Monday, August 31, 2009

Everybody Dies Famous in a Small Town

We are published! This picture is from the Keizer Times (sorry the picture isn't very good I took it with my phone). The text is from the Mail Tribunes website, my mom picked up a copy for me but this might be easier to read than the picture and they say almost the same exact thing. Just wanted to share!


Andrew and Tara Lynch
August 23, 2009

Tara Lorraine Wallace and Andrew Michael Lynch were married June 13, at The Riverhouse in Shady Cove.

The bride is the daughter of Thomas and Tammy Wallace of Central Point. A 2004 graduate of Crater High School in Central Point, she received a bachelor's degree in elementary education in 2008 from the University of Oregon in Eugene. She received a master's degree in teaching in 2009 from Pacific University Graduate School. She works in elementary education.

The groom is the son of Kevin and Anita Lynch of Keizer. A 2004 graduate of McNary High School, he received a bachelor's degree in business administration in 2008 from the University of Oregon. He is a territory representative with Grainger Industrial Supply.

Maid of honor was the bride's sister, TeriAnn Stafford of Reno, Nev. Bridesmaids were Ashley Sheridan of Hillsboro, Kaitlin Ellson of Portland, and Kindall Grey and Jessica Hayes, both of Medford.

Best men were the groom's brothers, Kyle and Robert Lynch, both of Keizer. Groomsmen were Duane Doyle of Pleasanton, Calif., and Jeff Porter of Los Angeles.
Flower girl was the bride's sister, Maxenna Wallace of Central Point. Ring bearer was the bride's brother, James Wallace of Central Point.

Following the ceremony, the parents of the newlyweds hosted a reception at The Riverhouse.
After a wedding trip to Kihei, Maui, the newlyweds are living in Salem.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Latest Projects

When my mom came up a few weeks ago she brought me these black shelves from my room at home that I had completely forgotten about. Everything in my room used to be black but since I have a whole house to decorate now only one room is black. The guest bedroom has my old black bed but I really wanted these shelves to go into our bedroom. A year ago I would have given these shelves to goodwill and went to Target to buy white ones to match our room. Now that I am obsessed home decor shows and blogs I know that these could easily be spray painted white. This is how they started:

They are not perfect but I think they turned out pretty well for my first spray painting project:

I made the "Lynch" frame with things that I had around the house and a little bit of extra spray paint.


This is my next project. This desk is in our spare bedroom where the rest of the furniture is black. Before I can paint it black I have to sand the entire thing which may take me all week! I will make sure to share the finished product!!


Monday, August 24, 2009

Cinnamon Rolls

Hmmmm.... Good!


Last week I went up to Kaitlin's to make Cinnamon rolls with her and they turned out like CRAP! The dough didn't raise and so when they were in the oven the outer edge burnt and the middle didn't cook at all. I have a really hard time leaving things wrong so I promised Kaitlin I would make her a good batch over the weekend and here they are!


These ones turned out perfect and delicious!!

The dough doubled this time!


This is delicious cinnamon and brown sugar being rolled together.


A finished product, imagine this with some cream cheese frosting and drool!


Friday, August 21, 2009

3-layer mint chocolate chip brownies

I may not be exploring new dinner options this summer but I sure have spent a lot of time baking! Today I made delicious three layer mint chocolate chip brownies all from scratch!

Layer #1: Brownie


Layer #2: Mint frosting with chocolate chips



Layer #3: Thin layer of chocolate (Andy ate into them before I could take a picture!)



All frozen together and delicious!!


Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Yesterday :(

Let me take you through my day yesterday:

Before I'm ready to wake up in the morning I hear Andy walk out into the living room and say "Oh Sh**". Thinking that he is just not happy about being awake for work, I go back to sleep. About 20 minutes later Andy comes back into the room and wakes me saying "we have a problem." So I get up and walk into the living room to see our kitchen covered in water! We had started the dishwasher before we went to bed and at some point in the night it overflowed. The bad part is that it has leaked all into the carpet.

So I spent the morning changing the towels in front of the dishwasher ever 20 minutes to keep it from getting more into the carpet while we were waiting for the repair man to come. The repair man finally comes and finds NOTHING wrong with it! He said the float probably just got stuck which now has me worried that it could happen again at any point.

After he left I spent the rest of the day waiting for the carpet cleaning guy to come and soak up all the water. The worst part of the whole day is that he left us with this ugly blue fan to dry everything out. It is loud and is causing our entire carpet to shake and we have to leave it on until tomorrow afternoon! It's a good thing I had planned on getting out of the house today or else I would go crazy!!



Sunday, August 16, 2009

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh MY!

Sorry I didn't get around to posting towards the end of last week! I know that I had promised a blog on organization and it's still on the way. My mom and the kids came down for the weekend and I spent Thursday and Friday getting the house cleaned and ready for the kids to be here. My main challenge was getting the guest bedroom to a point where you could see the bed!


The main reason they came up was to see the zoo. Makenna LOVES anything that has to do with animals so this was a big deal for her. We met up with Ashley and Maddy who are zoo pros. Maddy and Makenna bonded over the fish and then they were all BFF's for the rest of the zoo! Here are some pictures from our adventure!









Tuesday, August 11, 2009

More Scrapbooking

I spent the last two weeks working on Ashley's second scrapbook. This is what my dinning room table has looked like since I started. Andy is glad that I am done and that we get to eat here again! I loved every minute of scrapbooking and am really proud of how these turned out. Now it's time to start cleaning my house for the girls to come up on Thursday and my mom and the kids to spend the weekend here. Coming up later this week: my organizing fetish!












Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Our Living Room

I have had a lot of fun decorating our apartment this summer and wanted to start showing it off! I told Andy before we moved in that I wanted a "grown-up" apartment and I totally got it!! With the help of this great blog http://www.thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/ I have found some great and inexpensive ways to decorate. I thought we would start with the living room because it is one of the only rooms that is fully finished.

This is the view after you walk around from the entry way. Behind you is the dinning room/ kitchen and to the right is the deck.

This is the view from the deck. I hate that chair and want to replace it with a love seat but it works for now. I think it looks great but it's pretty uncomfortable.

Close up of the wedding pictures that just got finished. I love the collage look of them and I got the frames at %40 off.


I am really proud of the top of our entertainment center. We got the vase the flowers are in as a wedding present. I had one of the candle holders from my old apartment and wanted to get more to cluster them together. So I went to Target and without paying attention to the price grabbed the last one they had. Turns out, it was $25!!!! For one of those tiny vases! I took it back the next day because I thought that was ridiculous. I remembered that the first one I got was from Goodwill and went out searching again. I found two of them there for 99 cents each!! I went back a week later and found the fourth one for 99 cents too. I went from buying one at $25 to getting all four for less than $4!!!



This is my other project that I am really proud off. I wanted some kind of large artwork to go over the couch but everything was wayyyy to expensive. I got this idea from the thrifty decor chick. We are really thankful to Andy's parents for giving us this couch and the chair and to Anita for the pillows. I used the green from the pillows for both the candles and the art work.


They are just fabric covered canvas and the best thing is that it will be easy to change the fabric if I ever want something different or we change the colors.



That's our living room! We spend most of our time in here love it. Even though we both talk about buying a house often we always say how much we LOVE this apartment. Once the scrapbook stuff gets cleaned up I will show off the kitchen/dinning room!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Back In The Groove!

A long, long, time ago I made a deal with Ashley. She was so kind to beautifully address all of our wedding invitations and in exchange I would scrapbook all of the pictures from Maddy's first year (she's two now!!) Ashley upheld her end of the deal and now it's months later and I am just getting around to the scrapbooks. I knew once I got started I would fall in love with scrapbooking again but it was really hard to get started. With only one month left of my summer vacation I knew I had to get started. So I pulled out EVERYTHING and fully took over the dinning room table. First I spend hours organizing and then I got started. I got so into it that I finished one of the two scrapbooks all this weekend!!!

This first one is smaller than the second will be but it goes through Maddy's first year by months. Ashley took a picture on her birthday each month so this scrapbook shows how much she grew in one year. Here is a sneak peak for Ashley and for everyone else to see how cute Maddy is: