Welcome Autumn and a New Challenge!

It's my favorite time of year, as everybody knows! Fall is finally officially here. I had my first pumpkin spice latte a few weeks ago, a brief glimpse into the lovely season that is now upon us! My house is decorated, my mini pumpkin collection has started (thanks for the $.75 pumpkins Albertsons), Ohio State football blares from our TV every Saturday, and I baked pumpkin-banana bread this week (much to the pleasure of my neighbors, co-workers, Megan, and my husband of course)... Really is there any question about why I love fall?

For many the start of fall marks the beginning of their busy school years. My schedule is quite the opposite. I've just started my season of rest. And I'm already restless... what a surprise! Remember my 90 day challenge from last year? Where I didn't repeat a meal from October to New Years... well, I'm not doing that again. I considered it. It was afterall a worthy challenge and one that I immensely enjoyed. But my line of thinking has gotten more complex since then. I thought to myself, what if I didn't just try to cook something new everyday, what if I actually did something new everyday? Thus, my new challenge was born: Do Something New... Everyday! I'm excited for the start of October to start my new challenge. I've been brainstorming ideas for what my "something new" could be everyday. I feel like I need to have a list ahead of time so that I don't run out of ideas or miss a day, but I'd also like to have some flexibility to be spontaneous! I'd love to hear any of your ideas about what new things I should do. I can't promise that I'll do all of them, but I can promise that I'll actually document this journey here on my blog. And you can bet there will be lots of pictures to go along with it. *Also, just to clarify, the something I do doesn't have to be something I've never ever done in my entire life... just something that is out of the ordinary everyday routine. 

I'd also like to throw the challenge out to you guys! Let me know if you'll be coming along on this journey! 

I also wanted to mention that I've been taking a blog design class. Over the next few days I'll be updating the look of my blog, so if it gets a little wonky for a few days, that's the reason why! 

I Heart Faces - Babies

How convenient that this week's theme is babies and just last week I took pictures of my beautiful newest cousin Isabella. This is one of my favorites, capturing a sweet and happy moment between daddy and baby!

Recent Scrapbooking Pages!

I don't even know where to begin on catching you all up on my life, so we're just going to move on from here! I thought I'd share a few scrapbooking pages that I worked on (semi-) recently!

Sorry for the poor picture quality! I only had time to shoot these at night!

Crazy BBQ Night w/ Co-Workers

Me and my Hubs

Refugio Beach '09

Sea World with Amy and Conor

Me and My Mom

From Meagan's Bridal Shower

From Max's 80's Party

From Christmas

A morning at the dog beach

I Heart Faces - Play

This week's challenge for I Heart Faces is a Play! I decided to showcase my kid-at-heart husband with our 2 happy little dogs!

We Took Down the Beast!

After 4 months of building, procrastinating, reassembling, getting so frustrated that I almost took a sledge hammer to the whole project, cutting moulding, re-cutting moulding, painting, and distressing... the center portion of our media cabinet is finally complete! Woo Hoooo!!! Celebration time!

This truly was a great project for Daryll and I to work on together. It tested our patience at times (well, my patience, I won't throw Daryll under the bus here). And it definitely took me getting over my obsessive need for perfection in my projects (well, I wouldn't say I'm over that exactly). Nonetheless, I feel such a great sense of accomplishment and pride that we tackled such a huge project... our FIRST EVER woodworking project... and FINISHED it!!! And it looks beautiful, if I do say so myself! I can't wait to start on the bookcases for the outside of it!

I Heart Faces - Flowers

This is my first time participating in the iheartfaces photography challenge! This week's theme is flowers and I thought that this picture of Daryll and Lulu was perfect for it!

Just Another Crazy Weekend Is All...

Well our non-stop lifestyle has continued to be, well, non-stop. Last weekend was the epitome of craziness. Here's the tv guide version (as my 6th grade teacher used to say):

Thursday: Drove out to Palm Springs for P-Club. Sat by the pool and relaxed. Ate dinner on the company. Slept. (At least that's what I did.)

Friday: Spent the day lounging by the pool, watching Daryll play poker, getting massages, and going to the awards recognition. Spent the night driving

a ridiculous route from Palm Springs to Fresno starting at 10pm.

Saturday: Slept 2 hours on my Mom's couch in Burbank. Drove the rest of the way to Fresno, while watching the sunrise. Daryll and Don competed in Brandon's Splash and Dash and finished 1st in the relays. Daryll had an obscene amount of energy for having so little sleep. I did not.

Sunday: Went to breakfast with Daryll's fam to celebrate Mother's Day. Started our trek back to San Diego. Stopped to bbq in Burbank with my fam for Mother's Day. Took some really cute pictures. Finished the drive back to SD where we picked up 2 very smelly puppies. Fell into bed and were whisked off to dreamland.