David's Grand Adventures

David has gone on some pretty amazing adventures in the past couple of weeks. Here are a few pictures to show you what he's been up to:


David took a rock climbing class and they went on a trip to City of Rocks. Needless to say, he loved it!

We went to the Lowder water slide party and had a blast! David went down the slide like 60-70 times (nonstop from 10:30 to 5:30) Aunt Janice said David was like the energizer bunny because he just kept going and going. It was so much fun!



And, finally, David got an internship with the Mormon Messages (the LDS YouTube channel). He'll start his internship in the Fall. I'm so excited for him. He's really going to enjoy this experience.

Life is wonderful

My life has been so blessed the past few weeks – which has been so wonderful since it's been really stressful being unemployed and having to worry about finances for the past few months. But I was able to do some great freelance work for a local business and the Mormon Times.
I know this picture is blurry, but we're just the cutest couple ever!
David and I volunteered as I-team leaders this semester - we helped new married students get acquainted with school and participated in fun activities. It was a lot of work but really fun. It's funny that I never participated in any of this I-team stuff till I graduated.

And the big news is....

I got a job!!

I am now a writer for the Leadership in Action magazine at Melaleuca. I started on Monday and it's been great. It's so nice to be able to be able to put my degree to good use.

I actually got two amazing job offers the same week and had to decide between the two. I guess when it rains, it pours - but I don't care for the dry season.

This position also means that David and I can afford to take a trip back east this summer. David has never seen any of the church history sites back east and it will be fun to go on our first road trip together. We'll also be able to visit family and friends who live back east - not to mention see our nephew get baptized. We've never done a road trip back east so if anyone has some great ideas of places to visit while we're there or great ways to make this trip less expensive, that would be wonderful!

And that's what is going on at the Landeen house.

Don't count your chickens before they hatch...

Choosing furniture for our apartment is an adventure no matter what. Seeing as we live down some steep stairs and in this corner apartment with low ceilings and a door at the most awkward angle imaginable to man. We discovered how hard it really is to find something to fit our apartment this past week. ( not just fit in our apartment but fit our apartment as well)

The above picture is our old set-up. We had a love seat and a nest chair thing. They were nice but were a little uncomfortable to sit on all day. Chanae found a full size couch online for $15 and we decided to go look at it. I measured the doorways, the floor to the ceiling and the distance across where we would put the couch. Everything fit the couch. So we bought it. We had to sell our other two couches to make room so Chanae put them up for sale and they went quick. Next we got our new couch and started the project of moving it into our apartment. We found out quickly that this would not be an easy task, but for some reason it took us a long time to figure out that it was impossible. The problem that we were dealing with was that I had measured the couch from end to end and knew that it was shorter than the ceiling. However to get the couch into that position you must tip it and the couch was too long to rotate upright. We tried everything and at one point considered breaking a board in the couch to give it a bit more flexibility. We didn't. In the end the couch defeated us and is now sitting at the top of the stairs. Chanae put it up for sail for $25 – if anyone is interested in a new couch ;-). We figured for all the work that we did trying to get it into our apartment we should at least make a profit.
So above is where our couch now sits until someone with a higher ceiling decides to buy it and below is where Chanae and I sit. We have never seen our apartment look roomier but we are hoping to fill this space with something more comfortable than the carpet. We have all heard the old saying don't count your chickens before they hatch. Well we might start saying don't sell your couches until you know if the new one will fit into your apartment. Who knows, it might catch on.


*This post was written by David Landeen... if you didn't notice.

The Daily Herald

David and I are so excited it's spring. We have a lot of fun plans for this summer, including David's awesome class schedule of rock climbing, fly tying, soccer, D&C, Methods for Seminary Teachers, and Comm 100. We're also planning on doing a bunch of activities with the school, fishing, and camping a lot in the mountains where David's parents just bought a few acres of land. Not to mention the family reunion and the Lowder water slide parties. This summer promises to be full of lots of fun... however, the one thing I am dreading about summer is our buddy, the Daily Herald...

We live in the basement of a house and, because of this, we get a lot of pesky friends that stop by. Last summer, I would hate to get out of bed first because I knew there was a spider waiting for us. We'd kill it and find another one the next day. So we named each spider Herald and each day we complain about the return of the Daily Herald in our apartment.

And today, I found our first Herald...

It's already begun and it's not even officially the first day of Spring!!

So my question today is, how do I officially get rid of our pesky friends? I tried a few bug repellents last year but to no avail. Does anybody have a great solution for this?

Plumber Bummer/Valentine's fun

The date: Last Saturday, roughly 11 p.m.
The place: Our apartment in Rexburg, ID
The problem: Bathroom Plumbing

It was quite a shock when I went to use one of our two sinks in the bathroom and both sinks started filling up with water and leaving these nasty black specks all over. I called my handy dandy fix-it man, David, to fix it and ended up spending all evening trying to figure what was wrong. After staying up till 1 a.m. on Valentine's Day, we decided to call it quits and talk to our managers before church. Either it was the drain-o stuff we put down the drain or the stuff in the pipes, but our bathroom stunk like sulfur all night. I'm starting to wonder if Valentine's Day is more of a cursed day for us, since last year we almost got in a wreck.

Fortunately, the manager came and fixed the pipes in time for us to enjoy our dinner with the windows open to air out the stink. I made David's favorite dinner: marinated pork, stir fry rice and homemade bread. David gave me the roses on the table for Valentine's Day.

I also followed my friend, Leadawn's example and made heart shaped pancakes that morning. I didn't have red food coloring so I tried a raspberry jello mix. It kind of left a weird taste in our mouths afterwords so I don't recommend it.
And, finally, David made me the most amazing Valentine's Day gift ever! He had learned how to sew from watching his sisters do it all the time and, together, we decided to embark on this immense journey of making a red and white polka dot dress. I found a vintage 1940's pattern (that is almost falling apart because it was so old) online and we went to work. When David gets started on a project, he hardly even rests till it's done. So we got this project done really fast, though it was the biggest sewing project either of us had done. Afterwords, we had some extra fabric so we decided to make a tie to match for Valentine's Day. It is cotton fabric so it's not as nice as a regular tie but it was fun to make. And so we had an amazing outfit for church on Valentine's Day -- cheesy, I know, but we're newlyweds! We get to be cheesy for a while. :-)

Happy birthday David!!

Yesterday was David's 23 birthday. It was his first birthday that we got celebrate while married so I wanted to make it really special. Also, because his birthday is a few days before Christmas, it has sometimes been overlooked in the past. But not this time...

The first thing David wanted to do on his birthday was open his birthday presents.

His family got him some really great presents. He got the game Connect Four, a leatherman, lights for when the power goes off – like last weekend, two toy guns – one for him and one for me to make things fair, and the movie The Night At The Museum. I got him a lot of movies: Be Kind, Rewind; Victory; Bourne Identity; Bourne Supremacy; Bourne Ultimatum; Iron Man; and ... STAR TREK!

David loves this movie. His parents were big Star Trek fans when he was growing up so he understood all the inside jokes within the movie and has been really excited for the movie to come out on DVD. So I got him the movie and decided to make his birthday a Star Trek theme.

I found a special edition of the movie in a case that looks like the Star Trek ship, the Enterprise. I think it's really cool.

And then I got him a Star Trek shirt. As you can tell in the picture below, he was really excited. In honor of his birthday theme, I made him wear the shirt all day. It was really funny.Here is a picture of David and his presents. He is holding his toy gun and doing the "Live Long and Prosper" sign that Spock does on the show.
Then we went to David's parents' ward Christmas party. It was a lot of fun. The ward decided to have a Christmas breakfast party instead of a dinner. So we went to that.

After that, I needed to make David's birthday cake. David was great and helped me out with it. Neither of us really like cake (as many of you who went to our wedding reception know. We had cheesecake then instead). So I made a fruit cake that looks like a pizza. I made this cake a few years ago for Kaity Kobayoshi's birthday and it was a hit so I decided to try it again.

After David helped me solve a few almost disasters, we finally got it done. And it looked amazing, if I do say so myself. David really liked it.
We put the pizza in a real pizza box from Craigos – that's our favorite restaurant in Rexburg. The following is what the substitute pizza ingredients were:

Pizza Sauce: Red Cream Cheese Frosting
Cheese: White Chocolate, grated
Pepperoni: Strawberries, sliced
Sausage: Blackberries, divided
Green Onions: Kiwis, sliced
Olives: Grapes, sliced with the middle cut out
Mushrooms: Bananas, cut to look like a mushroom

Combine all those ingredients and you have an amazing pizza cake!
To top it all off, I decided to throw David a surprise party. He's never had a surprise birthday party and so I took on the task of throwing him one. I started planning it during Thanksgiving break where I secretly asked his friends if they'd be up for it. Then I got his family involved in the planning and coordinating. His sister mentioned that it'd be fun to have a theme party like little kids do and I loved the idea, hence the Star Trek theme.

David's mom bought the balloons and a Star Trek cardboard cutout of James T. Kirk (the one from the movie). It was really cool. I bought Star Trek plates and cups but accidentally left them in Rexburg so she bought bowling plates.

David's sister reserved the bowling alley and helped with the planning.

There were many times David's mom would call me while I was with David and I would have to make up some excuse about it being for Christmas or something. Even on the day of, David would leave the room and we would automatically start talking about the party. Then he would come in and we'd change the subject really fast. I really thought he was catching on.

I took him out to dinner. We were going to go to an Italian restaurant but there was a really long waiting line. We went to Subways instead. Due to this, we were done eating before it was time to go to the bowling alley. Luckily there was a movie store nearby and I convinced David to look around for a while. Then I got the OK to go to the bowling alley and headed out.

David didn't even see everyone until he heard them all shouting "Surprise!" And he was. He was so excited to see his friends there.
Here's a picture of David posing like Caption Kirk. The picture is a little blurry but it's still cool.
We bowled for a little while and then we went to David's parents' home to end the night by watching the movie, Star Trek.

David keeps telling me it was the best birthday he's ever had. I'm glad he enjoyed it and that everything worked out. I just don't know how to top this one next year. But I've got a while to plan.

Free Canvas Portrait

My friend, LeaDawn, started a blog to help people find out where some of the best deals are. This has been a great site. I've already ordered a free photo album for my parents and just ordered a free canvas portrait. She also has many other wonderful deals on her site. You should check it out.

The canvas portrait is from canvas people. The 8x10 is free to first-time users or you can put $55 towards a bigger portrait.

It's a perfect Christmas present that you only have to pay for shipping and handling (which is about 14.95). But if you want to find out how you can save more on the canvas (making it only cost $2.95-$8.95, go to The Coupon Basics Web site for more information on how to do that. I'm really excited to get mine in the mail soon!