the rooms, finally!

This first picture is of the guest room, for now. Dellas has been hounding me to pick a paint color for in here, but I can't seem to find the perfect inspiration. First, I thought it'd be fun to do a western-ish themed room (they have some CUTE stuff around town) but Del wasn't too keen. I'm trying to get away from my habit of earth tones and "European/travelling" themes, so for now this is it!

Next, is an updated picture of our fabulous, rich living room. Many of you saw it without the 2 shelves, awesome rug, and added decorations. It's now finally coming together, so I can pretty much call it done.

Angle from the kitchen...our next purchase will hopefully be new tables to match a bit better with what we've got going. Dellas' ginormous bachelor tables aren't cutting it!

Here's a super sunny picture of the kitchen area with our newly purchased dining room set. I'm telling you people, Craigslist has become our best friend! Our living room chair and dining set were both found on there. And for the price of both together, we MAYBE could've bought a new chair, on sale!


Here's a closer view of the dining area. My cool "coffee" words were purchased in McCall on our trip after the wedding.

Kitchen hasn't changed too much since we moved in. Just paint and a few additions. One of our most used is our awesome espresso machine from mom and dad Vance!

Another angle...

So, that's pretty much it for now. Our next projects include organizing the garage, doing the guest room and guest bath, and cleaning up the yard some before winter. Then once the weather gets nice again we plan to get the yard in shape and paint the exterior. As we do more I'm sure we'll have more updates!

Wedding Pics n More!

I apologize for not posting anything until now, but there hasn't been a whole lot to report! Since the wedding, Dellas was working every evening and weekend, making up time off for the wedding, so our time together has been a little limited. However, this past week was his first full week off (he works every other week for those who aren't aware) so it was nice to be able to have some fun and get things done around the house together.
We bought some fun things for the house, including a new dishwasher, and finally were able to have some friends over for dinner one night for the first time! Dellas fired up his new BBQ (courtesy of Mom & Dad Clark! We love it!) and made us a fabulous steak and rice dinner. When it comes to the BBQ he's the pro...but when it came to brownies and working the oven it was, "Honey? How the heck do you work this?" Please! Everyone note that HE, the cook of the household, was asking ME how to use the oven! So, I DO know how to do a thing or two in the kitchen ;) Anyway, it was fun :)

On another subject, we finally received our wedding pictures from our photographer, Taylor Grant. There are WAY too many amazing ones to post on here, but in the next little while I plan to put together some discs that can circulate through our families for everyone to enjoy.

Del is on his first hunting escapade with a buddy as I type, so I'm sure there will be stories to come on that adventure. What a loving wife I am; letting my new husband take off hunting our very first whole weekend without work we could've been spending together!
Well, now you can enjoy the pictures :) Love you guys!

Cake Cutting

The "Vance" Family

Us, Mom & Dad Clark, with G&G Ramey

Us, Mom & Dad Clark, G&G Clark

Us, Mom & Dad with G&G Vance

"Clarks" & "Vances" Unite :)

The "Clark" Family

We're Married!!

So, I decided to break down and start a blog. It's a much more efficient and informative way to keep all of our family and friends, who're spread everywhere, up to date on the new beginning for Dellas and I as a married couple! So here goes my first little post!
On 9/19/2009 Dellas and I tied the knot on a beautiful day in Eagle, Id surrounded by our family and close friends. The weather was fabulous; 85 degrees, partly sunny, with a light breeze.

Del & me seeing each other for the 1st time.

View of part of the reception area



Walking down the aisle with Dad.



"The Kiss"

It was an amazing day and we had a blast seeing our families. Once I get our professional photos I'll post some of those! But for now, these will do and most of you have your own anyway!
Stay tuned...more updates to come!