To Wine

I have been collecting quite a few bottles because I have so many cute craft ideas using them. Since its the Christmas season I wanted to make a little Christmas decor. I got some yarn, hot glue, pom poms, bells, beads, felt, etc and made me 3 Christmas characters. A snowman. A reindeer. And a Santa Claus. Easy to make and turn out cute!!!

A few old shelves

I have had some old shelves that needed a little touch up. I first was just going to re-paint them, either just black or something colorful, but then I found MOD-PODGE... and decided I wanted to experiment... this little project could either turn out not that great and I wasn't out of nothing much, or it could turn out really cool. so if you decide you want to spice up some of your wooden shelves here is what you need:

• old shelves or frames
• paint - paint brushes
• mod podge
• scrapbook paper or fabric 

 And of course you can't forget your little helper!  

  

 Well I first started by cleaning off the shelves really well and letting them dry. I then painted the area where they were not going to be mod podged. For my shelves, I am painting the insides and mod poding around the outside. I painted a layer and let dry, and ended up doing a few layers.

 After the painting, I cut out the pieces of my scrapbook paper to fit the areas where I wanted them to be on my shelf. I then put a thin layer of mod podge onto the shelf. ( I didn't place the mod podge onto the paper first so it wouldn't get too soft to work with). After putting the mod podge around the area on the shelf, I placed the scrapbook paper down, pressing firmly to get any excess mod podge out and to help it all stick evenly onto the shelf.

 Continue to put all the pieces where you want them and continue onto the next shelf if you have more than one

 Let dry for at least 24 hours

Then hang and decorate!

Happy Mod Podging!

Craftiness

Ok.... so its about that time of year when people are starting to make crafts for the upcoming holidays, and I jumped on the bandwagon. Here are a few crafts I have recently made, and I have tons more ideas of other crafts I hope to make in the future (Pinterest and Michael's have made me very craft crazy)  So I plan to blog about all the different crafts I do and if you like them you can do them too! Let me know how they turn out!

So my first one I got the idea as I was walking through the store Michael's, they had a few examples their employees created and didn't look very hard to make, so my mom and I bought supplies brought them home and I went to work. Decorative plates for the fall season!

Mine - - I just love my little owl I put in it

My mothers I made for her

 


 Then I made a fall ribbon wreath.... It didn't turn out the way I wanted it in my head but I still like it. Now I just need to hang it up on my door!

I recently bought a heart shaped wreath and thought I would put an "H' on it for Haslam :) (cute right!) so I found some burlap leftover from my wedding and put it around it, then painted a wooden letter "H" and hot glued it on. I think it turned out pretty cute!






Well more crafts are on there way. The joy of being a college graduate with some spare time!

Proposal Story

Well here it is......

Wed. Dec 19 Hutch took me to go get a Christmas tree up Line Creek on our horses. It was fun, I've never went to get a live tree for christmas before, so it was a new experience for me. We found one, that looked to be alright and we cut it down and carried it out back to the trail. Hutch then put the tree on the ground and wanted to keep riding and we'd come back for it on our way back. So we took off again on our horses heading up a hill. We got on top and tied the horses up. He put his coat down so we could sit down on it, drinking hot coco while looking over the Morgan valley. We kept looking for some elk, and on our way up had saw a big bull off in the distance, so Hutch kept looking for more.

 After some time of drinking our hot coco and talking, with the dogs snuggling up next to me, Hutch stood up and walked a little farther on top and went to the other side of the hill, facing more of the mountains rather than the valley.  He stood there for a few minutes and called out to me saying he wants to show me something. I get up and headed toward him thinking.... more elk to see..... I get up to him and he holds me in his arms pointing to a clearing in some trees off in the distance and asks do I see it. At first I am scanning everywhere for elk but in the clearing of trees there are the letters "A + H" (our initials) he had made out of tree branches earlier that morning. He then turned me around as he kneeled on one knee and asked me if I would marry him. And they lived happily ever after.

Engagement Ring:

Isn't it perfect!!!

<3 It! Its gorgeous!

 Why a pearl ring???
I told Hutch I wanted a pearl engagement ring then a diamond ring when I am married. He went and picked out the engagement ring all by himself and I absolutely love it. I must admit I was a little worried what he would pick but he did a great job. Its a pearl with 6 diamonds. 3 on each side of it. 

22nd Birthday! Living Planet Aquarium

For my 22nd Birthday Hutch took me to the Living Planet Aquarium followed by dinner and shopping in Salt Lake. I've wanted to go to the aquarium for quite some time now so he humored me and took me. I loved it. Not sure if he had as much as as I did but we both had a good time. There is one section there about Utah and all the fish that live in Utah and he knew a lot about all the different types and info about them. I was impressed about all the fish he knew about.
There was also different sections of the world with different of their species.
There was ocean animals such as:

• Giant Pacific Octopus
• All types of SeaHorses
• All types of Jelly Fish
• All types of Star Fish
• All types of Sharks
• Sting Rays
• Sea Turtle (rescued from gulf oil spill)
• Colorful Fish

Sensitive to Flash (oops)

Can grow to 16 ft. Some of the largest ever recorded have been up to 30 ft.

Jelly Fish

This guys was awesome. In real life you couldn't differ from him and the corral behind him. The picture made him pop out so much more than what him and his surroundings look like

He was so still. Never saw him move, not even a twitch

Sea Urchin - did not know they had eyes!!!! It even blinks! Freaked me out first time I saw this

Beautiful aquarium with gorgeous colorful saltwater fish!

Strangest starfish I ever did see

Now thats JAWS!

 There was a South American Section that had animals such as:

• Anaconda (13 feet long) - feeds on frozen guinea pigs
• Tarantulas
• All sizes/kinds of cockroaches
• Alligators
• Giant fish
• Piranhas
• Eels
• All kinds of frogs



Glittery Piranhas. Touchy! Touchy!

Anaconda swimming

There was an Artic Section with penguins.
There was another section with all sorts of animals including:

• Green Tree Boa
• Weird/unusual creatures
• Glow-in-the-dark scorpions (glowed lime green)
• Hissing Cockroaches



Green Tree Boa - I want one!

 

This is what the green tree boa sees - thermal

I was very easily entertained, learned lots, and saw a lot of different types of creatures I never knew even existed. It was such a wonderful birthday. Couldn't have been happier!

<3 Him!

Yupp... I was in Heaven.

Halloween Cookies

The other day my mom made a batch of sugar cookies and told me I had to frost them. These weren't just regular sugar cookies though..... They were Halloween sugar cookies! So of course I couldn't just frost them, I had to decorate them. We had pumpkins and ghost cookie cutters so pumpkin and ghost decorating it was.

Of course I didn't want to decorate them alone.... Where is the fun in that?? So Hutch came over to help me.

At first I was a little skeptical because last time he helped decorate was with cupcakes and he didn't really "decorate" more just like throw everything on and the time he had 21 cupcakes done I had like 2.

But he actually did a really good job and put some effort into making them look good. . . He actually put some creativity into them.

He hates getting his picture taken and I have a bunch of these type of photos of him

My favorite of his..... Santa Claus Ghost

 However, the peaceful decorating turned into, "lets put it all over Ashley's face" dealio....
He sure likes to do this alot, especially with brownie batter.

Some of the final cookies.... quite a few already were eaten

Fall Quarter Classes

Well its been a while since I've posted anything on here, and I have a lot I could talk about. But for now I'll keep it short and sweet..

My last quarter ended in the last week of Sept. then I had a week off of school. Hutch and I went to visit my sister Rachelle and her husband Ben up in beautiful Kallispell, MT. It was relaxing and nice to not deal with school or work or anything. It was nice spending time with Rachelle and Ben since I haven't seen them for a while.

But its back to school again. This quarter I am excited. I have some pretty good classes that I'll really enjoy.

First class is Advanced Clinical Skills. This class is about doing lab work in a clinic setting which involves dealing with urine, microbiology, blood and more and conducting tests and lab work with those type of things for the animals. I already had a Clinical Skills class, so this will just be taking what I already learned previously further in a clinic.

My next class I am really excited for is Equine. Me and one other person in there are the only ones who has really ever had any contact with horses, in that we feel comfortable around them. Everyone else doesn't know much and a couple of people are scared of them... so it should be interesting. We'll learn about the anatomy/physiology and general things such as colors/breeds/markings/behavior, and then things we'll need to know in a veterinary clinic such as restraint and bandaging, etc. We also get to go to a couple different horse farms (one is a halter farm) so that will be fun to be working with them.... And I'll probably use my horse as a guinea pig to practice on. Hopefully she wont mind.


Last, is small animal nutrition and nursing. This class will be focusing mostly on canine and feline nutrition as well as being a nurse in the clinic for them. This involves doing exams such as history and physical exams, understanding/preparing for emergencies, placing catheters, giving drugs, and so much more. This will be a pretty big class because there is a lot to cover and do, but will be a huge in making me one step closer to work in a veterinary clinic.

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."

          -Nelson Mandela