8 Days left in California

I am very, very excited about our move to Salt Lake City! I can't even begin to tell you the number of conversations Jayson has tried to have with me about convincing me to move to Utah after we got married when we were dating. My answer was always "Uhm, we live in California..where its warm.. we're not going anywhere!" And I'm surprised to say that I've been counting down the days for the past month for our move.

There are a few things that I am no so excited for. The cold weather is one thing. Here I am, sleeping in 55-60+ degree weather and I'm 'cold' but I don't even know the meaning of cold until we move... Jayson looked up the weather for the day/night we move and the high will be 50-60 degrees and the low is about 30 something degrees. I'm really excited...

I'm not too thrilled about learning new cities, directions, and street addresses. Jayson says its darn near impossible to get lost on a grid system, but I still can't figure anything out because of these street numbers, even though they're all numerical.

I'm the worst at adjusting to changes, but I know I'll feel comfortable eventually. However, I am excited that we have our own place that we don't have to share with anyone. It's our first apartment that we get to decorate how ever we want without anyone telling us what we can or cannot do. We get to make it our own 'Anderson' home :)

I'm also extremely excited to be moving closer to some of my girlfriends in the area. Out here in California, 99% of my friends from high school have moved out of the area for college and we have lost contact. Most of my friends from church are still attending the Singles Ward, which is awesome for them, but because every one has a crazy schedule, Sundays were the only days we could really catch up and see each other. Jayson and I are excited to be moving into an area where there will be other young married couples, as well as two of our closest friends who are going to be getting married in April. Jayson also has a few buddies attending BYU who he will now get to hang out with.

This is a new adventure that we both just wanna start already. We've been waiting since the begining of October to start this..and we're 'tired' of waiting (well..maybe I'm just tired of waiting) We're excited for our new opportunities and a chance to plant our feet into the ground and get our lives going!

Crafts by Inspiration

Well, I've decided that I have zero crafting skills whatsoever. On Wednesday, I met with my Visiting Teacher, Lizzie, and she had shown me a skirt that she made a few years ago and a blanket sewing kit that her mother had sent her for Halloween. She had invited me to make skirts with her and I was rather embarrassed to tell her that I had no idea how to even start making a skirt. Since then, I have decided that I am going to learn to get crafty.

I have a few ideas of things that I'd like to make:

The first thing would be a few skirts. When Lizzie showed me her modest that she had made, I got super jealous! I'm not 100% sure of the fabric I'd like to use, but I think I'm going to challenge myself and try to make my skirt have pockets (if that's a challenge?)

Second, I want to learn how to really crochet again. I learned how to make a simple knot a few years ago, but nothing more than that. After spending Conference Weekend at Jayson's parent's house and watching Taylor, his sister, crochet several blankets, it sparked my creative mind.

And finally, Jayson and I really need coasters. I was browsing on the internet at craft idea's and I found a site that explains how to make coasters for a grand total of about a $1.50 or less and figured that those would be a lot cheaper than going out and buying coasters.

And I'm pretty sure I'll come up with more idea's soon!

Finding our place

September has been full of surprises. It marked our first full month of being married, and might I say it hasn't been all fun and games (imagine that!).

Don't get me wrong, we have been having tons of fun! We finally were able to take a week off from work in September to celebrate our marriage, which we spent at the Disneyland Resort! (obviously ;)

This was taken on our balcony at the hotel while we were watching the fireworks

We are very blessed to have this home that we live in as well as two stable jobs. However, even with these three great blessings life is still hard. For example, I just got a job working at Red Robin at the end of July and I absolutely love it. I love the learning experience I've had and the chance I've had to better communicate with people, as well as build relationships with my managers and co workers. I find it very surprising that I get along with every person I work with. You don't find that to happen at most jobs..

Even though I absolutely love my job, it gets frustrating at times. I have an inconsistent schedule- one week I could have 5 shifts and the next I could have 3. One day my schedule will say I need to work 5 hours, and I'll get sent home after 2 1/2. That's because it depends on how busy the restraunt gets, which is understandable and sometimes I like going home early, but it can also get frustrating when it comes time to pay our bills. Luckily we are still able to make ends meet even if I'm not making the money I hoped I would be.

The other thing that is changing is our current location of living. I have lived in Thousand Oaks my whole life and the only time I have ever left the state was for vacations to Kauai, Las Vegas, and Utah. For a long time I was completely against the idea of ever moving out of California. I like the sunshine and the constant warmness :) Anything colder than 60 degrees just doesn't sound like fun to me... Anyway, I finally opened up to the idea of moving to Utah after having spent a week in Salt Lake City area over the summer. Since Jayson is trying to get accepted to the University of Utah in fall of 2012, we decided it would be best to move up there as soon as possible and establish residency. We have been searching for jobs and locations to live all month. We have found several opportunities and now we are just waiting to hear responses.

Life has a funny way of throwing you through a loop. We thought we had finally found our stable nitch here in Newbury Park after finding a wonderful home (we may just be renting a room from a house, but it is still better than we had expected), Jayson being able to regain his employment at the Westlake Village Inn since returning from his mission, and me being able to get a job at Red Robin. After constant conversations about our options, we still need to make one more change. Finding our place is not coming as easily as we had expected, but we know and trust that the Lord has a plan for us. There is a reason why we are needing to relocate and make adjustments in our lives, and we know that what ever that reason is that it will be for our benefit and prepare a new path for us to follow in the future.

I'm excited for the change ;) HERE COMES SOME SNOW!!!

This was taken a few nights ago- we have fun together ;)

Ashley Anderson should NOT bake

I always knew I wasn't cut out for the whole "wife that bakes everything all the time" title, and last night proved that!

Jayson called me on his break at work and had asked me to make up some bread dough so we could have fresh bread. Its not that I didn't wanna help out, I'm just not very patient when it comes to cooking, and I somehow always mess up so I joke about how my cooking will kill someone or make them sick. Jayson convinced me that everything would be alright and he had faith that I could do this...

As convincing as he was, I still knew this wasn't a good idea, but I wanted to be helpful and learn to do something new. So I grabbed the ingredients necessary and the mixer and got started. (This next part is the dumbest thing ever, and I have no clue why I did it) I started to put the mixing rods into the hand-held mixer and locked them into place. I wanted to make sure they were locked in before I started using it, so I put my hand in front of the beaters waiting to catch them if they accidentally fell out (ya, stupid..I know). I accidentally turned the mixer on too high and startled myself and the next thing I knew, my finger was twisted inside the mixer :(

So now I've got a lovely little finger splint on my left-ring finger. I must say that only having 9 fingers to work with is a lot harder than I thought... But hey, in the end, I did make a pretty yummy loaf of bread ;)

Spinach, Strawberries, and Granola

Hello all!

Jayson and I have come to the conclusion that when we both get lazy, especially after working night time shifts, we resort to eating fast food/snack foo

d/unhealthy food instead of cooking a balanced meal. It's not that we dislike cooking, it just gets time consuming and..lets face it, who wants to cook at 11:30 at night? Ya..not us.

So anyway, we decided that we would cut out all fast food and as much unhealthy food items as possible. We started looking up healthy recipes online and I came across this super yummy salad!

Spinach, Strawberries, and Granola

• one bag of fresh spinach
• 1/4 cup of granola (you can find different types in a bag at the grocery store)
• 5-7 fresh strawberries

1. Using as much spinach as you like, chop up to smaller pieces (it helps to eat smaller bites than the leaves) and add to bowl.
2. Chop 2-3 strawberries into bite sized pieces and add to bowl
3. Mix the spinach and strawberries to ensure that every bite will have spinach and strawberry!
4. Repeat steps 1-3 depending on how big or little of a salad you'd like
5. Add the 1/4 cup of granola and toss the salad

And there you have it! The recipe I found didn't call for the granola, and gave instructions for how to make a dressing.. but I did not have the ingredients to do so at home, so I decided to add the granola myself. I must say that it was a yummy concoction! And the best thing about it? It takes 7 minutes to make!!

(I didn't take this picture..the one I had taken was way too large)