Matt & Mandy

Meet Russell




I have been wanting a dog for soooo long! I've been begging Matt for a puppy ever since we got married and I guess he finally caved. All I wanted for Christmas was a puppy. I even told Matt it could be my Christmas, birthday, and graduation present all combined into one. That's all I wanted! But he kept telling me that we had to wait until we bought our own house so we could have a bigger yard etc. etc. Excuse after excuse. So I was NOT expecting to get a puppy for Christmas at all! There was a big box sitting under the Christmas tree and Matt kept telling me he was so excited for me to open it. I honestly wasn't that excited because I knew there was no way there was a puppy inside the box. So Christmas morning came and Matt had me open that box very last. Inside was a dog collar and a picture of Matt holding my puppy. Yes, I cried. I was so happy!
He was at Matt's parent's house, and I couldn't wait to go get him so we hurried and got ready, went to church with my parent's (because there's was at 9:00 and our's wasn't until 11:00 and I couldn't wait that long) then went and picked up my cute little puppy. He is a Beagle and we named him Russell. He has been so much fun and a lot more work than I expected! He got sick a couple of times and the vet even told us that we would have to either spend thousands of dollars on him or put him down... but we nursed him back to health on our own and realized that that certain vet was just a money digger who we won't be going back to ever again. Anyway, I'm a little baby hungry and Russell is my baby for now so I spoil him, probably a little too much. But as you can see he is super cute and how could anyone not spoil him? We love our little Russell :)

Cakes



I have this dream of one day having my own cake business. I took a couple classes to learn the very basics and it is so fun! Besides the cakes I made for those classes, so far I have just made a couple cakes for family. The first one I made was for my sister's 30th birthday. Her birthday fell on Thanksgiving so I made a turkey holding a birthday cake. It is my first real experiment with fondant/gumpaste. It took me awhile to figure out how to make it work just how I wanted it, but I like how it turned out. Then I made a Christmas cake for Matt's grandpa. It was just a DIY cake I found on a cake blog so it was pretty simple but so fun and I think it's pretty cute!

Quick Update...

I haven't been very good at keeping up with this blog since we came back from Pennsylvania, so I'll just give you all a quick update of our lives... Matt got a job selling insurance back in October and seems to be enjoying it. I finished school in December (yay, finally!). I've been looking for jobs since then and hanging out with our new puppy, Russell (I will do a separate post about him because he's so stinkin' cute). Anyway, I was looking for a full-time job as a receptionist or just something that would keep me busy during the day, but after awhile I decided anything would be better than nothing. So I applied for a part-time housekeeping job at a nursing home and what do you know, I got the job. I know it's not the most glamorous job ever, but I'm pretty excited about it because it'll at least give me something to do for a few hours a day and a little extra cash for us :). I've also been working on starting up my cake business. So far I haven't been able to do a whole lot with it, but now that I have a job I will hopefully be able to get some more supplies that I need, start on a portfolio, and find some brides to do wedding cakes for. Hint, if anyone knows someone getting married in southern utah ;)