Thankful List

I've seen a few people doing Thankful list's on their blogs for every day of the month and I thought, well darn it thats a good idea. I think I need to work on having more gratitude in my life, I'd be a happier girl I'm certain of that. At first I was like "Whoa every day-not uh!"but then I thought what could it hurt (unless it bores you out of your mind...sorry) So since today is November 5 I will do 5 things :)

1. My man- Wow... where to even start...my best friend, my other half, my comedian, my sweetheart, my shoulder to cry on (and I need one of those- I'm a cry-aholic)... Tyler could not be more perfect for me. I can't imagine life without him, let alone eternity without him. He helps me be better, he forgives my crazy outbursts and faults, he holds me tight and cuddles with me in the morning, he scratches my back when I'm stressed, he kisses me and hugs me a lot, he works hard for us, he is so patient with me and my womanly habits (shopping, crying, etc).... simply put, he loves me and I love him. Not to mention he is ruggedly handsome. Can't deny it! I love you Tyler!

2. Family- What would I do without them?! I call my mom and sisters way more than they'd like me too I'm sure, and I annoy my Dad and brothers with questions and pointless phone calls...but they love me right? My nieces and nephews are so fun. They make me smile just thinking about them and I love them too much! My in-laws couldn't be better. I'm so blessed with great family.

3. Photography- My creative outlet and my passion... too much to say.

4. Scentsy candles (these are in no particular order ps) I am a smell person. I'm always worried if my house smells good and I think something about a good smelling house makes you feel at home and warmer. My scentsy are wonderful...I could smell them all day long

5. My home with my husband. Love Love Love my house and I'm so grateful for it. It was hard for me to move a little ways away from my family and home town after I got married, and I know I shouldn't complain because its only 6 hours away, but having a home really helped me feel comfortable. It gave me something to make my own and made me feel like I created a new home even though I was in a new state. I love my house, its smells, my kitchen (the granite counter tops that are going in right now!), bedroom, etc. I also love that Tyler puts up with me changing things every other week ;)

Halloweenie Weekend!!

WARNING: MUCHO PICTURES IN THIS POST!

We had an absolute blast this weekend over Halloween. Here is what went down. Tyler and I have these 3 other couples that we are the best of friends with. The men were all roommates/friends in college and the wives were friends in college or became friends after we all got married. 2 of us live in Idaho, and 2 of the couples live in Utah. So we try to get together for a few weekends during the year, or as much as we can. We always have so much fun together! Its nice to have some good friends. So anyway we planned fun filled Halloween weekend for us all to get together. On Friday night we played a How to Host a Murder game. SO FUN! For those of you who have never played one of these, they are a blast! I have played 4 now I think and they are SOO fun. You dress up as characters in a murder mystery and solve the murder together and one of you is secretly the murderer. Oh man they are way fun. Our mystery game was 50's themed, so we all dressed up 50's style and ate pizza and milkshakes! Heres some pictures.

Trevor and April :) our favorite cousins
Jemaica and Troy. They take awesome pictures together!





Brenda and Paul. Our fellow Idahoians! Love them!


So anyway the next day all the wives had some girl time and went shopping while the boys watched the BSU game and did whatever boys do. So we had fun trying on makeup ay MAC and just having a fun afternoon together. Then we went back to our house and dressed in our costumes for a Halloween party our other really great friends were throwing. So we dressed up, went to dinner at Wingers, and then headed off to the AWESOME party. I was pretty proud of Tyler and mine costumes. Tyler came up with the idea and I thought it turned out pretty funny. We got a lot of laughs especially when we were at the restaurant :)
Paul; 70's man, great wig! Brenda; Cutest little duck ever!

THE biggest losers!!

Troy; A ghost...a friendly one. Jem; A sexy witch :)




Trevor and April; Michelagelo and April O'Neil from the ninja turtles!!!
It was a fun weekend and I'm sad its over. I just love having fun and being able to forget about all the stressful stuff, relax, and laugh a lot! It makes life much easier! Its also a huge blessing to have such great friends. Especially couple friends! We had fun taking a break, staying up late chatting, dressing up, eating :), and just hanging out.

Now I have Thanksgiving to look forward to! Life has been crazy lately! Tyler has been busy on the hunt for a job here close to home. We'd like to find something close because we would be sad to leave again for the summer so cross our fingers! If not APX is a fabulous job that we are super grateful for and we're up for another adventurous summer! So we'll see what happens :)I've been busy doing photoshoots and just having a blast learning more about photography and meeting a lot of great people and capture some of their moments. I love taking pictures! I'm so happy I'm able to do it! Things are great in the Markus household.

More house pictures...

Okay so I seriously redecorate or rearrange things in my house like every 2 weeks or so. Its a bad hobby to have I think :) but its so fun. And I'm so excited with the holidays rolling around because I can get to put up Christmas decorations!! Yesterday we bought all the ornaments to go on our tree (costco 84 pack! Ya!)So anyway... we have this big, massive, kind of a pain, bookshelf. We got it for free right after we got married and for a year straight I've been meaning to add some shelves and get it repainted, so Tyler and I finally got it done and I think it looks pretty sweet fot getting it for free!
Initial dingy dirty bookshelf= free
Added shelves= about $15.00
Leftover paint from bedroom to touch it up=$12.00
Getting the boards cut about 5 times til they fit, sanding it down even more so it fit, not putting anything too heavy in the new middle shelf because its bowing= PRICELESS




Here is a view of my man in the living room... I'm pretty sure he is watching a football game AND checking his score on his fantasy football league. Wow. The multitasking taking place here is amazing :)


And here is the bedroom finally! Okay before it was dark brown, tan, and flat paint. So we repainted to back dark wall and painted all the tan walls a nice light cream color. It makes the room feel a lot brighter and not so heavy. Sorry its only one view. The room is still under construction on the other half and is covered with piles of pictures and decor to hang up still.

We have yet to someday get a bedroom set which will be awesome when we do...someday :)

Oh and I thought I'd throw this one in there. Its my new decal in the kitchen ;) fancy stuff eh?


Oh well thats all. Does anyone know of any good websites or home magazines that give good decoration ideas? I love looking at new ideas but can't seem to find any super good ones.

Things that still need to get done ( the list is endless really)
-Granite in the kitchen (can't wait)
-Furniture for the front sitting room (ah someday)
-A desk for Tyler
-Spruce up the laundry room with some girly decor (I figure I'm usually in that room so I'll make it all girly and cute since everything has to be gender neutral now!)
-Someday...bedroom set

Things are looking up ;)

So Tyler and I had an interesting week/weekend... I guess week would be all inclusive but whatever. So I was extra emotional this week... and I had no idea why! I'm a pretty emotional person generally, I just cry, its how I express my feelings I guess. And according to Tyler I have pretty large tears, he claims he can hear them hit the ground. ANYWAY, like I said I really had no idea why I was being extra sensitive, but when your man asks you, "Whats wrong? I want to help." You want to jump on that offer but all I had to say was "I DON'T KNOW" and I probably yelled it...to a degree. It was frustrating to say the least. And to top it all off I was legitimately sick ALL week. It was no fun. I started off with a little cough then had a horrible headache. Then I had a horrible cold, and then a fever! Yuck. But I still had to go to school, because it was midterms this week. So instead of taking it easy to get better, I was going to school, then I had to come home and study my butt off, with a cold and a fever, and EXTRA emotional-ness... are you feeling sorry for me yet? So anyway on Friday I figured out why I had been such an emotional wreck all week. :) My husband gained back some self esteem and I gained some peace of mind. So come Saturday things started to look up. I have been wanting to re-paint our bedroom ever since we have moved in. For some reason the paint was flat (meaning not smooth, marks super easy, and not shiny, pretty dull looking) so every time I walked into our bedroom all I could see was all these little marks on the wall and it drove me batty. So we made our way to our friendly neighborhood wal-mart and bought some decadent chocolate and baked custard (those unfortunately are paint names not desserts) so Saturday we spent all day painting til we got an unexpected call from some friends in need passing through our neck of the woods with some serious car troubles. So we picked them up then had fun the rest of the night with them eating all you can eat Pizza at Primos and just relaxing. So after our friends were all repaired and on their way we starting painting again because I was going nutty with our bedroom is total disarray. But of course as it goes... we ran out of paint!! So tomorrow we will finish painting the ceiling in our bedroom room (never paint ceilings!! I normally never do but I had no choice in this case) I'll be sure to post pictures when its all done. So good things...
1. we finally painted the bedroom...almost!
2. I am no longer sick! Yahoo for health!
3. midterms are over :)

The story of our bedroom and its ceiling is to be continued...

Family Pictures :)

Fall...in love

I LOVE Fall...

I love the colors of the changing leaves, I love the smell of the pumpkin spice candle in my house, I love the crisp feeling of the cool air, I love the clothes... the coats, sweaters, hats, boots, etc. Fall just seems perfect.



I had a hot sticky summer in Houston and I'm so ready for this Fall season coming in :)

Such a big deal I had to blog about it!

Wow things have been busy so far this month! School, work, family time...crazy! But so stinking fun! I've loved every minute of being home. Tyler and I got to take a fun trip to McCall for our anniversary and stay at the family cabin, we had a blast. Tyler planned some great things. We went hiking to a great waterfall, ate at some classic McCall restaurants, had smores, tried to go on a canoe ride (the rental shop was closed for the fall, we were so sad!!) got scared at the cabin all by ourselves (I'm pretty sure there was an alien outside, yes an alien, not a bear or anything logical) and seriously had a blast. It was so fun! It was great to have some non stop one on one time after being busy all summer. And then this week we were finally able to go to Lucky Peak resevoir to do some boating before it got too cold. Tylers parents have the boat and we had a blast out there. Okay so here is the big story. Everytime I have tried to go wakeboarding I have failed miserably. EVERYONE has tried to teach me how. At one point I even had someone in the water holding me up so I would be up when the boat started going, sad I know. So today as we were boating, everyone was taking turns wakeboarding and skiing and I just cheered them all on like I usually do. Everyone kept trying to get me to go in but I kept saying no because I knew I couldn't do it. Then finally Tyler talked me into it. So I jumped in the FREEZING cold water and was thinking "ok here we go again"...but after I few tries I DID IT! I got up! I boarded for about 2 minutes til my back leg was throbbing. It was AWESOME! Tyler and my in laws did a great job at helping me and being so nice! They all cheered and whistled when I got up! HAHA wow. Anyway highlight of the month probably :) Here are some pictures from the latest in our lives ;)

BSU Oregon game, first game of the season! A lot of fun! Tyler was a really happy boy that day :)

Here are some pictures from our anniversary trip to McCall

Waterfalls we hiked to, sort of, it was more like a long walk :)

On our way to find the waterfall we stopped at this pretty overlook of the mountains and threw big rocks off the side ;) cool I know.

These ice cream cones are like a dollar and you can pile them as high as you can! Tyler is the master.

Here we are at the pancake house, don't mind my face minus the makeup :)

Beautiful Payette Lake in McCall. Love it!

Okay here are our boating pictures and the proof that I wakeboarded! YAY!

This was right after I got up, I was so happy!

Tyler wakeboards like a pro. He looks so good wakeboarding! Gives me little butterflies! haha. Too bad this is a pic of him skiing but you get the idea. I was going to upload a video of him wakeboarding too but man it takes like forever to load a video! Just trust me he is awesome ;)