Ice Fishing

We woke up at 5:30 this morning and headed down to Manuta Lake to meet Nate's dad for some ice fishing. Nate has gotten really into it the past few years and this year he, his dad and his brother-in-law, Chris, each got some "essentials" for Christmas so now they pretty much have everything they need. His dad got a really sweet shanty, he and Chris got 'Mr. Buddy' propane heaters, and he and his dad each got sleds to pull all their gear.


My little fisherman...





They have been catching a lot of Blue Gill and some Trout.

Nate had a nice fish sandwich for lunch. I, on the other hand, had a ham sandwich... not a fish eater. I did taste it, and it was good, but not good enough to be my lunch. :)

I think I will just recycle the plastic ones...

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Merry Christmas!!

Here's a little Christmas cheer from the Hipp house.
So far we haven't really had enough room for a real Christmas tree (or maybe we just didn't want to clean up after one...), so we have borrowed these little trees from my mom for the past 3 years. They work great, we just pulled them out of the attic at my parents house, right where we left them last year... one with the lights still strung.

I think every house needs a nativity... we love this one we got from Nate's parents! Angie, this picture is for you, complete with lamp. (my $3 find at a garage sale this summer)

This picture might just look like a plain white house, with a plain white door (both need to be painted), with just a simple Christmas wreath... Well, I'll tell you why it's more than that. For some reason Nate has kind of a weird dislike for wreaths, but looky here --he surprised me when I was at my night class last week! I don't know why, but I have a secret obsession for wreaths... Thanks Love!

Feliz Navidad!! ...seemed appropriate since it's playing on pandora right now. :)

Happy Halloween!

From "Elder and Sister" Hipp

jj cole fall warehouse sale

Nightstand and Cinnamon Rolls... yum!

I don't know why, but I was really excited about this little nightstand... We found it at the DI for pretty cheap and a little primer, paint and glaze and...
voila... (or however you would spell that)

We thought it would be funny if we put Mose's bed in it and could get him to sleep in there, but he wasn't having it. He would start to get in and then jump back all freaked out. We're not giving up... with a little coaxing I think he could really like it! Please ignore the empty frame on our wall, it's taken us over a year to even get this far with any decorations in our room. Now for a lamp for our nightstand...

I got ambitious this week and made cinnamon rolls for the first time in my life!!! My awesome mom pretty much coached me through it. I called her from the store to see if she had any good recipes and then picked up the items I didn't have while she instructed me on where to find them. Then when I got home and called her so I could write down the recipe, she was in the process of making her own cinnamon rolls! (I think she did it so she could help me while I did it!) I was pretty proud of myself for two reasons... 1. I used real yeast for the first time. 2. I kneaded the dough (not for the first time, but, well... it may have been a first too -I don't remember)

my dough...

Here they are before I put them in.

And taadaa...

They were pretty good, but I'm excited to try it again so I can do it a little different to hopefully perfect them! I'm not much of a cook, I pretty much avoid it unless it has to do with eggs or chopping vegi's. hehe! Poor Nate, I always tell him, 'you knew what I was when you picked me up'. (anyone know what that's from?)

until next time.

A New Table and a New Tree!

We've been wanting something to fill the empty space under our picture in the living room. We thought either a sofa/entrance table, or a nice chair would be nice.

Well... last Monday Nate called me from the DI to ask if I thought he should buy a table he found. While we were on the phone he said there was another woman looking at the table while she was talking to someone on the phone... basically doing the same thing he was. I think that's what really helped him go for it. ;) So the 'before' pictures of the table are on his phone and we don't know how to get it off. But it had a brown top with matching wooden knobs, and the bottom was all black (cute, but not really our style). Saturday we went to every store in Logan to find the right color paint and some cute knobs and here is the finished product!!

It was a little scary to actually spray AQUA paint on it (Nate said he was worried it would look like we live in a Dora the Explorer house). We are really happy with how it turned out though... much thanks to this website www.allthingsthrifty.com for the idea!

We also found a little Honey Locust tree for 75% off, so we planted it in the front yard on Saturday (it's obviously the tiny one in the front of the picture). We have one in the back that we really love.

Oh summer, please never leave!!! We don't want to be stuck inside for 5 months!

The Garden Isle

Nate and I got the chance to go with our good friends, the Wegeners, to Kaua'i!! It was a pretty short trip, but so so fun! We pulled out on Wednesday (August 25) morning at 8:30am to head down to the airport. After about 6-7 hours if travel time, and a four hour time gain, we got to Hawaii early Wednesday evening. That night we grabbed dinner and did a little grocery shopping, not recommended, everything was SO expensive! Then back to the hotel and to bed.

Thursday we went to a place our friends had recommended, Kipu Falls. We had to walk through a field like this:

...to get to a really pretty waterfall. There wasn't really a safe way to take the camera down by the water to get a photo of the waterfall though.

There was a sweet rope swing; here is Andy... mid-swing!
And we all took a couple turns cliff jumping off the side of the waterfall into the pool (for lack of a better word).After Kipu Falls we took a drive to the south-west side of the island to a beach my parents recommended, Barking Sands. There was probably 8-10 miles of beauiful beach with about 6 other groups on the whole thing, it was beautiful!

We all did some body surfing, I was terrible at it... It felt so good to get some much needed sun!

Thursday evening we drove back around the island to the north side where we camped just off the beach, it was an awesome spot! It did rain quite a bit while we were there and there were about 3 roosters that made sure we were all up by about 6:30 am, but we loved it anyway!

Friday morning we hiked part of the Na pali shoreline trail, we had wanted to backpack the whole thing (11 miles each way), but that weekend there just happened to be a goat hunt... so we just hiked what was still open and then up to a beautiful waterfall instead (total was about 8 miles). Didn't even see one goat either...

It was such a pretty view from the trail, after the hike we did a little snorkling on the reef you can see in this picture.

Hanakapia beach is claimed to be very dangerous due to strong currents. We counted 82 supposed deaths accounted for on the sign...

Still pretty though

The falls...

the locals...fishing

Steep trail back

I have no idea why this humongous sign was necessary... maybe it is because of the rain...

Na pali coast. Within seconds the view would change due to the clouds

Waimea Falls. Reminded us of Havasupai.

Thanks Hawaii for including Kauai in your islands -nate

Homemade Root Beer

It was a very special weekend... so much that we got to have homemade root beer TWICE!! I haven't had the stuff since I was little, and for some odd reason it reminds me of the ward parties with the Brigham City 4th ward!

The first event was a birthday party/camping trip with my family for my dad's 60th birthday!! Here he is after a full day frying on the beach of Bear Lake on Friday, sleeping in a tent with a group of 26 Friday night (not all of which spent the night, but it was a big group none the less), and then back to the beach on Saturday...

He was just a little tuckered out from all the fun.

'Munga' was too... But who could blame them after all this fun!!

We all had a lot of fun! Saturday after Bear Lake, all the adults got to go to dinner at Cafe Sabor and then to the temple. Always fun to do with family.

The second event of the weekend we weren't totally prepared for... so we ended up making the root beer just before we left for the birthday dinner for Nate's mom, Joy. Here we are in the car enjoying the root beer fumes!
Grandma Joy is so nice to let Hallie help open her presents...

We're both so blessed to have such great parents and families. We really had a great weekend, and I think we had enough sugar to last us at least through another month!

Saturday Projects

The headlights on our Civic have gotten so cloudy (it been driving Nate crazy). So, today he went and bought a refurbishing kit and went for it. Here's the before...


And after!!

We're both really happy with the results (especially Nate)! :)

...you can see I was in the process of cleaning out the garage while he did it (notice all the junk along the side of the garage).

Relief!

These are a few of our favorite things...

Our trumpet flowers, the humming bird feeder (not so much the feeder, as the cute little birds it attracts) and... our new WINDOW UNIT!! We both had Monday off work and after switching from sitting in the house to out in the shade in the back yard most of the day, we decided it would be worth the money to have somewhere to keep us from going insane from the heat!

We're finally getting some color in our yard! I wish I could say I had much to do with it... but I don't. Nate is outside every night watering and planting flowers. My contribution is pretty much pulling weeds and complimenting him on how great it's looking. :)

We put a little patio area in the back of the yard in the shade; it's been nice to have somewhere to eat and relax out there.

Mose LOVES playing in the hose water!

We are trying out a new spot for another garden area this year, it gets a lot more sun so everything seems to be doing really well. We had a bunch of peas a few weeks ago, the lettuce has been great, but the season is coming to an end... as you can see. We should have a plethera of peppers and some strawberries, we're really excited!