Birthday and Christmas Fun!

I had such a wonderful birthday and Christmas vacation with Geoff and his family! Before we left, we had an early Christmas since we couldn't take our gifts with us. I was definitely spoiled! Geoff got me a FitBit Charge, so now I'll be more motivated to work out and keep track of how many calories I burn and all that fun stuff. It even tracks my sleep and I can set an alarm so it vibrates to wake me up, and it also vibrates and lets me know who is calling me on my cell phone! Pretty sweet. He also got me a Zumba workout game for the Xbox, a $50 Amazon gift card, a book I've been wanting by one of my favorite vloggers, the new Taylor Swift album and a Christmas album by another one of my favorite vloggers, and of course some cute socks and pajamas

I got him a car vacuum since he's been wanting one for forever, an Xbox game, a new watch, an awesome tie, some manly lotion and body wash, a gift card for lots of car washes and of course some pajamas.

I woke up to some lovely roses and a little gift beside it from Geoff. The gift he gave me was a spa manicure and pedicure, and I'm so excited to get pampered sometime in the next month or so!

We spent the majority of my birthday with Geoff's Uncle Roger, Aunt Leanne, and his cousins Ryan, Robby, April and Samantha. They were visiting Salt Lake for the day as they made their way from Washington to St. George, Utah. We hung out at the mall before eating a yummy dinner at Tucanos Brazilian Grill.

Geoff's family was driving from Washington to Arizona, and picked us up that evening so we could go to Arizona with them. We had Dairy Queen ice cream cake for my birthday before we made the 12 hour drive all through the night to Gilbert, Arizona.

Only picture I got of the cake... Oops!

We had a lot of fun in Arizona visiting family and doing some fun activities! Here's a rundown of some of the things we did:

• We saw the Christmas lights at the Mesa Arizona Temple.
• Saw the Loop of Lights, which is a street of Christmas lights where the houses go all-out.
• Spent lots of time with all the family members that live in Arizona.
• Ate way too much yummy, homemade food and homemade Christmas candy.
• Went swimming... outside... in the middle of December... Who does that?!
• Had a yummy kabob barbecue at a park where we played volleyball and frisbee.
• Went on a hike and saw the most gorgeous views of Arizona.
• Spent some time at the mall shopping and having fun.
• Went shotgun shooting (Geoff's favorite part, I wouldn't go near the guns!)
• Saw the gorgeous Gilbert Arizona Temple numerous times since we drove past it almost everyday.
• Looked through some photo albums from back in the day when Geoff was the cutest little boy!
• Played lots of board and card games. New favorite... Ticket to Ride!
• Shared lots of memories, laughed way too much, and slept way too less!

Mesa Arizona Temple

Gilbert Arizona Temple

Nativity Reenactment

Hiking

The Whetstone siblings with Uncle Sean, Aunt Suzy,
cousin Noel and Geoff's dad

All of Geoff's family besides two of his siblings

Whetstone 2014 Christmas Cards

I wanted to do Christmas cards this year, since it's our first year married and thought it would be something special to do! Although I didn't design the cards, I love how they turned out. I found the template on Etsy and was able to put in my own photos with Photoshop. Pretty simple and stress-free! I ordered the cards through the same company we ordered our wedding invitation and wedding thank you's from. Can't beat getting 100 cards for only $32 bucks!

Getting in the Christmas Spirit!

It's been exactly a month since I've blogged... A whole month! I don't have an excuse, other than we really have had nothing exciting going on. Until recently, which I'll talk about now :)

We had an untraditional Thanksgiving this year. We spent it with my dad at a condo in Henderson, Nevada, only about 15 minutes from Las Vegas. One of his friends has been begging him to take a trip down there, so we decided it would be perfect to use over Thanksgiving weekend. We enjoyed the warm weather, and getting some Christmas shopping done at the mall. We had to wait 3 hours to get into a buffet on Thanksgiving, that was not fun! The food was pretty good though.

Now that it's officially December, I'm totally in the Christmas spirit! We put our little tree and stockings up in our living room, and I'm loving it. I can't wait to put some presents under there for Geoff!

My awesome cousin Miken took some Christmas photos for Geoff and I since I'm wanting to send out Christmas cards this year. We drove into Cottonwood Canyon near our house and stopped at a picnic area with lots of trees and scenic backdrops. There was one photo we both fell in love with right away, so that's the one that will be on the cards! I also ordered a Christmas ornament for us to use in a photo on the cards and hang on our tree, since it's our first Christmas together as a married couple :) I'll have to post the Christmas card on here once we send them out in the next week or so!

And that's about it! We have some fun things planned on my birthday on the 20th, and we're also leaving for Arizona to spend Christmas with Geoff's family as well on my birthday. So I'll hopefully have a lot of fun pictures and Christmas updates to post once that time comes!

Until then, we'll continue our usual, working, adult life routine!

Happy Halloween from the Whetstones!

Since my work was having a Halloween party and we were told to dress up in our most creative costumes, and since it was Geoff and I's first Halloween as a married couple, I decided to go all out!

Now, you should know if you don't already, I don't like dressing up because I don't like attention. So this was a big deal for me. Same goes for Geoff. He also doesn't like dressing up too much. I'm glad he was a good sport for our first married Halloween!

I made my own piñata costume, and Geoff was my silly, Mexican sidekick.... who didn't abuse me with a stick like many people thought of when they saw us! But my costume took about 3 hours to make, gluing streamers with fabric glue to a tank top was not as easy or fun as I had originally anticipated. I made sure to get a really big tank top, knowing it would shrink a little bit with the streamers glued to it. It was almost impossible to put on! I made Geoff come in the women's bathroom at my work because I was struggling putting it on by myself. But it was fun being silly for a couple of hours on Halloween!

Aren't we so colorful?

Next year will be much simpler... I'll most likely stick with a traditional witch hat and call it good!

Halloween Poster for Charity Event for Lupus Foundation

One of my co-workers is hosting a Halloween Charity Night for the Lupus Foundation and asked me to make posters for her to hang around Salt Lake. I thought what she was doing for the Lupus Foundation was awesome, so I got to work right away making this poster for her. Since the event is at a Pub, I thought having potion bottles filled with their own concoctions (like drinks in a pub have) would be a neat thing to include on the poster. I hope she is able to raise a lot of money for the Lupus Foundation and this poster helps to spread the word!

Autumn Drive Through Alpine Loop

This weekend, Geoff and I decided to go take a drive through Alpine Loop to see all the fall colors through the mountains. It was gorgeous! There were also some good views of Mt. Timpanogos as well. Here are a few of my favorite pictures we took.

Happy 6 Months to Us!

Today, Geoff and I have been married for 6 months! It has flown by, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. In a way, it's bad because we're young and having lots of fun right now at this point in our life, and in a way I don't want it to end. Before we know it, we'll be older and Geoff will be working full-time and we'll hopefully have a kid or two that will keep us on our toes. Life is bound to get crazy busy! But it's also good because although we're enjoying life now, the future is fun to think about as well. I'm excited to see what happens in the next 6 months, and the next 6 years, and the next 60 years!

I love you Geoff! Marrying you was pretty much the best decision ever :)

Birthday Invitations - Halloween Costume Theme

My niece Kyra is turning 13 in a couple of weeks and my sister Chelsey asked me to design her birthday invitations. Kyra wanted to have a costume party since her birthday is close to Halloween. After Chelsey showed me an invitation she liked that had a mask on it, I came up with my own design just for Kyra!

Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall!

I can't believe it's the middle of September already. I especially can't believe we're now in the fall season when I still feel like it should be summer. But I'm loving the 70-85 degree weather and watching all the trees turn orange!

Geoff and I haven't done anything out of the ordinary lately. We've been working non-stop it seems like. We did go to the Draper Temple for the first time last week which was a special experience for both of us. And afterwards we went with a couple in our ward to Leatherby's. I've been wanting to go there for a while since I've heard about how good their ice cream is. We were surprised that it's a sit down restaurant, not just a Baskin Robbins type of setup. But while browsing through the menu, I saw that they had play dough ice cream, which is my favorite ice cream ever! I thought I could only get it at Farr's, so I was in heaven after I found that out. I got the small, thinking it would be one scoop of ice cream. But no... it was 3 giant scoops! I had to take it home because I couldn't finish it. They told me next time if I just want one scoop to get the kid size. Who knew!

Geoff and I also are officially on our own cell phone plan with AT&T and have Utah cell phone numbers! I was eager for us to get on our own plan, but once we left AT&T I started worrying if we had made the right choice. I'm such a frugal person and felt selfish for getting iPhone 5s's when we could have maybe gotten other phones so our monthly bill would be lower. But Geoff reassured me we would be fine and it's not like we'll go broke. It's just part of growing up! We love our new phones, it's been a nice change from us having iPhone 4s's for a while (Geoff's only had his 4s for a year, but I had mine for three years!)

Yesterday was the first day of classes for BYU-Idaho, which means it was the first day back to school for Geoff! We were planning on him transferring to UVU, since it's pretty close to where we live, but looking through UVU's classes we found out only his English classes would transfer, and he would basically have to start college all over again! Definitely not cool. So since he is almost halfway to earning a Bachelor's degree at BYU-Idaho, we figured he should continue taking online classes. He's taking a full load of classes this semester, so we felt he should only work part-time so he has time to focus on school. It will be an adjustment for sure, but it will pay off in the end once he earns a Bachelor's degree, most likely in Computer Information Technology!

I have an awesome husband who lets me take
"First Day of School" photos of him, even
 though he will be going to school and
doing his homework all at home!

Apartment Tour - Geoff and I's First Place Together

I'm finally getting around to taking pictures of Geoff and I's apartment! We live in my cousin's basement of their house. Although for a couple months we were dealing with a really bad spider problem (literally killing 3-4 big spiders a day and finding numerous dead ones) and I had constant nightmares of spiders crawling all over me like every other night (my cousins took down their ivy bushes, and I swear all the spiders that lived in the ivy decided to move in with us!), now that we've sprayed and set traps, we're only killing a couple of small ones every week. So I feel more comfortable and not so freaked out! Spiders are my biggest fear, and I'm grateful for a husband who has dealt with 99.9% of the spiders since I'm too scared to, even though he's not too fond of spiders himself! But all in all, we love living here and being right in between both of our jobs.

Not shown in these pictures is the laundry/storage room across from the bathroom, a cute little nook/storage closet in our living room, and also the garage outside where some of our stuff is stored and Geoff parks his car. I'm glad we have plenty of storage space here!

Living Room.

I'm in love with this bookshelf next to our kitchen!

The Kitchen.

Favorite decoration in the kitchen.

Front door, with the living room on one side and the
kitchen on the other. I apologize for the funky-looking lighting!
It doesn't look like that in real life.

Bathroom.

Bedroom.

Closet in the bedroom.

Love this saying hanging above our bed!

Wedding Pictures Part 2

As promised, here are the rest of our wedding photos for you to enjoy! Again, I'll only add a few since adding 40 photos on a blog post would be overwhelming. There are a total of 88 on Facebook if you would like to view them all there!

The rain clouds started rolling in...

You can never have enough ring photos, right?

Photos taken of our wedding reception.

My cousin Shaila took our photos. She is amazing!

And that's the end! We can't thank our family enough for their love and support that made for a perfect wedding day for us!