Christmas Advent Video

Posted in Christmas, Holiday, Life, Seattle, Videos by

Christmas is my favorite time of year and I love all of the different advent activities to do to make the whole month of December feel festive.  For some reason Advent seems to be one of those things that most people just do with kids, but I love finding ways to celebrate my favorite holiday.  🙂  I designed some advent magnets for my scrabble quote board that I love and it was a very meaningful Christmas this year as we tried to find ways to serve to “Light the World.”  I have found that it can be a little difficult to find advent activities for every day that are for adults so if you are like me and looking for inspiration here is a list of the activities we did this year.

Dec 1 – Ward Relief Society Christmas Dinner, the perfect start to the month, hearing about how to make Christ the center of Christmas and “Let Him In”

Dec 2 – Bellevue Festival of the Nativities, this is one of my favorites every year, since I collect nativities from around the world I love seeing hundreds from all over as well as the Christ room beautifully depicting the life of Christ

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Dec 3 – Girls Christmas Craft Night

Dec 4 – Hang ornaments on the tree and watch the 1st Presidency Christmas Devotional

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Dec 5 – Build Christmas Lego’s, it also snowed all this week which was so beautiful, I have really missed the Utah snow

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Fall Dinner Party

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After the mini food dinner party I made a goal to host a little dinner party every month… well that was in April… of 2015… and I actually had my second one last weekend.  I don’t plan on waiting quite so long before my next one.  🙂  I also revised the goal, realizing that every month might have been a bit too often to be realistic.

I chose a fall theme for this one, with mini pumpkins, yellow and orange flowers and goblets and napkins and sort of warm and cozy foods.  We had some feta and caramelized onion pastry appetizer’s and some honey crisp apple cider to drink as everyone arrived.

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I have been wanting to try some whipped butter for a long time, it is always so soft and spreadable in restaurants.  After whipping it I piped it with a frosting bag and tip.  I have been searching home decor and kitchen supply stores for weeks looking for small bowls to use and couldn’t find anything small enough, until I came across these little tea light holders that I already had, that I got at IKEA years ago.  Vu said that he wants to have his butter only like this from now on… good luck with that!

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Jaunita Bay Park Pics – 4 years

Posted in Juanita Bay Park Pictures, Life by

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One of the advantages of getting married in August is that it is almost always guaranteed to have sunny weather, so even though it is hotter than I would like it to be, at least it is always nice enough to take our annual pictures at Juanita Bay Park.  I was so excited when I found these number mugs right before our anniversary last year, I knew they would be perfect for our anniversary pictures.  The 4 was the only one in cobalt blue (one of our wedding colors) so I have been saving them all year.  My dad hasn’t been here for work at all the last few months 😦 so he wasn’t able to take them for us.  However, since one of the features my new camera has is Wifi, which allows me to take pictures from an app on my phone, and I bought a tripod before my trip to Europe, I tried taking them myself this year.  That was a bit challenging, but also nice because I could see what they looked like before and adjust things accordingly.  Maybe next year we will get around to actually paying someone to take them for us…

This really isn’t Vu’s favorite thing to do… but he did really well this year and didn’t complain at all while we were taking them.  As much as he hated doing it.  So thanks for that Vu!  You have a whole year before you have to do it again! 🙂

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(Last years pictures here)

On This Day 4 Years Ago…

Posted in Anniversary, Life by

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We started our forever.

We promised to make each other our first priority.

We committed to support each other in our weaknesses.

We would learn what that actually meant.

We chose to focus on the good instead of the bad.

We promised God would always be at the center of our relationship.

We would learn how vitally important that would be for our forever.

We promised to help each others dreams come true.

We started the process of choosing the happiness of the other over our own.

We would learn that happiness happens together.

We committed to love each other unconditionally.

We would learn that love is a daily choice.

We promised to help each other through the hard times, to hold together and not push apart.

On this day four years ago.

We started our forever.  Together.

Happy Anniversary Vuroom!  Love your guts!  Always!

 Our 3rd anniversary

California Phamily Reunion

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Last week we went down to Los Angeles for a family reunion with Vu’s family.  We flew out Tuesday night and got in pretty late.  Wednesday was a really relaxed day, we slept in and then went to lunch with Vu’s cousin Hanh, who was kind enough to let us stay at her house.  That evening there was a pool party and Vu’s aunt made some Vietnamese food.   Afterwards we went to get ice cream at Cauldron where they use liquid nitrogen to freeze the ice cream and you can get it in a puffle cone.  It was so good!

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Europe: Aggstein, Vienna and Budapest + a video

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On Thursday morning we were planning on driving straight to Vienna, but after seeing the castles and pretty drive along the river the night before we decided to drive back along in the daylight and stop at Castle Aggstein.  I am so glad we did this, the castle was one of my favorite things.  It is maintained in a sort of crumbling state, and I love castle ruins.  It is also built up on the top of one of the hills and right into a rock.  We had so much fun exploring the castle ruins.

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Europe: Germany, Austria and Czech Republic

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Friday was the day of Thomas and Nicole’s wedding.  They had the ceremony in the late morning, and then we all headed up to the reception which took place at a ski resort in the mountains.  It was such a beautiful area, and I loved the hotel where the reception was.  It was so fun and had so much character.  I loved that for the couple’s first dance they did the Viennese waltz.  It was so fun to see how our wedding traditions differ.

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Europe: Paris, Lake Como & Switzerland

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When our good family friend, Thomas, got engaged last year, my family knew we had to fly out for the wedding to celebrate with him and his new wife, Nicole.  Thomas and Nicole are from Germany, and we thought we would add of few more countries into our trip as well… 🙂  I went to Italy and Switzerland with Rachel, then to Germany for the wedding and to Austria, Czech Republic and Hungary with more of the family.  Paris wasn’t on the planned agenda, but I couldn’t go back to Europe and not go to Paris, so I left a day before Rachel and spent one very quick, long and exhausting but great day in Paris before flying to meet her in Milan.  My flight to Paris landed at 9:00am and the plan was to have slept the whole way from Seattle to Paris, one reason I intentionally got a direct flight, but I ended up not being able to sleep at all.  That was fun.  By the time I made it through customs, took the RER from the airport to my hotel and dropped off my luggage it was almost noon.  I could feel my precious time ticking away standing in line at the airport.  I didn’t make any really solid plans for my time there, I just wanted to be able to wander around the streets, enjoying being in my favorite city in the world!  It felt so surreal being back for the first time in 14 years.  I have missed it so much!

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Pie Bridal Shower

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So far 2016 has been the year of showers: bridal, baby and spring!  🙂

This past weekend my friend Carrie and I helped with a shower for our friend Jen.  Jen’s friend Trish was in charge, but she was sadly not able to make it to the shower from New York due to school conflicts, so she did what she could from afar, and we all collaborated on ideas together through text and a shared Pinterest board.  I love Pinterest!  Jen’s main wedding color is Kelly green, so we started with that and then added some touches of pink because we thought they were really pretty together.  Jen does not love pink… so we tried to keep it minimal… 🙂

Also Jen’s wedding theme is sort of outdoorsy-farmy-backyard picnic so we tried to stay close to that.  I made a quilt-like board for the mantle by cutting 2 inch squares of paper and taping them to a piece of square bead board that I had.

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And since every backyard/outdoor reception has strung lights we had to have some hanging over the living room.  Since we had the shower in the evening, these were really pretty as it got darker.  I still haven’t taken them down…

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