Life in Provo

Well, I'm finally updating the blog. I've had many comments on my long hiatus. Bryan has been threatening to update with a picture of a scared pug if I didn't post something soon! I have an excuse, though. My trusty camera has met an untimely end. Yes, one day I turned it on to find the LCD display screen looking cracked. The glass was fine, it was just the inside. Luckily, Bryan had a camera at his mom's house so we brought that back. I still dragged my feet getting pictures taken and figuring out how to upload from his camera, so sorry for that.

So, we're back in Provo! We had a great summer in Boise but boy, am I glad to have furniture again! I'm also happy to have the rest of our belongings again. It makes a huge difference in the feeling of a place to be surrounded by your things. I feel a lot more homey now. We moved into Union Square Apartments-- married student housing. Despite the fact that I thought they had dissolved all special wards into family wards, we attend a Provo Married Student ward. I have never before lived in a ward that had the exact same number of men as women!

Bryan seems to be doing well in school this semester and enjoying most of his classes. A few classes he has really been enjoying are Ethics and Computers in Society, Software Engineering and Cryptography. One reason he likes the first two so much is that they share the same professor, who is excellent. In Cryptography he is breaking down ciphers, something he has done as a hobby since he was a teenager so he's really enjoying it as a class.

I am still job searching. There have been a lot of ups and downs in the process and, as yet, nothing has panned out. I had a pretty severe disappointment yesterday when my temp agency, OfficeTeam, called saying they had a job for me. I had an interview elsewhere and told them I would call afterward with a definite decision. I decided the position OfficeTeam offered was a better one for me right now but when I called back she'd given it to someone else! Oh well. I'm still waiting to hear about the actual interview, though.

Anyway, a wise friend once told me that no one wants to read full text in a blog so I thought I'd take some pictures of our apartment as introduction to our new life in Provo (I mean, these are the reason I haven't updated in so long so they better be pretty good, right?).


Here is the first thing you see when you come to our apartment (sans my lovely shadow). In late August my parents came out to visit and to see my half-sister Tammy's adorable new baby girl, Hannah Blanche. My mom brought a surprise with her! She'd had our favorite wedding picture printed on canvas and took me out to have it framed. She also decided she wanted to do something nice for me and get a wreath for our door and a welcome mat. We found this nice wreath on Etsy and the mat at a personalization store online. Unfortunately, these were lost in the mail for a couple of weeks! I realized I'd been giving the wrong street for part of our address. What a disaster! Luckily, I called the DMV in time to correct my address before they sent out my Drivers License!There is another apartment 309 in this complex so I assumed the packages had gone there but they hadn't seen it. We ended up finding a house with the address I'd been using and they had kept the packages there for us. This doorstep was well worth it! The wreath makes our apartment smell amazing.

This is what you see when you open our door. Notice the Christmas lights lining the walls-- those were absolutely free! Courtesy of our wedding decorations... I even have a LOT left over. I love hanging Christmas lights-- they bring such a warm homey feeling to our apartment.

Here is the canvas picture that my mom framed for us-- we love it. We also have an army of WiiMotes chillin' under there in the entertainment center and a brand new Blu-Ray player. We had some money left over from our wedding on our Target gift card and decided it was worth the purchase. It connects to HuluPlus, NetFlix, Pandora, Picasa, YouTube, etc. It has 3D capabilities which is nice because we one day intend to own a 3D TV.

This is an unfortunate attempt at taking a picture of the curtains I sewed for our apartment. No matter how I took it, during the day they were simply not to be seen on film. Suffice it to say that they are two panels of fabric that hang from a rod (held up by Command Hooks) on either side of a window...

Here is a better idea of what the actual fabric of the curtains is like, though. This was the only pattern in JoAnn's that I really liked for it. It's not lying flat because I kept them hanging and held it up to the camera by my hand.

The entertainment center they provided with this apartment was not going to work with our wide, flatscreen TV so I turned it into a much needed book/game shelf. I think the couches are pretty nice, actually! We got a throw pillow from IKEA for it that you can faintly see in the dark picture above. It was very difficult figuring out how to arrange the furniture. We finally decided to have the back of the couch act as a hallway into the apartment. So, in a way, I guess the couches really section it off as it's own room. The gap between the chair and couch is slightly narrow but do-able.

We call this our "office." It really just shares the living/family room but it kind of feels like it's own little place. That may or may not be Pinterest up on the screen. I've become slightly obsessed.

I just wanted to zoom in on this part because I really enjoy the decorations we have up here. Minus the fish food. Darn, I should have moved that when taking pictures. I only just noticed it now. This is Bryan's our beta fish, Gordon. No, it's not after Gordon B. Hinckley. Instead, he's named after Gordon Freeman. In his old age (1.5 years) he has gotten rather ornery! He puffs out his gills at us if we just walk by him! Poor Gordon.

Yes, uninteresting but I thought I'd post our vanity. Be happy I left out the pictures of the shower room. Bryan said, "No one wants to see our toilet." You know, I'm sure he's right. I was just taking pictures of everything.

I just like this closet because there is a lot of opportunity for storage. I don't feel at all cramped in this apartment.

Same bedspread, more decorations. Luckily, this coloring followed the same theme I had when I was single so I just used the same pillows to spruce it up. Other than this, we have a couple framed wedding photos on our dresser. The only other interesting thing is comparing our closets. Talk about polar opposites!


Bryan snapped this not-so flattering picture of me last night.You can kind of get a better idea of what the curtains look like, though they are closed in this. Oh! And there is the aforementioned IKEA pillow!

So, this is our life for the next 8ish months. In April, Bryan will graduate. We hope to be back in Boise with him working for Clearwater Analytics, where he had his internship. Come next May we will probably be moving somewhere! It's exciting for real life to really start.